Regulatory Systems (Internal Affairs) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Internal Affairs: I think you’ve said enough, Madam Speaker! I present a legislative statement on the Regulatory Systems (Internal Affairs) Amendment Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I move, That the Regulatory Systems (Internal Affairs) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill.

I’m pleased to be here today to present the Regulatory Systems (Internal Affairs) Amendment Bill. This is an omnibus bill which amends 23 different Acts, with the overarching purpose of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the regulatory systems overseen by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA). The bill addresses a wide range of minor errors, gaps, and inconsistencies in legislation. It also addresses overly prescriptive and out-of-date provisions. While most of the legislation being amended falls within the internal affairs portfolio, amendments are also being made to legislation in the community and voluntary sector, local government, justice, health, and land information portfolios.

Internal affairs—and I’m reading this—is a big beast. It touches the lives of every New Zealander through the issuing of birth and death certificates, it preserves our country’s history through the National Library and Archives New Zealand, it deals with some of the darkest corners of the internet through countering child sex abuse material and terrorist material online, and it monitors our all-important fire and emergency service to ensure it is delivering for New Zealanders.

This bill makes a number of small but meaningful changes within Internal Affairs to make Kiwis’ lives easier and increase the efficiency of the Department of Internal Affairs. I would like to draw the House’s attention to just a few examples of these changes.

The bill makes a handful of changes to the Gambling Act that are intended to reduce harm and clarify expectations for gambling operators. One of these changes is limiting the sale of lottery tickets to those aged 18 or older, which aligns with the sale of other lottery products such as Instant Kiwi, or scratchies, as most people know them. While adults are allowed to gamble as they wish, I’ve been clear that I do not want to get children to gamble, and this amendment will introduce a consistent age restriction on Lotto tickets in line with other gambling products.

One of the most important roles that the Department of Internal Affairs plays is the monitoring and removal of objectionable content online, including child sex abuse material. I know that the department’s digital safety team work very hard to identify perpetrators and safeguard victims of this horrible crime. Currently, the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act is overly restrictive on how the department can share information about objectionable content with international law enforcement agencies. An amendment in this bill will allow for more direct information-sharing with our international partners. This will improve the coordination and efficiency in the department’s operations as they work across borders to counter the spread of this illegal content.

The bill also streamlines the process for organisations who want to offer RealMe to electronically verify the identity of their customers and staff. Many of us will be familiar with RealMe, the digital identity service used by over 1.5 million New Zealanders for activities such as opening a bank account or signing up with an education provider. Currently, organisations that are deemed acceptable to use the service and that pass all the requirements for privacy and security must wait for Cabinet to sign them off in a process that can take weeks or months. This bill proposes that organisations that meet all the requirements can be granted access by the Department of Internal Affairs, rather than waiting for politicians to sign them off.

The bill also makes a few simple and common-sense amendments such as allowing people to cancel their passports if their personal data has been compromised and allowing a sperm donor’s personal information to be updated in the case of their death so that offspring are aware of any possible hereditary diseases, and it modernises language such as updating the term “child pornography” to “child sexual abuse material” to better reflect the appropriate terms used by law enforcement agencies.

I could stand here all day and tell you about all the changes that this bill is making, but with 23 different changes that would be excessive. I will conclude by saying that this bill makes a range of mostly small but valuable amendments to the statute book. It will help ensure that the DIA continues to operate very well in the modern environment and that the legislation it oversees remains fit for purpose.

I’d like to thank the people who have worked on this, both within the Department of Internal Affairs and within Minister van Velden’s office—particularly Abigail Johnson, who has worked as her adviser on all of this very detailed work. It is very easy to make a new rule or a regulation; to remove them and make people’s lives easier and better through more seamless and logical and common-sense interactions with Government—that is actually harder work than is commonly appreciated. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call on the Regulatory Systems (Internal Affairs) Amendment Bill, and, as the Minister did say, generally, regulatory systems bills—well, actually, he didn’t say “regulatory systems bills”, but he said that this bill makes small and minor technical changes, which is quite the convention when it comes to regulatory systems bills. Generally, they are omnibus bills, and they make small tweaks to different pieces of legislation—as the Minister said, over 20 pieces of legislation. It’s because of that reason that Labour stands to support this bill for the first reading.

However, there are some issues, though, that I do want to raise, which we will probably traverse during the select committee with officials, which we can do in confidence, because there are some little flags for me, particularly because this is supposed to be a regulatory systems bill that makes only minor and technical changes. There are some changes in this bill on which I think officials should provide, if the Minister agrees to having officials as advisers—that the select committee should be aware of.

As the Minister has said, there are some good changes in this. One change is to restrict the purchase of all lottery products to under 18-year-olds. So, for example, back in—

Hon David Seymour: Over-18-year-olds.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: Over-18-year-olds—thank you very much, Minister. So, as most people understand, when it’s Father’s Day, Christmas, you know, Lotto has those big draws, and sometimes children buy lottery tickets for their grandparents, or for their father for Father’s Day. So that is—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Well, that would be nice!

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: That would be nice—well, my children are very nice to me. But, ultimately, it now restricts a person who is under 18 from being able to buy those tickets, and so they’re going to have to ask their grandparents or an adult who is over 18 to purchase them on their behalf, and still write a nice little card. I get cards, which is also a good thing.

There is also a good change to the Passport Act 1992—in particular, the change to the issuance of emergency travel documents. Sometimes, as much as you want your systems to work, and—I know this from having been a Minister of Internal Affairs—there are incidents where the system doesn’t actually produce the passport in a certain period. This particular provision allows the department to issue emergency travel documents, so that is a good change.

However, there were a couple of red flags which I did raise, which I think that members of the select committee—I’m sure it’s the Governance and Administration Committee—should actually traverse a bit better with officials. One is the fire service levy changes. It says in the regulatory impact statement (RIS) that the only people who—sorry. Actually, it wasn’t in the regulatory impact statement, and so, first of all, that’s an issue. It was not in the regulatory impact statement. But in the disclosure statement, however, it says that the only people who were consulted as part of those changes were some insurance companies and insurance brokers, and so I think it’d be good to have some submissions from the general public and other interested parties as to the impact of the changes to the fire service levies within this bill.

There’s also another change in the regulatory impact statement, and that’s on page 10, in relation to amending the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act. It’s around the information sharing of historical information with genealogy websites. My concern is that there is advice that has been redacted within the regulatory impact statement for the reason that it is to protect the free and frank advice of Ministers and officials. If it’s enough to redact that advice, then why is it in this bill? That is a good question that the select committee should be asking officials at the time when it comes through the select committee.

The second thing, as well, which is another red flag for me, is that on page 17 of the regulatory impact statement, there are a number of changes to the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act. A number of pieces of the advice that are in the RIS have been redacted as well, and it’s quite a serious reason as to why they’re redacted: it’s under section 6C of the Official Information Act. Section 6C, basically, means you can withhold this because either it is sensitive for the country or it’s sensitive for other particular reasons. If it’s so sensitive, why is it in a regulatory systems impact bill? That’s a fair enough question. It should be something that the select committee should be asking officials, and it can be done as secret evidence. They should be asking officials about why this information and advice has been redacted. What is the problem statement that the Government is trying to fix, because at the moment you can’t really go off much, based on the advice that’s in the bill.

The Labour Party, I say again, does support this bill through first reading. There are some flags that have been raised as part of this, and I question why they’re in this particular bill, but I’m sure the select committee will traverse that.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call on the Regulatory Systems (Internal Affairs) Amendment Bill. Like my colleagues in the Labour Party, we will also be supporting this bill, with some important caveats that they’ve raised.

We do note that this bill is an omnibus bill that does make a lot of changes to legislation—around 20—and a lot of them are fairly non-controversial, such as the changes to the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 2021. Those changes there relate to overseas divorce or dissolution, name changes, and historical information, and there are some small changes to the functions of the registrar-general. I think the overseas divorce or dissolution is particularly important, because as Aotearoa moves towards a sort of more multicultural society with an increasing proportion of the population having been born overseas, it’s important to make sure that we have provisions related to that.

The bill also makes changes to the Charities Act, such as clarifying functions regarding searching the Charities Register, requiring information to be published online regarding the charities review authority, and revoking some regulations. That level of transparency is quite important, so we support those changes in that regard.

It also makes changes to the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 and associated regulations, such as removing consultation with the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Chief Censor, removing references to the Office of Film and Literature Classification, and changing some of the terminology around that.

It also makes changes around the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act 2017. The changes in that section will remove the definitions of “personal property” and “residential land”, replace the definition of “residential property”, and add new definitions, and the bill also updates regulations relating to the Fire and Emergency New Zealand levy and payable rate calculation.

One of the other changes that the bill makes is to the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act, which requires providers to accept updated information from donors and allows the registrar-general to tell providers the number of donor offspring births for a particular donor.

I could go on—I’ve got notes for days here—but I think I’ve talked long enough. Thanks for the time.

It gives me great pleasure, again, to speak on the Regulatory Systems (Internal Affairs) Amendment Bill. I’m looking forward to consideration of this at the select committee, and therefore I commend it to the House.

Madam Speaker, fa‘afetai lava. I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Regulatory Systems (Internal Affairs) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First is backing this bill because it is a classic case of good change. It does not attempt to invent anything; it simply makes the present system function more effectively. This bill is about good management. It’s about making sure our laws are not only written clearly but are also functioning clearly and effectively. New Zealand First is happy to support it, and we recommend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m very thrilled to take a call on the Regulatory Systems (Internal Affairs) Amendment Bill in its first reading. Like most of these omnibus bills, it is tidying up bits and pieces of legislation that need to be tidied up, and so, with that, I’ll be very pleased to commend this bill to the House.

This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on 12 August 2025.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 5.58 p.m.