Welcome to the home page of newlaws.co.nz
We started this web site nearly two years ago to bring you regular updates on new laws in New Zealand. We also provide commentary from time to time on different areas of New Zealand Law which are of public interest or which might be topical at a particular time.
New Laws Explained
If you follow this new laws site, you should keep an eye on our new laws official blog page where new articles are posted from time to time as new legislation passes into law.
2010 and 2011 were busy years for the New Zealand government. During the year we will continue to bring you posts on new Bills before the house, new Acts and new regulations too.
New Acts of Parliament are new laws passed by Parliament after going through a stringent process of readings in the house and submissions to select committee. In total a bill gets three readings in the house before it can receive royal assent and pass in New Zealand law.
New Bills are proposed Acts which must go through the process described briefly above before they can pass into new law.
New regulations are laws enacted under Acts of Parliament.
To give some indication of the enormous volume of Legislation that Parliament deals with in any given year, at the time of writing this post there are between 80 and 100 Bills going through the many various stages of the process to ultimately become new laws.
New Law
The vast majority of Bills before the house at any given time will be Government Bills; in other words, legislation put forward by the government of the day. In addition, at any given time there can be as many as 15-20 members Bills put forward by members of the House.
Acts of Parliament deal with a large variety of different issues. In 2010 for example we had the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act passed under extreme urgency to allow the government to quickly and decisively provide assistance where required to facilitate the recovery in Canterbury. The Hon. Gery Brownlee was then appointed as minister in charge of the Earthquake Recovery process.
The drastic consequences of the 6.3 magnitude earthquake on February 22, 2011 have somewhat caused a rethink and the terrible tragedy in Christchurch has seen to it that this act has of course subsequently been superseded by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act creating the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA). For our article on this subject on a related blog, Christchurch Solicitor, and to read about the powers CERA will have click here.
In 2010 we also had the Rugby World Cup (2011) Empowering Act which provided among other things, for the establishment of The Rugby World Cup Authority and set out the details for such matters as liquor licensing during the World Cup.
2010 also saw a major overhaul of the 1972 Unit Titles Act so that we now have the replacement Unit Titles Act 2010 which now deals with all matters pertaining to the establishment and management of unit title developments in New Zealand.
In 2011 we kept an eye out for legislation overhauling the regulation of Financial markets and financial advisors generally.
As each new Bill makes its passage through the house and into new law we bring you progress reports and commentary on the major effects of each of these new laws.
Lastly, we recognise that our readers will also require expert legal advice from time to time and we will provide valuable links in each post to experts in particular fields of law. If you have legal requirements we recommend that you contact your specialist Christchurch Lawyer.
