Dalziel Lianne: Regulatory Improvement Bill — First Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Regulatory Improvement Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:654;Page:3039] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I am very pleased to be speaking on the first reading of the Regulatory Improvement Bill. Obviously given that it was a bill generated under a Labour-led Government I am very pleased to finally see it dealt with in the House. I thank the Minister for his very kind words and I do appreciate them. I felt that when I was Minister I was able to work with him in his capacity as an Opposition member of Parliament but as one who had introduced a member’s bill—that was his passion—the Regulatory Responsibility Bill. Even though we did not necessarily think that that was the right approach in that bill we were working with him to try to gain the results that we were both trying to achieve. I think we are on a similar track and I acknowledge his role here in this Parliament as the first Minister for Regulatory Reform. I think that is certainly a great acknowledgment of his commitment in this area. 
The Regulatory Improvement Bill itself is a demonstration of the Labour-led Government’s commitment to making continuous improvement in the quality of New Zealand’s regulatory frameworks in order to assist the efficiency and growth of New Zealand businesses. This was a really important process for us. I am really pleased the Minister has said that such a bill will become part of the normal proceedings of Parliament and I will talk about that in a minute too. It is really important that we have a regular opportunity as a Parliament to tidy up those issues that are not perhaps insignificant enough to make it into a Statutes Amendment Bill but not significant enough to warrant a bill in their own right. Although it is fair to say that the amendments contained in the Regulatory Improvement Bill are not particularly dramatic the bill itself is another deliverable of the Quality Regulation Review. 
I want to backtrack a minute to February 2006 when the then Prime Minister the Rt Hon Helen Clark said: “We will also be taking a fresh look at regulatory frameworks. Feedback from business suggests that higher quality regulation would lead to more growth and investment—and we want to engage with business on how to achieve that.” This is precisely what the Quality Regulation Review was all about. So the previous Government started from scratch and essentially we built a process that enabled us to engage directly with business because we felt that it was business that could give us the best quality information— 
Nathan Guy 
: Didn’t you sack the board? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: —about what it was that was standing in the way of business growth rather than coming up with a particular proposal— 
Nathan Guy 
: Didn’t you sack all the board when that came out of the recommendations? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I know that the member wants to make this point. Perhaps I need to respond to the interjection. The previous Labour Government established the position of Minister for Small Business. The former National Government did not have one. The Labour-led Government established a Small Business Advisory Group which did not exist under the former National Government. 
Nathan Guy 
: You sacked them all. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: We did not sack them all; we replaced every single member of it after one group had been operating for 3 years. They had been in for 3 years. 
Nathan Guy 
: So you sacked them? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I did not. I do not know why that member keeps saying that. Does the member object to the second Small Business Advisory Group—the people who replaced the first group? I think there is one member from his patch on the group now so perhaps the member might like to have a rethink. As I understand it the Small Business Advisory Group has had its number of meetings cut under this new National Government. So it is very interesting indeed that the member wants to interject in that regard. 
I released the final report on the review in September 2007 after over a year of engagement with business. The report identified a number of areas that required amendments to legislation and the changes covered a diverse range of policy areas and legislation. But they all essentially had the same objective which was to improve regulatory frameworks and reduce compliance costs for business. Those objectives are the unifying theme of the clauses in the Regulatory Improvement Bill. Overall these changes address regulatory duplications gaps administrative errors inconsistencies etc. Individually as the Minister has said these changes are small fixes but for business these small things matter most of all. It is not just one thing that annoys small business; it is the accumulation of a lot of things that upsets small business. That is a lesson I learnt by going out and talking directly to small businesses and working through these issues with them. 
When Labour was in Government it was committed to doing all it could to address the barriers big or small that hold back New Zealand businesses from reaching their fullest potential and their greatest growth. That is why for example Labour brought in the research and development tax credit—something that this Government has irresponsibly scrapped in my view. Too often much-needed changes to legislation are not made because it is difficult for small changes to get space on a business legislative agenda. In my former roles as the Minister of Commerce and the Minister for Small Business I combined those roles to champion the idea of a relatively easy mechanism to fast track these improvements even to the extent that I made a personal submission as a member of this Parliament to the Standing Orders Committee to get the Standing Orders changed so that we would be able to have this bill as an omnibus bill. 
Members will be very familiar with the Standing Orders as has been obvious since Gerry Brownlee took over as Leader of the House. There is a section that deals with the prohibitions on omnibus bills. Standing Order 258 limits the types of omnibus bills. Law reform or other omnibus bills have to go through the Business Committee. The Business Committee has already signed off as a matter of practice on a Business Law Reform Bill every year but unfortunately again the types of changes that are made in Government department areas do not obviously fall within the criteria required for a Business Law Reform bill. So the idea of having a Regulatory Improvement Bill every year in the Standing Orders seems to me to be the best way to get around that. 
In the meantime I was successful in gaining a ruling from the Clerk’s Office that improving regulatory frameworks and reducing compliance costs for business were sufficient unifying criteria as I mentioned before. So in order to have this bill introduced an amendment to the Standing Orders was not required but I still think it would be worthwhile for the House to think about whether we should formalise a Business Law Reform Bill and a Regulatory Improvement Bill in the Standing Orders. Then there would be no debate about whether we have this approach to dealing with these issues in the future. 
The Minister went through a range of different Acts that are being amended by this bill. But I want to make this point and it was a lesson I learnt very quickly when I travelled from one end of the country to the other talking to small business. My point is that Government Ministers tend to see individual departments. They see for example the Department of Labour the Ministry of Economic Development the Inland Revenue Department and the Ministry for the Environment. Businesses do not see individual departments. They see the Government and they are asking why the Government is asking them for the same information they gave it yesterday. They do not understand why the Government structures itself in such an inefficient way in terms of responding to the needs of business. I coined a phrase that became my personal driver for the Quality Regulation Review. 
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: It’s all about you. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Well thank you for that. That is lovely. I came up with a phrase that was trying to articulate what we were trying to achieve and that was: “Why cannot the many arms of Government extend a single hand to business?”. That became my driver. One of the amendments in the bill specifically responds to that call. Why cannot the many arms of Government extend a single hand to business? That is what we ought to be doing. 
The Regulatory Improvement Bill is an important measure in its own right regardless of its content and I believe we should acknowledge the hundreds of submissions from businesses large and small as well as from all of those really busy men and women out there in business who participated in all of the meetings with myself and with my officials at the time. I commend to the House an omnibus bill of this nature becoming a feature of New Zealand’s legislative programme and part of the Standing Orders of this House.