Dalziel Lianne: Legislation Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Legislation Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 16 October 2012. Volume:684;Page:5874. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I was very keen to speak on this part of the Legislation Bill because this is a particularly exciting part. In particular it is actually Subpart 2 “Reprints”—not retreads Megan Woods; it is reprints that I am talking about. The reason I am quite excited about this is the capacity for legislation to stay up to date with current drafting practice. 
When I first arrived in Parliament a few years ago I had completed my law degree at Canterbury University. I actually enrolled for a particular component of my degree and it was a course called Legislation. My university lecturer was one John Burrows who went on to become of course an esteemed professor at our university and then on to his most recent role at the Law Commission. Because of his influence I believed that working in the Parliamentary Counsel Office was something that anyone with an interest in the law a passion for the law would be absolutely interested in and fascinated by because he made the Parliamentary Counsel Office and the work of parliamentary counsel sound so fascinating and so important. 
When I arrived here I did not find that colleagues were quite of the same understanding of the fascination and the passion for the work of parliamentary counsel. But having served for three terms on a range of select committees I actually did realise that parliamentary counsel were able to bring to bear a consistency in terms of the language that they used and the method for prescribing the law in a way that made sense right across a range of different laws. And they were all able to do that. We had some incredible parliamentary counsel officers from the top down at select committees but right across the board there was this absolute commitment to what is now described in this legislation as current drafting practice. 
There would be some challenges faced when legislation came before a select committee and it did not meet that test of current drafting practice. The one I recall the most was actually a very early bill that was referred to the Justice and Law Reform Committee as it was called in those days and that was the Companies Bill. It was a brand new piece of legislation that had been the subject of a Law Commission report. The Law Commission had in fact drafted a bill but the bill did not meet the Parliamentary Counsel Office’s current drafting practice to adopt the modern phraseology. As a result the Ministry of Justice issued drafting instructions to the Parliamentary Counsel Office and completely redrafted the legislation. 
I will never forget sitting at that select committee listening to submission after submission after submission all of them beginning with their particular theory as to why the Law Commission draft was different from the Ministry of Justice’s draft. There was theory after theory after theory as to why a particular phrase was used and why a particular clause was drafted in a particular way and so the debate at the select committee came about as a debate around the two different drafting styles and the different approaches that they represented rather than a discussion about what our company law ought to look like. I have to admit and I think that colleagues on both sides of the House felt exactly the same way how difficult this made our job as a select committee. It really led me to the very strong view back in those early days that the Law Commission should in fact have the advantage of a direct delegation of someone from parliamentary counsel to the Law Commission when it was drafting bills. Then we would get the current drafting practice merged into the Law Commission’s work so that when it returned a bill to the Minister the Minister would with confidence be able to introduce that bill to the House. So I am very pleased to see an entire subpart of Part 2 devoted to this whole question of current drafting practice. 
One of the frustrations that I have experienced over the many years that I have been here is when legislation was drafted in a format that is no longer representative of current drafting practice and an amendment has to be made and the number of times that parliamentary counsel have to go through the existing legislation in order to essentially upgrade it so that it is fit for purpose and to accept an amendment that Parliament is dealing with several years later. I believe that that frustration can be dealt with as a result of this subpart which is why I am very very pleased to see it in the form that it is in. 
Of course there are simple editorial changes that can be dealt with at the time of a reprint which actually make incredibly good sense. We can for example see language changed to gender-neutral language so that we can refer to “he or she” instead of the word “he”. I mean I remember all of those laws that existed for many many years that only ever referred to “he”. You know I felt as a woman that these things never quite— 
Andrew Little 
: Excluded—you felt excluded. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I felt excluded. That is exactly the word I was looking for. Thank you Mr Little. 
Charles Chauvel 
: They didn’t apply to you. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: But sometimes I felt that they ought to apply to me. I felt definitely excluded. But now the words “he or she” can simply be replaced for the word “he” and that enables the law to be updated in a sensible way. The word “chairman” may be changed to “chairperson”. I remember—this is going to show how long I have been here—the Rt Hon Sir Robert Muldoon debating in the House once and he actually got a bit upset that somebody had been referring to the Chair. He got up and gave a speech about how unfortunate it was that the previous speaker was able to address only an inanimate object that the Chairman was sitting on. He really was not quite up to date himself. 
The words “Her Majesty the Queen” may be changed to “the Sovereign”. I actually think the fact that we are signalling this does suggest that you know we are getting ready for the inevitable there. I think the same thing happens when you refer to things like Queen’s Counsel and it becomes King’s Counsel over time and vice versa. We have to make sure that our legislation is able to stay up to date in that regard. 
Then there are some simple changes that just reflect some sensible changes to the way we use language. Sometimes there are simple spelling errors errors in numbering and cross-referencing and any other errors of a similar nature. All of these can be tidied up in a very straightforward manner and that is something that I think makes really good sense. So I believe that this is a helpful part of this legislation—this subpart in particular I think—to embed current drafting practice because of course the language always speaks to the present moment. The definition of “current drafting practice” in clause 23 is that it “means the legislative drafting practice for the time being used by the PCO”. That means that whatever the drafting practice of the day is that is the definition that will apply. That will enable our laws to remain of a particular standard. That means that when one looks at a particular piece of legislation and at another piece of legislation the differences will not be there. They will in fact be drafted in the same way and will meet the same tests and that will ensure that people have a common understanding of what they mean. 
So again I think this is an excellent bill and I am pleased to see this particular part. I know that people have sort of taken my comments as being somewhat facetious but having had the experience of sitting on a variety of select committees and seeing the incredibly hard work that our parliamentary counsel bring to the task I believe that these changes will assist them in the work that they do and obviously in that regard assist the work of this House.