Ardern Jacinda: Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 11 March 2015. Volume:703;Page:2186. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I do not know whether or not to call it a rare privilege to see the National Party members engaging in debate. It is somewhat disappointing that it is the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) that they have chosen to engage in said debate on but none the less we welcome engagement from the other side of the House. They are often so hurried in their dialogue in this Chamber that I often miss out on the great oratory that they have to offer. Perhaps though if the member from Hamilton gifted that opportunity to more of his other colleagues in the future generally that would be slightly more welcome. They seem to engage in filibustering much more successfully despite his length of service in this House. According to the member who just took his seat the New Zealand public are—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I regret interrupting the member. The member knows—Mr Bennett return. I am going to warn the member that he knows he can interject when he is seated but he cannot wander around yelling. He must not.JACINDA ARDERN: I come back to the point I was making. The member Simon O’Connor who just resumed his seat spoke of the New Zealand public’s support for the National Government being so great that they would specifically be supporting the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) this evening. It does not matter of course that half the members of Parliament do not know what is in this bill but apparently the public are right behind the Government on this Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4)—leaving behind the fact that actually the whole Parliament is because that is the nature of a statutes amendment bill. As the speakers who have gone before me have pointed out statutes amendment bills are intended to be primarily technical. Often they are updating outdated legislation to bring it into line with other laws. Often they are used to fix technical issues. It is not intended to be substantive in terms of the amendments that are made and that is closely linked to the fact that the entire debating chamber—all of Parliament—must support the amendments in the bill.We are seeing an increasing number of amendments—and I will touch on a few of them—in the statutes amendment bill that are actually being used to fix up mistakes that have been made in often rushed legislation. We see a bit of it in the Local Government Act 2002 and in the amendments that were made around the super-city. It was a rushed process. It was something that we debated on heavily at the time. We thought the Government was moving too fast with that legislation and now we are seeing the result of that. A perfect example for me of the kind of amendment that a statutes amendment bill is intended for was the last Statutes Amendment Bill I believe when we made an update to the classifications legislation to mean that when you were putting out a new classification for an imported DVD for instance the new classification did not have to be fixed to the physical DVD. It could be on the outside on the wrapping. The industry was spending an extraordinary amount of time having to unwrap everything in order to get the sticker directly on the product rather than on the outside of the product. Little changes like that we can all agree to.I want to come to some of the points of the bill that might have been considered worthy of some commentary by the Government Administration Committee. One of the first of those—and I believe that it has probably been touched on—was the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 and the Official Information Act 1982. Regarding the amendments to the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act there were two clauses clauses 49(1) and 51 that the select committee has recommended removing because in its view the changes that were made in that part of the Act would alter legal privilege and the committee believed that it was not appropriate for a statutes amendment bill. Again that was a really good test by the select committee checking whether or not that was an appropriate place for that amendment. I assume that the Minister will perhaps be pursuing that amendment in another form.On more specifically the issue of Official Information Act requests clause 52(2) of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act and clause 72(2) of the Official Information Act as introduced as the select committee has pointed out confirm that an official information request can only be made orally. It was an issue raised by Denis O’Rourke quite rightly that local authorities or agencies may request that oral requests be put in writing. I do not think it would be the intention of this House for it to be that amendment in practice. We would not want a situation I think where for instance a constituent of any member’s electorate contacted a local authority and asked for a piece of information only to be told the request had to be put in writing. That is not the spirit of the Act. Therefore I think it is right to have the proposed amendments by the select committee which would make this ability conditional. So the local authority has the ability to do that but not as a matter of course.I think thinking through that change in a really practical sense the idea that for a person who might for instance have an impairment or a disability where the practice of actually physically writing out a request was not possible or perhaps they would not have access to the internet—I know I still have a lot of contact with individuals who do not have access to the internet—it would be unfair to create a provision that would mean they could not access the Official Information Act as a result of this amendment. So I think that is a useful change by the select committee.Coming back to Official Information Act changes more generally the bill also replaces another section section 28(4) of the Act. That is a part of the Act that is around Ministers answering requests on time. I want to make a general statement about that part of the primary legislation. There is no amendment to the requirement to respond as soon as practical which is within at least 20 days but our concern is with the degree to which that is actually being upheld currently. The Prime Minister admitted not that long ago that he and his Ministers deliberately hold Official Information Act requests until the 20th day for political reasons except we have seen some exceptions to that rule. It was in Dirty Politics that we saw the discussion over the very rapid release of information where it was politically expedient.I think we have to be extremely careful to ensure that political process is not undermining the importance of the Official Information Act legislation. It is that kind of legislation that groups like Transparency International rely on as a measure of New Zealand’s transparency and its accountability and if we stretch the spirit of the law which has been done to a greater and greater extent we actually undermine the law in and of itself. That is a concern that we have had for some time. We cannot take for granted our ranking within that group.I want to come to amendments to the Local Electoral Act 2001 and the Local Government Act 2002. Again this is quite a technical change but the select committee has recommended putting in a new clause there. Essentially the amendment here extends the time frame for completing pre-election processes by 7 days for general elections. The intention here was so it would not be confined just to general elections so there is a need to make some amendments more broadly in the Local Electoral Act and the Local Government Act as this amendment does. I would have been interested though to hear from the Minister as to whether or not it would have been timely to use this Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) to ensure that actually there were not any other amendments required for another very important cross-electoral issue and that is online voting. It may well be that there could be legislative impediments to that and yet we know that the Electoral Commission is looking to trial online voting in some part at the local government level. It is a concern—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!JACINDA ARDERN: That might have been an opportunity because there are potentially impediments that we might be reaching further down the track.Coming then to some of the other changes that have been made as part of the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) I see that Part 31 has an amendment to the Tokelau (Territorial Sea and Exclusive Economic Zone) Act 1977. No one unfortunately has touched on that Act and yet it seems rather relevant given that it talks about the prohibition of foreign fishing in territorial seas. I would have thought that it sounds like an incredibly important issue to have made sure that we have that correct in our legislation but again putting it in law does not always mean it happens. Even though we have the ability to find in breach a vessel that is acting against the law by being in and fishing in a territorial area it is not meant to be in being an unlicensed craft and being able to be fined half a million dollars does not mean it is actually going to happen. So enforcement is just as important if you get my drift.