Statutes Repeal Bill

I move, That the Statutes Repeal Bill be now read a third time. This bill repeals or partially repeals 137 Acts that are no longer needed. This because they no longer have any actual effect, have very limited effect, or are designed to achieve regulatory outcomes that are no longer relevant. By removing some unnecessary legislation from the statute book, this bill is a small part of this Government’s work to improve the regulatory environment in New Zealand. The Government signalled this work in its response to the Productivity Commission report on regulatory institutions and practices.

After the bill receives Royal assent, the legislation listed in schedules 1 and 3 of the bill will be gone. This bill contains a self-repeal clause, unlike the last repeal Act, the Statutes Repeal Act 1907, which this Act also repeals. There will be no need for future Acts to repeal this Act once it has done its work. During the Committee stage debate, members asked about the effect of repealing other repeal Acts. I would remind the members of the rule in our Interpretation Act 1999, which provides that the repeal of an enactment does not revive an earlier repealed enactment.

The Acts repealed by this bill vary substantially in their original purpose and are an interesting reminder of the types of activities regulated throughout New Zealand history. For example, this bill repeals the Post Office Act Repeal Act. Not that long ago, the Post Office Act regulated the postal market in New Zealand, and the New Zealand Post had a monopoly on the delivery of the standard letter. This changed in 1998 with the deregulation of the postal market under the Postal Services Act. Another example of note is the Wheat Board Amendment Act 1986, which dissolved the New Zealand Wheat Board. Prior to this, the New Zealand Wheat Board had complete control of the purchase and sale of wheat and flour in New Zealand, including quantitative control of all imports of wheat.

The bill also repeals some latent legislation. The term “latent” is used to describe Acts that were once passed but which have not yet been brought into force—in other words, laws that are in legal limbo. This is needed where New Zealand is waiting to ratify certain international instruments, or certain prerequisites steps have to be completed first, or other related reforms or technological changes need to happen first. Sometimes policy changes mean this legislation is no longer needed. The latent legislation being repealed in this bill includes the Forests Amendment Act 1996 and latent sections of the Fisheries Act 1996 that are no longer required. Repealing this latent legislation will increase certainty for those who are potentially impacted. My colleague the Attorney-General Christopher Finlayson regularly reviews latent legislation to see whether it can be brought into force or repealed. He presents a list of this legislation to Parliament each year.

This bill has been through substantial consultation, which is the appropriate process for any repeal bill. This has been useful both in finding additional Acts to repeal and in ensuring that no repeals in the bill have had unintended consequences. The exposure draft of the bill was publicly released in late 2015, and responses helped the Government thoroughly consider the bill before its introduction.

One submitter expressed concern about the repeal of the Sentencing Council Act 2007 through a statutes repeal bill, suggesting that the decision not to establish the sentencing council appears to be a serious constitutional matter. The Sentencing Council Act does not require the sentencing council to be established by a particular date. The Government Administration Committee noted in its commentary that it received advice that the regulatory outcome of the Sentencing Council Act is not relevant, because the sentencing council has not been established. The Government announced publicly some years ago its intention to repeal the legislation. Parliament has been free since the Act’s commencement to scrutinise the Government’s actions and intentions with regard to the Act, including through questions to Ministers and scrutiny of appropriations and expenditure. While a separate repeal bill for the Sentencing Council Act would allow more parliamentary time to be devoted to looking at this particular aspect of the bill, it would result in substantially more use of Parliament’s resources and further delay. It would create uncertainty for the legal community and others.

Another question, raised in the debate at the Committee stage, was whether the repeal in this bill covers every piece of redundant legislation in New Zealand. Well, of course it does not. It has not been possible to research every piece of legislation. There are over 1,900 Acts in force in New Zealand, many of which will be redundant as more Acts outlive their original purpose. Statutory repeal bills are periodically advanced in the UK to repeal obsolete and redundant laws there; this will not be the last in New Zealand. Repealing redundant laws is just one part of the wider work we are doing to improve the quality of law in this country.

Departments have the legislative stewardship responsibility that requires them to search and review their legislation to keep it current. Working with departments and agencies on this, the Parliamentary Counsel Office is committed to promoting high-quality legislation that is easy to find, understand, and use. The Government’s revision bill programme is part of that work, and through this programme old, scattered laws are put into accessible and up-to-date form, and redundant provisions are found and repealed.

In conclusion, I do want to thank everyone who has been involved in the process, including members of Parliament and particularly the members of the Government Administration Committee; the previous Minister for Regulatory Reform, Steven Joyce; the Attorney-General; and those members of the public who have made submissions on this bill. It has been a valuable exercise in trimming down New Zealand’s body of legislation—I have thanked the committee and I do thank the committee—making it more up to date and fit for purpose. I do commend this bill to the House.

I am absolutely astounded that the Minister in charge of the bill, Paul Goldsmith, did not manage to fill in the full 10 minutes on this, the crowning jewel of the Government’s regulatory reform agenda, this Statutes Repeal Bill. But I do want to commend him for bringing it to the House and bringing this bill to fruition. The statues repeal bill process, as the bill has gone through the House, has forced me, one could say, to end up debating aspects of legislative process in New Zealand that I did not ever realise that I would be able to speak for so long about. But you never quite know what is possible until you try.

There are many aspects of this process that I support. I certainly support the notion that we should regularly update and streamline our laws in New Zealand and that we should repeal those that are no longer relevant. I attempted to add to that process during the Committee stage of this debate by repealing the law of blasphemy, which, of course, is no longer applied in New Zealand. Unfortunately, the Committee of the whole House did not agree by a majority to incorporate that into this bill, so it will go no further at this point. I hope that the House will have an opportunity to come back and look at that at some stage, because I do think that that fits within the spirit of what this bill is trying to do.

I note on page 1 of the Statutes Repeal Bill, as presented back to the House by the Government Administration Committee, that it adds additional Acts to be repealed. There are five additional Acts that the Government is seeking to repeal here: the Education Law Amendment Act 1933, the Infants Act Repeal Act 1989, the Taxation Acts Repeal Act 1986, the Wellington City Reserves Act 1872, and the Wellington City Reserves Act 1871. One could argue that those Acts that are now being added for repeal have not gone through that extensive consultation process that the Minister mentioned and therefore should not be included in this bill. I personally would not be comfortable with that argument. I am quite comfortable that there are good grounds for repealing these, just as I am comfortable that there would be good grounds for repealing the law of blasphemy without it going through a further process.

There were some interesting submissions raised, and I was particularly taken by the submission of Sir Kenneth Keith, whom members on this side, certainly, quoted during the Committee stage of the debate. I think it is important when we debate something like the Statutes Repeal Bill to ask a couple of questions. One of those questions is: “What’s the mischief?”—so, what the problem is that we are trying to solve by repealing whatever the legislation is that is in this bill. And the second question relevant to that is: “What’s the harm?”—so, what the harm is in either repealing or not repealing. The point that Sir Kenneth Keith made in his submission to the committee was that, in fact, many of these bills no longer have any legal effect whatsoever. There are there only in name—and, in some cases, there was debate as to whether they were even there in name or whether, in fact, they had already been repealed and therefore ceased to exist, so we were repealing laws that no longer actually existed in the first place. The question therefore becomes: “What is the point of repealing them again?”.

One of the points that Sir Kenneth Keith made in that regard was with regard to amendment Acts. These are Acts that have no standing in their own right; they simply remove or amend things in other Acts. So once they have done that job they, effectively, cease to exist because they were never Acts in their own right; they were only amendments to other Acts. You will see some of those Acts now being repealed, but there is actually no need to repeal them because they were never stand-alone laws in the first place. Once their amendments had been incorporated into the statutes that they were amending, then they, effectively, ceased to exist. So what is the mischief? What is the harm? What are we trying to fix by repealing them, because they do not actually exist.

Then there are some other Acts that have ceased to exist through other means. For example, the Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Act 2010 has already been discharged by Order in Council. That Act allowed Ministers, by Order in Council, to say “This Act has now expired.”, and they have done so. So why the need to repeal them when they have, effectively, been repealed by another means already?

💬 Todd Barclay: Just in case.

Just in case. There was a lot of discussion about the Sentencing Council Act of 2007 and whether, in fact, this was the appropriate mechanism to repeal that legislation. As the Minister noted, the Government has signalled its intention for some time to repeal this legislation, but I think, as some others have argued, the fact that this legislation has been on the book for some time and has not been implemented is not good grounds to include it in a statutes repeal bill, because it does not actually fit the criterion of a law that has become redundant. It is a law that was never enforced. That does not mean that it has become redundant because it has expired or the issue has passed. It has not been implemented, because Government policy has changed and therefore it does not actually fit the criteria of what this bill is trying to achieve, and therefore, it is somewhat surprising that the Government has incorporated it within this legislation. I think that is quite a legitimate concern to raise.

There are some other examples in here that are somewhat interesting. As the Minister noted, there is the last Statutes Repeal Act. Actually, I have to correct him. I did some research of my own and there has been another Statutes Repeal Act since then, but it has already been repealed. But the last Statues Repeal Act on the book was from nineteen hundred and—whatever it was—

💬 Paul Foster-Bell: 7.

1907—and it is now being repealed by this. We will not need to repeal this Act, because the Act itself, which we are about to pass, includes a repeal provision within it. So, basically, once it has been enacted it will itself just—it has got a self-destruct mechanism built within in it, and that is something that I am sure the House will welcome so that we do not have to torture ourselves with too many further debates like this one. But I do welcome the progress of this legislation. I am disappointed that blasphemy is not being repealed as part of this process, and I hope that we will get a chance to do that very soon.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Talofa lava, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to take a call in the Statutes Repeal Bill third reading debate. I do want to respond to a couple of the things that were mentioned by the Labour member Chris Hipkins, who was speaking before the dinner break.

This piece of legislation, I think, is very useful in that it does serve a purpose, and that purpose is, effectively, spring-cleaning our statute book. It removes some of the clutter, and in this day of electronic storage of information where there are no longer, necessarily, huge rows of statute books sitting on shelves, but these things are available electronically, one might, quite reasonably, ask the question: why would you need to do this? But the fact is that if you are a lawyer practising in a certain field of law, having additional pieces of legislation—some of which, well, certainly all of the 137 that we are repealing this evening in part or in total—that are no longer needed, that no longer have any effect, that have become dormant, and that have become, certainly in some cases, outmoded, having to be aware of these pieces of legislation and the possible interaction that they might have with other law is an unnecessary clutter. So this is a useful piece of regulatory reform to consign these outdated bills—such as the Education Law Amendment Act 1933 or the Wellington City Reserves Act 1871, section 4 of that Act, and 1872 in total—to repeal them and remove them.

I also want to respond to the point made by the member on blasphemy. Now, personally, I do think it is time for New Zealand to have a good, careful look at section 123 of the Crimes Act, and I am personally of the view that it is no longer necessary in a country like New Zealand to criminalise thought or speech associated with blasphemy, heresy, or apostasy; any of those concepts.

However, I think it is important that the Government approach this matter in an organised and sensible fashion, and I would note that it is the Government’s intention, under our very good justice Minister, the Hon Amy Adams, to review the Crimes Act and to look at tidying up some of these elements of the Crimes Act in a crimes amendment bill later this year. I do not think it is appropriate that we, in almost knee-jerk response to a media case of Stephen Fry being initially accused of blasphemy in Ireland—of course, the police have subsequently dropped charges in Ireland. It is not actually appropriate in a statutes repeal bill, which is supposed to be uncontroversial, to exert that measure at the last minute without any consultation of the public or of interested organisations. So I think it is very appropriate that that be dealt with by the Government in the normal way, following due process in the fullness of time. And given there has not been a single successful prosecution—only one attempted prosecution in the last hundred years for blasphemy—it is certainly not an immediate problem. But it is within the Crimes Act, so it is quite right and quite proper that it be looked at very carefully to ensure that there will be no unforeseen impacts of such a repeal.

So the rest of this bill is very, very sensible, from the Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Act—the empowering legislation for the Rugby World Cup, special measures—through to the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake legislation, all of which are out of date and all of which will be consigned to the history books rather than the statute book. Thank you.

I am delighted to be speaking in the third reading of the Statutes Repeal Bill, and I want to commend the member who has just resumed his seat, Paul Foster-Bell, for his contribution at our select committee consideration of this bill. One would probably assume from hearing the title “Statutes Repeal Bill” that it was not going to be a very interesting or exciting bill, but, actually, exactly the opposite was the case with this bill.

We started off with a proposal to repeal 132 pieces of legislation that were no longer in use, that were out of date, surplus to requirement. This was described by the Minister as being—I think the Minister was the Hon Steven Joyce at the time—as the great leap forward in the implementation of the Productivity Commission’s recommendations. I have to tell you, there is not a single thing in this bill that will improve the productivity of New Zealand—not a single thing—because none of these Acts are in force any more, none of them are being used; they are all surplus to requirement. We have spent hours of parliamentary time debating the need to repeal Acts that are no longer used. That is Steven Joyce’s idea of a major contribution to improving the productivity of New Zealand.

So we started off with 132 Acts to be repealed. Two of those 132 were controversial. Now, this is not a statutes amendment bill, so the controversy around those two Acts to be repealed was not relevant in the way that it would be in a statutes amendment bill, but I want to come back to those two.

We got so enthused by this process of repealing things that meant nothing that we added another five, so we ended up with 137 Acts. I remember Paul Foster-Bell and I having a little “who was right” on these figures during the Committee stage of the debate, and, indeed, we were both right because we started off with 132 and ended up with 137.

The two Acts to be repealed that were controversial are the Sentencing Council Act and the Medicines Amendment Act. Neither of those two was considered appropriate to be included in this legislation, because they were not surplus to requirement in the way that the others were. They were Acts that the Government no longer wanted to progress. So the Acts have been passed by Parliament, they were in force, but they had not been implemented.

We had an outstanding submission from Sir Kenneth Keith, and I am sure that the Minister of Justice, the Hon Amy Adams, is well aware of his legal mind and would be inclined on many occasions, I would imagine, to agree with his view. So Sir Kenneth Keith has been well recognised by New Zealand Governments. He has received an Order of New Zealand, he is a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, he is a Queen’s Counsel, he was a New Zealand judge, and he was the first appointment to the International Court of Justice—the first New Zealander. He was a judge in the High Court, the Court of Appeal, a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and one of the inaugural appointments to the Supreme Court of New Zealand. He has got quite a good record in the law; knows a thing or two about it. He said to our select committee in his submission that it was wrong for us to include the Sentencing Council Act in this bill, and I agree with him. Labour agreed with him, and the Green Party members on the committee agreed with him. And I do not, for the life of me, know why the National members, who seemed to be nodding their heads all the way through his submission at the committee, then got rolled by their Minister, who said to leave it in there.

The proposal that a Government does not want to proceed with an Act does not mean that it is appropriate to repeal it through a statutes repeal bill. It is, of course, appropriate for the Government to go to the country by introducing a bill and saying: “We’re over this. We don’t want this to happen.” That is what Governments are elected to do. They are entitled to do that, of course. But sneaking it through in a statutes repeal bill is not appropriate. Sir Kenneth Keith was pretty tetchy about it, actually, and his submission was quite strong. Can I just quote a piece of it that had particular impact for me. He quoted some of the reasons that were noted in the explanatory note of the bill, and one of those said: “the Sentencing Council Act 2007 came into force”—and those are important words—“on 1 November 2007 but was not implemented”. The explanatory note goes on to say: “Repealing that Act will clarify that the Government will not set up the Sentencing Council in the future and will allow the courts to retain their ability to develop their own sentencing guideline judgments.”

He described that as “misleading” and said that “The Sentencing Council Act presents a completely different case from that of the Acts not in force. That Act has been in force as part of the law of New Zealand since 2007 … the Executive has suspended its operation,” which he described as “an apparent breach of s1 of the Bill of Rights 1688;” and he referred to the Fitzgerald v Muldoon case, which many members in this House who are interested in political history will be aware of. He described the refusal to put that into operation and then to include it in a statutes repeal bill as a serious constitutional issue.

I actually think that when we have a submission from a person who is of such high-quality legal standing as Sir Kenneth Keith, we should take notice of it, and, you know, this does not actually do anything, anyway. It does not do anything, so why would you thumb your nose at one of the sharpest legal brains—with the exception, of course, of the Hon Chris Finlayson—that we have in New Zealand? Why would we do that? Well, as a Parliament, I think it is really disrespectful and unnecessary.

The other thing that I found quite gobsmacking was the response to Chris Hipkins’ Supplementary Order Paper 315, to include the repeal of the blasphemy legislation in this bill—a perfectly sensible thing to do, because everyone in this House agrees it is no longer appropriate to have the blasphemy legislation included on our statute book. David Seymour tried to introduce it. Bill English said: “What a jolly fine idea. We should repeal it, but not through that process.” We said “What about a statutes repeal bill?”, and the Prime Minister seemed to agree with that. But when it came to the crunch, when it came to putting his money where his mouth is—or, actually, putting New Zealanders’ money where his mouth is—he could not do it. He voted against the inclusion of the blasphemy legislation repeal, despite having said within just days that it was prime legislation for repeal.

The other controversial piece of legislation in this repeal legislation was the Medicines Amendment Act. Again, this is an Act of Parliament that the Government just does not agree with. It is not that it is surplus to requirement and it is not that it has not been put into force; the Government just does not agree with it, and the way to repeal legislation that a Government does not agree with is to introduce repeal legislation standing alone, not under a statutes repeal bill.

While we support this bill and agree that 137 Acts of Parliament, with the exception of those two controversial ones, should be repealed, this has made Steven Joyce a laughing stock in the business community, which took him at his word when he said that he would implement the recommendations of the Productivity Commission, a body set up to look at how we can improve New Zealanders’ productivity. We lag a long way behind other countries that we should be ahead of in this regard. So Steven Joyce has used this as the one and only response to the recommendations of the Productivity Commission, and it will achieve absolutely zero—absolutely nothing—because these are Acts that are no longer used. They are not the barriers to improving productivity that the Productivity Commission was talking about, so the Government has squandered hours of parliamentary time to achieve absolutely nothing. It has used this as an opportunity to slide legislation off our statute book, because it does not seem to be able to go through a proper process, and it has squandered the opportunity to include in this repeal bill the blasphemy legislation, despite saying that it no longer had a place on our statute book.

This makes absolutely no sense. I think we did a jolly fine job at our select committee, but I also know that not one single member of the committee felt that it was the most productive thing we could do.

It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of the National Government in support of the Statutes Repeal Bill in its third reading. It is fair to say that, for me, the repealing of statutes was not a primary driver of getting into politics, nor have I had many constituents of the fine electorate of Waimakariri bring up issues around repealing statutes. I do hope this is not the highlight of my backbencher career.

I am new to the Government Administration Committee, so I was not on it for the hearing of submissions or for the debating of any of the legislation to date, but I would just like to, for this reading, acknowledge the work of the Hon Ruth Dyson as chair, ably supported by the deputy chair, Paul Foster-Bell.

I think it is, in fairness, an important law, removing redundant law and repealing or partially repealing 137 Acts. Overall, it is about improving the quality of our law, and it does make us think that, in a week where the Government has worked hard to improve the quality of the living standards of New Zealanders, it still has time to focus on the quality of law. I think it just shows the depth of this Government—that it is able to focus on multitasking at the same time. So I want to congratulate the Government on that.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: So much good to do; so little time.

I think it is just a quality Government all round, I would have thought.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Back to the bill.

So back to the bill. I think what this bill identifies is actually the value of a good legislative process. What I mean by that is that when you look at the additional four Acts for repeal, they were brought up through the submission process, and I think that just shows the value of the public consultation and the value that the public can bring to the legislative process.

Overall, I think we would call it the “Good Housekeeping Bill”. We all know the value of good housekeeping—have a good tidy-up and throw things out that you do not need at the current time. I think this bill will oversee a reduction of about 10 percent in the number of Acts, and when we look at the repeal of statutes Acts internationally, we see it very much as a very cost-effective and timely way of collectively wrapping up Acts that need to be repealed.

There has been some discussion tonight around the blasphemy law. I think it is right, because it is a section of the crimes amendment bill—it will be looked at within that—and more so because we are talking about public consultation. This bill went out as a draft exposure bill. It had 8 weeks when it received feedback from the public. Quite rightly, we will go through any change or repeal of the blasphemy law with the crimes amendment bill, when the public can have their say about how that clause might be partially or fully repealed. So I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise to address this bill, the Statutes Repeal Bill. As previous speakers have said, it is not the most exciting piece of legislation we are going to have to deal with in this House and, in fact, as previous speakers have said, it is of somewhat dubious value.

The Green Party initially supported this bill to select committee. We are unable now to support it any more. We oppose this bill. We oppose it for a relatively simple reason, which is that the purpose of the Statutes Repeal Bill should be, as stated, to remove “redundant or superfluous” legislation. It should not be to remove legislation from the books that is in force and that the Government just does not want to observe.

I refer to a previous speaker who reminded us that Sir Kenneth Keith, when he came to the Government Administration Committee—and I commend the committee for inviting him to appear in person, because having somebody of his stature to talk about these issues has been enormously valuable. He reminded us that, actually, the Government’s role is to enact the law. The Government cannot pick and choose what pieces of law it upholds and what it does not uphold. In particular, the Sentencing Council Act 2007 was brought into force. The Government chose not to establish a council and not to observe an existing law on the books, and it is now trying to remove it via the very dubious process of the Statutes Repeal Bill.

We do not agree with that. The purpose of the Sentencing Council Act was, firstly, to ensure the consistency of sentences, and that is partly because of concern about the inequality of sentencing outcomes between Māori and Pākehā. That reason for the bill’s introduction in 2007 is still valid today. This bill, we believe, is taking a piece of legislation off the books that should not be removed, and certainly should not be removed in this way. The Sentencing Council Act also aimed to create more consistency with regard to parole board rulings, to promote transparency in rulings, and to have a base of reliable information.

We believe that the Government should have established the council. We believe that the Government should not pick and choose Acts to implement that are already in force. We believe that the Government should not play fast and loose with our law and parliamentary processes. We think this is an act of disrespect to our legal and parliamentary processes. We oppose this bill for that reason.

While we would have liked to see the other 136 pieces of legislation taken off our statute book, the fact that they have not been is not, I do not think, a major problem for the future of our country. However, the principle that the Government can pick and choose what it does about existing legislation, and use circuitous routes that should not be used in order to remove legislation, we believe is such an important issue that we have no choice but to oppose this legislation. Thank you.

It is really good to see the Government actually doing something useful in this term of Parliament. This is that thing, and what a wonderful piece of legislation it is. For that reason, most uncharacteristically, New Zealand First is going to be able to continue to support the Statutes Repeal Bill. So that, I think, is really good; it is really good to be able to do that. It is good to see a process for repealing redundant Acts, because they actually do get outdated, and I totally disagree with the previous speaker, Barry Coates, about that.

This is the right kind of process to get rid of a lot of very small, often totally outdated, completely irrelevant—in this day and age—pieces of legislation. I do not have any problem with using a statutes repeal process to do that. After all, it has been through the select committee process, there have been submissions, it has been well and properly considered. I see no problem. Actually, it can be dangerous to leave redundant statutes on the statute book because you can have situations where the police feel obliged to actually enforce them. The blasphemy law would be one of those, and it is only good fortune that nobody has recently—or, in fact, ever, I think—been prosecuted under that piece of legislation. It should have been removed by this process.

Other laws—latent Acts, as we know them—actually never get activated, because they should not be, and one of those is the provision for the sentencing council in the Sentencing Council Act. I am glad to see it go. It should never have been enacted in the first place. It impinged on the job of the courts. It would inevitably, if it had been used, have led to political interference in the sentencing system, and that is a very bad thing for the justice system and for New Zealand.

I do not accept that there is necessarily anything wrong with what is called the disparity between sentences between Māori and others, because we actually have no evidence whatsoever that that is the result of inherent racism within the justice system. It may actually just be a fact that emerges without any particular reason at all, except, maybe, more Māori actually carry out more serious offences than Pākehā, on average. Who knows? It may well have been the other way around, but it just happens to be that way this time. I do not accept that there is necessarily any racism about that whatsoever.

This council, in any event, would never have made any difference to that situation, even if that had been the case. So I am very glad that this stupid sentencing council and the legislative provision in the Sentencing Council Act is going. It should have gone; it should never have happened in the first place. It has never been activated, and neither should it have been. I hope we never see it again.

For those reasons, we in New Zealand First are perfectly satisfied with this bill. We know that the Government Administration Committee has done a good job in looking at it. We have come through that process, and it is quite clear that those enactments that are going to be repealed should be repealed. For that reason—that totally objective reason only—New Zealand First will continue to support it.

I am pleased to speak in the third reading of this Statutes Repeal Bill. Just off the bat, I want to take issue with Mr O’Rourke. I am really disappointed, but not surprised, that New Zealand First is supporting the repeal of the Sentencing Council Act. To hear Mr O’Rourke say that there was no need for the sentencing council, and that there are no issues around inconsistency in sentencing in our justice system—I am absolutely appalled at that. One needs only to look at the prison population in Aotearoa New Zealand—50 percent of the prison population are young Māori men, and yet we make up only 15 percent of the total population.

💬 Denis O’Rourke: That doesn’t mean anything.

It does—it means plenty.

Let us take a case in point—let us look at the case of Teina Pora, a young 16-year-old at the time. He spent 22 years in prison—wrongfully in prison—because of systemic failures within the police system, within their investigation, and within the court system. After two failed trials, we had to go all the way to the Privy Council to get the admissibility of his foetal alcohol syndrome. They had to go to all those lengths, through some good Samaritan people, to finally get justice for that young man. Even then, the Government was reluctant to give adequate compensation for 22 years of wrongful imprisonment. And we say there is no problem with the consistency of sentencing in our country! I think that is appalling, but it does not surprise me, because there is institutional racism among our institutions in society. Of course, for someone like Mr O’Rourke, that is invisible to him. He does not see it, because he is a typical Pākehā white male. They do not see the institutional racism that Māori have to deal with each and every day. I am disgusted, but I am not surprised, at the approach of New Zealand First in relation to that.

If I may, this bill—yes, it is a spring-cleaning exercise. Quite frankly, it is neither here nor there, really, in terms of this bill. I doubt whether folks out there are kept awake at night wondering about whether the Post Office Act Repeal Act is still in force or not. I doubt whether folks are wondering about the numerous finance Acts, or the New Zealand wheat Act, or whatever other Acts that we are repealing here, because they are of no effect at all. They are just sitting on our books. They do not mean anything. No one is actually going to look them up, because there is no need to. So, for all intents and purposes, many of these Acts are of no purpose whatsoever. Nevertheless, the Government is thinking it is that important—to improve the quality of our legislation, I guess, it wants to do a bit of a culling exercise, so here we are. We are supporting this bill, albeit reluctantly myself, at this final stage, because, yes, we do need to clean up the statute book.

Certainly this bill does that; however, again, it is a moot point. I guess we will leave it up to second year law classes and whoever takes an interest in what the effect is of repealing Acts that are amendment Acts or earlier repeal Acts—and then there are the ones that repeal everything through a self-destruct clause. So, yes, we are going to make all these Acts disappear. It may make the Government feel good, but, really, I am really disappointed that this Government is repealing the Sentencing Council Act. I have stated my reasons for that.

The irony is that there was an opportunity here for the Government to repeal a very archaic piece of legislation in respect of the provision of blasphemy in the Crimes Act. And what do we hear? We hear the Government members say: “Oh, we need more time. We need more time to look at this issue, and we’re going to put it in with an amendment to the Crimes Act. And so we can give proper consideration to that.” Well, where is the consideration for the Sentencing Council Act? Where is the consideration from this Government on the inequities and on the disproportionate sentencing of Māori in our justice system? There is not any. That is right—they are repealing an important piece of legislation, which could have been beneficial, but this Government’s policy was totally against it. It has put no effort into implementing it, and now it just wants to strike it off the statute book.

And all the while, more young Māori men will be filling up our prisons. How do we know that? Because this Government is building a brand new $1 billion prison to take into account the projections of an increased prison population. It is putting $1 billion into that when it should actually be addressing the real issues. It could have been doing that through supporting something like a sentencing council. But, oh no, it wants to build more prisons, because it wants to fill these new prisons up, again with more young Māori men. It is a disgrace. But it shows what this Government is really all about.

I am glad that my colleague from Tai Tokerau, Kelvin Davis, busted one of those Serco prisons. That is what the Government wants; it wants to have profit-generating prisons. It is absolutely abhorrent that all this Government cares about is building more prisons, putting in more private operators, trying to lock up more young brown men. Hence it is adding greater force to that through the passage of this legislation today.

I am disappointed in this legislation. I think it is two-faced of the Government members to say they want more time to look at blasphemy but are not prepared to look at the merits of a sentencing council or an equivalent body. So I am disappointed in that aspect, but I know that there is some spring-cleaning to be done, and I am sure the 135-odd other pieces of legislation that are about to be expunged from history will not be missed. I commend this bill to the House.