Hipkins ChrisCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am absolutely astounded that the Minister in charge of the bill Paul Goldsmith did not manage to fill in the full 10 minutes on this the crowning jewel of the Government's regulatory reform agenda this Statutes Repeal Bill. But I do want to commend him for bringing it to the House and bringing this bill to fruition. The statues repeal bill process as the bill has gone through the House has forced me one could say to end up debating aspects of legislative process in New Zealand that I did not ever realise that I would be able to speak for so long about. But you never quite know what is possible until you try.There are many aspects of this process that I support. I certainly support the notion that we should regularly update and streamline our laws in New Zealand and that we should repeal those that are no longer relevant. I attempted to add to that process during the Committee stage of this debate by repealing the law of blasphemy which of course is no longer applied in New Zealand. Unfortunately the Committee of the whole House did not agree by a majority to incorporate that into this bill so it will go no further at this point. I hope that the House will have an opportunity to come back and look at that at some stage because I do think that that fits within the spirit of what this bill is trying to do.I note on page 1 of the Statutes Repeal Bill as presented back to the House by the Government Administration Committee that it adds additional Acts to be repealed. There are five additional Acts that the Government is seeking to repeal here: the Education Law Amendment Act 1933 the Infants Act Repeal Act 1989 the Taxation Acts Repeal Act 1986 the Wellington City Reserves Act 1872 and the Wellington City Reserves Act 1871. One could argue that those Acts that are now being added for repeal have not gone through that extensive consultation process that the Minister mentioned and therefore should not be included in this bill. I personally would not be comfortable with that argument. I am quite comfortable that there are good grounds for repealing these just as I am comfortable that there would be good grounds for repealing the law of blasphemy without it going through a further process.There were some interesting submissions raised and I was particularly taken by the submission of Sir Kenneth Keith whom members on this side certainly quoted during the Committee stage of the debate. I think it is important when we debate something like the Statutes Repeal Bill to ask a couple of questions. One of those questions is: What's the mischief?"—so what the problem is that we are trying to solve by repealing whatever the legislation is that is in this bill. And the second question relevant to that is: "What's the harm?"—so what the harm is in either repealing or not repealing. The point that Sir Kenneth Keith made in his submission to the committee was that in fact many of these bills no longer have any legal effect whatsoever. There are there only in name—and in some cases there was debate as to whether they were even there in name or whether in fact they had already been repealed and therefore ceased to exist so we were repealing laws that no longer actually existed in the first place. The question therefore becomes: "What is the point of repealing them again?". One of the points that Sir Kenneth Keith made in that regard was with regard to amendment Acts. These are Acts that have no standing in their own right; they simply remove or amend things in other Acts. So once they have done that job they effectively cease to exist because they were never Acts in their own right; they were only amendments to other Acts. You will see some of those Acts now being repealed but there is actually no need to repeal them because they were never stand-alone laws in the first place. Once their amendments had been incorporated into the statutes that they were amending then they effectively ceased to exist. So what is the mischief? What is the harm? What are we trying to fix by repealing them because they do not actually exist.Then there are some other Acts that have ceased to exist through other means. For example the Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Act 2010 has already been discharged by Order in Council. That Act allowed Ministers by Order in Council to say "This Act has now expired." and they have done so. So why the need to repeal them when they have effectively been repealed by another means already?Todd Barclay: Just in case.CHRIS HIPKINS: Just in case. There was a lot of discussion about the Sentencing Council Act of 2007 and whether in fact this was the appropriate mechanism to repeal that legislation. As the Minister noted the Government has signalled its intention for some time to repeal this legislation but I think as some others have argued the fact that this legislation has been on the book for some time and has not been implemented is not good grounds to include it in a statutes repeal bill because it does not actually fit the criterion of a law that has become redundant. It is a law that was never enforced. That does not mean that it has become redundant because it has expired or the issue has passed. It has not been implemented because Government policy has changed and therefore it does not actually fit the criteria of what this bill is trying to achieve and therefore it is somewhat surprising that the Government has incorporated it within this legislation. I think that is quite a legitimate concern to raise.There are some other examples in here that are somewhat interesting. As the Minister noted there is the last Statutes Repeal Act. Actually I have to correct him. I did some research of my own and there has been another Statutes Repeal Act since then but it has already been repealed. But the last Statues Repeal Act on the book was from nineteen hundred and—whatever it was—Paul Foster-Bell: 7.CHRIS HIPKINS: 1907—and it is now being repealed by this. We will not need to repeal this Act because the Act itself which we are about to pass includes a repeal provision within it. So basically once it has been enacted it will itself just—it has got a self-destruct mechanism built within in it and that is something that I am sure the House will welcome so that we do not have to torture ourselves with too many further debates like this one. But I do welcome the progress of this legislation. I am disappointed that blasphemy is not being repealed as part of this process and I hope that we will get a chance to do that very soon.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m."