Cunliffe DavidHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I take a short call to support on behalf of the Labour Party the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill. This is an innovative omnibus bill something that wraps up a number of small changes across three different categories in the commercial matters building and housing and workplace relations areas. It stands alongside the Statutes Amendment Bill and the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill as three different processes by which the Government can do good housekeeping on making sure that regulations are updated modern and effective and sunsetted when they are no longer useful. I think that is a very important thing. In order for a regulatory system to be of good repute and useful it has to be kept up to date. Regulations are if you like like hedges—you have to keep them trimmed otherwise they just grow into bushes. So we want to see well-trimmed but effective regulations that are doing the job that they should be doing. The process for if I take it first the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill one of the three is a little bit—having said that—unusual in that it seeks to give effect to some of the recommendations of the New Zealand Productivity Commission's June 2014 report on regulatory institutions and practices. That is the Government has had over 2 years to get it from the publication of the report to the draft to the House and here we are talking about it today but the House has had only a couple of days to consider the material that is here. There seems to be something a little bit out of kilter if you will forgive me in having a 2-year time frame for the Government to do its work and then slamming it through the House process. We expect of course that the material here will be considered by select committees in detail. We support that process and we look forward to the feedback from the committees. I am sure that all current and former Ministers however would share one rule of thumb: whenever an official comes in and says Minister don't worry much about this. It is just a purely minor and technical amendment." it pays to have a really good look at it because they are not always minor and technical. Sometimes dressed up in that technical language there can be quite profoundly important changes. I am sure that the select committees will give due regard—due diligence—to a number of the matters here. Some of the Acts that these provisions in the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill touch upon are all very very important Acts—the Companies Act 1993 the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 the Financial Markets Authority Act 2011 and the Friendly Societies and Credit Unions Act 1982. They are not trivial pieces of legislation that it cross-references to and the committee will need to assure itself that the changes are useful. I have to say that the bill's explanatory note is clothed in pretty general language. Try this one for size in relation to the Friendly Societies and Credit Unions Act: "The Bill promotes innovation efficiency and accountability and removes unnecessary operating and compliance costs …". Well that is good as far as it goes but it does not tell you a hell of a lot about what it is actually going to do. It goes on to say: "by allowing friendly societies and credit unions to use electronic and postal voting …". Fair enough but let us trace through the implications across the different bills. In relation to the Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment Bill Labour will support the bill to the select committee to improve the regulation of these various pieces of legislation. Whenever I see the word "efficiency" I get a little bit suspicious or at least my antennae go up because I would not want to see a drive for efficiency and reduction of compliance costs be an excuse for cutting corners and we all know the hazards of that in the building industry. That is how we got leaky building syndrome last time. So let us make sure that when we are trimming the hedge we do not take too many of the trees out because we need the hedge to be there. In terms of the workplace relations there are some matters that touch upon paid parental leave and the calculation of early births and near-term babies to ensure that the parents get the full entitlement. We support that in principle. We think that the Government has been pretty miserly and pretty focused on the PR rather than on the substance if I can put it like that in relation to paid parental leave where it has done just enough to get the public off its back but not enough to really do enough for parents. So if this bill gives us an opportunity to revisit that we will be very happy indeed. Taken at face value it is a tidy-up piece of legislation. We will be looking at it at the select committee. Labour supports it to the select committee process. Thank you."