Secondary Legislation Bill

Members, we now come to the debate on clause 3, including Schedules 1 to 32. This is the debate on the amendments to Acts.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I was wondering if the Attorney-General could give us some guidance about where the line is drawn in terms of regulations that set a fee or levy. I understand that the general principle is that those tend to have legislative effect such that they should be regarded as secondary legislation, but that’s not always the case. So if any guidance can be given in that regard, that would be very helpful indeed.

I look forward to the more precise guidance that will come from the Regulations Review Committee.

Thank you very much. I wonder, in that case, if there is an answer that can be given from the chair—other than to simply go away and find out myself, wearing a different hat—if he can comment on the process of deciding what has significant legislative effect, such as, it was included in the many schedules, some 30 or so, and is he confident that most, if not all, such instruments have been picked up in that big process that would have been undertaken by many civil servants, including—and especially, I suppose—the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO), as colleagues have already acknowledged.

Yes, I am. There has been an enormous amount of work that has been done by PCO in particular, over a number of years now. It is tedious work, I would venture to suggest, but they have had to go through the regulation-making powers of every Act that empowers regulations to be made, and determined whether they meet the threshold for inclusion in this bill. The vast majority do; there are a small number that don’t. I’ve already addressed that issue in terms of some subsidiary rules that don’t meet that test of legal importance.

In respect of some of the other changes that were made, Vanushi Walters just asked me about a provision relating to the correction to correct amendments to ensure that the empowering provisions and related procedural provisions will integrate correctly with the Legislation Act 2019. That is necessary because the prior version of the bill, the bill that went to the select committee, was drafted before the Legislation Act 2019 was passed, and, therefore, some of these things had to be updated in order to meet the changes that were made by that Act.

Look, I’ve got great confidence that this will be 99.9 percent right. It is possible that there is still some regulation-making power that sits in a piece of legislation that has been missed inadvertently; if it has been, then that needs to be updated. I’m sure there are processes through this Parliament that we can tidy up. You know, I don’t know how many regulation-making powers changed here, but I would say, overall, from the range of Acts, that there are many hundreds, if not thousands.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Perhaps my final contribution to this clause within the bill. I wonder if the Minister can guide us in relation to the process—well, if anything, the education, and I’m struggling for a word that is appropriate—but the understanding of the civil service going forward in terms of the change of regime, whereby we’ve got a much clearer and coherent set of, well, rules, regulations, I might say in sort of a pretty general way, using ordinary meaning of the words that will be brought under this regime. Do you anticipate that it will be widely known and, indeed, celebrated out there in Wellington, effectively, what we are doing here tonight in going forward so that we don’t have to play catch-up in the future and, you know, correct language, whether it is notices or orders or other things that might properly, following the passage of this into an Act, be simply called “secondary legislation”?

I think there will be rejoicing in the street that we no longer have DINLIs—for people who sit on the Regulations Review Committee, and I can’t even remember the full name of what that stands for now. I was on the select committee when we started this process, when this actually started from an inquiry into disallowable instruments that the committee ran. We then spoke with the then Attorney-General, Chris Finlayson, who agreed it was an appropriate piece of work to kick off, and I thank him for that.

In respect of your earlier question around fees, officials have provided me with a note that is helpful. Legislation that sets fees in just about all cases falls within the definition of the sort of secondary legislation that is caught by this bill. The only exception is where the payment of the fee is voluntary because it is a voluntary organisation for which the fee is set. So if it is compulsory, then it is caught.

Thank you, Mr Chair. My question relates to Schedule 9 linked into clause 3. This is to do with the Ministry for the Environment schedules, and I’m wondering if you considered during the process—whether there was consideration of regulations of the sort that are made by district councils and plans and also in the local government provisions by-laws, if there’s the justification for them not being included as secondary legislation; if you’d be able to talk to that.

My memory from that is old, and officials will tell me if I’ve got this wrong, but my memory is, you had to have a cut-off somewhere. It was already an onerous task doing it across all of Government. Picking up all of the by-laws that are passed by district councils or regional councils was thought to be an additional task. It was at that stage a step too far. But that said, given that the outcome of this will eventually be better access to the law for people, it would be nice to see one day the country embark upon that task and get those instruments in a form that can be more readily accessed by the people who are bound by them.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I, being a little bit of a law nerd, really applaud anything that makes the law more accessible to the New Zealand public. I was actually at, opened, the central North Island secondary schools debating competition in my electorate on the weekend and was reflecting about the first time I ever got up and participated in a debate myself. At that point I had to go to the local bookshop and buy the Act that formed part of our debate, the Animal Welfare Act. So, you know, we’ve come very far, obviously, in terms of our accessibility to the law and legislation in New Zealand. My question, Minister Parker, is whether thought was given to taking this a step further and making it more widely available in the same way that our Acts are available, so there’s a sort of central repository for regulations; and if not, why not?

Ultimately, we do want all of the secondary legislation, whether it’s passed by Government agencies or some other body that’s authorised to pass legislation, to be accessible on an information platform. That requires new IT systems and processes not just in Parliamentary Counsel Office but also for other agencies that draft secondary legislation. So we’re on the way there, but we haven’t yet arrived, and some of the impediments to getting there are fiscal.

The question is that the Minister’s amendment to clause 3, set out on Supplementary Order Paper 12, be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Clause 3 as amended agreed to.

Clause 4 Amendments to Legislation Act 2019