Hipkins ChrisCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a call on the Statutes Repeal Bill as I think one of the few members of the Committee who actually finds this stuff interesting. I think that there are only a few of us who really do find this interesting.I was fascinated by the submission by Sir Kenneth Keith. Up until just recently I had not had the chance to have a look at it but there are a few points that he raises that I think are definitely worth us considering. One is at what point a law becomes worthy of repeal. In paragraph 5 of his submission he points out that there are still 200-plus private Acts many of which had an immediate effect—for example in providing for an acquittal completing an adoption removing barriers to marriage and validating appointments—and then he also points out that there are many other dissolution Acts repeal statutes abolition Acts and many 19th century special powers and contracts Acts. The question that he is raising is what is the mischief—what is the necessity in repealing all of this legislation when effectively it no longer has any effect anyway?He also raises a further interesting question I think which is: what of the repeal provisions of more substantive Acts? When for example a new education Act is passed and it includes provisions that repeal a whole lot of the existing legislation should those repeal provisions then subsequently be repealed as well? It is an interesting point. At what point do we determine that a law is sufficiently repealed that we no longer need to worry about it?I note that in this bill we are repealing a previous statutes repeal bill. At what point do we simply say: OK we've repealed that. Now we can forget about it."? Or are we going to be coming back in another hundred years? One of the statutes repeal bills that we are repealing today is over a hundred years old. In a hundred years' time will members be back in the House repealing the repeal bill that we are now passing today or will they simply say: "Actually that's been adequately dealt with now and discharged."?I was also interested in some other issues. I was involved as my colleague David Parker was in the Government Administration Committee back in 2009 and 2010 when the Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Act was passed. In that Act rather unusually it provided the Government of the day with the ability by Order in Council to repeal the Act because it was only ever intended to be a temporary Act for the purposes of the Rugby World Cup and that has now happened. The Government issued that Order in Council in 2014 so the Act was expired. So why are we needing to repeal it when the Act when it was passed had a repeal provision in it that allowed the Government to repeal it by an Order in Council? It has been repealed through an Order in Council so why are we even needing to do this? At what point does a repeal actually become final? Otherwise the statute book will continue to grow with more and more repeal Acts.I note in particular a very interesting comment again from Sir Kenneth that the statutes amendment Acts of 1943 and 1944 all amended other statutes some of which themselves had already been repealed. They have no separate existence in their own right because they were statutes amendment Acts. They were not new Acts in their own right; they were only ever repealing other existing legislation. So why the need to even repeal them? I am not sure about that.He makes a point about the Michael Connelly Appointment Validation Act of 1936. I am not entirely sure what the body was that Michael Connelly was being appointed to but it was abolished 14 years later. So we have an appointment validation Act for a person who presumably no longer exists and a body that presumably no longer exists. It seems to me that one of the fundamental issues that we should be grappling with is how to create a system where we do not have to have these repeal bills to repeal legislation that effectively no longer has any purpose and that in itself has in effect been repealed. Otherwise we are going to keep going in a cycle where nothing will ever be finally repealed because each subsequent repeal will need another repeal. It seems to me that that is somewhat absurd.It is quite an interesting exercise to read through the various explanatory notes of this legislation. It all does seem relatively sensible to repeal these pieces of legislation. But I cannot help but wonder whether the second point in Sir Kenneth's submission is not the most pertinent one: is there a better way of doing this than through a statutes repeal bill?"