Chauvel Charles: Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 11 September 2012. Volume:683;Page:5072. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 This is an annual ritual the introduction and first reading of the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill. Unfortunately it has become a ritual. The Minister for Courts quite correctly said that these enactments dealt with in the bill are traditionally a matter for cross-party support and certainly that is not changing today. But what I want to do is try to make some observations about the utility of the process. 
I think in the spirit of the House trying to do its job better there are some ways that we could explore in order to use the time of members more efficiently in respect of this sort of exercise. I was encouraged by the Minister’s motion of referral because I note that it proposes a report-back date of Guy Fawkes Day 5 November. It might well be that that ought to inspire us to rethink the way in which this legislation is dealt with on an annual basis by the Parliament. 
I want members and those listening to have a very clear picture of what will happen from here. This legislation if it passes its first reading will be referred to the Regulations Review Committee. The Minister made a reference to the valuable scrutiny that the committee will perform and that is kind of him. Unfortunately this is what the Regulations Review Committee will do: it will write to each Minister and department responsible for one of the orders dealt with by the legislation and the letter that the committee writes to the Minister and to his or her department will ask whether or not there is an ongoing need for the particular order that is being validated or validated and confirmed. The Minister or his or her department will invariably write back and say to the committee that yes there is an ongoing need for another year or whatever the term for the confirmation or confirmation and validation is. The Regulations Review Committee having no way to test that response will accept the advice that comes back and it will report to the House that the enactments referred to in this bill ought to be confirmed or validated and confirmed as the case may be. 
That is the extent of the scrutiny that will come from the Regulations Review Committee and I can tell the House that as the chair of the committee in this term and the last term. With the deputy chair of the committee from the last Parliament present in the House he will remember that that was exactly what was done last time. 
The problem that we have with this system is that these Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) bills have been enacted by this Parliament for many many decades. They date back to an earlier era when there just was not the sort of scrutiny that we have now with our committee system. The fact is that the Committee stage in the House is recorded in  
Hansard 
 so that people can actually see the detailed level of scrutiny that is performed in respect of legislation. The bills date back to an earlier time when the thinking around subordinate legislation was very different from the way that that thinking occurs now. All we are doing by dealing with an annual bill like this is trying to preserve the form of the principle that all expenditure and all revenue raising by the Crown ought to be authorised by Parliament by the legislature. That is all this exercise is designed to achieve: to preserve the principle and the form of that notion. But as I have said it is simply a ritualistic exercise. 
Much work has been done on what it costs to run this House per minute. There are various exercises that indicate the expense that the taxpayers are put to as this House operates. There are actually more important and more significant things that we could be doing than dealing with this sort of annual exercise every year and this is precisely the speech that I gave last year when we dealt with this sort of legislation. It cannot be beyond the expertise of the Standing Orders Committee and the expert advice that it receives from the Clerk to be able to find a better way to deal with this sort of exercise. 
I would say that the beginning point ought to be that we should no longer legislate annually to continue with this type of exercise and we should no longer have primary legislation that requires ongoing confirmation or confirmation and validation because it is an outdated exercise. There are easier ways to do it. We could just deal with each of these matters in primary legislation or we could simply delegate a particular power to a Minister to deal with by way of Order in Council and have it scrutinised by the Regulations Review Committee in the ordinary course which is what generally happens in respect of regulations and new regulation-making powers every year anyway. 
We do not need to spend the time of the House every year in this way. Given the report-back date of Guy Fawkes Day I am hoping that the Regulations Review Committee will agree to report to the House not only in terms of the enactments dealt with in the bill but also to ask that we actually find a better way to use the House’s time rather than have an annual Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill which as I have said pre-dates the modern scrutiny methods that are now at our disposal and is not by any measure an efficient use of the time of the House.