Curran Clare: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8285. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): In my first contribution to this debate and addressing my remarks to Part 1 may I first also join with my colleagues in remembering the fifth anniversary of Pike River and how the events of that day shocked the nation stopped us in our tracks and have to some extent reshaped our nation.As with all major events you always remember where you were when they happened. I happened to be standing on a grass verge in Mana waving a sign in support of my colleague Kris Faafoi. Of course none of that mattered. The most important thing was what was happening on the West Coast. But at least one of the good things that emerged post that was getting my colleague Kris Faafoi into Parliament.Following on from my colleague Su’a William Sio who talked about good process the thing that is really the most disturbing about this piece of legislation which on the face of it looks relatively minor is that it is about good process. It is actually about bad process and fixing bad process. There are some significant questions that the Minister can and needs to answer. I have got a couple of them to pose in this contribution.The public should be aware that this Government has made a habit of passing shoddy rushed legislation under urgency with no select committee scrutiny. Another trend has been to truncate the select committee process. There are too many pieces of legislation that are going through this kind of process. As a result you end up with unscrutinised law and you end up coming back and having to fix it which is what is happening here. This Government claims that it is transparent but nothing really could be further from the truth when you look at the sheer number of pieces of legislation that pass through so quickly that they are riddled with errors and mistakes.My comments specifically relate to clause 6 in Part 1 which is amending the part on the right of appeal to the High Court on questions of law. It replaces section 158(6). According to the departmental disclosure statement it is: “A minor and technical amendment … to fix an error in the drafting of the principal Act relating to the procedural requirements for the filing of appeals on questions of law with the High Court.”My question to the Minister is what the legal implications are of this. Given that we do not have a regulatory impact statement we do not have the advice from parliamentary counsel and all we have is a departmental disclosure statement and the amendment has been described as minor and technical what are its implications in law? I would ask the Minister in the chair the Hon Sam Lotu-Iiga during his contributions on Part 1 of the bill to tell the Committee whether or not there has been a legal opinion provided on this particular clause clause 6 which makes the change that “Notice of the appeal must be filed with the High Court and served on the Auckland Council no later than 20 working days after the Council notifies the matters …”.Given the impact and the import of the principles behind this piece of legislation and given that Auckland is our biggest city the processes that are being set out in law under the unitary plan are significant and have significant impacts. By making that change surely there must be some kinds of legal implications. I think the Committee needs to know what they are. If they have not been sought then the Committee needs to know why not. I also want to make reference to clause 8—