Street Maryan: Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Third Reading[Sitting date: 10 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15364. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): It gives me pleasure to rise to speak in support of the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill No 2. I appreciate the comments of the Deputy Leader of the House and her reflections on the work of the Hon Lianne Dalziel in the Regulations Review Committee. She has indeed been a hugely important contributor to that committee. This sort of bill a Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill comes round once a year to the House and it is essentially designed to bring some parliamentary scrutiny to those items that would otherwise expire if the dates of their legislation were not validated or confirmed. In other words there would be a rate or a regulation that would apply up to a certain date then it would expire and if this kind of bill or measure were not put forward to the House then it would not continue. It is an administrative measure but it is a really important one in that what this House is doing by confirming and validating the subordinate legislation that we are addressing in this bill is actually confirming that the policy behind the intention of the regulations is actually still valid. So it would be possible for example if this House were so minded and the Regulations Review Committee had recommended differently for votes to be split on this issue because there might have been a debate over whether or not the policy still remained intact.This type of bill is something that is debated annually in Parliament. It is designed to prevent the lapsing of certain subordinate legislation. When this kind of bill comes to the House it goes to the Regulations Review Committee. The Deputy Leader of the House Tolley traversed some of the time frame for that: the bill was introduced in July of this year it was referred to the Regulations Review Committee at the beginning of August and at the end of September it was referred back to the House. I chair the Regulations Review Committee and I thank the members of the Regulations ReviewCommittee for their consideration of this bill. What we had to do was write to the six Government departments with responsibility for administering the orders and regulations covered in the bill and invite them to explain why the orders and regulations should be confirmed and where pertinent validated. We also asked the agencies why the confirmation and validation provisions were originally included in the Acts under which the orders and regulations were made. In every case I am pleased to report that confirmation or confirmation and validation was considered necessary by the departments to prevent the orders and regulations from lapsing and thus ceasing to be legally enforceable.The reasons for these confirmations and validations include things like alteration to the rates of benefits and allowances including such things as increases in war pensions as the Deputy Leader of the House outlined in her initial comments and the ability to prescribe fees and collect levies. The good thing about it is that we got the responses back from all the departments and I would like to place on record my thanks to all the departments who responded quickly and promptly to the requests from the Regulations Review Committee. We found no reason that the orders and regulations should not be confirmed or validated and on that basis I think the House can have some confidence that it is desirable to proceed with this legislation without any contravention.It is good to note the number of pieces of legislation that are actually impacted by this bill. The Deputy Leader of the House outlined particular instruments whether they be regulations or the things that the regulations applied to—the various orders and regulations that were considered by this bill—so I will not traverse those. But it is worthwhile to note for the benefit of people listening the range of pieces of legislation covered by this: the Biosecurity Act of 1993 the Civil Aviation Act of 1990 the Commodity Levies Act of 1990 the Customs and Excise Act of 1996 the Gambling Act of 2003 the Land Transport Act of 1998 the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act 2001 the Social Security Act of 1964 the Road User Charges Act of 2012 and the War Pensions Act of 1954. This bill is administrative but it is also important that the House gets a chance to scrutinise this and to accept the Regulations Review Committee’s recommendation for it to proceed unamended.There is one final point I would like to make which is something that is mentioned in the Regulations Review Committee report. The Regulations Review Committee in October 2012 reported to the House on the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill of that time 2012 and asked that such a bill should be considered earlier in the parliamentary year preferably on 1 August or as close to that date as possible. The Deputy Leader of the House said that the Government took that seriously and indeed it did. I want to register my appreciation of the Government’s willingness to move more quickly—in fact to introduce the bill on 29 July so in advance of 1 August and 1 month earlier than the equivalent bill in 2012. But we also encourage the House to consider carefully whether the streamlined procedure which was recommended by the Standing Orders Committee for revision bills might also be applied to bills seeking confirmation and validation of subordinate legislation. That procedure was discussed in detail in the October 2012 report. The Regulations Review Committee of 2013 still thinks that this procedure would make the scrutiny of bills seeking validation and confirmation of subordinate legislation more effective. We have written to the Standing Orders Committee drawing that discussion to its attention so that it may act on that in the future. I support the bill.