Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill (No 4)

I move, That the Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill (No 4) be now read a second time.

This is one of the highlights of the parliamentary sitting calendar, as we consider the subordinate legislation confirmation bills, which are, of course, an annual event in this House. Their purpose is to confirm, by an Act of Parliament, regulations that would otherwise be revoked by a particular date, usually at the end of the year.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry to interrupt the Minister, but could we just keep the noise down a bit? I notice the Minister’s having to yell.

It’s the excitement, Madam Speaker—it’s the excitement.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I can tell.

If these regulations were allowed to lapse, the result would be administrative chaos—in some areas, considerable expense and loss of significant amounts of revenue. The process is set out in the Legislation Act 2012, having been clarified and detailed by the Legislation (Confirmable Instruments) Amendment Act 2015. Future subordinate legislation confirmation bills will be subject to the provisions of the new Legislation Act 2019.

This year’s bill confirms delegated legislation made under 16 different Acts of Parliament. The instruments to be confirmed cover a wide range of subjects and most commonly bring about changes in levies and other charges, including those related to biosecurity, engine fuel monitoring, and problem gambling. Other matters covered by secondary legislation approved by this bill include things like import prohibitions and changes to the annual catch entitlement for fish stocks, to name just two.

Subordinate legislation confirmation bills are used to implement changes that arise from international agreements. This bill approves amendments to tariffs that resulted from the Government’s successful conclusion of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations in Chile in 2018, and the World Trade Organization Information Technology Agreement.

With only the second reading of subordinate legislation confirmation bills being debatable in this House, detailed select committee consideration of these bills is very, very important, so I would like to thank the Regulations Review Committee. I’d like to thank the chair of the Regulations Review Committee, Alastair Scott, for their work on this bill. The committee has produced a comprehensive report on the bill, and I thank them for that. Explanations about why the instruments should be confirmed were made by the committee. The committee sought seven different Government departments’ explanations as to why they should be confirmed, and, as a result, I understand that the committee has been happy to recommend that all of them be confirmed.

The committee, I understand, paid particular attention to the Arms (Prohibited Ammunition) Order 2019, perhaps one of the more controversial aspects of this particular bill today. They heard oral evidence from the New Zealand Police on two separate occasions. The order prohibits 10 categories of military-style ammunition. Following its consideration of the issues, the Regulations Review Committee has recommended that the order be confirmed.

The committee’s report further outlines how thoroughly they’ve examined the prohibited ammunition order. That provides a clear example of how the subordinate legislation confirmation process works, and it demonstrates that the select committee consideration and the select committee process around subordinate legislation confirmation bills isn’t simply a rubber-stamping process, and that is actually something that the House should take note of.

Later today, the House will give its first reading to the Secondary Legislation Bill, which will make the framework of secondary legislation in New Zealand much, much clearer, in partnership with the Legislation Act 2012. The subordinate legislation confirmation process means that secondary legislation can be scrutinised effectively, without occupying a considerable amount of Parliament’s time, and I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in support of the Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill (No 4). As the Minister Chris Hipkins has rightly set out, it can be considered a rubber-stamping exercise. These bills, from time to time, come before the Regulations Review Committee, to check that the rules and regulations are not doing something that is outside the scope of the relevant Act. The committee does take the responsibility of that seriously.

You’ll see in the select committee report that, as the Minister said, there are a number of bills or confirmations that were made, including, for example, the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act, Animal Products Act, Arms Act, Biosecurity Act, Civil Aviation Act, and so on. But I would also like to focus on the confirmation, and we did end up confirming the Arms Act, which relates to the ammunition which the Minister referred to earlier. We took a couple of sessions. We had the police in twice to explain themselves and the way that they came to their conclusions. We were concerned that the police could possibly be seen to be able to act outside of the purpose of the Act, away from the policy settings of the Government of the day or the Minister, and so, as I say, we brought the police in twice to explain to us their thought processes.

We had a number of complaints that we ran alongside the process of confirmation, and these complaints raised concerns that the committee also had, I guess one could say. Those issues were around just the idea that one can ban this or that. We’re talking about tracer ammunition. We’re talking about armour-piercing ammunition. We had to satisfy ourselves not that they should be banned but that the rules and regulations that were before us fitted into the purpose of the Minister’s legislation in the first place.

We heard from the Police as well. So we heard about tracer ammunition. On this side of the House, we don’t like banning things just for the sake of it. We think people should take personal responsibility and should not be dictated to overly by any Government of the day. So banning stuff, we take seriously. In this situation, we agreed that tracer ammunition and armour-piercing ammunition, the way it was described, should be banned. Even though people liked to use some of this type of ammunition, it seemed to me that one of the main arguments for using it was simply because it was cheap, it was readily available, and it was ammunition that had been discarded from other jurisdictions and found its way into New Zealand. That is not a good enough reason on its own.

We took that armour-piercing ammunition and the tracer ammunition and the effects that that could have on the way that police deal with criminals—and deal with themselves, actually—very seriously. So we agreed unanimously—it was a unanimous committee report, which was good—that this confirmation should take place to enable the legislation to be passed and to be effected.

The other issue was around the consultation process. We were, as a committee, critical of the Police’s process around consultation. That has been made clear in the select committee. The Police heard that. We were all—not some of us; we were all—concerned about the process: that some of the people that could have been included were not. But that did not stop us from confirming these instruments. That was not in itself a reason not to confirm or to disallow.

The other issue was around the term “military-style”. “Military-style ammunition” was not a very helpful description—not a very helpful description of what we were talking about. What we were talking about was particular types of ammunition that had particular effects when it was used—so, for example, the armour-piercing ammunition. In my view, we shouldn’t have even mentioned the word “military-style”. In fact, it’s not in the order. It’s not in the legislation. There’s nothing mentioning “military-style” except in our report and in some of the commentary around the bills. So not helpful, because we were concerned about the effects that this banning would have on the general public and on the police, and so we wanted to talk specifically about the types of ammunition—not military-style in general.

The other issue was the idea that there should have been—and this is part of the complaint process—compensation for the banning of this particular type of ammunition. We’ve had compensation made for banned firearms—fair enough. That was what the Government wanted to do. That’s for them to decide. But the Government decided not to compensate for the banning of ammunition. So the question was whether that was enough to disallow this instrument. What we discussed and concluded was that that was not the ambit of the Regulations Review Committee. That was a question of policy. The policy was set by the Government, and the policy that they determined was that this particular banned ammunition should not be compensated for. So, whether you agree with the policy or not, that was not our consideration—whether the policy was good or bad. We stuck to our mandate. We said that it complied, and so we unanimously confirmed all of that regulation and confirmation powers relating to the ammunition and the complaints that related to it.

So that’s all I’ll say. It was a very collegial committee. As I say, we agreed. Many of us, on both sides, had very strong views in this regard, and we came to a very satisfactory conclusion. I commend it to the House.

Bill read a second time.

Third Reading