Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2)

Statutes amendment bills enable Parliament to make technical, short, and non-controversial amendments to a number of Acts. The current bill amends about 27 Acts, administered by 10 different Government agencies. Each of the amendments in the bill has been consulted on, with all parties of Parliament, and has received unanimous cross-party support.

I’ve tabled, for the House, two Supplementary Order Papers that make urgently required amendments to this bill. The first amendment is Supplementary Order Paper 55, which was tabled on 8 August. The second amendment was Supplementary Order Paper 53, which was tabled on 7 August. These amendments are suitable for inclusion in the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2). All parties have been consulted on these Supplementary Order Papers, and they support their inclusion in the bill at this stage. I’m going to briefly just go over those two Supplementary Order Papers.

Supplementary Order Paper 55 on the Customs and Excise Act—this part repeals clauses 30(1) and 31(1) of schedule 3 of the Customs and Excise Act 2018. Essentially, as the Act currently stands, it would result in champagne being exempted from excise-equivalent duty. This Supplementary Order Paper corrects that drafting error and will ensure that imported champagne continues to be subject to excise-equivalent duty under the Customs and Excise Act when it comes into force on 1 October this year.

The second Supplementary Order Paper, 53, on the Food Act, inserts new Part 15A into the bill to make a minor amendment to the Food Act 2014. Following the Kaikōura earthquake, the Ministry for Primary Industries identified a need for the director-general to be able to delegate their power to issue privileged statements. These privileged statements are for the purpose of protecting human life, public health, and informing the public in the event of a food safety or suitability incident. The inability to delegate this power meant that there could be delays in providing certainty to consumers and the market during a food safety incident, in the event of the director-general travelling or otherwise being unavailable.

The Food Safety Law Reform Act was intended to enable the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries to delegate the ability to make privileged statements relating to food safety and suitability. However, a drafting error has resulted in the inconsistency in the Food Act 2014, with the effect that the director-general cannot delegate that power. This Supplementary Order Paper corrects this error.

I just say that I want to acknowledge and thank all the parties for the respectful and efficient manner that you’ve engaged in with officials and the department, as well as with officials from my office, and I welcome the deliberation on this bill. The changes do not change policy whatsoever. They are routine, administrative, minor, and technical changes, simply to improve the bill’s clarity. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, we might be taking the debate on this bill in one part, but there is a lot of material to canvass, I would suggest, inside of that. I’d like to begin with what was, in fact, in the bill as Part 1, which is the Animal Welfare Act 1999. I actually think this is a really good example of a case where we’re looking to make—unlike in an earlier bill today—something that is actually a minor and technical, yet meaningful, change to that legislation to bring it into the context of the way the world is today. Particularly, there is the ability to use technology to help manage both the activities that are taken in trapping and capturing animals but also to the degree—because, ultimately, the animal trapped may well have only one final outcome coming, but at least through that process it makes that journey, if you will, somewhat more humane.

So this change here will allow that if a trap is remotely monitored such as through a remote sensor, or perhaps through something connected wirelessly or through cellular to a remote monitoring station, the ability to know that an animal has been trapped in a trap means that the trap therefore doesn’t need to be manually inspected within the same time frame that currently exists under the Animal Welfare Act, which is within 12 hours after sunrise on each day that the trap remains set. This provision actually allows that to be extended out to 24 hours, and I think it’s a very sensible change, because the status of the trap can be known, the status of an animal being live-captured can be known, and it is a better reflection of the technology that people will use in trapping operations today.

In fact, it also supports the Predator Free 2050 goal that the previous Government put in place, and which I think we can acknowledge that this new Government is also continuing with. So the last thing I think we would want to have is a situation where old world legislation was failing to keep up with new world technology, and potentially, if we didn’t make this change, we could at least make the Predator Free 2050 goal more difficult to obtain, if not impossible.

So I think it’s a good change. It’s one of those changes that has meaning, even though in itself it’s not terribly complicated, and it certainly isn’t controversial. So I’m certainly pleased that we did that.

Now, when this bill was in the Governance and Administration Committee, there wasn’t a great deal of discussion, as it happened, because of the nature of the suggested changes, but there were a couple. One of those, for instance, was around the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act. An odd situation is where in a partnership which doesn’t have employees, it could be difficult to have one of those partners as a compliance officer, because the compliance officer, under the Act as it exists today, is written in such a way that they are an employee—and, of course, a partner of a partnership that has no employees is not an employee. It’s a very sensible consideration to say that we’re committed to making sure that we comply and have enacted that legislation for good reason, so the change that is in this Statutes Amendment Bill will expressly allow that a partner in a partnership which doesn’t have employees—one of those partners is able to have the role of that compliance officer.

So that is another example, as I say, of a sensible shift. It is acknowledging that sometimes in this House, even when legislation does go through the full legislative process—which didn’t happen today with a bill, but it generally does—and even when that bill might have gone through a number of weeks or longer in a select committee process, it is still possible that legislation can exit the House that has a couple of anomalies in it or things that perhaps just weren’t traversed sufficiently to capture them on the way through. So statutes amendment bills are a very good vehicle to round those strays up, if you will, and to make those small changes to correct them, and in the case of that compliance role, that’s another example of that.

There are many others in here, and in a subsequent call I will talk about others. For instance, I’d like to talk about the interim protection orders and consequences that we also discussed at select committee. But at this stage, I’m going to offer one of my colleagues—and maybe even a member across the Chamber might like to take a call. Seeing as they didn’t want to leave early today, maybe they might actually have something to say about this bill. It’s a meaningful bill, so, hopefully, they do.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d just like to talk to Supplementary Order Paper 53 on the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2) in the name of the Minister in the chair, Aupito William Sio. That’s in regard to the insertion of new Part 15A of the Food Act 2014.

Now, we all realise in this House the importance of food security to our country, as we are an exporting country of food products and a primary product - producing nation. So part of the role of our legislative requirements around food safety is to maintain the level of strength of those rules and regulations. It is an area which constantly has new challenges come upon it, and often the legislation isn’t quite as good as it should be or has room for improvement.

This amendment here that the Minister has put forward is one of those situations where there is a challenge to the system that hasn’t been reflected in the legislation that was set out in the first place and needs some reflection and a bit of a change to make it more effective. So I congratulate the Minister for bringing it forward, and I know that it will pass through this House with unanimous approval, because it’s something that’s actually very much needed to tidy up, you could say, the original Food Act of 2014.

It really looks at the powers of the chief executive of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) to “publish privileged statements for the purpose of protecting human life or public health or informing the public.” When that was passed in the original Food Act, that intention was only partially achieved, and there was a need in this Supplementary Order Paper to give that intention “full effect by removing a restriction on the chief executive’s ability to delegate the power to publish those statements.” Now, some may think that that’s a long-winded explanation, but there is actually a very important public interest case that relates to this, and this was in regard to what happened with Fonterra and the whey protein case, where one of the aspects of that, when it actually happened, was that the MPI officials and the CEO realised that they didn’t have quite the powers that they thought they did and were quite constrained in their immediate ability to deliver a solution to a problem like that.

When you come to a food security issue, a food integrity issue, a food safety issue, New Zealanders need to act thoroughly and quickly and in a timely manner, and anything that would restrict the timeliness of that reaction is a restriction that would hurt New Zealand processors and New Zealand producers and, ultimately, the consumers. In an international market where, basically, any failure of a product will be online within a matter of minutes and around the world within a matter of minutes, it’s important that we have a system that is very flexible and can adjust and react quickly to those situations. We were found wanting in that case; the situation wasn’t as reactive as it should be. MPI felt that if it had had this power, it would’ve actually given them more opportunity to react and to undertake activities a lot quicker.

So that’s really one of the big drivers behind what’s happening here today. It’s a fundamental reform that was done in the Food Act but didn’t take into account quite the situation that might arise where the chain of command that was anticipated would be there might not be quite in that space at that time, and we needed to react and make judgments and decisions on behalf of New Zealand producers and the New Zealand brand, and this is something that does need to be sorted out.

So I think the Minister’s done a great job in getting that sorted out today, and I look forward to this bill passing through. He’s a pretty good Minister, actually. He’s not a bad guy. He’s one of the better ones, you know. I know it is the last day and it is late, so, you know, you’ve got to give the dog a bone before you go—ha, ha!

Statutes amendment bills are annual bills, basically. These bills will give us an opportunity to make minor technical and non-controversial amendments to existing statutes. This bill originally made changes to 29 Acts, but then the Governance and Administration Committee recommended removing two changes to two Acts—so, basically, to 27 Acts. There are various reasons why we need to make these changes. Some of the amendments intend to increase efficiency, such as Parts 3, 4, 5, and 13. All these amendments are related to legislation supporting children and families.

The amendments will, basically, facilitate the development of a central unit for the processing and payment of service provider invoices. Basically, it will make it easier for the lawyers or representatives of a particular client to submit their invoices, because, at the moment, it seems to be very difficult; they have to go to specific courts. Now, with this bill, they could go to any court to submit their invoices, because there will be a central unit to handle these invoices. Improving the efficiencies and effectiveness of governance is particularly important to any Government, so it is important for us to commit to delivering better public services, and so these changes will serve that purpose.

Also some amendments are for clarification, such as Parts 7, 8, 12, and 24, and some amendments simply correct errors or improve expressions, such as Parts 10 and 14. I think the Minister mentioned some of these previous errors or oversights. So these are simply minor changes, and there are other amendments that will enable us to better use modern technology. For instance, Part 1 of the bill will allow live-capture animal traps to be remotely monitored, and the use of modern technology will certainly be cost-effective.

Of course, it’s not just for cost or convenience, right? We do need to make sure that modern technology is used properly so that while we make it cost-effective, at the same time we protect animal welfare properly. And that is why this bill will also require people to make sure these traps, or modern technology, are used in the proper way. For that reason, this bill will, basically, amend section 36 of the Animal Welfare Act 1999, which provides that any live animal found in the trap must be removed or cared for or must be killed without delay. A person who commits an offence against section 36(2) is liable, on conviction, to a fine not exceeding $5,000 for an individual, or $25,000 for a body corporate. So, basically, you do have obligations to make sure that while you’re using modern technology, you’re able to protect animal welfare. So that is a bill which, really, is trying to improve efficiency and make people’s lives easier, but, at the same time, we do have our responsibilities to protect animal welfare.

Some amendments are small but could mean a lot to some people. For instance, amendments in Part 19 will enable justices of the peace with fewer than 10 years of service to use the designation “JP (retired)”. At the moment, you can’t, because this designation can be assigned to and used by only those JPs with service of more than 10 years. This is, basically, to make it possible for those JPs who have served for fewer than 10 years but have to retire because of illness or because of disability or for some particular reasons. So the secretary would be able to judge whether this person could use “JP (retired)” or not even though this person has not served for more than 10 years.

Now, JPs are particularly important in our society, and they are important particularly to new immigrants, because I myself have used JPs on quite a few occasions. Now, for new immigrants, they come to New Zealand. They need JPs’ assistance to certify certain documents in their settlement process, so we do need to recognise—

I’m sorry to interrupt the member. The time has come for me to report progress.

House resumed.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 5.56 p.m.