Legislation Bill, Legislation (Repeals and Amendments) Bill

on behalf of the Attorney-General: I move, That the Legislation Bill and the Legislation (Repeals and Amendments) Bill be now read a third time.

May I, on behalf of the Hon David Parker, because this seems like a somewhat dry and technical measure, explain, first of all, why this bill is important. Later, I would like to acknowledge the people and organisations that have had a hand in bringing it to this point.

Parliament is New Zealand’s supreme lawmaker. However, because of the complexity of modern society and the demands on parliamentary time, a lot more technical and detailed legislation must be delegated to the executive or specialised bodies inside and outside Government. This creates a risk that the ability of democratically elected and accountable members of Parliament to control the content of the law be sacrificed to administrative expediency. That risk has grown significantly since the 20th century, and it is mitigated by a number of measures such as enacting empowering clauses that state the specific purposes for which regulations can be made, the establishment of the regulatory review committee, with its mandate to scrutinise delegated legislation, and the development of a disallowance procedure to enable regulations to be amended or revoked by resolution of the House.

The Legislation Bill builds on, and significantly extends, these safeguards. It tackles one of the key outstanding problems of New Zealand’s legislative framework, which concerns a question as basic as: what is New Zealand’s legislation? The situation, with respect to traditional regulations, now called legislative instruments, is tolerably clear. They are mainly made by the Governor-General in Council, are drafted by the Parliamentary Counsel Office, and are published on New Zealand’s legislation website. However, over time, Parliament has delegated lawmaking power to scores of other persons or bodies. These instruments, which have been called deemed regulations or tertiary legislation—now, perhaps, best identified in the catchy terminology of the Regulations Review Committee as DINLIs: disallowable instruments that are not legislative instruments—are drafted by over 100 agencies of Government and published in accordance with requirements prescribed separately in hundreds of provisions across the statute book. What is more, they are often not explicitly stated to be legislation, but include a catch-all category of instruments with significant legislative effect. This makes them hard to distinguish from the thousands of other administrative instruments generated by Government each year. As a consequence, there is a large and probably growing category of law that is made under Parliament’s authority that isn’t necessarily visible to Parliament.

The definition of secondary legislation in clause 5 of the bill sweeps away the existing confusion of definitions of legislative instruments and disallowable instruments and replaces them with a simple single definition of secondary legislation, which clause 5 covers. The thrust of it is that an instrument that is secondary legislation, if it is called secondary legislation by an Act, while seemingly circular, has the merit of requiring an express statement, in each case, where Parliament has delegated power to make law. In the near future, the Government will introduce a large bill of amendments—the secondary legislation bill—to add those amendments to all Acts that delegate lawmaking powers. It is likely to be about three hundred pages. When the House considers the secondary legislation bill, it will have the opportunity to delineate, for the first time, where it has conferred a power to make law, and the requirements as to the publication and oversight of the instruments in question will be determined by the bill before us. The reforms to the framework for secondary legislation in this bill will deliver three broad benefits—first, establishing for the first time a clear category of instruments that are secondary legislation and removing the confusion. Second, stating explicitly in law for the first time the category of instruments over which the House has oversight through the disallowance process. And third, laying the foundation for gradually improving access to the whole body of secondary legislation.

The bill, of course, does a number of other useful things. It re-enacts the Interpretation Act 1999 and the Legislation Act of 2012 with a number of technical improvements. By bringing these two Acts together, it implements the last outstanding recommendation of the Law Commission’s 2008 report on the Presentation of New Zealand Statute Law.

Disclosure requirements are enacted in Part 4; they support more informed parliamentary and public scrutiny of that legislation by ensuring that key information about Government-initiated legislation is provided. This will ensure the quality of legislation and also contribute to delivering on this Government’s commitment to open Government. At an administrative level, disclosure statements have been required for bills since 2013. Making this a legislative requirement represents a stronger and more enduring commitment to disclosure, and gives assurance to the House of Representatives that we will continue to be consulted about proposed changes to the form and content of the disclosures that are required. The new requirements may also be extended to some secondary legislation, specified by a ministerial notice that is approved by the House.

Finally, I’d like to acknowledge the people who were instrumental in bringing these bills to fruition. The legislation was introduced by the Hon Chris Finlayson in the last Government. I know that he was really passionate about this legislation, and I acknowledge him for his work in the previous Government. It resulted from an inquiry to the Regulations Review Committee in 2014. That committee has provided its advice on many occasions throughout the development of these bills, and the secondary legislation bill, which Cabinet has considered. I thank the various chairs, deputy chairs, and the members of the committee for their input. As I mentioned earlier, the Law Commission recommended that the Interpretation Act and the Legislation Act be brought together. The Justice Committee considered the bill and made very helpful recommendations, particularly about the transition to centralised publication of secondary legislation. I also want to thank the Law Society, Local Government New Zealand, and members of the public who made submissions on this bill to the Justice Committee. And I’d like, of course, to thank the Hon David Parker. I commend the Legislation Bill and the Legislation (Repeals and Amendments) Bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and take a call on this Legislation Bill and the Legislation (Repeals and Amendments) Bill. Can I acknowledge the Minister, and thank her for talking with such great passion to bills that are highly technical. But, of course, it is a piece of National Party legislation, and could I also acknowledge her in the comments that she made around the Hon Chris Finlayson, because as we all know he has a huge legal mind and brain, and I personally miss his wit and humour in the House; so can I acknowledge him.

This is another piece of—like I said, another very good piece of National Party legislation. I’m just wondering and, with bated breath, every day and every sitting week, I wait for the Hon Willie Jackson to bring some of his legislation into the House. So, you know, I don’t know if that’ll happen before the end of the year. We’ll have to wait and see.

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: I need a promotion.

Can I just say—what was that? Needs a promotion? Well, it was a front-bench speech, I have to say. His earlier speech was a front-bench speech without a doubt.

This is a bill that will make it easier to find and access secondary legislation by requiring it to be published on the New Zealand Legislation website alongside Acts of Parliament, creating a single official public source for New Zealand legislation. This is a very good bill. The bill actually concludes the Government’s implementation of the recommendations made by the Law Commission in 2008, regarding the Presentation of New Zealand Statute Law. It does make it easier. I’m very happy to stand and take a call in support of these bills. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. This is one of the 23 or so bills that the Justice Committee had considered. As a former chair of the Justice Committee, I want to once again thank and acknowledge the officials, advisers, and submitters. I’d like to particularly acknowledge the former Attorney-General, Christopher Finlayson, and also the current Attorney-General, David Parker, for their leadership in this very important portfolio area, and also acknowledge the Minister Jenny Salesa, for her contributions earlier at the bills’ third reading. As my former Justice Committee member, the Hon Mark Mitchell, acknowledged, this is technical, bipartisan legislation that was conceived under the previous Government. In a similar vein, I think, the Justice Committee did enjoy a strong sense of collegiality, and we did enjoy a strong sense of collegiality before the arrival of one particular National Opposition MP. That Opposition MP should be very proud of himself, and enjoy himself, because the end result was he finally got rid of me as the chair of the Justice Committee by resorting to racial profiling.

Now, back to these bills. These are technically driven bills, and the committee did—[Interruption] Well, if you have no idea about that, calm down, just review some history, or your colleagues could help you to enlighten whatever may be missing from that member’s knowledge.

Now, back to this bill. These are technically driven bills, and at the Justice Committee, we did—

Tim van de Molen: What’s this? What’s going on here?

Well, if you really want to know what’s going on, just check with your colleague, because he leaked the internal voting process to the public and made up all these stories, fabricated stories, and sabotaged the Justice Committee’s process.

💬 Hon Member: Oh!

Well, he should be very proud of himself.

Tim van de Molen: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. There are some outrageous accusations being made by that member in this House, which is totally out of line and brings this House into disrepute.

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Dr Shane Reti): Thank you. The member—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: It is entirely within both the Standing Orders and the Speakers’ rulings for a speaker to respond to interjections from the other side, which I believe the speaker is doing. He made a number of attempts to get back to the bill, and then responded to interjections that were made.

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Dr Shane Reti): The member can speak to factual moments from the select committee, but he will come back to the content of the bill.

Thank you very much for your help, Mr Speaker. Back to this bill—

Tim van de Molen: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Respectfully, the member was making accusations that members on this side of the House were misleading, lying, and making false accusations which bring this House into disrepute. Those accusations need to be withdrawn and he should apologise.

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Dr Shane Reti): Thank you. I have taken this into account and brought the member back to factual recollections and factual statements at select committee, and that’s where it will rest at this point.

Thank you very much. This bill—at the very centre of this bill—is about secondary legislation. As Minister Jenny Salesa, in her earlier contribution, has explained, secondary legislation is very important because this is a new term in the Legislation Bill for all legislation made under lawmaking powers dedicated by Parliament or made under the royal prerogative. There are thousands of these kinds of secondary legislation made under different names and made by different organisations—for example, regulations, rules, orders, and notices. I recall that at the Justice Committee, we considered quite a number of factors in the submissions talking about how to define secondary legislation under different names, in different contexts, and made by different organisations.

Back to this legislation’s history, it was introduced in June 2017 and it received its first reading in December that year. The legislation rewrites and replaces the Legislation Act 2012 to bring together the law relating to legislation and to ensure that New Zealand law is easy to find, use, and understand. It will, for the first time in New Zealand law, identify clearly what secondary legislation is and, therefore, what this House’s oversight is through the disallowance process.

The secondary legislation that is drafted by the Parliamentary Counsel Office is easy to identify and is published on the New Zealand Legislation website, along with Acts of Parliament. However, secondary legislation drafted by over a hundred other agencies is often not easy to identify as legislation and it is published in a wide variety of other places. This impedes Parliament’s ability to supervise the exercise of powers it has dedicated, as well as New Zealand’s ability to identify the law that applies to them.

Without further ado, I commend these bills to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member who just spoke made a quite offensive remark accusing myself of racial profiling, something that I find deeply offensive. The issue at stake is with respect to an incident that occurred in the Justice Committee. I seek the leave of the House to table the minutes of the Justice Committee in respect of the controversial decision that was made to block the submission that was sought by Anne-Marie Brady from the University of Canterbury. So I’m seeking leave to table the minutes of the Justice Committee on the issue to which Mr Huo was referring.

We’ll deal with two matters here: first of all, the allegation that a member may have brought the House into disrepute. I have discussed it with the Clerk and I agree. I will ask the member Raymond Huo to stand, withdraw, and apologise for the allegations he made coming from select committee. The member will withdraw and apologise.

💬 Raymond Huo: I withdraw and apologise. I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is not allegation. It’s been fully recorded, and it’s been debated publicly.

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Dr Shane Reti): Thank you. I have made a decision.

💬 Raymond Huo: Yes.

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Dr Shane Reti): You’ve withdrawn and apologised. That matter is finished.

To draw to the second matter, you wish to table the minutes?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I seek the leave of the House to table the minutes of the Justice Committee in respect of the decision of the committee to decline the opportunity for the Canterbury University academic to be able to make a submission to the electoral law inquiry, which subsequently led to the resignation of the Justice Committee chair.

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Dr Shane Reti): Thank you. I’ll take advice from the Clerk. The advice is that the minutes may still be confidential, but we’re happy to put the leave to the House and leave it to the House. Leave is sought for the minutes of the select committee to be tabled in the House. Is there any objection? There is an objection. Leave is not given. Thank you. We’ll continue.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the Legislation Bill, a law about the law. We’ve got an exercise in front of us of improving access to the law, seeking to make it more open and transparent. Admittedly, the phrase “open and transparent” has lost a lot of “Curran, C”—that much is “Clare”. However, we can, nevertheless, observe that it’s a worthwhile endeavour to ensure that those who are subject to the law have an opportunity to find it and understand it. So that much is a worthy aim, and it’s no surprise to the House, therefore, that we on this side have been supporting it, as my colleague the Hon Mark Mitchell has already made very clear.

Accessibility to the law is a key aspect of the rule of law. This has been traversed somewhat at length already at previous stages and readings of the legislation, so I don’t intend to go back there in much detail, except to note that enabling compliance with the law facilitates its enforcement. The obvious corollary of members of the public being able to know how the law applies to them means that we can say that they must obey it, or else suffer the consequences as set out in that law.

Another worthy aim of this piece of legislation is that it folds into its arms the Interpretation Act. Given that finding the law and understanding it are, effectively, two acts of the same play, it is worth doing those two different things together in the same space, and that is exactly what we are doing here today.

Also I’d just note, as I prepare to draw to a close, that the website legislation.govt.nz is an excellent resource. We are in the pursuit of making it even more excellent, even more worthy, and even more worthwhile, indeed. So I bring to a close my contribution by just acknowledging all those involved across a couple of Governments: Christopher Finlayson QC, among others previously, and now the current Government’s had the good sense and taste to pick up that work and continue with it, such that now—through the Justice Committee and with the Regulations Review Committee also having had a look at it, and now the whole House—we move towards passing it. So it’s a pleasure to join with others on this side of the House in doing exactly that.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Legislation Bill and the Legislation (Repeals and Amendments) Bill. As has been mentioned, these are quite technical bills and they are somewhat dry, but it’s has been my experience in this House that the more technical and dry bills are often the most important. They are often the most important.

However, I don’t intend to traverse all of the changes in these bills, because they are quite numerous, although they are important. They have been detailed by the Minister and other speakers in this House, and it’s obviously a bipartisan piece of legislation, which is always good to see, but not always as fun to debate in the House. None the less, I’d just like to thank the Minister for bringing this bill to the House, and also the hard-working select committee that had to traverse through the details of this bill and make any of the recommendations that they did and bring them to the House, which we are debating at the moment.

First of all, just in brief, what this legislation does is it brings together law relating to legislation to ensure New Zealand’s laws are easy to find, which is obviously one of the most important aspects of this legislation. There is no logic in having the law there for the public of New Zealand if it’s hard for them to find, first of all, but also hard for them to understand. It’s to ensure that the legislation itself is of high quality, so it brings it up to speed and fixes up any issues in that regard.

It rewrites and replaces the Legislation Act 2012 and re-enacts the Interpretation Act 1999, combining the two into one Act. So, as has been mentioned, for the first time New Zealand law identifies clearly what secondary legislation is and, therefore, what this House has oversight over. It provides for improved access of legislation and absorbs the Interpretation Act 1999 with a small number of technical improvements.

The reforms of the framework for secondary legislation in these bills will deliver three broad benefits. The first is establishing for the first time a clear category of instruments that are secondary legislation; secondly, stating explicitly in law for the first time the category of instruments over which this House has oversight; and, third, laying the foundation for gradually improving access to the whole body of secondary legislation.

As I said in my opening comments, it’s important in a robust democracy to ensure that the legislation that the people of this country have access to is up to date, is easy to use, and is easy to access. Although these are technical bills and dry bills and perhaps not the most fun to debate, they are very important, and that’s why New Zealand First will be commending these bills to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

These legislative bills are just another example of the strong, practical reforms that the former National Government developed that is now progressing through its legislative changes. I want to particularly acknowledge Chris Finlayson. Not only was Chris a superb lawyer but he had a very practical sense of the importance of making sure that our laws and regulations were as accessible and as understandable to the public as possible.

All the time, we are passing laws and regulations, almost like a factory, and it is so useful to have a systematic approach to making sure that we’re not just piling laws upon laws but we actually are continuously tidying up the law books and making it as accessible as possible. I’m particularly delighted by the provisions in these bills that are going to enable the full set of not just Acts of Parliament—the primary legislation—but, actually, the regulations that have the greatest effect on everyday New Zealanders to be made so much more accessible, and it’s also really important for our role as legislators to see that full book of law to inform our process of reform.

If there is a fair and valid criticism of this Parliament, it is that we spend heaps of time passing new laws without actually looking at the old laws, old regulations, that need to be repealed. The provisions in these bills that provide for a far more systematic approach to managing the overall law book of both primary legislation and secondary regulations is not the sort of law that’s going to make the front page of the newspaper. It’s not going to get constituents super-excited, but it is about the practical improvements to our lawmaking system that is good for New Zealanders and, actually, equally important for New Zealand businesses.

I commend the legislation to the House. It’s a good bit of work. It’s about making our legal system more accessible for the average member of the public, and it is going to result in a whole lot of practical elements that make our system of law work better for this country.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of these bills. As others have said, they may not be super-fun bills to debate, but it is exciting, I think, for us all as lawmakers, and for me as a once-practising lawyer, to know that Parliament is keeping an eye on how accessible and knowable the law is for the general population.

It might be surprising for members of the public to know that we haven’t thus far had a consistent, coherent definition of what is secondary legislation. Secondary legislation—being effectively regulations that affect our lives at that level where we live, where higher-level legislation may not reach—hasn’t until now been well defined. It has been defined across different pieces of legislation. It has, as the Law Commission has pointed out, included disallowable pieces of secondary legislation that make it harder for the public to know their rights, to know the mechanisms by which their lives are being regulated, and standards that have been set.

This is an exciting piece of law. It consolidates the definition of secondary legislation and the way by which it can be interpreted. It makes that body of law that is actually really significant in affecting people’s everyday lives more accessible by requiring that it be also published online. Again, I think it’s surprising to note that that wasn’t already being done. We do have a really good, accessible online archive of primary legislation, but of course primary legislation sits sort of above everything and its interpretation is done by the courts. It’s not often clear enough, the way that it actually affects our everyday lives, without that access to secondary legislation which is allowed to be made pursuant to the primary legislation.

Making regulations both in definition knowable and in content and substance knowable to members of the public is really, really important, especially in the current context of our sort of information highway. Making these laws actually accessible online, where people do also essentially live, without having to go and access them in some lofty building elsewhere—and how would people even know? The fact that our law is becoming clearer, it’s being modernised, and it’s becoming far more accessible to members of the public is exciting and it means that we are closer to providing a rule of law system that is truly democratic as well. I commend the bills to the House.

As previous speakers have acknowledged, these are very practical bills. What they do, in part, is increase the public’s access to what regulations exist in New Zealand. I sit on the Regulations Review Committee, and what has been astounding, I think, not only to me on the committee but other members of that committee is that, actually, in New Zealand right now we don’t know how many regulations we have. The Regulations Review Committee has been on an exercise of overseeing an audit across all Government departments of how many regulations there are so that they can all be kept in one place as these bills envisage.

It’s really important that as lawmakers, we ensure that New Zealanders have access to the law, that the law is transparent, and that it is clear. Of course, on this side of the House, we are also of the view that having a careful approach to regulation and ensuring it doesn’t get in the way of business and innovation is particularly important, and that starts with having clarity and transparency about what regulations there are. I commend these bills to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a great opportunity to speak in the third and the final reading of the Legislation Bill. As a committee member on the committee which considered this, it’s been good to see this bill through the entire process through the House. It’s good also to see that we have support on a bill that is one of those bills that just makes our legislative processes tidier and also is more about transparency and enabling New Zealanders to easily access pieces of information or pieces of legislation that are available.

So the main piece of work—and it’s a significant piece of work that officials have been working on—is to really bring together a large body of secondary legislation. And can I just say how important that it is to have access to that.

So, “secondary legislation” is actually a new term in terms of legislation that’s not made within this House. So it’s made under powers delegated by Parliament, and that’s held in many different places, and it could be in terms of local council rules and regulations. It’s a significant task by those officials to try and bring together the significant body of regulation in one place and have that available online, as we do now with primary legislation. And that’s important if you are a local member of the public who’s impacted on by a local regulation or some order or applying for a permit. It’s important that people understand what is being delegated by Parliament and how it applies to them.

So there are rules, notices, orders, regulations, and so on. So I take my hat off to those officials that have undertaken the mammoth task of going through all of those different areas to bring together that piece of work.

So, really, what gave rise to this bill—and I’ll just briefly touched on this—is interesting in the fact that it responds to the recommendations of the Regulations Review Committee. That’s already been mentioned earlier. Back in 2014, there was an inquiry into the oversight of disallowable instruments—no, not just disallowable instruments but disallowable instruments that are not legislative instruments. And in that report, the committee highlighted the difficulties in facing identifying a disallowable instrument. These difficulties arise partly because of the category of disallowable instruments. It includes not only instruments made under an empowering provision but also that they are disallowing, and that’s specified in section 39 of the Legislation Act—so, clarifying where that sits.

The scope for legitimate divergences on whether an instrument does or does not have a significant legislative effect makes the boundaries of the category contestable and introduces a level of uncertainty in terms of which instruments are subject to the disallowance procedure. So having clarification in this area, knowing where the line is drawn in between primary legislation and secondary legislation is an important piece of work for New Zealand to carry out. So it makes it clearer in terms of where those areas are and also for making that more transparent for members of the public.

So the bill brings together the law relating to legislation to ensure New Zealand’s law is easy to find, it’s easy to use, and it’s easy to understand. But above all those things, it’s also to ensure that it is of high quality. In places it will rewrite and replace the Legislation Act 2012 and update and re-enact the Interpretation Act 1999, combining the two into one Act. And so it tidies up and brings together and consolidates all of that area.

For the first time in New Zealand law, it will identify clearly what secondary legislation is, and, therefore, what the House has oversight over through the disallowances process that I’ve already outlined.

It will also provide for improved access to that legislation, as I’ve already indicated, through having those available online where currently they are not. And it will absorb the Interpretation Act 1999 with a small number of technical improvements.

And, finally, it will enact legislative disclosure requirements to make key information about development and the content of new legislation available to support legislative scrutiny.

This is an excellent bill that really cleans up legislation for New Zealand, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand in support of the third reading of this Legislation Bill. I would like to acknowledge the Hon Chris Finlayson, who introduced this bill and had a vision and was on the track on how to reduce the red-tapeism.

This bill enables it so that all secondary legislation is brought together on one website where individuals and businesses can access that legislation so that there is no confusion anywhere. So it makes it easier and more efficient for the authorities to enforce the regulatory regime also, because everything is all together. The changes will modernise the requirement for publishing and presenting secondary legislation to the House of Parliament’s examination, enabling better legislative schemes to be delivered in the long term.

So with these words I commend this bill to the House.

On Radio New Zealand, on Friday afternoons, there’s a programme called Critter of the Week, in which they choose some ugly little animal and make it their critter of the week. I think of that when I’m looking at this piece of legislation. I think it’s had a bit of a bad rap in this House, as everyone who stood up, sort of said, “This is a little bit of legislation, it’s a hard piece of legislation, and it’s a complicated piece of legislation.” Well, I’m going to call this “my legislation of the week”, because it’s actually quite an important little piece of legislation.

As someone who has been on the hard-working Justice Committee, one of only two survivors, to date; the previous one just having—oh, I don’t think I’m allowed to mention she’s left. But Ginny Andersen is the other member of this. You can tell by our scars. I’m really only 35 years old, such is the effect of time on the Justice Committee. I think by some of the presentations and speeches you’ve heard today, you can understand why it’s been such an ageing process. Oh, and speaking of the ageing process, I see we have the Speaker—thank you, welcome back, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I think I’ll just push the time bell!

Anyway, before I get myself in any more trouble, can I go straight to the Legislation Bill. I could start again, but I’m sure that you don’t need some explanation about what a beautiful piece of legislation this is.

I love it when new words enter our lexicon. When this bill came to the House, who knew what a “disallowable instrument” was? But by the time we’d heard from experts and by the time we’d heard from various submitters on the bill, we knew exactly what one of those was.

But in all seriousness, what this really did, the understanding of this is that in virtually everything we do in New Zealand, there is some sort of regulatory or legislative basis to it. Every time we step outside our door, every time we engage in any sort of business—whether it be Government, and, as it turns out, even in private industry—there’s a regulation somewhere, a piece of legislation somewhere, which governs it. As previous speakers have said, we haven’t, simply, known where a lot of that regulation was, where a lot of that secondary legislation was.

It came to a little bit of a head during, you’ll remember, the milk powder inquiry in China, when there was an inquiry being conducted into that, and those conducting the inquiry actually went looking for the regulations, the legislation, under which they were operating to do the inquiry, and suddenly found that they couldn’t find it, and much of the secondary legislation, these disallowable instruments, had actually been passed and no one had ever recorded it—and that brought to a head the necessity to make sure that we do. Particularly where we’re going offshore with this legislation, we know just how vulnerable we are. There’s now a piece of work, that others have mentioned, to ensure that there is going to be a place where we can actually go and find those regulations under which we’ve enacted, under which we’re operating our daily lives

I guess in understanding that, we go to the places where there’s going to be some exemptions from publication of this legislation. On the select committee, there was actually a recommendation that we would have three exemptions to this. In our deliberations, long and hard into the night, we actually brought that down; there was a recommendation there would actually only be two exemptions to the legislation, the first one being where the secondary legislation contains information that cannot be publicly disclosed. Generally, that would be something around market sensitivity not only within New Zealand but, of course, internationally as well, but, of course, again, as we move our goods to the harbour, as we move our goods to the wharf, and move them offshore, again, the closer we get to export, the more important it is that there is a regulatory body under which we’re operating and we know where that legislation is. However, what we do want to make sure is that the legislation and the information that is enclosed there doesn’t become an advantage to our competitors. So there will actually be a situation where it doesn’t need to be publicly disclosed. Also, of course, naturally, where it relates to national security, under the agencies operating, that won’t, obviously, need to be disclosed there as well.

The second exemption is not so much sensitivity but it’s where it will still need to be made available to the public in a way other than just being on their website.

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

I just remind members that we’ve renamed this legislation the “Critter of the Week” or “Legislation of the Week” legislation, and I think the now-retired ex - Attorney-General Christopher Finlayson would be very happy to have himself described as the author or the creator of something that has been so named. He’s a very creative sort of a personality.

So, coming back to the legislation, we were talking when I was interrupted about the disallowable instruments—terminology that for those hardworking members of the Justice Committee became part of our lexicon from a word that none of us have heard of. In fact, indeed, secondary legislation—what is secondary legislation? And as we were talking about it, it’s something that underlies everything that we do in New Zealand. In everything we do, there’s generally either a Government, a Parliament, or a local body sitting behind that activity. In fact, there are in excess of 100 Government agencies that are empowered to draft and make secondary legislation.

So when we are considering it, there’s also quite a large number of local bodies as well. Seventy local bodies are actually able to make secondary legislation, so a very wise decision was made to, essentially, leave them out so they can continue to make that legislation. No doubt, there will be the need for a catch-up at some stage, just again, so that in one place, New Zealanders, whether for reason of doing an inquiry to test their legality, will just know the basis on which they are carrying out their activity and, indeed, are able to go and ensure that they are, in fact, keeping within that legislation.

I think it is something of a surprise to realise just how almost—I would stop short of saying the blind leading the blind in relation to this legislation, but certainly it was a surprise to see how little was known about this. I mentioned before about the inquiry into the export of milk powder that was required to be investigated and not knowing, actually, the legislation on which it was acting.

So, although this was quite an exciting piece of legislation—one that has taxed the intellect of the Justice Committee—even I am struggling to actually find anything else that will be of interest to you, Mr Speaker, so at this stage, I will resume my seat and recommend this legislation.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I want to congratulate Mr O’Connor on his call of two halves; although he did promise that he would complete it, he hasn’t quite managed to do that. I much preferred the first half, I have to say, and I’m quite sure that my very good friend the Hon Christopher Finlayson would be delighted to have been referred to as the creator and I’ll make sure that he gets that passed on.

I’m the final National Party speaker in the third reading on what is a very dry and technical measure—certainly, a very important measure. I don’t in any way mean to demean it, but I feel that my colleagues have said all that needs to be said. These are bills that enjoy cross-party support, and I therefore have no wish to detain the House any further, and I look forward to seeing them passed into law.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s with some surprise and disappointment that I hear my friends say that this is dry legislation or there’s nothing here. And I’m sure our assistants in the Parliamentary Counsel Office would be appalled and would abhor to hear that, because this, you know—I might have a facetious tone, but there’s an important point to be made here, and that is that this legislation is actually really important for access to justice, because this is, in fact, the doorway to the law. I know we can read this hefty legislation and, perhaps, find it a little dry, but the fact of the matter is that the ability to know what the law is is critical to a citizen’s rights, and that is one of the key things that this legislation does.

I was dealing with a matter to do with Ministry of Social Development for a constituent, and to find out the position, I had to navigate the primary legislation, an executive order that was a regulation, then rules promulgated by the department, and then a policy promulgated by the department, and then guidelines. So that’s five layers of rules and the question is: where there’s conflict, which prevail? Which ones are binding and which ones are someone’s opinion of what might be the best way to do it? What this piece of legislation does is it says we are going to draw a brightline so that anything above this line is delegated legislation, it is subject to the scrutiny of this House, and it is made under the authority of Parliament. And things below that line, which might be called rules or policies or guidelines, will not be delegated legislation, they won’t have the same force, and they won’t be subject to the same scrutiny.

And there’s more, and it is really important because at the moment—I mean, if you are an ordinary citizen, to navigate that kind of labyrinth is pretty much impossible. So part of this project—and it’s only the first step in a much larger project, but part of this project—embedded in this Act is saying, “We will find the law in one place.” and the joys of the internet are that we have an easily accessible repository for it. It’s not the case anymore—perhaps the romantic lawyers amongst us, if that isn’t an oxymoron, would love to go down to the law library and the dusty books, but the fact of the matter is that those days are gone. The legislation website will be the repository for all delegated legislation, so that anyone can go to this legislation and say, “Ah, now I understand what the layers of legislation are. And what’s more, I can go and find it.” So we won’t have the ridiculous situation we had not long ago when we had the Fonterra melamine scandal where an inquiry couldn’t be sure whether they’d found all the law or not. I mean, that is absolutely unacceptable in a country that prides itself on being subject to the rule of law.

So here we have a piece of legislation that addresses that and it makes it clear what the scrutiny is. I feel for some departments when they pass things that are probably legislative instruments and are expected to table them in the House, but they don’t even know that—so even the departments themselves can be confused. So here again, we have a piece of legislation which says it’s a legislative instrument, provides a definition for what a legislative instrument is, has clear legislative effect, and therefore it must be presented in the House. And that’s important because, you know, my friends who—I’m not sure I can see a colleague from the Regulations Review Committee in the House at the moment. Yes, I can: Willow-Jean Prime.

You know, that’s a really important check. Now, it’s one that’s used rarely but its existence is important. So the fact is that any regulation is disallowable. It’s set out here and that is an important part of parliamentary scrutiny. And increasingly, we know that the executive is given regulation-making powers because the law is complicated, things change very rapidly, and all those other reasons that are given for regulating regulation-making powers, but it must absolutely be subject to the scrutiny of this House. The Regulations Review Committee is a committee of this House and, I must say, it does a great job and one of the joys of coming here is seeing the very good job that it does do and the seriousness with which it takes citizens’ complaints about regulations.

I guess the other really important aspect of this legislation is the Interpretation Act. As the Law Commission suggested, recommended, it’s no good having, kind of, the way the law works, the way legislation interacts with each other, itself spread across many different pieces of legislation. Of itself, the irony is not lost on me that the law about legislation is not well drafted. So the Interpretation Act comes in here, and that’s actually a really important tool as well, because we know that when people approach legislation, it can be difficult. There are words in there, even words that look simple: a month—is it a calendar month or is it four weeks? A week—is it a working week? A day—is it a working day? All those kinds of things, those kinds of things which are spread across the Act, as well as the general approach to interpretation—I mean, despite what many people would think, we don’t take a pettifogging approach to interpretation. We approach it in a purposive way. The first question is: what was this legislation intended to achieve? What is the purpose of the legislation and its intended effect? Those kinds of things are all set out in the interpretation sections of the Act, and, again, it’s a great thing to do.

So this is the first step on a much longer project. Can I also, from, again, my position on the Regulations Review Committee, which had some oversight of this project, congratulate parliamentary counsel, who have been leading it and who now have a very large task ahead of them, which is, once the next piece of legislation is passed and we have identified everything which is a regulation, finding it and putting it up on Legislation Online so that any citizen can find it. They’ve done a great job so far. It’s a very long-term project, one that has crossed a number of Parliaments, but it is actually really important.

I want to end where I started, which is to say that this is about access to justice. This is about saying that the law should be accessible to anyone. It shouldn’t require higher education or a law degree to access it. It should be easy to find, easy to read, and easy to apply. This is a fantastic step forward for Parliament and for our law. I commend these bills to the House.

Bills read a third time.