Horomia Parekura: Statutes Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Horomia Parekura: Statutes Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:663;Page:11250] 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA (Labour—Ikaroa-Rawhiti) 
: 
 Labour has expressed concern to Minister Guy that a number of the provisions of the Statutes Amendment Bill seem close to the edge of acceptability—in particular the amendment of the definition of “foreshore” in the National Parks Act 1980. Labour has told the Government that we will support the bill while retaining the right as my colleague Steve Chadwick pointed out earlier to reconsider any individual amendment in the Committee of the whole House. The definition of “foreshore” in the National Parks Act will be amended. Currently the National Parks Act refers to the definition contained in the Harbours Act 1950 which has been repealed. Clause 103 sets out the new definition of foreshore as “any land covered by the flow and ebb of the tide at mean spring tides”. Labour has expressed concern that this will have unintended consequences in light of the review of the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004. The Associate Minister of Justice Nathan Guy has assured Labour members that the Minister of Justice and the Attorney-General are satisfied that the change will have no direct effect on the review of the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004. 
The bill amends section 9 of the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Act by substantively changing the meaning of when a parent is unavailable to sign a birth registration form. This is a sensible amendment but it seems very close to a policy change. It is an ongoing issue that has relevance to people who want to find out who their parents were if they do not know and it has unintended consequences. 
Other proposed amendments that give rise to concern as Charles Chauvel pointed out in his letter to the Minister of Justice were to the Juries Amendment Act 2008 which itself amends the 1981 Act. The year of that Act seems a long time ago but it is not yet in force. That is quite interesting. It is amended to expand the distance used to define jury districts from 30 kilometres to 45 kilometres. We are not too sure of the relevance and that is one of the things we want to just suss out a bit more. 
The amendments to the Marriage Act 1955 which has been quite a hot potato over the last 5 years change the criteria for appointment of independent marriage celebrants. That is a huge growing field. It goes outside the Church and it has its own ethos and its own practice. Marriage celebrants have a whole host of different practices and it is something else that we are concerned about. 
The amendments to sections 139 and 156 of the Property Law Act 2007 refer to when a mortgagee obtains a court order for possession of mortgaged property. Possession is backdated to the date of the application to allow the mortgagee to collect any income from the property from that day. That provision opens a raft of difficulties in the sense of determining who is in the right and who is in the wrong and we will certainly keep track of that. 
The amendment to section 94A of the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988 concerns the independence of witnesses to enduring powers of attorney and seems to be policy-related. It is very interesting that it seems to read in the course of the development of this notion that people can have an attorney practising for them in one sense but at the same time the attorney can be doing a double act. We certainly want to keep an eye on that. 
Both of the proposed amendments to the Radiocommunications Act 1989 allow regulations to be made concerning the importation for supply and the offering for sale of radio apparatus in the same way as regulations can be made that control the supply of such equipment. We have an ongoing concern about bandwidth and the use of this new equipment. That is really really important. Labour is also concerned that the proposed amendments to sections 405 and 412 of the Building Act 2004 will reduce the ability of the House through the Regulations Review Committee to scrutinise certain instruments. It is very important to keep an eye on that because we are not too sure what the— 
John Hayes 
: What it means. 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: Especially in the Wairarapa where a lot of people will be struggling after this Budget announcement. Although this case seems to have arisen from a drafting error in principle the Labour Opposition will not generally be supportive of including amendments that reduce parliamentary scrutiny in a Statutes Amendment Bill. 
We are very interested in the Companies Act 1993. Notices given by the registrar remove the need for publication of notices in certain newspapers and it is required that notices be available on the Internet. The difficulty we have with that is that a lot of our constituents do not have the Internet and it seems to be Big Brother tactics to remove from the public eye information that is very important. We would like to understand better what that is about. As I see you looking at me quite quizzically Mr Deputy Speaker I can tell you that we will be supporting this bill but we retain the right to ensure that we come back and debate and discuss in a peaceful fashion those matters that are relevant and that we are concerned about. Thank you.