Parker DavidSECONDARY LEGISLATION BILLFirst ReadingHon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): I move That the Secondary Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Regulations Review Committee to consider the bill.This Secondary Legislation Bill is affectionately known in the Parliamentary Counsel Office and departmental agencies as the slab" because it is a slab of a bill. It runs to over 300 pages and much of it is detailed cross-references to the many many Acts that are amended by the bill. It's the result of painstaking work not just in Parliamentary Counsel Office but in the legal and policy teams of more than 30 Government agencies that administer the primary legislation that is affected. This touches upon 150 bodies and agencies that Parliament has empowered to make what is soon to be called secondary legislation.The bill amends over 2500 provisions in some 550 Acts. As a result this bill touches the full spectrum of New Zealand's statute book. But the real importance doesn't lie in statistics; it's actually what it does in terms of aiding access to the law. At a general level the Chief Justice the Rt Hon Dame Helen Winkelmann said in her swearing in speech earlier this year: "Without knowledge of the law many don't know they have a problem with which the law can help them." Indeed on another inquiry recently or in recent years following the milk contamination scare that affected our exporters of milk the inquirer found that she could not even be sure what the law was that applied to milk exports because there was uncertainty as to which—what we're now calling—secondary legislation instruments were in legal effect.This Secondary Legislation Bill—there needs to be credit given to those who have been behind it because it's been under development for a while. The former Attorney-General in part because of that inquiry that I've referred to instigated work through his ministry on the secondary legislation that has led to the bill that's already been enacted—the Legislation Act 2019—and began work on this bill. It was also a consequence of work that was done by the Regulations Review Committee at that time and I'll come back to that later.This works by implementing a definition of secondary legislation which appears in section 5 of the Legislation Act 2019. This bill linked to that by implementing the provision in that Act which says secondary legislation falls within that definition if it's stated by an Act to be secondary legislation. So this bill gives effect to that by inserting statements into all of those various enactments that create secondary legislation across the relevant points of the statute book. In doing so it makes it clear what instruments are secondary legislation and therefore what law applies to them or what legal effect they have. By enacting this bill Parliament will replace the complex and overlapping definitions of the types of delegation that are currently determined as legislative instruments disallowable instruments and with them disallowable instruments that are not legislative instruments. As those who sit on the Regulations Review Committee know they're known as DINLIs. All of these complex definitions are actually being replaced by one simple coherent category of secondary legislation.The Regulations Review Committee has helped us get to this point. In its 2014 report which wasn't a bestseller but was entitled Inquiry into oversight of disallowable instruments that are not legislative instruments that committee recommended that the Government introduce legislation to ensure that every empowering provision whether in an Act or in delegated legislation and whether already made or being made state which category the instrument falls into. And that's quite simply what this bill does. It simplifies things.For the record it's important that I state that it's not the bill's policy to change the scope or legal effect of empowering provisions or to affect the validity of instruments already made under them. The fact that an instrument is identified as secondary legislation does not widen the power under which it is made nor does the failure to identify an instrument as secondary legislation narrow that power. It's important we say that because despite the best efforts of officials they may have missed one or two of these secondary legislation instruments and we don't want those legal instruments to be ineffective by the fact that they've been missed. If they have been missed they will be cleaned up in the fullness of time.As well as identifying what instruments are secondary legislation the bill sets out some exemptions from the general publication requirement for secondary legislation. The exemption will also apply to the presentation and disallowance requirements of the Legislation Act 2019. These exemptions do raise questions of constitutional significance because they limit the ability of the House to monitor the actions of the executive. Some exemptions are included because the secondary legislation they apply to contains sensitive information that should not be publicly disclosed. Most of these exemptions that are listed in the bill continue the status quo as Parliament has already conferred powers to make secondary legislation in some circumstances that contains sensitive information. A few other exemptions are proposed to reconcile discrepancies between the current statutory provisions and the framework that is set out in the Legislation Act 2019.There is of course a tension between protecting sensitive information in some secondary legislation and the general principle that the law should be publicly accessible and subject to parliamentary oversight. The issue of exemptions is therefore one on which I'm sure the Regulations Review Committee will have something to say and I look forward to reading their recommendations on this aspect of the book—bill. [Interruption] Ha ha! That was a slip of the tongue—following their consideration of it.The publication requirements that applied immediately before the commencement of this bill will be preserved for the time being. We are moving to centralised publication requirements for secondary legislation but it will take effect later when commenced by Order in Council. At the end of this process we will have a more coherent record of New Zealand's legislation. It will be more easily understood by the people who are meant to comply with it and it will be easier for people to access. This is an extraordinary bill not just because of its size. The bill represents the culmination of work by successive Governments to make our statute book fit for purpose in the modern age and I look forward to the Regulations Review Committee consideration of it. I commend the bill to the House."