Curran Clare: Regulatory Improvement Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Curran Clare: Regulatory Improvement Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 30 March 2010. Volume:661;Page:10164. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 I rise with great pleasure to support the Regulatory Improvement Bill. As a number of my colleagues have said before me it is a common-sense bill that will make it easier to do business. Labour is supporting this bill. As has been mentioned it is an omnibus bill that makes amendments to nine pieces of legislation in order to improve the regulatory framework and reduce the compliance cost on businesses. It is an important bill. 
It is important that I correct the previous speaker Melissa Lee who said that the bill would not have come before the House if this Government had not brought it. The bill was actually submitted to the House before the last election. It is very unclear—given the importance of the bill the sensible nature of it and all the previous work that has gone into it—why it is being rushed through the House under urgency. I think it is important that we note there is no reason for it to be considered under urgency. 
An enormous amount of work has gone into this legislation and that is largely due to the important work done by my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel. She has had a number of mentions in the House today. I think that she deserves a lot of credit for this bill. 
Labour supports this bill not because it has been rushed through the House under urgency by the Government but because it is the result of the very careful 15-month Quality Regulation Review. There has been a lot of consultation with Government agencies and 200 businesses. The previous Labour Government knew a lot about consultation and how to do it properly. This Government does not appear to know a lot about consultation. It seems to think that rushing bills through the House under urgency reflects consultation with New Zealand people. This bill is more important than its content. The previous Labour Government listened very carefully to businesses and set about implementing their recommendations whereas the style of the Minister in charge of this bill the Minister for Regulatory Reform Rodney Hide is to ignore recommendations and come up with his own plan. That does not bode well for New Zealand businesses because they will get what Mr Rodney Hide says they need. 
The important point to make about this bill is that the Hon Lianne Dalziel when she was Minister of Commerce—how many times have I mentioned her? 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: You’re only up to three. 
CLARE CURRAN 
: She consulted widely on the Quality Regulation Review which led to this bill. It appears that Mr Rodney Hide the so-called Minister for Regulatory Reform does not and will not place as much emphasis on consultation. Of course the key example of that is the Auckland super-city where a reasonably sham process disguised as consultation has been undergone in terms of consulting Aucklanders. The way that this bill has been introduced to the House does not reflect the work that has gone into it—another important point to make. But it certainly reflects the approach of the National-ACT Government to lawmaking and that is to have no consultation. 
The bill makes some small uncontroversial but very important changes to the regulatory environment. The Quality Regulation Review which was led by the Hon Lianne Dalziel led to a greatly enhanced regulatory impact statement regime which is another thing that the previous Labour Government should be very proud of. That regime is largely due to the work of the Hon Lianne Dalziel my colleague who is the chair of the Commerce Committee. 
The Commerce Committee is generally a very effective committee. We all work together very cooperatively and harmoniously in the main largely due to the extremely experienced chairing skills of the Hon Lianne Dalziel. All of my colleagues across the House who sit on the Commerce Committee even the ones who have subbed on the committee comment on how well it is chaired by the Hon Lianne Dalziel and what a pleasure it is to sit on it. 
As I said Labour introduced this bill but the credit is being taken by Minister Rodney Hide. It is important to make the point that annual Regulatory Improvement bills are a sensible way of ensuring that quality regulation takes place unlike the ACT Party’s Regulatory Responsibility Bill which is still languishing on the Order Paper. 
I will make a couple of comments about the process that led up to this bill. It was introduced by the Hon Lianne Dalziel in response to the Quality Regulation Review. The review found that when businesses deal with the Government they do not see discrete agencies. That is a really important point. Citizens view the Government and the services that it provides for both citizens and businesses as a single entity. They do not want to see a whole lot of individual organisations separately. They would like to—and do—see a single entity the Government. Because of the requirement to deal with all the single entities businesses in particular become frustrated at having to provide the same information over and over again to different agencies. 
Labour looked at the regulatory framework under the leadership of the Hon Lianne Dalziel and new regulations were made from a business perspective. As well as introducing this bill Labour strengthened the regulatory impact analysis regime to ensure that future regulation properly identified the problems to be solved. Labour looked at all of the potential options for resolving it. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: They’ve taken the regulatory impact statements out of the bills. 
CLARE CURRAN 
: The Government has taken them out. It was quite difficult to access the regulatory impact statement for this bill. My office had to go through quite a rigmarole this morning. The Hon Lianne Dalziel has spoken to the House about this issue on a number of occasions. Public access to the regulatory impact statement is extremely important. 
Another thing that the previous Labour Government launched as part of the Quality Regulation Review which was led by my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel was a 2-year trial of a business cost calculator that quantifies the compliance costs of regulation. The business compliance cost calculator is a software tool that allows Government officials to calculate the true cost for businesses of any regulations that they are recommending to the Government. The tool is designed to assist policy makers to create higher-quality regulation in a uniform and efficient manner. A similar type of tool is being used successfully in Australia and in some European countries. The Australian model is currently being adapted for use in the New Zealand environment. It is envisaged that in the long term the use of this tool will support greater productivity and competitiveness by allowing more resources to be applied to core business activities. The business cost calculator is just one of the measures introduced through the Quality Regulation Review led by my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel. She had an absolute commitment to making it easier for businesses to do business in New Zealand and to putting sensible measures in place. This bill is the result of that work.