Statutes Amendment Bill

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. The Statutes Amendment Bill is probably about as exciting as it sounds. The Minister’s explained already, I think, pretty well, the general nature of these kinds of pieces of legislation.

It’s a pretty nondescript title: statutes amendment. “Why?”, I hear you ask, “Why do we not have a better description, something more detailed, something indicating what statutes are being amended?” Well, the answer, I think, is in the Minister’s speech: some 42 bits of legislation that are being amended. I counted 41, actually, incidentally. I did that, Madam Speaker—and I know you’ll be interested in this—initially by going through and counting the number of pieces of legislation; each one has its own part. By the time I got to about Part 5, I realised that if I looked to the end and saw that there were 41 parts and each one was a different piece of legislation, then I could probably guess that there would be 41 pieces of legislation. Forty-one is a lot to count to, and I’m now more than that number of years on this earth, so I won’t reflect any more deeply on—

💬 Barbara Kuriger: A diligent MP.

—the size of that! I’m a “diligent MP”—there we go!—says my colleague and friend Barbara Kuriger.

Anyway, as the Minister also said, bipartisan in nature—I mean, that’s my word; I think he said “non-controversial”. And, in case those watching are wondering whether there is something of a risk that the House takes in bringing forward legislation—or the Government introducing legislation that the Parliament might or might not find controversial—there is a process that goes into these things in advance, generally, whereby we have the opportunity to consider whether we think that a change is, basically, policy-free, so to speak, it’s really in the nature of making something clearer, tidier, maybe updating, cross-referencing, and so forth. So it is introduced to the House with some confidence by the Minister, knowing that it will enjoy the support of the House as a whole and that a number of different items on our statute book will be updated and tidied up accordingly.

I thought some of these were actually quite interesting. I know I haven’t really sold it well so far—

💬 Todd Muller: No, not really.

“Not really” says Mr Muller, he of the sunscreen. It was interesting, actually, last week, I think, we had some quite extraordinary scenes outside on the lawn of Parliament, and, actually, you know, some quite, well, I’m going to say “tragic” scenes—I don’t resile from that word because, from a point of a view of a democracy as well as some individual harm that took place, it was certainly tragic and, indeed, extraordinary. But on that day, Mr Muller’s member’s bill in the realm of sunscreen labelling passed. So it was good to have some good news on that occasion, Mr Muller. He’s well placed to comment on that, which is exciting having brought that bill to the House—genuinely helpful contribution.

But anyway, on this one we have some equally exciting material. Another thing that I noticed when I started going through these is that they are alphabetically arranged, and I thought, “Gosh, they all start with ‘A’”. But, actually, that’s the word “amendment”—they’ve all got “amendment”—funny that, Statutes Amendment Bill—but, bear with me, amendment to Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act 1997—so that one starts with “A”, so too does the Animal Products Act, and so on. There’s sort of almost a Sesame Street vibe so far. We’ve got my counting of the number of statutes and we’ve got the letters that they all start with. So I’ve obviously spent too much time in lockdown, in isolation with a preschooler.

Anyway, so talking about, then—and let’s, you know, for the sake of something and giggles, with six minutes to go until the dinner break, I’m going to go through a couple of these, as I think they’re important and interesting; whether or not anyone else does is their affair, not mine.

So agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines: this talks about consolidating certain secondary legislation or published instruments. “Consolidating” in this sense actually means consolidating, and not as used by the Government in the sense of consolidating rapid antigen tests that have been ordered by the private sector just trying to take responsibility for keeping their workers safe. “Consolidating” in that sense being something of a cross between the dictionary and the Communist Manifesto, as meaning something other than what we would call “consolidating” on this side of the House. But in this case, actually there is a genuine consolidation going on, and that’s revoking a couple of different pieces of secondary legislation, and putting them together in a way that’s more sensible in terms of being able to have those different pieces of content of the law be found in the one place. So that’s all I can say, really, on the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act.

So the Animal Products Act, then—and you can see we’re proceeding slowly through the alphabet, so it won’t be a longer call than it needs to be. We’re halfway in terms of my time, if not the 26 letters; we’re still on “A”; there’s actually a lot of “A” to go! So, anyway, we’ve got at the moment the Animal Products Act in front of us and there’s also the Animal Welfare Act, not to be confused. We’ve got a Minister for Food Safety and director-general (DG), that being the chief executive of the Ministry for Primary Industries, I understand. “Director-general” is a phrase that we’ve heard often in the last couple of years, of course; the Director-General of Health is one particular DG, but, of course, we’ve got other such officers across the machinery of Government. So he or she in this case—

💬 Barbara Kuriger: He.

—he in this case, I’m reliably informed by Barbara Kuriger, who knows about all things agriculture—has the ability to make certain instruments and publish those, and so these are able to be consolidated.

In the Animal Welfare Act, there is a similar kind of thing there. There is a power referred to in relation to the Minister of Conservation—not to be confused with the “Minister for Conversation”, which is, of course, the Prime Minister, who’s told us in question time today, proudly, that her side of the House, as opposed to this side of the House, cares so much about a particular issue; I forget what it was now, probably cost of living. That’s a key performance indicator for me, by the way; every time I mention cost of living, I get a tick in the box. Anyway, I think she was talking about cost of living, and to demonstrate how much she cared, she said that “we’ve been talking about it for years.”, which I thought was really interesting, the “Minister for Conversation” making her mark again. Anyway, that’s enough on the Animal Welfare Act.

Moving now to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (AMLCFT) Act. This is the dreaded AMLCFT regulations. But lest anyone should get too excited that some of the more onerous and anomalous requirements in that space are about to be done away with, sadly I am bound to disappoint. The amendments in this space are more prosaic and I’d say less helpful—maybe that’s unfair; they’re probably helpful as far as that goes. But it’s a sharing of information between different bodies NZLS—being the New Zealand Law Society—Society of Conveyancers, and so on. So, again, as I said, pretty exciting stuff.

Skipping entirely past “B”—we’ve done the “As” and we’re skipping past the “Bs”—and I see various members clutching—

💬 Todd Muller: To “B” or not to “B”? It’s not to be.

—“It’s not to be.”, says Mr Muller, and I do enjoy that. Yes, yes, a very sweet reference there. We’ve got Shakespeare in the House.

Actually, talking of Shakespeare, I’m going to—because Mr Muller has brought in the bard—go straight ahead to what I think is interesting about the Care of Children Act 2004 within this one. And we’ve got, actually—I mean, obviously very serious topic in itself; “tragic”, indeed, to use that phrase again—the difference between domestic violence and family violence. This was a subject that was traversed in the House a little while ago when legislation was going through to make some substantive updates to that legislation. But it also made a change in the terminology, so that the shift that the Parliament thought fit to make was to change from talking about domestic violence, and instead talking about family violence. The difference between it was said that the connotations with domestic violence was that it might be said that violence of that nature was merely a “domestic”, in ordinary parlance—you know, an argument between, for example, a married couple or those in a similar relationship, civil union, whatever—and that would be inappropriate if we were to minimise the harm that was being contemplated. So a serious point there. So, in the context of the Statutes Amendment Bill, it’s updating that language and making a change that’s really consequential on that previous change that had been made by the Parliament.

My reference to Shakespeare is, of course, that classic line from Romeo and Juliet that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Yet balance that up against probably more of an Orwellian concept of the power of language from a cognitive linguistics point of view, that the language shapes a thought, and the thing that one can say, one can contemplate, and that which is not spoken of cannot be thought of. So we’ve got a sort of tension there, Orwell vs Shakespeare—sort of a cage fight of great literary figures, if you will. But, anyway, that’s the Care of Children Act 2004. I’ve probably taken us as far away as I could probably get away with that one.

Oh, I’m just getting started, but with only a few seconds to go—

💬 Todd Muller: Extension!

—not only in my contribution but in terms of the dinner break. I’m hearing a request for an extension of time; I think I’ll spare us all that, except to say that it’s a good bill, it’s worthy work of Government, and I commend them for bringing it to the House. We will be supporting the bill accordingly.

Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7 o’clock this evening.

Sitting suspended from 5.55 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Good evening, members. Before we went to dinner we were debating the Statutes Amendment Bill. The next call is a Labour Party call.

Good evening, and thank you, Madam Speaker. The Statutes Amendment Bill is a housekeeping bill. It’s a regular tidy up, a freshen, a repairing of small things, and I think it has a very important task for us to do. I want to take you through just a few of the amendments in this bill and talk about why they’re so important. I turn first of all to Part 12, where we’re fixing a squeaky door. The excise and excise equivalent duties table had the wrong rate of duty for a particular item of alcohol, and in order to get that fixed we couldn’t do it by Order in Council; it had to be done by legislation—a squeaky door now being fixed up with a little drop of oil.

Part 15 is a job which actually we don’t need to do any more. It concerns the Evidence Act. When that Act first came into being, there was a periodic review of the operation of the Act that was allowed for. That review has been done periodically, and it was found that the principal Act is doing well. So, actually, that’s a job that just doesn’t need to be done any more. And I ask: does anyone actually iron sheets any more?

Part 19 of the bill has amendments to the Government roading powers. Instead of referring to the Chief Surveyor, we are now going to refer to the Surveyor-General. Yes, that’s the right way around. The words do actually matter. It’s a little bit like getting around to finally hanging up that new calendar in February when perhaps it should have gone up on 1 January.

Part 30 of the bill has a whole series of changes to the Privacy Act—so, not just one small change but a number of changes. It’s a bit of a—well, not exactly a spring clean, because that would be an entire overhaul of the Act, but a deep clean, making sure that we get various items tidied up.

Part 35 is to do with retirement villages, and it’s making sure that operators of retirement villages have to make sure that they actually get a particular piece of information to intending residents before signing any agreements. It’s about doing things in the right order, a bit like dusting before you vacuum.

I know I’ve pushed this analogy of housekeeping quite a long way. I’m sure that Mr Chris Penk will be enjoying it. But it’s actually quite important. This is a job that we do every year. There was a Statutes Amendment Bill last year. There will be one next year. We will do it year after year after year. It is a bit of a Sisyphean task, a bit like housekeeping is, but in this case it is a job that is well worth doing, keeping our legislation tidy, keeping it up to date. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to take a call on this housekeeping piece of legislation and I just want to thank the member beaming in via Zoom, Deborah Russell, for that great inspirational speech: vacuum cleaning, sweeping, dusting—all of those great analogies. It sounds very exciting but something which I’m not too keen to look forward to, those particular tasks.

But, look, it’s great to be able to discuss this piece of legislation. It’s an omnibus bill, as my colleague has referred to. It changes a number of pieces of legislation and I think, as my colleague Chris Penk said, these are pieces of legislation which need changing and where there is generally unanimous agreement across the House around the fact that there is a need for the change in this legislation. So we work together across the House to get to this point and then, of course, we look forward to the select committee and the submissions to ensure that there’s no particular unintended consequences of any of these particular changes. I think there’s been certain lessons which I hope are learnt recently regarding unintended consequences—the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, in particular, is a piece of legislation which I think is on the minds of many New Zealanders at the moment as a piece of legislation which may have good intent, but has very severe unintended consequences and has made a huge impact on many New Zealanders’ ability to get a mortgage, buy a car, and do many other bits and pieces which they need to be able to do.

So there’s not a lot that I’d like to touch on in particular in this piece of legislation but of interest to my portfolio of transport there are some amendments to the Railways Act, the Government Roading Powers Act, the Land Transport Act, and one particular amendment that is being changed is the fact that particular things will no longer need to be sent by registered post. I imagine that means that the registered post was when the letters were sent and it was noted down as to when they reached particular post boxes along the way of their journey, which is, of course, a service that I don’t believe New Zealand Post continues to serve New Zealanders with. Hence with that service no longer being available, very clearly the legislation needs to not allow or not require something which cannot actually be offered.

There’s lots of other pieces of legislation being changed. I’m sure the good people on the committee which will be considering this piece of legislation will be looking forward to, I’m sure, many hundreds of submissions from interested New Zealanders up and down this country who will have an interest in many of these particular areas and will be looking at that and very diligently taking that all into account before this bill continues to progress through the House. The National Party supports the Statutes Amendment Bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a real pleasure to take a call, the second call I’ve taken from the spare bedroom in my house as I participate in the virtual House. This is an important bill, the Statutes Amendment Bill. As Minister Sio said earlier before the dinner break, this bill has 62 proposals that amend 42 different Acts. I’m delighted that it will be coming to the Governance and Administration Committee, a small but hard-working committee. I’m sure we will look across every part of this bill with the level of detail needed to ensure that it comes out the other side ready to be passed into law.

There’s one particular piece I wanted to point out, which was Part 22, amending the Legislation Act of 2019. I noted here that we will be amending the definitions to ensure they’re correct with reference to the North Island and the South Island. As a proud South Islander, I just want to note how important it is to me that we correctly reference the South Island in our legislation. And so this bill will ensure that we are correct in our definitions.

This is an omnibus bill. It tidies up technical corrections and drafting errors within other pieces of legislation. I’m looking forward to hearing from thousands of New Zealanders across the motu who will submit on this bill, and on that note I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe. I rise on behalf of my colleague Jan Logie to support these amendments to 41 different Acts. Many thanks to everybody who was involved in this epic piece of work. Along with all the other parties in the House, we were consulted on this. There were two areas, though, where amendments were made that had flow-on consequences that we were not aware of.

The first related to the Privacy Act, where this bill reinstates the Human Rights Review Tribunal’s power to make and review interim orders under sections 95 and 96 of the Human Rights Act. We have been reassured on that point. And the second relates to amendments to the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act of 2015. We have confirmed that the intent to—and I quote—“specifically provide for a determination to be revoked where there is a change in the relevant circumstances of a returning offender, such as overseas conviction being quashed or pardoned”. So that remains the same.

And, finally, we had originally opposed the repeal of section 202 to the Evidence Act, which provides for periodic reviews of the legislation. We’ve since resolved that with the Minister. So, all of that being said, this is a technical bill with which all agree. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party to support this Statutes Amendment Bill. This, as everyone said, is a house cleaning bill. I wish someone would come and do my ironing and dusting; it would be very good if I could have someone doing that. But, as my learned colleagues over here said, it is an omnibus bill that makes small changes across a number of different Acts. In this bill, there are a total of 41 Acts that have small to a little bit larger changes.

ACT supports bills that have a problem to be solved, and legislation that makes it clearer for those New Zealanders who are affected by these Acts. It’s interesting, when reviewing the bill, how old some of these Acts are, and how new others are. One amendment to this is the Oaths and Declarations Act 1957. So for all those lovely people that have got a birthday this year—they’re turning 65—there’s an Act in here that we’re changing; Part 26 of this bill that makes changes to section 9 of the Oaths and Declarations Act 1957. Section 9 lists the persons before whom a declaration may be made in New Zealand. The amendment adds to the list a Registrar or Deputy Registrar of the Māori Land Court who, by a notice issued in the Gazette on 25 June 1992, at page 2181 under section 9, are authorised to take a declaration.

As you can see, some of this is quite technical and can be quite confusing for the average person. But we do hope that those that these amendments affect definitely make their submissions to our select committee to make sure that we’re not changing things and making it more confusing to them.

I also found, in amongst some of these Acts, a very recent one that already has to have some word changing, and that’s the COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Act 2020. The COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Act 2020, Schedule 6 amendment: new clause 25(2), set out in clause 24, replaces “requesting” with “requested to provide”. So slight wording differences can make things very confusing and also not quite legible for people to quite understand what is supposed to be going on in these bills.

Then, also, over this side, there’s quite a few of the bills in this omnibus bill that are required to remove registered posting, and, I mean, most of the kids these days would not know what registered posting is. It’s even getting more difficult for us oldies here to recognise a lot of these things that we would have called inventions that are now called old ways.

There’s also amendments to the Care of Children Act 2004, which Chris Penk spoke about, changing wording from the “domestic violence” to “family violence”. There’s just minor word changes that make a huge difference within a lot of these Acts.

So, really, as Deborah Russell, said, yes, it’s a house cleaning bill. I commend this bill to the House, and hope for a lot of select committee reviews to come through to make sure we’ve done it right.

Mālō e lelei, Madam Speaker, thank you. It’s a pleasure to take a brief call on the Statutes Amendment Bill this evening. I understand that this is unlikely to be contentious given the unanimous support, it seems, from members around the House.

This will, effectively, give effect to a number of amendments across a number of Acts through many different Government agencies. Many this evening have cherry-picked particular parts, so in that vein I will do the same. I will refer to Part 17 in the bill, which will seek to amend the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act 2017. There are eight changes within that Act, but one of them actually relates to section 42(2)(c), which relates to an emergency situation where a person can take or send equipment or machines into, through, or upon any land, buildings, or structures, but not over any building, lands, or structures. So things like helicopters, drones, and the like—this will be an opportunity to allow Fire and Emergency New Zealand to go about their business in an emergency by that particular way.

So that’s just one example; there are many others. It will go to select committee and the community can have their say. I’m delighted to commend this bill to the House.

The next call is a split call. But before I call the next speaker, can I just remind those who are participating remotely that if you want to take a call, please type in “call” on the chat. I call Simon O’Connor.

Thank you very much—a split call but not necessarily a split personality. I thought that, look, the Labour Party’s doing a wonderful job tonight of symbolically expressing the nature of a statutes amendment bill: short, pithy, nothing overly controversial, nothing of particular depth. So, thank you. Thank you very much to the Labour Party. They’re doing a fantastic job. I’m a bit more verbose, so I’m going to try and fill my five minutes, but we’ll see—we’ll see.

I think probably, look, the first thing is, even though in this debate tonight there’s been a little bit of mirth, this is actually an important part of our parliamentary structure. Some people may be asking at home why we worry about statutes amendment bills. Why are they that important? But look, fundamentally the reason is that law relies on accuracy, and no matter how hard every member of Parliament works in this Parliament, errors come through. It’s just inevitable. Well, errors are one element of why we have statutes amendment bills. The other is that things change, and we had some references tonight to the Customs and Excise Act, for example, or even nomenclature around the use of “police constable” versus a “police employee”.

Things change, and therefore we have to update the laws. For those at home who are wondering, “Well, why through this mechanism?”, and it’s possibly been explained by others, but, look, fundamentally, it’s easier to bring one piece of legislation—I think there’s about 41 changes to legislation—to pass it through the House in one go, rather than actually trying to have 41 amendment bills. So it’s really important to understand that you’re not going to easily find a statutes amendment bill with a list of everything that’s ever been done, per se. What we pass tonight flows on to other pieces of legislation. It updates them.

I think it’s important for people at home to understand as well: this is, by and large, pre-agreed across the Parliament. Anything that’s deemed particularly controversial is often pushed back—not in every case. But it’s actually a courtesy of this Parliament and perhaps an expression to people as well that the Parliament often operates on a non-partisan or a collegial basis. So we get a heads-up from whoever the Government of the day is—always looking forward to the Government of tomorrow. But the Government of today gives us a bit of a hint of what they want to change across portfolios, and people like myself or Chris Penk, Gerry Brownlee, and others will go through and we’ll have a look and go, “OK. That’s fine.” And again, courtesy to Government: if there are areas that are of particular concern, those conversations are had.

As I say, there’s about 41. I haven’t counted them all, I must confess. In fact, we’ve been provided a lovely summary list, which is excellent, although it would be lovely to have one more column that numbers them. But it’s a list of laws which are being changed. I thought I’d just touch on a couple of them, because amongst many claims to work here, I look after the customs portfolio. There’s actually a few. It’s quite exciting. There’s customs and excise changes. But the excitement pretty much ends with the words “customs and excise”. It’s all pretty basic, and a lot of it is to do with anti - money laundering and the countering of financing and terrorism.

Unfortunately, for the people who are going to their bank at the moment and spending most of their life trying to explain why they donate to churches or might buy a chocolate bar on the weekend to their bank, it’s not going to change any of those requirements, unfortunately. It’s a little bit more simple, and it’s just one, as I say, of nomenclature. Importantly, for those who enjoy a drink, if you’d been drinking undenatured ethanol under 80 percent, for some bizarre reason—I would not recommend this at all, at any time, but if you’re that type of alcoholic who’s drinking that type of ethanol—we’re now going to hit you with the correct excise tax. As I say, I want to be very clear: don’t touch the stuff. It’s bad. But that’s one of the changes that we are having here. [Bell rung] I suspect that’s the one-minute bell. We’re doing OK towards the five minutes. How tremendous!

Oaths and declarations. For monarchists out there, the change is not to Her Majesty. We remain loyal to Her Majesty the Queen on this, her 70th jubilee, and we wish her well. As the corrections spokesperson, I’m happy to say that the changes to prisoners’ and victims’ claims is pretty basic, which is pretty good, because under this Government, they’ve let most of the prisoners out. And finally, again, back to those who enjoy a little bit of a tipple, there is a further change to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act. Unfortunately, it’s not making it any easier to get hold of, for those who are desirous of it; it’s just around some financial reporting.

And that, with about 12 seconds to go, I believe not only allows me to have spoken to this amendment bill but to have fulfilled my duty to my party and to my whips.

Well, there you go: a speech just about as dull as this bill. It’s not a particularly exciting bill, but, listen, it is an important bill—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: This is going to put us all to sleep.

—and I can just—Gerry, we’ve been trying to put you to sleep for quite some time, but we’ll get there eventually.

This is a bill which touches on some important points. I mean, the amendments that apply to the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal is as good an example as any, making it clear what the rules around limitation are. I mean, you could call it a technical amendment, but if you’re in front of that tribunal and whether you win or lose depends on whether limitation applies or not, it’s absolutely critical and life-changing. So this is a bill full of changes of that nature, making sure that the statute book is consistent and that it hasn’t got any lose ends.

I thank the Opposition for coming through and agreeing that these are tidy-ups that are appropriate for a statutes amendment bill. I entirely commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I would like to challenge some of our previous speakers this evening who say that this bill is dull as dishwater. For those of us who are social scientists, we can see some little pieces of history being recognised tonight. We’ve already heard about the removal of some concepts that are beyond their use, such as registered post, but something that has happened is to establish and recognise some of modern living. There is the enabling of body corporate meetings to be attended via audiovisual link or by audio link, because, as we know, as we’re experiencing right now, things have changed because of COVID. So everyone has said it’s a tidy-up bill, but I’d like to think that actually there’s an opportunity for historians, as they go through as check these statutes over the years, to recognise Governments who pay attention, take note, and help to ensure that we’ve got a coherent set of legislation that is fit for purpose, especially in 2022. I am pleased to commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Thank you for letting me take a call in this hybrid Parliament. I just want to, basically, sum up everything that’s gone on this afternoon and this evening for the Statutes Amendment Bill. It’s short, it’s about stuff that’s technical, and it’s non-controversial.

Now, when we say “short” in this Parliament, sometimes I’m not sure if we quite get that, but it’s—several paragraphs isn’t short. Getting to the point, keeping it simple and short is something that we need to learn. So that’s one of them.

Secondly, around it being technical: so in terms of it being technical, if you’re making massive changes or you’re messing with a principle of the Act, it’s probably a little bit—you know, it affects it.

And finally, non-controversial: so if someone’s maybe tried and failed to pass an amendment in the past then that’s probably controversial. So it’s something, as we can across the House, we can reach across the aisle and support this. So very simple: the Statutes Amendment Bill first reading is around short changes, it’s technical, and it’s non-controversial. For that fact, I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Statutes Amendment Bill be considered by the Governance and Administration Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Governance and Administration Committee.