Huo Raymond: Legislation Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Huo Raymond: Legislation Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 03 August 2010. Volume:665;Page:12962. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
RAYMOND HUO (Labour) 
: 
 Whenever we open a newspaper—the  
New Zealand Herald 
 the  
Dominion Post 
 or any other daily or weekly newspaper—to seek information from its classified advertisements the first thing we do is go to its index page or pages. Online media such as TradeMe publish such indexes on their home pages. Surprisingly there is no such official index to our laws despite there being over 1100 Acts. Without looking at those index pages we would be looking for a needle in a haystack. 
There are over 1100 Acts and some of them are 100 years old written in old-fashioned English and full of legal jargon. That is the first aspect the Legislation Bill is seeking to address. The second aspect is that many Acts have been amended and patched up over many years. To borrow Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s language they contain some “dead wood” that “should be removed.” 
This bill attempts to modernise and improve the law relating to the publication availability reprinting revision and official versions of legislation and to bring the law together in a single piece of legislation. The bill implements aspects of the Government’s response to recommendations made in the reports of the Law Commission entitled  
Presentation of New Zealand Statute Law 
 and  
Review of the Statutes Drafting and Compilation Act 1920 
. I take this opportunity to thank Sir Geoffrey Palmer and the Law Commission for presenting such comprehensive reports which contain recommendations to make statute law easier to access and to make measurable progress in updating the statute book. The reports were written in conjunction with the Parliamentary Counsel Office and I congratulate the office on such a great initiative. 
There are at least four issues with the statute books. The first one is that there are Acts on the statute books that are totally obsolete. Sir Geoffrey cited two examples: the District Railways Purchasing Act 1885 and the New Zealand Institute of Journalists Act 1895. As a lawyer turned MP I do not think it is shameful for me to admit that I have never heard of those two Acts. 
The second issue is to borrow Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s language again that New Zealand’s statute law is in a “chaotic state”. There is no obvious order or logic in our statute books. The law on one topic can be scattered over several Acts. There is a rule for instance that contracts to sell books for delivery in the future must be put in writing and must contain the total price in red print. That provision is hidden in the Mercantile Law Act 1908 which is the last place anyone would think to look for it. 
The third issue is that there have been changes in drafting styles over the years and therefore it is sometimes very difficult to understand legislation purely from a linguistic perspective. The old and the new style together can make matters even more untidy and inconsistent. The fourth issue is that with redundant and obsolete provisions remaining in force there are inconsistencies between Acts which may give rise to difficult questions of interpretation. 
The Parliamentary Counsel Office identified two options in its regulatory impact statement. Option one is to make legislative changes so the Parliamentary Counsel Office would be required to have a revision programme and statutory fast-tracking procedure for enacting revision bills. Under this option the Parliamentary Counsel Office would be duty-bound to undertake a triennial programme of statutes law revision the contents of which would be settled by Cabinet. The Parliamentary Counsel Office would thus have statutory powers to alter the wording order and placement of the provisions that are subject to revision. 
As the regulatory impact statement explains when the revision bill is drafted it is submitted to a committee comprising the Chief Parliamentary Counsel the Solicitor-General the President of the Law Commission and a retired judge. The committee’s job would be to certify the bill and question whether the committee was satisfied that it had changed only the presentation of the law not its effect. I look forward to submissions and deliberation on this particular point. In particular I will be interested to know more details about how the committee is meant to function and how its members will be appointed. There are risks associated with this option as correctly identified by the Parliamentary Counsel Office. However as proposed by the Law Commission it would be more consistent with current constitutional understandings to achieve the changes to parliamentary procedure by making amendments to the Standing Orders rather than by making legislative changes. This would ensure that the changes have unanimous or near unanimous support from all or most parliamentary parties. 
Under option two a general reference to undertaking revision could be included in the Parliamentary Counsel Office’s statutory functions. The risk of this option is that without any statutory obligation to carry out revision the role for the Parliamentary Counsel Office to play may be too passive. The preferred option is to have statutory provision for a revision programme and a duty for the Parliamentary Counsel Office to draft a revision and to submit it to a certifying committee. The parliamentary procedures for the passage of revision bills are to be set out in the Standing Orders instead. 
So Labour supports this bill going to the Regulations Review Committee. At the select committee we will look closely at the regulations disallowance changes proposed in the bill as explained by the Hon Maryan Street who spoke earlier. We have some concerns about the impact the changes will have on the work of the committee given that its mandate is determined by the definition of “regulation” contained in Standing Order 3(1) which will have to be changed as a result of this legislation. 
In respect of clause 25 I share the concerns expressed by the Hon David Parker who spoke on this bill last week. Further I note that the previous Leader of the House and Attorney-General the Hon Dr Michael Cullen strongly believed that the Parliamentary Counsel Office should report to the Leader of the House not to the Attorney-General. This bill continues the practice of the Parliamentary Counsel Office reporting to the Attorney-General but we might want to take the chance at the select committee to reconsider this practice. 
The Law Commission consulted widely during the preparation of these reports. I thank the stakeholders involved and thank the Parliamentary Counsel Office for its commitment and wonderful work in taking the bill to its current status. This bill contains a lot of sensible provisions but it will require careful consideration by Parliament because it deals with important constitutional matters. Thank you.