Statutes Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Associate Minister of Justice: I present a legislative statement on the on the Statutes Amendment Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Statutes Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

As the House will be aware, statutes amendment bills are legislative vehicles that make small, technical, and non-controversial amendments to a number of Acts. These bills allow amendments to be made that would not usually receive sufficient priority to be progressed individually. This bill, as reported back, amends 41 primary Acts, administered by various Government agencies. Each of the amendments in the bill have received unanimous cross-party support, and it’s interesting to see the proposed amendments in the Statutes Amendment Bill. They are, as my introduction acknowledged, small, discrete changes: anything from modernising a bill—references, for example, to “doctor’s surgery” in the Maritime Transport Act 1994, of all things, now become “medical centre”; and, likewise, in the Railways Act 2005, the reference to “registered post” is removed because, of course, that no longer exists. It’s important that legislation keeps up with the times, and when only small, discrete amendments are required, this is the basis on which that happens. So it’s an efficient way of using the House’s time to do small but necessary and vital changes to important pieces of legislation.

This bill was reported back by the Governance and Administration Committee on 8 August this year. I want to thank the committee and the chair, Ian McKelvie, for the careful consideration that the committee gave to the bill. The committee received and considered 16 submissions on the bill, including one late supplementary submission. It is surprising sometimes to see that even with very small, discrete, noncontroversial changes to legislation, people are motivated and energised and animated enough not only to make one submission but to make more than one submission, including a supplementary submission. I know that is a measure of the robustness of democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand today. For that, we should be most grateful.

Two submissions that were part of the original 16, not the late supplementary submission, supported the intent of the respective amendments. Four submissions opposed specific parts of the bill or, indeed, the entire bill. I don’t have a full rundown of the detail of that. But, again, people are taking a close interest in what is passing through this House and what is being done in their name. And some people are for things and other people are against them. The remaining submissions commented on matters that didn’t relate to the bill, and that’s not unusual, and that’s fine. But, of course, that can’t come into the consideration of this particular bill.

The committee did not recommend making any changes to the bill based on the submissions, which is not to say that the time spent by those submitters was fruitless. It was them participating in our democracy. I’m sure, although I haven’t had any advice specifically on the matter, that members of the committee would have been well informed by those submissions and would have given due consideration to them. But they weren’t necessarily persuasive enough to lead to a change to any aspect of this bill and the changes to 41 pieces of legislation that it makes.

The committee’s report does recommend two changes to the bill as it was introduced. The first change is to include a new amendment to the Ngāti Manuhiri Claims Settlement Act 2012. In settlement legislation, there is a statutory encumbrance which provides for Māori to have a right of access to protected sites as defined by the New Zealand Heritage List. There is a development opportunity that Ngāti Manuhiri wish to pursue in a discrete area of the South Mangawhai Forest. Heritage New Zealand has confirmed there are no sites that meet the definition of protected sites within the discrete area. The encumbrance therefore has no practical effect. So this amendment will remove the statutory encumbrance from this discrete part of the Mangawhai Forest, and this will enable Ngāti Manuhiri to fulfil their post-settlement aspirations. This amendment meets the criteria of a statutes amendment bill because it is, as I said at the beginning, small, technical, and non-controversial. This amendment, the House will be pleased to know, received cross-party support earlier this year.

The second change recommended by the committee is to remove the amendment to the Unit Titles Act 2010, as apparently it is no longer required. The same amendment was made by the Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2022, which received Royal assent on 9 May 2022.

I do just want to take my hat off, too, to the staff of the Clerk’s Office, who have to keep track of all these sorts of things, not only individual and discrete pieces of legislation like the Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2022, but also the statute amendment bills that come through, and make sure that everything lines up and nothing crosses over each other. So I just want to acknowledge that that takes a fierce amount of organisation and diligence and paying attention and understanding what’s going on, and the Clerk’s Office does a terrific job in supporting the business of this House and, ultimately, supporting effective democracy in New Zealand.

In summary, this bill will provide much needed changes to the statute book. The amendments will ensure that New Zealand’s legislation operates efficiently and effectively. I endorse the recommendations of the committee. Again, I thank the committee for its considered work. I look forward to the passage of the bill through its remaining stages. And, although ordinarily I’m not the Minister in charge of this bill, I will actually now, having read these notes, keep very close tabs on the future progress of this bill. I think this will be a remarkable achievement of the House as it passes this bill eventually, with the level of unanimity—can you have a level of unanimity?—with the unanimity that it has so far received, because that, again, is a celebration of wonderful things that can happen when everybody thinks together. I look forward, as I said, to this matter coming to a conclusion. On that note, I commend the bill to the House.

It’s good that such enthusiasm survives two sitting weeks! The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Mr Speaker, the National Party does not—oh sorry, wrong notes, wrong notes. Only kidding! No, we’re very pleased to support this Statutes Amendment Bill. In fact, there is nothing more exciting than a statute amendment bill late on a Thursday as we approach a recess week, and that enthusiasm was abundantly clear in the impassioned speech from the Minister Andrew Little, who we know is actually a very strong speaker—eloquent; can get fired up—and that was on display there. Full passion, and I feel humbled—humbled—to speak after him.

Look, somewhat humour aside—somewhat humour—these are actually important bills, or bill, rather. It’s an omnibus bill and, importantly, for those at home, what that means is it’s one piece of legislation which changes a number of pieces of legislation. In this case it’s 41, but perhaps symbolic of a statutes amendment bill, the notes given to me said it was 42. It was wrong, clearly, so I’ve had to amend the amendment to the Statutes Amendment Bill. But 41 pieces of legislation have to be amended.

I’d like to acknowledge the work of the Governance and Administration Committee and Ian McKelvie, who was then the chair—is he still the chair?

💬 Barbara Edmonds: Yes.

He is still there. I’ve lost track of who’s swapped around lately, so I apologise to Ian, who remains the chair. But, actually, I’d like to thank the committee—and I’ll come to the clerks as well—for their diligence. There is actually quite a lot of work involved in getting down to what are very particular, discrete changes, and that actually takes a little bit of discipline. To somewhat speak personally, when you are dealing, in a select committee, with, if you will, a highly controversial topic or one that’s particularly fascinating, you can be engaged. It actually takes a certain degree of quality to sit through something that is quite particular, and we’ll go through some of those in a moment.

Secondly, I’d like to actually echo the Minister’s comments to our clerks and the entire office. They have a remarkable ability—and duty, as well—to keep an eye on all that we do, to, obviously, articulate it in law or in writing very, very clearly, and to acknowledge what is changing and where these changes are needed, because, despite all the work that we do in this entire Parliament, with the hundreds of people who help us, mistakes are made in some instances, or often—as with, actually, the two changes the select committee recommended—the situation changes, which means a piece of legislation becomes out of date. I’ll be quite honest: I’d be hopeless—absolutely hopeless—at the clerk’s role with that level of detail. So full admiration to them there for the work that they do, and, of course, to the Minister’s team who’s put this together.

As has been noted, these are uncontroversial changes. The Government of the day will engage with other parties and other MPs, and it gets its sign-off. It’s an important part of our democratic process, and I think it also illustrates two points. One is that most legislation, as I said the other night, goes through this House—I think it’s about 80 percent of the legislation—with the agreement of certainly the two major parties, but it’s also a sign of how the rule of law works.

As we heard, there were 16 submissions, and I think I heard from the Minister that there was a late submission as well. I think it’s actually in itself quite remarkable that actually people—and thank you to those who submitted—are taking enough of an interest, and rightly so, in what this Parliament does that they want to raise issues.

The bill makes a series of changes to 41 pieces of legislation, and I’ll take some highlights from that for members’ edification, but the select committee proposed two changes. One was around the unit titles. Long and short—probably long—but the reason there is that it was a proposed change through statute amendment to the Unit Titles Act. Now, that, of course, has been updated in recent months as we have a new version of the Unit Titles Act; there was an amendment bill that was passed, the Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act—by and large, I think, a good set of improvements. So, basically, the changes in the Statutes Amendment Bill were no longer needed.

The other comes down to the Ngāti Manuhiri Claims Settlement Bill. I think it’s actually a really good example of using statutes amendment to bring about a sensible, practical change otherwise. I’m sure Minister Andrew Little, who’s also the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, would know the hoopla one would have to go through to make a change in that Treaty law to bring around something very, very simple. So I’m really pleased to see that to this point, the House supports it, and I’m sure that it will continue to do so.

I’m not going to go through all the Acts which are being changed, but I’ll go through most, depending how five minutes goes.

💬 Hon Members: Aww!

Yeah, I know—I’m sorry. I can’t quite give you the gift of time in these last minutes. By and large, a lot of what you’re seeing is, basically, removing some duplication that’s coming through legislation, and you see that with the animal products and welfare bills.

Some small changes in the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act of 2009—again, a good example where the Statutes Amendment Bill will kick in, because that bill’s from 2009. It refers to the 1996 Customs and Excise Act, but we’ve made changes since then—exciting changes—in 2018, and we just have to update the text there accordingly. Obviously, the committee was in agreement with that.

We’ve also got two of the incorporated elements of the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act. That’s in 2009, which must have occurred just after the anti - money laundering. So, again, it’s just tightening up the language and nomenclature there.

Similarly, with the Care of Children Act of 2004—in 2004, we talked about “domestic violence”. The nomenclature we use now is much more around “family violence”. So, again, it’s just to illustrate to the viewers at home—probably, once again, my mum and dad—to say that these are important changes.

The Courts Security Act is removing the phrase that “2 or more justices” are required to ensure that, actually, in this particular case, justices of the peace cannot and, if I understand that correctly, should not be doing any hearings for an alleged crime that has an imprisonable penalty—so that’s important, there, as well.

I think a very efficient change is coming through around the Crown Entities Act of 2004. It means that Orders in Council can actually update the list of State and Crown entities, and that’s very, very pragmatic as well.

A really good change—and I’m thinking I might even have had a small part in this—to the Customs and Excise Act of 2018 around correcting the excise rate to “undenatured ethyl”, as it’s called strictly in the schedule. So, basically, you’re talking pure ethanol. The rates were incorrect, according to other types of alcohol. So that’s just a small, little tidy-up there. I mean, it’s almost inconsequential, but it’s important to get things right.

The Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act: despite all the issues in Fire and Emergency New Zealand, they’re doing some good little tidy-ups here. The board can now authorise a class of person to actually hold some delegations. The current law means that a very specific fire officer had to be named to exercise certain delegations. Now, it can be a class of person, which is really good.

Excitingly for me, Fire and Emergency are now able, once we pass this law, to legally use drones, helicopters, and other—I better read it to be correct. We don’t want to make a mistake in the Statute Amendment Bill. They can now legally use drones or aircraft or helicopters—I’d have preferred the term “fixed wing and rotary wing”, but, anyway, that’s me—in responding to an emergency.

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: Is it a rotary wing?

Rotary wing. It’s sort of the military term for a helicopter. It’s not plain English, but we just sort of sound fancy. There’s something in Latin for it too, I suspect.

Look—really importantly too—we’re updating things like “housing and urban development”. It’s now just “urban development”, and, again, it’s all just nomenclature. Similarly, to the Land Transport Act, we’re making sure “medical practitioners” has been updated to “health practitioners”—I think we changed that about five or six years ago—as in we change a lot of terminology from “medical practitioners”, which means just doctors, to “health practitioners”, which recognises, actually, that doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, and others can operate in this space, and, clearly, we missed something in the Land Transport Act.

Interestingly, we have to update the Legislation Act of 2019 to correct the definitions of the “North Island” and “South Island”, and I thought it was fairly binary. I mean, how do we get that wrong? Did we once called the South Island the North Island? I don’t know and I’m very confused, but we are updating it.

Finally, and of great importance, I am sure, the Wine Act of 2003—

💬 Hon Member: Oh, hello—hello.

Yes, now everyone’s interested. The Wine Act of 2003—who knew. I want to be really clear to people at home that this is the Wine Act, without an “h”. We invoke the whining, often, here, but no, this is the Wine Act of 2003. It’s very important. We must listen to this: it’s going to enable certain secondary legislation or published instruments made by the same marker to be consolidated—excellent. I think that means we can still get a bit of a drop once we’re well over the yardarm, and, with that, I commend the bill to the House.

Although I’m tempted to call this a mundane bill, it is not. Like the Minister, the Hon Andrew Little, has said, it is a bill with lots and lots of hard work and lots and lots of detail that has been put into it by our officials, especially those led by the Ministry of Justice. And so, as a member of the Governance and Administration Committee—a great select committee—we thank all of the officials who have come in to work with us.

During the select committee process, we spent a lot of time making sure any changes were non-controversial. And that is obviously the nature of omnibus bills. To make sure that there was no opposition, we paid special attention to the Ngāti Manuhiri claims in terms of whether people, either from iwi or from other interested parties, had any other opinions or ideas or if there was any conflict about the changes being made. And so we spent a good deal of time making sure that was settled, and that was, and that they all supported this change we were going to make.

Mr Speaker, it would be remiss of me, especially when you are in the seat today, to not talk about my favourite change here: the Dog Control Act of 1996 to remove the requirement for a registered vet to provide a written declaration that an imported dog is not a breed listed at Schedule 4 for disability dogs and any dog “that is kept, used, or certified for use by a specified agency”. So on that note, I commend this bill to the House.

So, on Thursday evening, at approximately 4.45, I rise to take a call for the National Party on the Statutes Amendment Bill. I acknowledge members who served on the Governance and Administration Committee, the previous speaker, Naisi Chen, being one of those, and my colleague Ian McKelvie, who is the chairperson and MP for Rangitīkei.

Not having sat on this committee and being enlightened by all the amendments that came before the committee—this bill was referred to the select committee on 8 March earlier this year, with the closing of submissions to be presented on 20 April of this year. There were 16 submissions that were received and all 16 of those were considered by members of the select committee. Advice had been received from the Ministry of Justice and also Te Arawhiti, which is the Māori-Crown agency, and also, notably, advice from the Office of the Clerk on the bill’s legislative quality, and the Parliamentary Counsel Office assisted with legal drafting.

The reason why I’ve made particular mention of those offices is that there is an inordinate amount of work that goes on behind the scenes, particularly noting that this Statutes Amendment Bill, as has been said, is an omnibus bill, which is dealing with multiple numbers of Acts—42 specifically, in relation to this Statutes Amendment Bill. And within the framework of this, as an omnibus bill, 62 amendments have been proposed and outlined in the bill.

It was interesting when I picked up the bill to have a cursory glance, and my eye was drawn specifically, in particular, to noting that this bill is made up of 41 parts and four schedules. So in my Māori development spokesperson role, the lens of my eye was drawn to, in particular, Part 25A, which references amendments to the Ngāti Manuhiri Claims Settlement Act of 2012. Minister Little addressed the House in terms of the particular and the detailed and the important provisions around that amendment.

My eye, also with a Māori development lens, was drawn to Part 28, “Amendment to Port Nicholson Block (Taranaki Whānui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika) Claims Settlement Act 2009”, and then, of particular and relevant significant note for myself personally as uri, a descendant of Whanganui, having spent all my life in Whanganui, and generations before me too, to Part 39, which is “Amendment to Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017”.

I was in the House on the day that that particular bill was passed into law and that was a significant time for Whanganui, for uri of Whanganui, because it was in the making of some 128-130 years before we arrived at that point. So my eye has been drawn to that. My colleague Simon O’Connor made reference to Part 41, amendments to the Wine Act—“wine” without an “h”. I’m going to highlight Part 39, Whanganui with the “h”. That took some time—and it was controversial for the “h” to be gazetted—for the recognition of we of Whanganui and the significance of it. So that is Part 39.

I’m going to address specifically clause 119 of the bill, and it’s important for me to be able to address this under the Statutes Amendment Bill. Clause 119 of this bill amends the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017; in particular, clause 120 amends Schedule 3 of the principal Act, inserting “If the term of appointment of a person appointed to Te Pou Tupua expires”—and to explain to members of the public and also members in this gallery, Te Pou Tupua is the human face and representative of Te Awa Tupua, the Whanganui River. This was significant international legislation—significant for we of Whanganui, but significant internationally because this was a legal personification of our tūpuna, of a natural asset: the flowing waters of the Whanganui River.

Clause 120(3) is dealing with the appointment of Te Pou Tupua, one of the two legal faces representing the Whanganui River. If the term of the appointment of that Te Pou Tupua person expires, “unless that person resigns or is removed from office, that person continues to hold office by virtue of the appointment for the term that has expired, until—(a)that person is reappointed; or (b) a successor to that person is appointed.” I’m labouring the point a little bit, but there is specific and personal relevance. A former member of Parliament of this House—Dame Tariana Turia—was one of the first of those two Te Pou Tupua to be the legal representative of the Whanganui River in the personification and recognition of that as a living being, an essence.

So this is quite significant for we of Whanganui in terms of the Statutes Amendment Bill. As has been said, the National Party does support this bill. It’s one of the few bills that comes before the House that does have unanimous support across all parties for this. In recognition of the importance—although it may not be seen to be important by members of the public and perhaps some members of this House—the fact that there are 42 Acts that have 62 amendments under 41 parts with four schedules says that it is somewhat significant.

So, in closing, the National Party does commend this bill. And, finally, my last commentary is that my eye has also been drawn to relevant, significant parts to do with our children in terms of the service that I gave in the Family Court and in the child welfare sector and also representing victims particularly in the domestic violence and the family violence—there are provisions within this Statutes Amendment Bill that make modifications or amendments to bring everything to contemporise it and to make it consistent. So, on that note, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. There is a saying that “short can be sweet”, especially when you’re vertically challenged like myself, but also because this particular bill is very sweet, and so I’m going to make this speech very short for your purposes.

There are not many times in this House where we come together to unanimously agree to a bill. This is one of those times. Even before it gets through to the process where it’s a bill, generally most political parties are actually consulted as part of the policy process. What usually happens: Government agencies come together and say, “I have this very small technical amendment, I’m not going to have a bill in the House in the next coming Order Paper, so please, Parliamentary Counsel Office, adjust this. Please make this bill come together and put my amendment in the bill.” I’ve been part of that policy process many times.

So as Minister Andrew Little covered already, this is a small, technical bill. It is a bill that does not contain any significant policy changes; it is a bill to make policy more efficient and more effective. I commend this bill to the House.

This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 8 November 2022. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and staff, for your work in this sitting block.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 4.56 p.m.