Statutes Amendment Bill

Members, the House is in committee on the Statutes Amendment Bill. Statutes amendment bills are bills that consist entirely of minor and technical amendments across the statute book. They are drafted with cross-party consultation and support and there is a strong convention that they will be supported unanimously. There are special procedures for statutes amendment bills. Standing Order 313(2) provides that if any member objects to a clause standing part, that clause is struck out of the bill.

Therefore, at the end of the debate on each part of this bill, rather than asking for those in favour and opposed to the question, I will ask whether any member objects to the relevant provisions standing part. We come first to Part 1, which is the debate on clauses 3 to 7, “Amendments to Accident Compensation Act 2001”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Madam Chair, I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one question.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is.

Hon NICOLE McKEE: OK. I am very pleased to be leading the Statutes Amendment Bill through the committee stage. This bill plays an important role in the ongoing maintenance of our statute book. Statutes amendment bills are legislative vehicles that make small, technical, and non-controversial amendments to a number of Acts. These changes are intended to improve clarity, correct errors, update terminology, and ensure our legislation remains current and fit for purpose. These bills allow amendments to be made that would not usually receive sufficient priority to be progressed individually.

I want to emphasise that the Statutes Amendment Bill does not make substantive policy changes. Instead, it serves a housekeeping function, ensuring that the laws we rely on every day continue to operate smoothly and as intended. Each of the amendments in the bill has received unanimous cross-party support, and it’s a good demonstration of all parties working together.

The bill as reported back amends 41 primary Acts administered by various Government agencies. The key changes made by the Governance and Administration Committee include clarifying in the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 that address verification is not required as part of a standard customer due diligence process but as part of an enhanced customer due diligence process. This change will provide clarity to reporting entities, to avoid unnecessary and burdensome over compliance.

It includes clarifying in the Privacy Act 2020 that the six-month limitation period for a complainant to bring proceedings in the Tribunal starts only when the Privacy Commissioner or Director of Human Rights Proceedings has made final decisions about all related complaints and matters and has notified the complainant about those decisions under relevant provisions in the Privacy Act 2020.

It removes references to audio link in the Oaths and Declarations Act 1957 and replaces the term “in writing” with the term “in a document”, inserting new section 2A and 2A(1A) to make it clear that in cases where audiovisual software includes the option to turn off a camera, the camera must remain on. This change will improve the accessibility of oaths, affirmations, and declarations while ensuring the person is visible to the person administrating it.

The committee also recommended removing the amendments to the Racing Industry Act 2020 and the Conservation Act 1987 from the bill. The amendments to the Racing Industry Act are no longer required as they are included in the Racing Industry Amendment Bill, and the proposed changes to the Conservation Act are being considered as part of other pieces of work.

I commend the Governance and Administration Committee for their hard work and dedication, which ensured that changes made through this bill are minor, technical, and non-controversial. I welcome the deliberations from the committee on this bill, and I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s been a long Tuesday, I think we can all agree, and it’s still going. It’s a privilege to be able to contribute to the Statutes Amendment Bill. I enjoyed being able to engage with this bill on the Governance and Administration Committee, which looked at this bill, and did go through many of the different parts and sections with officials during our select committee stage. I think that was relatively thorough, but as you mentioned at the beginning of this committee stage, this is a special type of bill. It is by its nature less contentious.

We do have questions in relation to many of the parts, and they might not be the substantive contributions that maybe we would make on policy issues and other bills, but genuine questions that we have for the Minister around how the bill works. If they are a little bit technical, because this does cover 42 different primary pieces of legislation, then hopefully she’ll be able to get advice, and we understand that that may be necessary, but we do have a few questions.

The first part that I wanted to start with was Part 1, in relation to the Accident Compensation Act, and the changes that have been made there. So this is in relation to clause 4, which amends the Code of ACC Claimants’ Rights, which is a relatively significant part of the Accident Compensation Act, and anyone who’s dealt with the ACC legislation will know that the ability for claimants to be aware of their rights and also for these to be clearly set out is very key.

So, essentially, my reading of this particular section is rather than the current requirement which requires publication in a newspaper in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin of the changes or when an ACC bill of claimants rights’ is put in place, this will now be changed to publication on one of the corporation’s main websites. So I imagine that the reason for this is to update the way that people engage with information, so rather than in the past, people, say, looking in the newspaper to see what news has changed in relation to ACC, they may be checking the website.

The question I had for the Minister in relation to this part is has there been any advice around whether there would be a notification of any change on that website or if it would be, say, with a media release or, say, a heading on the website to signal that there had been a change to the ACC claimants’ rights? Has there been any assessment of whether that would be sufficient to actually let people know in these important areas that there has been a change to the Code of ACC Claimants’ Rights? Because I imagine, when this was originally enacted by Parliament, the reason that those major centres were, in fact, chosen was because that would allow people to be aware that this Code of ACC Claimants’ Rights had, in fact, been put in place. So that was the first question that I had for the Minister.

The other change, I think, has just been to repeal the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act 1960. I did look at that and I did understand, from my quick analysis of this Part 1, that perhaps that’s been removed because that is no longer on the statute book. When you look at the legislation website, you’re unable to click through that link. So I just wanted to double check that my understanding was correct, that the reason that that has been removed from the list of relevant statutes is because in fact it perhaps is no longer valid. Those are my questions on Part 1.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the member for her work in the Governance and Administration Committee on this bill. In the first instance, I think, a lot of the feedback that came back—I agreed with all of it, and I thought that with the contribution from across the Chamber, we got the bill in a really good state.

I thank the member for her question. I haven’t received advice about how ACC will notify the different individuals of the change, but my expectation is that that would have to be ongoing. There would have to be some way of being able to tell people that there’s a change in the way that we are letting people know that they can contribute in some way. I think doing it through the internet means that we’ll get more contributions, but there are still those people who look for it in the newspapers. I cannot answer your question directly, but I will take it on board and say that I do expect that there will still be some notification, even if it’s on the internet, that things have come up or will be popping up. I will make sure that our officials are aware of that.

In regard to the second point, on clause 5, you are absolutely correct. It was a technical amendment because that piece of legislation had been repealed. It was just a tidy-up because we can’t refer to it anymore.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I wasn’t lucky enough to sit on the Governance and Administration Committee on this bill. I had a chat to the Clerk, who did inform me of the special nature of this bill and the fact that if I thought there could be improvements, it certainly ran into some procedural difficulties. Nevertheless, I do think, in terms of how the bill works and its operation, it’s a good opportunity. There’s really quite a lot in this bill and, as was identified, some non-contentious amendments, but, nevertheless, they do have some significant law changes.

I really just want to talk about one clause, and that clause is clause 7, because it relates to a really important thing, which is consultation requirements for levy setting. The question, basically, is this: how do we make sure that people who pay levies have their say? Because, in fact, it’s a requirement that appropriate levy payers are consulted in respect of proposals to impose new or increased levies. Look, I get it—going away from public notices in newspapers, which have limited circulation, and to the internet is understandable. One of the challenges is that there are people out there—lawyers are one of them—who actually get the paper and go through the notices for this very reason, because it’s understood as a repository of notices of consultations and other important legal matters that is easily and publicly available in one place. The challenge with putting it on a website is that if you want to understand what’s going on, not only do you have to go to the ACC website, in this case, but you actually have to find it on the ACC website. Were I to propose an amendment, it would be to that. ACC, like many Government departments—the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, IRD—have circular emails. If you are paying ACC levies, they’ll have your email address, and they often send updates on operational changes and how to comply with obligations and how to stay safe—all great stuff.

I guess there’s two things I would like to know, in an operational sense, as to how this lands. Will the consultation be easily found? I think that’s really important. Will it be there on a regular consultation page that, essentially, you find from the front page of ACC? Because, many a time, you come to find a consultation document, and you’ve got to click through many levels, and sometimes it’s just impossible to find. I guess the other thing is will ACC be using other tools to make sure that affected people actually know about levies? Because levies—they’re not quite a tax, but you’ve really got to make sure you’ve got legitimacy, and consultation is not just about getting the details right around the edges. It’s about having a legitimate process where people have been genuinely asked, and I just am a little concerned that if we just put it on an internet site—either ACC’s or their agents’—a lazy person would simply tuck it away in the background there. I’d be interested in the Minister’s comments in terms of how that will operationally land.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Dr Duncan Webb, for your question. As the member will be aware, the Statutes Amendment Bill is making small, technical, non-controversial amendments. If the member was wanting to get really into this and the operational side of it, I would have thought he would have gone along to the select committee process, but he hasn’t. I’m not—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: This is his right—to do that here. He has the right to do that here.

Hon NICOLE McKEE: It may be his right, and it’s my right to also speak to what he’s talking about, so I’d suggest that the member just be quiet or at least—[Interruption]

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Order!

Hon NICOLE McKEE: —take the stand himself. Nevertheless, what I will say is that when we are modernising the Act so that we can look at the internet, a part of the reason why we’re doing that is because people aren’t buying the newspaper. When you look at the accessibility in finding it, one of the things that the member actually said was—he actually said it’s all in one place and so it’d be easier to find. I dispute that, actually. People are finding it quite difficult, and I would have thought that putting it on to the internet, where people have more access—that they know that they can go to a site and they’ll be able to look it up and find all the information in one place instead of trying to look through certain newspapers and find copies of those newspapers.

This is modernising it. How the agency, how ACC, goes about doing it and informing people—I would expect that they would inform people because it’s a change, right? As a Government agency, they would be expected to do so. But to be fair, I have not got into 42 different Acts and the operations behind every single clause that’s in there. I will answer what I can on the minor and technical and non-controversial amendments that have been made here to the best of my ability, but I am not the Minister for ACC and therefore the operational side of how they work would probably be better directed to them.

I hope that the member would agree that, actually, internet access for some of these will mean that we will reach more people rather than less, and it’s modernising for the modern age.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a very short question on that note to the Minister, and potentially this will cover other questions later on in terms of other amendments when it comes to the digitalisation of some of our legislation when it comes to consultation.

Looking at clause 7, updating from a “daily newspaper” to “Internet”—and I agree 100 percent with the Minister that it will give more availability—would “Internet” in this case also include other forms of, I guess, website or things like social media? The reason I mention that is because social media now, in terms of advertisement, plays a similar role as daily newspapers, and we just heard a really good example yesterday in the debate on the stalking and harassment legislation where the select committee uses social media to open up for things like consultation. So that’s my only question—whether we can actually interpret “Internet” in that way.

That’s a really good question, and I thank that member for that. I think the answer to that will come down to the different agencies and also whether or not they have a social media presence. If you think about it, some of them will; some of them won’t. But I think when we talk about using the internet, it’s actually about trying to access as many people as possible.

My expectation as a Minister is that if we’re going to use modern technology, we should use it to reach as many people as we can. That would be the expectation. Otherwise, why change it? We’d just stick to newspapers. But I think that’s a very good point, and I would encourage all of the Government’s agencies to use all of the means possible, because all we say is “the internet”. We don’t say “the website”; we say, “the internet”. So, in my view, that opens it up for use everywhere.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Amendments to Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009