Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) Link to this
I move, That the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. At the conclusion of the first reading debate I will move that the bill be referred to the Regulations Review Committee with an instruction that the bill be finally reported back by 4 December 2006.
This is a routine annual bill to confirm and validate items of subordinate legislation that, in accordance with the confirmation and validation provisions in the Acts under which the various instruments are made, lapse at stated times unless earlier confirmed or validated by Acts of Parliament. This year the bill provides for Parliament to validate and confirm 18 Orders in Council made under eight Acts. To avoid the subordinate legislation lapsing, this bill must be enacted before the end of 2006. The 4 December report-back date will allow time for the select committee to receive explanations on the contents of the bill from the departments that administer the various orders and regulations. I am sure that, under Dr Worth’s excellent guidance, the committee will deal expeditiously with the bill.
Two of the 18 orders apply movements in the consumer price index to the rates of social security benefits, New Zealand superannuation, and war pensions.
Five orders are named under the Customs and Excise Act 1996. Three apply movements in the consumer price index to rates of excise and excise-equivalent duties on alcohol, tobacco products, and motor spirits. Two continue for a further 3 years the import and export prohibitions on toothfish.
Two of the orders are made under the Tariff Act 1988. They introduce a new tariff concession, and implement commitments on tariff reduction and removal in relation to the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement amongst Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Singapore, and New Zealand.
Six of the orders deal with commodity levies. Two replace similar orders relating to nashi Asian pears, whose order expired in July 2005, and asparagus, whose order expired in May 2006. Two relating to maize and arable crops replace one similar order that expired in July 2006, and one imposes a new levy in relation to navel oranges. These orders were voted on by the respective industry participants themselves. Each is payable to the industry organisation in order to finance activities of benefit to the industry. The sixth order concerning commodity levies extends for 5 years the existing order relating to Nelson-Marlborough dredge oysters that was due to expire in 2007. It was made at the request of the company to which the levy is payable, and it finances the enhancement and management of the relevant fishery.
Two of the orders impose biosecurity levies. One is to fund the increased cost of the primary risk assessment of imported goods by electronic screening. The other order replaces some costs prescribed under previous biosecurity regulations, and funds increased monitoring and verification activities required in relation to sea containers.
Finally, one order increases certain rates of road-user charges under the Road User Charges Act 1977. I commend this bill to the House.
Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) Link to this
I am grateful for the encomium offered by the previous speaker. I assure him that when this bill—if it passes this stage—is referred to the Regulations Review Committee, the committee will exercise diligence in meeting the report-back date and looking appropriately at these issues.
As the previous speaker said, this is an annual bill that confirms and validates subordinate legislation; subordinate legislation being orders and regulations made under certain Acts that provide that such subordinate legislation will lapse after a certain time unless it is confirmed or validated by Act of Parliament. In this case we are talking about orders made under eight statutes.
Just to give an example of the process, if we look at one of the statutes, the Biosecurity Act 1993, we see in section 137 provision for levies to be made from time to time by Order in Council for the purposes of wholly or partially funding a service provided or function performed by a department for the purposes of the Act. In section 138, “Orders to be confirmed”, some time frames are established that state that unless an order is confirmed, it is deemed to have been revoked by a particular period. So really the task of the committee to which this legislation is referred is to look at those orders and see whether there is appropriate justification for them to continue.
I think we all know that in the world of regulations and deemed regulations, there are large numbers of regulations and orders that probably are not required. It is a reality that, just as the statute book each year grows longer and longer, so it is with delegated legislation. It is interesting to reflect that in 1988 the Regulations Review Committee, which was then chaired by Sir Douglas Graham, conducted an inquiry into all the regulations that were in force as at 14 November 1988. The committee collected all of those regulations together, and wrote to the various Government departments and administering bodies with a series of questions along the lines of which regulations were still required, why—in a brief statement—they were required, how often they had been used over each of the past 3 years, and which ones could be revoked. And—I think to the surprise of the select committee and possibly the public who might have read the report that followed—they found that over 400 regulations could be revoked immediately.
Well, we do not know, I say to Dr Cullen, whether they looked at those particular regulations. So the select committee recommended that those regulations be revoked immediately, and they were.
To come back, though, to this bill and the confirmation and validation provisions, I note that we have orders made under the Biosecurity Act, the Commodity Levies Act, the Customs and Excise Act, the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Act, the Social Security Act, the Road User Charges Act, the Tariff Act, and the War Pensions Act. There is just one subtlety in the legislation and that is the issue of confirmation on the one hand and confirmation and validation on the other.
The bill, of course, is an opportunity for Parliament to decide whether in each case the effect of the relevant sunset clauses should be avoided and the subordinate legislation continue in force. That is effected by confirmation, when the House considers that the policy that lies behind the relevant regulation continues to justify it. It is right to say that amongst the areas of lawmaking where Parliament has decided it does not wish to give the executive carte blanche in the making of regulations, but wishes to reserve to itself this extra control, such expiry provisions are appropriate.
Most subordinate legislation referred to in this bill is confirmed, but the orders made under the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act, the Social Security Act, the Tariff Act, and the War Pensions Act are both validated and confirmed, because the Acts under which they are made provide that they expire at a stated time unless earlier validated and confirmed. The validation, as a matter of constitutional law, is limited, as its purpose is only to prevent the expiry of those orders, and the validations that are effected do not also cure any invalidity. Finally, I say that the bill also provides that the resulting Act will bind the Crown.
I have made comment as to the number of regulations that are probably not required, and there is particular work going on at the moment in that area. In part, this work is led by the Government in—I believe—a somewhat clumsy approach reported to the Cabinet policy committee as a document entitled Quality Regulation Review—First Milestone Report. But the Regulations Review Committee is itself carrying out a detailed inquiry that will look at this issue. The inquiry will also look at mechanisms to provide ongoing and systematic review of regulations, and at an issue that I think is increasingly important, which is the provisions in the Cabinet requiring regulatory impact statements. If one looks at those particular provisions, one can see that they are so shrouded with exceptions that regulatory impact statements are often not forthcoming—or, if they are forthcoming, they are not sufficiently enlightening. Although the Regulations Review Committee’s jurisdiction is restricted to delegated legislation, it is in that area of delegated legislation that significant compliance cost is imposed.
National supports this bill and its passage to the relevant select committee.
R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) Link to this
New Zealand First supports the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 2). As so eloquently described by Dr Worth—and Dr Cullen, of course—this bill covers a lot of areas where legislation needs to be passed from time to time in order for some regulations to continue to exist. I have to say that I used to be a great fan of sunset clauses in legislation, but when one is confronted with legislation such as this, and one thinks that sunset clauses could bring legislation such as this to Parliament every week of every month of every year, it sort of puts one off a little bit.
In this regard, because I am a generalist by nature and not a detail person, and because I tend to be somewhat dismissive of people who go through the fine print, I must give credit to the Regulations Review Committee. Its members go through this stuff, they are the ones that make sure there are no problems in it, and they are the ones who sign it off. I take this opportunity while there are not too many people in the House to thank the members of the select committee, because they fulfil a very necessary job in this Parliament. It is not something that a generalist by nature should be involved in; it is more the sort of thing that a person with some legal training should be involved in. So Mr Worth, who is a sterling member of that select committee, is just the right sort of person to go through it.
This bill covers a lot of things. New Zealand First is in favour of it, and we look forward to its passage through the House.
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) Link to this
Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Kia ora tātou katoa. As we do when we are in Parliament, I try to get to grips with the bills that we consider. For this one, I started with the term “subordinate”. It is an interesting word. It can mean to “belong to a lower or inferior class or rank”, and to be “subject to the authority or control of another”. The Māori Party, a party that—I think—prides itself on its commitment to upholding due access to justice and to defending and protecting human rights, is immediately interested in any legislation which unashamedly sets out to create hierarchies of power and control.
Here we turn to this bill to confirm and validate the deliberate minimising of power and control as it relates to biosecurity, to road-user charges, to tariffs, and to nashi—Asian pears. What do we do with a long list of regulatory changes, literally apples and oranges, oysters and alcohol, all blended in with the odd lump-sum payment here and there? The suite of subordinate legislation proposals raises the fundamental question about the rapid path of regulation that this Government is following—government by regulation. The major concern we see with this bill is the reality of so much regulation that escapes the scrutiny of Parliament. The detail and the scope of the significant regulatory proposals identified in this bill warn us as to the obvious likelihood that similar proposals may sit within the Regulations Review Committee and never make it here, to the House.
As to the points of detail in this bill, the Māori Party has considered four significant issues that prevent us from supporting the package in its entirety. The excise and excise-equivalent duties clash front on with our intentions as a party to introduce a member’s bill to make the production, manufacture, and sale of tobacco products illegal. The Māori Party was really heartened by the TV3 poll in April this year, which reported that 52 percent of New Zealanders are also in favour of getting tobacco out of Aotearoa. Our aim is to eliminate tobacco from Aotearoa by 10 December 2010, 6 years after bars and restaurants went smoke-free. With this aim in mind we therefore strongly oppose the amendment in the bill relating to the indexation of tobacco products.
The second area is the Social Security (Rates of Benefits and Allowances) Order. The Government needs to read its own reports. If it did, priority would be placed on immediate action to address the increase that has been identified in the proportion of the population experiencing severe hardship. Page after page of the Government’s Social Report 2006, released in August, revealed that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The 2006 report described the proportion of the population with low incomes as substantially higher in 2004 than in 1998. Nineteen percent of that population is now living below the 60 percent poverty threshold, compared with 12 percent in 1998.
In light of this the Māori Party recommends that the rates of benefits and allowances order needs amendment, rather than validation and confirmation of what we consider to be basically invalid payments in the greater scheme of whānau well-being. What is the point of a fat budget surplus of $11.5 billion if it is not being gainfully applied to support the most vulnerable members of our society?
The third area of concern is in relation to the contentious issues around tariff. When we think about tariff, we think it could be useful to apply some analysis against the genuine progress index. If one measures any progress against a full range of social, economic, ecological, and environmental indicators, we are likely to achieve a more comprehensive and accurate assessment than current measures based on GDP. Under such an analysis the Māori Party will support fair trade agreements rather than agreements that position Aotearoa as a market for cheap goods made by companies that exploit workers, the environment, and indigenous lands and people. If the recent fascination by both Labour and National with climate change is anything to go by, one would think they would be open to possibilities of doing things differently. We cannot address climate change if the rampant consumerism and consumption that is part and parcel of tariff reductions is not addressed.
The fourth significant area of concern relates to the War Pensions (Rates of Pensions, Lump Sum Payments, and Allowances) Order. The Māori Party has consistently been raising issues in this House about the legitimate and longstanding grievances of Viet Nam veterans. We have risen in this House to alert our colleagues to the need to support Viet Nam veterans who were exposed to dangerous levels of dioxin-contaminated Agent Orange; the need to respond to the call for those veterans to receive the full medical treatment and monitoring they deserve; the right for the families of those affected by Agent Orange to access free and suitable health-care for their children and grandchildren for at least seven generations; the differences in pension payments and compensation under the War Pensions Act and the Accident Compensation Corporation clearly disadvantage former servicemen; and, indeed, the call for justice for all.
Bruce Isbister, in his work on the tortuous processes of Veterans Affairs New Zealand, summed it all up when he described the case of veterans in the following way: “Their earning capacity has been taken from them by their service to country, consigned to an income akin to poverty line and exacerbated by blatant discrimination. Many veteran pensioners have to sell family assets to stay afloat, causing huge disruption to themselves and their families.” Sixty percent of Viet Nam veterans are Māori, yet to add insult to injury, in spite of the disadvantages of and obstacles to their rehabilitation that I have just referred to, the simple wish that Māori veterans raised to hold a hui on marae was rejected outright by the independent joint working party.
There is no excuse for the rights of Viet Nam veterans not to be heard. We know now, tragically, that Agent Orange contains dioxin, which has been found to have serious health side-effects including cancers and birth defects. Just 2 days ago the Government admitted that in-the-field support for children of Viet Nam veterans is inadequate. The Minister of Veterans’ Affairs, Mr Rick Barker, declared in this House that veterans and their families do not have the extent of field support that they should, and the Government wants to address that. Well, here is the perfect opportunity to do just that, and the Government is choosing not to do so. The War Pensions (Rates of Pensions, Lump Sum Payments, and Allowances) Order could have been amended to assess the discriminatory impact of the differences in pension payments and compensation available for injured soldiers under the War Pensions Act.
There are some positive passages in this bill. The Māori Party supports the recommendation to confirm the Road User Charges (Rates) Order as we support the concept behind road-use charges, and would further recommend that they be spent on transport issues, rather than going into the consolidated account. We are also very supportive of the changes made to confirm the Biosecurity (Risk Screening Levy) Order and the Biosecurity (Shipping Container Levy) Order. But those positive initiatives are overshadowed by the substantive concerns we have with the four areas I described previously.
Unfortunately, it would appear that the concept of subordinate as meaning a lower or inferior class or rank has been applied in this bill, to the detriment of our Viet Nam veterans and to our most impoverished children and families. We envisage a pool of cheap overseas labour, subject to the authority or control of the Labour Government, let in through the new tariff laws, and we witness more moves to let the health of New Zealanders just go up in smoke. As a result of such significant misgivings, the Māori Party will not support this bill.
A party vote was called for on the question,
That the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation Bill (No 2) be now read a first time.
Ayes 109
Noes 3
Abstentions 6
Bill read a first time.
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) Link to this
I move, That the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 2) be referred to the Regulations Review Committee referred to Regulations Review Committee