Shanks Katrina: Regulatory Improvement Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Shanks Katrina: Regulatory Improvement Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 30 March 2010. Volume:661;Page:10159. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KATRINA SHANKS (National) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to take a call this morning on the Regulatory Improvement Bill. I will address some issues that the previous speaker Kevin Hague talked about. The first is about urgency. This Government is about action and urgency is part of that action. It has been said before that this bill has been sitting on the Order Paper for a significant period of time so if we are serious about getting legislation through sometimes we need to go into urgency to do it. A bill like this does not have a high priority on the Order Paper and it can sit there for a very long period of time. For those businesses that rely on changes in regulations to update their regulations and keep them relevant to the environment they are in currently because we are in a business environment that changes very very quickly it is important that we keep legislation current with the environment those businesses are in. This legislation is part of that plan and this Government is committed to making change and to making a difference. 
The Hon Lianne Dalziel got up earlier and talked about how she had gone up and down the country talking to hundreds of businesses around New Zealand. They all said the same thing: as much as regulation is important—and it is important for investors to have confidence in the environment and for them to have confidence in their investing they do need regulation—they do not need a lot of regulation all the time. We do not need to put layers and layers of regulation upon businesses. Governments are very good at regulating but they are not very good at looking at regulations already in place to ensure that the regulations are still current and that they are still getting benefits from those regulations. So that is why this bill is very important. 
This bill is an omnibus bill; a vehicle to improve frameworks and reduce compliance burdens on businesses in a timely fashion. I know that the previous Green speaker questioned whether this bill should be standing as it is but I believe that it should. I believe there is a common thread that runs through this bill in all areas. I know that it will be broken up into different bills later on after a later stage but at this stage it is a good vehicle for getting small changes through. Otherwise the Order Paper would be clogged up and we would never get these small not-quite-so-important bills through because bigger bills will always take preference. 
The current bill addresses certain low-hanging fruit reforms. The visions in the bill came out of the Quality Regulation Review undertaken by the previous Government in 2006 and 2007. I thank the Hon Lianne Dalziel for the hard work she put into this omnibus regulations bill in making sure that the whole House bought into this bill she put forward and worked with. The Quality Regulation Review worked with many many stakeholders over a period of about 18 months I believe to put something together that would work. Hopefully we will have a bill like this going through the House every year to change some of those regulations that are not as relevant as they were when they first came in. 
I am taking just a very short call. I will be speaking at the Committee stage and on the third reading this morning as well. I look forward to speaking at those stages.