Robertson Grant: Standing Orders Inquiry into Parliament’s Legislative Response to Future National Emergencies — Instruction to Regulations Review CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Standing Orders Inquiry into Parliament’s Legislative Response to Future National Emergencies — Instruction to Regulations Review Committee[Sitting date: 30 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19751. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):Thank you very much for letting me take the call Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson and I would also like to acknowledge the excellent speech you gave in your valedictory. In fact I acknowledge all of the excellent valedictory statements given yesterday whatever their length.These are important matters as the Leader of the House has said. I want to work through the areas that the Standing Orders Committee considered and to pick up on one or two matters. Some matters have resulted in recommendations and some have not and I believe those matters should be revisited by the Standing Orders Committee in the next term of Parliament.What I would say at the outset is that I endorse Mr Brownlee’s views that these regular reviews are an important occasion for Parliament to look again at how we do our business and what we can change to improve that business. There were many innovative ideas put before the Standing Orders Committee both by members of Parliament and by parties and also by those who submitted. I would like to thank all submitters for their contributions. Not all of the innovative ideas have made it back to the House and it is fair to say that on the committee there was a range of views about just how far we could go but it always important to respect your elders I find and those who have been here a little longer than myself. So we attempted as a committee to come to a consensus and it is those recommendations that are with us today but there are a number of matters that could be considered again in the future.Just working our way through one side note is that a very minor change has been made to the Standing Orders to recognise that if Anzac Day or Waitangi Day falls on a Saturday or a Sunday the following Monday is not a working day. That is a good reminder of the excellent piece of legislation that was passed in this term of Parliament under the name of Dr David Clark.Sue Moroney: But who was it written by?GRANT ROBERTSON: Well my colleague asks who it was written by. I am too modest to note who the author of that legislation was but I do just say that it is good to see that particular law now having some effect. We look forward to 2015 when that has its first—Hon Gerry Brownlee: Always looking for a day off.GRANT ROBERTSON: We are just giving hard-working New Zealanders their full allotment of holidays every year and I am sure that even if Mr Brownlee voted against it he is pleased that it has now happened.I want to also make reference to the question of a review that the Speaker will be undertaking of the prayer at the start of each day. The current prayer was adopted by the House in 1962. Its wording is very much evocative of that time and perhaps does not take into account the increasing diversity of New Zealand and the increasing range of faiths and beliefs that we have in our country. On a personal note I would say that it is very important that this House starts the day with some time for reflection. I think that is an excellent thing. We are all elected here as honourable members—as you often tell us Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson—and it is important that we take a moment to consider what that means. We need to do that in such a way that every member of this House feels included in that reflection and my view is that there is now an opportunity for the Speaker to review that issue. There is no outcome that is specified; it is merely something that the Speaker will now do in the next Parliament and I look forward to the outcome of that review.I also want to pick up on Mr Brownlee’s comments about what I think is a very important change which is the amendment to Standing Order 105 to recognise that any member may address this House in New Zealand Sign Language. That is an important development. New Zealand Sign Language is an official language of this country. It is about time that this House recognised that as it does with Māori and also English which is not actually an official language of this country but is obviously the most commonly spoken language—Paul Foster-Bell: Yes it is.GRANT ROBERTSON: Not by law it is not. It is in fact not by law an official language.Hon Christopher Finlayson: No it’s not an official—you’re quite right.GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes but it is obviously the language of convention. The Attorney-General has—for the second time actually—said I was right about something. We had better get that in the Hansard. Yes it is a very important moment.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Don’t worry.GRANT ROBERTSON: Ha ha! That is right. He will return to type later—it will be fine. But what we do strongly understand and appreciate here is that as members of Parliament move to being able to use sign language more often we will be working in consultation with the Speaker’s office on that. But it is an excellent development for this House.The area that I want to dwell on for just a couple of minutes is the question of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vets that are undertaken. The committee had a significant discussion about this and certainly some of us on the committee believe that the recommendation we have here—to amend the Standing Orders to provide that a paper presented by the Attorney-General about the inconsistency of a provision with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act stands referred to a select committee for consideration—is a good first step to ensure that select committees will look at the Attorney-General’s section 7 comments. However there were a number of members on the committee who felt that that did not go far enough and certainly Labour members on the committee would have preferred that a report from a select committee comes back to Parliament after the reference of an Attorney-General’s section 7 recommendations.We feel that this is an important area. If Parliament is going to say that we are going to allow an inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act then that is something that should be debated openly and clearly and should be given some attention in a select committee and at the moment we do not believe that is certain enough.The other area that concerned a number of the members on the committee was when very large Supplementary Order Papers find their way into the House at the last minute and we do not have time for the Attorney-General to look at those in the same way as substantive pieces of legislation are looked at. We have seen in this Parliament very large Supplementary Order Papers that have not had substantive consideration and certainly have not had the Attorney-General’s oversight in terms of their New Zealand Bill of Rights Act consistency. So on those two matters certainly the Labour members of the committee would have liked to see this go further but we are pleased to support the amendment to Standing Orders that will at least mean that select committees will always consider the Attorney-General’s wise words on inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.We made an important decision to increase scrutiny in a number of areas. The time for the Budget debate will now move from being 14 hours to 15 hours and the estimates debate will now move from being 8 hours to 11 hours. Those two debates are very important parts of the scrutiny of what the Government does with the hard-earned dollars of taxpayers and the committee agreed that more focus on that would be beneficial to the House. That sees a reduction in the time allowed for debate on the Prime Minister’s statement from 15 hours to 13 hours. It has been the practice in the last few years for that debate to become a bit of a catch-all and I do not think that losing 2 hours off that versus having an increased financial scrutiny would be a bad trade-off at all. So we are pleased to support those amendments and changes in the way in which debate takes place.Another area where we felt that the committee did not go as far as it could have was on the question of what to do with petitions and e-petitions and online engagement. I am of the strong view that this is an area where Parliament could do a lot more to engage with the communities that are interested in our work. So much of what happens in political debate nowadays happens online and all of us know that the signing of e-petitions is now the way in which many people express themselves politically rather than going to a public meeting or rather than even filling out a written petition. It is my strong view that we would encourage more interest in Parliament if we were to adopt something like a process where a threshold is reached on an e-petition and that then generates a debate in Parliament or at the very least results in a petition being referred to a select committee for some significant consideration.We need to do more to engage with the public about how our democracy works and what people can engage on. We could have taken that opportunity here and I am sorry that we did not. There are as Mr Brownlee has mentioned occasions for set topic debates which we also endorse. I do believe that the debate on the Health Committee report was a very very good one. We can do more of that perhaps by using the extended hours provision a little more there and we can look at that in the next Parliament. But we do need as a Parliament to think of new and innovative ways of engaging with the public and I would urge the Standing Orders Committee to take another look at this next time.I will not dwell on the changes to the pecuniary interests register except to note that obviously members of Parliament will need to look carefully at the changes particularly around the question of the definition of “gift” and to note in particular that multiple gifts from the same donor that breach the $500 threshold now need to be declared. That means that members of Parliament will need to look much more carefully at the number of gifts that they receive and keep a record of them should they end up being over $500—if you get perhaps three or four smaller gifts from the same person within a 1-year period. There are a number of changes around the definition of “gift”—description of real property unit trusts discharged debts and so on—that will make a change for us.Overall there are some very useful advances in the report of the Standing Orders Committee. We would have liked one or two more but we are happy to support the report.