Chauvel Charles: Regulatory Improvement Bill — First Reading 
Chauvel Charles: Regulatory Improvement Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:654;Page:3085] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to say a few words on the Regulatory Improvement Bill. I would like to start by sharing with the House my perspective as the chair of the Regulations Review Committee—and we have just heard from Amy Adams the deputy chair a very able speech if I may say that respectfully. I will cite the experience of the committee because it provides very important accountability from this House and this Parliament back to the community as far as sub-delegated legislation is concerned. Indeed many of the principles that we on the committee look for in our work are reflected in the bill; for example the Regulations Review Committee recently had cause to express some real concern about whether when a regulation incorporates say a New Zealand standard by reference that standard is sufficiently accessible to citizens for it to be said to have been satisfactorily incorporated into the law or whether we ought to recommend that the standard be contained in the delegated legislation itself so that people can have free and easy access to it. It is interesting to see that this legislation does something very similar on a point of sub-delegated legislation—a point to which I will return. 
I turn now to the analogy between the work of the Regulations Review Committee on delegated legislation and the work of this House now with this first—hopefully it will be annual—Regulatory Improvement Bill. It is a similar way of engendering accountability—in this case back to the business community by and large—in respect of primary legislation which is something that this House really has not thought about a lot. Parliaments overseas have for example looked at the question of whether all legislation should have sunset clauses built into it. That way we can make sure that legislation that sits on the statute book for many years does not simply get out of date. After all it has the effect of the law of the land yet there is no mechanism that we as legislators have to make sure that the law of the land is refreshed and always remains relevant. This bill I see as a first step in that direction and it is a very welcome step in the same way as the reforms put in place by that great reforming Attorney-General and Leader of the House the Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Palmer spearheaded the way for a proper regime of accountability in respect of delegated legislation one of the fruits of which is the Regulations Review Committee—which as I have said I have the honour to chair. 
I will say a few words about the Quality Regulation Review because that will set this legislation in context. The Quality Regulation Review came out of the previous Prime Minister’s statement in the House back in February 2006. In her statement the Rt Hon Helen Clark said: “We will also be taking a fresh look at regulatory frameworks. Feedback from business suggests that higher-quality regulation would lead to more growth and investment and we want to engage with business on how to achieve that.” That is another point that I think is important to make. This legislation is important as the previous speaker said in that it tidies up bits and pieces of legislation that have presented a problem from a compliance or duplication point of view but have not warranted legislation in their own right. It is important that this Parliament looks at that sort of legislation and tidies it up. That sort of exercise will lead to greater confidence in our ability to foster the sort of growth climate we need in this country to make sure we have the kind of equitable society that we want to see in New Zealand. 
But the point about the content of the bill is only half the matter; the other point is the process that led to it. It was a meaningful consultation process. If this type of legislation is to become an annual feature of the business of this House we must not lose sight of the need to consult. We must continue to consult the businesses and the other stakeholders who are affected by legislation and we must make sure that we are not simply imposing further problems on them by legislating for problems that we see exist. We have to make it a two-way street: to ask the businesses what the problems are go through a meaningful consultation exercise and then make sure that we respond in a proper and proportional way. 
The beauty of the Quality Regulation Review is that that was exactly the exercise that the then Minister of Commerce the Hon Lianne Dalziel undertook. The review took over 15 months to complete and involved a wide range of Government agencies as well as more than 200 businesses. The final report identified a number of issues that required the sorts of amendments to legislation that we now see in this omnibus bill. If we look at this legislation we see that it covers quite a remarkable range of activity but all of it is aimed at the same objectives and they are to improve the regulatory frameworks and to reduce the compliance burden on business. 
Before I talk about some of the specific examples in the legislation I want to make this point. A visitor from Mars arriving in New Zealand just before the election might have presumed from the sorts of speeches being made during the election campaign that New Zealand was not a very prosperous stable or fair place to live. I think that one of the unfortunate features of New Zealand politics is that there seems to be a temptation on the part of whoever happens to be in Opposition—but certainly not the honourable members on this side of the House of course—to run the country down to say that the economy is in a mess New Zealand is a terrible place to live and we have to claw our way back up the rankings somehow. It would be useful I think—again to set the legislation in context—for members to recall that New Zealand does not start from a zero base in this area. It is easy to do business in New Zealand. To set up a business for example we are second to Singapore in the World Bank’s rankings. [ 
Interruption 
] I think Mr Tremain would concede that the World Bank knows a bit about how easy it is to set up a business in the various countries in which it operates. We are No. 2. So let us not lose sight of the fact that we are doing pretty well in at least one of these important areas. Another important area is the amount of transparency that exists in New Zealand. We are up there with the Nordic countries—I think we are second to Finland—as far as our complete lack of corruption in public life is concerned. 
Hon Rodney Hide 
: That’s because Labour’s gone. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Mr Hide is quite right; that is the legacy of 9 years of Labour in office. It is something we can be very proud of because that lack of corruption is something that other countries and businesses overseas would absolutely die for. 
I said I would speak on some of the details of the bill and I will move to the incorporation by reference point which I touched on earlier. It is a well-known principle of the law that in order for people to be able to comply with the law that this Parliament makes including regulations made under legislation the law should be well known to people and accessible. One of the important things this legislation does is address an important incorporation by reference point when we have the standards requirements or recommended practices of national as well as international organisations. This change will resolve some potential issues that have arisen from the current wording of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. The current provisions make it difficult to refer to the preferred standards of an organisation such as the British Standards Institution because it might be considered a national organisation of the UK rather than a properly recognised and reputable international organisation. This creates unnecessary confusion and obstacles to the incorporation in New Zealand regulations of high-quality standards developed by such organisations. That situation will be addressed by this bill. 
Two other matters that are dear to my heart as Labour’s energy spokesperson are dealt with in the bill. First the gas governance regime will be amended to allow gas to be used as feedstock. This amendment is intended to create certainty that the governance regime will cover participants using feedstock gas and to ensure that industry participants are treated consistently. The current provision in the legislation could be interpreted as exempting feedstock gas from any rules or regulations made under Part 4A of the Gas Act. Part 4A was intended to provide for an effective governance regime for the gas industry. This exclusion was not the intention of the original legislation and it clearly creates unnecessary confusion and uncertainty. 
The last point I will make was touched on by the previous speaker. It is important to align the treatment of liquefied petroleum gas under both the Weights and Measures Act 1987 and the Gas Act 1992. Gas industry consumers will gain greater clarity and thus reduced compliance costs. That is another example of the excellent measures contained in this bill. Thank you.