Regulatory Systems (Occupational Regulation) Amendment Bill, Regulatory Systems (Tribunals) Amendment Bill, Regulatory Systems (Courts) Amendment Bill

We were up to call No. 4—a National Party call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Yes, I would like to add my contribution to these bills that we have before us—the regulatory systems courts, tribunals, and occupational regulation amendment bills—and we’re still on the first readings as it was interrupted recently.

I reflected as I was preparing my thoughts to convey right now that over the summer, we all went to our family and friends at different barbecues, and they were talking about how they feel and how they feel the country’s going, and, of course, with me being a member of Parliament, this conversation was even more prominent. It’s so interesting how many people I spoke to that are involved in businesses where they just shared with me how difficult it is having so many burdensome regulations just weighing them down and preventing them from getting to that next step where they just want to continue and go on and just build their business, do what they need to do, and provide the services that they love to provide.

What I’m looking forward to with these various variegated bills are the amendments that we’re going to make in this one piece of legislation. Essentially, we’re going to be improving the effectiveness and the efficiency of a number of areas when it comes to regulation, and we’re going to the Justice Committee—and I’m so glad to have my colleagues on the committee sitting here around me as well; a wonderful team, an excellent team, and very hard working, as well. I look forward to hearing and reading and learning more about two of the bills. As we’ve just learnt, one of them is going to go to the Education and Workforce Committee.

With that, I’ll leave it at that. I can’t wait to listen to more, and I commend these bills to the House.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in favour of the Regulatory Systems (Occupational Regulation) Amendment Bill, the Regulatory Systems (Tribunals) Amendment Bill, and the Regulatory Systems (Courts) Amendment Bill.

As has been stated in this House, there are 63 substantive amendments for over 24 pieces of legislation, so trying to summarise all of these points into one summation in the few minutes I have would be difficult. I think that the strong theme—and it has been mentioned—is about the strengthening of the quality of our regulation, improving court timeliness, and enhancing our access to the judicial system.

I think, in summary—[Member trips in Chamber]—we talked, generally, in the occupational regulation about conveyancing regimes—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Oh, just a moment. We’ll just check and make sure—

Dr Vanessa Weenink: I’m fine, Madam Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: OK, thank you. Carry on.

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: Sorry, Madam Speaker. The occupational regulation is about conveyancing regimes, the real estate regimes, and even the Prostitution Reform Act. Again, within the tribunals legislation, it’s the access to justice, simplifying the appointment process for tribunals, and resolving inconsistencies through this process. Finally, within the court systems, we are looking at efficiencies and operational impact to the courts.

Collectively, we are talking in this legislation about improving efficiencies and about creating some better outcomes for the public, and when we talk about anything to do with improving access to justice, I think it is an important priority for this House. Generally, if we are going to get things moving as an economy, we also have to get things moving in all of our system processes, and this is an important piece of legislation that will look at all of the things that slow us down and all of the things where we can create better outcomes for the public, particularly when we’re talking about access to regulations and access to justice, and the timeliness of court access is of course a key factor in this discussion.

We learnt some things during the period of COVID, and this legislation will also look at making permanent some of the measures we’ve put in place, proving that we do learn as we go along and we make opportunities to put things in place that make things better. Within the court system, whether it’s criminal, civil, employment, family, or even the coronial court, we know there is a great deal of efficiency we can achieve, and this substantive piece of work will ensure that all of these aspects are being addressed. Therefore, I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. E mihi ana ki a koutou i tēnei pō. Ka tū ake au hei māngai mō te rohe o Tāmaki Makaurau me Te Pāti Māori ki te whakamana i ngā āhuatanga o te Tiriti o Waitangi, ā, ki te whakahē i tēnei pire.

[Greetings to us of the House. I greet you this night. I stand as a representative for the Auckland region and the Māori Party to honour the components of the Treaty of Waitangi and to oppose this bill.]

It’s great to be back in the House for my first week, and what bills to stand and kōrero to on behalf of Te Pāti Māori. We stand in staunch opposition to the Regulatory Systems (Courts) Amendment Bill, the Regulatory Systems (Tribunals) Amendment Bill, and the Regulatory Systems (Occupational Regulation) Amendment Bill. While the Government frames this as a technical and procedural package of so-called non-contentious bills, we know that hiding within this legislation is a calculated political decision, one that directly undermines Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the education required to uphold its principles.

The removal of sanctions for failing to complete a compulsory professional development course, and specifically those addressing Te Tiriti o Waitangi, is nothing short of a politically motivated act. We know why this is happening. Certain sectors—particularly real estate agents—have resisted engaging in these essential training programmes. Rather than standing firm and requiring professionals to deepen their understanding of Te Tiriti and its relevance to their industries, this Government has chosen to reward ignorance. It is the type of ignorance being enabled that results in only 13 percent of New Zealanders having read the Māori text of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, according to a 2023 Horizon Research poll.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi is not optional. It is not a box to be ticked, nor an inconvenience to be negotiated away. It is the foundation of our nation’s constitutional framework, and any erosion in education around it is a direct attack on the principles of mana ōrite: true partnership and equity between tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti.

Te Pāti Māori stands on the kaupapa of mana motuhake. We oppose this bill because it strips away yet another mechanism that upholds mana and our Māori rights, and ensures that those in positions of power and influence are held accountable to our foundational document. We will not allow this Government to quietly undermine Te Tiriti while pretending that this is merely a tidy up of regulations. We see this for what it is.

Ka tū tahi mātou, ka tū pakari mātou ki te tiaki i te mana motuhake o tō tātou Tiriti. Huri noa i te Whare, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[We will stand together; we will stand strong to support the distinctive authority of our Treaty. All across the House, thanks and greetings to us all.]

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. There are three simple changes with the regulatory systems courts, tribunals, and occupational regulation amendment bills. These bills, as my colleague Rima Nakhle said earlier, will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the courts and tribunals, occupational regulation, and criminal law, particularly focusing on anti - money-laundering and countering the financing of terrorism.

I wanted to talk on one point on each of the three bills. Firstly, the Regulatory Systems (Courts) Amendment Bill will streamline court processes, reducing delays and improving the overall efficiency of the judicial system; the Regulatory Systems (Tribunals) Amendment Bill will remove barriers to accessing justice, making it easier for individuals to bring their cases before tribunals; and the Regulatory Systems (Occupational Regulation) Amendment Bill will strengthen the ability of occupational regulators to protect consumers, ensuring their services are performed with reasonable care and skill.

I’m looking forward, as a member of the Justice Committee, to considering two out of these three bills, and I commend them to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I am rising to speak about legislation that’s actually three bills, for the general public. They’ve been clustered together because they’re relatively non-controversial. One improves our law courts; another, our tribunals; and another, the regulations that govern our occupations.

The one with the law courts is one which looks at issues around access to information. It does things like look at Family Court Associates. We’ve had a problem—and a lot of ordinary people will have been engaged in a Family Court proceeding—of a simple issue of delay. By bringing in Family Court Associates, we’ve been able to make sure that we have enough people to do that work and that they’re doing the work that’s appropriate. This allows people like a Family Court Associate to make a decision about something that might affect an ordinary person, like a permanent parenting order. Before that, that had to go to a judge, but now it can come to a Family Court Associate.

I think that it’s also interesting in terms of the Coroners Act, because it allows our coroners to do some things which I would have thought they could already do. It really makes sure that they can close a file that it’s appropriate for them to close without going through it in detail which is inappropriate in circumstances—so if there is someone who has died and they know why that person has died and there’s no suspicious circumstances or they haven’t taken their own life, then in those circumstances, they can close a file.

It’s a process, I think, that demonstrates what these bills do well. They make a whole lot of little changes, and I would bore the New Zealand public if I went through all of them, but they really sweep up a whole lot of changes that really oil the wheels of our system.

Another one that I thought was interesting was the issue over bail for family violence, and making sure that the appropriate decisions are going to the right people with regard to that. The Employment Court was something that I was involved with for a long time, and I always thought that it would be able to get compensation for remuneration. Someone has, clearly, had a look at that situation and decided that it’s not as clear as it should be that it can do that, and they’ve added that into the law so that it now can award compensation for remuneration. It can also get wage and time records. These are the kinds of things that just make our system much more reliable and make it more understandable and fair to the people involved.

There is a bill on tribunals, and one of the areas that that looks at is private security guards and investigators. It lets those people who are involved in the complaints and prosecutions unit actually get the documentation that is relevant to the investigation they’re doing, and if somebody doesn’t provide the information they need to do their job—which is in the public interest—then the person who doesn’t provide that can be fined $10,000 if they’re an individual, or $20,000 if they refuse to provide and they’re a company. It’s just a way of making sure that the right teeth are in the right mouths, really, in that situation.

With regard to the occupational regulation, this is something where there’s a huge amount of little bodies that actually self-regulate. We have people like real estate agents, and they’re one of the groups that are affected by this bill. It makes sure, again, that they’re able to do the right things—and I’m running out of time, so I won’t go through too many more.

I think the last one I’ll just go through is the one about prostitution. It makes sure that people can’t run brothels who have actually been involved in offending, which may not have been in the original Act, but, actually, you can see why you wouldn’t want somebody running a brothel who has been involved and convicted of burglary, robbery, blackmail, or money-laundering. That seems a really obvious change to be made. It clearly got left out of the first piece of legislation, and now it’s in this legislation.

All and all, we’ve gone through and thoroughly looked at this law. Everyone on this side of the House has agreed that this is a law that should be recommended and it should go through. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. These bills are regulatory systems bills that come before the House from time to time. We’re looking to streamline the process for these bills, remove redundant clauses, and make the carrying out of the legislation that these bills cover a lot easier for those that are required to do so. With that, I’ll be really interested to see this legislation when the various select committees report back, and I commend it to the House.

Madam Speaker, thank you, and, as Miles Anderson, the previous contributor, takes his seat, I think I will take his starting point about this streamlining and just give a few more details. The Regulatory Systems (Occupational Regulation) Amendment Bill, Regulatory Systems (Tribunals) Amendment Bill, and Regulatory Systems (Courts) Amendment Bill, as has been said, are those three aspects and are going to different select committees, I hear.

With regard to the first one—the occupational regulation amendment part—it does streamline, as the previous contributor said. In particular, it streamlines the Law Society’s complaints process by allowing discretion in referring complaints and introducing a triage system for handling them, and that sounds like a wise thing to do. It updates the real estate licensing regulations, including extending and renewing the period for expired licences, and renaming the real estate agents authority, which also sounds relatively straightforward, and it is strengthening consumer protections by clarifying those legal provisions related to professional misconduct. Those are three examples that you can find, or the select committee will traverse during its work, in relation to the occupational regulations.

Also in that particular amendment is the clarification of disqualifying criminal offences, and I think that someone said earlier that a good example of it is amending the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 to ensure that individuals convicted of a violent offence, a serious offence, or a sexual offence are ineligible for brothel operator certificates. The legislation updates references to the relevant offences in the Crimes Act and the Misuse of Drugs Act to maintain the original policy intent.

There is also a reduction of regulatory burdens and redundant provisions, as was also mentioned by the previous contributor. The legislation removes outdated or inconsistent provisions across those multiple Acts—which is a good idea—and adjusts the level of regulation to better match risk levels. It is reducing unnecessary compliance costs for those professionals and it introduces a much more flexible licensing system for real estate agents, which would allow them to renew licences within 12 months of expiry—so, not necessarily straight away—without a full reapplication.

If we turn our mind to the tribunals part of it, improving access to justice and tribunal efficiency is, obviously, the main aim and the impetus behind these changes, and removing the barriers to justice by allowing disputes tribunal referees to order a respondent to repay a filing fee to a successful applicant is merely one example of the suite of things that changes there. There also are some changes to the Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal and the Tenancy Tribunal, and updates to the ACC status of referees, which also, therefore, simplifies that particular appointment process.

What also happens by virtue of these changes is that there is some enhancement of the Private Security Personnel and Private Investigators Act—the PSPPI Act—which clarifies that the PSPPI Act can accept complaints about unlicensed security workers, which is something that we’ve heard about from the industry over the last wee while, and it strengthens the complaints investigation and prosecution unit, as well.

The last one, as alluded to, is the Regulatory Systems (Courts) Amendment Bill. This seeks to, essentially, just increase the court’s timeliness and its efficiency, which is always a good thing. There’s certainly a lot more work that is required in that area to bring that up to scratch, but this is a piece of work that will make a start. It makes procedural improvements to reduce delays in those court processes and it aligns various laws to increase the consistency in how court-related matters are handled throughout.

Without going through the full list of all of the different things that are in this legislation, I recommend it to the House and I look forward to hearing back from the select committees about any things that they find through their process and any recommendations or changes that are made. Thank you.

Thanks for the opportunity to close out this debate, Madam Speaker. Often we hear from the Opposition that they just want us to spend more money, but often being in Government is about taking lots of actions that together enable this country to get back on track, and there are a couple in these bills that I thought I’d touch on. By clarifying the roles and jurisdiction of judicial officers, the legislation ensures that court proceedings are more straightforward and less prone to administrative errors—a positive improvement in the way we spend taxpayers’ money. By making the court system more efficient, the legislation helps to improve access to justice for all New Zealanders.

It’s legislation like this that, while maybe being slightly mundane, does things in the way we spend money to deliver on what this Government promises, which is getting this country back on track. I commend this bill to the House.

OK, so I would advise the House to listen carefully because the voting on this bill is going to work a little differently and we have six votes that we need to take. A party has indicated that they do not wish to vote the same way on the first reading for all three of the associated bills, so I will put the question on each separately.

The question is that the Regulatory Systems (Occupational Regulation) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. Those of that opinion will say Aye, to the contrary No. Then the question is—[Interruption] Are you calling for a party vote?

Hon Member: Yes.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: OK, I’ll allow you this time, but be a little quicker next time, thank you.

The question is, That the Regulatory Systems (Occupational Regulation) Amendment Bill be considered by the Education and Workforce Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

The question is, That the Regulatory Systems (Tribunals) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

The question is, That the Regulatory Systems (Tribunals) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

The question is, That the Regulatory Systems (Courts) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

The question is, That the Regulatory Systems (Courts) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Thank you to the Clerks for your help in working through this.