Curran Clare: Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9819. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Short. Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. Thank you “Mr Whip”.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: You have the call—proceed.CLARE CURRAN: Yes I have the call Mr Deputy Speaker thank you. I would just like to make a few comments about this bill the Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill which Labour is supporting. As you know this amendment in front of us is not absurd. It is not preposterous. It is a sensible move and it is something that we think is basic common sense. Labour supports this bill. As you know it is necessary and logical in its provision to ensure a comprehensive trustee policy agenda. I do not really want to go too much into the substance of it other than to say those things but I also want to talk about the importance of the regulatory impact statement when tabling a bill in the House and introducing it in the House and ensuring that it accompanies a bill into the House.Although this bill cements the endowment that turning to the Public Trust must be seen as a last resort when seeking to retire there is the financial burden of finding a replacement which has grown exponentially as trusteeship becomes increasingly focused and complex. Those things are absolutely important but we have had—is it five new bills introduced into the House in the last 2 days? How many of those bills have been accompanied by a regulatory impact statement? What—[Interruption] How many? What is the importance of the regulatory impact statement? Why is it so important? In relation to this particular bill there was a regulatory impact statement introduced within just hours maybe 24 hours around the—Andrew Little: Today.CLARE CURRAN: Today?Andrew Little: Today.CLARE CURRAN: Today which—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The time has come for the dinner adjournment.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The House is resumed. Kia ora tātou nō reira e te Whare e ngā iwi e ngā reo e ngā hau e whā. Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa. Prior to the House suspending at 6 o’clock for the dinner break the honourable member Clare Curran was addressing us with her dulcet tones. She has 7 minutes and 40 seconds remaining to speak. Does she seek the call?CLARE CURRAN: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It is lovely to be in the House listening to your dulcet tones. As I was saying before the dinner break Labour supports this bill. Labour supports the underlying policy behind this bill but the Government on the other side has failed in a number of ways. First of all it has failed to provide an adequate assessment to justify why this bill should be put through under urgency and second it has failed as it has failed on a number of other bills that have been before this House this week to provide adequate regulatory impact assessment and to provide time for the Opposition and the public to have discussions and consideration around these bills before they are actually brought before the House for debate. This bill’s regulatory impact statement which was prepared by the Ministry of Justice reflects concerns from the ministry that National’s reactionary approach means an adequate risk assessment has not been conducted which suggests that the Minister of Justice’s public justifications are mere scaremongering.On this bill which we support there are things to be said but the fact is that on two other critical pieces of legislation before this House yesterday particularly—one around the Government Communications Security Bureau and one around our telecommunications networks—no regulatory impact statements were supplied at all. None. That meant that there was no ability to get any sort of independent assessment that had been prepared by officials before those bills were brought to the House. One of them is being rushed through with a truncated select committee process which we have said is a travesty of process and is a very strong indication of an authoritarian approach to running the Government.In this particular case the Minister’s public justification as I have said could be mere scaremongering in an attempt to gain support. The regulatory impact statement states that the nature and rigour of the analysis has been affected by the limited amount of time. This is fact. This is written down in the regulatory impact statement. Further it expresses concern that because the ministry has not consulted with trustees who will be affected by the bill the risk of further applications to the High Court has not been quantified. As we heard earlier I think the regulatory impact statement was produced yesterday or today—anyway in a very short amount of time. That has minimised the length of time for Opposition parties to scrutinise the Government’s policy rationale for this bill. This is a trend. It is a trend that this Government has I suppose we could say set in stone now. It is a trend that is being extended through other ways of withholding information blocking information and obfuscating the Opposition’s and the public’s ability to access information through the Official Information Act and through other mechanisms. It is a trend as I have said that is towards a much more authoritarian way of running the Government.Bill read a first time.