Dalziel Lianne: Regulatory Reform (Repeals) Bill — First Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Regulatory Reform (Repeals) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:670;Page:16909] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 The Labour Party of course will support the Regulatory Reform (Repeals) Bill. But let me say that for something called a regulatory reform bill it is the most inefficient use of Parliament’s time that the Minister for Regulatory Reform and indeed the Government have imposed on this Parliament so far. Given some of the legislation we have had in this House that takes some doing. Last Tuesday only 2 days ago we debated the Regulatory Reform Bill and referred it to the Commerce Committee. Why on earth was the Regulatory Reform (Repeals) Bill not a schedule to that bill? It would have made absolute sense for this bill to be included within the legislation we have already referred to the select committee. I ask the Minister why this is a separate bill. Perhaps one of his acolytes who rises to speak on the bill could explain to us why there is a separate bill when we had a Regulatory Reform Bill before the House just 2 days ago. In fact it has already been referred to the select committee and we will be advertising and calling for submissions as is standard practice. 
The first principle of the Code of Good Regulatory Practice is efficiency. It is the No. 1 principle. What is efficient about two separate bills taking up the House’s time including this debate this afternoon? What is efficient about two separate references to the Commerce Committee which I chair? We are an extraordinarily busy select committee and we do not need to have our time wasted when these bills could have been compacted into a single piece of legislation. What is efficient about doubling the cost of the advertising for submissions when the two bills could have been advertised together? This does not meet the No. 1 test of the Code of Good Regulatory Practice in itself. It is a complete failure in that regard and I am utterly appalled that the Minister for Regulatory Reform gave his speech in the form that he did. He has indicated that this bill is doing something that it simply is not doing. 
If there were a single valid reason for having two separate bills—and I for the life of me cannot think of one reason—then why not include this provision within a Statutes Amendment Bill? There is nothing at all by any stretch of the imagination controversial about repealing three pieces of legislation that date back to the 19th century. I do not think anyone will be opposed to the repeal of the New Zealand Institute of Journalists Act 1895 the New Zealand Shipping Company (Limited) Empowering Act 1884 and the District Railways Purchasing Act 1885. I do not think we will miss that legislation. I do not think there is anything controversial about repealing them because they do not have any effect any more anyway. The Regulatory Reform (Repeals) Bill is a “do nothing” bill that could have been added to a Statutes Amendment Bill in its own right. It is also repealing one Act from 1934 and one from 1964. The rest of the Acts date back to the 1980s and the 1990s and three are from this century. So only three of the Acts being repealed are from this century. But guess what? Of the 31 Acts of Parliament that this bill repeals 12 of them are repeals of repeal Acts. All they are doing is repealing the fact that there was a repeal Act on the statute book. They are not something that anyone would be looking up in our printed statutes but I will come back to that in a minute. 
If there were a single valid reason not to include this bill in the Regulatory Reform Bill then we would have seen it in a Statutes Amendment Bill except that there is possibly a reason why this Minister for Regulatory Reform wants a separate bill. It is because he wants to prove that he is delivering on the second principle of the Code of Good Regulatory Practice and of course we all know what that is off by heart do we not? In fact Aaron Gilmore will know; he probably wrote the Code of Good Regulatory Practice. The first principle is efficiency so what is the second principle? 
Aaron Gilmore 
: It doesn’t really matter. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: No he does not know. Ha ha! I did not think he knew. The second principle of good regulatory practice is effectiveness. This Minister wants to show he is an effective Minister because he has had all these bills passed in his name. Can I just say that one does not measure effectiveness by quantity. It is the quality of the regulation that counts not quantity. The number of pieces of legislation in the Minister’s name that are passed in his name does not meet the test of effectiveness either. I wonder whether it has something to do with the fact that the Prime Minister announced that the Government would be introducing its own Regulatory Responsibility Bill. I wonder whether it is because Rodney Hide’s old Regulatory Responsibility Bill because it is a member’s bill is now in the name of the Hon Sir Roger Douglas so he wants to get that name back on his Regulatory Responsibility Bill. 
Of course if that Regulatory Responsibility Bill had been in place at the time that this Government had taken office then that Government would not have been able to pass the amount of legislation it passed in its first 100 days in office because a number of those pieces of legislation failed the test of the bill. If anyone thinks that the union movement would not have gone to court on the 90-day trial period legislation I would think that that person had not given much thought to how the Regulatory Responsibility Bill would have worked. That is why we have the bill. We have the bill because the Minister wants to say that he has passed X number of bills and that he has repealed 31 statutes. The Regulatory Reform (Repeals) Bill repeals 31 statutes that have no effect. Therefore the repeal of them is a bit like multiplying by zero. What happens when we multiply one by zero? What happens when we multiply 150001 by zero? The answer is still zero and that is what this Minister has produced: zero. 
Unfortunately this bill also offends principle No. 3 of the Code of Good Regulatory Practice which requires transparency. There is no transparency in presenting a bill when the explanatory note says: “The maintenance of a quality regulatory environment requires ensuring that the existing body of legislation is easy to use up to date and fit for purpose.” It is all very well to say that that is what this bill delivers when all it does is clear from the statute book some unnecessary and spent Acts. These are all pieces of legislation that are now completely out of date no longer have effect or have very limited effect and none of which are relevant to our legal system today. There is nothing about the bill that actually delivers on that. Let us look at what the explanatory note states: “The maintenance of a quality regulatory environment requires ensuring that the existing body of legislation is easy to use up to date and fit for purpose. This Bill will help achieve this by clearing the statute books of some unnecessary and spent Acts.” 
I come back to my point: the legislation that this bill repeals does nothing. The repeal of the legislation that this bill repeals does nothing as well. There is nothing that the Minister or any of the MPs on the other side of the House can say that will make it otherwise. If each of the laws that this bill repeals has no effect then as I have said the bill will not do anything other than create the obligation for those who still have printed statute books to update them by crossing out the statutes that have no effect anyway. In regard to all the books out there in the lobbies someone will have to come along and open them up at the relevant pages from the 1890s into the 1930s the 1980s and the 1990s and put red lines through all of those pages. It would be a make-work scheme and maybe the Government could get someone on Community Max to do it. That would be a very good idea but actually it is a very skilled job that has to be done in these areas because we should not be playing around with our statutes. 
But who uses the statutes out there any more? If members are in their office they can go on to legislation.govt.nz. I do not know how many people are still using the printed statutes and that is why again this is such an irrelevancy that does not deserve a separate debate and separate referral to the select committee. The only reason this is a separate bill is so that the Minister can puff up his chest and claim that he has yet again applied the blowtorch to regulation and any National members who back him up will prove that they are the patsies they are.