The new privacy legislation comes into force as this edition of Fineprint is published; it updates the law to reflect the needs of the digital age. Although we published an article on this topic in the Winter edition, we remind you that the key changes relate to:
Water was the hot topic in the 2017 election campaign. This year, with an election coming up shortly, there seems to have been little talk of water (or much policy at all, so far) with Covid still taking up most of the news space, closely followed by scandals of various sorts.
The National Environmental Standards for Freshwater 2020 (the Freshwater NES), however, are due to be published later this year. Some parts of it will take effect 28 days after it is published while other parts won’t come into effect until the winter of 2021. This year is more than half over, and with the first half of the year being severely disrupted by the Covid lockdown and because the election is looming, there can be no certainty that the new Freshwater NES will be published this year. There is no certainty as to what form it will take, given we may not know which parties will form the government – perhaps sometime in October.
In the Autumn edition of Rural eSpeaking we discussed the situation that Covid had caused with leases where tenants were unable to access their premises due to lockdown restrictions. Potential issues for the rural leasing sector arose from this problem, particularly given that rural leases are often in a different form to urban commercial property leases.
The article pointed out that the main lease issue due to Covid was the inability of tenants to access their premises. Since we published the Autumn edition, the government has announced that it proposes further changes to the Property Law Act 2007 where it would imply in certain leases a clause similar to that in the latest version of Auckland District Law Society (ADLS) lease, section 27.5, where a tenant has:
Smoking in motor vehicles when children under the age of 18 years old are present is now prohibited. The passing of the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor
Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Act 2020 has made this an offence.
Police will now have the discretion to issue on-the-spot fines of $50 for those who are caught smoking in cars with children, or they may issue warnings or refer people to stop-smoking agencies.
The Privacy Bill is on its third reading in Parliament and will now become law on
1 December 2020. It will repeal and replace the current Privacy Act 1993, and
will update the law to reflect the continually-evolving needs of the digital age.
Your personal information is stored in many places by organisations such as businesses,
government agencies, healthcare providers, financial institutions, social network platforms and telecommunications companies (called ‘agencies’ in the new legislation).
One of the most significant pieces of new legislation introduced last year was the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act 2019, more commonly referred to as the ‘Zero Carbon Act’.
The legislation outlines the government’s targets over the next 30 years (by the year 2050) of net greenhouse gas emissions of zero and to reduce methane emissions by up to 47%.
In response to the Covid pandemic, changes continue to be made around tenancies – both residential and commercial – as well as mortgages and lending.
To accommodate delays arising from the Covid restrictions, the deadline for landlords to provide healthy homes standards compliance statements to their new tenants has been extended by five months.
The healthy homes standards have been introduced to ensure that all rental properties have, for example, adequate heating, insulation and ventilation. As part of the first stages of these standards, you must provide any new tenants or tenants renewing their existing agreement with information on whether your property meets the healthy homes standards. This is called a healthy homes standards compliance statement. Continue reading
The government’s Budget, presented by the Minister of Finance the Hon Grant Robertson on 14 May has addressed, in the words of the Minister, “a 1-in-100 year health and economic challenge” as it moves to rebuild the economy post-Covid-19.
“With the outbreak of Covid-19, New Zealand now faces a 1-in-100 year health and economic challenge. The pandemic continues to evolve, and it has already caused enormous social and economic disruption. It has required agility on the part of New Zealanders, the Government included,” said the Minister.
I need to make a will but I do not want to leave my estate to my son as I never see him. I also do not want to leave my estate to my stepchildren. What can be done?
In some parts of the world, a will-maker can leave their assets to whomever they want, whether that be their children, a distant relative or to the local cats’ home. In New Zealand, however, this is currently not the case. Continue reading