Chauvel Charles: Regulatory Improvement Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Regulatory Improvement Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 30 March 2010. Volume:661;Page:10155. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 The bill before us implements a number of minor tweaks to nine pieces of legislation. In doing so it makes our regulatory environment one that imposes fewer compliance burdens on New Zealand business. Labour supports the bill because we believe that strong business is in the interests of New Zealand and that is the belief that drove Labour to introduce the original legislation in 2008 when we were in Government. 
The bill as we have heard from the previous Minister of Commerce Lianne Dalziel is a response to the opinions of businesses on things that would make the regulatory environment easier for them to operate in. These views were communicated through a very wide-ranging consultation process conducted by the previous Minister and her officials which was known as the Quality Regulation Review. Over 200 businesses were consulted and the changes to the nine Acts that this bill will affect are the result of that consultation process. 
A wide range of Acts is affected: the Companies Act 1993 the Conservation Act 1987 the Designs Act 1953 the Fisheries Act 1996 the Gas Act 1992 the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (Restructuring) Act 1995 the Reserves Act 1997 and the Weights and Measures Act 1987. That is a good reminder of just how widely the statute book ranges over the interests of business and of how it can impose compliance costs on them. The changes that are proposed to each of those Acts are small and relatively uncontroversial I think but as expressed to Lianne Dalziel and her officials during the Quality Regulation Review consultation process they are important because they are what businesses want. The changes are small but important changes in order to allow the largely small and medium sized enterprises that were consulted to enjoy a more efficient regulatory environment that is fair to them and easier for them to do business in. 
I will give just a couple of examples of the sorts of minor changes in the bill that will have this effect. There is currently an inconsistency between the Companies Act 1993 and the Financial Reporting Act of the same year and this inconsistency imposes a cost on business that is completely unnecessary. Under the Financial Reporting Act a company with overseas ownership may not be required to file audited financial statements but under the Companies Act there is still an obligation in that situation for the company to appoint an auditor. That is obviously a discrepancy and one that Parliament should reflect on given that it results from two Acts that this House passed in exactly the same year. It is a systems issue that such an inconsistency could arise in our procedures and could result in the sorts of unnecessary additional costs that are imposed upon business. Obviously those costs are then passed on to the consumer and create inefficiencies and productivity glitches. So the minor changes to the Companies Act proposed in the bill and confirmed by the committee will fix this situation. They will basically put affected companies in the same position as the majority of other companies which essentially can choose whether to appoint an auditor. 
There are a couple of other examples of sensible changes in the bill. They can be found in the amendments to the Designs Act the Gas Act and the Weights and Measures Act. As far as the Designs Act—legislation dating from 1953—is concerned there is provision for the restoration of lapsed copyright in a registered design in cases where there has simply been a failure to pay the renewal fee or fill in the correct forms thus causing the lapse in the right to use the design. Clearly it is disproportionate for a company or an organisation to lose valuable intellectual property in a design simply because of a technical failure to pay a fee or register a form. This legislation will correct that area of the law; again this is a small change but one that will be valuable to business. 
The Gas Act 1992 will be amended to clarify that any regulations recommended by the Gas Industry Co. Ltd under Part 4A of the Act will cover gas to be used as a feedstock. That will clear up a previous area of unnecessary uncertainty. 
The Weights and Measures Act 1987 will be amended to provide that the control of LPG gas should occur only under the Gas Act 1992 and not also under the Weights and Measures Act. Again that is an example of how in legislating less than precisely and carefully this House can impose burdens under more than one piece of legislation which business then needs to comply with. We are now correcting that but there must be thousands of other examples of this sort of problem in the statute book where we impose a burden on those who are trying to make a living and contribute to our prosperity and we should take seriously the fixing of such problems. In that regard I recall the comments made by Lianne Dalziel in her speech. There is a real case for this exercise to be an annual one in order to deal with the sorts of reforms that fall midway between Statutes Amendment bills which come up regularly on a omnibus basis and the full substantive measures that clearly would not be justified in terms of the House’s time to deal with these sorts of glitches. 
The changes that I have briefly referred to by way of example are minor but provide much-needed certainty. They are just a few examples of the sorts of practical effective changes that Lianne Dalziel made sure were included in the bill after many months of talking to businesses about the need for amending legislation and minor reform. The New Zealand business community and the New Zealand public deserve an honest representation of what this reform is about and it is cheering to have heard Mr Finlayson in his introductory words give due credit to Lianne Dalziel for bringing this legislation before Parliament. It is appropriate legislation. 
I will deal though with one comment made by the previous speaker Sam Lotu-Iiga when he referred to a decline in exports. In an earlier contribution on the dairy industry restructuring legislation John Boscawen referred to a breakfast that he and I were at earlier with European members of Parliament in relation to climate change. One of the potential problems identified in that discussion was the potential for export barriers to be raised by certain trading blocs as a result of the possibility of a perception arising in those different markets that others were not taking the issue of climate change seriously. Again this provides an important reminder that all policy issues are interlinked and we cannot simply assume that an action taken in one area will have positive action in another. We have to make sure that there is joined-up policy. This bill is just a small example of that. 
As I have said this is timely legislation; it is useful legislation. Although there is absolutely no justification for progressing the bill under urgency through its final stages Labour will support its passage because we originated the measure and because it is good law.