O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): On Radio New Zealand on Friday afternoons there's a programme called Critter of the Week in which they choose some ugly little animal and make it their critter of the week. I think of that when I'm looking at this piece of legislation. I think it's had a bit of a bad rap in this House as everyone who stood up sort of said This is a little bit of legislation it's a hard piece of legislation and it's a complicated piece of legislation." Well I'm going to call this "my legislation of the week" because it's actually quite an important little piece of legislation.As someone who has been on the hard-working Justice Committee one of only two survivors to date; the previous one just having—oh I don't think I'm allowed to mention she's left. But Ginny Andersen is the other member of this. You can tell by our scars. I'm really only 35 years old such is the effect of time on the Justice Committee. I think by some of the presentations and speeches you've heard today you can understand why it's been such an ageing process. Oh and speaking of the ageing process I see we have the Speaker—thank you welcome back Madam Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I think I'll just push the time bell!GREG O'CONNOR: Anyway before I get myself in any more trouble can I go straight to the Legislation Bill. I could start again but I'm sure that you don't need some explanation about what a beautiful piece of legislation this is.I love it when new words enter our lexicon. When this bill came to the House who knew what a "disallowable instrument" was? But by the time we'd heard from experts and by the time we'd heard from various submitters on the bill we knew exactly what one of those was.But in all seriousness what this really did the understanding of this is that in virtually everything we do in New Zealand there is some sort of regulatory or legislative basis to it. Every time we step outside our door every time we engage in any sort of business—whether it be Government and as it turns out even in private industry—there's a regulation somewhere a piece of legislation somewhere which governs it. As previous speakers have said we haven't simply known where a lot of that regulation was where a lot of that secondary legislation was.It came to a little bit of a head during you'll remember the milk powder inquiry in China when there was an inquiry being conducted into that and those conducting the inquiry actually went looking for the regulations the legislation under which they were operating to do the inquiry and suddenly found that they couldn't find it and much of the secondary legislation these disallowable instruments had actually been passed and no one had ever recorded it—and that brought to a head the necessity to make sure that we do. Particularly where we're going offshore with this legislation we know just how vulnerable we are. There's now a piece of work that others have mentioned to ensure that there is going to be a place where we can actually go and find those regulations under which we've enacted under which we're operating our daily livesI guess in understanding that we go to the places where there's going to be some exemptions from publication of this legislation. On the select committee there was actually a recommendation that we would have three exemptions to this. In our deliberations long and hard into the night we actually brought that down; there was a recommendation there would actually only be two exemptions to the legislation the first one being where the secondary legislation contains information that cannot be publicly disclosed. Generally that would be something around market sensitivity not only within New Zealand but of course internationally as well but of course again as we move our goods to the harbour as we move our goods to the wharf and move them offshore again the closer we get to export the more important it is that there is a regulatory body under which we're operating and we know where that legislation is. However what we do want to make sure is that the legislation and the information that is enclosed there doesn't become an advantage to our competitors. So there will actually be a situation where it doesn't need to be publicly disclosed. Also of course naturally where it relates to national security under the agencies operating that won't obviously need to be disclosed there as well.The second exemption is not so much sensitivity but it's where it will still need to be made available to the public in a way other than just being on their website.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.GREG O'CONNOR: I just remind members that we've renamed this legislation the "Critter of the Week" or "Legislation of the Week" legislation and I think the now-retired ex - Attorney-General Christopher Finlayson would be very happy to have himself described as the author or the creator of something that has been so named. He's a very creative sort of a personality. So coming back to the legislation we were talking when I was interrupted about the disallowable instruments—terminology that for those hardworking members of the Justice Committee became part of our lexicon from a word that none of us have heard of. In fact indeed secondary legislation—what is secondary legislation? And as we were talking about it it's something that underlies everything that we do in New Zealand. In everything we do there's generally either a Government a Parliament or a local body sitting behind that activity. In fact there are in excess of 100 Government agencies that are empowered to draft and make secondary legislation.So when we are considering it there's also quite a large number of local bodies as well. Seventy local bodies are actually able to make secondary legislation so a very wise decision was made to essentially leave them out so they can continue to make that legislation. No doubt there will be the need for a catch-up at some stage just again so that in one place New Zealanders whether for reason of doing an inquiry to test their legality will just know the basis on which they are carrying out their activity and indeed are able to go and ensure that they are in fact keeping within that legislation. I think it is something of a surprise to realise just how almost—I would stop short of saying the blind leading the blind in relation to this legislation but certainly it was a surprise to see how little was known about this. I mentioned before about the inquiry into the export of milk powder that was required to be investigated and not knowing actually the legislation on which it was acting. So although this was quite an exciting piece of legislation—one that has taxed the intellect of the Justice Committee—even I am struggling to actually find anything else that will be of interest to you Mr Speaker so at this stage I will resume my seat and recommend this legislation."