Cunliffe David: Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1176. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn):I rise as chair of the Regulations Review Committee and in so doing would like to acknowledge the work of the previous committee and especially the outgoing chair the Hon Maryan Street. Can I acknowledge the Minister and endorse his comments. The Regulations Review Committee—as you well know Mr Assistant Speaker but for the benefit of the public—is a largely bipartisan committee of Parliament typically chaired by the Opposition which reaches decisions by consensus. Its role is to act as Parliament’s watchdog on the role of the executive in promulgating subordinate legislation—that is regulations and disallowable instruments which are executive orders and instruments promulgated under legislation or laws but do not have the force of law in themselves.There are a number of times when regulations or the like are made and they have time limits or they have certain clauses that would cause them to cease their effect which is not bad practice because it is a sunset type of provision. The role of the committee and of this bill brought before the House today is to go through the list of those regulations and see which ones if any should not be rolled over—should not be continued. That is Parliament’s opportunity through the work of the committee and its staff to ensure that the executive is not inappropriately using its powers.The need for the committee and the need for this exercise grew out of would you believe—and as recalled by the outgoing chair last year in this debate—the Rt Hon Rob Muldoon who imposed a wage and price freeze by regulation not even by legislation and then rammed through justifying legislation within a month. And—Hon Maurice Williamson: Ha ha ha!Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: I can hear his laughter over the other side of the—Grant Robertson: He appears to be in the Chamber.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: He appears to be in the Chamber but we cannot refer to that as—Chris Hipkins: His spirit lives on.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: His spirit lives on. So out of that the public has a new safeguard. It is the work of the Regulations Review Committee.Now to the content of this bill. There are no regulations that the committee felt should not be rolled over and so there is a clean bill of health contained in this bill and all of the regulations that would have “sunsetted” have been renewed. As the Minister has noted there has been a new process—a more streamlined process—introduced this year truncating the House debate but also seeing the bill introduced a month earlier as per the previous year. The committee would like to emphasise the importance of that early start and to ask the Attorney-General to ensure that the same thing occurs next year. It was difficult given the election for the committee to complete its task on time and our advice is that it would have been better in terms of the depth of scrutiny if longer had been allowed. But it has been sufficient time to reach a determination on the issues that have been raised in the bill.In closing can I just say that the committee is reviewing the way it does its work. Rather than giving consideration to every single deemed instrument or deemed regulation or disallowable instrument it is likely to focus more on a 80:20 approach where those that are likely to be non-controversial and not to offend any of the key principles of good legislative practice will not be routinely reviewed but increased scrutiny will be given to those that are more likely to provide issues that need to be considered. So we are expecting the committee to take a more detailed and focused approach to its work in the coming year. I would like to commend the work of the staff and again the outgoing chair the Hon Maryan Street in setting up that process. Thank you very much.