Hipkins ChrisLEGISLATION BILLFirst ReadingHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education) on behalf of the Attorney-General: I move That the Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.The Legislation Bill was introduced with cross-party support under the previous Government and I'd like to acknowledge the Hon Christopher Finlayson who put an enormous amount of work into bringing this legislation to the House. I'm very pleased to say I think this Government will make much more progress on taking it through the House than the previous Government did. If the current Opposition continue their streak as the largest and laziest Opposition in New Zealand's history we'll be able to make a lot more progress on the legislation that they failed—that they failed—to progress through the House in their term in Government.Much of the legislation of course on the Order Paper is passed with consensus—about 70 or 80 percent pass with consensus in this House—and given the somewhat lacklustre performance of the Opposition I think we'll be able to do it a lot faster than the previous Government did as well. This bill will I'm sure be yet another one of those.The bill has elements that are innovative and ambitious and others that provide more technical improvements to Parliament's lawmaking. We are progressing the Legislation Bill because the coalition Government has committed to open and transparent government and the significant part of this bill is about enabling easier access to the law. Unlike the other side who talk about open access to Government and to the law we are actually going to deliver it and the passage of this legislation is another example of that.I'd like to acknowledge the Hon Christopher Finlayson who put an enormous amount of work into drafting this legislation and bringing it before the House. He didn't get the opportunity to hear me say that earlier on but I do want to commend him for his efforts. I know how much he enjoys it when I do that.New Zealanders deserve to have confidence that they can meet their obligations under the law and this bill will make significant advances in that regard. In order to do that the law must be accessible to the public so that they can find and understand the provisions that affect them. The bill's main reform is to deliver better access to New Zealand by requiring that secondary legislation is clearly identifiable and available to the public online.As a nation we take pride in our international reputation for being law-abiding and free from corruption. As a member of the international Open Government Partnership New Zealand has signed up to fostering good governance by increasing the availability of Government information and using technology to improve openness and transparency. As the Minister for open government the Hon Clare Curran said recently this Government is determined to pay more than lip service to action plan commitments that we've signed up to.One of those commitments is to make secondary legislation more accessible. This type of law is made by Ministers officials and a wide variety of Government and non-Government agencies under powers delegated to them by Acts of Parliament. Secondary legislation tends to be either technical such as food standards transport rules and health and safety regulations or the kind that is more appropriately made at arm's length from the political process such as broadcasting standards. This type of law affects the day-to-day activities of many New Zealanders. The problem is that there is currently no central register of delegated legislation so there's no way to know definitively what secondary legislation has been made and what is in force. Since there are a variety of ways it can be notified published or presented to the House it is not always easy to find.Two inquiries in 2014 highlighted these problems. Firstly the Productivity Commission's inquiry into regulatory institutions and practices observed that the volume and complexity of the regulatory stock in New Zealand poses challenges to people wanting to understand their regulatory obligations and for the centre of Government—Ministers and central agencies—to manage the system. Tools are needed to help people navigate the stock and for the centre to effectively govern the system. The absence of a central electronic repository constrains the ability of firms and individuals to understand their regulatory rights and obligations.Secondly the Government inquiry into the whey protein concentrate incident or the botulism scare found that the secondary layer of dairy industry regulation runs to about 12000 pages taking up more than 3 metres of shelf space. Submitters to the inquiry said the regulations were difficult to navigate inaccessible and a bit of a nightmare. The inquiry noted that the burden of this legislation is particularly felt by small and medium sized businesses. Crucially the chair to the inquiry Miriam Dean QC stated the inquiry was unable to find all of the secondary legislation that applied to the dairy sector and indeed there would be no way of establishing if in fact they had found it all. By remedying this confusion Part 3 of the bill will enable businesses to find the law that applies to their sector and be sure it is complete thereby reducing the cost of regulatory compliance in doing business in New Zealand.Another benefit of the bill will be improving the oversight and scrutiny of regulatory regimes. The Regulations Review Committee has over several years recorded its frustration that its oversight role has been impaired because some of the legislation that it should oversee has not been presented to it. Surprising though it may be the limits of New Zealand's stock of secondary legislation has never been clearly and unambiguously defined. The current conceptual structure of legislative instruments and disallowable instruments is not only unnecessarily complex but also open to differing views and confusion about where the boundary lies between secondary legislation and purely administrative instruments.To achieve this bill's aims we must first define the boundaries of secondary legislation and then identify for the first time all of New Zealand's collection of secondary legislation. While this bill has a key role in this process more work is required and a substantial research project has already been carried out over the past six months to begin to identify the collection. This has involved analysing all Acts currently in force and identifying all of the thousands of provisions that may empower secondary legislation.Once this process is completed another bill will follow to amend the identified provisions to state that they empower the making of secondary legislation ensuring that there will be no more confusion in the future. This outcome will support chief executives' duty under section 32 of the State Sector Act to be stewards of the legislation their agency administers. It will enhance the regulatory design and lead to better legislative schemes and it will ensure that Parliament can comprehensively supervise on behalf of New Zealanders the lawmaking powers that we have delegated to others. The ultimate goal is that the public can confidently access the entire collection of New Zealand's secondary legislation from an authoritative source. We look forward to the public submissions to the select committee on how best to deliver these benefits as quickly and as efficiently as possible bearing in mind the huge scale of this undertaking.The Legislation Bill has three other main elements; though less innovative and ambitious than the parts that I've just spoken of these nevertheless remain important for the good lawmaking in this House. First it absorbs the Interpretation Act of 1999 with some technical enhancements; second it enacts legislative disclosure requirements to make key information about the development and content of new legislation available to support legislative scrutiny; and third it re-enacts with minor changes the current Legislation Act.Part 2 of the bill carries forward the general rules and principles in the Interpretation Act 1999. These rules and principles help to communicate the law clearly to people so they can easily use and understand the law. Standard interpretation provisions allow legislation to be simpler shorter and more consistent. The interpretation rules and principles need to be kept up to date to remain effective. The bill also makes some technical changes to address development since 1999.The legislative disclosure requirements in Part 4 of the bill will enhance the quality of legislation and also contribute to delivering on this Government's commitment to open government through supporting more informed parliamentary and public scrutiny of legislation. The disclosure statement brings together key information including the policy background of the legislation; the testing the legislation has undergone; any departures from specified legislative guidelines or standards endorsed or adopted by the Government such as inconsistencies with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act; and any other significant or unusual features such as provisions that retrospectively alter rights freedoms or obligations or that could result in the compulsory acquisition of property.As I draw to a close the Legislation Bill finally in rewriting the Legislation Act clarifies updates and recasts some of its provision. In conclusion this bill will substantially improve access to the law for all New Zealanders and improve lawmaking by this House. I look forward to the Justice Committee's consideration of the bill and I commend the bill to the House.