Robertson Grant: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10165. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): I want to pick up where my colleague Ruth Dyson has just left off in speaking about her amendment to clause 2 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill. This amendment as has been noted would insert after the current wording: “This Bill can only be submitted for Royal Assent if the Bill has been submitted to the Health Select Committee for public consultation and comment prior to the Third Reading.” This is the first opportunity I have had to speak on this particular piece of legislation and I am pleased to be doing it in the debate on the commencement clause because it cuts to the heart of the issue I have with the process that the Government is going through at the moment.Normally a debate on a commencement clause is relatively non-controversial. The Government makes a decision about the timing by which it wants to put a bill through. It often for instance gives a little bit of time for processes to be worked through. Recently when the marriage equality legislation was passed the commencement date for that particular bill was pushed out 3 or 4 months to allow the Department of Internal Affairs to put in place the arrangements for changing forms and so on. That kind of thing is acceptable when we come to a commencement date clause. Sometimes there is a reason to make a commencement date immediate when there is an immediate issue in front of the House—perhaps a taxation issue or something like that that requires that.This commencement clause comes as part of a bill that has not had the kind of scrutiny that we would expect a piece of legislation to have. This bill as has been stated by my colleague Chris Hipkins was effectively introduced today for the purposes of this House. It is not a bill that was seen by other parties before it came to the House. Along with it as we would expect we have had provided to us a regulatory impact statement. As other colleagues have noted this document illustrates the quality of the regulatory impact statement material that we are working with. It is another great example of work from “Transparent Tony” well known for his ability to let the public in on things! I know there was a story about Tony Ryall when he was a Minister in the 1990s. He had a drawer full of Official Information Act releases. He waited until people complained about them before he actually released them otherwise they just stayed in the bottom drawer unable to be found. That is “Transparent Tony” for you.This regulatory impact statement indicates for those of us on this side of the House that this bill needs select committee consideration and that is the amendment that Ruth Dyson has put to the commencement clause. It is an amendment to push this bill to the Health Committee. So rather than a blacked-out document like this we would actually have the opportunity for members of that committee to talk with officials to question interested groups to bring in the carers and talk to them and to give them a chance to have their say here.That is all the more important and Ruth Dyson’s amendment is all the more important when we look at the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report from the Attorney-General. What the Attorney-General is saying in that report at the end is: “On balance I have concluded that the limitation to the right to a judicial review cannot be justified under section 5 of the Bill of Rights Act.” So what the Attorney-General is saying is that what this bill does—the limiting of people’s rights through the judicial process—cannot be justified under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Surely that alone would be a justification for this bill to go to the Health Committee as Ruth Dyson’s amendment to the commencement clause requests. When we get such a report from the Attorney-General—not a man loath to come to this House and throw New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vets around; he is a person who obviously has thought carefully about this and no doubt has had strong advice given to him from the Crown Law Office and others that this bill does breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and it does breach people’s right to a full judicial process—that should be the subject of extensive debate in a select committee. Ruth Dyson is offering that with her amendment to the commencement clause.Yes it is unusual for a commencement clause to be amended in this way but that is because the Government has undertaken a most unusual process by bringing up this particular bill in the way that it has. Normally we would have seen a process whereby there were public submissions. We would have been able to look at the nature of a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet that says that this breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We have had a regulatory impact statement that has been largely withheld. All of those things would have been able to be considered by a select committee. So amending the commencement clause to now allow for a select committee process although unusual is appropriate in this case because of the actions that the Government has taken.