Hereora Dave: Regulatory Responsibility Bill — First Reading 
Hereora Dave: Regulatory Responsibility Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:640;Page:10312] 
DAVE HEREORA (Labour) 
: 
 I take this opportunity to take a call and restate my colleagues’ comments surrounding Labour’s position—that is that we will support this bill’s referral to the select committee. I do think it is important that we have that debate and the select committee process will allow us to enjoy some of the advice that might come to us in relation to regulatory responsibilities. Having said that it is good sense I think that we are monitoring talking about and debating good lawmaking systems and processes because we do not necessarily want to find that there are unintended consequences where the rights of people are compromised. 
The possibility of a regulatory responsibility bill was considered and not pursued by both recent National and Labour-led Governments. Instead of setting high-level principles for public service legislation the Government has focused on strengthening institutional measures to improve regulatory design. 
The aim of this bill is to ensure that principles of responsible regulatory management are always in the minds of those responsible for legislation and that is about ensuring we have good lawmaking systems and processes. Many of these principles are equivalent to those in a proposed regulatory responsibility bill from 1997 and 1998 with a few significant exceptions. They are also largely the same as the current requirements and processes set out in the  
Cabinet Manual 
 the Regulatory Impact Analysis requirements the Code of Good Regulatory Practice the Generic Policy Development Process and the Legislation Advisory Committee guidelines. So essentially this bill would be in some way a duplication. 
During April and March of 1998 the Government considered introducing a regulatory responsibility bill. The proposal was canvassed with a group of experts. The group did not reach agreement on whether legislation was needed to catalyse cultural change in the public service or to reinforce institutional measures such as the Code of Good Regulatory Practice. The experts group also debated and came to no clear consensus on whether the problem of poor regulation at the time could instead be addressed by improving the capability of public servants to develop good regulation contracting for good regulation through the employment contracts of chief executives the further development of best practice and the greater provision of this throughout the public service the private sector interest groups and the public review of regulations by analysis with regulatory oversight and whether this review should be of the process or of the process and substance of regulation and the creation of a ministerial portfolio that may have additional powers of review. 
 Other discussions concerned whether the legislating of high level principles would be a good way of signalling a cultural change in the public service or whether it would limit the future development of principles and good regularity practice whether the legislation would need to be subject to judicial review to be effective and whether that would leave the Government open to litigation and give courts an undue influence on policy. Many of the instrumental measures identified during discussions on the 1998 bill have since been implemented. 
I want to make a note of future deliveries to 31 July 2007. A business-cost calculator that determines the compliance costs of proposed regulation on business will be ready for application within Government departments in the first half of 2007 for a 2-year trial and Cabinet has agreed to a detailed work programme to be undertaken during 2007-08 by the Department of Building and Housing the Department of Internal Affairs the Ministry for the Environment and Local Government New Zealand to help resolve issues around the interface of the Resource Management Act and the Building Act including possible legislative amendments. 
So having said that I reiterate that we are supporting the passage of this bill to the select committee. I also reiterate that it is good sense to have this debate and to seek advice to ensure that we are indeed setting the right systems and processes in place for good lawmaking.