Mapp Wayne: Imports and Exports (Restrictions) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Imports and Exports (Restrictions) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:609;Page:6966] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore) 
: I wish to turn directly to the amendment proposed by my colleague Ms Judith Collins because as I signalled at the outset of the debate on Part 2 it is a very important amendment and one that I would like the Government to seriously consider. It is basically an issue of constitutionalism. If one looks at clause 6 one will see that paragraphs (a) through to (d) refer to specific conventions and the intent of the legislation is to enact specific conventions. For instance there is the Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade the Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants the Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal and the Convention to Ban the Importation into Forum Island Countries of Hazardous and Radioactive Wastes and to Control the Transboundary Movement and Management of Hazardous Wastes within the South Pacific Region. All of that is reasonable and the proper way of doing it. The legislation should name the particular conventions that our Government has adhered to. 
However the Government has also added paragraph (e) which refers to “any other international obligation that is or becomes binding on New Zealand” relating to hazardous wastes. The difficulty is this: Parliament implements by statute the domestic enforcement of international conventions and those conventions should be known to parliamentarians. That is the constitutional process that is being followed and it is well understood. It is surely wrong to give a general power to the executive to add in and sign other conventions without giving notice to Parliament. I ask the Minister and his officials to reflect on that issue because I cannot believe it is the intention of a Government to bind the country through domestic legislation—and that is the key point—to conventions that are signed up to without first referring them to Parliament for re-enactment . 
I will put it this way: think of the process of entering into international law conventions. The Government sends its officials to an international convention and we sign the convention—that is the normal process that occurs and that is an executive role. It is not always necessary but where there are domestic considerations the Government then puts to Parliament that the convention should be enacted into our domestic legislation and that normally requires a specific statute. This statute today is precisely that in that it is implementing the four conventions that I referred to. The proper constitutional process is therefore that as each convention comes up a statute is created for each of them—and perhaps for a group of them—to implement that convention. To give a general power that enables the executive to just put any convention to do with hazardous wastes into law without coming back to Parliament is surely wrong. 
This Parliament is the supreme law-making authority. It is wrong for the Government to use its majority to negate the power of Parliament to transfer our fundamental obligation which is the determination of our domestic law to the executive. That is effectively what will happen. To draw a proper analogy to demonstrate the seriousness of this matter it is the equivalent of ruling by decree: the Government would be signing conventions that would say that those conventions will hereafter be the law of the land because some statute—possibly passed decades ago—provided that path. That cannot be the right approach to constitutional provisions. 
I will make one final point. The Opposition is supporting this legislation. We are asking the Government to recognise the serious intent that my colleague has drawn to the Committee’s attention and to support the amendment.