Bishop Chris: Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBishop Chris: Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 02 July 2015. Volume:706;Page:5080. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS BISHOP (National):As my colleague Andrew Bayly pointed out this is I think the only bill that the Regulations Review Committee considers but it is an important bill. Mr Hipkins has unfortunately left the Chamber and he noted before that—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! You cannot refer to the absence of a member.CHRIS BISHOP: Good point. I acknowledge that Mr Assistant Speaker. Apologies. Mr Hipkins mentioned before that my colleague Andrew Bayly’s speech was so boring. One may say that these issues are somewhat technical but they are actually very important. I think the speech by the Hon David Parker actually elucidated why bills such as these are small and minor and in some ways technical and you may even call them boring but they are really important.The Regulations Review Committee is a real workhorse of the Parliament I have to say. I have to say it is very well chaired by the Hon David Cunliffe and we are very fortunate to have David Parker on the committee. We are really actually making a huge amount of progress across a whole range of issues at the Regulations Review Committee on Thursday mornings. It is very collegial; we work in a very bipartisan fashion. We are also privileged enough to have the Hon Chester Borrows on the committee.I think we are raising the bar in terms of what Regulations Review Committees have done. I acknowledge that the Hon Maryan Street in the previous Parliament did a good job of chairing the committee but we are as my colleague has mentioned taking a look at the vexed issue of disallowable instruments that are not legislative instruments.We are taking a look at the issue of Acts that Parliament has passed but that have not actually been brought into force yet. The House may be surprised to know that there is a whole range of Acts that Parliament has passed some as far ago as the 1980s that are actually not part of our law because they have not been brought into force yet through Order in Council by the Governor-General acting on ministerial instruction. For some of them as my colleague Paul Goldsmith points out there are good reasons but for others there perhaps are not. So we are actually kind of forensically going through that list and thinking well perhaps that situation is not desirable—that Parliament passes an Act that has the support of the majority of Parliament it sits on the statute book or at least provisionally sits on the statue book I guess you could say but it is not actually part of the law of New Zealand. So we are having a look at that.With that minor digression about the important and powerful Regulations Review Committee which I am very pleased to sit on I just want to endorse this bill. Part 2 is the most interesting part of the bill because it rationalises the terms of the existing confirmation validation provisions and as colleagues on the committee have pointed out we will be taking a close look at that. The nomenclature of these provisions is confusing and as Andrew Bayly has pointed out we are taking a good look at that in the select committee. Part 2 of the bill is the one that I think we will be examining most closely. With those brief remarks I commend this bill to the House.Debate interrupted.