Goff Phil: Legislation Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goff Phil: Legislation Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 16 October 2012. Volume:684;Page:5867. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 This is an important piece of legislation and a very worthy piece of legislation. In equal amounts it is very technical and very dull which probably explains why all the speakers tonight on this bill the Legislation Bill with my exception will be lawyers. They thrive on this sort of thing. Labour will be supporting it. It looks like a common-sense bill and certainly not before its time when you consider that one of the pieces of legislation that the bill replaces is the Statutes Drafting and Compilation Act 1920. Well that was 92 years ago. That was a different age and it is really quite remarkable that a piece of legislation could have survived this length of time albeit with amendment but in its original form. Because the legislation has been there for 92 years I guess it is understandable that this legislation has sat around since the Regulations Review Committee heard submissions on it about 2½ years ago. So it is not the sort of legislation that the Government has given any particular priority to notwithstanding its worthy nature. In fact I see the closing date for submissions was 23 September 2010. Almost exactly 2 years later the Minister brings to the House an extensive Supplementary Order Paper which runs into 23 pages. Because this bill is about drafting and printing one wonders why the Supplementary Order Paper has come in and those technical changes were necessitated so long after the submissions were received and the select committee looked at it. Maybe the Attorney-General can give an explanation for that. 
Essentially what this bill does is to modernise and improve the law relating to the publication availability reprinting revision and official versions of legislation and it brings them together in one piece of legislation. Well I think that is an important first point. It replaces three pieces of legislation: the 1920 Statutes Drafting and Compilation Act which I have mentioned and two pieces of legislation from 1989 the Acts and Regulations Publication Act and the Regulations (Disallowance) Act. So it is always good that in the myriad tomes of statutes we can try to consolidate down legislation into one piece. In fact the first purpose of the bill under Part 1 is set out “to bring together in this Act the main provisions of New Zealand legislation that relate to the drafting publication and reprinting of legislation and the disallowing of instruments:”. So that is certainly something to be said in its favour. 
Because it is a modernising Act it also provides as well as for printed copies of Acts for there to be electronic copies. The old days when people studied for long hours over dusty books in the law library have been replaced with most people having access to legislation online and that certainly has been an improvement as well. The bill sets out as a purpose the facilitation of the production of up-to-date reprints that are modernised and consistent with current drafting practice particularly in terms of expression style and format. That is a good thing. What so much of this legislation is about is to try to make Acts of Parliament less impenetrable for the average citizen. I am going to come to the really important part of this legislation and what the Law Commission actually said about that in just one moment. 
The bill also sets out as its purpose “to make New Zealand statute law more accessible readable and easier to understand by facilitating the progressive and systematic revision of the New Zealand statute book …”. What it tries to do in that sense is to rationalise and arrange statute law more logically and that is praiseworthy; to remove inconsistencies and overlaps and certainly the legislation will benefit from that; to repeal obsolete and redundant provisions and if you can make the legislation shorter again that makes it more comprehensible; and to modernise the expression style and format and make sure it is consistent. I note what the Law Commission said which is at the heart of this legislation and this was in its  
Presentation of New Zealand Statute Law 
 that came out way back in October 2008. I want to quote from it because I think it is the heart and the soul of the legislation: “The state has an obligation to make law accessible to citizens. People have to obey the law; ignorance of it is no excuse. So they need to be able to find it and understand it. They will not respect the law if they cannot. Moreover law which is not accessible is expensive in terms of both time and money.” It is notable that this legislation—I mean it is very hard to find any politics in this legislation—actually comes out of two reports by the Law Commission. I want to acknowledge the work of the Law Commission because this is the sort of thing that actually you would be waiting forever for if it was the Ministry of Justice that was responsible for putting it together. The Law Commission put out first of all the  
Presentation of New Zealand Statute Law 
 in October 2008 and then a year later the  
Review of the Statutes Drafting and Compilation Act 1920 
. 
I think it is important to go over what was wrong with the existing law why we have this very large new piece of legislation and why it is necessary. There are a number of things I think we need to take into account. Acts of Parliament are ordered chronologically which means that the user who is looking for an Act on a particular topic is likely to have trouble in knowing where to look for it. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the law on one topic can be scattered across any one of a number of different Acts. That makes it very hard for somebody who is trying to understand the law in a particular area. We need to address that. All of the content of an Act might not be indicated by its title which again makes it more difficult for people to find. Sometimes the legal provisions about particular matters are located in very unlikely sounding Acts and that is a frustration for people trying to follow the law as well. Amending Acts sometimes contain substantive provisions that are actually separate from the Act that is being amended and therefore you can miss that when you are looking for the provisions on a particular subject. 
A lot of the Acts that we are dealing with—and you have only to walk out into the lobbies and pick up some copies of the statute book to see that—are old drafted in archaic language that is difficult to understand and drafted in a style again that is not accessible. Acts can be amended several times before being replaced—God knows how many times the Crimes Act has been amended and it still has not been replaced. One day there will be a Government with the time or the courage or the stupidity to take on that particular task. But because of those amendments it can mean that there are inconsistencies in drafting style between the original and the inserted provisions in the same Act. You are clearly looking at something that appears to be scissors and paste in how it is put together. It lacks coherence it lacks consistency it lacks flow and again that is not desirable. Sometimes when the National Party is really desperate and it is looking for a member’s bill it repeals things that nobody has thought about nobody cares about and that have not been seen for many years. The truth is that you get redundant and obsolete provisions that remain in force for a very long time. That is one of the— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: John Banks. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Sometimes members of Parliament come into that category too my colleague Lianne Dalziel very—well I would not say unfairly I think it is absolutely fair—unkindly suggested that John Banks might be redundant and obsolete. One wonders why he is in the House—a dead man walking. The last point to come back to— 
Maggie Barry 
: People in glass houses. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Yes people in glass houses. Well tell us about it. One day Maggie Barry somebody will explain why somebody who lies can retain a ministerial portfolio. Can you explain that? Not you Mr Chairman but Maggie Barry if she wants to worry about glass houses. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: I know. I will come back to the point. I have been distracted by that unfortunate intervention from that unfortunate member. So what you can see from what I have been saying right up to date—trying to make this non-political because essentially the bill is non-political—is that there are real problems with the status quo and we need to make those changes. If we look at the summary of the provisions the Parliamentary Counsel Office which is the key agency here will be required to publish legislation electronically and in printed form. It will issue official versions of legislation in both forms. This provision is a sensible one. We support it.