Hide Rodney: Regulatory Improvement Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hide Rodney: Regulatory Improvement Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 30 March 2010. Volume:661;Page:10180. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon RODNEY HIDE (Minister for Regulatory Reform) 
: 
 I first acknowledge the Hon Lianne Dalziel whose work the Regulatory Improvement Bill is; and I am carrying it on. One of the things that I have noticed as a Minister is how much work that has been set up carries over from one Government to the next. I have been the fortunate beneficiary of Lianne Dalziel’s efforts so I thank the member for that. 
H V Ross Robertson 
: You can’t rest on your laurels though Rodney. 
Hon RODNEY HIDE 
: No. I admit to the honourable Ross Robertson that Lianne Dalziel set a very high bar and that I am working hard to match her efforts in this area. 
The Regulatory Improvement Bill proposes to give effect to the Government’s objective of improving the regulatory framework by reducing the compliance burden on business. As members will appreciate the bill is an omnibus bill introduced under Standing Order 264(a) which has now become Standing Order 259(a). The bill contains a number of small but important amendments to legislation. These amendments were identified as being part of the 2006-07 Quality Regulation Review. This bill is the first of this nature and it is aimed at making it easier to do business in New Zealand by removing red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy—something that all of us in the House agree with. The bill covers a diverse range of policy areas and legislation with the whole aim of improving regulatory frameworks and reducing the compliance burden on business. Overall these changes address regulatory duplications gaps and administrative errors and inconsistencies between different pieces of legislation that collectively create unnecessary compliance costs and uncertainty for business. The bill provides a vehicle to progress these issues in an efficient and effective manner. 
The first change in Part 1 of the bill is to the Companies Act 1993. The purpose of the changes to that Act is to reduce compliance costs and align the obligation of companies to appoint an auditor with changes that were made recently to the Financial Reporting Act 1993. The bill provides that these companies can opt out of the requirement to appoint an auditor through the unanimous resolution of shareholders in the same way that other companies do that are not required to file audited financial statements with the registrar. 
We have also made changes to the Conservation Act 1987 in Part 2 of the bill. The purpose of the changes to the concessions provisions of that Act is to reduce costs and the administrative burden and to ensure that efficient contestable processes can take place. The changes will ensure that the process of obtaining concessions over public conservation land is more efficient. The three changes are: firstly to enable licences to be granted for up to 10 years without mandatory public notification; secondly to increase the maximum term for permits from 5 to 10 years; and thirdly to prevent persons from making applications for concessions when the Minister has already initiated a tender process for the particular activity. These changes will assist a wide range of businesses that operate on public conservation land. But the changes—and this is an important point—are not part of the proposal to allow mining on public conservation land. Mining on public conservation land requires an access arrangement to be approved under the Crown Minerals Act. Concessions are not required for activities covered by the mining permit; a concession is needed only in some cases where there are ancillary activities that are not covered by a mining permit. 
The next legislation to be changed is the Designs Act 1953 in Part 3 of the bill. The purpose of the changes to the Designs Act is to ensure the policy intent of the Act can be more efficiently and effectively achieved with the minimum necessary compliance costs. The bill allows for the restoration of lapsed design registrations and abandoned design applications and Supplementary Order Paper 118 in my name relates to this part. 
Then there are changes to the Fisheries Act 1996 in Part 4 of the bill. The purpose of the amendments here is to create a statutory process whereby commercial fishers who have inadvertently incurred deemed-value debts can have the debt reviewed. The bill provides for the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Fisheries to consider requests from commercial fishers for catch balancing relief provided that set criteria are met. 
We come to the Gas Act 1992 in Part 5 of the bill. I see that the Hon Lianne Dalziel remembers this well. The purpose of the changes to the Gas Act is to create certainty that any regulations and rules that the Gas Industry Co. Ltd can recommend under Part 4A of the Gas Act—and I notice that Lianne Dalziel is nodding her head—will cover gas used as a feedstock. The changes will reduce the uncertainty for the gas industry and ensure that all participants will be treated fairly. 
We then have changes to the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 in Part 6 of the bill. The purpose of the changes is to ensure that the policy intent of the Act can be more efficiently and effectively achieved with the minimum necessary compliance costs. An important point—and I am looking at the Greens in the hope that they will appreciate this—is that the amendments do not affect the regulation of genetically modified organisms. This was an intentional decision as any changes to the regulation of genetically modified organisms are likely to be contentious and would not fit within a bill such as this one. The purpose of a regulatory improvement omnibus bill is to address relatively minor regulatory problems and this bill is not an appropriate means to address such an issue. 
The amendments to the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act cover a range of different matters. The first area of change is intended to improve the functioning of the Environmental Risk Management Authority and the Government is doing four things in that respect. Firstly instead of requiring all applications for the use of hazardous substances to be publicly notified we are giving the authority the discretion to publicly notify only those that it considers are likely to be of significant public interest and to not notify those that are routine. Secondly we are allowing the authority to delegate the relatively minor technical or administrative decisions to its chief executive or other persons. Thirdly we are allowing the authority to deal with changes to individual substance and group standard generic approvals at the same time and to make minor or technical corrections to those group standard approvals on its own motion. Fourthly we are removing the duplication of reporting requirements in the authority’s statement of intent annual report and annual monitoring report. 
The second area of change is intended to reduce the barriers to innovation by getting the balance right between the benefits of public participation and the associated costs and delays. There are two things here. Firstly we are allowing the discretionary public notification of applications for the general use of hazardous substances and secondly we are introducing the rapid assessment of certain classes of applications for low-risk non - genetically modified organisms in line with the Primary Production Committee’s report on its investigation into plant imports while on the other hand allowing the authority to publicly notify applications for non-GMOs that it considers may be of higher risk. 
The third area of change is to improve the operation of test certification for high-risk hazardous substances. There are three things here: firstly removing the all-or-nothing nature of current certification requirements by giving test certifiers the flexibility to issue conditional test certificates for locations where they consider non-compliance to be “minor and technical” while that non-compliance is being remedied; secondly extending the authority’s power to revoke test certificates and the grounds for such revocation to circumstances when the certificate holder no longer meets the criteria for which the certificate was issued; and thirdly allowing the register of test certificates to be searched for emergency response planning purposes by for example the New Zealand Fire Service. 
The fourth area of improvement is to bring increased clarity to compliance with and enforcement of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act by improving its alignment with other legislation. Here there are three things. The first is to empower MAF Biosecurity New Zealand to recover the costs of new organism conditional release approval compliance and enforcement under the Biosecurity Act. These costs are currently met from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s baseline funding. The amendment provides the ministry with the incentive to fully identify the costs and develop an efficient monitoring system and cost structure as it does already for new organism containment approval compliance and monitoring. The second measure is to align the times in which to lay information which will make the new organism provisions consistent with those in the Biosecurity Act and make the hazardous substances provisions consistent with those in the Health and Safety in Employment Act. The third measure is to further align the Health and Safety in Employment Act and the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act enforcement responsibilities in order to minimise duplicate inspections. 
The fifth area of change is intended to keep the hazardous substance and new organism regulations and other instruments up to date by allowing amendments and updates to material incorporated by reference to take effect by notification by the Minister or the authority in the  
Gazette 
. The regulations refer to a large number of standards in similar technical documents. However the material that is incorporated is fixed in the form that it was in at the time of incorporation. This creates unnecessary complexity and confusion for users when such material becomes outdated. 
I turn to the changes to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (Restructuring) Act 1995 in Part 7 of the bill. The primary purpose of these amendments is to remove the penalty regimes applicable under the Act for the non-payment of cost recovery levies as the Fisheries Act 1996 contains an adequate penalty regime. At present clients are faced with what amounts to a double penalty. 
In terms of Part 8 of the bill the purpose of the changes to the Reserves Act 1977 is to reduce the cost and administrative burden attached to certain licenses issued under the Act. Part 8 provides that licenses will be granted for 10 years rather than for 5 years for specified purposes over reserves that are vested in local administering bodies. 
I know that the previous Minister of Commerce is interested in the changes to the Weights and Measures Act 1997 which is amended in Part 9 of the bill. The purpose of the changes here is to resolve the confusion and reduce the compliance costs caused by having two pieces of legislation—and I think the previous Minister of Commerce raised this issue with me—namely the Weights and Measures Act 1987 and the Gas Act 1992 controlling the supply of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in gaseous form through pipes for industry consumers and regulators. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: 7 kilograms and falling. 
Hon RODNEY HIDE 
: The bill proposes that LPG in gaseous form is regulated only under the Gas Act. The previous Minister is telling me that her new regime has seen her lose 7 kilograms and we can all be proud of that. 
There was a question from Kevin Hague about why new section 42C(3) of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act which is inserted by clause 28 of the bill is different from the current section 41 in respect of the amendments. Let me explain that as best I can and see whether I can address the member’s concerns. Section 41 is the regulation-making power for low-risk GMOs and it includes provisions regarding the procedures as well as the circumstances when a GMO is low risk. New section 42C relates to low-risk non-GMO organisms. The procedural aspects are not included as these replicate what is covered by specifying the circumstances. Further there is less uncertainty associated with non-GMOs than with GMOs and that justifies a slightly different approach. It should be noted that there is no substantive difference. That is because there are currently no regulations relating to procedures for GMOs as these were not necessary in order to make the low-risk GMO regulations. I hope that answers the member’s question.