Dalziel Lianne: Statutes Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Statutes Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:659;Page:8331] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I too rise to support the introduction of the Statutes Amendment Bill. I thought I would focus my comments on Standing Orders 258 and 259 because of course it is under Standing Order 258 that we get to debate an omnibus bill as a type of omnibus bill that may be introduced to the House as of right. A Statutes Amendment Bill is one of those. The reason it is in the list of things that can be dealt with by way of an omnibus bill is its uncontroversial nature. That is why we have a very detailed cross-party consultation process which enables individual parties to reject any particular clause of a Statutes Amendment Bill. I think that is a very good process. It means that when the bill does arrive in the House it has general agreement subject to the comment made by my very good associate to whom I was delighted to delegate the responsibility of the Statutes Amendment Bill for the Labour Opposition which is that sometimes there is a tendency for officials to slip in a little bit of policy when somebody is not looking very closely. 
The idea of dealing with relatively minor technical amendments that do not meet the totally non-controversial nature required of a Statutes Amendment Bill has been a frustration that many of us who have been in Government have experienced over a number of years. That is why I wanted to focus on the importance of the vehicle. I think Jo Goodhew made a very good point. This morning I had a classroom of young people here from Aranui Primary School which is in my electorate. They asked me about voting. They asked what the Ayes and the Noes were for. We had to explain what those old-fashioned words meant. It was very easy actually. We just told them to knock the “A” off the Ayes and the “es” off the Noes and they then had a very clear understanding of what it was all about. 
But they wanted to know why in Opposition we did not always vote against the Government. They did not quite get that. They thought that the role of the Opposition was to vote against the Government. I said that no by and large most of the business of this House is conducted without a party vote because generally speaking we are of one mind in respect of the overwhelming bulk of the legislation that we deal with here. But unfortunately our friends in the media are not so interested in the times when we agree with each other. It is not really headline news that peace broke out in Parliament last night. Therefore the media focus tends to be when there is disagreement. 
This bill is a very good vehicle. It was one of my drivers behind having a Regulatory Improvement Bill. We have Business Law Reform bills now as an agreed Business Committee decision around the introduction of an annual Business Law Reform Bill which enables a range of legislation to be addressed as an omnibus bill instead of having to have just the one subject matter dealt with in the legislation. That has been a very useful way of dealing with business law reform. 
The Regulatory Improvement Bill which was my personal contribution to the suite of omnibus bills that we now have was really designed to pick up those particular instances where things did not quite meet the standard required for statutes amendment in that there may have been an element of controversy or the technical amendments may not be minor and the amount of red tape that could be cut or the amount of slack that could be given to business operations did not quite meet the business law reform agenda. It might be an amendment to the Resource Management Act it might be an amendment to the Employment Relations Act or something like that. It could be dealt with in the regulatory improvement framework as well. 
We are very much in favour of omnibus bills that are able to be read together as it were within a sensible frame. In this case the Statutes Amendment Bill having a number of pieces of legislation tidied up in one hit I think is very positive legislation and I am happy to see it go to the Justice and Electoral Committee I believe. Is that where it is going? I do not know whether I heard the Minister say where the bill is going but it is definitely not coming to the Commerce Committee and I am very pleased about that.