Legislation Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Legislation Amendment Bill.

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

Hon SIMON WATTS: I move, That the Legislative Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 18 December 2025.

The purpose of the Legislative Amendment bill is to promote high-quality legislation for New Zealand that is easy to find, use, and understand. These goals are not lofty; they are both achievable and, importantly, necessary to New Zealand being a free and democratic nation governed by the rule of law.

The bill seeks to improve access to secondary legislation by amending the Legislation Act 2019. Secondary legislation is law made under a delegation from Parliament. It includes regulations, orders, rules, exemptions, bylaws, notices, and instruments with many different names. This type of law is made by Ministers, departments, occupational regulatory boards, and the like. As the current and former members of this House will be aware, it is much harder than it should be to find a lot of secondary legislation. This lack of access is significant. If we can improve access, we can improve trust in our institutions, promote adherence to the law, and maximise social cohesion. If we don’t take these steps, we carry the risk of costly regulatory failures, retain inefficiency, and also enable misinformation.

There are also big opportunities in the new digital age and with digital services, through the creation of new high-quality data sets of primary and secondary legislation. Legislation is more than words in a book; legislation is data. If this data is available in a reusable format, then there are clear opportunities for the market to pick up the ball and run with it, and with all of that, it contributes to a growing economy. This might include simple things like high-quality chatbot advice, or more efficient Government services to businesses and citizens.

This bill establishes the New Zealand Legislation website, managed by the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO), as a single point of access to legislation and information related to legislation. The website already includes all Acts, bills, Amendment Papers, and secondary legislation that is drafted by the PCO. The big gap is that most secondary legislation is currently drafted and published by a range of departments, Government entities, and even some private agencies. Some is published online on the agency’s website, some is published in the New Zealand Gazette, some in newspapers, and even some secondary legislation is not published at all. There are currently more than 100 different agencies, and that does not include local Government, so obviously this is a problem.

The bill is a significant step in a series of reforms which began back in 2014, off the back of two inquiries: the Regulations Review Committee inquiry into oversight of certain types of secondary legislation, and the Productivity Commission’s report on regulatory institutions and practices. I would like to acknowledge the Hon Christopher Finlayson KC, Attorney-General under the previous National Government, for kickstarting this work to improve access to the law during that time.

The bill will require all secondary legislation that is drafted by agencies to be published on the administrating agency’s website, with very few exceptions. Agencies will also be required to publish information about legislation along with it, such as what Act and provisions and powers it’s making, and which agencies are responsible for it. This will enable a technology solution to identify that published legislation is made available on the New Zealand Legislation website. The technology solution being adopted for this purpose is open source technology originally developed by the Department of Internal Affairs and the National Library. We are taking advantage of existing investment and process to reduce costs, while also, importantly, improving the quality and access to legislation. This will, over time, turn the New Zealand Legislation website into a one-stop shop for legislation. My vision is that the public will only need to visit this one website to find all New Zealand legislation and related information, and I can hear around the House the support for that vision, which is great.

An important feature of this bill, also, is that agencies will continue to be responsible for the publication of legislation that they draft. They’re already doing this, and many are doing a pretty good job at it, but all the bill will require them to do is to adjust their practices to meet standard requirements set under this bill. This approach has enabled us to leverage existing investment and minimise the costs and disruption to agencies and users for implementing the new system. In the future, I anticipate the New Zealand Legislation website’s collection expanding to include local authority bylaws—a current exemption in the new system—with other information relevant to legislation.

We’re also not sitting on our hands, of course, waiting for this legislation to pass: a demonstration of the new New Zealand Legislation website, which includes a host of new features and a trial of the secondary legislation service, is already up and running. Anyone can sign up to experience the new site and provide feedback, and we would welcome that to support the new system. There’s also a new function for the PCO to maintain a record of administrating agencies for legislation on the New Zealand Legislation website. This is a key improvement. There is currently no source of the truth about which agency is responsible for legislation.

The bill also makes a number of improvements to the operation of the Legislation Act 2019. These include changes on how the revisions process works to make it a more effective and efficient tool to bring old legislation up to date. We’re also proposing to refine the PCO’s editorial powers under the bill, which is another key tool for improving the ability of users to find, use, and understand the law.

Finally, the bill proposes to repeal several Acts identified as spent or redundant. This is the first step in a larger programme, under which we are reviewing hundreds of older Acts that may no longer be relevant.

One final note: new research shows that the New Zealand statute book is growing at a rate of around 2.5 percent every year, and this—the weight of the words—is making it near impossible for anyone to truly have a sense of what the law is in New Zealand. This bill is one piece of the solution, by bringing all legislation together, by removing what is redundant, as we have hope of seeing the wood from the trees. This bill is a major step forward in approving access to legislation and I 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 Tuesday, 22 July.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 5.56 p.m.