Williamson Maurice: Transport Legislation Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Williamson Maurice: Transport Legislation Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:16912] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I think it would be fair to say that Part 2 is reasonably brief in its clauses. [ 
Interruption 
] I say to Dr Mapp that I think a fair person seeing this and realising that it goes only to just less than one page would say it is quite brief. However Dr Mapp makes a very good contribution as he normally does about the technicality of that because it does refer to enormous schedules that are to do with which Acts are affected and which come into the new regime and which ones go out. I have to say that this is where I think the Minister owes the Committee an explanation about some of the legislation. I look at a particular provision in Part 2 which is clause 53. I apologise in advance to my adoring drive-time audience that I will be really boring by doing this but I am going to read clause 53 and then ask the Minister what it means.  
Clause 53 is headed “General savings provision”. We could say that this is something to do with superannuation or long-term nationhood building. No we should look at the wording: “Except as otherwise expressly provided in this Act nothing in this Act affects the completion of a matter or thing or the bringing or completion of proceedings that relates to an existing right interest title immunity or duty.” What on earth does that mean? I will read it out again: “Except as otherwise expressly provided in this Act nothing in this Act affects the completion of a matter or thing”—what is a “matter or thing”?—“or the bringing or completion of proceedings that relates to an existing right interest title immunity or duty.” Clause 54 which is lovely stuff states: “Transitional regulations—The Governor-General may by Order in Council make regulations—(a) prescribing transitional and savings provisions concerning the coming into force of this Act that may be in addition to or in place of the transitional and savings provisions in this Act:”. How bad does it have to get before someone calls an end to this sort of nonsense where we are allowing for transitional and savings provisions concerning the coming into force of this Act whereby those provisions may be in addition to or replacing those that are already in the current Act? 
Sandra Goudie 
: Labour lunacy. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: My colleague is right. I think clause 54 deserves another reading because I do not know what it means and I am asking the Minister to get up and tell us what it means. I will read it out again: “The Governor-General may by Order in Council make regulations—” I am happy with that. I know about the Governor-General and about making regulations by Order in Council so that is great. The regulations are: “(a) prescribing transitional and savings provisions”—remember this is transport legislation not superannuation or anything—“concerning the coming into force of this Act that may be in addition to or in place of the transitional and savings provisions in this Act:”.  
What does that mean? I think it means that if we have got it wrong if we have messed it up then we have an ability to come back at any time and make some savings and some transitional provisions to cover the ones that we got wrong in the first place. How pre-emptive is that! The Minister is basically saying that because he does not know what he is doing he will put in a clause that allows him to keep changing the legislation as we go along so he can keep fixing up the mess-up he made along the way.  
This bill could have been done more simply. There are a lot of provisions that the National Party is supportive of and a lot of provisions for which we would have been happy to come to the party and save this time on a lengthy debate that will have to be gone through. It would have been all simply handled in Part 1 when the Minister had dealt with that “safety at reasonable cost” provision. He has refused to answer who is on his big list. We will be delving into that later in the debate on the title.  
I am going to leave it to my colleagues to get into some of the details of some of the specific schedules—like technical amendments to the principal Act amendments to various Acts such as the Local Government Act and the Health and Safety in Employment Act and so on. It is quite complicated. We have an absolute right to hear and the Minister has an obligation to get up and explain a few of these bits and pieces. They are quite technical they will involve the lawyers and we have that right.