Cunliffe David: Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 02 July 2015. Volume:706;Page:5077. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn):I rise to take a brief call in support of the Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill. Labour will be supporting the bill and the Minister’s comments that this is a routine part of the House’s work. I support this bill as chair of the bipartisan Regulations Review Committee and in so doing wish to affirm the role of that committee and of the various processes which the public so seldom see that contribute to the orderly working of this House and our democracy. The Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill plays a role in examining regulations and their associated regulation-making powers to confirm or confirm and validate subordinate legislation—in this case in nine Acts that will lapse unless confirmed or confirmed and validated. That is in Part 1 of the bill. It also replaces all existing confirmation provisions in the Legislation Act 2012 with standard provisions and that is in Part 2 of the bill.There is I would note a matter before the Regulations Review Committee that goes to the nomenclature that is being used pursuant to the Legislation Act 2012 of which there is a diverse range to describe different technical categories of instruments such as disallowable and non-disallowable instruments. This bill introduces a new term that is called “confirmable instruments”. I wish just to put on record the fact that the committee is working in a bipartisan way with the Parliamentary Counsel Office and the Attorney-General to undertake a review of this nomenclature with a view to it being standardised and further streamlined and for the development of a mandatory reporting and registration system so that all Crown agencies and entities have a streamlined easy-to-read easy-to-find set of indicators of regulations and other forms of subordinate legislation. That is an ongoing process with which we are engaged and I mention it simply to say that it is one of those other cross-party below-the-radar useful pieces of work that the public so seldom see but they can have some confidence that it is occurring in a reasonable and bipartisan manner.The next steps from here are that the House and the Regulations Review Committee will see this bill off to its various subject select committees. The nine Acts that are referred to within the clauses of this bill will be separately considered by the relevant committees. They will satisfy themselves as to the basis for the confirmations—or confirmation and validations as the case may be—and then they will report back. It would be unusual for a bill that has got this far through the Cabinet process to contain matters that are either controversial or technically problematic. It would be our expectation that we would be able to report back to the House in a timely fashion that these measures should proceed. Labour supports this bill and as I say this is part of the unseen process that goes to ensuring that our democracy is healthy and our legislative processes robust. Thank you very much.