Parliament
Parliament is New Zealand’s statutory law making body. It consists of the elected members of the House of Representatives and the Sovereign. New Zealand’s Parliament is unicameral, meaning that there is only one house (the House of Representatives). The House of Representatives is made up of members of Parliament (usually 120 members) who the general public elect in the general election held every three years. These elected members are responsible for the passage of Bills through the House (this includes processes such as Select Committees, the Regulations Review committee and sittings of the House) while the Sovereign is responsible for opening and dissolving Parliament and giving assent to Bills that have successfully passed through the House. Parliamentary sovereignty is the overarching doctrine defining New Zealand’s legal system. This means that Parliament is supreme over all other law-making institutions. Examples of activities of Parliament are found in this part of the toolkit.
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Petra Butler “Rights and Regulation” in Susy Frankel (ed) Learning from the Past Adapting to the Future: Regulatory Reform in New Zealand (LexisNexis, 2011). The Cabinet Manual 2008 sets out a detailed structure of how departments should develop Bills and who should be consulted.[24] Regulatory reform should involve the Legislation Advisory Committee, the Legislation Design Committee and officials of the Ministry of Justice’s Bill of Rights/Human Rights team, early in the policy process in order ensure human rights compliance.[25] An early involvement of the officials should also clarify what the policy-maker needs to establish if it is necessary to prove that any BORA infringement is justified in a free and democratic society.[26] This should avoid the Attorney-General having to report any inconsistency with the BORA to Parliament.
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Petra Butler “Rights and Regulation” in Susy Frankel (ed) Learning from the Past Adapting to the Future: Regulatory Reform in New Zealand (LexisNexis, 2011). Under s 15(1) of the Constitution Act 1986, Parliament has full power to make laws. Parliament usually exercises this power to pass statutes, but it also has the ability to delegate its law-making power to other persons or bodies. It is widely acknowledged that in a modern state Parliament cannot meet the regulatory demands alone by enacting statutes and that, therefore, delegated legislation is necessary.[36] The Regulatory Standards Bill 2011 goes one step further and states that non-legislative options are available to deal with issues of public interest.[37] This raises the question of whether Parliament and the Executive are free to choose how to regulate an issue. Must all regulatory reform that impacts on human rights be dealt with by an Act of Parliament? Or, under certain circumstances, can such reform be dealt with as secondary or even tertiary regulation? The Legislative Advisory Committee in its Guidelines proposes a high threshold, stating that “provisions which affect fundamental human rights and freedoms should always be included in primary legislation”.[38] That suggests that measures which have an impact on BORA human rights must be regulated by statute.
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Derek Gill “Regulatory Management in New Zealand: What, Why and How?” in Susy Frankel (ed) Learning from the Past Adapting to the Future: Regulatory Reform in New Zealand (LexisNexis, 2011). [6] The Regulation Review Committee (RRC) is a committee of Parliament that examines all regulations, and investigates complaints about regulations to ensure that regulations are subject to effective parliamentary scrutiny and control. The committee reports annually on the results of its review of regulation introduced in the course of the year. The report covers whether, for example, the regulations to introduce taxation without parliamentary scrutiny (a Henry VIII clause).
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Petra Butler “When is an Act of Parliament an Appropriate Form of Regulation?” in Susy Frankel and Deborah Ryder (eds) Recalibrating Behaviour: Smarter Regulation in a Global World The LAC Guidelines stipulate that principle and policy should be regulated by an Act of Parliament, whereas regulation is adequate for detail and implementation. However, the LAC also recognises that the distinction between principle and detail, and policy and implementation can be both confusing and circular, not least because there is a significant overlap between those general descriptions.[82] The 2012 LAC Guidelines state:[83] provisions which affect fundamental human rights and freedoms should always be included in primary legislation. Examples of these rights and freedoms include— freedom from search and seizure. the right to demand and receive information. rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 generally. provisions which expropriate property (namely, the taking of property for public use). social and economic rights (which include welfare and ACC rights and the corresponding rates of entitlement). On the face of it, the LAC Guidelines go further than the German reservation of law principle – stating that every matter that affects fundamental human rights and freedoms should always be included in primary legislation. However, that threshold would mean that every policy would have to be regulated by an Act of Parliament. It is hardly conceivable that a matter regulated will not (at least tangentially) impact on a fundamental human right, especially since the LAC Guidelines do not refer to civil and political rights but only to social and economic rights. Therefore, questions of threshold arise: At what point is an infringement of human rights so significant that the matter has to be regulated by statute? What is the sphere in which the executive can operate without Parliament’s authorisation (that is, still has the royal prerogative)?[84]
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Petra Butler “When is an Act of Parliament an Appropriate Form of Regulation? − Regulating the Internet as an Example” in Susy Frankel and Deborah Ryder (eds) Recalibrating Behaviour: Smarter Regulation in a Global World (LexisNexis 2013). The New Zealand Parliament can override any prerogative power by statute.[75] Parliament recognises that some matters are for it to decide by providing in SO 315(2)(f) that the Regulations Review Committee may draw a regulation to the special attention of the House, if the regulation "contains matter more appropriate for parliamentary enactment". The Regulations Review Committee had its beginnings in 1929 when Lord Hewart perceived that the Parliament's law making powers had been delegated extensively to the executive which "place[d] government departments above the sovereignty of Parliament and beyond the jurisdiction of the courts".[76] In 1932 the Donoughmore Report on Ministers' powers acknowledged Lord Hewart's concerns, but disagreed with the notion that the devise of delegated legislation was objectionable.[77] The report acknowledged that there was the risk of abuse and that safeguards had to be in place "if the country [was] to enjoy the advantages of the practice without suffering from its inherent dangers".[78] In New Zealand, the first step towards preserving Parliament's law making power over that of the executive was under the Regulations Act 1936, which stated that all regulations had to be made available to the public.[79] The next major step was the widening of the mandate of the Statutes Revision Committee in 1962 to draw the attention of the House to any regulation that: (a) trespassed unduly on personal rights and liberties; (b) appeared to make some unusual or unexpected use of the powers conferred by the statute under which it was made; and/or (c) required elucidation.[80] The Statutes Revision Committee scrutinising its own work in 1985, concluded that it did not have enough time to comprehensively scrutinise delegated legislation and recommended the establishment of a separate, specialised committee.[81] The Regulations Review Committee was constituted in July 1985.
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Brent Layton “Regulating the Building Industry – A Case of Regulatory Failure” in Susy Frankel (ed) Learning from the Past Adapting to the Future: Regulatory Reform in New Zealand (LexisNexis, 2011). Consideration of the costs and benefits is a core component of regulatory impact statements.[11] These are required for most papers to Cabinet, if they propose legislation or regulation.[12] Moreover, some consideration of costs and benefits is required to support most decisions by specialist regulators, such as the Commerce Commission, Gas Industry Company and the Electricity Authority.[13] In 2011, the Regulatory Standards Bill 2011 was introduced to Parliament with the support of the government. One of the requirements of its cl 7 is that responsible regulation should “produce benefits that outweigh the costs”.[14] If the Regulatory Standards Bill is passed into law, it will ensure that all regulatory decision makers – Parliament, the Executive Council and specialist regulators − will be careful to undertake and publish what economists refer to as a net public benefit (NPB) test of their proposals.[15] Failure to do so may mean that the regulatory decision could be declared by a court to be incompatible with this legislation.[16]
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Derek Gill “Regulatory Management in New Zealand: What, Why and How?” in Susy Frankel (ed) Learning from the Past Adapting to the Future: Regulatory Reform in New Zealand (LexisNexis, 2011). One area in which New Zealand does seem distinctive is in the role of Select Committees in reviewing all proposed new legislation. Commenting on the quality of Select Committee review in New Zealand, George Tanner, former Parliamentary Counsel observed,[29]“[a]t its best, it works well and is probably a more effective scrutiny process than many upper Houses around the world”.
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Derek Gill “Regulatory Management in New Zealand: What, Why and How?” in Susy Frankel (ed) Learning from the Past Adapting to the Future: Regulatory Reform in New Zealand (LexisNexis, 2011). In the New Zealand context there are arguably a number of constitutional features that constrain the quality of law making. These include a unitary and extremely centralised state with one House, a three-year parliamentary term, and the relative paucity of checks and balances. This all leads to an imperative for legislative haste over quality –what Palmer described as “the fastest law in the west”.[65] The advent of MMP has meant legislating takes longer, Bills are less stable, and corrections to technical drafting issues or “little”policy design flaws are now considerably more difficult.
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John Prebble “General Anti-avoidance Rules as Regulatory Rules of the Fiscal System: Suggestions for Improvements to the New Zealand General Anti-avoidance Rule” in Susy Frankel and Deborah Ryder (eds) Recalibrating Behaviour: Smarter Regulation in a Global World (LexisNexis 2013). In addition to the general considerations just mentioned, there is a specific constitutional concern. This concern is that Parliament has several times considered whether to concretise the general anti-avoidance rule by legislating in much more detail. Parliament has not done so, for good reason.[39] In short, the reason is that general anti-avoidance rules are not able to be the subject of effective detailed legislation. In addition, it appears curious, even substantially unconstitutional, that if Parliament has decided not to legislate in detail the Commissioner should step in to provide that detail. The considerations outlined mean that in the end a Commissioner's interpretation statement can amount to no more than some kind of instruction about the appropriate analytical technique to be brought to bear in interpreting the general anti-avoidance rule. This feature is particularly evident in the draft of 16 December 2011. It is more like a textbook or monograph than a kind of set of quasi-rules; albeit a textbook or monograph that is short on examples.
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Paul Scott “Competition Law and Policy: Can a Generalist Law be an Effective Regulator?” in Susy Frankel and Deborah Ryder (eds) Recalibrating Behaviour: Smarter Regulation in a Global World (LexisNexis 2013). The first possibility is that Parliament poorly drafted New Zealand's competition law, and that the Commerce Act 1986 did not cut the mustard. However, this does not seem valid. Trebilcock noted that "it is often claimed that Canada's Competition Act, 1986 is the most economically literate competition statue in force in any jurisdiction in the world".[20] I do not agree. At the time of drafting New Zealand's Act was at least as sophisticated, if not more so. For one thing Canada's Competition Act has a purpose clause which mentions four different and potentially conflicting goals. Section 1.1 provides:[21] The purpose of this Act is to maintain and encourage competition in Canada in order to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy, in order to expand opportunities for Canadian participation in world markets while at the same time recognizing the role of foreign competition in Canada, in order to ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises have an equitable opportunity to participate in the Canadian economy, and in order to provide consumers with competitive prices and products choices. Breaking this down into four main parts one can see the following goals as being to: (1) promote efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy; (2) regulate foreign and domestic business inside and outside of Canada; (3) protect small- and medium-sized businesses; and (4) protect consumers. These goals do not provide for consistency and clarity. Goals (1) and (3) at least can starkly conflict. New Zealand has had two purpose statements, however, which while not free from controversy, are more helpful than Canada's. The long title of the Commerce Act 1986 originally provided it was "[a]n Act to promote, competition in markets within New Zealand". The Court of Appeal in Tru Tone Ltd v Festival Records Retail Marketing Ltd related this to efficiency. Richardson J observed:[22] In terms of the long title the Commerce Act is an Act to promote competition in markets in New Zealand. It is based on the premise that society's resources are best allocated in a competitive market where rivalry between firms ensures maximum efficiency in the use of resources. In 2001, Parliament amended the Act and introduced a new purpose section via section 1A which provides: The purpose of this Act is to promote competition in markets for the long-term benefit of consumers in New Zealand. Subsequent courts have interpreted this as continuing the efficiency focus of Tru Tone.[23] In any event the New Zealand purpose provision is clearer than Canada's. The key sections in the Commerce Act are sections 27, 29, 30, 36 and 47. Section 27 is the general prohibition section. It provides that no person may enter into or give effect to a provision of a contract, arrangement or understanding that has the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially lessening competition in a market. Section 30 deems price fixing among rivals to be a breach of section 27. A plaintiff does not have to prove any competitive harm. Section 29 prohibits group boycotts. The Act terms these "exclusionary provisions". Section 37 prohibits resale price maintenance and makes it per se illegal – although it does not use this term and nor did sections 29 and 30. However, one can view those provisions as the Commerce Act's per se prohibitions. Section 36 is the Act's monopolisation provision. Section 47 deals with mergers. Initially it prohibited mergers which resulted in acquiring or strengthening a dominant position. Parliament later changed this to prohibiting acquisitions which would be likely to have the effect of substantially lessening competition in a market.[24] New Zealand based its Act on the Australian Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) (now renamed the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth)). However, New Zealand's Act was superior. New Zealand only had one general prohibition section (s 27), rather than individual sections which dealt with particular types of behaviour. The best example of the problems with the Australian legislation is the exclusive dealing provisions contained in section 47. Section 47 is not the finest model of the drafter's art. It has nearly 2,000 words in 14 subsections, 40 sub-subsections and 10 sub-subsections of subsections. In 1979, the High Court of Australia described it as "replete with double negatives and proliferating alternatives, [defying] accurate synopsis".[25] In 2003, Kirby J called the provisions '"obscure" and "a significant challenge for interpretation" requiring the Court to deal with "too many cross references, qualifications and statutory interrelationships" which imposed "an unreasonable burden" on those with the responsibility of assigning meaning to, and applying its provisions.[26] New Zealand has no equivalent section. Rather section 27 does the job all by itself and New Zealand has not suffered at all. Perhaps Pengilley put it best about section 47:[27] Australians are so garrulous that they need 2,000 words to describe that which does not need to be said. Well what about Canada? Canada is supposedly the home of the most sophisticated piece of competition legislation of them all. It too suffered from prolixity. Initially the Competition Act RSC 1986 had its own sections expressly dealing with predatory pricing. Under the old section 50(1)(c) of the Competition Act, predatory pricing was a criminal offence. Again this was in contrast to New Zealand which simply relied on section 36. How did these provisions work in Canada? Parliament repealed them in 2009 and now Canada, like New Zealand, relies on its general monopolisation provisions. Further, New Zealand (and Australia) also allow for private suits for monopolisation. Under section 79 of the Competition Act, Canadian victims of monopolisation have to go to the Competition Bureau and convince it to apply to the Competition Tribunal for a remedial order. Only the Commissioner of Competition can file an application to the Tribunal. This is true of all the civil provisions of the Competition Act including agreements or arrangements that prevent or lessen competition under section 90 of the Competition Act.[28] Given that private litigation has contributed much to the Australasian competition jurisprudence, New Zealand's position was, and is, superior. In any event, it allowed private parties to use competition law to police markets. Another positive feature of New Zealand's competition law is that lay members appointed to the High Court must be qualified by virtue of their knowledge or experience in industry, commerce, economics, law or accountancy.[29] When hearing appeals from the Commerce Commission, section 77(9) makes it compulsory that the High Court consist of a judge and at least one lay member. With other Commerce Act matters under sections 27–29, 36, 36A or 47, a High Court judge may choose to sit with one or more lay members.[30] Most cases involving lay members have involved economists sitting. Also in most cases where lay members are not mandatory, the High Court has included them. This is hugely beneficial as one of the complaints from overseas is that generalist judges lack the economic knowledge to deal with competition matters.[31] The presence of lay members removes this criticism and allows the High Court to deal with sophisticated and complex matters confidently. So, I am of the view that New Zealand's competition statute was, and is, in good shape. That is, not to say, all was and is perfect.
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Richard Boast and Susy Frankel “Defining the Ambit of Regulatory Takings” in Susy Frankel and Deborah Ryder (eds) Recalibrating Behaviour: Smarter Regulation in a Global World (LexisNexis 2013). Neither the Regulatory Standards Bill nor Option 5 would give rise to a constitutional right to property, which would be directly actionable before the courts. The Bill places the role of scrutiny on the legislative process and also, if not most dominantly, on the courts. Option 5 places the burden squarely on the parliamentary process.[30] These differences are important, but there are also some similarities. Both approaches require scrutiny over whether there has been an effect on property rights. Both approaches lead to the questions about the scope of property rights and how the owner's rights should be compensated or not because of regulatory effects. The difference is that under the explanatory notes approach, any effect on property rights is raised as a matter for parliamentary consideration rather than as a legally actionable matter, unless the right to legal action otherwise has force in law because it is recognised as a property right. Some would advocate that economic loss caused by regulation should be compensable (and consequently are not likely to support Option 5); we discuss this view further below.
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Richard Boast and Susy Frankel “Defining the Ambit of Regulatory Takings” in Susy Frankel and Deborah Ryder (eds) Recalibrating Behaviour: Smarter Regulation in a Global World (LexisNexis 2013). The entire foreshore and seabed saga illustrates the propensity of our legislators to play fast and loose with property rights and indeed with core concepts of property which is difficult to imagine happening in more conservative and more complicated jurisdictions like Australia and the United States. The legislation illustrates another tradition – apart from the tendency towards resource nationalisation – that is, a proneness to resolving complicated problems arising from our peculiar political, ethnic and historic make-up by erecting edifices of statute. The 2004 Act took away the ability of Māori to go to the Māori Land Court to obtain private freehold titles to areas of foreshore and seabed, and this ability has not been restored by the 2011 Act. (In fact the 2011 Act gives even fewer powers to the Māori Land Court than the 2004 Act.) Both Acts did indeed "impair" the property rights of iwi, and the enactment of the Regulatory Standards Bill into law might indeed caution against the state from embarking on a similar exercise in the future.
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Mark Bennett and Joel Colón-Ríos “Public Participation and Regulation” in Susy Frankel (ed) Learning from the Past Adapting to the Future: Regulatory Reform in New Zealand (LexisNexis, 2011). Public hearings are already a very important mechanism within New Zealand government and law-making. Parliamentary Select Committees scrutinise both executive government activities and bills passing through the House of Representatives.[163] Select Committees play an important role in seeking and receiving written submissions from a number of participants, including the general public, businesses, industry groups, political interest groups, and other organisations. Committees will advertise for submissions on the bill or matter for inquiry, and will sometimes write to groups with an interest or to experts in the field to invite submissions.[164] Proceedings relating to the hearing of evidence are usually in public, and written submissions are usually released to the public. If the topic being considered is of great public interest, there may be thousands of written submissions; however, due to time pressure not all of those wishing to make an oral submission have a right to be heard, and the committee may determine how many people it hears and for how long they can appear.[165] Public hearings of a similar sort may also be conducted as part of ministerial inquiries, for example as happened in the inquiries into the telecommunications and electricity industries.[166] They are also used in the context of environmental regulation.
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Mark Bennett and Joel Colón-Ríos “Public Participation in New Zealand’s Regulatory Context” in Susy Frankel and Deborah Ryder (eds) Recalibrating Behaviour: Smarter Regulation in a Global World (LexisNexis 2013). Also, there are various stages of the regulatory cycle that the public can participate in. This is shown in the diagram below, from the House of Lords' The Regulatory State: Ensuring its Accountability report. Figure 6.1 The circle of accountability Source: House of Lords The Regulatory State: Ensuring its Accountability[52] The diagram shows that participation can occur in Parliament and government through the legislative reform of existing statutory regulatory frameworks, in the form of the usual processes of governmental and legislative consultation and lobbying; for example, in select committees. Once the basic regulatory framework is in place, day-to-day decisions will be taken within that framework, by ministers or by regulators. These decisions – applying the objectives, duties, and powers that have been laid down by statute or government policy – may include other forms of public participation.
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Mark Bennett and Joel Colón-Ríos “Public Participation in New Zealand’s Regulatory Context” in Susy Frankel and Deborah Ryder (eds) Recalibrating Behaviour: Smarter Regulation in a Global World (LexisNexis 2013). The other point that should be emphasised is that ordinary governmental and legislative processes may also be improved from the perspective of public participation. The policy and legislative decisions are usually the most important ways that the framework of regulatory decision making is created; and as the framework sets the institutions, procedures and objective/standards that subsequent regulatory decisions are made, the creation of this framework should occur by a process that engages as much public participation as possible, if it is to produce democratically legitimate results. While one view would be that any legislation Parliament passes is legitimate, there is another increasingly popular view that major changes to our socio-economic or political structure are only legitimate if there is more than a bare majority of support. This view has become more popular under MMP, where the political parties that form the government and can pass legislation will usually not individually gain a majority of the electoral vote. While they, of course, must find a majority in Parliament to legislate, there are clearly perceptions in a relatively evenly divided political landscape (that is, where the left and right blocs command only just over 50 per cent of votes at elections and support in Parliament) that further public participation is necessary from the perspective of democratic legitimacy.
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Paul Scott and David de Joux “Uncertainty and Regulation: Insights from Two Network Industries” in Susy Frankel and Deborah Ryder (eds) Recalibrating Behaviour: Smarter Regulation in a Global World (LexisNexis 2013). 11.7.2 Parliamentary uncertainty One of the issues Mladenovic identified as ripe for investigation was regulatory uncertainty.[221] It almost goes without saying it is a concern for regulated entities. However, it can mean different things in different contexts.[222] One type of regulatory uncertainty involves how Parliament has provided for regulation.[223] In New Zealand the path to regulation has, as Ahdar notes, been tortuous.[224] As Mladenovic shows, it has moved from a state-run affair to light-handed relying on general competition law and then on to regulation with specialist regulators.[225] This is not optimal. As Ahdar notes citing Joskow "a continuing stream of reforms rather than one comprehensive package is not conducive to the sort of large, long-term investment the sector needs."[226] This history of pragmatic piecemeal reform has done nothing to improve regulatory certainty. Indeed, the recent reform is the fifth Act of Parliament in the name of reforming industry since the Electricity Industry Reform Act 1998.[227] It does nothing to attract investment into the industry.
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Rayner Thwaites and Dean R Knight “Administrative Law through a Regulatory Lens: Situating Judicial Adjudication within a Wider Accountability Framework” in Susy Frankel and Deborah Ryder (eds) Recalibrating Behaviour: Smarter Regulation in a Global World (LexisNexis 2013). Accountability, as defined above, is a social relationship between an actor and a forum. In what follows, the Regulatory Standards Bill is characterised in terms of the three components of our integrated evaluative framework set out earlier: "information provision", "debate", and "consequences".[84] Under the Regulatory Standards Bill, the Minister and the chief executive are explicitly directed to provide the relevant information to Parliament.[85] As for any judicial declaration of incompatibility; the forum in which the court's declaration constitutes information is not specified under the Bill. In so far as the judiciary is conceptualised as "monitoring" the certification process, then the forum for a judicial declaration, understood in terms of Bovens' information provision is Parliament. Nonetheless, the true target of the Bill lies elsewhere. While falling outside the formal accountability framework provided under the Bill, the Taskforce clearly intended the Bill to influence the persons behind the legislation, the policy makers and drafters responsible for generating and drafting the relevant regulatory intervention.[86] The Bill is intended to indirectly influence these individuals by putting to justification those who have to certify a regulatory measure's compatibility with the principles, or those who have to defend a claim of compatibility in court.[87] The nature of the debate about those principles in Parliament takes its cue from the constitutional perspective, and concentrates on conformity of the legislation with the relevant principles, where that is given content by judicial rulings on the principles, or legal advice directed at anticipating those rulings.[88] As to consequences, there are no formal consequences as long as one confines oneself to the courts. The issuance of a declaration of incompatibility does not affect the legal validity of a measure.[89] The expectation is that a court ruling constitutes information to be fed into parliamentary and wider public debate, potentially generating a response in the legislature. The consequences are political. The intent is that this political response will in turn modify the behaviour of those developing and drafting legislation, bringing them into conformity with the nominated regulatory principles. There is an incomplete forum, the courts, nestled within the larger forum of Parliament, to complete the accountability relationship.
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Derek Gill “Applying the Logic of Regulatory Management to Regulatory Management in New Zealand” in Susy Frankel and Deborah Ryder (eds) Recalibrating Behaviour: Smarter Regulation in a Global World (LexisNexis 2013). While the system of officials committees is not nearly as strong as other comparable jurisdictions, the Cabinet and Cabinet Committee system is arguably the strongest of all Westminster countries as is the select committee review process. Commenting on the quality of select committee review in New Zealand, the late George Tanner, former Parliamentary Counsel, observed (in email correspondence): "[a]t its best, it works well and is probably a more effective scrutiny process than many upper Houses around the world." The introduction of MMP, while it has been successfully nested in the cabinet system, has also resulted in the growth in the use of urgency.[33] MMP requires minority governments to put together a parliamentary majority for each piece of legislation (other than confidence matters) before the Bill is introduced into the House.[34] Over time this imperative may undermine the role of the select committee as amending the legislation in committee risks unpicking the delicate balance of support for a Bill.
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Dean R Knight and Rayner Thwaites “Administrative Law through a Regulatory Lens: Situating Judicial Adjudication within a Wider Accountability Framework” in Susy Frankel and Deborah Ryder (eds) Recalibrating Behaviour: Smarter Regulation in a Global World (LexisNexis 2013). The closest analogue in terms of a parliamentary certification mechanism in the New Zealand political context is the section 7 process under the New Zealand Bill of Rights. Geddis has concluded that the parliamentary certification mechanism "appears to be at its weakest when it comes to protecting those rights most likely to be overlooked in the legislative process".[109] In contrast, "the situations in which it may actually have some effect" are those in which the public was already disposed to accept the necessary discipline required to adhere to the rights, without the intervention of the Attorney-General's section 7 certificate.[110] The question is whether the Regulatory Standards Bill is likely to suffer from the same weakness.