Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2)

I move, That the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time.

As the House will be aware, statutes amendment bills are legislative vehicles that make minor, technical, and non-controversial amendments to a number of Acts. These bills allow amendments to be made that would not usually receive sufficient priority to be progressed individually. This is achieved with the support of all parties in Parliament.

The bill as reported back amends 28 Acts administered by 11 different Government agencies. Each of the amendments in the bill has received unanimous cross-party support. This bill is a good demonstration of all parties working together. The bill was reported back by the Governance and Administration Committee on 28 May, and I want to thank the committee and the chair, the honourable member Brett Hudson, for the careful consideration of the bill by members of that committee.

The committee’s report recommended a number of changes to amendments in the bill as it was introduced. The committee also recommended including urgent amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009. Finally, the committee received and considered one submission from an interested member of the public. This submission was to repeal redundant local Acts and private Acts. The committee did not recommend making any changes to the bill following the submission, and I support these recommendations.

I will now turn to detail some of the changes made to the bill. Possibly the most substantial change to the bill is the inclusion of new amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009. The need for these amendments was identified after this bill was introduced to the House, and they are urgently required. I consulted all parties on these urgent amendments, and all parties supported their inclusion. The amendments ensure that the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 regime works for reporting entities structured as partnerships. As some of you may be aware, the regime was amended last year to progressively include lawyers, conveyancers, accountants, real estate agents, and high-value dealers. Many of these new sectors practise in partnerships, and lawyers and conveyancers will come into the regime from 1 July this year.

There are two key changes these amendments make, which are now included in the bill. The first change is to allow reporting entities structured as partnerships to appoint a partner as a compliance officer, irrespective of whether that reporting entity has employees. Without this amendment, a reporting entity could only appoint a partner as a compliance officer if the reporting entity did not have employees.

The second change is to clarify that a partnership is liable for the same penalties as bodies corporate for criminal offending or a civil liability act. As the partnership has the compliance obligations in the regime, it is common sense that the partnership also faces the consequences for failing to comply. This amendment clarifies how the regime will operate as these sectors come on board.

The other key change that I’d like to highlight is the inclusion of a new amendment to the Parole Act. The amendments to the Parole Act that were in the bill when it was introduced were aimed at ensuring that interim supervision orders are treated in the same way as extended supervision orders. All parties were consulted on these proposed amendments in 2016 and supported their inclusion. Interim supervision orders were established through a Supplementary Order Paper in 2014. They were developed to enable courts to impose electronic monitoring and intensive monitoring special conditions on an offender while an application for an extended supervision order is being considered. Due to the way interim supervision orders were created, a series of small legislative changes was required to ensure consistency between interim and extended supervision orders. Most of them were included in the bill as introduced. However, one further amendment was recently identified.

This amendment will allow arrest without warrant for breaches of interim supervision orders. Breaches of interim supervision orders are currently enforced as breaches of bail conditions, which allow for arrest without warrant. However, this approach does not necessarily allow corrections and police to seek arrest and act in a swift and timely manner proportionate to the risk these offenders pose. In addition, the power to arrest without warrant already exists for breaches of extended supervision orders. The committee has recommended that an additional amendment be included in the bill to also allow for arrest without warrant for breaches of an interim supervision order. I want to thank them for those recommendations.

The other changes that the committee recommended are important but relatively minor. For example, the committee has recommended changes to the Animal Welfare Act 1999 and the Biosecurity Act 1993 that will improve the clarity of those amendments. Other changes include removing the amendment to the Public Records Act 2005, as it is not considered necessary at this time. The committee has also recommended that an amendment to the Public Finance Act 1989 be removed to allow for it to be progressed through conservation legislation, which is currently under development. I endorse the recommendations of the committee.

In summary, this bill will provide much-needed changes to the statute book. While the amendments are technical and non-controversial in nature, they will ensure that New Zealand’s legislation operates efficiently and effectively. I look forward to the passage of this bill through its remaining stages, and to working constructively with all parties as other such bills are put together in the future. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this, the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2). Can I acknowledge the Minister and the comments that he made in terms of the importance of having cross-party support and working together on a bill like this. It’s largely minor changes that are being made, but they are important ones in many cases. Can I also acknowledge Brett Hudson, who has taken the lead for us and has done an outstanding job in making sure that there is close attention to detail and that the work is done for this bill; so can I acknowledge him as well.

There are just two areas that I wanted to comment on. The Minister has already drawn our attention to one of them: the Parole Act 2002. I think this was a very good change because it did bring into alignment the treatment of interim supervision orders and also extended supervision orders. So with the insertion of that new clause, clause 60A, it now allows an arrest without warrant to be made for a breach of an interim supervision order. I think this has provided much-needed clarity. It’s now going to be much easier to be administered, and so I just congratulate the Governance and Administration Committee on the good work that was done around this piece of legislation.

Also, the Animal Welfare Act 1999—this is a really interesting one. This actually relates a lot to the work that the Department of Conservation do in their war against predators, and the fact that it wasn’t clear whether or not a trap—because often, now, they do use remote devices, in terms of being able to monitor and watch the traps that they set. They get indications when they might have captured the predator that they’re targeting or that they’re after, but it wasn’t clear in the legislation as to whether or not—because there is a requirement, within a 12-hour period of the sun rising, that they have to get out and they actually have to check that trap manually and physically, when, in fact, they might have had an electronic ability to be able to do that.

With the amendment that’s being made under the Animal Welfare Act, it means now that within 24 hours after an animal is captured, if the person monitors the trap with a reliable electronic monitoring system that promptly communicates details of any animal captured in the trap, then they are entitled to use and they can use that system to be able to monitor and make sure that those traps are actually checked regularly, rather—and you can understand the actual logistical challenge—than manually having to get out into vast areas of conservation land and trying to check these traps. So that was another very good amendment to one of these Acts.

I’m very happy to have taken a call in support of this bill. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak to the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2). If anyone has tuned in this morning for a fierce debate about this bill, they’ll be bitterly disappointed, obviously, because of the technical and non-controversial manner in which these bills implement changes to legislation. In plain English, it’s a housekeeping exercise for the Parliament to make sure that any errors of a small nature that may have been put in legislation are cleaned up every so often as they are found, either by the Government or by officials or by people who are looking at the laws closely.

So I would like to take a concise and precise short call looking at two of the Acts which come under my purview as the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. The first one is extremely technical, and that is Part 6, which pertains to the Companies Act, where I am looking at sections 303 and 308, which are about creditors’ claims over companies that have gone into liquidation. If I go to the correct page here, it is, in essence, inserting a handful of words into section 303(2). After “penalties,” clause 20 is inserting “sentences of reparation, orders,”, which I believe—having read the section here this morning in the Act as it stands at the moment—will open up a lot more options for people who are looking to get redress from companies that have gone into liquidation, and there is a subsequent amendment to section 308 of the Companies Act as a result of the change to section 303.

The substantive change I wanted to speak to is in Part 8 of the statutes amendment bill before us today, and that is a very small amendment to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA) of 2003. That amends the cross-heading above section 9J and is simply deleting the words “disclosure of”, which might sound mundane, but I’d quite like to talk about section 9J because I was a member of the Commerce Committee when the previous Government amended the CCCFA.

I think the member Mark Mitchell, who spoke before me, was also a member of the Commerce Committee when we looked to change the CCCFA. Section 9J was one where I think—if I recall correctly—the New Zealand Bankers’ Association were quite motivated about making sure that they understood exactly where things were in terms of disclosure of standard loan arrangements, which had to be displayed prominently for the benefit of customers. The argument that was being made at the time by those who were concerned about section 9J was they would, essentially, have to plaster loan agreements on the walls of bank branches to make sure that they could adhere to section 9J. I guess we know in hindsight that that didn’t happen, but at the time there was a bit of concern about a number of the changes that the previous Government was making to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act.

They certainly didn’t make changes of this nature, which I think are certainly technical, and we’re kind of slightly amending that today and I don’t think there’s anything big in that. But I think, certainly at the time, they missed some amendments that we are now addressing as a result of the Government’s review of the CCCFA—and the harm that is still continuing to be done in our communities by predatory lending by the likes of mobile trucks—and, certainly, a clean-up of the CCCFA as it stands now to ensure that some of the work that I think certainly some of the members who might have been on that committee were keen to do but the higher-ups were not.

I’m talking about the likes of this Government being completely open and transparent about looking at measures to introduce interest rate caps, so that those vulnerable consumers who the previous Government failed to protect back in 2014 when it changed the CCCFA, and who have continued to be preyed upon by predatory lenders in our communities, have increased protection from those predatory lenders. That is something that should have happened five years ago, but it was not done by the previous Government, and since then, New Zealanders and those vulnerable consumers—such as my constituents, and spread around the country—have continued to be preyed upon by those predatory lenders.

So I make no apologies to those in the industry who have continued to fly in the face of the laws—and the lack of their boldness back in 2014 to protect New Zealanders from predatory lenders—that their days are numbered. As well as measures that we will take as a result of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act review, a lot of the work was done in terms of the forum last week, where community organisations, the Government, and the finance sector are coming together to ensure there are safe places for those vulnerable consumers to lend, and to increase the financial capability and the wisdom of financial decisions to be made by New Zealand families. Bringing those three parts of this triangle together will, in fact, help those people who are being preyed upon, and who were left by the previous Government to continue to be preyed upon by their lack of courage to amend the CCCFA in a way that made sure those in the most vulnerable parts of our country were protected.

So I’m proud that we are making that action and, obviously, I acknowledge the very minor change to section 9J in the CCCFA that is here today. But I add just a note of caution to those who are in the community who have taken shelter in the lack of change from the previous Government to the CCCFA to say that change is on the way, and the shelter will no longer be there.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Well, it’s wonderful to take to my feet to actually speak on the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2), which is perhaps something Kris Faafoi, the previous speaker, didn’t spend a lot of time on. But, given that he introduced a subject that isn’t completely germane to the bill, I will just respond. He said that there would be no contention on this bill. Well, Mr Faafoi doesn’t get to decide what we do and don’t debate in this House. I can tell you there is certainly some contention with his idea that the previous Government was somehow lacking in concern for vulnerable borrowers in the community. The Government of the day understood that there is a legitimate need for people to borrow in circumstances of their choosing and that their ability to get full disclosure of the nature of those loans was most important to ensuring that they could have the information they needed to know whether or not to enter into them.

But it would be wonderful to be able to endorse and support the moves that the Minister brings to the House. When he brings them to the House, it will be very interesting to scrutinise those to make sure that they don’t seek to introduce things that have unintended consequences, like setting interest rate caps in a manner that will force people into black market - type loan arrangements that will make people more vulnerable than they already are. Quite frankly, on this side of the House we’ve seen nothing from the Government that gives us any confidence in the work they’re doing. But to the point of this bill—

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: Ambitious for loan sharks.

—the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2), which in itself—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! We’ve heard that a number of times. Now, can we come to the bill. You’ve had—

To the bill. In the provisions—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: You’re one-all. Let’s get on to the bill.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: It’s supposed to be one that we all agree with; non-confrontational—OK?

We can agree that the provisions of the bill we can support. It’s the fundamental nature of a statutes amendment bill that the changes are of a technical nature and non-controversial, even though the people debating them might behave somewhat differently.

In truth, in the Governance and Administration Committee, there was scrutiny of the bill that did not raise any great concerns. There were a couple of amendments that officials brought to the committee that the committee members were all able to agree with, and to report back to their parties and to maintain consensus across the House that these were the right things to do. For instance, one of those was around the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009, where, in an odd situation, in a partnership without employees, there could be an issue having a compliance officer nominated because the Act requires the compliance officer to be an employee of the firm, and, of course, under a partnership with no employees, a partner is not considered an employee. So that was a very sound and well-thought-out amendment brought during the committee stage, which it’s very easy for members across the House to continue an agreement on.

My colleague Mr Mitchell raised the Animal Welfare Act 1999. I think it was actually quite illustrative that while laws are made for the day and in good conscience and with the best of foresight that members can apply at the time, things do change over time.

And so, for instance, as the Act has stood, there are some challenges about whether or not live-capture animal traps could be remotely monitored and meet the conditions under the Act as it stands. And these changes, through the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2), will explicitly permit that. But, importantly, in doing so, the committee, through officials, was able to capture, no pun intended, that, actually, that also required a change to the legislation to remove the requirement to replace the words “details of any animals captured” with “the fact that an animal has been captured”. While with technology today we can remotely monitor that an animal may have been caught in a trap, it is perhaps somewhat more challenging for the technology today—at least, certainly cost effectively, if at all—to be able to provide the exact details of the animal which has been captured. But, of course, the fundamental and most important element of the remote monitoring is to know whether or not an officer should be sent out then to check that trap or whether indeed there is no point today, because no animal has been captured—so another example of a sound change that allows Parliament to come together, on a consensus, to address small matters across our legislative book to make changes that make sure that our legislation remains relevant for today and into the foreseeable part of the future. We, along with the other parties in this House, commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise to take a short call on behalf of my colleague Clayton Mitchell and New Zealand First, just to indicate that New Zealand First will, of course, be supporting this Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2).

It’s interesting; I learnt a long time ago, when I very first came to Parliament, that it’s sometimes quite fascinating to trawl through what are, clearly, amendments to legislation that the entire House considers to be technical and of a non-controversial nature. It is sometimes interesting to have a trawl through to see exactly what has been covered off by other members of one’s caucus who have spokesman roles and, indeed, by Ministers who have responsibilities for these various pieces of legislation that have been moved, generally, as we know, to tidy up, to fix loopholes, to tidy gaps, to clarify interpretation and law, and to make sure that unintended consequences and inaccuracies are dealt with.

And it’s really interesting, when you go through this particular bill, the broad range of topics that are covered—everything from the Animal Welfare Act to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act, the Biosecurity Act, the Care of Children Act, the Child Support Act, the Companies Act, the Coroners Act, the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, the Crown Proceedings Act, the District Court Act, the Domestic Violence Act, the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act, the Family Proceedings Act, the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act, the Government Superannuation Fund Act, the Housing Corporation Act—it pretty much covers the entire ambit for which the Government is responsible. I’m not sure, but probably the Minister of Defence is the only one who doesn’t have a statute amendment in here.

But, that said, within the Defence Force, we clearly have an interest in what is happening in the area of financing terrorism and countering the financing of terrorism. So I did have a quick scan at Part 1A, clauses 4A through to 4F, which cover off the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009. And it’s clear, from that piece of legislation, that the Government, with the support of all parties in the House, is just tidying up what appears to be a small gap, a small loop, or, indeed, an area that needs clarifying, particularly in the area of where a partnership is involved.

The particular section that’s been amended is section 56, in clause 4B, and the new subsection of substance that I’m looking at is new subsection (5), which states, “Despite subsections (2) to (4), if a reporting entity is a partnership,—(a) the partnership may designate one of the partners as an AML/CFT compliance officer to administer and maintain its AML/CFT programme, irrespective of whether the partnership has or does not have employees; and”—and I guess that’s just a tidying up to make sure that people aren’t allowed to be left out because they simply do not have employees—“(b) the partnership so designated must report to another partner designated for the purpose of receiving those reports by the partnership.” That clearly puts the onus back on that company, back within that company, within the partnership, to make sure that they are compliant with the general thrust of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009—probably, a very good thing.

It is interesting to note there are adjustments in there for the Biosecurity Act—even, dare I say it, the old plumbers and gasfitters get a mention in here. I guess that every tradie throughout New Zealand has stopped work, downed tools, gone to their device, and pulled up the bill and is checking to see what the heck Parliament is doing to them under the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act 2006. I can just tell the guys, “Go back to your smoko. Carry on, chaps; it’s no biggie. It’s just a technical tidy-up in the legislation.” I just want to compliment all the Ministers for their diligence in bringing these small technical amendments to the House, and I look forward to making progress. Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Bill read a second time.