Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Can I thank my colleague Ruth Dyson for putting that issue so clearly. I was sitting on the Government Administration Committee when Sir Kenneth Keith came before it and I think it is worthy to note that you would have few jurists more competent than Sir Kenneth Keith to tell a select committee what is wrong.As Ruth Dyson has said he is a former Court of Appeal judge then a Supreme Court judge and then was at the International Court of Justice. He is an esteemed legal academic in addition to all of those matters and someone who now as a retired jurist felt that this was important enough that he would make his first submission to a select committee since his retirement as a judge. He now has the freedom to make submissions in a private capacity that he would not have been able to make particularly when he was on the bench of a New Zealand court and probably even when he was at the International Court of Justice.He came to the select committee and made this point of principle: that a statutes repeal bill—which is an omnibus bill the purpose of which is to repeal redundant or superfluous Acts because they are spent in that they are no longer relevant and no longer have any practical effect—is different from repealing an Act which whilst not being adhered to by the Government remains in force.At the select committee and in the report that came back from the select committee the issue was not even addressed by the majority. Well that is not quite fair—the New Zealand Labour Party and the Green Party are recorded in the commentary back from the select committee as questioning whether this was appropriate. But the rest of the select committee just noted that it had had a submission and then did not express an opinion upon it. I am somewhat surprised that the committee did not say: Oh no we disagree with Sir Kenneth Keith. We don't think it is a matter of different principle." Rather the only thing that we get from the select committee is: "We were told that repealing the Act is within the scope of the bill as introduced."Well that is obviously the view of the clerk of the committee—that repealing the Sentencing Council Act is within the scope of the bill—but that does not make it right. I think Sir Kenneth Keith is correct—that if the Government wants to repeal the Sentencing Council Act because it does not want to implement it then it should repeal it through a piece of legislation to repeal the Sentencing Council Act rather than tacking it on to the Statutes Repeal Bill.If the logic of the Government is correct that there is no difference between this and any other repeal I do not see a difference in principle between repealing an Act that remains valid on its face but for reasons of administrative neglect is not being implemented—I do not see any difference in principle between repealing that through a bill like this Statues Repeal Bill and a bill that is currently being implemented because whether an Act is or is not being complied with is not the point. Acts that exist on the statute book that should be complied with but are not—it should not be any easier to repeal them than an Act that is being complied with. They are both laws of this Parliament. The Sentencing Council Act is not redundant just because the Government is refusing to implement it.The Government back in 2008 campaigned on the basis that it was not going to proceed with the Sentencing Council Act and since then the Government would have been quite entitled to come to this House with legislation to seek to repeal the Sentencing Council Act. But it has not done that. Rather it ignored the provisions of the Sentencing Council Act and did not apply them in the way that Parliament said should happen. For it to through this instrument—the Statutes Repeal Bill—remedy its problem by adding it to a long list of these Acts that truly are redundant seems in the opinion of Opposition members to be wrong.For that reason there is an amendment in my name that excises from the list of those statutes that are being repealed found in schedule 1—from page 7 just after line 10—the words "Sentencing Council Act 2007 (2007 No 25)". I will hope that National Party members will join with members of the Labour Party and I hope other Opposition parties in backing an amendment to the Statutes Repeal Bill as reported back by the Government Administration Committee that is excising from the list of statutes to be repealed the Sentencing Council Act 2007.I do not think I can put it more clearly than that. There is no point me repeating that again. I think the logic of Sir Kenneth Keith—unsurprisingly given his stature and the fact that he does not make these submissions lightly and had to go to the trouble of preparing a submission and presenting it at select committee I do not think there is much doubt that he is right. I am convinced. I was convinced on the day. I think that that Act should be taken out of the Statutes Repeal Bill and if the Government wants to repeal it some other way well it has got the ability to do so.I do think it is quite a good idea to get rid of some of these old statutes off the book. I do not think it saves much in terms of compliance costs because they are truly redundant. All you are doing is saving the cost of reprinting them in the future next time you reprint the New Zealand Statutes. That is a very small amount of money given that most of these things are published electronically anyway these days but none the less it is not a silly thing to do to clean up those old finance Acts that are listed there over more than two pages—two and a half pages of amendments to the Finance Act through other finance Acts that have long since been overtaken by events.So I am happy to support this bill. I do not think it has an effect on the compliance costs of businesses operating in New Zealand in any material way. It does slightly decrease the costs of people who buy statutes I suppose. Indeed people who try to find the current position at law might find that they do not have to check whether there are some unexpired provisions of these other Acts—not that I think they would check that in practice because they know them to be so old as to be redundant. But the point in respect of the sentencing council is correct and I would commend that amendment to the Committee."