Walters VanushiVANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Kia orana Madam Speaker and thank you for the opportunity to take a call in relation to the Regulatory Standards Bill. I don't support the progression of this bill through the House. While this is the first reading of this bill I can't help but feel a sense of déjà vu. Now I've tried to work out why and I thought initially that it was because this is a bill that is almost identical to the one introduced by Rodney Hide in 2011 but no it wasn't that! It's because we've all already heard rather a lot about this member's bill in the members' questions when in July Mr Seymour had the entire ACT caucus stand and ask questions about the bill using up about 15 minutes of the House's time. There is a little bit of irony in terms of putting forward what the member proposes are systems to improve our democracy while using systems in a way that is in essence in my view wasting the House's time. But let's turn to the bill.I'll speak briefly to the reasons why we don't support this bill on this side of the House which have been well traversed by my colleague Rachel Brooking. I refer to the fact that the bill is almost identical to the bill introduced by Rodney Hide in 2011 which Labour opposed then. The Government of the time didn't progress the bill after the Commerce Committee examined the bill and recommended that it not be passed due to numerous issues. The Government who decided not to proceed with it was the National Government and ACT was a confidence and supply partner at the time. What's clear is that the then Government identified that it wasn't a bill they could or should proceed with. So what's changed with the bill? Well almost nothing except for one significant thing and that is that Mr Seymour has made the addition of a costly referendum.So we could then ask: what's changed that makes introducing the bill a viable course of action? Well actually there are things that have changed but they're not helpful to the progress of this bill. Since the 2011 bill a number of changes have been made that improve the framework for making high-quality legislation that are demonstrably better than this bill's proposals especially I would say the introduction of departmental disclosure statements to accompany the introduction of most Government bills and substantive Supplementary Order Papers. The disclosure statement system is a better alternative than the certification of all legislation as is proposed by this bill because disclosing and explaining policy and process choices made in developing legislation is more inclusive and responsive than reporting on compliance with selected principles stated in what is a very fixed form which is what this bill proposes.Every time this bill has been considered the bill itself is considered fundamentally flawed and the reasons for that are that it checks for quality of legislation which already exists as my colleague traversed for Government bills and are also set out in the Cabinet Manual processes. It cuts across and potentially undermines existing lawmaking processes such as departmental disclosure statements and New Zealand Bill of Rights Act reports which may result in certificates under both the proposed bill and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in respect of the same matters. It confuses existing lawmaking principles and would likely create confusion and uncertainty in the courts and in Parliament.Now in this stage of my review of the bill and its history I was curious about whether there were comparable systems as proposed in this bill in relation to other jurisdictions we commonly look to. In Australia and the United Kingdom there is no equivalent to the proposals in this bill but both as expected have systems that set out high-level considerations for the development of legislation—for example in Australia the Legislation Act 2003. So again I would say that I do not support the progress of this bill through the House.