O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Mr Speaker the National Party does not—oh sorry wrong notes wrong notes. Only kidding! No we're very pleased to support this Statutes Amendment Bill. In fact there is nothing more exciting than a statute amendment bill late on a Thursday as we approach a recess week and that enthusiasm was abundantly clear in the impassioned speech from the Minister Andrew Little who we know is actually a very strong speaker—eloquent; can get fired up—and that was on display there. Full passion and I feel humbled—humbled—to speak after him.Look somewhat humour aside—somewhat humour—these are actually important bills or bill rather. It's an omnibus bill and importantly for those at home what that means is it's one piece of legislation which changes a number of pieces of legislation. In this case it's 41 but perhaps symbolic of a statutes amendment bill the notes given to me said it was 42. It was wrong clearly so I've had to amend the amendment to the Statutes Amendment Bill. But 41 pieces of legislation have to be amended.I'd like to acknowledge the work of the Governance and Administration Committee and Ian McKelvie who was then the chair—is he still the chair?Barbara Edmonds: Yes.SIMON O'CONNOR: He is still there. I've lost track of who's swapped around lately so I apologise to Ian who remains the chair. But actually I'd like to thank the committee—and I'll come to the clerks as well—for their diligence. There is actually quite a lot of work involved in getting down to what are very particular discrete changes and that actually takes a little bit of discipline. To somewhat speak personally when you are dealing in a select committee with if you will a highly controversial topic or one that's particularly fascinating you can be engaged. It actually takes a certain degree of quality to sit through something that is quite particular and we'll go through some of those in a moment.Secondly I'd like to actually echo the Minister's comments to our clerks and the entire office. They have a remarkable ability—and duty as well—to keep an eye on all that we do to obviously articulate it in law or in writing very very clearly and to acknowledge what is changing and where these changes are needed because despite all the work that we do in this entire Parliament with the hundreds of people who help us mistakes are made in some instances or often—as with actually the two changes the select committee recommended—the situation changes which means a piece of legislation becomes out of date. I'll be quite honest: I'd be hopeless—absolutely hopeless—at the clerk's role with that level of detail. So full admiration to them there for the work that they do and of course to the Minister's team who's put this together. As has been noted these are uncontroversial changes. The Government of the day will engage with other parties and other MPs and it gets its sign-off. It's an important part of our democratic process and I think it also illustrates two points. One is that most legislation as I said the other night goes through this House—I think it's about 80 percent of the legislation—with the agreement of certainly the two major parties but it's also a sign of how the rule of law works.As we heard there were 16 submissions and I think I heard from the Minister that there was a late submission as well. I think it's actually in itself quite remarkable that actually people—and thank you to those who submitted—are taking enough of an interest and rightly so in what this Parliament does that they want to raise issues.The bill makes a series of changes to 41 pieces of legislation and I'll take some highlights from that for members' edification but the select committee proposed two changes. One was around the unit titles. Long and short—probably long—but the reason there is that it was a proposed change through statute amendment to the Unit Titles Act. Now that of course has been updated in recent months as we have a new version of the Unit Titles Act; there was an amendment bill that was passed the Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act—by and large I think a good set of improvements. So basically the changes in the Statutes Amendment Bill were no longer needed.The other comes down to the Ngāti Manuhiri Claims Settlement Bill. I think it's actually a really good example of using statutes amendment to bring about a sensible practical change otherwise. I'm sure Minister Andrew Little who's also the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations would know the hoopla one would have to go through to make a change in that Treaty law to bring around something very very simple. So I'm really pleased to see that to this point the House supports it and I'm sure that it will continue to do so.I'm not going to go through all the Acts which are being changed but I'll go through most depending how five minutes goes. Hon Members: Aww!SIMON O'CONNOR: Yeah I know—I'm sorry. I can't quite give you the gift of time in these last minutes. By and large a lot of what you're seeing is basically removing some duplication that's coming through legislation and you see that with the animal products and welfare bills. Some small changes in the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act of 2009—again a good example where the Statutes Amendment Bill will kick in because that bill's from 2009. It refers to the 1996 Customs and Excise Act but we've made changes since then—exciting changes—in 2018 and we just have to update the text there accordingly. Obviously the committee was in agreement with that. We've also got two of the incorporated elements of the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act. That's in 2009 which must have occurred just after the anti - money laundering. So again it's just tightening up the language and nomenclature there.Similarly with the Care of Children Act of 2004—in 2004 we talked about domestic violence". The nomenclature we use now is much more around "family violence". So again it's just to illustrate to the viewers at home—probably once again my mum and dad—to say that these are important changes.The Courts Security Act is removing the phrase that "2 or more justices" are required to ensure that actually in this particular case justices of the peace cannot and if I understand that correctly should not be doing any hearings for an alleged crime that has an imprisonable penalty—so that's important there as well.I think a very efficient change is coming through around the Crown Entities Act of 2004. It means that Orders in Council can actually update the list of State and Crown entities and that's very very pragmatic as well.A really good change—and I'm thinking I might even have had a small part in this—to the Customs and Excise Act of 2018 around correcting the excise rate to "undenatured ethyl" as it's called strictly in the schedule. So basically you're talking pure ethanol. The rates were incorrect according to other types of alcohol. So that's just a small little tidy-up there. I mean it's almost inconsequential but it's important to get things right.The Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act: despite all the issues in Fire and Emergency New Zealand they're doing some good little tidy-ups here. The board can now authorise a class of person to actually hold some delegations. The current law means that a very specific fire officer had to be named to exercise certain delegations. Now it can be a class of person which is really good. Excitingly for me Fire and Emergency are now able once we pass this law to legally use drones helicopters and other—I better read it to be correct. We don't want to make a mistake in the Statute Amendment Bill. They can now legally use drones or aircraft or helicopters—I'd have preferred the term "fixed wing and rotary wing" but anyway that's me—in responding to an emergency.Angie Warren-Clark: Is it a rotary wing?SIMON O'CONNOR: Rotary wing. It's sort of the military term for a helicopter. It's not plain English but we just sort of sound fancy. There's something in Latin for it too I suspect.Look—really importantly too—we're updating things like "housing and urban development". It's now just "urban development" and again it's all just nomenclature. Similarly to the Land Transport Act we're making sure "medical practitioners" has been updated to "health practitioners"—I think we changed that about five or six years ago—as in we change a lot of terminology from "medical practitioners" which means just doctors to "health practitioners" which recognises actually that doctors nurse practitioners nurses and others can operate in this space and clearly we missed something in the Land Transport Act.Interestingly we have to update the Legislation Act of 2019 to correct the definitions of the "North Island" and "South Island" and I thought it was fairly binary. I mean how do we get that wrong? Did we once called the South Island the North Island? I don't know and I'm very confused but we are updating it.Finally and of great importance I am sure the Wine Act of 2003—Hon Member: Oh hello—hello.SIMON O'CONNOR: Yes now everyone's interested. The Wine Act of 2003—who knew. I want to be really clear to people at home that this is the Wine Act without an "h". We invoke the whining often here but no this is the Wine Act of 2003. It's very important. We must listen to this: it's going to enable certain secondary legislation or published instruments made by the same marker to be consolidated—excellent. I think that means we can still get a bit of a drop once we're well over the yardarm and with that I commend the bill to the House."