Legislation Amendment Bill

Members, this was an interrupted debate, and we’re on to call No. 2, a Labour Party call.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s my absolute pleasure to speak on the Legislation Amendment Bill, which brings the House together in procedural unity, I believe. I would like to congratulate the Minister in charge of the bill, the Hon Judith Collins. I also think it’s actually quite poetic, because when the Minister was chair of the Regulations Reviews Committee back in February 2023, I sat as a member as well. The committee presented a report entitled Briefing on best practice for publication of secondary legislation to the House of Representatives, which included principles that reflected the rule of law, that law should be publicly accessible, and that most—most—secondary legislation must be published on a website. I think that report made clear the principle of access to legislation. But the important word there is “most”, and I think that this is the bill that takes us even further.

The problem that we’ve faced in the past is that the Parliamentary Counsel Office, who’ve been responsible for drafting most legislation, have also been responsible for publishing it on the New Zealand Legislation website. However, there is a raft of other secondary legislation produced by around 120 agencies. Some are published in the Gazette, some in newspapers, and some not at all. Of course, this creates a number of issues for individuals, but also businesses and other entities who are looking to find out what the law is. It makes it very hard to understand what the law is, it increases cost to individuals and other entities in terms of spending time locating the law, it reduces Parliament’s oversight of secondary legislation, and it also makes it considerably harder for us to meet our international obligations, which more and more are asking us to ensure that all law, including that raft of secondary legislation, is freely available online.

The work in terms of where we are now actually started back in 2016, or actually potentially even before that, when two reports were produced which, in principle, asked for the publication of legislation to be accessible in a single point. In 2016, the Government agreed that that would be what we would implement. It’s extremely significant, because up until the passage of this legislation, essentially, there was some law that was not published at all. The direction to members of the public was that you should find out which entity was responsible for the regulation, write to them or communicate with them, and request a copy, which is really unbelievable in terms of everyday laws that would apply to people. I think the beauty of this legislation, if I could use that word, lies in clause 20, which inserts new section 77 and 77A, which essentially mean that secondary legislation is not law until it is published.

Now, while I do support the legislation wholly, I am glad that it’s proceeding to select committee, because there are a few issues that I will enjoy discussing with members around the table when it comes to select committee. One is around the repeal of section 73. This is about what’s called prospective consolidation, and that’s when members of the public can see what a bill will look like when its provisions come into force. I actually think that’s quite a valuable tool for the public to have. That section’s been repealed.

The second thing I’d like to speak about at the select committee is the repeal of Part 4 of the Legislation Act, which pre-empts the coming into law or the passage into law of the Regulatory Standards Bill. While I can understand the desire to want to minimise administrative difficulties if you believe another law is going to come into place, I do just want to make sure that we’ve thought through the things that that part covers and protects that we may want to continue protecting.

The final thing that I’d like to have a conversation at select committee about is exemptions. I did want to look at the extension of exemptions, but also the rationale in terms of for what reason those extensions will be permitted.

I commend this bill to the House. I’m absolutely delighted that we’ll get a chance to talk more about secondary legislation in due course.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to speak on the Legislation Amendment Bill. I want to just preface this by saying that—and also kind of thank the Parliamentary Counsel Office, in particular for the work they are currently doing on the legislation website, which is fantastic. We managed to have a preview of what it looks like. I am particularly excited by the way they’re able to draw on amendments and past amendments, and as a way of being able to cross-reference more easily as a result of that. That partly shapes the foundation of what we’re looking at here in terms of this bill.

I think the other really important element is, as we’re seeing with the update to the legislation website, we’re also seeing the need for us to be able to access secondary legislation in a really easy way. A few of the things that are going to take place, hopefully, as a result of this legislation is, number one, the use of a standardised format when we’re looking at the creation of secondary legislation by various agencies and ministries. There is a lot of secondary legislation to keep track of, and, over time, this will be all brought in and cross-referenced within the legislation website that is being maintained by the Parliamentary Counsel Office, or the PCO. With that, it also, again, means that for those to be active, we’re able to use that legislation website to be able to keep checks on these secondary legislations as well, and, over time, that will be brought in as part of that aggregating tool. That’s a substantial portion of this particular omnibus bill.

With that, again, the Green Party is supporting this bill to select committee. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have concerns on certain areas of this bill. Now, there are things—more—that we would like to tease out as part of the select committee—[Interruption] We did say support to select committee. Part of that is to do with in terms of accessibility. What we have seen in terms of Parliament, and this is something that we have spoken on and questioned as part of the Estimates process, is around accessibility to Parliament and, in this case, accessibility to legislation and secondary legislation by the disabled communities, and how that would be able to enhance as a result of this process. If we’re putting in all of this effort into it to be able to make our legislation easier to use and more user-friendly, and particularly in the context of secondary legislation, it will be really important and I will be really interested to know, through the select committee process, what that would potentially look like broadly, in terms of accessibility and inclusivity, when it comes to this particular legislation.

Now, there are additional things that have been mentioned, because it is an omnibus bill, although the update to the legislation website and the changes to the way that we keep track of and also publish secondary legislation is hugely exciting—and the Attorney-General knows how excited I am about that particular component. The other components of this, particularly in terms of supporting—oh, and what I didn’t mention is by having the ability to keep track of secondary legislation, it will also, hopefully, improve the function and improve the work of the Regulations Review Committee here in Parliament as well, which is something that is also incredibly exciting.

In saying that, there are other elements of this bill that deserve attention, particularly in the context of the select committee process, and the previous speaker has already spoken on, in terms of the repeal of Part 4 of the Legislation Act 2019. I think it is a concern that while we are still in the process—and this is something that I haven’t seen that takes place in other bills, where one particular bill anticipates the passing or anticipates the enactment of another bill that is still currently going through the House and is being repealed as a result of that and, therefore, in some ways creates an interesting little limbo where it’s uncertain as to the exact nature of the repealed clause and how that would be assessed as part of the select committee. So that’s just one example.

Overall, the Green Party’s supporting this to select committee, and we would love to hear more about it as part of that process.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak on the Legislation Amendment Bill. Obviously, in ACT, we’re not big on more laws and regulations, but this is a very, very sensible bill which actually does ensure that the New Zealand public actually has complete visibility over the laws and regulations that we pass in this place. I think, actually, most people will be quite surprised to know that there isn’t a single repository of secondary legislation where, in this day and age, you can actually just go to look up what might affect you and actually have it at your fingertip.

This is a very sensible bill. It’s actually making a very sensible change. I know it’s taken some time, and I understand the complexities of why it’s taken a while to get to this point. But we’re going to wholeheartedly support this, because it is very important that in our democracy, we actually do have transparency around particularly secondary legislation. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is about making legislation and regulations more accessible to New Zealanders. That is a great attitude. That is what Government should be all about: trying to help New Zealanders to understand the laws which govern them. It’s common sense, it’s democratic, it’s efficient, and it’s effective. We often say that ignorance of the law is no excuse, but when we hide the law, that makes it very, very difficult for people to understand it. So if we acknowledge that, then that means that it is our responsibility to make that law more accessible, and that is what this is all about. It’s an obligation on lawmakers, if you like, to make sure that the law is available in plain language and with a plain, easy way to get hold of it. This legislation sets clear requirements on the Parliamentary Counsel Office and agencies to deliver on that attitude and those objectives, and I’m delighted to commend the Legislation Amendment Bill to the House.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Mr Speaker.

I think the next speaker is actually supposed to be from the National Party, on my schedule.

Have I got the call, Mr Speaker? Thank you very much. It gives me great pleasure to rise on behalf of the National Party and speak in favour of the Legislation Amendment Bill. As has been outlined by previous speakers on this, this is a single broad policy to promote high-quality legislation for New Zealand that’s easy to find, use, and understand, which I can’t believe that, in 2025, we haven’t got. But we’ve got a Minister in charge, in the Hon Judith Collins, who’s sorting it out and getting it fixed. So it gives me great pleasure to commend the bill to the House.

Kia orana, Mr Speaker. What an appalling speech that Tom Rutherford barely remembered to stand up for. Here’s the funny thing about this bill—

Hon Scott Simpson: Put your 1970s tie back on.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: —that no one—I’d rather have a ’70s tie than ’70s values, Mr Simpson. The funny thing about the Legislation Amendment Bill is that it repeals Part 4 of the Legislation Act 2019. I just wanted to talk a little bit about the history of this Act. The Legislation Act is 100 percent about regulatory quality. It is about legislation and secondary legislation and getting it right. It was worked on under the National Party. It’s a bipartisan piece of legislation. It was introduced on 20 June 2017, went to the Justice Committee in June 2018, the committee of the whole House in 2019, and it got Royal assent a few weeks later, in October 2019. So it took a little bit over two years to pass a top-quality piece of legislation in a bipartisan manner that was about legislative quality.

One of the things that this bill does is it repeals Part 4 of the Legislation Act. Do you know what Part 4 is about? It is about accountability to this House for legislative quality. It is being repealed because of the shocking piece of legislation that is being shoved through this House at speed, called the Regulatory Standards Bill. The fact of the matter is that much of what is done in that bill—the good bits of that bill, the bits that actually have some merit—is already in the Legislation Act that we passed around this House with a consensus.

The fact of the matter is that if you look at section 103 of the Act, that is now being repealed by this piece of legislation, “Chief executives must prepare and publish disclosure statements for Government-initiated legislation”. Well, that’s not a million miles from some of the suggestions in the Regulatory Standards Bill. Then, if you go on a bit further, there’s a whole lot of stuff around regulatory disclosure statements, and then “Chief executives must act independently and include statement of responsibility”. That is pretty much exactly clause 23 of the Regulatory Standards Bill, which requires consistency, accountability statements.

A whole lot of stuff that’s going on that David Seymour’s waving his arms about, saying, “We must do this.”—wake up! We’ve done it already. You just want to have a little political win, have your ideological, right-wing, libertarian version of regulatory quality, when what we did over many years in this House—and this bill was considered also and shepherded by the Regulations Review Committee, and I remember working on it there, very carefully, diligently, with fantastic advice from the clerks’ counsel. Yet here we are now, doing away with a system, which also, by the way, had a framework for the responsible Minister—that is to say, the Minister responsible for regulatory stewardship—and the Attorney-General issuing guidance as to what good regulatory quality was. So we’ve got a system here that is well-thought-out and—this is the real point—is politically neutral, isn’t imbued with neoliberal principles, isn’t embarrassing every other party in the House other than the ACT Party, but, because of the coalition agreement, we’re doing away with it.

Now, that’s only one small part of this bill. The fact of the matter is that we know that the coalition parties and the National Party and Christopher Luxon have acceded to the demands of the ACT Party in this, so the Regulatory Standards Bill will pass, and this Part 4 of the Act—a very good part of the Act that, incidentally, hasn’t yet come into force—will become a dead letter, so it’s no use. It’s sitting in this bill after that, but it may well come back, because we intend to repeal the Regulatory Standards Bill.

The rest of this piece of legislation is OK—is OK. It’ll do. It’s a tidy-up. It modernises the legislative framework, and that’s a good thing. But Part 4, there was a solution there already, and now you’re getting rid of it. Kia ora.

It is a pleasure to rise and support this Legislation Amendment Bill in the first reading. I think what’s important is that this actually goes back to 2014, based on two inquiries: one is the Regulations Review Committee’s inquiry into the oversight of disallowable instruments that are not legislative instruments, and the Productivity Commission’s report on regulatory institutions and practices. Both of those inquiries recommended improving accessibility of New Zealand’s secondary legislation by establishing a single website or register from which it can be accessed. I completely feel in tune with that comment, because every time that I talk to people, especially ethnic communities, who want to learn more about bills and regulations, they don’t actually have one place that they can go to find all that information.

I think what this bill will achieve is that in time, all of the legislation, secondary legislation, everything related to the changes that we make in Parliament, will be available in that one place, and technology makes it happen. I would like to say, I commend this great bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s an honour to take a call on—well, I haven’t actually taken a call on a Government bill that we’ve supported in a while, so I’m pleased to be able to do that tonight. I also want to acknowledge the Minister for bringing the bill, and recall our time together on the Regulations Review Committee when she was the chair—so a full-circle moment here, to be in the House when this piece of legislation, the Legislation Amendment Bill, has been brought to the House.

As my colleagues have eloquently said, Labour will be supporting this bill, because it is a practical bill and it does provide greater access to legislation. I think probably, looking through it, the main big change will be the single point of access that it will allow to secondary legislation. Now, I think that secondary legislation is not something that many New Zealanders probably spend a lot of time thinking about, unless it directly affects their lives. But the point of the work that we do is to try and make sure that when either primary legislation or secondary legislation has an impact on people’s lives, they have access to that. It shouldn’t be something which is hidden away and it shouldn’t be something which is difficult to find, and so I think, in addition to the single point of access, the publication requirements that this bill introduces will also be of great use moving forward.

I also wanted to say, at this stage, that this looks very much into the work of the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO). We get to work with the Parliamentary Counsel Office every single week in Parliament, and they do an exceptional job. They’re exceptionally talented lawyers, who probably could make a lot more money doing other work but choose to spend their time doing what can sometimes be extremely detailed work—some may consider it tedious, but I’m sure they don’t—making sure that the legislation that we put before this House is of the highest quality. They do an exceptional job of that. They work with parties around the House and select committees, but also, of course, with the Ministers who are in Government, to make sure that the legislation is of very high quality. I want to commend them for the work that they do.

I do echo the concerns that my colleague Duncan Webb made around repealing Part 4 of the Legislation Act and around the almost preparation that the Government is doing for the Regulatory Standards Bill. That is of course legislation that we don’t support and, in fact, purports to do a somewhat similar job to this bill but, actually, as we’ve seen with a lot of those debates, goes a lot further than that. I think, to also agree with what Dr Duncan Webb has said, this particular bill took a long period of time because sometimes legislation does take a long period of time, and especially legislation which is genuinely bipartisan and genuinely seeks to solve a real problem that members across the House can agree exists and that we know that we can do better around moving forward. So I do echo the concerns that Dr Duncan Webb stated around the Regulatory Standards Bill.

But I think, overall, we’re really pleased to see this come to the House. It’s really pleasing to see work that’s gone on, especially with very dedicated committees like the Regulations Review Committee, which probably doesn’t get enough attention in this House. They often meet when the House is sitting, unless those people make complaints, the Regulations Review Committee—who are a small group of people, from my experience. You don’t actually get to see the work that they do, but they do do really important work in this House.

I think that this particular bill will enable the PCO, Regulations Review, and the public to better understand the role of secondary legislation, so it is something that I’m very pleased to support, and, obviously, we’re just keen to see, looking through all of the details of it—and there is a significant amount of information that’s been released today as well, to support that. We will look through this. We will see if there’s any further improvement that can be made, but I want to commend the work that’s been done over successive Governments to get the bill to this particular state. I’m pleased to be able to make a tiny contribution to this and commend this bill to the House.

When I have been meeting recently with a number of disability groups in our community, the biggest theme I’ve heard from them isn’t about plain language or comprehension; it’s been about ease of access, and this bill, the Legislation Amendment Bill, bringing primary and secondary legislation to one place, improves accessibility. I commend it to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Legislation Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

Instruction to Justice Committee