Legislation Act 2019 changes aim to standardise publication for secondary legislation
Attorney-General Judith Collins has announced that the Legislation Amendment Bill, which seeks to improve access to and standardise publication practices for secondary legislation, has passed its first reading.
Collins explained that the bill would require agencies drafting secondary legislation to publish the legislation and related information on the agency website or another approved website. An example of a suitable website would be the New Zealand Gazette.
Intending to amend the Legislation Act 2019, the bill aims to make it easier to find and comply with laws and digitise government services, according to a news release from the government.
Collins added that the bill seeks to promote high-quality legislation in the country and make laws easy to access, apply, and comprehend.
Collins explained that secondary legislation includes regulations, orders, rules, exemptions, bylaws, notices, and instruments with various names. Collins estimated 7,500–10,000 enactments, drafted and published by around 100 government and non-government agencies, plus local authorities.
In the news release, Collins lamented the challenges of finding most secondary legislation – some were available on the agency website, the New Zealand Gazette, or newspapers, while others were apparently not publicly available anywhere.
“These variable publication arrangements undermine the rule of law, increase compliance costs, hamper digital government and impair scrutiny of delegated law-making powers,” Collins said in the news release.
According to information from the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) website, the Legislation Amendment Bill would also confer a new function for the PCO to maintain the official New Zealand legislation website as the sole access point for agency-published legislation and associated information.
According to the PCO website information, “the NZ Legislation website is becoming dated and falling behind user expectations.”
With data collection technology, the redevelopment aims to allow users to search for, index, and link agency-published secondary legislation.
“This will turn the website into a one-stop shop for legislation matters,” Collins said in the government’s news release. “My vision is that the public will soon only need to visit one website to find all New Zealand legislation and related information.”
The news release noted that interested individuals could test a public demo of the revamped website, which features a significant amount of agency-published secondary legislation.
