O'Rourke Denis: Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading[Sitting date: 16 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17343. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First is satisfied that all the amendments in the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) are minor and suitable for a Statutes Amendment Bill but I do have some comments to make on some of the parts. First of all Part 11 has two amendments to the Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Judicial Conduct Panel Act—quite a mouthful. The first one deals with the ability of the Judicial Conduct Commissioner to delegate to his or her deputy. This was something we discussed in the Justice and Electoral Committee when we interviewed the commissioner. We felt that it was rather strange that such a delegation power did not already exist and that it was only a sensible use of the resource that is the deputy to assist the commissioner himself or herself in their work. We were concerned the commissioner might become overloaded so I am very glad to see that this minor amendment is included in the bill.The second amendment states that the commissioner must dismiss a repetitive complaint. We were also concerned in the committee that there were a number of time-wasters who made repetitive complaints that were not useful for anybody so I am glad to see that that particular amendment is here as well. With regard to Part 2 that deals with the Antarctica (Environmental Protection) Act 1994 and implements New Zealand’s obligations under the 2009 agreement to amend the Antarctic Treaty for the purpose of improving the regime for taking species from or introducing species into Antarctica—a very important provision indeed. It includes ice shelves and sea ice as well. It is a very welcome provision. It is one that is long overdue and I am very disappointed that it has in fact taken 5 long years to implement this so perhaps we could have some explanation from the Associate Minister of Justice why it took so long to do such an important thing.I want to move on to Part 17 which deals with the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987. Clause 50 amends section 4 of that legislation and “provides that the purposes of the Act include increasing progressively the availability of information to the public.” There is a high public demand for information from local authorities and councils are notorious for firstly unnecessarily having meetings with the public excluded and secondly being highly defensive about keeping information to themselves that they do not want known. They have a culture of “It’s our information not the public’s information.” and that is a culture that has to change. So we actually need even stronger amendments than this. This is welcome for progressively improving the situation but in fact what we need is something stronger and I hope the Government will look at something stronger than this in the future.Also clause 56 clarifies that a local authority may refuse a request if the document alleged to contain the information cannot be found despite reasonable efforts to locate it. That is actually a little bit dangerous when you think about it because it is very easy for a local authority simply to say “Well we’re not going to give you that document because we can’t find it.” and nobody would be the wiser for it. So I am a little bit worried about that provision. It should really be just a defence rather than an authority to give that as a reason for refusing to give a document. I am a little bit disappointed in that provision. I do not think it is quite right but it is not so serious that New Zealand First would vote against the whole bill because of it.I want to move on to Part 23 because exactly the same issue arises there with the Official Information Act 1982. Clause 76 amends section 18(e) to refuse to give documents for exactly the same reason—that is that the document has been lost. So I repeat the same concerns I have in respect of that provision as I did with the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act matter.Moving on to Part 24 I think this is quite important. It amends the Ombudsmen Act 1975 and New Zealand First approves very much of the amendment that gives the Ombudsman the ability to refuse to commence an investigation of a complaint if he or she is satisfied that it is unnecessary to do so. Again I was present at the Justice and Electoral Committee when we talked to the Ombudsman about this very issue. It is actually quite a serious problem because a lot of time-wasting can happen when the Ombudsman has to set out to investigate a complaint when he or she is sure that it is actually unnecessary to do so. The Ombudsman’s time is very very valuable and I think we need to trust him or her to sift out those complaints that are unnecessary to investigate. This amendment actually makes it possible to do that. We in New Zealand First think that that is completely appropriate. We are a little bit worried about the high workload that the Ombudsman has to work under so this is also just a common-sense way of making better use of the Ombudsman’s time.So with those comments some concerns but there are also some very welcome new provisions which although minor are nevertheless very important in their own way and I think they are appropriate for a Statutes Amendment Bill. It is a bill that is easy togloss over but that we all need to take particular notice of. We in New Zealand First have studied it closely and we think it deserves to pass even with some of the reservations that I have expressed.