Carter John: Regulatory Responsibility Bill — First Reading 
Carter John: Regulatory Responsibility Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:640;Page:10305] 
JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) 
: 
 It gives me great pleasure to rise to speak to this bill and to say that the National Party will be supporting it to the select committee. I want to say to the author of the bill— 
R Doug Woolerton 
: Good to hear from you! 
JOHN CARTER 
: The member will hear from me in a minute all right. He should just sit there and be patient. I want to congratulate the author of the bill Mr Rodney Hide. He is not a bad bloke actually. He has a good sense of humour and is quite a good travelling companion. It is not a coincidence I should say to Mr Hide that I am speaking to this bill. 
I want to refer to one particular issue and set out some reasons why I draw the House’s attention to it. First I refer to clause 6(3)(c) which states: “set out the view of the agency that is responsible for the administration of the Act or regulation on whether the Act or regulation is necessary for the achievement of an essential public interest:”. I am trying to find the clause that talks about costs. Also paragraph (a) of clause 6(3) states: “indicate whether there is a continuing need for the Act or regulation and if so identify in specific terms”. Paragraph (b) states: “specify the national interest regulatory objective of the Act or regulation at a level of generality that does not prejudge the justification …”. I just cannot find the reference to costs. Mr Hide will have to direct me to the clause that talks about the costs of setting out regulations. 
I draw to the House’s attention that the bill states that when the House is passing legislation a costing has to be done of the impost that the legislation puts on to the agency that will be dealing with it. In that context I want to talk about local government and the fact that if this bill had been an Act then the Government would have had to tell local government 69 times the cost of the bills the Government was passing. This Government in its time has passed 69 pieces of legislation that have added costs on to the ratepayers of this country. Let me give an example of the sort of thing of which I speak. 
Right at the moment the Government is talking about water quality and about having a national standard across the country. Well that is all very well for the big cities that may be able to afford to reach a very high standard of water and no one is saying they should not. But the reality of dealing with water quality in a small community where there are 30-odd consumers where 90 percent of the water is consumed by stock and where the cost of upgrading is in excess of half a million dollars means the cost to that community is just extraordinary. How can those 30 people face that bill? They cannot. Yet if a costing had been done people would have seen the idiocy of it and of course it would not have been imposed on them. 
Let us just have a look at the earthquake and war legislation. If this Regulatory Responsibility Bill had been law then those people would have known the cost. In fact the bureaucrats would have had to do some work to justify the cost of their bill. Let us have a look at the earthquake and war legislation and the impost that has put on Wellington City for example. It is another classic example. The Government roared ahead and changed the legislation so that Wellington City had to put that huge regulation into effect and what did that cost the citizens of Wellington? It cost in excess of a million dollars and can the council recover the cost? No the ratepayers have to cover that sort of cost. 
This bill will stop an outrageous Government like this Labour Government transferring responsibilities from central government to local government without at least having to tell the ratepayers of this country what the costs will be. The Government should have to do that. Mr Hide’s bill will tell people the cost of the rules and regulations that this House will impose on other agencies. 
I congratulate Mr Hide on bringing this bill forward. It has been long overdue. It is time that it was before the House. The National Government will happily work with the select committee to smooth out any irregularities in the bill. I must say it will go down particularly well with the people in Mitimiti.