Secondary Legislation Confirmation Bill (No 4)

I move that the Secondary Legislation Confirmation—[Interruption]

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Quiet! Apologies, Minister. Can I have a bit of quiet over in this corner, please.

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

This bill is done routinely every year to confirm secondary legislation that would otherwise be revoked if not confirmed by Parliament. I want to thank the Regulations Review Committee for the work it’s done evaluating this bill, including finding two extra instruments to confirm which weren’t able to be included when the bill was introduced, and especially for doing it so that it could be reported back to the House much earlier than it normally would be.

Usually, this bill is passed in December as one of the final bills of the year. However, with the election scheduled when it is, we’ve decided to ensure this bill passes now, before the end of the term, so that the next Parliament doesn’t have to rush it through once sworn in.

This legislation confirms 17 instruments over seven Acts, including the Biosecurity Act, the Commodity Levies Act, the Customs and Excise Act, the Road User Charges Act, the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act, the Social Security Act, the Tariff Act, and the Wine Act. The bulk of the instruments relate to levies, including on strawberries, passionfruit, blackcurrants, citrus fruit, and wheat grain. With those brief remarks, I commend the bill to the House.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

My remarks will not be so brief, but I do thank the Leader of the House for her acknowledgment of the Regulations Review Committee, which considered this piece of secondary legislation and the orders it confirms. There are 17 of them, and the way that the committee did that was very quickly, with its usual sense of working together, and all of the orders were considered in a cross-partisan way with unanimous agreement at all stages.

It’s relevant for us to consider tonight what Parliament is being asked to do. Every time benefits or rates or fees or tariffs in these instruments are set, the primary legislation which enables these Acts requires Parliament to confirm them in this way. Delegation to those secondary decision-makers like Ministers or the Public Service requires this sort of oversight when, effectively, ordinary people and businesses are being asked to, in many instances, pay fees that are material to the way that they conduct themselves, and so it’s right for us to consider them, not only at the committee level, but to debate them at this stage.

If Parliament did not confirm these orders in the statutory deadline, then they would need to be revoked and they would not have effect. So it’s also right for us to have done that in a very fast way to enable the House to consider this second reading before Parliament rises.

The confirmation bills have traditionally been required for particularly significant exercises of delegated power. Usually, those include things like emergency regulations, regulations imposing something similar to a tax, and regulations capable of amending primary legislation. The big piece of delegated authority in this bill is the confirmation of the order that impacts on beneficiaries and superannuitants, so I will draw the House’s attention to that.

This bill confirms the order that was made that, effectively, sets the rates for main benefits, for superannuation rates, and for other benefits like the unsupported child’s benefit and the orphans benefit. It is relevant to note that here because this order takes effect after a number of changes to that.

It dates back to 2009, when Labour changed benefit indexation so that each main benefit was increased in line with average wage growth. National reversed that change in 2024, but not for superannuation, and so now we have two ways of indexing two different types of benefits. Previously, they would have used the wage growth. This makes a material impact, not just as the formula as set out in legislation—and of course there are changes for what superannuation and beneficiaries can expect in line with those different rates in this order—but it also makes a big difference in terms of what people can expect in the future. In this order, for instance, it doesn’t make a huge difference because wage growth and the Consumers Price Index are similar numbers, but, say, under the previous Government, when wage growth was increasing much faster, it was 4.3 percent per annum under Labour, and that would have made a material difference to what beneficiaries could have expected and what superannuants could have expected.

When we considered this order, it was relevant to consider what each benefit would have gone up by. We’re talking between sort of $10 a week to $15 a week for some sorts of main benefits. That makes a material impact for the people who are affected by this to the tune of about $500 a year for, say, a parent who is on a sole parent benefit with care of children, and so it was relevant for the committee to consider just how big that would be for those people who were affected.

The other examples in this bill are things like the Customs Import Prohibition (Nitrous Oxide) Order 2026, which prohibits nitrous oxide from being imported without a permit from the Director-General of Health. That is a good change. It is one that I have campaigned on as a local MP because having NOS cans or nangs cans in our communities and being dumped in our parks is completely unacceptable.

These are the sorts of changes which can be provided for in regulations that have a material impact on the communities that are affected by them, and it’s important that we also appreciate that this kind of lawmaking can be done at the secondary legislative level, but it’s appropriate to confirm them here because this also impacts on a number of businesses who have been, effectively, in my view, getting away with something that they shouldn’t have been, which is importing these products cheaply. They are very clearly marketed to children. They are brightly coloured, they have flavours, they are designed in a way which is appealing to young people, and yet they are a prohibited drug that is only intended for use by dentists. This is an important order which makes that much harder for these businesses to do, and it makes it much clearer that that is not an effective thing that will be profitable in New Zealand, going forward.

The bill also confirms the commodity levy orders. The Leader of the House very quickly read these out, but, as the Regulations Review Committee chair, I have had to pay attention to the rules for blackcurrants, citrus, harvest wood, herbage seeds, passionfruit, strawberries, summerfruit, and wheat, and so I’m going to talk about them. It was really useful for the committee—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: It’s the only thing that’s kept the other side of the House quiet during your whole speech, and so keep going!

They are desperately interested in the consideration of the passionfruit rules by the committee.

Stone fruit was an excitable topic of conversation around the committee table, about the levy orders that would apply, and the committee had the expert advice of Miles Anderson around the charges that were associated with blackcurrants and citrus. It was very useful.

💬 Hon Member: Is passionfruit a stone fruit?

The question my colleague is positing, is passionfruit one of those fruits considered alongside stone fruit: no; the committee was able to seek the advice, as my colleague has raised, about these tiny stones, which do not in fact bring the passionfruit in line with the other stone fruits that are in these orders—very useful to have that expert advice available to the committee and the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) team, who presented to committee not twice, not three times, but four whole times, which I went back and forth on with the secretariat of the committee because I thought that was too many times for anyone to have to talk to PCO.

In conclusion, the secondary legislation in this bill deals with detailed rules, but those rules have real legal and financial consequences for the people who are impacted by them. It is right that Parliament considers them at this stage carefully. That is a feature of the Regulations Review Committee, and it is a feature that this Parliament has considered as to whether that would be a useful design for a legislative scrutiny committee that would function in a sort of similar way but with primary legislation. I think that is a good idea. The working model for the Regulations Review Committee in being able to examine the detail of these regulations is one that works. It is one that works because the two major parties, and other participating minor parties who come along to the Regulations Review Committee, take that work very seriously in scrutinising the effect of the rules, not only as legal instruments in and of themselves, in the drafting of those, but also on people’s lives. It is right that we have elected representatives who think about how much NOS should be charged to the people who are importing it who are selling it to children. It is right that we should have elected representatives who consider the imports, fees, and charges that affect stone fruit growers in those regions that rely on those, because these are things which deeply impact our economy. They’re not exciting in this House; they’re not the things that get the big debates, but they are the things that keep our economy running.

So it has been a privilege to serve as the Regulations Review Committee chair and to be able to take a call on this bill, which will be my last as a chair because when we return to this Parliament, we hope to be in Government.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Just following on from the previous speaker, the excellent chair of the Regulations Review Committee, Arena Williams, I am one of those people who is attending the Regulations Review Committee for fun, under Standing Order 213.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: For fun?

For fun, because it’s genuinely—I want to acknowledge, actually, all of the clerks and the legislative counsel and everyone who supported us in the Regulations Review Committee as well. I mean, I want to acknowledge all of the select committees and the Office of the Clerk, but in particular Regulations Review Committee members have the kind of intellect that really wows every single member of that committee because of their ability to really look at the details of every piece of secondary legislation.

Now, with the Secondary Legislation Confirmation Bill (No 4), the number should be pretty obvious, noting that this is the fourth one we’ve done this particular term. But, you know, obviously, this particular one the Green Party supports. The Green Party hasn’t always supported—the Secondary Legislation Confirmation Bill (No 3) being a really good example because of some of the changes to the customs excise levy, which we consider is unexpected or unusual but yet somehow a legal use of the power. But we did not find any of that in this particular one.

Just for members of this House in particular, the Regulations Review Committee, under Standing Order 326(1), actually examines all secondary legislation, and these sorts of confirmation bills are one of the few bills that go to the Regulations Review Committee for examination, because usually the Regulations Review Committee doesn’t examine any particular bills.

With this Secondary Legislation Confirmation Bill, there are 15 instruments for confirmation, and the committee has also—

💬 Arena Williams: Two more.

—recommended two more on top of that—excellent. Do you remember which two?

💬 Arena Williams: Stone fruit?

Yes—no, no; summerfruit and passionfruit. They are the two additional ones that the committee recommended. As the previous speaker, Arena Williams, mentioned, there is a number of commodity levies that are introduced as a part of this, and most of them we have examined as a part of the committee process anyway, as a part of how the Regs Review Committee examines secondary legislation. As we mentioned, blackcurrant, citrus fruit, harvested wood, strawberries, wheat grains, the two we added—passionfruit and summerfruit—and also, very excitingly, non-proprietary herbage seeds, which is very important. But the increase that we’re seeing and giving effect to those particular commodity levy orders is incredibly important for the way that the Ministry for Primary Industries is also able to continue its own particular function, because the levies that are collected through those, particularly through the growers of either blackcurrant or summerfruit or passionfruit, will help undertake industry good activities to support industry performance and growth. I think we can all agree that that is a good thing for us to do. So there are things such as tax and levies and duties that are actually good for us to be able to do and need to be adjusted accordingly based on the needs of our communities.

Now, I do want to touch on the one that the previous speaker spoke on, which is, I believe, the Social Security (Rates of Benefits and Allowances) Order 2026. Now, this is something that is important because, again, this is something that has been a longstanding practice. Again, it’s important for us to point to the fact that there could be non-partisanship in a lot of things like social development, etc., if we all agree on what we want to see and the vision we want to see. This particular one in terms of adjusting things to inflation, particularly Consumers Price Index, is a longstanding practice since the 1990s, and, again, we would like to see that being continued by future Governments as well, in terms of how those rates of benefits and allowances are increased.

Now, finally, I do want to check—the previous speakers mentioned that there are also additional other things like tariffs, inherited goods, and gift concession, to create a new concession allowing certain inherited goods into New Zealand, noting that a lot of the inherited goods coming into New Zealand already have a duty attached to them. So this idea of an inheritance tax is not actually entirely new, and we already have seen some of those duties, particularly when it comes to inherited goods coming over from overseas. But, in this particular case, it does allow for certain, I guess, concessions that are being made in terms of some of those inherited goods, and this is part of the working tariff document.

Overall, this is something where, usually, we tend to see secondary legislation that is simply passed as an Order in Council and then the Regulations Review Committee would then go and examine that. But what we do see is, for some of these particular instruments, it is important for there to be the ability to conduct and debate some of that in this House. For the many things that were mentioned regarding some of the duties, levies, taxes, and those additional benefits, it is important for us to maintain that parliamentary oversight on some of these. I do believe that one of the things we’re seeing is the importance of having, I guess, specialised committees such as the Regulations Review Committee, where it is able to, in most cases, operate in a non-partisan and consensus way to get some of these over the line. I think that’s a really important function of the Regulations Review Committee and it’s an important function of our Parliament.

Now, although, again, this pains me to do so, I am going to leave that there despite having three minutes left on the clock, because I think this is the second to last day of this term of Parliament, and, you know, maybe we can all afford to go home a little bit early. So, with that, the Green Party supports this bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House is suspended until 9 a.m. tomorrow.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)