Willis Nicola; Williams PotoNICOLA WILLIS (National): I rise to speak also on the Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill (No 2). I'm conscious that my colleague Simeon Brown has already done a very good job of illustrating some of the issues that we have discussed at the Regulations Review Committee in relation to this bill. I am a new member and my participation in the Regulations Review Committee has been a very gratifying experience because on that committee I think we feel very close to the purpose of Parliament and in fact what the power of this House is. Of course as MPs our job is not only to create new legislation but also to ensure that the regulations that are set fall within the scope of statutes that have already been passed and this scrutiny is an important role for Parliament. So in discussing the Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill (No 2) both National and Labour were very clear that there was no particular reason why these particular instruments shouldn't be confirmed but we did have a very thorough conversation about the process at play with this bill and its appropriateness given the supreme role of Parliament within our democracy and whether or not that role does play out in this process.So in particular I want to acknowledge the chairman the Hon Gerry Brownlee who I think as a parliamentarian of many years' experience and standing was well placed to lead this discussion. I want to acknowledge Dr Duncan Webb who of course as a legal mind was very able to engage in the debate as well; Kiritapu Allan Dr Liz Craig and Simeon Brown. The Regulations Review Committee—as members in this House who have sat on it will appreciate—is a committee that is not often adversarial but where good debate and discussion about detailed matters takes place.In relation to this bill and the process issues which the National Party in particular raised it's important that people understand the current process. So the current process is that Parliament sets an empowering Act that allows the creation of legislative instruments and it requires in setting that Act that those legislative instruments be confirmed by legislation within a certain period. The instruments are then made they're notified in the Gazette they're published and then they're presented to the House. Then this bill is prepared and we go through this debate as we are today.But of course the key point here is that we're really having the debate after the fact because the regulations have already been set; they're already in effect. And so if for any reason those regulations have actually strayed outside the scope of the original empowering Act—if officials have perhaps gone beyond what was the mandate of Parliament or the intent of Parliament—we do have potentially a significant issue as Simeon Brown laid out. That issue is not just about the role of Parliament in a theoretical sense—which I would argue is also very important—but it's a practical issue because if regulations have been set that have allowed levies for example to be collected in excess of what the original statute had envisaged then we would find ourselves in the circumstance of Parliament having to pass an Act saying that that wasn't OK and then requiring those levies to be recollected again. We can imagine the administrative challenge and difficulty and complexity that could cause.So in raising this issue National had very good intent which was to say Yes in this particular bill there are no particular instruments that we have special concern about." but of course we did raise the question of: "Well what if we did?" And it would really frankly be after the fact and it means to some extent that it makes a little bit of a joke of the powers of the Parliament to do much about it. So that is the process point which we've acknowledged and which the committee has reported on and that I think it's important for members of this House to appreciate and reflect on.The next step of course is for those substantive issues to be considered further. I think the Minister referred to the Standing Orders Committee potentially being the avenue for that discussion. I think it's a useful discussion. I would appreciate the opportunity potentially for other legal scholars—those who've studied our public law systems—to reflect on it. I think what is very important—and I hope it's a view that is shared across this House—is that when we come here as members of Parliament we do so with the responsibility to ensure that the decisions that we vote on in this House are representative and work through our democratic systems. And if we allow the executive to take actions which sit outside Parliament we are losing the supremacy of Parliament; we are losing the power of our roles in here.So this is a significant issue. It's a process point. It's a technical point. I won't pretend that this was a discussion that I thought could be streamed live on TVNZ or NewsHub for that matter. I'm not sure that it would have kept young people up and down the country awake and excited and yet it is an important and substantive conversation. So again I'd like to acknowledge fellow members of the committee for the discussion we had to reconfirm National's support for this bill but our desire to engage in further discussion about this process. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): The question is that the motion be—oh I apologise. I call Mark Patterson."