Curran Clare: Regulatory Reform Bill — First Reading 
Curran Clare: Regulatory Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:670;Page:16749] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 It is nice to hear the member opposite Amy Adams being a bit philosophical about things. It is just a pity that she was rewriting history throughout the few minutes when she stood up and spoke. As she well knows and as the rest of the members of this House know Labour supports the Regulatory Reform Bill because it is essentially a Labour bill. It is nice to hear that Amy Adams thinks regulation is important albeit only sometimes and that regulatory reform and improvement is also important. 
As has been pointed out earlier this omnibus bill is an outcome of the Quality Regulation Review which was led by the Hon Lianne Dalziel when she was the Minister of Commerce. It is not an idea that came out of the brain of the Hon Rodney Hide. Lianne Dalziel introduced that first Regulatory Improvement Bill which I spoke on in the House last year which was an omnibus bill as well. It was passed by the Government across the way which then took credit for it. At that time Rodney Hide said that the Government would commit to an annual bill of this nature and that is what we have here today. But instead of calling it the Regulatory Improvement Bill (No 2) he has called it the Regulatory Reform Bill and is taking credit for the concept as well as the content. I put on record that the concept was and remains a Labour initiative. 
As I said before the bill was the result of the Quality Regulation Review. That report was released in September 2008 after a 15-month review process. The Quality Regulation Review addressed the regulatory barriers to business growth which Labour was absolutely committed to looking into and improving upon. It was a broad review. It looked at anomalies inconsistencies and duplication across the Government’s regulatory framework. As well as correcting some errors the review aimed to develop ways of ensuring that new rules were efficient from a business perspective. 
Around that time Labour also launched a 2-year trial of a business cost calculator in order to quantify the compliance costs of regulation. That was a really important new initiative. It was a 2-year trial. The calculator was a software tool that allowed Government officials to calculate the true cost for businesses of any regulations that they were recommending to Government. The tool was designed to assist policy makers to create higher-quality regulation in a uniform and efficient manner which are all the principles that underpinned the Quality Regulation Review. At the time it was launched under the previous Labour Government Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O’Reilly said that it would help sharpen the focus on what it costs business to comply with new regulation. Those costs include fees for consents payment for signs manuals and software or professional fees and staff time to perform those functions—all good practice and all things the previous Labour Government was committed to doing. 
Annual regulatory improvement bills are a sensible way of ensuring quality regulation but although those changes may be helpful to some businesses most of the changes in this bill are as Chapman Tripp has said small and technical in nature—hardly slashing red tape as Rodney Hide announced in December. In an article on its website entitled “Red tape slashed by regulatory reform bill—or snipped?” of 22 December last year Chapman Tripp wrote: “The Regulatory Reform Bill will ‘slash red tape’ according to its sponsor Rodney Hide. And indeed the Bill will remove a lot of unnecessary bureaucratic clutter. But almost by definition most of the changes—while useful—are small and technical in nature. In our view more substantial amendment to the Companies Act 1993 is required to fix long-standing technical gaps and to catch up with the modernisation of company law in other countries.” Chapman Tripp thought that sounded more like a snip than a slash. Another argument is to question whether this bill will lead to quantifiable growth in the economy. Does the Government have nothing better to do? As my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel has said why is there not more in it? 
Let us look quickly at the summary of changes. The bill will amend the Companies Act to allow companies to choose whether to use electronic shareholder participation; it will amend the Unit Trusts Act 1960 so that financial statements and accounts can be distributed electronically which will result in cost savings to unit trusts; it will amend the Films Videos and Publications Classification Act to modernise labelling which has been estimated to reduce compliance costs by $2.4 million in the first year and $3 million in the fifth year; and it will align and make consistent all food-related legislation. We do not have any issues with any of these amendments because we were the ones who initiated them. 
I will talk briefly about the electronic documentation voting and meeting participation aspect of the legislation because those changes were sought by the Listed Companies Association in 2009 and have been more recently endorsed by the New Zealand Shareholders Association. Those changes will reduce compliance costs and bring New Zealand into line with other jurisdictions. The Listed Companies Association—not the Minister—estimated that aggregate cost savings of around $1.5 million a year could be generated among listed companies assuming a 30 percent uptake of electronic voting facilities and use of those facilities for one voting process per shareholder per year. This again builds on the work of the previous Labour Government which was done by a former Minister of Commerce Paul Swain in 2005. He noted that an information revolution was taking place and that the technological and innovative capability of New Zealand businesses and citizens would be the key to ensuring our ability to compete in world markets and our enthusiasm and capacity to exploit the opportunities offered by the 24-hour-a-day 7-day-a-week global economy. This measure is building on this capability. It sounded in the previous speech as though somehow this bill was all a new idea and a new initiative and that somehow the National Government had come up with it all itself. 
We support it as we have said but I note two concerns. Firstly I echo what the Hon Lianne Dalziel said about the removal of the regulatory impact statements from bills. Requiring people who are looking at proposed legislation to go to another ministry or department website to find the regulatory impact statement is not open and transparent government; it is government that wants to obfuscate and remove any potential criticism of its legislation from public scrutiny. Yes one can still get the regulatory impact statement but if one does not understand how the process works or know where to look for it then one will not find it. I put on record my concern about that matter. 
Secondly there are concerns about aspects of proposed amendments to the Takeovers Act as my colleague has previously talked about. We will be looking closely at those changes when the bill gets to the select committee. I note the issues raised by the reporter Adam Bennett in this morning’s  
New Zealand Herald 
 in a piece entitled “Planned ‘friendly’ amendment to Takeovers Act sparks worry”. Essentially the concern was raised that “As the Government seeks to sell the public on state asset sales it is amending a key protection for small investors which is feared may allow company takeovers to go ahead in order to maintain friendly relations with other countries.” This is a serious concern. Essentially it “would enable the Takeovers Panel to take into consideration ‘international comity’ or friendliness between nations. The panel administers the Takeovers Code and can issue exemptions for companies looking to take over another business where it believes they are warranted.” A company law expert and the Shareholders Association have expressed a lot of concern about this amendment. We think it is an important issue in relation to the ability of foreign investors to take controlling stakes in local assets and we note that we will be looking closely at it in the select committee. 
We support this bill primarily because it builds on the work done by the previous Labour Government. It will remove duplicating and overlapping regulatory requirements it will design safe harbours and it will allow more rigorous risk analysis when developing and enforcing law and provide tailored information on regulatory requirements to meet the needs of business. I look forward to its coming to the select committee.