Source: Govt’s austerity Budget to cause real harm in communities
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to ask the Minister a couple of questions. The first one is around the commencement date. Now, we have seen that the commencement date is the day after Royal assent. I would want to see if the Minister would consider pushing it back at least three months, so that way there is some clarity that is able to be granted to also the people who are applying or who have existing consent on some of the issues that we have heard our previous speaker, the Hon Rachel Brooking, mention. There is confusion around a lot of this because of the fact that we didn’t get sufficient clarity.
Now, the reason I’m suggesting pushing it back by at least three months, or even—just three months; I think that’s sufficient. The reason is that the Minister, throughout this debate, talked about the fact that this is required under urgency, etc. However, if we, again, go back to what started a lot of this, which is a High Court ruling, the judgment was made on 5 March, and it was two months ago. If Cabinet, and if the Minister, were really serious about the urgency of this situation, this bill would have been brought to the House a lot earlier. It did not need to be brought into the House two months after that particular ruling. So, clearly, the backlog that the Minister was referring to is not urgent enough for this bill to be brought to the House earlier. So I think another three months is not outside the realm of possibility and probability, over here.
In terms of the title of this bill, I really like the suggestion that the Hon Rachel Brooking has made in terms of, just, who knows? What about if the Minister considered the “Wildlife [shrug emoji] Amendment Bill”, because that is, essentially, what we’ve got out of this entire debate. What we have heard is pulling teeth from the Minister to try to get any ounce of any information out of him that we have gotten quite succinctly and clearly by the officials during the select committee stage. But over here, what we have largely heard throughout the debate is politicisation and “back on track”.
In terms of other potential titles, I would actually propose an alternative pathway when we are looking at the title for this, because what we are seeing with this, and this is fundamental to democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand, is a distortion of the separation of powers and the overstepping of that, and where the executive has decided to overstep into the judiciary and affect the rulings of the judiciary, and also the principle of comity.
I would ask if the Minister would consider “Wildlife (Distortion of the Separation of Powers) Amendment Bill”. Further on from that, the fact that we have been doing this under urgency, we are being criticised for doing our job as the legislature to scrutinise the executive because we have no opportunity and the New Zealand public has no opportunity to contribute to this. I would say that this actually is not about even parliamentary supremacy, because we have not been granted the privilege of that supremacy as the legislature, so I would recommend, finally, for the Minister to consider the title “Wildlife (Forget about Parliamentary Supremacy, the Executive Rules Supreme) Amendment Bill.”