Statutes Amendment Bill

Members, we come now to Part 37, the debate on clauses 153 to 160, “Amendments to Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Act 2004”.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Another Act which has quite the quaint title and harks back to maybe a different time—although, I’m sure these days with the focus on reusing, and I’m here with my colleague Rachel Brooking, who is very much focused on that, but this is very much something that should be kept up to date and modernised in order that we can have effective secondhand dealers in New Zealand.

I have one question in relation to this particular change, and that is: I’ve looked at section 77A of the original Act, which is not mentioned here apart from to say that 77AA is inserted underneath it by clause 156 of the bill—and the question I have is: in reading those two provisions together, they seem, on the face of it, to be a little bit contradictory, and I’ll tell you why I think that, and I’d be interested in the Minister’s thoughts or her officials’ advice. You may not have this in front of you, so I’ll let you know what section 77A says, and then everyone can read section 77A, inserted by clause 156 of the bill. Essentially, section 77A(1) states that “All Licensing Authorities acting together may issue practice notes, to apply to all of them, as they think fit.” So that’s quite a wide power that is given in 77A. If I’m reading this correctly, 77A stands—and this would be the normal drafting, that we would have 77AA after that; that provision then says a more prescriptive requirement that “All Licensing Authorities acting together must set requirements as to the manner in which photographs [are] required to accompany applications under sections 8”, etc.

My question, really, is: do those two sections fit together? Because 77A seems to be slightly wider and less prescriptive than 77AA. So I don’t know how well these licensing authorities in relation to secondhand authentication of photographs get on, but perhaps if there was a disagreement that one group may rely on 77A, and one may rely on 77AA. It appears to me inconsistent, but I’m sure that there is a reasonable explanation as to why this drafting is more robust than I initially thought it appeared.

Thank you, Mr Chair. The proposed amendment being made here would facilitate the introduction of electronic filing in the future by enabling the licensing authority to set authentication requirements for photographs that can be complied with electronically—so modernising it, setting up for a future file of these photographs, and allowing them the ability to prescribe what that would look like.

Part 37 agreed to.

Part 38 Amendments to Serious Fraud Office Act 1990