Hipkins Chris: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: 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:10161. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a call on the commencement clause of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). Yes indeed this is a very narrow debate. It concerns when this legislation will come into force. We will need to consider first of all in discussing the bill the context in which it is being debated—it is being debated under urgency—and the contents of this bill which basically remove the right to a judicial process for a group of New Zealanders. Therefore the date on which it comes into force is actually very significant. It is being pushed through under urgency to basically prevent anybody else using their right at the moment under current law to use a judicial process. This bill is being pushed through to stop further claims being made and that is why we are here under urgency debating it.So let us talk a little bit about the commencement clause which states: “This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” Well there are many many aspects to this particular clause that are of a slightly more technical nature but “the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” ispretty ambiguous because actually we do not know when the Governor-General is going to sign this particular piece of legislation. In our constitutional arrangements the Royal assent is exercised on behalf of the Queen who is the head of State by the Governor-General. So the first question we need to know the answer to is when the Governor-General is available to sign it and in fact of course there is no guarantee that the Governor-General will sign it. In our arrangements there is no obligation—there is no concrete obligation—on the Governor-General to sign any legislation that this Parliament passes. In fact part of our constitution is the never-yet exercised right on the part of the head of State to veto legislation that this House might pass. It has not happened in the New Zealand context but it has indeed happened in other contexts. What might happen if the head of State decides to refuse to sign something?There is a very interesting example where this happened. It was in Belgium which I visited recently. What had happened was that the King had refused to sign a piece of legislation to give it the Royal assent and therefore the Belgian Parliament was forced to work out how it might get this particular piece of legislation through in the absence of the Royal assent. What were the grounds for the refusal of the Royal assent? The King had refused to sign it on the basis that the legislation being passed—I cannot remember what it was but it was in the nature of the sort that we would have a conscience vote on in the New Zealand Parliament—violated his own conscience. So even though the democratic Parliament had passed the legislation the head of State decided that he could exercise his conscience on it as well and he refused to sign it. That created some interesting constitutional issues there. So the Parliament effectively used a little-known mechanism that allowed it to remove the head of State for a defined period of time. In this case it was for only the period of time that it was necessary for the Prime Minister to sign the legislation because if there was no head of State then the Prime Minister could sign the legislation. Belgium removed its head of State for the duration of the time that it took for the Prime Minister to sign the legislation instead and that is how Parliament got what was the equivalent of the Royal assent for that particular legislative measure.But in New Zealand it is a little bit less clear what would happen to a piece of legislation if in fact the head of State or the Governor-General refused to sign it. It has not happened in New Zealand’s history. I think that is something that is quite interesting because it is very possible that the head of State in New Zealand could look at this bill and say: “Well this legislation which removes the right to a judicial process”—to a legal process—“from citizens of New Zealand has been passed by Parliament under urgency without according it the usual legislative process.”So we have got two issues here. We have got the issue of people’s rights being taken away and then we have got the issue of the correct parliamentary process where the public and people of New Zealand have the chance to have a say also being taken away. So those two things could together compound the concern of the head of State or the Governor-General. The Governor-General or the head of State—the Queen—may refuse to give this legislation the Royal assent. I think that is pretty unlikely because like I have said it has never happened before in New Zealand’s history that the Royal assent has been refused but it is a really important principle—the principle that New Zealanders have the chance to have a say on legislation that impacts on them.There is no good reason why this legislation could not go to a select committee even for a shortened period of time. In fact there has been precedent in Parliament where legislation that needs to have immediate effect can have a clause inserted into it that it would come into effect from the day that it was introduced. So even if it was introduced yesterday I think—which is actually today under the parliamentary urgency system—Hon Ruth Dyson: Not in the real world.CHRIS HIPKINS: No. Well that is right. In the real world it is Friday; in the parliamentary world it is Thursday. It is still Thursday here. So this legislation was introduced today in the parliamentary world which is yesterday for everybody else in the rest of the country. So if we were to send the legislation that was introduced on Thursday—let us just say “on Thursday” to avoid confusion—to a select committee it could have a clause in it that said that once it had been considered by the select committee had been brought back to the House had gone through this process that we are now doing—the Committee stage process—and had then passed its third reading and been given the Royal assent it would come into force at that point. It would come into force backdated effectively to the day that it was introduced. That has happened before in the House. Therefore the idea that this legislation removing New Zealanders’ rights needs to be pushed through this House under urgency is seriously diminished because there is another way the Government could achieve that.So therefore those two things—the removal of citizens’ rights and the bad process that the Government is using to do it—could be sufficient for the head of State to look at it and say: “Well I am not going to give this the Royal assent.” and could the head of State then send it back to the House? The head of State could send it back to the House and say: “Well I want some evidence that the House”—that this Parliament—“has gone through a sufficiently robust process in passing the legislation.” I think it would probably be a good thing if the head of State did that but then again it might create some other issues around the separation or the appropriate balance of powers.The issue that we have here is that there really is not a good justification for this process. One of the reasons the Labour Party is voting against this legislation is that there is not a good justification for pushing it through all stages under urgency in the way that it has been and for not supplying the New Zealand public—the people whose rights are being taken away by this legislation—with the chance to make a submission at a select committee and to talk about it.What tends to happen with bills like this one is there will inevitably be a mistake in it. We know that because after we have done this we are to debate changes to the Crown Minerals Amendment Act which the Government amended literally only weeks ago. That amendment Act has barely been in place for a number of weeks and we are going to be amending it because the Government stuffed it up. I think that bill did go through a select committee process and the Government still managed to stuff it up. This bill has not gone through a select committee process so we could be back here in no time debating—Grant Robertson: We might be back here later in the day.CHRIS HIPKINS: We may be back here later in the day given the way Parliament works fixing up a mistake in this legislation because it has not been given scrutiny. There is not one piece of legislation that has gone to a select committee that I have been a member of that has not in some way been improved by going through that process. That is one of the reasons why we have the select committee process so that we can adequately examine legislation and so that we can make sure the Government is doing its job. How can we do that adequately and how can we discharge our functions as a Parliament when we have things like the regulatory impact statement being mostly blacked out?A regulatory impact statement is designed specifically so that Parliament can ensure that the Government is exercising its responsibilities and doing its job appropriately and we are being denied that information. That is another reason why the head of State could look at this legislation and refuse to give it the Royal assent—due process has not been followed. Parliament is not following its own rules. By passing legislation withoutdue scrutiny—and I am going to ask Grant Robertson to pass me the piece of paper the regulatory impact statement sitting in front of him—Grant Robertson: A very good piece of paper.CHRIS HIPKINS: —a very good piece of paper. When we have a regulatory impact statement that looks like this which no one can actually read to make sure that we are doing our job appropriately it is good grounds for saying that this legislation should not stand.This legislation is being passed by the narrowest of margins. The last vote we had on clause 1 passed by the narrowest of margins in this Chamber against the will of the very significant minority and the process also shut New Zealanders out of this process. But that is what New Zealanders have come to expect from this Government. That is what they expect from the born-to-rule Tory arrogant Government. More and more it is willing to ride roughshod over the democratic process and over the rights of New Zealanders—[Interruption]—and the Government members laugh about it because they think it is funny. They think it is hilarious that New Zealanders will not get a chance to have a say on legislation that affects them and removes their rights. That is wrong.