Hide Rodney: Regulatory Improvement Bill — First Reading 
Hide Rodney: Regulatory Improvement Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:654;Page:3037] 
Hon RODNEY HIDE (Minister for Regulatory Reform) 
: 
 I move  
That the Regulatory Improvement Bill be now read a first time. 
 It is my intention that the bill be referred to the Commerce Committee. 
Today we take an important step towards making it easier to do business in New Zealand by removing red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy. This step illustrates this Government’s commitment to making continual improvements in the quality of New Zealand’s regulation in order to assist the efficiency and the growth of New Zealand businesses. Today I present to the House the Regulatory Improvement Bill. We have reinstated this bill which was introduced by the previous Government because we agree that the changes will help business. 
Today marks what I intend will become an annual event in this House. The yearly regulatory reform omnibus bill will be a vehicle to improve regulatory frameworks and reduce the compliance burden on businesses in a timely fashion. This Government has a focus on new regulation that would impose compliance costs on businesses because we recognise the pressures that businesses are currently under because of the global financial crisis. Our aim is to get better policy and better results for New Zealand. When it comes to existing regulations on which this bill is focused that means first systematically reviewing regulation that has a significant impact on productivity and second identifying and regularly repealing unnecessary or unnecessarily costly regulations. It is crucial that we ensure that the Government’s regulation is necessary that it is cost-effective and proportionate to risk that our regulatory frameworks as a whole are of high quality and that key interested parties are engaged in the process of continual regulatory improvement. 
The current bill addresses certain low-hanging fruit reforms that have been identified in the last few years. The provisions in the bill came out of the Quality Regulation Review which was undertaken by the previous Government in 2006 and 2007 and let me thank the Hon Lianne Dalziel for that work and for working across the House in terms of getting a better outcome. The review identified a number of issues that required amendments to legislation. The changes proposed in this bill cover a diverse range of policy areas and legislation but they are all aimed at the same objective—namely improving regulatory frameworks and reducing the compliance burden on business. Those objectives are the unifying theme of the clauses in the Regulatory Improvement Bill which I am introducing to the House today. 
I am advised that the Quality Regulation Review took 15 months to complete and involved a wide range of Government agencies as well as more than 200 businesses. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the businesses and their membership organisations that contributed their time energy and ideas to the review and again to thank the previous Minister of Commerce for her work. I am confident that these businesses will enjoy some clear benefits arising from this bill. It goes some way to address the concerns they raised with us. Engagement with business is the only way to understand the real impacts of the decisions we make as parliamentarians and I intend to continue the momentum begun in the development of this bill. 
Overall these changes address regulatory duplications gaps administrative errors and inconsistencies between different pieces of legislation. Collectively they created unnecessary compliance costs and uncertainty for business. Fixing them is a small step toward seeing a more prosperous and more successful nation driven by the initiative and hard work of individuals. These changes individually are small fixes but for businesses these small changes do count and this Government is committed to do all that it can to address the barriers big or small that hold back New Zealand businesses from reaching their full potential and greatest growth. 
Too often much-needed changes to legislation are not made because it is difficult for small changes to get space on a busy legislative agenda. This bill represents a first instance of a relatively easy mechanism to fast track such improvements. This bill does exactly that; it provides an efficient and effective legislative vehicle to make the amendments and it consolidates several small gains into an omnibus bill which can deliver the accumulated benefits these changes represent. The bill comprises 22 changes to various Acts and all the changes are designed to make it easier to do business. The changes demonstrate that this Government is a Government of regulatory reform: we see the problems and we want to fix them. 
Some of the changes are aimed at speeding up administrative processes. These include the proposed amendments to delegation processes in the quota management system and aspects of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act amendments to some public notification procedures under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act and improvements to access to information for emergency services. Other clauses aim to provide certainty around existing provisions. Those include the removal of duplicate penalties regimes for commercial fishers greater certainty around the process for tendering for concessions on conservation land clarity around governance arrangements in the gas industry and allowing for provisional test certificates under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. 
Several clauses have the effect of reducing current administrative and reporting requirements. Included in these provisions is an amendment that allows business concessions on conservation land to be granted without public notice for 10 years at a time instead of just 5 years. That will save approximately $1000 for the application. The Minister will still notify concessions that will have significant effects. Similarly changes to the Companies Act will mean that some private firms will no longer have to appoint auditors and thus that Act will be brought in line with the provisions of the Financial Reporting Act. 
The other largest group of changes in this bill will reduce the number of inspections to which firms are subject by enabling inspectors authorised under one Act such as the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act to undertake inspections related to other Acts such as the Health and Safety in Employment Act and the Biosecurity Act during one visit to the firm instead of separate visits—often actually now done by the same inspector—for each Act. 
The Regulatory Improvement Bill is just one of the essential measures needed to implement improvements to regulation in New Zealand. Many more measures will be needed and are on the way. In recent years there has been an avalanche of new rules and regulations. New Zealand is over-regulated: red tape is tying up businesses in knots—in particular those involved in building construction and property. This omnibus bill represents a fresh approach which ensures that New Zealand’s regulatory environment will continually evolve to meet the needs of a dynamic economy trying to grow its way out of a recession. In introducing this bill I recognise that the legislative changes proposed are limited and will not provide an immediate silver bullet to improve overall business investment or productivity. I believe though that we can do even better to reduce the red tape and regulatory interventions that are hindering businesses. That is the reason I intend that a regulatory reform omnibus bill will become a feature of New Zealand’s legislative programme each year. Thank you.