Regulatory Systems (Primary Industries) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Regulatory Systems (Primary Industries) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon TODD McCLAY: I move, That the Regulatory Systems (Primary Industries) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

I’m pleased to bring the bill back to the House today, and, as I said in the first reading, this is all about good regulatory practice and reducing red tape and unnecessary compliance. Let me briefly remind the House of what’s in the bill, and then I’d like to touch on some of the changes that have been recommended by the Primary Production Committee.

The bill as introduced amends 14 Acts and repeals five, which are all administered by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). Changes range from fixing typos and small areas that have crept into legislation over years. I recall an energetic discussion at first reading over the misplaced bracket in the National Animal Identification and Tracing Act. It goes on to minor policy shifts that will make the regulatory systems work more efficiently.

There are four key themes to the amendments that the bill makes. These are reducing administrative burden and cutting red tape—for example, allowing for renewals of registration under the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act, rather than requiring people to submit a whole new application when their registration expires. The second is clarifying and updating the statute book to better reflect the policy intent—for example, in the Animal Welfare Act, adding that MPI can take any history of past breaches of export conditions into account when considering an application for an animal welfare export certificate. Thirdly, addressing errors, gaps, and inconsistencies within and between different pieces of legislation—and I mentioned the misplaced bracket earlier. Finally, ensuring that the regulatory systems remain up to date—for example, changing overly specific consultation methods to become a list of options so that the most appropriate method can be chosen to fit the circumstances. This reflects the changing way that people receive information, especially through the internet.

I’d like to acknowledge the Primary Production Committee for its work on this bill. I’d also like to thank the Business Committee for its indulgence in agreeing for me to recommend two rounds of additional amendments to be added to the bill. The Primary Production Committee worked through these very well, with the support of officials, and I’d like to recognise their hard work and understanding.

These additional amendments were proposed because of the kinds of changes that could be suitable for the Regulatory Systems (Primary Industries) Amendment Bill being identified all the time. I wanted to make the most of the opportunity this bill presented to fix errors, reduce red tape, and, of course, improve the quality of regulation. Let me give an example of an additional amendment added during the select committee phase. Under the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Act, the Horticulture Export Authority charges fees for monitoring horticultural exports. In some circumstances, it would be appropriate for the Authority to provide an exemption, waiver, or refund of these fees if a fee-payer has not been able to use the Authority’s services because of an adverse event, as an example. This is what happened following Cyclone Gabrielle. The authority wanted to refund those fee-payers who had not been able to export any product that year and had been unable to use the authority’s services—the Act doesn’t allow for that. So we’re making that change to provide the flexibility that’s needed.

One other example of this is quite a technical one—when setting a levy under the Commodity Levies Act, an industry body will hold a weighted referendum where the vote is counted by the amount of the commodity produced or the amount of land under production or some other appropriate criteria dependent upon the commodity in question. To calculate that amount, the Act says that the industry must use the previous 12 months before the referendum was held. This doesn’t always line up with the seasons or industries where it would make more sense to pick a date and say, “All animals owned as of this date.”, as an example. So the bill will amend the Commodity Levies Act to provide more flexibility in how a weighted referendum is calculated, so that it is the most appropriate method for each industry.

Now, in the consideration of the bill, the Primary Production Committee added three Acts to it. So for those who might be keeping count, it now amends 17 Acts and repeals five. I’ve talked about the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Act already, and I’d like to turn now to the two other Acts added: the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Act and the Organic Products and Production Act. Given that these are fairly recent pieces of legislation, members may wonder why there was a need for changes to them. These two Acts were still before the House at the time this bill was being drafted, and because they were adapted from existing legislation—for instance, parts of the Organic Products and Production Act were adapted from the Animal Products Act—they contain some of the same issues. So all the changes to these two Acts replicate existing amendments already in the bill; they’re just applying them in different legislation. This will improve consistency across legislation—it means that there won’t be different regulatory regimes with different requirements for the same thing.

During the select committee process, some submitters raised points of concern with some amendments. For example, there was a proposed change to the National Animal Identification and Tracing Act that would have enabled information to be shared more easily with police in the case of stolen livestock or in emergencies. However, submitters were concerned that this would weaken privacy protection in the Act and allow for farmers’ personal information to be used inappropriately. That amendment has come out of the bill. The Ministry for Primary Industries will continue to work on improving information sharing, while maintaining privacy protections separately. Again, I’d like to acknowledge the Primary Production Committee for their work on this bill and thank those who took the time to make submissions on the bill or to be heard in person. This bill is going to reduce red tape and improve regulatory quality, and it backs our farmers and our food producers by helping to simplify and get costs down. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased to rise in support of this piece of legislation. Just want to acknowledge the Minister of Agriculture, who has just resumed his seat, or just finished speaking, and I want to acknowledge the members of the Primary Production Committee, who worked on this piece of legislation. I think I refer to these regulatory systems amendment bills as somewhat more of housekeeping-type bills, where a general look is done across the system and different things are picked up—for example, minor errors, duplications, gaps, inconsistencies, and perhaps something that was once put in place that is no longer relevant in more modern times.

The bill was referred to our select committee on 27 March. We only had a few submitters, but none the less they were very important and valuable submissions for us to have. The select committee did make some changes to this legislation, and, well, there’s heaps and heaps of lots of little bits and pieces of legislation, so I’ll just touch on a couple of those changes that have been made, one of them being—for example—just making a change to clause 34. Currently, laboratories that are exporting samples of animal material or product overseas for tests that can’t be performed in New Zealand have to meet relevant export requirements. This is definitely deemed unnecessary, because, actually, these products aren’t being exported for trade or any sort of reward. So one of the changes has been to make an exemption on goods such as this that are just being sent overseas for testing.

One of the other things that I wanted to point out, and the Minister also mentioned this, was particular to the setting of fees or waiving of fees for those involved in hort export. The Minister, he has mentioned it too, but I do think it’s really important that we’ve made this change to the legislation, particularly in light of extreme weather events such as what we saw with Cyclone Gabrielle, where people were unable to export their goods and would have—prior to something like this being set in place—had to still pay their fees. So what this does is allow for a waiver or an exemption, and I think that’s only right and it is only fair.

One of the other things that the select committee looked at was—well, one of the changes was proposed to some of the wording with regard to the milk price panel. The proposal was to amend new section 150E(2C), inserted by clause 132A, to “one vacancy” rather than “any vacancy”. Fonterra’s submission opposed this, and upon hearing their argument, whereby they discussed the members that are on that milk price panel—and they are independent—they felt that even if there was more than one vacancy on that panel, there would still be enough members remaining to be able to continue with the appropriate duties of that panel. They were also concerned that if we continued with the original proposal in this piece of legislation, they wouldn’t be able to carry out their functions for a certain period of time should there be a vacancy due to unforeseen circumstances, and it would actually be quite dire because it could force the base milk price calculation process to come to an absolute halt, which would undermine the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act’s base milk price oversight regime. We certainly don’t want to see something like that happen.

The other thing that we looked at and considered—and the Minister also mentioned this in his contribution—was around the National Animal Identification and Tracing Act 2012, or, as we referred to it, NAIT. Part of that was to allow for the sharing of information in certain situations, and it was, as the Minister alluded to, to deal with things such as issues around, perhaps, stealing of livestock or what have you. Listening to the submissions on this, it was quite interesting. There was some genuine anxiety out there on what that information could be potentially used for—what if it got into the wrong hands, etc. And so the ministry proposed to delete this provision to enable further work separate to the bill to be able to address the submitters’ concerns around the scope of the information sharing. So as a select committee we were quite happy and agreed to that position that the officials took.

One of the final things that I just thought I would mention is around the Walking Access Act 2008, and this is pretty much just modernising that. The Act established the New Zealand Walking Access Commission, but times have changed, and it now has a board role relating to access, and so it’s not limited to just walking. It’s since rebranded itself as the Outdoor Access Commission, and the Minister proposed amending the Act to reflect this change. We also recommended changing the name of the Act to the “Outdoor Access Act”, which makes perfect sense. So, without further ado, I commend this bill to the House.

I thought I might be off the hook tonight with one minute to go.

Hon Rachel Brooking: One more minute, Jo!

STEVE ABEL: That was a fantastic, Jo, and I appreciate it.

It’s been pretty clearly outlined that this is a one of those sort of omnibus bills that makes a lot of inconsequential changes to pieces of legislation to make them more functional; clarifies and updates statutory provisions to give effect to the purpose of various Acts and their provisions; addresses regulatory duplication, gaps, errors, and inconsistencies within—

Suze Redmayne: Typos.

STEVE ABEL: —and between different pieces of legislation—it’s all right, guys, we’ll get out of here about 5 past—ensures the regulatory systems remain up to date and relevant; and reduces administrative burden for regulators and regulated parties. The bill is a vehicle for smaller regulatory fixes to be made in a timely and cost-effective way. By their nature, regulatory systems bills are designed to make many necessary and varied amendments across the sector and in multiple Acts, as long as there is broad support for them.

Now, one thing that I am struck by is it just happens to be, by dint of circumstance and history, that this bill is repealing the Forests (West Coast Accord) Act 2000. In terms of the impact of that, I will be asking the Minister of Agriculture to clarify that in the committee stage. But I have a particular association with that piece of legislation. For those who don’t remember, the West Coast Accord—originally 1986, I believe; perhaps it was 1987—was an agreement between foresters on the West Coast and the conservation movement to ensure the protection of a certain segment of forests while permitting the logging of other sections of native forest on the West Coast. Now, that was seen to be a necessary deal, if you like, made by conservationists to ensure that some of the finest lowland remaining native rainforests were not logged.

As time went by, and through the 1990s, it became clear that given we only had 7 percent of our lowland rainforest left, the loss of any of those exceptional remaining West Coast forests was a significant biodiversity loss, a significant impact on conservation, and a risk to the survival of a number of species but also to some of the most extraordinary remnant forests, such as Ōkārito, the podocarp forests that are an example of what used to occur throughout the entire country, which is these amazing podocarp forests that went from mountain to the sea. And we all know how spectacular that West Coast landscape is, but the loss of that connected forest ecosystem was a big loss for the natural heritage of our nation.

I happened to be part of the campaign in the 1990s to see those forests, allocated for logging in the West Coast Accord, returned to protection. That campaign in the 1990s—which was hard fought and where some of us ended up getting arrested for various reasons: blockading logging roads or locking ourselves to helicopters—led to the change of Government in 1999 to the Clark Labour Government, which was in part through a coalition agreement with the then Green Party that had first entered Parliament as the Green Party in 1999. It led to the creation of the Forests (West Coast Accord) Act 2000, which had the effect of gazetting 137,000 hectares of native forest as conservation estate. That was the effect of that legislation, and it became probably the most significant gazetting of very high value biodiversity forest that has occurred since that time. Nothing is comparable, and it meant an end to the logging of native forests by the State on Crown land.

Whereas other countries—including our nearest neighbours, Australia—are still logging magnificent ancient rainforests in the likes of Tasmania, New Zealand took the very wise decision, 25 years ago now, to stop logging our native forests on Crown land, and that is an example of where we have done the right thing in terms of conservation. I am very keen to understand what the consequences of the repeal of that legislation are and how it works in terms of the relevance of our protection of those forests in an ongoing manner. So I intend to be asking those questions of the Minister in the committee of the whole House. For the meantime, that’s me for the night. Thank you very much.

The time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House will resume at 2 p.m. tomorrow. Good night.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.