Statutes Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Statutes Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on Parliament’s website.

Hon NICOLE McKEE: I move, That the Statutes Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

As the House will be aware, statutes amendment bills make small and technical but important changes to our legislation to ensure that it is up to date and it’s fit for purpose. Many of the amendments in the bill correct drafting errors or references, some amendments clarify the intention of the existing provision, and other amendments make technical changes to ensure our systems and functions can operate effectively. Each of the amendments in the bill has received unanimous cross-party support. The bill as reported back to the House from the Governance and Administration Committee amends 42 primary Acts administered by 11 Government agencies. The Governance and Administration Committee agreed to the changes recommended by the Ministry of Justice and other agencies in the departmental report.

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. Again, I want to thank members of the Governance and Administration Committee for their time and their effort, as well as all of those people who submitted on the bill. I also want to thank all members of Parliament for their support of the amendments in the bill. I look forward to working constructively with parties as the next statutes amendment bill is put together. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on this Statutes Amendment Bill at the third reading. We’re all at one, holding hands, over this bill. This really is just an example of what David Seymour would call regulatory stewardship, and, in fact, you know, it’s just a matter of good regulation—good regulatory standards. And it’s good that we have this, because I understand that Winston Peters is going to repeal the Regulatory Standards Bill very soon, which just goes to show we didn’t need it anyway.

Glen Bennett: Two days.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Yeah, two days in. But look, these statutes amendment bills are important. I mean, some of them are correcting slips: the slip that said you had to ask for consent when you search someone’s house and seize their firearm; you have to ask them if you’re allowed to destroy it rather than allowed to destroy it if they don’t object—I mean, that’s a cracker. It really is a good example of the need to be vigilant.

I guess the fact that, in reality, there’s relatively few slips like that is a testament, perhaps, more to the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) than our select committee process and other scrutiny that goes on. PCO are very, very good at ensuring that that doesn’t occur and picking it up when it does. There’s some modernisations going on there; there’s a huge chunk of the Act that includes amendments to armed forces regulations and the Defence Act simply to stop using the word “airman” and turn it into “aviator”. And I guess that’s fine, right? It’s—

Tim Costley: Is it?

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Well, it’s fine to change it, isn’t it, Mr Costley? Mr Costley would prefer to have it “airman”. Mr Costley doesn’t want to have women aviators, it appears. Or you just want to call them men, is that what it is? Whatever it is, I think spending some parliamentary time getting gender-neutral and inclusive language is actually OK.

The other one that was interesting, and I must say it caused some discomfort, was talking around some of the sexual offences, and people did get a bit queasy about it. That was in respect of the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act and also the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act. I must say, and I’m hoping somewhere out there the justice officials have a quick look at this, because the inclusion in the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act of offences under the 1908 Crimes Act is kind of weird, but weirdest of all is inclusion of “unnatural” acts, which are acts against homosexual conduct—they shouldn’t be in there. I’m surprised that if we’re doing a statutes amendment bill, we’re getting rid of references to having sex with—I think the word “imbeciles” was in there. That’s fine. We can do that. But to then not go this step further and say, “Why have we got these other very strange offences which pre-date 1961 in there?” kind of beggars belief.

One of the other things I think we’ve got to be cautious about, and Celia Wade-Brown noted on a number of occasions, is this move towards electronic provision of both things like infringement notices and publication of Land Transfer Act notices, and there was information under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act and so on and so forth. I’m just a bit worried as we modernise the provision of information and the providing of notices, that we just do it, actually, just sloppily. To say you can provide further information on an internet address—if you’re going to go down that road, you need to go down it with as much detail as when you set out how to provide it in writing: the address for service, whether it has to be delivered or actually received, and things like that. I just think we’ve gotten a bit sloppy by simply saying things like, “By emailing it” and “It is sent when it leaves the information system of the sender.” Well, if you’re going to serve a notice, it’s not enough to put a letter in the letterbox; it has to actually arrive. Now we might not really have—do we still have registered mail? I don’t know, but that’s essentially a registered mail when you can prove receipt or a signed courier delivery.

As we go through and modernise information provision, I do think we need to take care to make sure that it is calibrated appropriately in terms of seriousness. If you’re sending a power bill—not that that’s legislative—then an email is fine without knowing it’s been received. But if you’re sending an infringement notice, and one of the provisions here was about infringement notices, to simply say it’s deemed received when it leaves your information system—and you’ve got to remember, if it leaves my information system, it then goes to my internet provider’s information system, and it may go through another a number of other internet providers before it reaches the internet provider of the recipient, before it then reaches the information system of the person to whom it’s addressed. And as Celia Wade-Brown identified, it doesn’t often go wrong, but it can go wrong.

The Minister herself noted that our own information systems can reject emails when they do not have the memory to receive them, which was the example she gave. But other situations can exist, as well—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Dr Duncan Webb, I’m sorry to interrupt you. Can I please have some quiet on the right side of the House? Thank you.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: You can interrupt me for that anytime you like.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Carry on, thank you.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I was just talking about how the Minister accepted that emails, in particular, can get rejected for a number of reasons. Spam, of course, is the other reason that can occur.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Faxes were much better.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Oh, yeah—and, in fact, faxes were much better, because whilst there is a read receipt function on emails, you could actually always tell when a fax was received at the other end because you’d get a notification. And, you know, it goes back a while now, but many a lawyer’s file had the original fax and a little slip of paper that was proof that it had been not only sent but received.

Of course, the other thing we talked about was the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act and keeping records of affordability testing. I can understand that keeping records of everything is onerous. There’s no suggestion that every time a bank has an enquiry or a financier has an enquiry about a loan, they need to keep records. I was concerned that the Minister didn’t really get the point that when a non-customer seeks a loan and is turned down or withdraws their application, then there’s nothing to see, but in situations where a customer goes and asks for some variation, it’s actually important that those records remain, because they’re part of the customer’s record of relationship with the bank and, also, a record of their financial position—because if they are seeking hardship relief, formally or informally, then I think it’s appropriate that the bank keeps full records of those.

The other thing I’ll say just in closing, and, you know, I didn’t sit on the select committee and these statutes amendments bills are circulated prior to introduction, but I do think we need to exercise a little bit of caution about the extent to which they don’t just clarify; they actually change meaning. This is not the place for improvements in legislation. There is a place for modernisation and there’s a place for modernisation of language. There’s a place for correction of errors, but substantial changes in how the rules work is problematic. It’s interesting in the Real Estate Agents Act, the change from “inconsequential” to “not sufficiently serious”—same meaning but better for dispute resolution by not aggravating the complainant. But some of the other changes went a little bit further than that.

So, look, good to see we’re all at one on this. Good to have a little bit of fun around the Statutes Amendments Bill. In an evening of an urgency debate, this is the archetype of a non-urgent bill. It shouldn’t be on the Order Paper today, but here we are.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to also support the Statutes Amendment Bill. Like the previous speaker the Hon Dr Duncan Webb said, this was actually a bill that—although it’s quite long and there are many, many parts—we did have a very wholesome discussion on and engagement with the Minister during the committee of the whole House stage.

To start with, there are 42 parts to this bill—technically, now 41, because one of the parts has been removed and introduced as a separate bill—and they have wide-ranging topics, as well. Again, it’s just one of those bills that really exemplifies the way that, as a Parliament, how we do these sort of incidental corrections on a number of legislations as an omnibus bill that is agreed upon by the entirety of Parliament. Again, this is a bill that is supposed to make these sort of technical amendments, because, again, a lot of these—regardless of what has recently been passed in the House—once a bill is enacted, the only place to actually make any changes and make any corrections is through an Act of Parliament, because of the fact of parliamentary sovereignty, but also the fact that Parliament is the place to make law.

I do want to touch on a few of the broader themes of the things that come up. Like I said, there are 42—technically, now 41—parts to this bill with a wide-ranging scope in terms of the different bills that it covers. But one of the first themes that we do come across is the theme of an update in the digital age. To give an example: at the very beginning, in terms of Part 1, we are looking at an update to the Accident Compensation Act that allows the consultation of levy setting, etc., rather than just solely being in newspapers, to be allowed to be done on an internet site maintained by or on behalf of the corporation. For this particular section, the Minister was incredibly helpful at also clarifying that “internet”, in this case, is much broader than a website, or otherwise it would have stated “a website”. “Internet” does capture the scope of how we use anything that is online—in which case, social media. It was very heartening to hear from the Minister that there is the encouragement that we do what we need to do—as in, in general for Public Service agencies or departments—to use all tools that are available now, including social media should they have a social media account, to also engage with other members.

The previous speaker the Hon Dr Duncan Webb mentioned quite a bit regarding one of the technical amendments to Part 34. This is around the Radiocommunications Act 1989. Both parts of this talk about how an infringement notice could be presented. Currently, an infringement notice could only be delivered either things like in person or physically through the mail, but it doesn’t really capture instances where the person does not have a known place of residence or business in Aotearoa New Zealand—so, in those cases, what this bill has upgraded to allow is for electronic addresses to be used.

Like the previous speakers have mentioned, and also my colleague Celia Wade-Brown has mentioned, there are things that are more technical in terms of how, then, would we be able to track when it comes to a valid electronic address and how an issuing of that infringement notice, particularly when we’re using lines that are technical in nature, that requires a particular ministerial intent or particular interpretation to know what is meant. In this case, it is around the fact that “an infringement notice sent to a valid electronic address … is to be treated as having been served at the time the electronic communication first enters an information system that is outside the control of the Secretary or the authorised person.”, which is a very long-winded way of saying “when the Secretary or authorised person presses send”. But again, that does cover a broader thing, and this is something I will touch on a little bit later. Those are just two examples; one element of the theme that we see throughout the Statutes Amendment Bill.

The other one that we’re seeing is the use of inclusive language or updated language or languages, or adjustment from languages that are no longer accepted or is considered appropriate in the 21st century. I think one of the ones is in Part 11, for example, when we’re looking at amendments to the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995, where the term has been updated to the use of “certain persons”. The definition of that, according to the Minister, is something that can be determined through common law and through just general practice, rather than having a specific defined term. I think the other one that has been touched on by the previous speaker, as well, is around the Defence Act 1990. There is language that is being updated to be a little bit more inclusive. These are, again, some of the things that we are seeing running as a core theme of this bill that needed updating.

The third theme that I want to touch on is inconsistencies, and these inconsistencies could be anything from aspects of the bill that, when they’ve been updated, have been left out in terms of the drafting. A good example of that is the Land Transfer Act 2017. When it was updated from being the Land Transfer Act 1952 to the Land Transfer Act 2017, the term “or the registered owner” was dropped off, instead of being after “claimant”—and this is clause 90 of the bill, and this is Part 23.

There are also other instances where certain terms, for example, were incorrectly drafted or inappropriately drafted. One of the examples of that is in Part 36, when we were looking at amendments to the Search and Surveillance Act 2012, where the word “consent” was incorrectly drafted, when it’s supposed to be “object”. Again, something like this we’re seeing as being a technical update on something that, potentially, could have broader implications.

Another really good example that I think is worth mentioning is the amendment to section 29 of the Housing Act 1955, which is in clause 72 of the bill, and I think this is just so lovely. This particular section is replacing the term of “1 pound”. It was only recently picked up through this bill, for example, that the registration of an easement certificate still uses the pound as a currency as opposed to the New Zealand dollar, which is what we’re using now. That has been updated from “1 pound” to “prescribed under the Land Transfer Act 2017”. So—

Andy Foster: What’s the exchange rate?

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Great point. This is another thing, and the last part is just removing certain areas that has been repealed and hasn’t really been updated as a part of this.

One of the things that we also explored—and it’s a theme in a few multiple areas—is just in terms of some of these amendments, what does it mean when the legislation was, for example, drafted incorrectly or when the bill has been enacted and has taken effect, but now we’re making these kinds of changes? The Housing Act 1955 and also the Search and Surveillance Act are really good examples of, “Well, we haven’t picked up on that.”, and so what happens for all of those people who have been paying for a registration of easement certificate up until now, when the legislation says “1 pound” versus what it’s meant to be—and I think the Minister has articulated those really well.

Finally, one of the last things that we explored as a part of this bill during the committee of the whole House stage is some of the concerns that—again, the Minister has accurately said this is a technical bill. We can only do so much within this bill, but there are next steps that people could consider exploring through a member’s bill on things that are a little bit broader than that. But with that, it was a really enjoyable bill during the committee stage, and the Green Party is supporting it.

It was New Zealand’s Governor-General in World War II, Sir Cyril Newall, who famously started his speech, “Men of the army and navy, gentlemen of the air force.”, and those gentleman and ladies who served in our Permanent Air Force and Royal New Zealand Airforce, from 1923 and 1937 respectively, have always generically been known as “airmen”. Regardless of gender, of trade, or of rank, they were just all airmen, in the same way that we have soldiers and sailors. We’ve now changed that, in Part 14 of this Act, to “aviator”—except, of course, traditionally, an aviator was a man, and an aviatrix was a woman. We’re ironically going for something that, traditionally, is a more gendered term. Now, I understand, and I accept the rationale for it, but it’s just a shame to see 102 years of tradition go by the wayside. Regardless, I’ll be voting for this bill.

I had the pleasure of being part of the Governance and Administration Committee, which spent some good time discussing and perusing this bill. You’ll note that there were a number of areas—and this, really, is going to be minor and technical stuff and things which are agreed by everyone. There is no demurral in this House. I think, in the committee of the whole House and in some of the speeches which we’ve just heard, the magnificent efforts of members occupying 10 minutes talking about these sorts of things, like Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan—

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: It’s such a delightful bill, to be honest.

ANDY FOSTER: Yes, it’s remarkable. I’m not going to try and do that. Anything that was any substance whatsoever—as you’ll see in the report there—we have said is outside of the scope of this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

This call is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I thought I would manage a No. 6 call—thank you.

I was on the Governance and Administration Committee, and it was a remarkable introduction to the breadth of legislation in this country. I would like to make a few comments about some of the items we discussed, and one of the things that I enjoy and, I’ve heard, my colleagues do, at least on this side of the House—I’m not sure about the other side of the House, but we could be enlightened—are great op shoppers. But who knew until we got this Statutes Amendment Bill that there was Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Act? I imagine pawnbrokers would need regulating, but I didn’t realise that it was also real estate and second-hand dealers.

There are some really serious and important Acts in here that just needed to be brought up to date—some unpleasant language that should be removed. I do have some slight sympathy with the word “aviatrix” being a fantastic word that it’s great to get into Hansard. We don’t call a chairperson, “chairman”; in fact, it was until quite recently there would be certain female members of leading organisations that would like to be called the “chairman”, but that’s an unusual situation.

In the main, Parliamentary Counsel Office and/or the legislators at the time pick things up, but, over time, those little errors accrue, and it was our job to look through these and even spot a few more opportunities. It’s very good. I don’t think it needed to be done under urgency at half past 10 at night, to be honest. However, until that point, until the point of urgency for both the committee of the whole House and urgency for the third reading—I do think it needs a higher bar to go into urgency—the process had been pretty good, because there was initial consultation about the things that should go into it, and that was consultation across the different parties, and they all agreed these things were straightforward.

There were a few, like the audiovisual link and the question of sending things by email and when it’s judged to be sent, and we even found a few more interesting questions tonight, such as the potential difference in delivery dates between rural areas—we’re proud to receive mail five days a week, and I have to say the rural post is amazing, but with the towns and cities, I believe it’s about three times a week and difficult to predict exactly when it’s going to arrive.

I am glad that I’ve been introduced to this way of looking across a whole range of bills. I don’t think it replaces the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee, which is actually a really good way of looking at law. It should be used, in my view, for members’ bills and all Government bills, as well, and that would have meant that we wouldn’t need what I would call the ephemeral Regulatory Standards Bill. I would commend this bill to the House and we fully support this bill.

Oh, this has been fascinating to sit here for the last—it feels like my full 28 years I have sat here, actually, for the entire Statutes Amendment Bill. But it has been really interesting to watch and see members engage in the process and look to improve it, but I also commend the Associate Minister of Justice for her proactive approach with trying to sort out what are minor, technical details that she is remedying and fixing. I just commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, it’s a pleasure to take a call on this, the third reading—already—of the Statutes Amendment Bill. It was quite a journey to go through all 42 different pieces of legislation that are amended by the Statutes Amendment Bill. I’ve recently been watching the Back to the Future movies with my kids, again, and it felt a wee bit like that. We’d be zipping from the 1890s, in fact—I think was the oldest bill that we looked at—through to 1955, 1983, and just going all over the place with the different bills and their historic relevance. This was an interesting process, and I came into this bill during the select committee stage. I wasn’t there for the entire select committee stage, I don’t think, at the Governance and Administration Committee. I do want to acknowledge my colleagues who are part of the Governance and Administration Committee and who have been contributing to this bill, including Celia WadeBrown, Tom Rutherford, and Tim Costley, I think, and others, of course, who are not on that committee, who also made contributions to this bill.

This is an interesting process: the bill is shown to—as others have said—all parties prior to it being introduced. I think I would concur with the comments made by the Hon Dr Duncan Webb when he said that this process that we’ve been through tonight may have been more fruitful had we been through that process some months ago when it was first circulated. I think that’s probably a lesson for all of us here, that when you do go through something in quite granular detail, there are important questions that arise. I don’t think that there’s anything that would prevent us, necessarily, from supporting those particular sections or changes, but I do think that when you do go through it so thoroughly, you do pick up additional things, so I think that that’s something that we can all take on board.

Of course, this was a bill that was started under the Labour Government, continued under the National Government, and is very, very dependent on the very, very hard work of many, many different officials. I think I was reading before that there were at least 12 Government departments—someone, maybe, who’s familiar with that part in the bill could correct me if I’m wrong, but there were a great number of Government departments who were involved in, probably, the drafting of this bill. I’m not sure if they follow this type of thing, but I’m sure it would have been something to be in a department who found a minor and technical error of the bill, have put it forward, have it form part of the Statutes Amendment Bill, and now they can see the satisfaction of that coming into law. So if anyone who has been involved in that is watching, thank you very much—not you, Madam Speaker, but those watching—for their hard work in bringing this bill forward.

This is an important type of bill to come forward. I don’t think these types of changes should be left on the statute book. In this Statutes Amendment Bill, we saw some particularly egregious examples of some particularly abhorrent and offensive language which is still on our statute book. I think, at the time, during the committee stage, I mentioned to officials that if we do see that, I think it is really important that we do seek to amend that. I don’t think there’s an excuse for leaving that type of language on our statute book, so I’m pleased that we’re able to amend some of those words—I’m sure there are some others. I would just really encourage people that if they do find that type of antiquated offensive language in legislation, raise that with a member of Parliament, and, hopefully, they will be able to bring it to the next Statutes Amendment Bill and we can tidy up our legislation so we don’t have those types of problems.

There were a few funny things that were in this bill—I mean, my colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s mentioned the reference to £1. How ridiculous that it’s 2025 and we still have that currency included in our statute book, so that was interesting. I enjoyed looking back at provincial ordinances, which I did not know were still in place. When New Zealand had provincial governments, they put provincial ordinances in place; some of those are still in force—very, very historically interesting—and have been continued through the Statutes Amendment Bill. So that, I thought, was particularly interesting.

We also had some more minor things. We had some typos that had been sitting on the statute book for a number of years, so a chocolate fish to whoever the official was who found the typographical error. Then, we did have changes to the Oaths and Declarations Act, which was one of the changes that we made at select committee. It’s very important, I think, to make sure that, although technological advances continue, we don’t lose some of those important things about face-to-face contact—looking at someone to assess if they have capacity, which is always a question that a lawyer or someone taking an oath will ask; if they do have capacity, do they freely enter into an oath and declaration? Very difficult to do that with just audio, which was what was proposed in the initial version of this bill. I’m very proud that the committee did take on the recommendation, and the Associate Minister of Justice did accept changing that, to make sure it was audiovisual, because I think that does uphold the integrity of the Oaths and Declarations Act. I think that was really important.

I do want to pick up on the issue that was raised by my colleague Tim Costley around gendered language. I think it’s really important that we do not dissuade ourselves from the task that is inclusive language. When I’m talking about inclusive language, I’m not talking about anything more than not including language which is overtly sexist in legislation. Unfortunately, it is just simply the fact that if you say “men” or “man”, generally, people think you are referring only to a man or men and not, in fact, to women or humans. I think it’s such an easy thing for us to update that language, to use a term which includes both men and women, rather than sticking to what I believe are sexist stereotypes which make our children, if they hear them, think that certain professions are only open to one gender. We can change that through having inclusive language—I don’t think there’s anything sad about it, and I would strongly push back against allegations from the other side of the House that there is anything that we should be looking back fondly on for language that tells our children that because you are a certain gender, you may not be able to do a certain job. So I very, very strongly push back on that, and I support the inclusive words which are included within this piece of legislation, which I think is very, very important.

Joseph Mooney: It’s a little bit off-track. That’s not what he said.

CAMILLA BELICH: I was here, I listened to it—

Carl Bates: It is not what he said.

CAMILLA BELICH: —and I’m responding in a debate. So that is very much what—

Joseph Mooney: Aviatrix.

CAMILLA BELICH: Yeah, well, I actually—

Carl Bates: He was saying, use the correct language for gender.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): It’s not a conversation; it’s a speech.

CAMILLA BELICH: Yeah, it’s not a conversation; it’s a debate. He raised a point; I’m saying, let’s make language inclusive. Let’s not be equivocal about that, other side of the House; let’s stick up for inclusive language.

Joseph Mooney: He was saying it could be “aviator”, “aviatrix”.

CAMILLA BELICH: Well, it’s very interesting that other members of the House disagree with it, because this is a bill that everyone in the House has to agree to—

Joseph Mooney: That’s not what he said.

CAMILLA BELICH: I’m not talking about him any more; I’m talking about you, sir. You are challenging what is in this piece of legislation. If you want to vote against inclusive language, then you can vote against this bill and it will not go ahead. And I challenge you to stand—

Carl Bates: That’s not what he said.

CAMILLA BELICH: If you’re going to make comments across the House, stand up, vote against it, and let the public decide whether inclusive language is something that this House stands for or not—totally up to you, and totally something that was raised in the debate and is perfectly appropriate to be discussed.

Dr David Wilson: False flag.

CAMILLA BELICH: So that’s what I think. I think we should encourage our children to do whatever job that they want.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Aw, “falsely”. He said it was “falsely”.

CAMILLA BELICH: Madam Speaker, this is a lot more drama than I expected from the Statutes Amendment Bill. Generally, it is not a bill which people get excited about; generally, most of the stuff in it is quite inane and just minor and technical amendments.

Look, I think we can show that, with intellectual curiosity, with the fact that we go through this and we take our jobs seriously as legislators, we can actually find all sorts of interesting facts, not only about our history, not only about the history of New Zealand, the way we see ourselves as a country, the way things used to be, and the way we want to see things in the future—all wrapped up in what we wouldn’t usually spend so much attention on.

I do want echo the comments of my colleague Dr Duncan Webb when he said this isn’t an appropriate bill to be put through urgency—it is important, but it’s not urgent.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise to make a brief contribution on the Statutes Amendment Bill. It’s an omnibus bill that makes changes—mostly minor—to 42 different Acts. I’ll just make one brief comment just in response to the last speaker, Camilla Belich, who I think was arguing with phantoms in her own mind, frankly, because everyone in this House is actually incredibly supportive of all men and all women and all young boys and all young girls having every opportunity available to them in this country. We have great people in our armed forces, where I served with men and women. So, with that, I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I would like to speak about Part 17 and Part 29, which make amendments to two separate Treaty of Waitangi settlements. I happened to sit and speak to both of those when they went through the House.

I just want to bring to the attention of the House, if members aren’t already aware, to the report from the Controller and Auditor-General on how Treaty obligations are being implemented by public organisations. At the time of the report, there’d been 80 settlements with 150 public organisations, with 12,000 contractual or legal commitments in them.

Part 17 and Part 29 deal with two of those commitments—two out of 12,000. There are thousands still that have been committed to but have not been enacted yet. Prepare for the onslaught, is what I say to this House. If those public organisations don’t lift their game—because when you think about deferred properties, they have plenty of time to deal with them when we pass those pieces of legislation, and any reasonable person reading it would say, “Oh, they’ve got four years to do that particular contractual or legal obligation—four years.” Some people manage to go and buy a house in three months. Why is it that we are, in a statutes amendment bill, having to extend the time in which these two commitments can be done after the time that they were originally given? It’s not really acceptable.

The Māori Affairs Committee is looking into that very report right now and hearing from some of these agencies. I’ve got to say there are some agencies out there, public organisations, that are doing an excellent job and would be great examples for around about 140 others that really need to lift their game. My contribution on those two parts is that when we pass those pieces of legislation, we apologise for everything that’s gone wrong, we make contractual commitments to the iwi and then we don’t deliver. We just need to do better. We need to have these organisations put in the resources, and that means the Government needs to resource them so they’re actually able to meet those commitments, because it’s quite clear that they are not being resourced properly to do it.

When this House passes the next Treaty settlement—I suspect it will be before the end of the year—if you’re in the House, remember this speech. Remember that there will be dozens of commitments in that Treaty settlement, and there will be an expectation from the people sitting up in the gallery that they are going to be delivered on. I think we owe that to them.

I want to support my colleague Camilla Belich. There was a time in this House when—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Part 22 of this bill is an amendment to the Juries Act 1981, which is an Act that I’ve also got a member’s bill currently going through the House to amend, as well—so clearly interested in any improvements to that Act. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Madam Speaker?

It’s a Labour Party call.

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Bit too early? Ha, ha!

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Lemauga Lydia Sosene.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ve been here for a few hours now and what I found fascinating about the Statutes Amendment Bill that we’ve been going through—I was just really listening intently, and I really appreciated the Associate Minister of Justice being so open and, also, informative. I understand that the Statutes Amendment Bill has covered a range of things.

First, can I acknowledge all of our speakers tonight across the House, but I wanted to really acknowledge Matua in speaking about iwi, because sometimes in our role we need to acknowledge—it’s a really important bill—all of those across the House, but also the communities that we serve. We must never forget that, because that’s why we are here: to make good legislation.

What I found helpful about the Statutes Amendment Bill tonight was listening, not just going through—as a member of the Governance and Administration Committee, I do recall that we had different provisions of different Acts to go through, particularly in this bill. There are 42 Acts that cover 12 Government agencies. I do want to acknowledge all the officials, because they would come to the committee and explain the changes and the reasons for the provisions.

It is also important that—and I’ve heard my colleagues on this side of the House repeat that—in terms of modernising pieces of legislation, the language and the clarity around the language is important to really understand those provisions. I also did hear that some of the talanoa, the kōrero, would lead into problematic areas, and Dr Duncan Webb highlighted that. I wanted to reflect on—and I know Matua ran out of time, but it’s important that this Government has made changes in terms of the strengthening or the empowerment of Te Tiriti. It’s really important to acknowledge, when iwi make a contribution to this Whare, that we as politicians, we as parliamentarians, may not agree with different decisions and we have robust debate, but it’s really important that we acknowledge iwi; we acknowledge our people of the land.

What I also appreciated in terms of my colleague Camilla Belich, in speaking about the modernisation—and the Minister explained that really well and repeated why the different bills, specifically in this Statutes Amendment Bill, the purpose of it. What I appreciated about what Camilla did raise—and she spoke about it very strongly in her robust debate—was the inclusivity, the inclusiveness, and, also, when we are talking and making changes and we are agreeing and disagreeing, what kind of legacy are we leaving for our tamariki? Camilla spoke really well in terms of the strong messaging—getting that across.

We understand that some of the provisions are about seeking clarity, and what, also, the Minister was helpful for was her advice in terms of the consistency of respective provisions and of respective Acts. There were a few Acts that I was quite interested in: the amendment to the Burial and Cremation Act, but also the Coroners Act, because I know that we talk a lot about life in the House but we don’t actually acknowledge when it comes to death, and those two Acts in particular acknowledge provisions, and there was changing of wording. I was quite interested in that, because for Māori and Pasifika, we honour and we treat our people who have passed to the other side very carefully. We have tikanga, we have things that we specifically do in our communities because we are acknowledging that when those of our loved ones are passing over, there is law in terms of doing things right and processes and provisions, but we are also spiritual and we treat those who have passed—I just wanted to reflect that.

What I also found helpful were the changes that were intended around clarity and clarifying the various provisions, specifically when it came to, sometimes, incorrect references. It was really helpful to hear the Minister explain her understanding of the broadness of some of the provisions. That was really helpful for me, because she then talked about alignment of the different provisions.

In terms of the different Acts that we were going through—and it was already talked about, in particular, the oaths and declarations. When we were on select committee, it was really helpful to really be focused and really have clear wording in terms of that specific Act and what it does and why it’s really important to have the person not just talking about it—we needed to have visuals, because the committee’s job was to then look at the provisions, look at the wording, and correct it, and it was helpful for the Minister to acknowledge that.

Just with the substantive changes, it was important to understand, as a committee member, that our work is to strengthen, and we did have robust debates in terms of some of the provisions when it came to committee, because there is evidence in terms of affidavits and key aspects of the different bills, specifically with that bill and any substantive change, which was the one I’ve just mentioned—it is really helpful that when we are correcting our legislation or we are amending legislation, that the public understands the intent of those amendments. I just think that that’s really important that, as we are passing legislation in this House specifically, we are communicating to New Zealanders why the change is important and we still get the purpose right.

I just wanted to talk about and reflect on my colleague Celia when she talked about—and others have spoken about it—email and then verifying when you press the “send” button that you assume that’s gone. Then Dr Duncan Webb also highlighted about the different email addresses, etc. I met recently with New Zealand Post, and one of the things that they talked about was now we’re in an online world. The difference is that 12, 13 years ago, New Zealand Post used to deal with 88 million pieces of correspondence or letters and post; in 2025, that’s now gone to only just over 150 million. So the change to the online world is really important, in reflecting that in pieces of legislation. The change, also, is around the necessity of having correct online email addresses so that we can guarantee through the provisions and the changes that we’ve made tonight that we are cautious on the proposed changes and the modernisation, so that we don’t end up changing things but it becomes more problematic. On that note, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend the bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker; tēnā tātou e te Whare. In observing the speeches tonight—it’s a bit of a learning exercise for me, too, to be completely honest, when we’re reflecting back on things that were drawn up in 1890 and then coming through to the 1900s and so on and so on. It’s a revealing exercise about the ideas of those times and, fortunately, the change of those ideas to modern times. So it’s a pleasure to stand tonight and offer a small contribution.

I like the idea that outdated ideas should be put away and they should be refreshed with good, strong, and smarter ideas, particularly from the minds of women. I would imagine in the 1800s there wouldn’t have been enough women in the House, bringing the energy and the capability and the intelligence of women and wāhine into the House—so good on us.

The omnibus bill addresses 42 corrective measures: longstanding errors, and unresolved matters designed by men. Did I say that? No, I’ll just carry on. But anyway, all right, I’ll stop doing that, but just to say that among these technical changes, one does stand out. I’d like to mention that one: modernising the procedures of the House to allow members to take the oath online, including via Zoom. In 2025, this is entirely appropriate. Our parliamentary processes should reflect the realities of modern life while upholding the commitments that bind us to this service.

For those watching, the oath is the affirmation every member makes when committing themselves to serve the people of Aotearoa New Zealand. I will add that while I support this amendment, I believe the next step is necessary. The oath of this House should expressly include Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Te Tiriti is not a historical footnote; it is the foundation of our constitutional arrangements and the enduring covenant between the Crown and Māori. Embedding Te Tiriti within the oath would ensure that every member across all parties acknowledges that partnership and its obligations whenever we take our seats in this Chamber. This would not only strengthen our constitutional integrity but reassure te iwi Māori, who have endured a series of regressive bills during this Government’s term. It would affirm that the power and responsibilities of this House are exercised in good faith and with respect for the founding promises of our nation.

While I support the technical amendments before us today, I will continue to advocate that: for Te Tiriti to be placed at the centre of our parliamentary oath and our democratic processes. Thank you, Madam Speaker, tautoko mārika i a au [absolute support from me].

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.