Regulatory Systems (Internal Affairs) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak in support of the Regulatory Systems (Internal Affairs) Amendment Bill, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Regulatory Systems (Internal Affairs) Amendment Bill. As other speakers have noted, this is a regulatory bill, and so the purpose of this bill is really to make what would be seen as minor amendments to make the efficiency of existing regulations and laws more effective within the House. You’ve heard some extensive analysis of that by two of my colleagues—one in our previous sitting day, the Hon Barbara Edmonds, when she looked at this particular bill, and also my colleague Lemauga Lydia Sosene, who is our spokesperson on internal affairs, who made some other remarks on this bill.

I suppose, in short, this bill is one that you would expect to be non-controversial, and that was our expectation, too, in looking at the drafts of this bill. There have been some changes made to it to remove some areas that we consider to be somewhat more controversial. However, there is still a select committee process to go through on this, and while this bill is a regulatory systems bill, it does cover a number of matters that appear, on the face of it, to be substantive. So, on the Governance and Administration Committee, I look forward to going through with officials, and hopefully with the Minister, some of the details in relation to this bill to see what the intent is and where the particular impetus for these regulatory changes has come from. I think most New Zealanders, in reading this bill—and I accept that there may not be that many of them at this stage—would find that many of the changes in this bill would affect things that they interact with in their daily lives. For example, there are substantive changes around passports, around Births, Deaths and Marriages—there are also substantive changes in relation to something that Internal Affairs has been doing recently: the sale of public records. So that is of public interest, I think, and I look forward to receiving some submissions on that. There’s also, as my colleague Barbara Edmonds noted, relatively substantive changes in relation to the way that Fire and Emergency New Zealand works.

We are happy to support this through to select committee, but, really, I suppose, our message would be that we would like to hear from the Minister and from officials why these are simply operational and efficiency changes that should be included within a regulatory systems bill, and, if not, why this instrument is being used for somewhat substantive changes. That’s not to say that many of the things in here are not things that we would generally be supportive of, but I think it is important to make sure that when we do have bills which are meant to, on the face of them, make small changes, we actually assess that that’s what’s happening. I’m sure the select committee will do that.

I do encourage members of the public to have a read of this bill, especially if that’s something that you have a particular interest in, just making sure that a lot of these changes are consistent with what you would be expecting. My first read of it is that there are a few things in there that I do have questions about, but I do have faith in the select committee process going through those, but we would be very much aided especially if people would submit to this bill. It’s not often we get that many submissions on a regulatory systems bill, but I think, in this particular example, I would encourage people to look at it and to make submissions, just to make sure that we have got the balance right there.

I won’t use all of my time, but just to say that we’re happy to vote this bill through, but I look forward to taking a microscope to it and actually making sure that all the changes that are in there are of the nature that we would expect in a regulatory systems bill and also achieving the objectives that we would expect them to as well. So thanks very much to the Minister for working with parties around the House on this bill, and we look forward to seeing if further improvements can be made at select committee.

Debate interrupted.