Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): E te Pīka tēnā koe. It's a pleasure to take a brief call on this bill and I thank the member David Seymour for bringing it to the House but it is a bill that Labour opposes and I'd like to talk about the reasons for that. But first let me give you some context about why I care about this bill. I think New Zealand's democracy is something that we are all very very proud of. In the same way that we look at our sporting heroes in the Olympics and draw an extraordinary amount of pride on an international scale we too look to our democracy—it's fast it's nimble it's inclusive it's representative—and say that's something that we can be proud of as New Zealanders.The basis of our Parliament is sovereignty where Parliament because it is representative can make law that protects and serves its people of the day and improvements to those rules are welcome. They're something that I would love to talk about to the member who has brought this bill and I'm sorry that I've missed his emails on it because this is important for us all. There is some level of forgetfulness on the Opposition benches here when harking back to that 2011 select committee when National was in Government and found this bill to be lacking then but in Opposition wants the legislature to be empowered to keep the executive in check. But that's not really what I want to talk about. I want to tell you about whether these proposals do in fact lead to better law and then to examine a quick question about what does lead to better lawmaking and lift productivity as the member is trying to do here.The answer to whether these proposals lead to better law is quite simply no. They're political principles in this bill they're not bipartisan and we haven't arrived at those principles through a bipartisan or cross-party process within this Parliament. There are a number of members here sitting with me tonight who love the Standing Orders who love to talk about regulation who love nothing more than to find Chris Penk in the corridor and talk to him about how we might consider secondary legislation and those world rankings. David Seymour: Name them. ARENA WILLIAMS: I might be talking about ourselves! My point there is that improving the laws with which we make laws is something that all parliamentarians have an interest in. Whether we are in Government whether we are in Opposition to take a long-term view is a special privilege that parliamentarians have and is the best part of serving in this place and finding ourselves the guardians of our parliamentary democracy.This bill does not in fact protect our parliamentary democracy. In fact it introduces a set of principles which are supremely partisan and political into a system which does not need more partisan input. It needs a long-term view. It needs a system where the courts aren't invited into the role of the legislature because when the legislature is strong and the courts have a clear role in findings of judicial review through the Bill of Rights process then we have the harmony in our system which exists currently which is the envy of the rest of the world.I'll just give you an example of that. In the 2019 Legislation Act which was something which came out of a review of the Standing Orders—and may I commend the Leader of the House Chris Hipkins for being a bit brave in Government and looking at that review of the Standing Orders and saying Yes this is something that we can do to strengthen our legislature to check the executive in a way which is helpful for all parliamentarians and good lawmaking." It's a useful piece of legislation because it defines the place of secondary legislation and the role of Ministers when they are granted powers in legislation—whether it's Gazette notices regulations—and it makes it clear what the powers are of the Regulations Review Committee which when used properly is a very powerful body within our Parliament.So this bill would seek to sort of quasi-entrench this principle of liberty but that is something which is already enshrined in our Standing Orders which are themselves rules about the rules. At Standing Order 327(2) the grounds that the regulation may be drawn back to the House includes "trespasses unduly on personal rights and liberties:". When we have a well-functioning Regulations Review Committee that right is well upheld by our legislature. I'm disappointed I don't have more time on this but I'll finish with a plea for more bipartisan discussion on the ways that we can make our legislature function better."