Dean Jacqui: Statutes Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dean Jacqui: Statutes Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 29 June 2010. Volume:664;Page:12287. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Statutes Amendment Bill. As Grant Robertson my fellow member on the Government Administration Committee noted this is an omnibus bill that is designed to deal with a number of non-controversial issues. I thought that the select committee process was good. We did call for submissions. There were not a lot of them. We noted a couple of things as the bill went through the select committee process. Probably the one that I want to highlight first of all amends the Statistics Act. A small issue came out of the amendment made by clause 156(2). We would have recommended an amendment but we felt that reprinting the bill—and it is quite a substantial bill because it has a number of statutes in it—was not justified for a single minor amendment that should be addressed at the Committee of the whole House stage and it will be. We consider that the words “in each place where it appears” should be added to the end of clause 156(2) with regard to the substitution of the term “enumerator” with the term “collector” as that term appears more than once in section 26(3) of the Statistics Act 1975. 
One can go through the Statutes Amendment Bill and find a number of interesting statutes to be amended. One is the Conservation Act which will be amended by several amendments that the committee found quite interesting. Several things will change as a result of this Statutes Amendment Bill. First of all section 26ZD(7) which deals with the meetings of fish and game councils is amended by omitting “3 months” and substituting “4 months”. It is a pretty non-controversial and sensible change. Also section 26ZR relating to the use of hazardous substances to catch or destroy fish is amended by substituting a new subsection (2) which states: “Subsection (1) does not apply to actions taken by—(a) a warranted officer or a fish and game ranger; or (b) any person authorised in writing for the purpose by the Director-General the Director or the appropriate Fish and Game Council.” There are a couple more amendments to the Conservation Act. 
I highlight these particular amendments to that Act as an example of one of the amendments to 47 statutes administered by 15 different Government agencies. There are 196 clauses in total in this bill and it was the select committee’s job to go through each and every one of the amendments to those 47 statutes. We had to examine them to determine whether they would be controversial and whether the amendment made sense which in most places it did. The select committee had a pretty robust process in place to do that and I thought at the time that the committee had come to a pretty good agreement on how we would return this bill to the House for the Committee stage. 
With those few words my contribution is almost at an end. 
Amy Adams 
: So soon? 
JACQUI DEAN 
: Yes so soon—I thank my colleague. I will mention the Copyright Act 1994. Again this was an interesting amendment. The bill amends the definition of “prescribed library” in order to cover the law libraries that are maintained by the New Zealand Law Society. The old district law society libraries have now been taken over by that organisation under the reforms implemented by the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006. 
Charles Chauvel 
: A very fine Act. 
JACQUI DEAN 
: Well it was quite an interesting statute to look at because I know one law library particularly well. I have seen people coming in cutting and pasting and sellotaping bits into the statutes so I am a little bit familiar with that. 
There is also the Electoral Act 1993. The bill amends the Electoral Act by removing the obligation for a party to an intended marriage or civil union to provide information to the registrar-general but it requires the registrar-general to provide details of registered marriages and civil unions to the Chief Registrar of Electors. Although that might seem to be a minor amendment I suggest that it is quite a significant amendment for a number of people. 
The final amendment I will raise is the amendment to the Juries Amendment Act 2008. New section 14B inserted by clause 97 provides: “(1) The Registrar may permit a person summoned to attend as a juror on an occasion to defer that person’s attendance to serve as a juror to a time within a period that—(a) starts at least 8 weeks and ends no later than 1 year after the date on which that person is required to attend under the summons;”. So that provides a little bit of leeway. It seems eminently sensible and that was one of the other statutes that was considered and approved by the committee. Thank you.