English Bill: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
English Bill: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14761] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 I want to speak to clause 6 which concerns me. First I reiterate the point made by my colleague Mr Mapp that if one looks at the regulations on the face of it one would see that the levy was payable once. If the Minister could tell members when the regulation was renewed that would be helpful. I understand the Act has generic provisions about the levy including the fact that it must be reviewed in 2006 but the regulation is not generic. It applies to the academic year 2003 and it specifies dates for payment. It is quite specific. So if regulations have been renewed or the process has been changed since then we would like to know about it because it is not in the book. 
The second question I raise is this: why is it that the people who write our legislation cannot get this sort of thing right? It is not as if raising a levy is something new to the Government—a Government of any sort. All Governments of all colours raise levies. They write legislation that allows a provision to write regulations and the Governor-General to promulgate them and the levy is thereby collected. But somehow in the middle of this machinery that writes all our law there is confusion about what is done when it comes to the purposes of a levy. 
So we have clause 6 here because when the draftsmen wrote the regulations they did not include a purpose for the levy. Presumably the argument was that the purpose of the levy was in the Act and so it did not need to be repeated in the regulations. Well whatever the argument was then it has now changed and it has been decided that that might not have been right. What is going on here? 
The Parliamentary Counsel Office writes regulations every day—in fact I think for about 23 hours of the day judging from the volume that comes out—and when its staff are not writing regulations they are writing bills. But apparently they do not know what is meant to be done about regulating the purposes of a levy. When are they going to find out? 
This clause does not even clear the issue up. It just says that whatever was in the regulation was valid—whatever was there. We had to legislate that those regulations themselves were valid because it was not clear that they were and it wastes the time of this Committee to pick up the work of some dopey draftsman who still does not know how to do it. 
So I want to know what Parliamentary Counsel Office policy is and its officials can tell the Minister while he sits there. What are the rules now? If one writes a set of purposes into legislation does one then have to repeat those purposes in the regulations—yes or no? I do not want to stand around in this Committee wasting time on this kind of mess-up again. If the dopey draftsman does not know the answer then presumably the expansively and interplanetary bright people who run the Parliamentary Counsel Office ought to know the answer. [ 
Interruption 
] Members might think it is trivial but it shows sloppiness. 
Levying that kind of money from free citizens of New Zealand is a serious business. The question of whether the levy is valid may not matter to the member for Otaki but it sure as anything matters to the people who pay it and that is part of the problem. That member does not care because as far as Labour is concerned this is costless regulation. To clean up a problem at no cost means at no cost to the Government but there is certainly cost to the payer. 
So I want to know whether the Parliamentary Counsel Office knows enough about levying levies to know whether regulations should have a purpose because this clause is not satisfactory as far as this Committee is concerned. All it says is that no matter what the dopey draftsman does the Government can always legislate later to make sure it is right. But surely there is a policy and a principle about how to do that.