Purging ‘dead wood’ in laws and regulations

Press, 27 August 1979, Page 16

Purging ‘dead wood’ in laws and regulations

By

CEDRIC MENTIPLAY

An important regulation passed last Monday had the effect of removing from operation a total of 507 Government regulations judged to be no longer of any value. This marked the end of one stage, arid the beginning of the next, in a programme instituted by the AttorneyGeneral and Minister of Justice (Mr McLay). During the last few months there have been many references to the amount of “dead wood” among the regulations and in the statute book. Among those drawing attention to this has been Mr D. F. Caygill (Lab., St Albans) who in his maiden speech gave a list of obsolete ordinances. But when Mr McLay took over the justice portfolios late last year from Mr P. Wilkinson (who resigned because of ill-health) the task had already begum Indeed, the National Party policy document, issued before last November’s General Election, included the promise: “National, concerned that some statutes and regulations are outdated or ir-

relevant, will give the Law Reform Council the additional responsibility of reviewing all existing statutes and regulations. This review will be facilitated by the adopting of a new method of reprinting statutes.” Mr McLay pays a tribute to the work done under Mr Wilkinson, and by the Chief Parliamentary Counsel, Mr Walter Iles. “It has been an enormous task, growing bigger and bigger as time went on,” Mr McLay said. “All the Government departments were involved, and went through their own lists of regulations,” But this has been only the start. “The matter has been taken to the Law Reform Council, which as the task of going through and looking at all acts and regulations which are more than 50 ■ years old, to determine whether they are still required, or whether they can be consolidated into other legislation.” Mr McLay is sure that this will be a much bigger task. “The regulations we

have dealt with were ‘spent’ regulations,” he said. "The next exercise is to look at regulations which are still in force. The next step after this will be to look at the mass of regulations and to consolidate them into a reasonable set of volumes.” The consolidation of statutes will go hand-in-hand with the revision of statutes. The printed volumes of statutes today form a massive

three-shelf library, all of which must be duplicated in any office where legislation must be referred to. “The end result will be that they will be printed in a chronological sequence, rather than the present alphabetical sequence. The result will be that all statutes will have been reprinted in the last 10 years. Instead of having, as we have here, 72 volumes, we will finish up with about 39.” He explained it as “part of an on-going exercise to get the junk out of the statute book.” He emphasised the plan was for the running revision to be kept going, presumably by whoever happens to be the Government. Reverting to the reprint of the regulations, Mr McLay said: “If we can achieve this it will be a very considerable consolidation, because prior to 1936 many regulations were nor printed in

the red-cove; ecl books which have contained the later ones, but were printed in the ‘Gazette.’ Therefore, in order to find them, one has to sort through old issues of the Gazette. It will take an enormous time to run down all these regulations, and to bring them together.” Mr Mc.Lay regards this as a very worthwhile exercise, though a long-term one. “It will take a long time to get the junk out of the statute books, but in the end the law will be much more readily ascertainable, easier to find, and therefore of much greater use to those working with the law from day to day.” The actual work on the review of regulations will be done by the Law Reform Council, which was asked last April by Mr McLay to consider reviewing all laws and regulations passed more than a half-century ago.

How long the process will take is not yet known, but the result is expected to reduce the bulk of act and regulation by at least half. Perhaps more important still is that a pattern is established whereby relevant law will be more easily found, and regulations brought together. Of those 507 regulations laid to rest last week, it is surprising how many related to the arrival of groups of foreign seamen on the New Zealand coast in the days of sail. There were also the traces of restrictions applied during two World Wars — including some which might, at a pinch, have been pressed into service to cover present fuel difficulties. Most officials have been glad to see them consigned to oblivion —to be replaced, perhaps, with something that has the tang of 1980.

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