Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): I stand tonight to speak to the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill in its second reading here tonight. There's no question that this is an extremely huge piece of work. In fact the original—the Social Security Act of 1964—has been very overdue for this overhaul but it was such an enormous task that had been filed away into the too-hard basket. So who was it who took the initiative to make the legislation clearer more user-friendly and appropriate for the 21st century?Hon Members: Who?MAUREEN PUGH: The former National-led Government of course. This bill is simply about making the law clear about updating the language so that it is fit for implementation in the modern world.The Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill will repeal the Social Security Act of 1964 and the Social Welfare (Reciprocity Agreements and New Zealand Artificial Limb Service) Act of 1990. It does provide consistency and clarity across all of those Acts.I support this bill in its current form but what I do not support is this [Holds up Supplementary Order Paper 25]. Earlier today in this House I heard a very passionate speech from a Green Party member who insisted that that Government believes in this process that it believes in the select committee and that it believes in the right of the public to be able to have its say yet this afternoon we received this and we have only had time to print it and bind it before the second reading debate happened in this House today. What we have got here is a 501-page rewrite of a rewrite.Today there was no time for the public to scrutinise this bill because we have short-circuited the select committee stage. Now the public's opportunity to speak to these changes in this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) is gone. I think it is disingenuous of this Government to dump a document of this magnitude—and it does propose changes to the original bill after the public has made its submissions.There were concerns with this SOP and the original bill and they were raised by the Regulations Review Committee. There were three regulation-making powers that were highlighted that provide for the making of regulations to identify persons or benefits that are exempt from requirements set out in the bill. The Regulations Review Committee was really clear about the fact that they should set out clear purposes for the granting of exemptions that they should set out clear criteria for the granting of exemptions and be consistent. They should give good reasons to state them in the exemptions instrument itself and they should expire within five years and should contain sunset clauses to that effect. But we don't know if those issues have been dealt with in this SOP because there's simply no time to scrutinise it.There was no explanation for the purpose of these exemptions no criteria included no requirement to give reasons for the exemptions and no time limit on the regulations made after this clause. So there is a lot of work still to be done and especially now that this SOP has been dumped on us today I say that this process has done the public no service at all. I thank the Regulations Review Committee for their feedback. It's signed by the illustrious Andrew Bayly.