Dalziel Lianne: Legislation Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Legislation Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 16 October 2012. Volume:684;Page:5863. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to address the Committee stage of the Legislation Bill. As of course we are all aware the Legislation Bill is designed to modernise and improve the law relating to the publication availability reprinting revision and official versions of legislation bringing them together in a single piece of legislation. So that is an excellent move in respect of this particular piece of legislation and that is something that we all support in this House—in fact we welcome it. I think that it is an important advance in the way that we are able to bring together the legislation into the one single format. 
This bill was introduced to Parliament on 25 June 2010 and normally I would make some reflection as to the time that it has taken to return to the House in the Committee stage. I think Mr Chairman would know that normally I would be somewhat critical of such a delay but I am not critical of the delay in this particular instance because I believe that the legislation is so important. 
In many respects it is not the sort of legislation that as my husband might use the phrase smokes your tyres. He always uses that expression. Something that is particularly exciting is something that smokes your tyres. This does not normally smoke the tyres of anyone I know but the truth is that it is really important legislation and it is worth taking the time in order to put the effort in and in order to make it really worthwhile. So a lot of people who are tuning in to their crystal sets tonight will be thinking that this is a very technical and a very dull bill but I can assure those people who are listening tonight that this is anything but certainly for this side of the House and for certain members on both sides of the House. For a lot of members of the House this will be a technical and dull bill but those of us who have been here for some time will know that it is a really important part of making sure that our legislation speaks to our modern environment rather than reflecting that which has come before. 
There are elements around this particular law though that I do think are worth reflecting on as we deal with the Legislation Bill in the Committee stage. I really would like the Attorney-General to speak to a particular issue that I want to put on the table and it relates to a former Leader of the House and Attorney-General Sir Michael Cullen who believed very strongly that the Parliamentary Counsel Office should report to the Leader of the House as opposed to the Attorney-General. I personally think that he was on the right track with that and I really would like the Attorney-General to respond to that because it was a comment made by a former Attorney-General. 
The reason I support it is that in fact the Leader of the House controls the agenda of the House controls the Order Paper and looks after the legislative programme. I remember as a former Minister having to negotiate quite a hard bargain from time to time to get bills that I wanted on that programme. Often the point at which it was held back was when the Parliamentary Counsel Office was not able to prioritise that work. Therefore rather than having the Attorney-General being the Minister responsible for parliamentary counsel it actually made good sense to have the Leader of the House with that particular role. Actually the more that we debated this issue—because we did have quite a long discussion about this when we were in Government—and the more we had the discussion around the different roles that were brought to bear in this regard there was not a vote as it were that sat with the role of Leader of the House and it made good sense for the Parliamentary Counsel Office to be the basis for a vote to be allocated. 
I will give you an example of where that particularly worked. I want to go back perhaps more than 10 years now back to the last time when the sale of liquor legislation was before the House with any sorts of substantive amendments. Of course in those days all parties operated under a conscience vote. As a result of a number of different amendments that were going to be moved during the Committee stage of the sale of liquor amendment legislation that we had in front of us at that time the Attorney-General was asked to make provision for parliamentary counsel to be available to private members—to individual members—to assist in the drafting of amendments. The reason that this occurred was to ensure that under a conscience vote scenario if legislation was to be amended by way of a Supplementary Order Paper by a member at least it would be drafted in a form that would work. Again that really reflected back to me. 
I am trying to remember who the Minister was at the time. I know that Tony Ryall was the Minister of Justice when the legislation went through but I cannot recall whether it was still Doug Graham in those days who was the Attorney-General. But whoever it was they did make the Parliamentary Counsel Office available for the amendments that were going through. It did strike me at the time that it would actually go a lot better with the role of Leader of the House. 
In terms of the good order of the House around the question—particularly in conscience vote areas and I know that there are fewer of those today—it did seem to me that it made a lot of sense for that to occur. So I really would appreciate the Attorney-General actually responding to that issue. I know that Sir Michael Cullen would have felt—well I think he would appreciate the fact that the House was considering this particular issue in the context of the Legislation Bill in front of us tonight. So I do ask the Attorney-General whether he would respond to that particular question. I do actually think that it has a lot of merit. 
I want to mention just one other example of when this particular issue came to light and that was when I was part of a select committee that was looking at constitutional arrangements. Again this dates back a number of years. I think it was just prior to 2005—it might have been 2004 or 2005. I was involved in a small select committee that was established for the purpose of looking at constitutional arrangements and I recall that Peter Dunne I think was the chair of that particular committee. We traversed a whole range of different issues around constitutional matters including this whole question of whether a vote should apply to the Leader of the House and whether there were grounds for particular support around some of the constitutional issues that would arise in terms of the House and the roles of private members arose on that occasion as well. So even though it is not obviously a part of this bill in the sense that it was not a proposition that the Government did pick up I would actually appreciate having the Attorney-General on record in response to that particular issue because it is an important one. 
The point that I really wanted to make was how important these sorts of legislative measures are. There is a lot of serious work that goes on behind the scenes to modernise the rules around legislation. I think that for legislation to be accessible and available to people generally we do have to have a serious look at these kinds of legislative improvements from time to time. 
The select committee looked at the regulations disallowance changes proposed in the bill as well—the provisions in the bill that separate the publication and the disallowance of delegated legislation in the broad definition of “disallowable instrument”. That is designed to ensure that there will be parliamentary oversight of the use of delegated powers by the executive and to make it more difficult to avoid disallowance. I also agree with that. I think it is very important that we are able to hold the executive to account which is the proper process of the Regulations Review Committee and parliamentary process in general.