Young Jonathan: Third Readings — 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Young Jonathan: Third Readings — 
[Sitting date: 23 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4752. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) 
: 
 Well I do trust that my contribution can be a bit of sense amongst the triviality of that last speech from Trevor Mallard which I am sure that people who have been listening to this debate have been appalled by. We who worked through this legislation in the Commerce Committee believe that it will make a significant difference to the businesses in our nation which is what this legislation is about. It is about nothing that the previous member spoke on. It is actually about bringing some relief and some lifting of financial and regulatory burden to those businesses out there to those New Zealanders to those hard-working people who want to see this Parliament be effective in helping them. I think that that is what this Parliament wants to do and what the people of New Zealand want this Parliament to achieve. 
So I believe that in progressing this bill here in its third reading—well all the 13 separate bills arising from the Regulatory Reform Bill and the Regulatory Reform (Repeals) Bill—are relieving what the Minister described as niggles and we have surely had enough niggles here today regarding this legislation. It is going to be something where I think New Zealanders may not see the huge massive impact of major legislation but they will receive the benefit of all the smaller changes that take place which in the end will have a significant benefit in the bottom lines of businesses and that is going to release more funds more finance and more profits to businesses. It is going to help with employment better public services and in the end a better way of life for New Zealanders. So what is good for business has got to be good for New Zealand. 
We believe that less but better regulation—not less is better but less but better—is essential to boost New Zealand’s productivity its growth its international competitiveness and its living standards. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: The member’s father knew how to make a speech without reading it. 
JONATHAN YOUNG 
: Yeah well certainly I do not think you read your speech across the House there. Certainly I would say that the content of this speech is probably a lot more substantial than the content of the previous one. 
What New Zealand needs is a better policy environment which is a very good reason why we have National as the leading party in this Government. We are bringing a better policy environment for businesses in New Zealand which is going to create the economic advantage that we need. We live so far away from most of our markets. We live so far away from the great populations of the world in our isolation here and in our geographical distance that it is imperative and important that we have a very good robust positive attractive policy environment in order to retain talent—that mobile talent that can go anywhere in the world. 
We know that all New Zealanders do an OE. Of course you hear the haranguing around that but you know many New Zealanders go overseas and then return with global skills and global connections. All of that brings an improvement into the capability of our businesses here in New Zealand. It is important to have this environment which attracts people to business in this country. 
In fact back in April Bill English went to Australia and there many Australian businesses were very very jealous of the environment that has been created here in New Zealand. We know that investment is coming this way. It is because of what we are doing—it is because we are working systematically through the regulations that work in the business sphere. In particular we are working through this systematically to identify those areas that are redundant and those areas that are constrictive with a determination that we are going to have regulation that is robust that is essential that is reasonable and that has rigorousness about it. We are also going to remove those redundant pieces of legislation that just clutter the business environment. All of these are part of our plan to improve the environment for New Zealand businesses. 
We touched on this last night as we went through Part 5 of the Regulatory Reform Bill where we looked at the amendment to the Films Videos and Publications Classification Act 1993. It is just a very simple measure that is going to bring significant savings to that industry. Instead of having to take a DVD slip out of its cover and then adhere a rating classification to it those in the industry are now able to print this at the source of supply and this is going to make a significant saving to them. 
 Comment has been made that we could have progressed this legislation a little bit faster in order to bring that benefit to people. But I understand that that area of the industry approached the previous Labour Government year after year and then finally it thought that this was a good idea. So it has taken a long time to bring that sort of relief and that sort of benefit to that sector. It is important that these things happen in order to build this better policy environment and in order to bring the success that people aspire to in this country. We believe that better regulation and less regulation is essential. This is what we are working on as a Government. 
One of the changes that we have made is a new system for assessing the health of New Zealand’s regulatory regimes. This will help improve economic performance over the longer term. The results of preliminary assessments are included in a report called  
The Best Practice Regulation Model: Principles and Assessments 
 which was released on the Treasury website this month August 2012. This new model for assessing major pieces of regulation considers whether each regime gives appropriate weighting to factors that can help improve economic performance competition innovation exports compliance costs and trade and investment openness. 
In 2009 the 
 Government Statement on Regulation: Better Regulation Less Regulation 
 made two major commitments. We said: “We will introduce new regulation only when we are satisfied that it is required reasonable and robust.” The second commitment is: “We will review existing regulation in order to identify and remove requirements that are unnecessary ineffective or excessively costly.” So I am very pleased to stand and support this legislation in its third reading. Thank you.