Dr. David Kenny:

I thank the Deputy. The jurisdiction I referred to was New Zealand, which requires as a matter of law that regulations be published in advance unless there is some pressing public health reason that this cannot be done. I agree that a form of pre-legislative scrutiny for regulations would be even better, if possible, although I am operating on the assumption this may be difficult when considering the time available for the making of regulations. Such a practice would nonetheless be ideal to encourage better understanding and public communication about the content of regulations. Availability and scrutiny in advance of implementation would help with that.

Again, following the example of New Zealand, the idea of defaulting regulations if they do not receive ex postparliamentary approval would be of benefit. There has been some improvement in our regulations. The most recent major set, the temporary restriction No. 4 regulations, as they might be called, were published on 31 August but they were not to come into force until 3 September. At the same time there was a long delay in what was essentially the public announcement of the regulations, as we were told they were coming in the middle of August but it took two weeks for them to arrive.

We have made some progress, but there is more progress to be made in terms of giving people notice that these regulations are being introduced and also acting swiftly to ensure we have the proper law in place for the restrictions that we want to enforce.