Blumsky Mark: Regulatory Responsibility Bill — First Reading 
Blumsky Mark: Regulatory Responsibility Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:640;Page:10313] 
MARK BLUMSKY (National) 
: 
 I am delighted to have this chance to stand and support this Regulatory Responsibility Bill and good on Rodney. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: You can never trust the Nats. 
MARK BLUMSKY 
: That member did not move me up the batting order so that is tough. I have pleasure in supporting this bill on behalf of the National Party. It is an excellent opportunity for the select committee to have a really good chat about this and a really good tidy-up. Congratulations as well by the way because I was reading the  
National Business Review 
 report of 8 June and I noted in it that Lianne Dalziel was pretty adamant that the bill was not going to come through and I see that she has changed her mind. 
I am pleased to see that because I suggest the logic behind putting this bill forward is very strong. There is no shortage of regulation. Business New Zealand stated about 2000 pieces of regulation had been passed in New Zealand since 1999. That is 2000 bits of regulation in the last 6 years or so and I would suggest to members that that is a hell of a lot of regulation. Just for members to note: for small businesses—85 percent of all businesses in New Zealand—that worked out to a cost of about $53000 to comply with that regulation. So one would want to think that regulation had a good reason to be there. 
So we have no shortage of regulation as I said. Already a number of reviews in the last few years have indicated that quite a bit of the regulation in place is not worthy of being there is not needed and needs to be sorted out. One has to ask how the hell the regulation got there in the first place if the review is saying now that it is not actually working or doing the job. I would suggest to members that the ACT bill before us will actually make a difference in sorting through what is going to be helping good and/or bad regulation and cutting out the rubbish stuff. 
I was reading the explanatory note of the bill and there are a couple of points that I took great heart from. It states: “Far too many Acts and regulations are a result of undue haste poor quality processes and inadequate scrutiny.” Well I have not been here very long but already in the time I have been here I have seen a number of amendments to Acts amendment bills come forward to fix up hasty legislation and I think one is going through the House right now that is a tidy-up of legislation that was done in haste or did not get adequate scrutiny. So I think it is important that this legislation will attend to that issue. 
The other piece in the explanatory note that I took heart from was the question of whether there was a need for the legislation. Are there alternatives? What are the alternatives? Maybe we should consider alternatives before we bring in regulation. Could there be any unanticipated consequences? The extent to which legislation takes property or impairs other legal rights also needs to be discussed. So I say good thinking Rodney and well done on bringing the bill forward. 
 As I indicated earlier I have an interest in small business—in business—and in the fact that such a lot of the regulation that comes before the House has a big impact on business in New Zealand. I took the opportunity a wee while ago to ask a number of Ministers whether they thought that the legislation regulation and stuff going through their ministries was in fact of use or would be reasonable for small business. 
The question asked about the possibility of having a small-business advocate responsible for presenting a small-business and medium-business perspective on legislation so that there could be a discussion as to whether the impact on small business would be good or bad. In the main the answer from most ministries I wrote to was that no they did not believe there was any chance of a small-business advocate having a look at legislation and they were relying on the Small Business Advisory Group which is the wonderful group we have now had for a number of years. The ministries were relying on the work of that group to help guide them as to the quality of legislation. The most interesting thing about the Small Business Advisory Group is it has been going for 2 years now and the Government just does not listen to it. Many of its recommendations which would help small business and legislation are totally ignored. So for Ministers to say to me that they rely on that group to give them guidance on legislation then it seems to ignore 90 percent of its recommendations just makes a farce of the Government saying that is how it figures out whether there is any impact. 
In my mind it reinforces yet again the power of this bill. I certainly hope the select committee does justice to the issues when working through them as it should because it is an important bill. I wish the committee the best and I again congratulate the member Rodney Hide on bringing the bill forward. Small business says thank you.