Street Maryan: Regulatory Responsibility Bill — First Reading 
Street Maryan: Regulatory Responsibility Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:640;Page:10304] 
MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I find myself in the novel position of rising to speak in support of a bill in the name of Mr Rodney Hide. People may be surprised at how much Rodney Hide and I have in common. We both used to spend a lot more time than we do now with Richard Prebble and Roger Douglas myself in the 1980s and Mr Hide more recently. We are both refugees from academia although we have yet to establish a parliamentary alumni club. 
Labour is prepared to support this bill going to a select committee. While we may not initially be very attracted to it it should be seen in the context of a range of other work being done currently and a member’s bill is a worthwhile mechanism to apply more light to the area of regulation than might already be being applied by the work currently being undertaken. So if we are to see this bill in the context of other work there are two other pieces of work that the House needs to be aware of and certainly that the Commerce Committee needs to take into account in considering Mr Hide’s bill. 
The first is the Quality Regulation Review that the Minister of Commerce the Hon Lianne Dalziel has been pushing through since last year and I want to refer to some of the work that has been done in the context of that Quality Regulation Review. One of the very important aims of that review was in fact to do away with a substantial amount of red tape where it was proven to be unnecessary and restrictive. Some of that work has clearly been done already and has been released into the public arena and the Quality Regulation Review is heading into its final stages and is on track for completion in July 2007. 
Good progress has been made to address the regulatory concerns of business with a number of initiatives having been achieved. Those solutions have varied in nature and in scope and include amongst many other things some direct responses to individual businesses some changes to administrative processes and procedures some legislative enactments some proposals for further legislative amendments and some changes to Government mechanisms and processes for developing legislation and regulation. Relevant departments have been directed to undertake further work and report to the ministerial group overseeing the review on a number of other issues. Much of this has been outlined in the second milestone report that the Minister released at the beginning of May this year. 
In amongst that work there has been a range of work streams. One of them that has been completed has been the sector studies which have involved interviews with businesses of four sectors and regulatory issues pertaining to those four sectors have been passed to the relevant departments for their response. The final report on that is due in the middle of this year—in fact next month I think. Another area where there has been work on the issues of regulation has been the interface study which concerns the interaction of building and resource consent processes and the findings on that were released in February 2007. A number of other instruments and work streams have also been used to apply to this area of regulation. 
 It is important to note that new strengthened regulatory impact analysis requirements were agreed by Cabinet at the end of last year and came into force on 1 April this year. The standards and conformance infrastructure review will also be enacted and has already been reported. I highlight these things because they are all important areas of activity and as I mentioned earlier the member’s bill should be seen in the context of contributing to that ongoing discussion—which is across-party—that there should be as much regulation as necessary and as little as required across business in particular. 
I want to mention one other piece of work as well. It comes because I am also a member of the Regulations Review Committee. The Regulations Review Committee is currently undergoing a review of all regulation. Such a review was last done in 1993 I think and that resulted in a whole lot of unnecessary regulations which had long since been superseded by events being taken off the books. That was a good thing and it is clear even from our preliminary investigation as a select committee into regulations that a similar benefit could be gained already from the work we have done. 
But the more important point—and this is one of the points that I think Rodney Hide’s bill may draw out and put into the public arena for discussion—is the relationship between legislation and regulation. We have a lot of delegated regulation delegated from primary legislation and that relationship is worth exploring again to see whether we are addressing it in the most efficient way in the most useful way and in fact in a way that allows our statute book to be kept up to date and pertinent and that allows for regulations needing to be applied to remain before those people who need to enact them who need to respond to them and further than that who need to report on them. 
So I welcome a number of the issues that Rodney Hide’s bill raises in the context of the work already being done on our regulatory environment. The Labour Party has no problem with this bill being referred to the select committee for further public discussion. I welcome dialogue on the measures contained in this bill just as I welcome dialogue between the parties in this House on all matters on a case by case basis. In that spirit I am pleased to advise the House that the Labour Party will support this measure going to the select committee. Thank you Mr Speaker.