Hipkins Chris: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 28 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:304. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):I am very happy to make my speech on the title and commencement provisions of this particular legislation. I want to pick up a point regarding a technical issue that I raised last week with regard to the schedules. I want to particularly refer to clause 3 of the bill which refers to the principal Act. It says: “This Act amends the Employment Relations Act 2000 (the principal Act).” The reason that I raise this is that during the Committee stage I had a bit of an interchange with the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety about some circular wording in a later clause of the bill—in the schedules of the bill—where instead of referring to the principal Act the wording has actually been changed by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to now refer to “this Act” itself rather than to the principal Act.The reason that that is important is for example the provision in clause 2(6) of new schedule 1AA which says: “Part 6A of this Act (as it was immediately before the commencement of the 2013 Act) continues to apply to the restructurings as if the 2013 Act had not been passed.” The reason that that becomes significant is that if the words “this Act” are interpreted to mean this bill that we are now passing then that simply makes no sense whatsoever—it becomes completely circular. Basically it is a double negative that cancels itself out. However if the words “this Act” are taken to mean the principal Act then the subclause actually makes sense because it basically says that the principal Act will continue to apply as if this bill that we are now passing had not been passed.If we are talking about the principal Act in one part of the bill and we are talking about the bill itself in another part then that becomes slightly confusing for many many people involved. I thought our objective in this Chamber was to try to start drafting law into plain English rather than something that you need to have a law degree in order to be able to follow because it is incredibly complex.Hon Ruth Dyson: What did the Minister say when you asked?CHRIS HIPKINS: The Minister did reply to the comment although even then I am not entirely sure that he quite understood what his answer was. In fact he admitted that he did not quite understand it himself but that he had been advised that that was the right thing to do. So at least he was honest about saying that he did not understand what he was doing and that he had been advised that that was the right thing to do. I commended him for at least taking part in the debate which was very good. I think that this is a drafting issue. I think that at some point in time in the future someone from the Parliamentary Counsel Office may like to provide some guidance to the Government about this to get a greater degree of consistency on it because it seems to me that we should be—well like I said—consistent right throughout the bill.The second point that I want to raise relates to the commencement provision clause 2 of this legislation. It comes into force 4 months after the date on which it receives the Royal assent. This is a very topical issue—well it is kind of topical; I am about to make it topical—because the Royal assent has of course a degree of royal prerogative within it. The head of State could refuse to sign this particular piece of legislation if they so choose. That has never happened in New Zealand’s history but technically it could happen. In reality in New Zealand it is of course the Governor-General who signs Acts on behalf of the Queen but the Governor-General or the Queen could refuse to assent to legislation and therefore it would never come into force. As I said that has never happened.The reason that I say it is topical is that it falls of course within the bucket otherwise known as the reserve powers of the head of State. The last time that the reserve powers of the head of State were used in Australasia was when they were used by the then Governor-General of Australia to remove the Prime Minister of the then Parliament Gough Whitlam who passed away last week. So it is of course possible that the head of State or the Governor-General acting as head of State can use reserve powers. Therefore this bill like any other bill that gets passed by the Parliament could technically never come into force if the head of State chose to refuse to give it the Royal assent. There is actually a reasonably recent example where that has happened—not in New Zealand or Australia but in fact in Belgium. The King of Belgium refused to provide the Royal assent to a piece of legislation that was a conscience vote. I think it was about either homosexual law reform or gay marriage and the Royal assent was refused. There in Belgium the parliamentarians used a very little-known power that they also had to effectively depose the King for a period of time. In this case I think they deposed the King for about 24 hours and the Prime Minister was then able to sign the legislation instead—[Interruption] I have not quite finished yet Mr Chair—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): You have now.