Salesa JennyJENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for this call on the Statutes Repeal Bill. This bill repeals and in some cases partly repeals about 124 Acts that are no longer needed because they no longer have any effect or were designed to achieve regulatory outcomes that are no longer relevant. It is a bill that will reduce overall legislation in New Zealand and some of these enactments have not even been brought into force by Order in Council. Due to the fact that this Government does not have any intention of bringing some of these enactments into force it is really wise that we repeal them so that we reduce the uncertainty that is associated with them remaining on our statute book. Some of the Acts that are listed for repeal seem rather curious. Looking at them gives us a pretty unusual and unique overview of New Zealand's history. For instance we have the Phoenix Assurance Company of London Act 1887. This is an Act that enabled a London company to sue and be sued in New Zealand. We have the Hawke's Bay Earthquake Relief Funds Act of 1931. This legislation dealt with the aftermath of the devastating 1931 earthquake in Napier. We have legislation like the Southland Flood Relief Committee Empowering Act of 1992. That was an Act that discharged the Southland Flood Relief Committee from administering money held in trust for providing relief and assistance to people suffering hardship and damage from floods in Southland in 1984. This is legislation that was needed at the time but is no longer needed now. The Statutes Repeal Bill will also repeal over 60 finance Acts something that we all agree on and this is a repeal bill that we in the Labour Party are of course in support of. But although there may be colourful and interesting issues for legal historians and researchers in looking at why we are removing some of these Acts we should also look at why there are certain things that we are not considering. I know that some of my Labour colleagues spoke about Nuk's bill but the bill that I would actually—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: What is not in the bill is not part of this discussion so let us talk about the bill.JENNY SALESA: OK so let me go back to what is in the bill. The oldest statute that this bill will repeal is the Liverpool and London and Globe Insurance Company Act 1879.Hon Member: Fascinating bill.JENNY SALESA: This was a fascinating bill yes—a private Act that was passed in order to change the name of an insurance company to give it corporate identity. The most recent statute that this legislation will repeal is that called the Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Act 2010. This is an Act that made itself expire on 4 December 2014. However it still remains as an active piece of legislation still in force. It is absolutely vital that this omnibus bill gets passed so that we can actually clear out some of that old legislation and unclutter our statute book. It is very fitting and I think it is something that we should absolutely do. If I can just end on this note: as we are considering the 124-odd Acts that we are repealing there is one piece of legislation I wish we were also considering. Just today we had the Sisters of Mercy come to Parliament. There were several of us—from different parties—who were there to receive a petition that they together with five Catholics girls' schools came to deliver. It was a petition called Shelter for all". They said to us that we as politicians should consider housing especially all of our families and children who are homeless. My wish is that we would also be considering in this bill the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Act 2013—something that had so much promise that it would deliver and would house so many of our families but it has not. We support this bill on the first reading but as I say we wish it also included various other Acts for repeal. Thank you so much."