Dalziel Lianne: Regulatory Reform Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Regulatory Reform Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Sitting date: 22 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4694. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I have been addressing the different parts of this legislation in light of the nature of this particular bill that is in front of us today the Regulatory Reform Bill which is an omnibus bill. The omnibus bill that we have in front of us today was designed specifically so that parts like this could actually see the light of day. 
What we are dealing with in Part 4 is an amendment to the Conservation Act 1987. There is no way that the Minister of Conservation—and I am not sure who the Minister of Conservation was last year when this bill was introduced. Was it Kate Wilkinson then or was it someone else? Anyway whichever Minister was the Minister of Conservation last year he or she would never have been able to persuade the Leader of the House to place an amendment of this nature in front of the legislative programme of the Government ahead of a number of the other measures that it was pursuing. It was only by grouping a number of amendments to legislation in an omnibus bill—which actually I take some credit for as a former Minister of Commerce. I realised that there were a number of pieces of legislation that needed to be adjusted but which of themselves were not sufficient to gain a place on the legislative programme. Having been a Minister bidding for a place on a legislative programme I know personally how difficult it can be. So the idea— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: A very good bidder. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I was a very good bidder but I was not always successful. Therefore I felt that it was important to have a vehicle that enabled a number of Ministers to basically put these kinds of measures together in an overarching bill and to bring them before the House. They were never at a low enough level to qualify for a Statutes Amendment Bill because of course those have to be non-controversial and they also have to have essentially the consent of the whole House. You cannot have individual parties basically saying: “No we are not going to agree to that particular measure. We don’t want this change to the Conservation Act going through the Statutes Amendment Bill process so therefore we will not have it in there.” Of course that was the kiss of death—that was the end of it. Statutes Amendment bills enable those little tidy-up functions to be taken up on a regular and ongoing basis. 
This particular amendment to the Conservation Act 1987 would never have made the cut for a Statutes Amendment Bill because it actually had some elements of controversy around it—[ 
Interruption 
] No controversy actually. I suspect that the Green Party is going take a call on this particular part because I know that there was a concern that the Green Party raised on this particular measure when it was brought before the Commerce Committee. I know that some environmental movement individuals did make some submissions to the select committee. 
You know it is always difficult to know after having heard the evidence whether people felt satisfied with the amendments that we made in the select committee. Of course the people here in Parliament will have the bill in front of them and will see that we actually did not make any amendments to this particular part. So it will be very interesting to see whether people ultimately were satisfied with the changes. We did make a slight amendment in order to meet one of the concerns that had been raised. Essentially it increases the time around concessions applying in the Department of Conservation estate and I think that that was an issue of substance and it was an issue that did require a degree of reporting on it. 
One of the issues that I think has not been really dealt with in this debate thus far is the fact that there were a number of officials who appeared in front of the select committee every time we were dealing with this particular bill. They came from all the different departments in order to respond to all of the issues. When you look at the whole bill we had people coming from the Department of Conservation we had people from the Ministry of Economic Development we had people from the Department of Internal Affairs we had people from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and we had people from the Ministry of Fisheries. Fortunately a lot of people were covered by the Ministry of Economic Development. We had Statistics New Zealand as well and we had Ministry of Justice officials. 
 The problem that I had certainly as the Minister who had spearheaded the process and then as the chair of the select committee was feeling a sense of frustration that all of these officials felt that they had to turn up for every discussion we had on every part of every bill. What I was trying to do was to get the different departments to maybe collaborate with each other in order to reduce the amount of input into the select committee which was the whole point of having an omnibus bill. [ 
Interruption 
] I did feel a sense of frustration. I think my colleagues are sensing how frustrated I felt. 
One of the purposes of the bill was to cut down some of that interdepartmental nonsense and just allow some of the different departments to actually come together and have other departments represent their interests on these particular matters. But the Conservation Act amendment is certainly one of those that probably did require the input of the department so I would not include that in my general comments. On that note I think that is sufficient on Part 4.