Genter Julie Anne: Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7111. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise to take a very short call on the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill which the Green Party will be supporting. As with these sorts of bills from other years as many speakers have mentioned already today it just consists of very technical regulations and orders that are extremely uncontroversial.The Regulations Review Committee’s correspondence showed that all relevant departments considered it necessary to have the regulations in question confirmed or validated. If confirming these regulations will assist with the proper functioning of departments then it is definitely most worthwhile to support the bill. So it was no great surprise to see that the Regulations Review Committee recommended it be passed without amendment and we join the committee in thanking the relevant departments for their assistance.What was more interesting was the recommendation by the committee that the Government examine the viability of introducing bills seeking confirmation and/or validation of subordinate legislation earlier in the calendar year than has been usual in recent years. I think this seems like a very sensible recommendation. If we are going to go through this process every year it is worth allowing the committees more time to undertake serious scrutiny of the technical issues surrounding the legislation.It seems to be that more can be substantively accomplished through consideration at the select committee—at least in the first instance—than in a first reading debate. Of course as others have noted the annual nature of this process is not necessarily desirable. It is good to see a streamlined debate recommended in the case of these confirmation and validation bills. But that does not necessarily mean that we are still operating as efficiently as we might otherwise do. Charles Chauvel in his speech at the first reading made the very good point that this process undertaken annually is probably not a very efficient use of the House’s time. As he said it would behove us to try to enact primary legislation that does not require taking time out of the business of the House each year to have bits of it confirmed. If there are major issues with a piece of legislation we can always deal with that in a more robust way than this yearly exercise makes room for. It seems more efficient to delegate more time for the Regulations Review Committee to scrutinise these sorts of provisions in the course of its business rather than this slightly onerous procedure that we have now.I note that other speakers have referred to the changes to the road-user charges. Part of this bill is specifying the rates of road-user charges for distance licences for road-user charge vehicles. Interestingly the Government’s financial statements are out today and they show that there was a significantly lower tax take from indirect taxes. That was primarily because of the road-user charges which were $73 million lower than forecast. So what this suggests is that actually the Government’s most recent change to the road-user charges regime has not delivered the revenue that was expected. That is in part probably because road use is down. It has been down for 5 or 6 years. It has not been growing so there is less revenue coming in from road-user charges and from petrol taxes.It seems in this particular case that the changes that were made to the road-user charges scheme maybe were very optimistic in terms of the revenue that they wouldraise. This is going to pose a significant issue for this Government which of course has very very ambitious highway-building plans that it intends to fund from road-user charges and petrol taxes which of course probably are not going to deliver enough revenue. So now the Government is looking to creative borrowing techniques like public-private partnerships and getting us into some really long-term expensive loans to pay for its motorways.I would expect that next year we may well be seeing an update to the Road User Charges Act hopefully increasing the rates of road-user charges because after all of this work that we have just done it seems that the Government has not got it right and is not going to be getting enough revenue in. It probably should be revisiting its spending priorities because the spending priorities just do not match up with the demand that is out there in the market. Obviously if you are making investments for the next decade or two one would want those investments to be supportive of the sorts of economic development that we are actually going to see in that time.Aside from that I do not have much to add. This bill raises no major issues of policy for us. We will be happy to see it pass although I do expect that we are going to have to see an update to the road-user charges rates in a very short time.I would like to thank the committee for its careful consideration of the process and extend particular thanks to Mr Chauvel who I think has raised very good points about the process and about the opportunities to improve the process and make it a little more streamlined and efficient. Thank you.