Hipkins Chris: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3745. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a call on clause 2 which is the commencement clause of the bill the Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill. It is a nice simple straightforward clause which reads: “The Act comes into force on the day”—on the date after—“on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” That seems relatively straightforward. What does that actually mean?Hon Ruth Dyson: Can you say that again?CHRIS HIPKINS: I will read it out again because I botched it up completely the first time. “The Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” That might seem relatively straightforward. Typically the Royal assent would be given within a few days of the bill being passed through all of its stages by Parliament with the Governor-General signing it effectively on behalf of the Sovereign the Queen of New Zealand who is of course Queen Elizabeth. However there is no guarantee that the Royal assent will in fact be given. All New Zealanders work under the assumption that if a law is passed by Parliament it will automatically become the law of New Zealand. That is not correct. In fact we have the royal prerogative which does allow the Sovereign of the country not to provide Royal assent. That has not happened in New Zealand but it has happened in other jurisdictions that have a similar procedure. If I look at the Parliament of Belgium for example—Hon Member: Let’s!CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh we will look at the Parliament of Belgium where the issue of the Royal assent came up when a law was passed by Parliament—and I think from memory it was around gay marriage—that the King of Belgium objected to and therefore refused to provide the Royal assent. Therefore the will of the people through the democratically elected Parliament was thwarted—or perhaps it was not. What the Parliament of Belgium did—and this is quite a novel approach—was effectively to remove the king from office for a day. The law was signed—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I would not want the member to feel that I was being pedantic in any way but it has been drawn to my attention that speculating as to what the Sovereign may do at any one time is not only a long way away from the ambit of this particular clause but also may draw disrespect towards the Sovereign. The member may wish to check Standing Order 118 in relation to that. I would ask him to stick fairly close to as he has conceded the very narrow nature of clause 2.CHRIS HIPKINS: Absolutely and I mean no disrespect to the Sovereign whatsoever and I wish to make that abundantly clear. However the Royal assent is granted by the Sovereign of New Zealand who is Queen Elizabeth II or by the Governor-General. The point that I am making is merely that there is no guarantee that the Royal assent would be given by the Sovereign and I am not speculating in any way as to whether the Sovereign may or may not give the Royal assent. I am simply pointing out that there is precedent of the Royal assent not being given in other jurisdictions that follow the same legal process as us. In the case of Belgium what that resulted in was the Parliament effectively taking the sovereignty for itself for a short period of time which allowed the Prime Minister to sign the law and then of course the Sovereign was reinstated. That was the precedent in Belgium.We are very fortunate that in New Zealand the Royal assent as far as I know has never been refused under the royal prerogative. And that of course is a very good thing. The principle that we have in New Zealand is that the Parliament the will of the people through the majority in the Parliament—even when the minority is right and the majority is wrong—will be given the Royal assent and that will become the law. So this bill will effectively come into force at some point within the next few days probably. I think early next week would be the next opportunity for the Governor-General to sign the law for it to come into force. Of course we are debating this bill on 21 May despite the fact that the rest of the country has moved on and it is now 22 May. The Hansard records of the House if this bill is passed—and by the looks of the votes it is going to be passed by a reasonably comfortable margin—will show that this was passed on 21 May. One would assume that the Royal assent might be given on 22 May.That will not be the case because in fact by the time the bill makes its way to the Governor-General for the Royal assent it will be at least 23 May. I would think that it is not going to go to the Governor-General today—“normal people time”—which is 22 May. It is 21 May according to the House. It will be 23 May tomorrow by the time the bill is prepared and ready but that of course is a weekend. So Monday 25 May would probably be the first opportunity for this law to actually come into force. This is quite correct. This is when the Royal assent will take place. The earliest opportunity for this bill to come into force would be Monday when you work through the logical sequence of the dates that we are talking about. The reality would be that if the Governor-General were unavailable to sign the legislationfor some reason it may not come into effect on Monday and it may be given the Royal assent further down the track. There are of course other provisions that mean that if the Governor-General is not available on Monday the legislation could be signed by someone else.