Seymour DavidNEW ZEALAND PRODUCTIVITY COMMISSION ACT REPEAL BILLThird ReadingHon DAVID SEYMOUR (Minister for Regulation): I present a legislative statement on the New Zealand Productivity Commission Act Repeal Bill.SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the parliamentary website. I'd ask members leaving the House to do so speedily and quietly with no conversations in the aisles.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I move That the New Zealand Productivity Commission Act Repeal Bill be now read a third time.There has been considerable debate over this bill in proportion to the length of the bill and the size of its effect. To reiterate: the New Zealand Productivity Commission has for 13 years functioned as a Crown entity and a kind of quasi-Government thinktank which has produced a wide range of advice on public policy matters—everything from strengthening global links through trade and investment to building more homes to improving the quality and quantity of regulation. All of those resources produced by the Productivity Commission including one more report expected to be reported back to the House on 15 February will remain as public property in the public domain ad infinitum. For the rest of this country's history they will be available as a valuable asset. Many of them I hasten to add would be very beneficial if the Government implemented them.We heard someone say that perhaps because people are dying we should stop medical treatment. Well that's not quite the right analogy for stopping the Productivity Commission—and it was James Shaw who said that. I think a better analogy is that when we're doing a bad job it's time to stop asking for more large reports on what to do and start implementing the advice that we've already got. In this particular case we are going to stop giving around $6 million a year to the Productivity Commission to produce more reports. We are going to take that money and we're going to establish a ministry of regulation whose job it will be to uphold and enforce the quality of lawmaking in New Zealand and to review the red tape and regulation that stifles so much productive activity up and down this country so that New Zealanders can get on with building their homes their families their businesses and their lives without undue restriction from badly made laws. That is what we are doing.One of the consequences of that is that a group of very good intelligent productive people who have been in the commission—some of whom are past people such as the inaugural chair Murray Sherwin others who have been commissioners since and those who are staff members—will no longer have employment at the Productivity Commission from the end of this month. This is something that has been signalled since the end of November and as I assured members in the committee stage one of the first things I said when we asked how we are going to go about this was I said to the Treasury officials—who have been responsible and I think have done a very good job of this policy process—we must make sure that we look after the current Productivity Commission staff. I have every confidence that that will happen. Of course I'm not going to comment on the specifics because there is a series of private matters there but that has been one of our first priorities. That means that those people are being looked after as best as can be hoped with a range of personal circumstances as we go through this process.What remains is two big opportunities. One is for the Opposition to actually read some of the fabulous work that the Productivity Commission has done so that they will have some policy ideas to take to New Zealanders and show how they can actually make New Zealand a better place than they did last time. And if they were to do that they might start asking higher-quality and less back-bity questions at question time and start bringing along some ideas! The second is for the Government that is in place to use the proceeds that would have gone to the Productivity Commission in the next financial year to establish the ministry of regulation and start seriously improving the quality of regulation that New Zealanders up and down this country face so that they can in a very real way experience and access tino rangatiratanga—the ability to use their own property to live their own lives as they see fit without following ridiculous poorly made regulations which I would say could be characterised as one of the worst manifestations of colonisation. With that I commend this bill to the House.