Dalziel Lianne: New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16350. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I want to speak on Part 1 because although it is headed “Preliminary provisions” it contains some very important matters. 
The first matter is in relation to the interpretation of “productivity-related matter”. I think that provision was improved before the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill was introduced. The reason it was improved was to try to narrow the focus but in narrowing the actual wording of the interpretation we were trying to expand what could be considered by the Productivity Commission. Leaving the interpretation as “ ‘productivity-related matter’ means any matter relating to productivity or improving productivity in the private sector the public sector or the economy as a whole” enables an incredibly broad brush to be applied to the definition of the word “productivity”. The last thing anyone on this side of the Chamber wants is a narrow approach to something that hopefully will be an important feature of our political and economic landscape for the future. I really hope the Government of the day takes an equally broad-brush approach to the definition of productivity. 
During the Commerce Committee process it was very interesting to hear from Gary Banks who heads the Australian Productivity Commission. He talked about the history of the development of the commission and gave some background as to why its legislation focused on a quite specific but actually quite broad range of items. When one looks at the Australian Productivity Commission legislative provisions one sees that there are environmental regional and social dimensions to its definition of productivity. I think that is because of the background of the commission which has come through various stages in its life. Gary Banks talked about the legislation originally coming from the Tariff Board which is where the industry focus came from. The modern form of the commission came in under the Whitlam Government in 1973 and that was the Industries Assistance Commission. Finally the Productivity Commission took over from that commission. That description helped me understand why it was better to go down the track that we had agreed prior to the introduction of the bill which was to leave the definition very broad and open rather than seeking to define every aspect of productivity that we would want to see applied. But that being said the definition is not an open invitation for the other side to take a narrow view of productivity. If one of the early tasks of the Productivity Commission is to focus on regulatory matters compliance costs and all of those sorts of narrow issues then we will be very disappointed. We want the Productivity Commission to achieve good things for our country. That is why I have tabled a new purpose clause but I will not speak to that now because it comes into Part 2. 
The second thing I want to refer to under Part 1 is the definition of “responsible Minister”. I see that the Minister for Regulatory Reform who is not the responsible Minister is sitting in the chair. I am disappointed that he is not the responsible Minister—[ 
Interruption 
] I knew that was going to excite concern from my colleagues but I do think the Minister for Regulatory Reform ought to be the Minister who takes responsibility for this particular legislation. Then again there are those who argue that the Minister of Finance has a broader sweep and that the reason why we shifted the regulatory impact analysis unit from the Ministry of Economic Development to Treasury was to bring about that whole-of-Government approach. We also wanted a department that was capable of monstering other departments into doing stuff that perhaps they did not want to do so it made sense to shift the unit to Treasury. Maybe that does mean the Minister of Finance is the correct responsible Minister. 
I want to use the opportunity to comment on a couple of things that the Minister for Regulatory Reform has done while he has been the Minister even though deeply involved in the discussions that we had prior to the introduction of this bill—and this bill does come from the agreement between the ACT Party and the National Party in forming the Government. That is to put on record again my deep concern about the decision that the Government took—and the responsible Minister is included in this—to remove regulatory impact statements from the pages at the front of the bill. I find that incredibly disruptive to the process of analysis. It also means that my first reading speeches are nowhere near as good as they would be otherwise because I have always found the regulatory impact statements to be a great source of information about the nature of the problem analysis of the different options and stakeholder engagement as part of the consultation process. Those have all been really important features of regulatory impact statements. Having to find them on the website and download them separately I find very frustrating. I understand having had discussions with the Minister about it why that particular approach has been adopted but I still feel that including even a modified form of the regulatory impact statement that reflected any changes Cabinet had made to the final set of decisions would be preferable. If that analysis were appended to the end of the regulatory impact statement and included with the bill then the issues that the Government has grappled with in this matter simply would not be an issue. I would be very keen to see regulatory impact statements come back into the published versions of bills. I think a very short analysis at the end of the regulatory impact statement to identify any differences that had occurred as a result of the Cabinet process would certainly be extremely helpful. I think it would add to the quality of the debate in the Chamber and certainly to the quality of my own personal contributions to these debates. 
There are a couple of other things that I want to mention in relation to Part 1 because even though it is a very short part it is very very significant. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I spent the entire dinner break reflecting on what I had said before the break and I have decided that it is correct that the Minister of Finance is the Minister responsible for the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill. I came to that conclusion because if the Minister for Regulatory Reform undertook the role that would shift the primary focus of the New Zealand Productivity Commission to regulatory matters and Labour does not agree with that. I discussed it with several colleagues over the dinner break and I think we are now of one mind that the Minister that the Prime Minister has selected to be responsible for the bill is in fact the right Minister. 
But it is good to have the Minister for Regulatory Reform in the chair because I know that he and his party were significant driving forces behind this measure. Although I do not agree with the emphasis on regulatory matters I do think the emphasis on growing New Zealand’s productivity enhancing our productivity and looking at all the different aspects of our productivity in order to improve New Zealand’s economic development is good. So it is important to acknowledge the role that Rodney Hide has played in this matter and it is good that he can debate the bill from the chair. It is only Thursday night after all according to the calendar on the wall and I have to say that the House being in urgency does reflect a significantly higher level of productivity than is normal in this place. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Are you sure? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: It depends. If people have taken advantage of it and have used the approach my colleague took on the previous bill the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) which was to get the Government to finally concede that the point he had been going on about for quite some time was correct and to fix that little problem then it is amazing how much more productive Parliament can be under urgency; otherwise there is a high risk of a little bit of filibustering. But that is not what Labour members are doing on the New Zealand Productivity Commission Bill. We think it is very important we do want to see it passed and we do want to see the current Government utilise it in the way that we intend to utilise it to get the productivity gains for New Zealand that we need.