Tisch Lindsay: State Sector Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Tisch Lindsay: State Sector Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:610;Page:7322] 
LINDSAY TISCH (NZ National—Piako) 
: 
 It is interesting that today we are debating a Supplementary Order Paper that covers Part 2 and which is a complete rehash of the bill that we debated way back in July 2001. I was in that debate on 11 September 2001. Here is the bill that we debated then and even at that time I said that this had been rushed through because we had 4 weeks from introduction through to the second reading and the select committee. One of those 4 weeks was a recess week. In effect we had only 3 weeks and we heard nine submissions at that time. 
Here we have a Supplementary Order Paper tabled at the eleventh hour last night that nobody has had an opportunity to go through to see what it means. What impact does this have on the Government’s organisations? We do not know what the impact is because this Government at the eleventh hour—which it so commonly does—drops legislation on us where there is no scrutiny no opportunity to go through to appraise the legislation to debate it and to scrutinise the impacts of it because this was dropped on us last night. 
When I look at this Supplementary Order Paper which in effect absolutely replaces the whole of Part 2 that was in the bill I see that it is a complete rewrite. This Government is now in the habit of trying to sneak this stuff through at the eleventh hour without that opportunity of clear scrutiny and transparency that we would expect. If we look at what this bill is to do we see that it will allow by Order in Council the executive to make the decisions about merging. It will make the decisions about what happens to staff and chief executive officers. Under this regulation people will not have to fire anybody because they just amalgamate or abolish the department and there will be no redundancies for those people. We are aware of what happened with the Rankin affair. 
I want to bring the Committee’s attention to a very important message in a submission made by the Regulations Review Committee dated 15 August 2001. I was a member of that select committee at that time. This is the point that was made: “We question whether there are sufficient reasons to allow an Act of Parliament to be amended by a regulation in this way.” It said that there needed to be much closer scrutiny. It then went on to say: “The proposed change may be administratively convenient but this must be weighed against the loss of parliamentary oversight.” That is a very very powerful message. That came from the Regulations Review Committee of which I was a member at that time. 
It goes on to say that the amendment will allow an Act of Parliament to be amended by a regulation. This is a Government that is using more and more regulations to get what it wants—more and more regulations so that the scrutiny of Parliament does not take place. This is the place that we should scrutinise these things. This is the place where we should debate these issues but when this bill is passed it will allow by Order in Council the executive to make those changes. National’s position is very very clear. We believe that it is an abuse of the process and that it politicises the process and it is something that we will not support. 
The Regulations Review Committee also made the statement that the amendments will allow an Act of Parliament to be amended by regulation. I am stating that again because that is what will happen. It goes on to say: “It is therefore important to consider whether there are sufficiently strong reasons why this matter should be dealt with in regulations rather than primary legislation.” That is the message that the committee set. It had doubts about the process going by regulation and said that there were insufficiently strong reasons that it should not be through primary legislation.