Speech Regulatory Improvement Bill

Winston Churchill and Rodney Hide have something in common, apart from looks, (although Rodney is actually in better shape).

It was Churchill who famously said, “If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”

Almost eighty years later, Mr Hide has introduced a Bill to do something for once and for all to address the duplication, gaps, errors and inconsistencies that make a mockery of our law.

It is great to see the Act Party going to such steps to implement Maori Party policy.

We campaigned last election on a commitment to supporting the growth and sustainability of small businesses.

We committed to reducing the tax of businesses with a net income of $100,000 or less, from 33% to 25%.

And we laid it on the line that we wanted to support collective business development strategies that encouraged local and regional self-reliance.

But there was a fundamental principle that was woven through all of these policy targets.

That was the understanding that we will review compliance costs with a view to minimisation.

So, we appreciate the support of the ACT Party in getting this policy in place with the Regulatory Improvement Bill.

The Bill sets in train some changes which make complete and utter sense.

And I know that the member from National has already referred to the matter I am about to raise, but let me remind the House about the changes to the Fisheries Act.

The way that the law currently works, commercial fishers are required to balance their catch with the Annual Catch Entitlement as part of the Quota Management System, and they have twenty days after the end of the fishing year to do so. However…..the register closes after the 15th day and so what has been happening is that fishers have been incurring a debt in the form of an invoice for debt.

That just doesn’t make sense.

If the law says twenty days, and someone shuts the register on day fifteen, well that’s a good enough reason as any to change legislation.

The late Dr Martin Luther King once said, “Just as it is the duty of all men to obey just laws, so it is the duty of all men to disobey unjust laws”.

It’s a bit of advice I’ve always heeded pretty seriously myself.

Another one of the fisheries acts affected by this Bill is the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (Restructuring) Act.

What the changes in this Bill will do is to revoke the sections which deal with the removal of penalty fees and the ability to deduct costs from collecting levies.

This change is not to suddenly stop collecting fees, costs and levies – much as I’m sure that would be a highly popular move.

But the change is a good change anyway because these costs are already covered by the Fisheries Act 1996 so there’s no good reason in my mind for repeating them.

There’s some other bits and pieces in this Bill – the Design Act which will be amended so that when a design registration has lapsed out of unintentional non-payment of a renewal fee, the design registration can still be restored, just by paying that registration fee.

The only area that we might need a closer look is that related to the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act – what is usually called the Hasno Act.

Tangata whenua have raised prolonged and consistent concerns around the risks to matauranga Maori, the ownership of biological resources, the inadequacy of existing statutory frameworks, and the fundamental significance of protecting article two rights to taonga katoa.

The Bill proposes that the Environmental Risk Management Authority – ERMA- should be able to delegate technical and administrative decision-making powers to its Chief Executive and other staff.

The concern for us is to establish an ethical framework for moving forward, such as that recommended by those pursuing the WAI 262 flora and fauna claim.

And so we will be keeping a watch over the select committee process, to hear what submitters have to say about the ways in which this Bill takes into account the recommendations of WAI 262.

We will, therefore, take our lead from tangata whenua in subsequent readings of this Bill, but for this, its first reading, we are happy to support it.