Dalziel Lianne: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:661;Page:10067] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I wanted to take the opportunity for a further call on the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill due to Rodney Hide now being the Minister in the chair. As he is the other Minister responsible for this area of the legislation I felt it was important that I ask him to take the opportunity to respond to whether he now thinks it is a good idea to have the regulatory impact statement separate from the bill itself. This regulatory impact statement is totally relevant to both the title and the commencement date—both of these issues are touched on in the regulatory impact statement—and this is a very very clear example of why we need to have the regulatory impact statement included with the bill itself. 
On this particular occasion as I discovered subsequently regulatory impact statements are required to be tabled by the Bills Office essentially because we are in urgency and some MPs will not have time to go back to their offices and download them from the Treasury website before a bill is debated in the House. This is entirely unsatisfactory and would not have arisen as an issue if the Minister had not demanded to have the regulatory impact statements removed from the bills themselves. I have never heard the Minister explain why he took this decision to Cabinet. It is such a detrimental approach. I do not know whether the Minister has read the regulatory impact statement for this bill but the following statements “proposals to replace the elected Councillors for all of ECan’s functions” which is what the title of the bill is about and “suspend local body elections or remove the right of appeal on the NRRP or Water conservation orders except on points of law” really concerned me and I thought would have concerned him too. The departments themselves said: “These proposals appear to present a prima facie access to justice issue and some departments were concerned that this may not be consistent with the Government’s statement on regulation: ‘better regulation less regulation’ which requires a particularly strong case [to be] made for any regulatory proposals that are likely to override fundamental common law principles.” This bill overrides fundamental common law principles. The Minister is silent on that point and the title Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill does not indicate that many people had concerns that there was an overriding of fundamental common law principles. I raise a point of order Mr Chairman. The Minister whose name the bill is in is back in the Chamber and I thought it was a requirement that he sit in the chair when he is in the Chamber. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: The Minister can decide who sits in the chair at the time but I understand the Minister has come back to retrieve some papers. If he intends to stay then he needs to be sitting in the chair. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I wanted the Minister in the chair to respond to this question of the impact of the kind of decision making that has led to this bill being called the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill and of course its commencement date. The commencement date bothers me a lot. The bill states: “The Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” But we heard from the Minister yesterday that this bill is expected to be done and dusted by 1 May. 
Do members know what the implementation date was in the regulatory impact statement? It was 1 April—April Fool’s Day. That was the original date on which the Government had planned to have this bill come into effect not 1 May. So we are an entire month out from the original plan. In fact this bill was supposed to have been passed on 15 March. What is the date today? It is 30 March. No it is actually 31 March everywhere else in New Zealand except here in Parliament because of the irony or— 
Colin King 
: Process. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: The process of urgency somehow makes the parliamentary clock stop and it has stopped on 30 March. But according to the regulatory impact statement 15 March was the date on which the Government was supposed to progress this legislation through Parliament. This is what bothers me. The regulatory impact statement should be an integral part of the debate on this legislation; it is absolutely fundamental. None of the stuff that we have discovered by reading the regulatory impact statement was mentioned in either of the Ministers’ speeches or any of the Government members’ speeches on this bill. We have not had a proper debate on the elements of the bill that actually matter. 
The other point perhaps the Hon Rodney Hide might like to hear from the regulatory impact statement is this: “Options that rely on introducing legislation in a very short timeframe increase the risk of poor or misdirected intervention resulting in unintended consequences and the need for subsequent intervention to remedy these consequences.” That is exactly what is wrong with this process. It is not a robust process and there will be a price to pay.