Hide Rodney: Regulatory Responsibility Bill — First Reading 
Hide Rodney: Regulatory Responsibility Bill — First Reading 
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RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I move  
That the Regulatory Responsibility Bill be now read a first time. 
 This bill is addressing an issue I think that concerns the entire House in that there is a concern about red tape excessive compliance costs and the often conflicting and contradictory rules we are placing on the citizens of New Zealand. I think where we would disagree in the House often is on just what is red tape and on particular legislation; one member’s red tape might be another member’s good law. So I am conscious of that but I know that at the last election every political party when asked had a concern about red tape and expressed a desire to deal with it better. Indeed the majority of political parties in response to a query by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of New Zealand said they would certainly look at supporting a regulatory responsibility bill that would address it. 
The ACT party as members know has just two MPs but with a little bit of help we have been beavering away in relation to how we can address the issue of red tape and indeed bring better lawmaking to this Parliament and to New Zealand. The response we have made is to come up with the Regulatory Responsibility Bill. I want to put the bill into a context: this is really the legislative equivalent of the Fiscal Responsibility Act or indeed the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act which are legislative approaches to political decision-making that in and of themselves do not determine what politicians or what a Government can or cannot do or indeed in any way undermine the sovereignty of Parliament. But they do provide a legislative process if you like that Parliament and Governments can follow in order to get better political decision-making. So they are quasi-constitutional arrangements by which Governments and parliamentarians operate. 
I think it is fair to say that those initiatives have served us well. An example would be the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act when we had had a generation of high inflation driven by political expedience. With that Act we have actually put ourselves into a decent framework. We can argue around the edges but the result has been a low inflation environment where we know from one year to the next what the dollar will be worth against a basket of goods here in New Zealand. Likewise the Fiscal Responsibility Act was quite controversial when it was introduced in 1994 but its provisions are now hardly controversial. It survived the introduction of MMP changes of Government and several elections. Again that legislation did not constrain a Government or a Minister of Finance in any way but it required a transparency about the decision making of Cabinet and therefore an accountability that hitherto we had not seen. 
Before the Fiscal Responsibility Act we had Governments in power making financial commitments on behalf of the taxpayer that no one knew about—or could know about—till after an election which would always come as a surprise to an incoming Government. Indeed we had a situation where it made sense for a Government essentially to borrow to fund consumption spending to fund Government spending in order to buy votes and to leave the bill for future generations which was the exact opposite of how we think now about good environmental policy. It certainly should be the exact opposite of how we think about good Government policy or good economic policy. 
We had Governments borrowing endlessly to pay for their election promises—so much so that by the 1980s one dollar in four of the income tax bill was spent entirely on servicing that debt which was loading down future generations future taxpayers and of course voters who were not able to vote in the election; hence its purpose. With the introduction of the Fiscal Responsibility Act Governments had to undertake to follow a process whereby every 6 months they advised the Treasurer of all spending decisions and every 6 months the Treasurer was required to do a Budget stretching out 4 years. So there was a transparency to decision making that Governments previously had not had. Also within that legislation a Government had to demonstrate or test its Budget against some key criteria such as a surplus or a deficit. Again there was no requirement that it ran a surplus or did not run a deficit. But that simple requirement of transparency has meant that since 1994 Governments have run a surplus which I think has been a fantastic thing in the long run. Hitherto for three generations Governments had run deficits. 
The Regulatory Responsibility Bill attempts to do that for law. It is a bit harder and I have to say that I am not clever enough to have done this on my own; I have had a great deal of help. The bill sets up a similar process whereby Parliament and Governments have to be more transparent and more open about their lawmaking. Indeed I have tried to set out some criteria of good lawmaking against which proposed legislation would have to be assessed. Those criteria are set out in clause 6. Again I hasten to add I do not believe that I have got it all right or that this is the last word on the subject but I think it is a good first cut at the issue of asking how we would provide in a comprehensive way in a systemic way—that is to say across all legislation—a proper process whereby we have transparency and therefore accountability of a Government of a Parliament for the laws we are making. 
 I hasten to add that nothing in this bill undermines parliamentary sovereignty or a Government’s ability to pass law. That would be the wrong approach to this bill. There is nothing in this bill that attempts to tie up a Government in red tape; there is nothing in this bill to slow down the process by which a Government could pass law. All it does is require that a process be followed and information be supplied which has to be a good thing. 
I have to say that nothing has gladdened my heart more than the constructive engagement that I have had with all political parties in this House on the matter and the constructive engagement that I have had with people who are concerned about this issue. I am pleased to say that we do have the numbers to put this bill to the select committee. The select committee that I will be recommending is the Commerce Committee and I am hopeful with the National Party’s support to be subbed on to it to hear this bill. I have been to see and would like to thank the Law Commission and Sir Geoffrey Palmer who has some criticism of this bill particularly the ouster clause—he thought that would be more mischief than it is worth. Although he has some concerns he does appreciate that this is an important issue. Getting the bill to a select committee for a proper debate will be a good first step and I am sure we will be hearing from the Law Commission. 
I should also say to my friends in the Maori Party who obviously have a concern about collective rights and in particular the rights of tribal groups which have often been trampled in the history of New Zealand that I may not have expressed this well in the bill but of course collective rights all spring from individual rights. There is not an inherent conflict between recognising the rights of the individual and recognising the rights of a group. In fact if we put group rights first the rights of the individual are trampled so I believe that this bill strengthens the Maori position in respect of say customary title to the extent that it is recognised in our common law traditions very very well. I certainly want to give a commitment to recognising existing rights and customary title and with that I look forward to the debate and the discussion.