Friday, February 17, 2012



In the ballot XLIII

Another batch of Member's Bills currently in the ballot. Previous batches are indexed here:

Energy Efficiency Conservation (Warm Healthy Rentals) Amendment Bill (Gareth Hughes): would require the government to set minimum energy performance standards for residential rental accommodation. It does not actually include the standards, but instead establishes a framework for them to be set and transitional arrangements giving landlords time to comply. As we've already seen from the home insulation programme, this will have significant health benefits for the poorest New Zealanders, and is worth doing.

Land Transport (Admissibility of Evidential Breath Tests) Amendment Bill (Scott Simpson): would amend s77 of the Land Transport Act 1988 to allow evidential breath test results to be used as evidence where an accused drunk driver elected to take a blood test, but blood was unable to be drawn. This doesn't seem unreasonable, and it corrects a hole in the law. But shouldn't it be included in a government bill?

Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Shopping Centre Opening Hours) Amendment Bill (Trevor Mallard): would require that shopping centre default opening hours be set by a secret ballot of a centre's tenants, rather than by its owner. Again, this doesn't seem unreasonable, and it protects small businesses from being forced to open at unreasonable times by mall owners.

As usual, I'll have more bills as I acquire them.