Tuesday, 20 February 2007

Tuesday, 20 February 2007

Tuesday, 20 February 2007

Madam Speaker took the Chair at 2.35 p.m.

Prayers.

Resignations

Georgina Beyer, Labour

Madam SPEAKER: I wish to advise the House that I have received a letter from Georgina Beyer resigning her seat in the House with effect on 16 February 2007.

List Member Vacancy

List Member Vacancy

Madam SPEAKER: I have been advised by the Chief Electoral Officer that, pursuant to section 137 of the Electoral Act 1993, Lesley Frances Soper has been declared to be elected a member of the House of Representatives in place of Georgina Beyer.

Members Sworn

Members Sworn

Madam Speaker administered the Oath of Allegiance to Lesley Frances Soper, who then took her seat in the House.

Points of Order

Taito Phillip Field—Proxy Vote

RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Through the media I understand that you have granted, using Standing Order 156(4), permission for the Labour Government to cast Taito Phillip Field’s vote while he is not within the precincts of Parliament. If that is correct, I am interested in the reasons why that would be the case, because, to the best of my knowledge, Taito Phillip Field is not on parliamentary business—I know he does a lot of business, but it is not of a parliamentary nature—

Jill Pettis: Yes, he goes with us.

RODNEY HIDE: Well, the member can interrupt if she likes, but I would like to know—

Madam SPEAKER: The member is speaking to a point of order. If there are any further interruptions, those members will leave the Chamber.

RODNEY HIDE: I would just like an explanation, Madam Speaker.

Madam SPEAKER: I thank the member. I think the first point to note is that I have not granted the Labour Party anything, but I have, in fact, exercised the jurisdiction I have under the Standing Orders in terms of proxy. But I understand the point the member raises, and for the interests of the House I shall give a ruling on the matter.

As members are aware, party voting was introduced in 1996. It was soon appreciated that special arrangements needed to be made for parties consisting of one member and for Independent members of Parliament. Effectively, these had to be exempted from the general requirement to have a member present in the Chamber. From 1996 to 1999 there were, in fact, no requirements on Independent members at all. They could have proxy votes recorded for them regardless of where they were. In 1999 the present rule set out in Standing Order 156(4) was introduced. A proxy for an Independent member can be exercised only if the member is within the precincts, absent on select committee business, absent on other business approved by the Business Committee, or absent with the permission of the Speaker. In the case of the latter, the Speaker’s permission may be granted for illness or other family cause of a personal nature, or to enable the member to attend any other public business, whether in New Zealand or overseas.

Since that provision was introduced, three members have been given general approvals by the Speaker to have their votes cast by proxy in their absence: the Hon Peter Dunne in 2000, Tariana Turia in 2004, and the Hon Jim Anderton in 2005. I have given an approval to Taito Phillip Field in exactly the same terms as those approvals. Once the member has been given the approval it is for the member to judge whether the condition applies entitling him or her to have a proxy vote regarded. If, for example, there is no family illness, and the member is not attending to other public business, whether in New Zealand or overseas, the member should notify the person who holds the proxy that it is not to be exercised while that state of affairs continues. But no member has to account to the Speaker for how he or she uses their time away from this House.

RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. This is of crucial importance because we know and believe that legislation will be before this House where the casting of this vote could make the difference between the legislation passing or not proceeding. It seems to me that we do have a problem. I can understand perfectly with the Hon Peter Dunne, the honourable Tariana Turia, and the Hon Jim Anderton, because all three were actually on parliamentary business. But we know that Taito Phillip Field is not on parliamentary business. I also understand that he is not ill. You are telling this House that if he does not fit those categories, his vote cannot be exercised if he is not here. Now the difficulty that we have is that in Parliament a piece of legislation could be hanging on that vote, the vote gets cast, but we are not certain whether, in fact, the criteria for Taito Phillip Field have been met, because we do not know the reason you have granted it. I think you have to be particularly specific and send a very strong message to this particular member that if he does not fit the category that you have set, which I guess has to be family cause of a personal nature, or illness, his vote cannot be cast unless he is here.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House): This is an interesting matter but is one, of course, that does not apply to just Independent members; it applies to all members of the House. The criteria are not just for Independent members but apply to the exercise of a proxy vote on behalf of a party member, including, of course, that member who was absent all week from the House. He was absent on, as we know, business of a personal nature all that week, not public business.

The second point to make is that public business has a very wide interpretation—it is not parliamentary business; it is public business. It is Standing Orders 156(4)(b) and 155(4)(c) that refer to parliamentary business. It is Standing Order 156(4)(d)(ii) that relates to public business. In the case of members who are not independent members, their proxy votes are cast on their behalf by their whips, or a person acting on behalf of the whip, on the basis of leave granted by the whip—although, strictly speaking, that is with the permission of the Speaker, because it is understood that permission of the Speaker is operated by delegation to the party whips in that case. There is a very longstanding understanding in this House that members do not ask whether that has been properly exercised by the whips. I invite the member Rodney Hide to think very carefully about what would happen if, every time a proxy vote was cast on behalf of somebody, we had an examination of the precise reasons why that person was absent. I see Mr Power, who has been a senior whip, understanding perfectly well how unattractive that proposition would be in actual practice. It is a matter, in the end, between the member on whose behalf the vote is being cast, and the Speaker. It is a matter for the member to notify if in fact he or she is not absent on that business.

JOHN KEY (Leader of the Opposition): Madam Speaker, I think it would be useful if you could define for the House exactly how you will interpret public business. If we are to believe media reports, we know that the Labour Party will be casting the proxy vote of Taito Phillip Field—a person whom the Prime Minister described as immoral and unethical for his behaviour. It will be interesting to see whether you rule that somebody who was interviewed yesterday by the police and who could be in the dock facing significant charges falls within your ruling of being on public business. If you do not make that clear, I cannot see how the Labour members, who will be casting their votes, will understand it. The Prime Minister, if we are to believe her, thinks the actions of Mr Field have been unethical and immoral, and I cannot believe, if she believes that, that she will be casting his vote.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House): Madam Speaker, that point is an irrelevancy. Perhaps Mr Key will remind himself that a proxy vote was cast on behalf of Alamein Kopu for the National Party on a very large number of occasions, and that only a year or so back proxy votes were cast—normally in line with the National Party’s position on the issues in front of the House—on behalf of Donna Awatere Huata, who was actually facing criminal charges and was subsequently convicted of them. The point he raises, unfortunately, may make for a bit of a smile in the media, but it is irrelevant to the Standing Orders and their interpretation.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): Madam Speaker, as someone who has been in the position that is being referred to, I want to pick up one or two of the comments that the Deputy Prime Minister has made, and to suggest a way through based on previous experience. When leave is issued by whips it is issued, effectively, on the authority of the Speaker. When leave is applied for to whips, normally some documentation accompanies the application—in other words, a member wants to be absent for a particular purpose. Between 2000 and 2002, when I was the sole member for my party, the arrangement that I had with the previous Speaker was, because technically he was the whip who would grant me leave, that I would put retrospectively an application to him indicating the purpose for which I was absent on a particular day.

Madam Speaker, I suggest that in this particular case that may be an appropriate practice to follow, so that if there is any question, the member is required to have at least provided some documentation to you justifying the purpose for which he was absent; otherwise, we could have a situation where, effectively, nothing much is changed. So I do think there is a way through it based on previous experience. I think, Madam Speaker, that it would be appropriate for you to say to the member that you need some written documentation to cover the periods for which he is absent.

RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT): Dr Cullen confuses the issue somewhat. When our vote is cast, it is cast under Standing Order 156(3), which I am sure Dr Michael Cullen is fully familiar with. He is using that to obscure the nature of what is at issue here with Standing Order 156(4).

I go to the point that it is a very, very narrow set of reasons allowing the honourable Taito Phillip Field’s vote to be cast. It is not the situation of a party’s MP being away, which is not so narrow and which is set out specifically. The clear implication is that if these criteria are not met, the vote cannot be cast. The problem I have is that if we imagine the vote going to the Labour Party, we have Labour’s whip interacting with Mr Field to get him to explain that, yes, he still meets these criteria. The difficulty I have with that is that the Prime Minister herself says that this man is immoral and unethical—and, indeed, he is facing dishonesty charges. So he cannot be trusted, in the Prime Minister’s view. I do not see how the Labour Party whip can exercise this vote, because Labour cannot guarantee that the criteria are being met. Those of us who might be opposing the particular legislation at issue, believing that the Labour Party does not have the numbers, have no way of assessing whether Taito Phillip Field can vote, because we do not know the criteria.

Madam SPEAKER: I thank the member. He is starting to be a little repetitious. If I could just address some of the issues members have raised. The first point I note is that no member has actual knowledge of the business of any other member when he or she is not in this Chamber. I would make that point and ask members to reflect upon it.

I also note Mr Dunne’s point, and although he did that voluntarily, the other members did not. I am very happy, of course, to take up the matter with Mr Field, but I make the point that there is nothing in the Standing Orders that insists on that process or that the Speaker be responsible for it. I also note that if members are suggesting that the Speaker should inquire into the reason why any member is absent—and it would have to apply to any member, to operate fairly—then I think members should reflect on that. I am happy to consider it, but it would be a ruling on all members. My feeling at this stage is that such a ruling would have to be supported by a change in the Standing Orders. It may well be a matter that members wish to go to the Standing Orders Committee—that every member in this House verifies, either through their whips or to me, that he or she is on parliamentary or public business when not in this Chamber, or is ill. Certainly, that has not been the position in the past.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister for Economic Development): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. As I indicated to you before Dr Cullen’s second contribution to the point of order, I wish to bring to your attention the fact that Rodney Hide interjected on Dr Cullen’s first point of order, after Rodney Hide had complained and you had indicated people were on their last warning.

Madam SPEAKER: Yes, and I also noted that Gerry Brownlee did the same. [Interruption] Yes, he did! But the members were having a debate and discussion on this matter. We will start afresh.

PETER BROWN (Whip—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I am seeking just a little bit of clarification. Would it be fair to say that the rules surrounding proxy votes are fairly flexible? Have there not been cases of members dancing with the stars and dropping young women all over the floor, yet still voting by proxy?

Madam SPEAKER: Well, I am not sure that is a point of order.

JOHN KEY (Leader of the Opposition): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I wonder whether I could just take you back to Standing Order 156(4)(a) to (d), which is the part of the Standing Order that relates to Independent members. We are not talking about the situation where Mr Hide’s party, or another political party, may have two or three members; we are talking about the situation where a proxy vote is being cast for an Independent member.

I put it to you, Madam Speaker, that it is quite clear under Standing Order 156(4) that there are a number reasons why a legitimate proxy vote can be cast, and they are: “if the member concerned is—(a) present within the parliamentary precincts, or”, etc., etc., but under paragraph (d)(i) and (ii) the member may fall within two other particular reasons, which are an illness of a personal nature, or to attend to other public business. I say to you, Madam Speaker, that if the Labour Party, in casting that proxy vote, cannot understand whether Mr Field is on public business—if he is, for instance, being investigated by the police, being absent as he is today, or is in a situation where he may well be in the dock—then legislation cannot possibly be progressed. That situation may well occur in a second reading debate before we can progress any further in other debates. So it is simply not possible for Parliament to progress legislation when the Government relies on a one-seat majority, casting the vote of an Independent member who is going to claim to be away under the definition of public business when that public business is something that could legitimately be challenged by the Opposition.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House): I think the member is trying to draw too long a bow by making, essentially, Standing Order 156(4), and the rest, apply only to Independents or to a party comprising one member. Standing Order 156(4) was put into the Standing Orders in 1999, effectively by the Standing Orders Committee as a codification of the understood rules around the granting of leave within political parties. But where, of course, there is one person, then nobody else can grant that leave other than the Speaker himself or herself. Therefore, it is perfectly legitimate to draw the conclusion from the origins of Standing Order 156(4) that it is understood that it applies in practice to all members of the House.

It is absolutely equally true that it is applied in such a way that it is broadly interpreted and, importantly—as you said, Madam Speaker—is not inquired into by other members of the House. That would be an endless process every time, as has been rightly pointed out for weeks recently. Mr Hide was absent merely for appearances in a television programme. The fact that he dropped the young woman did not turn the situation into a case of illness.

Madam SPEAKER: I thank members. The member is correct that the rationale behind that provision is that the person is an Independent, and there has to be a process. But the rationale is that the whips do, in fact, undertake that task. So if a different change in procedure is what is requested for an Independent member, then to be fair, for that to apply, the whips should be able to verify what is happening to other members, as well. I ask members just to reflect on that and, if they do wish that, then I suggest they raise it at the Standing Orders Committee.

The last comment I will make is that it is for the member to be the primary judge as to whether he or she is on public business and, as the Standing Orders read, that is communicated to whoever holds the proxy. That is the state of the Standing Orders at this stage.

RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I ask you to clarify—and I accept all the points that have been made—whether the authorisation provided to the honourable Taito Phillip Field is valid through to the next election. Does the authorisation have a time period, or is it valid through to the next election?

Madam SPEAKER: It is until the Speaker wishes to withdraw it, which would be when I received an indication that the member no longer wishes that practice to take place.

JOHN KEY (Leader of the Opposition): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Just to go back to my earlier point first, the question we had for you is that if we cannot understand the definition of public business—and I put it to you that Taito Phillip Field may not be able to understand the definition of public business—then Taito Phillip Field himself will not know, if he is in the dock, whether he is in fact on public business. That is a very serious point—if he cannot understand whether he is on public business, then he does not know whether his vote can be cast on behalf of the Labour Party.

Secondly, in the event that he is not deemed to be on public business, because he is in the dock and you do not deem that to be public business, then the question is what the sanction against Mr Field is in the event that his proxy vote is cast by the Labour Party.

Madam SPEAKER: As the Standing Orders stand, it is for the member to determine what is public business and what is not. If I were to give a ruling, then it would have to apply to all members. [Interruption] No, I am sorry—unless the Standing Orders Committee came up with a different ruling, in which case it then is for the Speaker to interpret the ruling. Public business is, of course, a very wide term. Members themselves know that, and that is why it is for them to interpret it and to convey that to the member who is holding the proxy. As I indicated in response to Mr Dunne’s comment, I am happy to talk to Mr Field about a process and procedure. But if I am to give a ruling on exactly what a definition is to be, then we are down the road where everybody has to comply with that, and there will have to be some ability to test it if it is challenged by any other member.

GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The difficulty is that you are not seeing any middle ground here. The reality is that Standing Order 156(1) to (3) makes it clear that there is a role for whips in the organisation of Parliament’s business. That authority given to whips comes not only from the fact that members sign up to a political party but also from the fact that the Speaker chooses to accept the honour of whips. Anyone who has been in that position knows the responsibilities that come with it. But this particular part was inserted because of Labour’s outrage over the actions of Alamein Kopu and, perhaps, some others. So we now ask this question, Madam Speaker: are you saying that an Independent member simply notifies you, and that that therefore absolves you of any requirement under Standing Order 156(4)(d). Is that what you are saying?

Madam SPEAKER: Would the member please finish his point of order.

GERRY BROWNLEE: It raises the question as to what happens when the validity of the proxy is questioned in the House, because if it happened on—

Madam SPEAKER: I thank the member. I understand your point—

GERRY BROWNLEE: Well, I have not finished my point.

Madam SPEAKER: You have made the point at great length, and I appreciate it. The point is that the word of all members is accepted in this House, and that is the procedure I will be following in the future if no one produces any evidence, because there is nothing under the Standing Orders for that sort of inquiry or process to take place. And if it did, as I said, I accept the member’s point about the whips, but I also accept that these rules are based on the assumption that just as one accepts the word of the whips, one accepts the word of all honourable members.

GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker.

Madam SPEAKER: If it is a new point of order.

GERRY BROWNLEE: Does that not mean that you should at least have some idea of what Mr Field is doing from one part of a parliamentary day to another, in order that the whips who hold his proxy do not undergo a challenge as to whether the proxy is valid? That may tie Parliament up for an enormous amount of time. What is at risk here is the smooth and confident running of this place—and all because Labour wishes to keep the vote of someone whom it has just flung out.

Madam SPEAKER: I thank the member. I have nothing further to add to the rulings I have made.

Questions for Oral Answer

Questions to Ministers

Climate Change—Forestry

1. RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) to the Prime Minister: Following her statement to the House last week recognising “the important contribution of forestry to climate change mitigation strategies”, by how much can New Zealand forestry mitigate climate change, and what is the level of her Government’s commitment to New Zealand forestry?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) on behalf of the Prime Minister: The Government is very committed to New Zealand forestry playing a role in climate change mitigation. The extent of this, of course, depends on both the general levels of investment and disinvestment in the forestry industry.

Rodney Hide: Why, then, did this Government remove the large part of the incentive that existed to plant trees during the 1990s by confiscating the forest owners’ carbon credits that were recognised as a property right, the result of which has seen a slump in confidence in the forestry industry, with plantings falling from an average through the 1990s of 65,300 hectares of new forest to just 8,000 hectares, and the unprecedented result of the planted forest cover in New Zealand getting smaller each year rather than growing?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: The member should not believe everything Mr Dickie tells him. Firstly, the credits were created by the Kyoto agreement, and the vast majority of our forests pre-date that agreement. Those credits were an intrinsic property right of existing forests. They were created by Governments, and the liabilities pertained to Governments—the credits are owned by Governments. That is the nature of the agreement. That is the most important point in that regard. Secondly, deforestation and a lack of planting have been caused not by that; they have been caused primarily by low prices for timber and high prices for dairying, which have incentivised, therefore, conversion from forestry to dairying, given that there is no penalty attached to that.

Tim Barnett: What initiatives have already been actioned or proposed to encourage forestry to play a constructive role?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Last year the Government launched the Permanent Forest Sinks Initiative. It is already attracting investments such as that from Ngāti Porou, which will alone sequester up to 75 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. There is also significant Government investment in the Forest Industry Development Agenda, and, of course, the proposals out for consultation include the possibility of cash grants or carbon credits for new forests planted.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Why has the Minister excused the deforestation on the basis of changed economics rather than Government policy, when in the same period in which this Government has seen a 40,000 hectare deforestation Australia has been able, under exactly the same economic conditions, to expand its forest estate by 400,000 hectares; how does the Prime Minister equate all her rhetoric about carbon neutrality with New Zealand’s appalling record compared with Australia’s?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: The member might well ask himself exactly the same question, given that between 1996 and 1999 forest plantings more than halved in New Zealand.

R Doug Woolerton: Will Dr Cullen’s proposed incentives for exporters include specific measures to encourage the planting of new forests above and beyond current projections?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: The Government is certainly looking at proposals to encourage new plantings of forest, because obviously additional plantings would be a significant contribution to meeting our Kyoto obligations. There is also a necessity to look at methods—for example, the inclusion of “cap and trade” systems—that provide some kind of disincentive to deforestation and conversion to other land uses.

Te Ururoa Flavell: Kia ora tātou. Why is the Government on the one hand championing the climate change cause, then on the other hand using taxpayers’ money for Landcorp to destroy 23,000 hectares of pine forest north and south of Taupō?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: That land is not owned by Landcorp. It is simply that Landcorp has the management contract for that process, which would have been carried out by somebody else if Landcorp had not carried it out.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Why does the Government not just rule out the proposed deforestation tax, which is causing even more trees to be felled and making the climate change situation for New Zealand worse in respect of the balance; noting that the Government had to do a U-turn on both the carbon tax and the animal emissions levy, why does the Government not just cut its losses and back down now?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: It is always possible to be scared of ideas, but I would encourage the member to just dip his toe in the water occasionally and try the odd one, and to slither around a little before rejecting it.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker—

Madam SPEAKER: Could the Minister add just a little more to his answer?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: What I am saying to the member, to put it bluntly, is that there is a discussion document out there. Some people are having a rational discussion; Mr Dickie is getting into a sort of foaming hysteria mode.

Rodney Hide: In having this discussion about ideas, has the idea ever occurred to the Prime Minister that when people plant trees, they look at the costs and at the returns, one of the returns they might be looking at being the fact that there is an expectation they will get a carbon credit per hectare worth thousands and thousands of dollars—in fact, more than the cost of planting that hectare—and one of the costs they might be thinking about when they plant a forest being whether they can convert it to something else without having to pay a tax to the Government of $13,000; or are the Prime Minister and the Government so out of touch with New Zealanders that they think those basic—

Hon Trevor Mallard: You were away last week. You don’t need to make up for it this week.

Madam SPEAKER: Look, please—would the member ask a question and not give a speech. And we will not have unnecessary interruptions, please.

Rodney Hide: I know these simple ideas are hard to get across to this Government.

Madam SPEAKER: Would the member please just ask his question. Thank you.

Rodney Hide: In speaking about ideas, has the idea occurred to this Government that when people are looking to invest in a forest, they do have a regard to the return and the costs, that a big part of the return that was expected in the 1990s was the carbon credits that had been widely touted—indeed, credits the Government had promised would belong to the owner—that one of the costs was what one could do with the land at the end of the forest’s life, and that in terms of lowering that return and increasing that cost, this Government is the reason that trees are not being planted in New Zealand?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Most of the trees that have been cut down were planted long before the Kyoto agreement. If the member really thinks that the people planting those trees thought they would get carbon credits for an agreement that did not exist, then he thinks those people showed an enormously large understanding of the future. But the member might well ask himself the question whether, if trees can be cut down and the land converted to higher polluting usages, and there is no cost at all attached to it, that encourages disinvestment in forestry and conversion to other land uses.

Hon David Parker: Is the suggestion that property rights attach to carbon credits inconsistent with the viewpoint taken by other parties that no property liability attaches to existing emissions?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: That is indeed a very, very good point. But as usual, of course, what we are hearing from the Opposition is that one capitalises one’s gains and socialises one’s losses. That is a longstanding tradition of the National Party.

Rodney Hide: Does, then, the Prime Minister disagree with Mrs Gillian Robertson from the New Zealand Anglican Church Pension Board, who wrote about its forests: “No wonder forest owners are desperately cutting at present, even at losses, with the Government threat of owners having to pay a levy equal to more than what the current harvest is worth.”? That is what Mrs Robertson and the Anglican Church Pension Board are writing, and the board actually owns trees, unlike this Minister.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: With all due respect to members of the Anglican Church Pension Board, I say that if all new ideas had been rejected in the first place, the Anglican Church would never have existed.

Rodney Hide: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I know that when this Minister gets into trouble, he tries to get out of it with a—

Hon Annette King: What’s the question?

Rodney Hide: It is a point of order, actually.

Madam SPEAKER: It is a point of order, so would members please just settle. I know we started late today and it is a little different from usual, but would the member please make his point of order succinctly.

Rodney Hide: I know that when this Minister is in trouble, he gives smart alec comments about the pension board—

Madam SPEAKER: Well, that is not a point of order—

Rodney Hide: —but they cannot be an answer to the question. The Minister said to this House that he wanted to debate the ideas. We are putting up the ideas and the experience of people who are actually growing trees, yet all we get is abuse of the people we refer to.

Madam SPEAKER: I ask the Minister to further address the question.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Let me put it again, in a somewhat different way, for the benefit of the member. If there is no penalty on deforestation and conversion to land uses that have a higher value otherwise, then there will be a strong economic incentive to deforestation. That is what the current economic position is.

Carbon Neutrality—Prime Minister’s Statement

2. JOHN KEY (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by her statement that New Zealand “could aim to be carbon neutral”; if so, by what date does she think this could be achieved?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) on behalf of the Prime Minister: Yes. But she is not prepared to put a date on our first achieving that goal. She is confident that consistent progress can be made towards that target.

John Key: Does the Prime Minister think it is consistent with her statement that New Zealand could be carbon neutral that this very month her Government is firing up the massive E3P gas turbine, the second-biggest greenhouse gas emitting power station ever built in New Zealand?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I remind the member that his colleagues only a year or two back were calling for the Government to accelerate progress on various thermal power stations around the country because of what they described as an electricity supply crisis around the country. This flip-flop, of course, is consistent with the member’s flip-flop on global warming itself.

Hon David Parker: Has the Prime Minister seen any evidence that others are committed to achieving the goal of carbon neutrality?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Certainly. I believe that many in the House are committed to that. Obviously, the Green Party, and, I believe, also United Future and New Zealand First, are committed to goals of this variety. From the National Party we have had a lot of empty rhetoric, but when asked by the Minister responsible for Climate Change Issues to engage in solutions the National Party refused to come to the table. National always prefers the problem we have to the solution we do not have.

Jeanette Fitzsimons: Does the Prime Minister agree that the electricity sector could be the first to be carbon neutral, without it even having to purchase any offsets, by moving over the next couple of decades to 100 percent renewables except for dry years and emergencies; if so, is that what Minister Parker will be telling Gerry Brownlee in response to question No. 10?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I do not know what Mr Parker will be telling Mr Brownlee in answer to question No. 10, but the member is certainly correct that the ambition is to move to reliance upon renewables for normal baseload activity, but, of course, thermal capacity will still be required for firming activity, and, given the nature of much of our renewables, that will mean a quite considerable amount of thermal generation capacity will still need to be maintained.

John Key: Can the Prime Minister confirm that E3P has a projected life of 40 years, that it is set to emit about half a million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, and that those emissions will far outweigh any of the announcements of policies she declared last week in her statement of intent?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: We should look at those kinds of questions in the light of the net impact. The commissioning of E3P, with the commissioning of additional renewables generation over the next 10 to 15 years—there is a considerable amount of that on the agenda at the present time—will enable less efficient thermal generation to be taken out of capacity, thereby reducing net emissions.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Has the Prime Minister received any letter from the Leader of the Opposition indicating National’s opposition to firing up E3P?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: No, not at all, but then, of course, the Leader of the Opposition at one stage said that climate change was a complete and utter hoax, and now he says that the results could be catastrophic.

Peter Brown: Will the Prime Minister be specific and put the whole issue into perspective by saying whether, in terms of addressing climate change, the most effective approach would be to have the USA, China, and India achieving some modest reduction in their greenhouse gas emissions, or to have New Zealand becoming carbon neutral; if it is the former, can she tell us what pressure New Zealand is exerting upon the USA, China, and India to address the issues?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: The Government has consistently supported extending the Kyoto Protocol agreement to the widest possible group of nations. It believes very firmly that those who at present are not within Kyoto will need to be brought within some kind of post-Kyoto agreement—notably, of course, India and China, and, obviously, the United States, as the largest emitter in the world at the present time, needs to be brought in, too. But members should remember that many United States states are already taking quite significant action in this regard—particularly, California.

Nandor Tanczos: With regard to New Zealand’s emissions, does the Prime Minister agree that the only way the agricultural sector, which is New Zealand’s single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, can approach carbon neutrality is to decrease animal numbers, in direct contradiction to what is happening now; and given the recent statement made by Frank Brenmuhl, the Chairman of Dairy Farmers of New Zealand, that farmers will grow bananas if they need to, instead of cows, what is the Government doing to encourage them?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I will try to be as gentle as I can: to grow bananas in New Zealand would require an awful lot of electricity in order to provide sufficient warmth, and that probably would increase the level of global warming, rather than reduce it.

John Key: Is it not the case that the problem with the Prime Minister’s statements is that she is running around trying to convince the country that she even seriously half-believes in New Zealand becoming carbon neutral when at the same time she is offsetting that by firing up E3P, which is something to do with security of supply; and that maybe the reason the National Party does not oppose E3P is that we firmly have our eye on the ball of both security of supply and a realistic long-term target for climate change?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: The wonderful thing now is that Mr Key can manage a flip-flop between one supplementary question and the next supplementary question, even on E3P.

John Key: Can the Prime Minister tell the House exactly what the carbon footprint is of Treasury, the Inland Revenue Department, and the other four departments that the Prime Minister announced last week would be carbon neutral?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: The carbon footprint of Treasury is, obviously, rather low, and that of the Inland Revenue Department is somewhat higher, but that does not mean to say the Government should not begin with its own organisations in that regard.

Nandor Tanczos: The Prime Minister having stated her welcome support for the Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill in Parliament last week, will she be encouraging her Cabinet to watch tonight’s premiere of TV3’s WA$TED!, which “takes your average household of eco-horrors and turns it into a clean green haven”, so that all ministries can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cut waste?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: If the documentary was about how to turn each house into a clean Labour haven, then I am sure we would all be watching it with a great deal of interest.

John Key: Is it not the situation that the Prime Minister has not got a clue what the carbon footprint of the Inland Revenue Department, Treasury, and the other Government departments is; that the reason she promoted it last week was that it was about all she could think up; and that if she had not claimed that New Zealand would be carbon neutral, she would not even have bothered to suggest those things, because the savings—compared with those of E3P—will be absolutely next to nothing?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: If the member is prepared to put down a specific question, I will give a specific answer. The Prime Minister is certainly aware the Government has a Fruit in Schools programme, and did not run around as the “Muesli Bar Kid” before finding out that that was the case.

Jeanette Fitzsimons: Does the Prime Minister accept the widely reported conclusions from international research that building new roads increases vehicle miles travelled, and tends to reduce the use of public transport and cycling; if so, why is her Deputy Prime Minister promising to boost carbon dioxide emissions with “the biggest ever road building programme this country has ever known”?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: The Prime Minister’s splendid deputy is proposing that for a number of reasons. Firstly, new roading is needed for safety reasons. Many of our roads lack hard shoulders, lack passing bays, and lack other mechanisms that would reduce our road toll, which, while it has come down dramatically in the last 20 years, is still higher than that of many other developed countries—that is, in human lives. Secondly, and specifically in the Auckland area, improvement in the roading network is likely to have benefits in terms of traffic moving more quickly, but in particular, of course, in many areas we also need better traffic mechanisms for buses. As I have said to the member many times—and I will keep repeating—whatever happens in terms of upgrading rail, buses will remain the main mode of public transport in Auckland. For very simple, geographical reasons, there are only two main railway lines in Auckland.

John Key: What is the precise carbon footprint today of the Inland Revenue Department, Treasury, and the four other Government departments that the Prime Minister outlined last week; is the answer that the Prime Minister does not know—the same position she had last week—and would not have a clue what the impact on New Zealand is?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: If the member is capable of telling me what the carbon footprint of the National Party is, she might be able to tell him.

John Key: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I asked the Prime Minister in question No. 4 and question No. 6 what the precise carbon footprint is. The Deputy Prime Minister got up and said: “Well, if the member wants a precise answer”—

Madam SPEAKER: I take the point. Would the Minister please further address the question.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I thought we were on question No. 2, not questions Nos 4 and 6. Obviously, the member’s supplementary questions are all numbered for him so that he does not get them mixed up along the way. If the member cares to put down a specific question, I will try to provide—[Interruption] No, I ask him to put down a specific question, in writing, and in the morning. Bill English will write it for him—as he usually does—and we will try to provide an answer for him.

John Key: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. We asked a precise question. The Deputy Prime Minister told us that he would be happy to give the precise answer. Surely, if it was in the statement of intent last week, he would know what the exact answer is and he would not need me to put down a written question.

Madam SPEAKER: No, that is not a point of order.

Foreshore and Seabed—Legislative Framework

3. SHANE JONES (Labour) to the Deputy Prime Minister: What reports, if any, has he received on proposals to change the legislative framework relating to the foreshore and seabed?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister): I have received a number of reports relating to a proposal to repeal the existing framework and re-vest the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, effectively holding that subject to subsequent legal claims. This proposal is in the bill being promoted by the Māori Party.

Shane Jones: What reports has he seen on support for this proposal? [Interruption]

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: That is a very good question, as Mr Power said. I have seen a report suggesting that the bill needs to be considered by a select committee, a report claiming that this was never said, and, finally, a report saying that the bill will not be supported at all. All three reports are attributed to the leader of the National Party, Mr John Key.

Tariana Turia: Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker, tēnā tātou katoa. What does the Minister have to say about the statement from Jock Brookfield, Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Auckland, that the legislative framework relating to the foreshore and seabed was a gross overreaction to the June 2003 Court of Appeal decision, which “held that Māori customary communal title in areas of sea land (of foreshore and seabed) could exist at common law.”, and that “customary title is a species of legal property and should not be taken by Parliament without full compensation determined by an independent authority.”?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I thought the article by Professor Brookfield was very interesting, but I think it was unfair in one key and important respect: any group has the right to go to the High Court, which has the inherent jurisdiction in customary law matters in any case, for a declaration that, but for the passage of the Act, territorial customary rights existed—that is, in language he uses, customary title. If that declaration is made by the High Court, the Crown must enter into negotiations with the claimants for redress, and any agreed redress must be taken back to the court for confirmation. Alternatively, of course, the Crown can enter into direct negotiations with groups that it believes have such territorial customary rights and then proceed back to the court for the registration of an agreement. That is happening with Ngāti Porou, Whānau-a-Apanui, and Ngāti Porou ki Hauraki, and excellent progress is being made in those discussions. I think the member may be surprised at what comes out of those discussions. I think New Zealand as a whole will be pleased to see the kind of balance that, in fact, the Foreshore and Seabed Act is capable of producing.

Question No. 4 to Minister

SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei): I seek leave for this question to be held over until the Minister of Corrections appears in the House.

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought. Is there any objection? There is objection.

Corrections, Department—Confidence

4. SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) to the Minister of Corrections: Does he have confidence in his department; if so, why?

Hon MITA RIRINUI (Associate Minister of Corrections) on behalf of the Minister of Corrections: Yes, but there is always room for improvement.

Simon Power: What does it say about the culture of his department when a former employee has alleged, on National Radio this morning, that smuggling of contraband by guards at Rimutaka Prison “would not have occurred without management knowledge of it, and they had knowledge of this for a long time, and the fact is they chose not to act.”; and is that why several guards have had to go to the media before the Minister is prepared to do anything about it?

Hon MITA RIRINUI: On 22 November last year the department’s chief executive appointed a barrister and two former police detectives to independently investigate allegations by ex - staff members. Since then further allegations have arisen and are being addressed by the inquiry. Allegations arising more recently—as of today—by a former staff member are not new. She was interviewed last year and the independent investigator is also looking into those matters.

Simon Power: What does he say about the allegations made by a former employee on radio this morning about the way in which his department has treated whistleblowers “and the depth that they”—the department—“will go to, to try to discredit people and to cover up these matters.”, highlighted by the case of one guard who was attacked by an inmate and was left to fend for himself by other guards because he did his job, by conducting proper cell searches and reporting contraband?

Hon MITA RIRINUI: All allegations are treated seriously and the investigation will inquire into all those matters. The Minister will be able to comment on them when the investigation has been completed.

Simon Power: How can the public believe that he is in touch with what happens in prisons, when they hear Andy Coward, a former guard with a PhD in psychology and 20 years’ experience working at prisons on four continents, say that the prison system in New Zealand is “a disgrace and a joke” and “the most despicable thing I have ever seen”; and all the Minister can say, publicly, is “Talking with Barry, there may have been some slackness.”?

Hon MITA RIRINUI: As I have said, all the allegations are subject to an investigation. The results will be made public, in the public interest.

Simon Power: Does he stand by his statement yesterday that corruption amongst prison guards is not a widespread problem, when the Department of Corrections now admits that guards have been smuggling contraband to inmates at Rimutaka; when officers at Arohata and Wellington prisons have also resigned while being investigated for corruption; when last month he ordered an inquiry into corruption by guards at Rotorua District Court, after the department’s chief executive said he would not investigate; when guards report that cellphones and P are rife at Waikeria Prison; and when an inmate reports that P is being consumed openly in the exercise yards at Mount Eden Prison; and what is going on in his department?

Hon MITA RIRINUI: Once again for the benefit of the member, all these allegations are subject to investigation.

Simon Power: Does he agree with the Prime Minister that Barry Matthews, the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections, enjoys the confidence of the Government and is, according to the Prime Minister, “an exceptional chief executive”?

Hon MITA RIRINUI: I do agree with the statement of the Prime Minister, who said that Barry Matthews is an exceptional chief executive.

Simon Power: Does the Minister intend to communicate with Labour members of the Law and Order Committee regarding their vote on National’s quest for a wide-ranging inquiry into this hugely dysfunctional department?

Hon MITA RIRINUI: There is currently an investigation into all allegations. That is the Government’s position right now.

Family Violence—Departmental Advice

5. Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) to the Prime Minister: What advice, if any, has she received from the Minister for Social Development and Employment or other Government agencies about the policies needed to curb the rise of family violence in New Zealand?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) on behalf of the Prime Minister: The Prime Minister has received many reports from the Minister and from Government agencies on this matter, including, of course, the advice from the Justice and Electoral Committee that there is an urgent need to repeal section 59 of the Crimes Act.

Hon Peter Dunne: Does the Prime Minister share the concern of many, many New Zealanders that rising family violence is now virtually endemic and relentless, and that the time has come for action rather than talk; and instead of calling for more reports, will she bring together groups like Plunket, the Families Commission, and Barnardos, which have an interest in this area, to develop a strategy for concerted action that this Parliament can have within the next 3 to 6 months to act upon to curb this mounting problem?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: A great deal of that has already occurred, and a number of initiatives are under way right now. There will soon be a very major programme designed to change community attitudes towards violence and abusive behaviour—$11.5 million will go into the community prevention programme. The family violence prevention social service in last year’s Budget received very significant increases in its funding, and there is funding of $14.8 million going towards the Strategies with Kids - Information for Parents—SKIP—programme, which funds some 89 community groups to teach positive parenting and alternatives to physical discipline. At the end of the day this is a community issue, a community problem, and the Government has to work with communities to try to seek solutions to this.

Hon Peter Dunne: Does the Prime Minister accept that the perception of many in the community is that, despite the initiatives referred to in the earlier answer, the problem is mounting and is close to getting out of control, and that many New Zealanders are sick and tired of every Monday morning waking up to hear of the latest horrific attack that has occurred on children in a New Zealand family; if she does accept that proposition, how does she see the nexus being broken between what look like worthy programmes, on the one hand, and a mounting public concern that nothing much is happening, on the other?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: What that comes down to is a number of very difficult issues. Clearly there is mounting public concern. That can be seen as a good thing, in the fact that the public is less accepting of family violence than would have been the case 25, 20, or 15 years ago, when people commonly made remarks that accepted some levels of family violence as being normal. It is not clear that overall there are actual increases in the levels of family violence—there is always the problem of how much of the increase is from reporting changes and how much is from actual change in the incidence of family violence. What the House and the Government can do is make those moves that are within their competence. This House has a chance next Wednesday to make one very clear statement—that it does not support the current section 59 of the Crimes Act, under which kids have been beaten with large lumps of wood, riding crops, and what have you, and people have not been convicted because section 59 provides an excuse for that. It is a simple thing. I will not argue about some of the details of the bill itself, but I state quite clearly to vote for the second reading so that the House can then work through some of the detailed issues subsequently. If the National Party votes against the bill en bloc, as it has said it will do, then the public will draw a conclusion about what that means.

Hon Annette King: Can the Prime Minister confirm that reporting of family violence has doubled in the last 10 years, and does she agree that increases in reporting of family violence should be encouraged?

Judith Collins: For goodness’ sake!

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: The Opposition spokesperson says “For goodness’ sake!”. The Minister is quite right. Incidents of family violence should be reported. It is only by getting more and more reporting of what is actually occurring that the community as a whole can make its own statements about the unacceptability of family violence.

Hospitals—Productivity

6. Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) to the Minister of Health: Is he satisfied with the level of hospital productivity and why?

Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health): I regret I cannot answer the member’s question because we cannot yet reliably measure productivity. However, we are making good progress in developing a variety of productivity indicators for the future.

Hon Tony Ryall: What is wrong with the health system when official Treasury reports calling for value for money in the health sector show that hospital performance has plummeted during Labour’s term in office, with the reports suggesting that almost $3 of extra spending is now needed to get $1 of extra benefit for Kiwi patients?

Hon PETE HODGSON: The member, as usual, selectively quotes. What the Treasury report found was not that productivity has gone down, up, or sideways, but that productivity is difficult to measure. Let me just quote back to the member the substantive finding from the paper in question. Treasury states: “This research is useful as a case study that underlines how little is known about public sector activity.”

Sue Moroney: Does he think that productivity means having fewer staff working harder for longer, or does the Government take a more enlightened approach?

Hon PETE HODGSON: The latter, I can assure the member. During the 1990s the National Government’s view was that productivity was about putting a competitive market model at the core of the health system, shifting costs on to individuals through part-charging, and deflating salaries. National’s aim was to have doctors and nurses running ever faster down corridors. The Labour-led Government, however, knows that achieving higher productivity involves better training, better facilities, and better technology. We are delivering just that.

Hon Tony Ryall: Has the Minister read the Treasury report that states quite distinctly that hospital efficiency has fallen by 8 percent in a 3-year period, and, further, has he seen the Treasury report that states: “Although there has been an increase in staff numbers, hospital outputs have not increased commensurately.”, and “Output per full-time doctor and nurse has reduced.”; and could he explain to the House how come we have more doctors and nurses but less treatment?

Hon PETE HODGSON: Again, the member quotes selectively. He has not read out to the House the blizzard of caveats around the finding that the data may be wrong, that the quality may have improved, etc. In other words, for example, Treasury measured how many people were discharged from hospital but did not measure how many of them went on to live. Some of the things about productivity need to be examined a little more carefully than the member would have us believe.

Hon Tony Ryall: How is it that Labour can put $4 billion extra into the health system and deliver fewer elective operations, fewer specialist appointments, and fewer day-stay operations, and call that a success?

Hon PETE HODGSON: The member straightforwardly makes it up as he goes along. I can say to the member, for example, in the totality of medical discharges, that it has increased by a third or more since the change of Government—and that is the bulk of the work that goes on in our hospitals. The member makes assertions repeatedly in the belief that someone will believe him; I do not.

Hon Tony Ryall: Does he think that New Zealanders can be confident that the substantial additional resources that have gone into the health system have produced the best results for citizens?

Hon PETE HODGSON: I think the member now makes a good point, which is that if we cannot measure productivity in our health system—or, indeed, elsewhere in our public sector—then we should attempt harder to do so. This Government does not lack initiative in this regard. We are keen to measure productivity. We want to know that the taxpayer’s dollar is spent in the best way, and, in the case of the health system, I will repeat to the member that we are making good progress.

Hon Tony Ryall: Does he stand by his statement: “One of my priorities for the health sector is achieving value for money …”, and can he explain how employing 2,000 extra hospital managers and administrators in the last 6 years is giving New Zealanders value for money for that extra $4 billion?

Hon PETE HODGSON: Again, the member quotes selectively. He says that we have this number of managers and administrators, but forgets to tell the House that on top of that we have 5,000 more doctors and nurses. I wonder which of those administrators the member would not employ. Would the member not employ the administrator who pays the staff? Would the member not employ the administrator who rings people to come in for the out-patient clinic? Would the member not employ the administrator who records the work done so that we can measure productivity? Which of those administrators would the member not employ, and would he like to tell the House whether the health system would be better off for that? The long and short of it is that this health system is bigger and better than it was when he was in Cabinet.

Hon Tony Ryall: In light of the fact that the Government says that there is no problem, I seek leave to table nine detailed reports from Treasury showing that there is less being produced with more under the Hodgson health system.

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table those documents. Is there any objection? There is objection.

Rates Rebate Scheme—Response to Expansion

7. ANN HARTLEY (Labour) to the Minister of Local Government: Has he received any reports on the response to the Government’s expanded rates rebate scheme?

Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Local Government): Yes, indeed I have. I can advise the House that as of yesterday’s date, local authorities have received $41,276,000 of rates rebates from this Government for the rate-paying Kiwi households around New Zealand. This compares with just $696,389 paid out in rebates for the whole of the 2005-06 financial year, which was for just 4,200 households. This represents a sixtyfold increase in Government funding so far this year.

Ann Hartley: How the does the average rates rebate granted to date compare with the average rebate for the previous financial year?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: He just said that! He just answered it.

Hon MARK BURTON: Dr Smith clearly was not paying attention, but I am happy to inform him that as a result of the maximum allowable rebate increasing from $200 to $500, the average rebate to date this financial year is $448, compared with just $165 for the 2005-06 financial year.

New Zealand Qualifications Authority—Deputy Chief Executive's Statement

8. KATHERINE RICH (National) to the Minister of Education: Does he agree with the statements of Bali Haque, Deputy Chief Executive of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, that “The examinations and marking process have gone smoothly” and that “candidates will have robust and reliable NCEA results earlier than ever before.”; if so, why?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Education): Yes; this year, students sat 1.9 million papers marked by 1,920 markers and watched over by 4,000 exam supervisors. Students received their National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) results online and in the post on 17 January, a full week ahead of last year due to system improvements. Schools have now also received 2006 NCEA interim national data—more than 1 month earlier than in 2005—and that allows schools to get on and plan their year and analyse their statistics.

Katherine Rich: Can the Minister imagine the shock felt by top student Anna Wing of Northland, who found “Not Achieved” on her results slip when her return paper marked “Merit” stated the opposite, and explain to her why, despite two requests, she cannot get any corrected provisional results from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, which she wants for her university course?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: As the authority has been saying, there are individual cases. If the member gives me that one straight after question time, I will fix it.

Hon Brian Donnelly: Has the Minister ever known a year in which there were not some glitches with external examinations, despite the fact that the past system had no internal assessment in year 12; has the Minister ever known a year in which there have been fewer glitches than in 2006, despite 1.9 million papers having been required to be marked?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: The member, of course, has a great deal of experience in the schooling system in New Zealand and therefore would know that there have been massive improvements in this system. That is the point he is seeking to make. I have also had a large amount of experience in marking as well, and I know that there are always individual issues, such as the one raised by Katherine Rich just now, and if she had bothered to phone me before question time that problem probably would have been fixed by now.

Katherine Rich: Can he understand how the frustration felt by Jeremy Moroney of the Hawke’s Bay, who had “results not available” for calculus on his slip, turned to anger when the paper returned was clearly marked and graded, and he too could not get the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to send out revised provisional results so that he could send them to his engineering course?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I have from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority a four or five-page list of individual cases; out of 1.9 million scripts one would expect that each year. This has improved dramatically each year of the NCEA, and I expect it to carry on improving. I say to the member that if she has individual cases that are still outstanding she could either pick up the phone and ring me, or ring the chief executive, who has invited anybody in the country to do that if he or she has an individual case, and the problem will be fixed as rapidly as possible.

Katherine Rich: Why should it take the raising of this issue to a Minister by a member of Parliament when these kids have attempted to phone the New Zealand Qualifications Authority themselves to sort it out; and when the authority has made mistakes does the Minister think these students deserve better service than the dismissive response they have received from the authority, which just glibly says that mistakes happen and directs them to a website that does not have any of their internal marks on it?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: On the first point: of course, it does not require this matter to be resolved in this way. The authority has been very clear about the fact that it will fix individual problems. I have now invited the member to give the problems to me and they will be fixed.

Katherine Rich: Will he instruct the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to find some way of getting a full set of correct provisional results to these students, and to those from other schools such as Avondale College and Logan Park High School, so they can send them to their tertiary providers or put them on their CVs, because the authority is telling them that they will have to wait until April or May to get their final certificates?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: If I could take one of those questions. It was the mistakes made by the Logan Park High School administration—as the member will know, because she is the member for that area—that was the reason students did not get their results back, not the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, and not the NCEA. That is why the school was apologising in the paper. What would be quite helpful, and I think this was the point raised by Mr Donnelly, is that instead of people looking at NCEA to try to find the obvious one or two mistakes each year, they should applaud the fact that the standards-based system, which everybody in the country who understands assessments supports, is now working as well as one could hope it to work in respect of 1.9 million scripts. If there are individual issues, simply pick up the phone, ring me, and they will be fixed. The system is working.

Katherine Rich: Why should it take a member of Parliament picking up the phone to ring the Minister, when these students have phoned the New Zealand Qualifications Authority time and time again and got some glib response that they are to go to a website, when what they want is their corrected provisional results so they can give them to their employers or their tertiary providers?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I want to reassure the member that one does not have to go through the process of an MP raising these specific issues. I would like the member to give me the case she is talking about, because her predecessor, for example, raised numerous cases, and we could never get the details out of him. But I am hoping she will set a different way of going about this. If she raises these cases and tells us exactly what they are, she will lift her own standards and we can fix them.

Corrections, Minister—Departmental Information

9. RON MARK (NZ First) to the Minister of Corrections: Does he have confidence in the information he receives from his department?

Hon MITA RIRINUI (Associate Minister of Corrections) on behalf of the Minister of Corrections: Yes.

Ron Mark: When the Minister stated on 19 February on Radio New Zealand: “The thing that concerns me is that people assume this is right across the prison system. It is not. This is one unit, perhaps, in Rimutaka.”, had the Department of Corrections informed him that in November 2006 a Canterbury prison officer reported to prison managers that corrupt officers were smuggling in P and up to 28 cellphones per month, and names of officers were provided, and has that management, which is the same management who were responsible for overseeing and running the “goon squad”, briefed him on that incident?

Hon MITA RIRINUI: The member raises a number of issues on which, I am sure, the Minister of Corrections has responded to him directly. There are a couple of matters that are currently subject to investigation, and I am sure the member appreciates that.

Ron Mark: How can he have confidence in the information provided by the Department of Corrections when honest prison officers who take enormous risks reporting allegations of smuggling and corruption to prison managers are, firstly, ignored, secondly, put at risk when the fact that they have passed on that information is deliberately leaked back to the inmates and the officers involved, and, thirdly, suspended and investigated for alleged misdemeanours?

Hon MITA RIRINUI: All allegations and accusations are treated very seriously within the department. I am not familiar with the particular issue the member refers to, but I would be more than happy to follow that up and come back to him with an answer.

Ron Mark: Can the Minister see that as long as the department is run by people such as those who led the “goon squad”, who regionally oversaw and approved of its corrupt and illegal activities, and who at head office level failed to bring that region and its squad to account, seeking instead to justify their decisions not to fire anyone, he will never be able to have confidence in the quality of information provided to him by his department?

Hon MITA RIRINUI: Corruption within the service is not accepted or tolerated.

Electricity Supply—Reliance on Fossil Fuels

10. GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam) to the Minister of Energy: Does the security of electricity supply for the next 20 years rely on the use of unsustainable fossil fuels?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Energy): We expect that the emissions from fossil fuels in the electricity sector will increase very significantly over the years to come as a consequence of the Government’s climate change policies.

Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Did the Minister just say that he expects the emissions to increase, or did he mean decrease?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I thought I said decrease. I made a mistake.

Gerry Brownlee: Does the Minister agree with Dr Keith Turner, the Chief Executive Officer of Meridian Energy, who says that to overcome considerable risk to the reliable power supply of the South Island a new coal-fired thermal plant producing 350 megawatts may be needed?

Hon DAVID PARKER: No, I do not. Indeed, I think the article in the Press that perhaps led to that question in the House is perhaps a misreport. I understand from contact my office had with Meridian Energy today—at Meridian Energy’s behest, not at my prompting—that it was misreported in the Press and that it has no plans for thermal generation.

Gerry Brownlee: So Keith Turner got the big call from the Prime Minister to tell him to get back in his box. Does the Minister agree with Mr Murray Jackson, Chief Executive Officer of Genesis Energy, who says that natural gas is critical to New Zealand’s energy security, with 25 percent of New Zealand’s electrical energy being generated from natural gas?

Hon DAVID PARKER: It certainly is at present and it will be for some time to come. Indeed, as Jeannette Fitzsimons noted earlier in one of her questions, it is inevitable that we will have some reliance on thermal generation for some time into the future. It is, nonetheless, true that E3P will reduce greenhouse gas emissions this year because it will back off coal, and progressively over time we will see marked reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation.

Charles Chauvel: What additional support is the Government giving to renewables generation to improve its viability?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Just prior to Christmas, after Parliament rose, we announced a fund to support and bring forward marine power generation in New Zealand in a similar way to how we have brought forward wind power generation. In addition, the draft New Zealand Energy Strategy has proposed the consolidated call in of renewable geothermal and wind proposals to facilitate consents.

Gerry Brownlee: Why is the Minister so confident that coal use is going to reduce, when chapter 3 of his draft Energy Strategy under the title “Security of Electricity Supply” does not even mention coal, and when Huntly is now a baseload station producing 4,500 megawatts per year—without which this country would see the lights go out?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Because, as is recorded in the draft Energy Strategy, it is abundantly clear that coal is probably the most expensive form of new generation in New Zealand other than nuclear—it is certainly more expensive than gas and renewables.

Peter Brown: Will the Minister put the whole issue in balance and acknowledge that about only 9 percent of New Zealand’s electricity is generated from coal, whilst in the USA it is 50 percent, in Australia it is 75 percent, and China is commissioning a new coal-fired power station every 10 days; and, if that is so, in the light of all this does he agree that it is imperative the world solves the clean-coal technologies?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I certainly agree that coal does not make up the majority of New Zealand’s electricity generation; nor should it, because it is a more expensive option. I agree with the member, though, that in terms of the world’s challenge for climate change, clean-coal technology is very important and deployment of it in countries in Europe, the United States, and China will be important. It is unlikely to be a solution for New Zealand because coal-fired power stations, even without the additional cost of carbon capture and storage, are more expensive.

Gerry Brownlee: If renewable energy from hydro, wind, and geothermal fuel sources is the way of the future, why does the Minister not come out and direct State-owned generators to stop using coal and produce a timetable for the exit of other thermal plants—or does he know that that suggestion would be as silly as the rest of his energy policy?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The reason we do not pick on State-owned enterprises, rather than have wise policy settings across the sector, is that if we banned State-owned enterprises from doing it but did not ban, for example, Contact Energy—not wanting to pick on them—TrustPower, or any other generator from pursuing coal, then if it was more cost-effective for those generators under those policy settings to develop coal they would, and, therefore, emissions would grow.

Electricity Generation—Thermal Stations

11. Dr ASHRAF CHOUDHARY (Labour) to the Minister of Energy: What reports, if any, has he received on plans to build new thermal generation plants?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Energy): The first report is, of course, the one that was in the Press in the last couple of days that Meridian Energy is now disavowing and is saying is incorrect. The second report was in the Sunday Star-Times on 11 February, when Mighty River Power said that in light of the Government’s energy and climate change policies it is unlikely to go ahead with the Marsden B coal-fired plant.

Dr Ashraf Choudhary: Has the Minister received any other reports on approaches to building new thermal generation plants?

Hon DAVID PARKER: In contrast with this Government’s consistent opposition to new coal-fired plants, I have received a report that another party welcomed the Marsden B facility at its inception. That party said it “welcomes the new coal-fired Marsden B …”, and said: “the development of this generation is exactly what New Zealand needs”. That party’s thermal energy spokesperson went so far as to say: “The Government must ensure that it doesn’t let the RMA sink this desperately needed piece of generation.” The party that was promoting coal generation was, of course, the National Party.

Gerry Brownlee: How can the Minister argue that requiring State generators to abandon coal and progressively get out of other forms of thermal generation will in fact give a price advantage to privately owned generators when he goes around the country saying that renewable sources are the cheapest form of generation—is it that for the private sector coal is cheap or is it that for the Government it is expensive—and how does that give consumers any confidence, given that the Government is such a big player in generation and ultimately sets the price that households pay?

Hon DAVID PARKER: That is not what I said. I said it is important that the policy settings are right to dissuade the building of coal-fired generators, be they for the private sector or for the State-owned sector. It is clear that the Government’s climate change policy is having the effect of dissuading anyone from building new coal-fired power stations.

Ingram Report—Review of Immigration Matters

12. Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney) to the Minister of Immigration: Does he continue to claim that he has reviewed the immigration matters covered in the Ingram report?

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Minister of Immigration): Yes. A number of immigration matters are covered in the Ingram report, which I have read on a number of occasions, as previously stated to the member on 12 September, 14 September, and 15 November 2006.

Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith: Would information that Sunan Siriwan was working on Taito Phillip Field’s house in Samoa at the time Mr Field was making representations to the then Associate Minister, Damien O’Connor, on Mr Siriwan’s behalf have been relevant information to the Associate Minister’s decision to issue Mr Siriwan with a work visa?

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Presumably, yes.

Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith: In considering the crucial issue as to the knowledge of the Associate Minister, Damien O’Connor, of Mr Siriwan’s working on Taito Phillip Field’s house in Samoa at the time he signed his letter of 23 June 2005 directing the New Zealand Immigration Service to issue a work visa for Mr Siriwan, would the evidence of the Hon Phil Goff have been relevant, as Mr Goff knew that Mr Siriwan was working on Taito Phillip Field’s house in Samoa, because he had met him there, working on the floor of the house, almost exactly 3 months earlier?

Hon Phil Goff: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I have ignored that member for a long time, but he has constantly misrepresented the truth in this case. At no stage has anybody demonstrated that I knew anything at all about Mr Siriwan, other than the fact that when I, accompanied by a number of senior officials, visited the house being built, there were two workmen in place. What the member is saying is inaccurate.

Madam SPEAKER: Would the member be seated. The member knows, as many members do know, that that was not a point of order.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: The Ingram inquiry found absolutely no evidence of impropriety by the member Mr Phil Goff, and, as the House has heard, Mr Goff strenuously denies that false assertion by the member.

Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith: Is it correct that the Ingram inquiry concluded that the evidence does not support a finding that Mr Field knew that Mr Siriwan was working on his house in Samoa at the time of his final representations to the Associate Minister, Damien O’Connor, on 17 May 2005, yet the Hon Phil Goff knew that Mr Siriwan was working on Mr Field’s house during that time, because, along with Mr Field, he had seen Mr Siriwan screening the floor on 18 March 2005, and had spoken to him about the work he was doing to level the floor in preparation for tiling it?

Hon Phil Goff: I wish to make a personal explanation in relation to the comments the member has just made. Several years ago, when I was visiting Samoa on Government business for meetings with the Samoan Government, I travelled with a large number of people—I think the group might have included the Commissioner of Police from New Zealand—and we called in to the house being constructed for Taito Phillip Field. We looked briefly at the house. I saw two people there. I was introduced to them but I do not recall their names. I have no idea of their background or identity. For the member to say that I knew that a Mr Siriwan was working there is inaccurate. The member should not continue to make statements that he knows to be inaccurate.

Darren Hughes: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. While the Hon Phil Goff was giving his personal explanation to the House, which was meant to be heard in silence, Nick Smith interjected twice. You have given warnings twice today already about members breaking those Standing Orders.

Madam SPEAKER: Yes, and I have given two lots of warnings. So would the members who interjected during that time please leave the Chamber. I did not hear exactly who the members were. The members know. There was interruption during the personal explanation. Would those members please leave the Chamber. I have given two warnings.

Hon Dr Nick Smith withdrew from the Chamber.

Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. It would seem to me that the personal explanation from Mr Goff was not concluded.

Madam SPEAKER: I think he sat down.

Gerry Brownlee: Surely he would want to tell us how he might have corrected Mr Ingram’s conclusions.

Madam SPEAKER: That is not a point of order.

Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith: Did the Hon Phil Goff provide relevant information to the Ingram inquiry on the immigration issue as to whether Taito Phillip Field knew that Sunan Siriwan was working on his house in Samoa at the time of Mr Field’s final meeting with Damien O’Connor and his private secretary on 17 May 2005?

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: In the first place—in answer to the member—the member Phil Goff’s position has been fully covered by his personal explanation. In the second place, Dr Lockwood Smith has advanced no evidence to this House that the Hon Phil Goff had any specific knowledge of people working on Taito Phillip Field’s house. Thirdly, the Ingram inquiry found absolutely no evidence of impropriety by the Hon Phil Goff. And, fourthly, in any case, the Minister of Immigration is not responsible for the statements made to the Ingram inquiry.

Question No. 2 to Minister

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister): Further to question of the day No. 2, I now have the information. I seek leave to table the estimates of the carbon footprints of the Government departments concerned.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

Debate resumed from 15 February.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour): When I finished up my speech last week I was talking about National’s sudden change to style over substance, and about the blatant plagiarism of style from David Cameron in the UK and the blatant plagiarism from Mark Latham of the Australian Labor Party in the Burnside speech. I understand that tomorrow Mr Key is off to Gisborne again. Of course, National had its 3-day caucus meeting in Gisborne. They swanned in, told us how bad we have it in Gisborne and what a sorry state we have it in, and then hermetically sealed themselves inside the Emerald Hotel, which is a hotel and conference venue only recently opened—like so many other developments in Gisborne that were inconceivable until Labour came into Government. They came down and told us how bad we had it and what a sorry state we were in, and they did not bother to go and talk to anyone about it. They got a lot of criticism for that, so now they are going to have to come back and talk to some of the stakeholders in Gisborne.

John Key is a man who obviously never went to Gisborne or the East Coast when his party was last in Government, when unemployment hit 22 percent in Gisborne and when surveys showed that tourists were staying away because they were afraid to come to Gisborne because it was regarded as a place high in unemployment and crime. I could not put it any better than our mayor, Meng Foon, did in his letter to the Prime Minister at the beginning of this year. He stated: “I write to convey my appreciation of all your Government’s policies and the funding support you have given to our region over the past few years. Your Government’s support has certainly given us economic transformation.” I could not put it any better than that.

Of course we still have problems, but we do not need someone with no knowledge of our district swanning in from Auckland to point out what is obvious to those of us who live there every single day. Every community in this country has problems, and I am sick of our community being constantly singled out and being defined by the negatives when I am sure that if Mr Key looked around his community in Parnell, he would find that many, many problems exist there also. I say to the National Party that it is easy to criticise and point out problems; it is far harder to get results, as this Labour-led Government has done.

I want to say three things to John Key, who is becoming “Mr Everything to Everyone” and “Mr I’ll Tell You Exactly What I Think You Want To Hear”, even though he contradicts himself constantly. He told Māori at Rātana that he wants more dialogue and then decided that National’s policy on the Māori seats is that it will not consult Māori at all. Even Dr Brash said he was going to consult Māori on the Māori seats policy. No, John Key does not need to; he is not going to consult them at all. I say that I believed the Māori Party when it said it thought the National Party was going to vote for the Foreshore and Seabed Bill. I believe the Māori Party now, but of course then John Key went to his caucus and they focus-grouped it, and now they have found that it might not be as palatable. So rather than saying he had told Māori that but now he disagrees, he said he had never said it. Maybe he was just being polite—as he was to Dr Michael Cullen in their meeting.

I want to say to John Key that if he is going to visit the worst streets of Gisborne—and I am interested in what streets he thinks are the worst—I want him to be honest and tell any Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants whether he is going to put up their rents. He should not go in there, play volleyball with the kids, and take one of them for a ride in his limousine, then not tell them—and deliberately mislead them—about the fact that his party’s policy could see their rents rise 140 percent, like they did last time his party was in Government. I want him to apologise for his party’s policies of the 1990s that saw the percentage of children in sole parent families living in poverty go from 15 percent to 63 percent after the “mother of all Budgets”, and saw the percentage of children living in families where an income-tested benefit was the main source of income go from 25 percent to 75 percent overnight. I want him to apologise to those families if he now cares about them so much.

I want to tell him—and I want to hear him say it—that he is never, ever going to implement those policies again, that the National Party has admitted that those policies were a failure and that they were destructive to New Zealand, and that they are never going back there again. But do members know, I do not think we are going to hear that, because, as Chris Trotter pointed out—and it is a very good point—why are all the big right-wing backers of Mr Key and the National Party not crying out about his sudden lurch to the left? Why are they not very concerned about where this National Party is going? The answer is because they know it is not true. They know that what he is saying is not what the National Party will do if it gets into Government.

I am very cynical, because I think the reason the National Party members are talking about an underclass is not because they care about it; it is because they want to make the rest of New Zealand afraid of it. They want to make people—as Jenny Shipley said when she talked about Pacific Islanders crawling in people’s windows—scared about a growing underclass. They want to drive another wedge. They used Māori in the last election; they will use the poor and disadvantaged of this country at the next election. I say to Mr Key that at the end of the day, it does not matter how nicely he says it. It does not matter whether he changes his tone. It does not matter what politically correct shirt he wears. At the end of the day, it is substance and policy that put food on the table and a roof over people’s heads. The people of New Zealand deserve to hear the truth from John Key.

PITA PARAONE (NZ First): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Are you aware that New Zealand First will be splitting its speech time?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): I will give you a bell at 1 minute.

PITA PARAONE: Ā, engari e tika ana, ko te mea tuatahi e mihi kau ana ki a tātou e hui tahi i te wiki nei ahakoa ko tēnei te wiki tuarua. Engari e tika ana kia mihi atu ki a koutou mō te tau hōu.

[It is apt that the first thing to do is to extend greetings to us as we meet together this week, even though it is the second one. This aside, greetings for the New Year to you.]

As was outlined in my leader’s speech last Tuesday, New Zealand First believes in climate change—namely, economic and social. That is what we are asking this Parliament in 2007 to begin and to deliver. The Prime Minister in her statement leading off this debate outlined to the House that the Government has a challenge to sustain family and community living standards. We in New Zealand First believe that the challenge facing this Parliament is not to merely sustain family and community living standards but to dramatically improve those standards. One of the areas by which New Zealand’s community living standards can be measured is the standard of housing available to its people, especially the availability of housing for the people who can least afford it. Although the State housing stock is slowly being restored after being slashed by the Government during the 1990s, the percentage of the stock being made available to New Zealanders is declining, and although some refugee and migrant families are worthy recipients of State housing, the fact that the scales continue to slip away from New Zealanders is of great concern to New Zealand First.

Beyond the State housing stock we need to move to increase the stock of affordable housing. As our leader alluded to in his speech, the appalling rate of savings in this country is the key driver of sky rocketing interest rates and house prices. If our savings rates were higher, interest rates would be lower and many more people would be able to afford to buy houses. New Zealand First has made no secret of its desire for a compulsory savings scheme. Many will recall that our support for the New Zealand superannuation legislation—now commonly known as the Cullen fund—was dependent on the inclusion of a clause to enable accounts to be individualised as a step towards enabling it to be made compulsory in the future. We will continue to campaign for compulsory savings and to hope that some cross-party consensus is reached sooner rather than later for the betterment of this country.

New Zealand First secured an independent inquiry on rates last year that will look at the factors driving the steep rates increases that have been of such concern to superannuitants and others on fixed and modest incomes.

I want to include in my short contribution to this debate the area of Māori affairs. I mentioned earlier the need to improve family and community living standards. I acknowledge that in the area of Māori affairs improvements have occurred in employment and education. But there is still a terrible need to improve in these areas, as Māori still feature at the bottom of the social indices of our country. The recent reports on Māori male school-leaver underachievement do not paint a pretty picture for the future of Māoridom.

I want to take this opportunity to support recent comments made by the principal of that fine Māori boys’ boarding school in Feilding, Hato Paora College, Mr Tihirau Shepherd, who stated that parents—and, indeed, families—needed to take more responsibility for their children’s education, rather than opposing the present system. And while I am talking about Māori boarding schools, given their immense contribution to Māori educational achievement, one can only wonder why no support is given to the boarding facilities of these schools.

During the sitting period, the first reading of my member’s bill, entitled the Treaty of Waitangi (Removal of Conflict of Interest) Amendment Bill, will be debated. I hope that during the debate members of this House will hear the pros and cons of it and support it going to a select committee.

RON MARK (NZ First): Firstly, I welcome all members back to Parliament—I know we are into the second week of the House’s sittings, but this is my first opportunity to speak. I trust that everyone is rested. I would like to pass on my thanks and the thanks of my partner to the people of the far north. We had the opportunity to holiday up in Whananaki, at Winston’s home, and in Matauri Bay, with Dover and his whanaunga. We had the opportunity to spend time up at Whangaroa—and what a beautiful place that is. I thank very much Doug and Robyn Gower for their hospitality.

I also spent a bit of time camping down in the South Island, in Canterbury. The downside of that holiday experience was that, once again, I found myself the victim of crime. Although I could cry in my teacup about what that feels like, when I inspected my property and found that once again it had been burgled and that once again we had lost property—that makes it about the 12th or 15th time that rural property of mine has been burgled—I was reminded of the reason why people do not report crime. It is that quite often there is no point, because quite often when people report a crime to the police very little happens. They simply get a number to quote to their insurance company, and they get on and make the claim. If people in a particular area do not have insurance or if it is not worth insuring something because the premiums are so high, then there is no reason to report the crime. This time, however, we did report the crime. This was done out of recognition of the fact that if people do not report such crimes, the statistics look bad. I have long said in this House on behalf of New Zealand First that the reason some of the statistics that have been quoted in this House look as good as they do and have been painted positively is that two-thirds of crime in this country still goes unreported—my source is the victimisation reports that get tabled in this House, too infrequently for my satisfaction.

New Zealand First will again be focusing on law and order, and we hope to do so in as constructive a manner as is possible with the Government, in line with the confidence and supply agreement we have with it. In that respect, it behoves me, having listened to much of the rhetoric after the festive season about corruption in prisons, again to remind the Minister that he is not being briefed of all the facts. The question I asked in the House today was based on information passed to me by a prison officer, and supported by other people, that corruption is again rife not just in Rimutaka Prison and Waikeria Prison but also in Canterbury. I remind the House, and the Minister—who is, after all, the sixth or seventh Minister of Corrections; I have lost count of the number we have had—that although we have a chief executive officer in the Department of Corrections who is new in the job, underpinning him essentially are all the same people who were responsible for the activities of the infamous “goon squad”, defined by Ailsa Duffy QC as being not only corrupt but illegal, and I remind the Minister that no one was fired. If the Minister has any doubt about or any reason to wonder why the information he gets on occasion is embarrassingly wrong, he need look no further than the people who are advising him. We in New Zealand First have long said that a clean broom needs to go through the Department of Corrections. I am going to take it upon myself, on behalf of New Zealand First, to take some things to the Minister and encourage him to get out the broom and start cleaning out the department.

At the same time as I do that, we will be pushing the Government to ensure that our target of 1,000 extra police is achieved by 2008. I will also be pressuring this House, from a New Zealand First perspective, to pass our Youth Offenders (Serious Crimes) Bill so that we might give ourselves a chance in this country to come to grips with violent youth crime. I congratulate Judge Boshier on his brave and courageous statements in the paper over the weekend. I encourage him to step forward and inform his Government and the Ministry of Justice that all is not well in the Youth Court. All is not well in youth justice, and we need to lower the age of criminal responsibility to 12 in order to save—and I say “save”—some young people. To allow them to enter a life of crime and rack up 40, 50, or 80 appearances in front of the police only to then wonder why we are imprisoning them at the age of 21 for murder is a crime in itself. We are ducking our responsibilities if we do not do this.

Hon DAVID CARTER (National): It is a pleasure to follow Mr Ron Mark from New Zealand First in this debate, because in the next day or two that member will have the opportunity to put his money where his mouth is. I understand that in the Justice and Electoral Committee, National members of Parliament are calling for a select committee inquiry that can finally resolve the inadequacies of the Department of Corrections. Whether that select committee inquiry proceeds will be based entirely on the vote of Ron Mark. So he can come into this House day in and day out protesting and questioning the Minister, but he will now finally have a chance to do something about it. I will be watching his vote, as will many New Zealand First voters throughout the country.

I start by welcoming to our caucus Katrina Shanks. She was dealt a fairly harsh blow at the last election: she was an MP for just over 1 week. When the final results came in she held her head high, and I think it is great that we now see her as a member of our caucus. I also record my thanks to Don Brash, who departed as a member of Parliament over the Christmas break, and say he did a remarkable job for the National Party. He took us from 20 percent in the polls to nearly being in Government, and I assure the Government side of the House that this party intends to build on that success and make sure that at the 2008 election there is no doubt at all that National will be the Government.

A week is a long time in politics when we consider that it is now just over a week ago that the Prime Minister stood here and gave a very boring 35-minute speech. The buzzword on that occasion was a new one—I give her that—sustainability. I watched with interest the body language of the Labour members of Parliament as they listened to that rather turgid, boring speech. They knew that the Prime Minister, who has delivered, to date, seven such speeches, has, at best, only one more of these shocking speeches to deliver before the next election.

Darren Hughes: Three elections down; two to go!

Hon DAVID CARTER: I say to Darren Hughes that I took the opportunity to go back over some of the earlier speeches made by Helen Clark. They are full of buzzwords and rhetoric, and there is no substance to them, at all. When she first started delivering speeches in this Parliament she used to use the word “integrity”. It is a shame that she certainly cannot use that word now amongst New Zealanders without a huge smile coming across all their faces, because they know that her party totally lacks integrity.

The next buzzword we see is the term “economic transformation”. We had a couple of years during which the Prime Minister used to try to tell us that the film industry would replace New Zealand agriculture as the basis of the economy. We all know that that did not happen, and never was going to happen. This year she came to the House with her eighth Prime Minister’s statement and began the parliamentary year by talking about sustainability.

Darren Hughes: Good idea!

Hon DAVID CARTER: Darren Hughes says it is a good idea! She was livid by the time she watched the 6 o’clock news that night, because she realised that by raising the issue of sustainability the question on everybody’s lips was how sustainable the Labour caucus is. Taito Phillip Field, whom the Prime Minister had said was simply a little over enthusiastic in the way he represented his constituents, had the audacity to question the Labour Party and its loyalty to him. The response was that he was sacked immediately, and all of a sudden the voting majority of this Government looked questionable.

So I want to talk about the sustainability of Labour. Today we found out that Helen Clark is now on record as saying that Taito Phillip Field is immoral and unethical, yet the Labour members of this House are prepared to grab the vote of a member who is unethical and immoral, according to their own Prime Minister’s statement. So that says it all about Labour, as it desperately tries to hang on to power and limps to the next election midway through 2008.

Let us look at some of the other less sustainable aspects of the Labour caucus between now and 2008. A number of its members are on the chopping-block. Jim Sutton was told to go late last year, and was replaced by “Champagne Charlie” Chauvel, whom I welcome back to the House. I see he is here this week; I did not see him around last week. Georgina Beyer was told to go, to be replaced—

Darren Hughes: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): The member knows—

Darren Hughes: I want to raise two points of order, Madam Assistant Speaker. The first point of order is that every member must be referred to by his or her full name, not in any other way. Secondly, one cannot refer to the absence of members.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): The member is quite right. The member will call members by their correct names, and he will withdraw and apologise.

Hon DAVID CARTER: I withdraw and apologise. I welcome Charles Chauvel back as part of the rejuvenation process of the Labour caucus. The next one is Lesley Soper. Labour did not think much of her after she had been here in the last term; it dumped her way down the list. She is here today only because Georgina has left this place. Then we have a few others still to go. When will Dover Samuels go? The Prime Minister sacked him only because he was accused of wrongful action—it was never proven by the police. We have Russell Fairbrother, who was identified by the Prime Minister as being dog tucker in the Labour caucus. There is Jill Pettis still to go; there is Dianne Yates—the list never ends. The interesting thing to do is to look at who possibly might replace them, and I think to do so will provide the only hope that some of the deadwood on that side of the House has. There is very little talent still to come in.

I looked at the Labour Party lists, and when Dover Samuels, Jill Pettis, or Russell Fairbrother gets the final nod, the next one in is Louisa Wall. Louisa Wall is the only one on the first half-dozen places of Labour’s list who does not appear to have active union affiliation. She happens to be a policy analyst with the Human Rights Commission—almost as bad. The next person on the list is Su’a William Sio, who, by his own blog, is a personal friend of Taito Phillip Field. The first thing he will be told to do this afternoon is to get that statement off his blog. He has good Labour Party affiliations—good union affiliations. Let me quote from Su’a William Sio’s personal statement on the Labour Party website: “I believe my services in the Labour Party, the trade union movement in both New Zealand and the South Pacific region, have prepared me to advocate strongly for the above points and add value to Labour’s Parliamentary team …”. The only thing stopping Helen Clark from proceeding to get rid of the deadwood on the Government side of the House is that the people on the list who would replace them are certainly no better and provide no rejuvenation whatsoever to a tired, tired Labour Government.

I have not mentioned one or two others who need to be mentioned, and, of course, I cannot go without mentioning the Hon Damien O’Connor, the Minister of Corrections. He was totally missing over the Christmas break when we had the dreadful Burton affair. An innocent person was killed, and Damien O’Connor could not be found anywhere to even comment on the issue of Burton being let out on parole, even when the police were asking that he be recalled.

Of course, the other Minister who must be on borrowed time is the Hon Dr Michael Cullen, the man who raised the idea of a mortgage tax, only to be shot down in flames by his own leader.

Hon Parekura Horomia: No, he didn’t.

Hon DAVID CARTER: I say to that member that I was listening to Morning Report, and, yes, the Minister did raise the issue of a mortgage tax. He suggested that it was an idea worthy of investigation. He was completely annihilated immediately by Helen Clark, who knew that such an idea was political suicide. So how long can that Minister stay on as deputy leader, when he openly disagrees with the leader of the Labour Party? I will tell members again what saves Dr Cullen: there is nobody with any talent at all to take the job from him. The pretender Trevor Mallard does not have a show. He is the guy who blotted his copybook by talking about a stadium on the waterfront. That will be what saves Labour members—the machinations of trying to carry out the rejuvenation process. They are bereft of talent in caucus, they are bereft of talent outside caucus, and they will see that there is an ability to rejuvenate after the 2008 election, when National is on the Government side of the House and the remaining Labour members are over here.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister): That was a classic National Party speech in this debate—10 minutes long and not a single policy, not a single positive statement. Let me say one thing to the member. If he had listened to Morning Report that day, he would have heard Bill English say at 8 a.m. that it was an idea worth considering and say by 9 a.m. that it could not possibly be done at all. That was, even for Bill English, a quick flip-flop, and it showed the clear choice that this country faces—on the one hand an experienced and effective Government, with strong positions and policies for the future, and on the other hand an unprincipled and weak National Party, with a co-leadership of “Mr Empty” and “Mr Angry”.

Let us deal with the Government first. We have a stronger, fairer, more confident nation than we had 7 years ago. One can visit any provincial centre and feel and see the difference. Tomorrow and Thursday Mr Key will be in Gisborne, trying to make up for the fact that when the National caucus went there it spent all its time having a good time and not visiting anybody, so he has to go back. I do not know what designer T-shirt he will wear in Gisborne; it will be interesting to see.

We have had uninterrupted economic growth—the second-longest period since the Second World War. In employment, we have created 330,000-odd more jobs. We have the second-lowest rate of unemployment in the OECD. National said we could never get the unemployment rate down below 4 percent. In terms of skills, we have Modern Apprenticeships and industry training, and we have had a major revamp of the tertiary education system. The Working for Families programme is reducing by 70 percent the number of children living below the poverty line. New Zealand superannuation was increased in the first step we took as a Government and has been maintained at that higher level ever since. Through the primary health care system there are cheaper visits to the doctor and cheaper prescriptions. The total crime rate has actually reduced under this Government.

Now we need to move to the next stage—the stage of putting in place, in a range of areas, key sustainability policies that will see New Zealand into the long term. We have done so in relation to New Zealand superannuation with the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, and now we need to move on the issues of the environment and climate change, because our long-term goal must be to be carbon neutral. The Opposition has poured scorn on the long-term goal and asks when it will be: “Will it be 15 August 2010; if so, how are we going to get there by that time?”. Well, we have to be carbon neutral at some point. The Opposition does not seem to understand that particular, very simple environmental point. We have to deal with the damage that has been caused over the last 50 years in particular, and 200 years in general, to our environment. That is a goal that all members ought to share; all National can do is try to make up its mind as to what it thinks about the issue in the first place.

In the area of savings and investment, KiwiSaver comes in on 1 July this year. We will need to think about further moves to ensure that we promote savings and investment in New Zealand. We have changed the tax laws already in order to reduce the overtaxation on low-income earners—those earning below $38,000 a year—who manage to save, and we have put in place a fairer offshore investment regime. We need to think about the next steps to build a stronger savings culture in this country. There is no point in whingeing about foreign ownership if we are not saving enough to generate our own investment in our own country. We need to build our national identity more, which is not to build a midi-America but to build a better New Zealand. That is what this party in Government stands for.

Against that is the empty rhetoric of the new co-leadership. Mr English, of course, claims to be the brains of the team, but we can see that that is not a high claim to make when we look at the other half of the team. Mr English says that he does the policy and writes the speeches. He boasted that he wrote the Burnside speech because Mr Key did not know anything about social policy. Well, going on what was inside the Burnside speech, Mr English did not know much about social policy, either. Mr Key is there to provide the veneer, but beneath that veneer there is nothing. We used to ask in politics: “Where’s the beef?”; with Mr Key we ask: “Where’s the wood—what is actually below that veneer?”. He has an extraordinary ability to take no firm stand on anything at all. He is all veneer, no wood; all surface, no substance; all gloss, no paint. That is Mr Key.

In the Burnside speech he had two ideas. The first was to have a bit of coordination with the voluntary sector, and to show how important that was he put in charge of it—who? Was it one of the front-benchers? Was it one of the key figures? No, it was Paula Bennett, a person unknown in the community at large—never heard of. Most people who come from where I come from probably think she is Gordon Bennett’s daughter. Secondly, he had a food-in-schools programme—and then he did not have a food-in-schools programme, because he discovered we already have a Fruit in Schools programme that he did not know about—

Hon Member: Gone by lunchtime.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Gone by lunchtime indeed was the food-in-schools programme. The “Muesli Bar Kid”, John Key, vanished completely into the air, never to be seen again in that particular respect. There will be a new T-shirt on, a new visit, a new issue, a new photo opportunity.

And what of the underclass? Mr Key ventured forth from his three sections in Parnell and discovered there was an underclass. There was no connection between one and the other, no doubt, in his own view of these matters. Well, I could have told him that; there has always been an underclass in our kind of society. But what is his policy? From this Government on 1 April there will be a $10-per-week per child increase in family support to all families that qualify for the family support tax credit. Mr Key’s policy was to repeal that increase and to replace it with a tax cut for himself, for me, and for all members of this House. What does he want? Does he want 3½ sections in Parnell? Is that his actual approach to social policy for the future of New Zealand? There is no real substance.

What did he say of Iraq? He said that it was too far away to judge the best course of action. This is from a man who used to bet millions, if not billions, of dollars of other people’s money in terms of Iraq’s international effects on the financial markets, yet suddenly when he is the leader of the National Party Iraq is too far away to know what the course of action should be for a New Zealand Government. That gives people confidence about what kind of Prime Minister he might be!

What of the Hollow Men conspiracies? John Key has claimed to know nothing. He knew so little that he has claimed he did not open the key email addressed to him that told him everything. It actually was headed with what it was about, but he has said he deliberately did not open it. That was interesting, and nobody followed that up.

What does John Key think of climate change? He claims he did not say that it was a complete and utter hoax. What he did say was that he was somewhat suspicious of it—that he was not even sure there was a problem. Then he said, only a year later, that the risks were serious and that climate change had to be dealt with.

What about the Springbok Tour? He cannot remember what position he had on that tour, as a 19-year-old in New Zealand in 1981—give me a break on that one! What about the Foreshore and Seabed Bill? He led Tariana Turia and the Māori Party to believe he would vote for it, then he said he would vote against it. What about all those new monetary policy instruments, whereby he was first on one side and then on the other?

His index finger is wearing away from the number of times he is licking it so as to stick it up in the wind to see what his opinion ought to be on every kind of issue. What connects all this is the fact that he does not want to be firm on anything in case he loses a single vote on any position he might take. One gets away with that for only a brief period of time.

So we have gone from Mr English, who became incredible for saying things he did not believe, which were mad right-wing slogans, to Dr Brash, who became incredible for saying things he did not believe, because they were centrist and he was a mad right-winger, to Mr Key, who is becoming incredible for saying nothing except for empty slogans that nobody is supposed to disbelieve. The ultimate thing he is trying to aim for is a slogan that no one will disbelieve but that adds up to a picture of nothingness—a sort of photograph of a white ghost in a snowstorm. That is his position on every issue.

We are told by a senior member of the press gallery that Mr Key is still on his honeymoon and should not yet be asked any hard questions. Well, that is a dodgy basis for a long-term relationship with the electorate. The truth is that there are no answers. Mr English is the puppet master, but what Mr English has not quite realised yet is that there is actually no puppet. When he finally realises that, he will utter again those famous words: “Why not me?”.

NATHAN GUY (National): It is with pleasure that I rise this afternoon and wish my colleagues a happy New Year, and I extend good wishes to our newest member of the National caucus, Katrina Shanks, who will be giving her maiden speech anytime shortly. I welcome Katrina. She did a fantastic job in Ohariu-Belmont and was not far away from taking that seat. I believe that in the 2008 election, Katrina Shanks will take it. I welcome Katrina and her colleagues into the House this afternoon.

It is a special occasion for me that I can follow on from the Minister of Finance—“Mr Mortgage Tax”, or “Mr Chewing Gum Tax Cut”. He is someone who is on the way out, like this Government, which is extremely tired, and has a lack of ideas and a lack of vision. Prime Minister Helen Clark, in her address last week, mentioned the word “sustainability” 33 times. That is obviously the key word, and that is how this Government thinks it will get back into power for a fourth term. The Greens are holding up in their poll rating, and Labour members have worked out, with their little bit of polling, that if they scare people into thinking that icebergs are going to float up their street, their creek, or their canal, that climate change will hurt everyone. So we heard the Prime Minister mention sustainability 33 times. Her address last week was full of slogans, without any detail.

Last week I was walking across the street when a person yelled out to me. He said: “Hey, Nathan!”. I turned round and saw an old university colleague of mine crossing the street. I stopped and shook his hand. But it was not his normal hand, because he was wearing a brace, out from his shoulder down to his elbow, and had things screwed into his arm. I said to him: “What’s happened to you?”. He said: “I’ve been shot.” I said: “Shot?”. He said: “Yeah, have you heard of Graeme Burton?”. This is a true story. I said: “Yes.” He said: “Well, I was out on my mountain bike, with a mate of mine, happily on a Sunday afternoon.”—I think it was. He was riding through the tracks on his mountain bike, going flat out, and came around a corner and came across a person who had been shot dead by Graeme Burton, and stabbed. He could not stop quickly enough to help this person. He braked, locked up his bike, and there was Graeme Burton. He cycled away as quickly as he could. Graeme Burton had a shotgun, full of buckshot, and blew the bone in this person’s arm into seven pieces; he blew it apart.

This Government’s stance on parole is hopeless. What did we see from Damien O’Connor when Graeme Burton was running large in the hills above Wellington? Nothing. A colleague of mine, whom I went to university with, was out having a joyride on his mountain bike, and had the bone in his upper arm blown to bits in seven places, and this Government is silent. We thought that even the Prime Minister would get tough on the Parole Board. We thought there would be something in her state of the nation address. But there was nothing. There were more words, more slogans, but they did not address the core issues for this country. Yet she comes out and talks about selling the VIP car fleet, because that will save $500,000 in 3 years’ time. That will reduce our carbon emissions. What will happen? This fleet of cars will be sold on the open market in New Zealand, and another New Zealander will buy them. So we are going to move into vehicles powered by bio-diesel. I cannot wait to see Parekura Horomia trying to fit himself into one of those vehicles, powered by biofuels.

When we are talking about climate change, what about the people involved in forestry? What about those people who are scared of this Government bringing in a tax for changing land use? Whereas farmers or landowners might have been going to harvest their trees at 28 or 30 years’ maturity, they are now out there firing up their chainsaws as we speak, because this Government is going to impose a $13,000 a hectare tax on changing land use from trees. Under this Government we have a terrible wishy-washy policy on climate change. It is all over the place. The Government has scared foresters and landowners who want to steal the carbon credits. It has forced them to fire up their chainsaws, and more pine trees are being felled in this country now than are being replaced. The Government needs to look very hard at itself, because it is the one that has inflicted this terrible deforestation that our country is incurring.

I thought that the Prime Minister’s statement would be great. I thought that surely she would mention something about the backbone of our economy—surely she would mention something about the farming sector, which I am pretty passionate about. [Interruption] I say to Mr Hughes, who represents the most marginal seat of Otaki, that the Prime Minister had one sentence about farming, on page 4 of her address. She said, when talking about emissions: “In agriculture part of the answer lies in changing farming practice now, …”. There were no ideas; no solutions.

Darren Hughes: What are yours? Give us one.

NATHAN GUY: No, why should we divulge now all the things we are proposing, when Labour members have had 8 long years. They are hopeless. That is why they will all be gone. They will be packing their bags. They will be down in numbers in 2008.

It is interesting to see that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is out there, looking for more employees to go and sell the Labour Party’s climate change policy. The ministry employs 1,500 staff and it is now looking for an extra three to get out there and sell this climate change policy. The ministry spends $1.2 million a year on public relations consultants, yet it wants to go out and employ more people. I cannot work that out.

Today we asked the Minister of Finance about carbon neutrality. We asked to hear from him about the six departments that are going to reduce their carbon footprints by 2012. There was nothing. He is absolutely hopeless. What we see from this Government is that it is now going to hang on to power by the one proxy vote that Taito Phillip Field—who the Prime Minister says is unstable, unethical and immoral—will give it. The Government is going to hang on to the thin thread of power by one proxy vote, from someone who, more than likely, will end up in court. The courts have a long list of cases, because the Government cannot solve the problems, and I believe it will take 12 to 15 months before Taito Phillip Field appears in court. This Government is going to hang on by a little thread—one proxy vote from Taito Phillip Field.

It is also interesting to see in the Prime Minister’s statement that 2007 is the year of the exporter. Well, well, well! Are not exporters struggling? There is a high dollar. What is this Government doing about that? What is the Government doing about farmers, who are the backbone of this country? Sheep farmers are now finding that this is a 7-year low for them as $25 has gone off the lamb schedule, yet this Government says that this is the year of the exporter. The rural economy is going to close its cheque book, lock it in the top drawer, and provincial towns around New Zealand will feel that.

I was really interested to hear Paul Hargreaves, the former boss of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, say on Radio New Zealand National this morning that the institute could forecast floods 12 to 36 hours quicker than MetService, yet MetService has the contract to do the weather forecasting for heavy flood warnings in New Zealand. We have two Government departments, run by different Ministers, that cannot get together and forecast our flood areas. If that had been the case in 2004, if the institute had had the opportunity to forecast flooding, I think we would not have been in the same situation then, whereby one farmer in the Manawatū lost 3,500 lambs in that flood. I think that is shocking. It is bureaucracy gone mad. We have the technology to forecast flooding in this country, and the Labour Government cannot sort it out between Steve Maharey and the Minister for State Owned Enterprises, whose name I have forgotten.

Just to sum up, this Government is on its last legs. I look forward to seeing the end of it. Its members are tired. They do not have any ideas at all. I think the most important thing for National is that we have rejuvenated, and I welcome Katrina Shanks into our caucus.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Minister for Building and Construction): For the uninitiated who are listening to this on radio, I say that the last speaker was one Nathan Guy who harks from a province near here. I was very interested in his speech. I know he is a new member, but he asked what his role is. He was challenged by members on this side of the House to provide one policy in his speech. He was not equal to that challenge; he had not one policy, not half a policy—he said it was not National’s role. What is the role of an Opposition? Well, apart from Opposition members sitting on their backsides and claiming 120 grand a year, the role of Opposition members is, yes, to oppose. That is the natural role of an Opposition. One would have thought that after 7½—nigh on 8—years in Opposition Nathan Guy, who is part of the new world order, with a few of the other “newies” who have come in on that side of the House, would be told to get up and put out an agenda and a policy.

Michael Cullen used a very interesting phrase. I will give Nathan Guy a little history lesson. In American politics, every candidate for leadership goes through a particular phase. Michael Cullen used the term for it; it is called the “where is the beef?” moment, or “where is the substance?”, or “where is the policy?”. National members can go with the “slick willy” routine. They can paint John Key with as many coats of varnish as they want, but at some time he will come to that American political moment when he has to come up with the beef. He will run out of stunts like the one at Waitangi where he used a young Māori girl. I have never in my life seen such a blatant use of a young person in politics. As Shane Jones said in his address, the kaumātua nailed him and told him not to bring a pet up there. He got nailed at Waitangi on that. Then there was the so-called food in schools stunt. He got unzipped, slit open, and stitched back up again because he tried to pull a fast one not only on that principal and that school but on our communities.

John Key, of course, is a person who thinks in transactions. He was a foreign-exchange dealer: a man who made his pile as a junk bond dealer trading down the Kiwi dollar. He thinks in transactions. As Michael Cullen said, when John Key was asked what his position as a 19-year-old was on the 1981 Springbok Tour, he thought about it as a transaction. He thought that if he said he was for it, he would maybe brass off a historic group in the community; if he said he was agin it, he would probably alienate a few others; but if he told the truth and said what he believed—if he knew what he believed—then he might show some leadership. He copped out and took both plan A and plan B. He could not even answer when asked the simple question—and I am not moralising here, as a not-very-good Catholic myself—of whether he believed in God; he thought in transactions. He could not quite—after four attempts—give a straight answer.

Mr English says he is hand in glove with Mr Key, and I believe him. Mr Key is the glove puppet and we all know where Mr English’s hand resides. It resides right in that glove puppet. We know who writes the speeches. I say that the Prime Minister—unlike the Opposition—set out an agenda. She reminded this Opposition that we have the second-lowest unemployment in the OECD and that we have created 330,000 jobs as a nation. I ask people to ask what National did when they were in power for nigh on a decade. We re-created, recrystallised, and backed our young people with apprenticeships after National had destroyed apprenticeships. Lockwood Smith gets up in Parliament and says he is proud of the fact that he did over and destroyed the Apprenticeship Act.

We backed our young people. We backed our elderly folk with a sustainable policy. The Opposition hates that word “sustainable”, because it cuts to the quick of the shallowness and the hollowness of every member on that side who cannot, in every speech in this debate, come up with one policy idea. They lambaste us for talking about sustainability. They lambaste us for saying what we believe and that we are going to promote policies and ideas that will protect our environment. In doing that we do a simple thing: we protect our communities, we protect our social fabric, and we protect our natural and public environment.

They lambaste us for putting a policy agenda on the table in our third term in office. But when challenged, would the hollow men, the hollowed-out crew, over there give us one answer, one idea, or one thought? Even if they cannot give us a policy, can they give just a thought to say they had an idea they wanted to kick around with the communities? Not one of them will front up. They are great superstars with their wonderful careers in the private sector. They are great intellects who wandered into Parliament. They are the disappointed men who were lawyers and trade ambassadors on the outside and now, of course, they sit languishing over there, not quite realising their dreams and their ambitions.

There is intellect over there somewhere. They hide it well, but it may be there. I challenge them. They have had a Prime Minister’s statement setting an agenda and setting a number of policies: what we are going to do in the transport area, how we are going to take apprenticeships to the next level, and how we are going to sort out things close to my heart—energy efficiency and health and safety within housing. They have all our ideas, and, unlike Nathan Guy, we are not afraid to put them out there. We believe we actually get paid to propose and to challenge our communities with policies and ideas.

I say to Nathan Guy that if he wants to know how to earn his pay, he should go back to wherever he came from, go out and do a clinic occasionally, speak to more than his little inner circle of the silk suit - wearing brigade, and ask the communities what they think. Maybe he should go out and apologise for what he did in the last election when he made jokes about climate change and laughed about sustainability. Maybe he can go back to where he comes from and answer the challenge of why, for 9 years, National members have denied there is a problem in the environment. For 9 years they said it was a joke—it was smoke and mirrors. The man who walks in now was the proponent of that, and now they have had a road to Damascus experience. Suddenly they believe it—but only because it is politically palatable.

Madam SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired. The question is that Heather Roy’s amendment be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question that all the words after the word “That” be omitted and the following substituted: “this House has no confidence in the Government, which is in denial about the real issues confronting New Zealanders, keeping families dependent on government, and stands between our people and prosperity.”

JOHN KEY (Leader of the Opposition): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I notice that the Labour Party has just exercised a proxy vote for Taito Phillip Field. You will recall that this afternoon in Parliament there was quite an extended debate about the definition of “public business”, so I assume that under Standing Order 156(4)(d) the Labour Party will be claiming that the vote is being exercised on the basis that Mr Field is on public business. I wonder whether that would be an opportunity for you to reflect whether Mr Field is, in fact, on public business. We know that yesterday he was interviewed by the police. This is a wonderful opportunity for you, Madam Speaker, to give us an indication as to whether you think that is the case.

Madam SPEAKER: I thank the member. I did rule on this, as the member indicated earlier. The whips’ word has to be accepted concerning the casting of a proxy vote, and it is.

RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I am very happy to accept the Labour Party whip’s word. I just want to know what the word is. Is the Labour Party whip saying that Taito Phillip Field is on public business or is he saying that Taito Phillip Field has told him he is on public business? What word is it that we are actually accepting here?

Madam SPEAKER: The member, Mr Field, has indicated he wishes his vote to be exercised in this way by the Government whip. It has been exercised. Mr Field knows what the rules are. His word is taken, as is the Government whip’s word.

RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker.

Madam SPEAKER: I have ruled on that matter.

RODNEY HIDE: I am sorry; I know that. I would hate to upset you at this stage. I know that we are accepting the member’s word for how the vote is to be cast. I know that we are accepting his word that he is happy for the Labour Party to cast it, but what I do not understand is that as the requirement is for Taito Phillip Field to be on public business, are we accepting the word of the Labour Party whip that Taito Phillip Field is on public business?

Madam SPEAKER: Mr Field knows what the rules are. He knows he has to be on public business to enable the Government to cast his proxy vote. I have accepted his word, and, obviously, the Government whip has accepted his word. I have accepted it because that has been accepted. So that, as far as I am concerned, is the end of the matter.

TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Māori Party): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Under subparagraph (i) of Standing Order 156(d) anybody can be away from Parliament “for illness or other family cause of a personal nature,” but that has not been raised. The issue being raised now is whether he is away on public business, and it has been very clear that he has given his vote to the Labour Party whip. He has said that publicly, and if he is away on business that is of a personal nature, that is allowed. It was certainly allowed to me when I was on my own. So I cannot see what the argument is about, actually.

Madam SPEAKER: As I said, it is for the member to decide whether he wishes to have his vote cast through proxy, with the Government whip in this instance. The member knows the rules. I have accepted the word of the member.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker.

Madam SPEAKER: I am sorry; but you were asked to leave the Chamber till the end of the day. I am not sure what you are doing here but I am sure someone else will raise your point.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: You change the rules to suit yourself.

Madam SPEAKER: No, I do not. I gave an instruction to that effect and I am sorry if it did not get through to you.

That all the words after the word “That” be omitted and the following substituted: “this House has no confidence in the Government, which is in denial about the real issues confronting New Zealanders, keeping families dependent on government, and stands between our people and prosperity.”

Ayes 50

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 2.

Noes 61

New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand First 7; United Future 3; Progressive 1; Independent: Field.

Abstentions 10

Green Party 6; Māori Party 4.

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question,

A party vote was called for on the question, That this House has no confidence in the Government led by Helen Clark because it lacks any vision or purpose apart from getting re-elected, it refuses to be accountable or responsible for the public services it oversees, it is tired and bereft of ideas, and all it can offer New Zealand is a collection of empty slogans.

Ayes 50

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 2.

Noes 61

New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand First 7; United Future 3; Progressive 1; Independent: Field.

Abstentions 10

Green Party 6; Māori Party 4.

Motion not agreed to.

Points of Order

Taito Phillip Field—Absence

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I think an issue has arisen that does require your further consideration. It relates to the matter of leave provided to Taito Phillip Field. Because what has been discussed this afternoon is that a member can be given leave from this Parliament for public business, illness, or a family matter. The Labour whip previously suspended, under the Prime Minister’s orders, Taito Phillip Field from his parliamentary duties and from all electorate duties. Taito Phillip Field was absent from this House, under the authority of the Labour whip, for a period of some months. He was suspended from all parliamentary duties and all public business in his electorate.

What I think you need to indicate to the House is the validity of that period of absence—a prolonged period of absence from this Parliament—for a member of this Parliament when clearly that absence, because the Labour whip suspended him from his parliamentary and electorate duties, could not possibly have been on public business. We know the member was not sick for that full period of time, and I do not imagine it would be possible to construct a family reason why the member was absent for that time. This Parliament does ultimately have the say over how long a member can be absent from this Parliament. You are responsible for making sure the Standing Orders are upheld in that regard. It would seem to me there has been some breach there.

Madam SPEAKER: I thank the member and I would refer him to—I am sorry, I do not have it in front of me—I think, Hansard on 6 December where I gave an extensive ruling on this matter. But I am very happy to make it available to the member again; it dealt with the issue of absence from Parliament.

Maiden Statement

Maiden Statement

KATRINA SHANKS (National): My journey to arrive in Parliament today has been slightly longer and, one might say, more convoluted than most. It actually began in 1975, at the age of 6, when my father, then 37, stood for Parliament for Social Credit against the Rt Hon Sir Keith Holyoake in the Pahiatua electorate. My dad believed he could make a difference to society and sought to make that difference by standing for Parliament and the values he believed in. He never actually stood a chance in the National stronghold of Wairarapa and he did not become an MP, but for me his experience was a valuable lesson. If one believes one can make a difference and wants to seek to make that difference, then one should be prepared to speak up.

I did exactly that in 2005 when, at the age of 36, with a successful accountancy career, a wonderful, supportive husband, and three beautiful, healthy children behind me, I sought and won the National Party candidacy for the Ohariu-Belmont electorate. Even though my dad and I sit miles apart on the political spectrum, we wanted the same things. Broadly, we wanted a better country for our family, our friends, and all New Zealanders.

In a further parallel with my father, I stood in another safe seat for an Opposition party. That was a challenging task, but I aimed with the knowledge that the situations of the people in the families of the Ohariu-Belmont electorate mirrored my own situation—they were hard-working, educated, family oriented, involved in the community, and striving to provide a safe, caring, and nurturing environment for their children to grow up in and prosper. My team and I campaigned hard, determined to get the best result for the National Party. I believe that the values I share with the people of Ohariu-Belmont enabled me to connect with the voters in that electorate, and, importantly, connect those voters with the National Party. Even though I did not win, I am proud to say that National’s share of the party vote was almost doubled.

But my dream of making it to Parliament was not quite over. Under MMP I had a second chance, and, following the 2005 election, I was actually elected to Parliament on the National Party list. However, in a cruel twist of fate this avenue of entering Parliament was not to be, either. Once the special votes were counted, National lost a seat—mine! My short 2-week stint as an MP came to a end, but those 2 weeks gave me a taste of what being an MP was all about and confirmed to me that I definitely had unfinished business. So when Dr Brash made the decision to resign late last year and the new leader, John Key, phoned to ask me whether I would be interested in taking up his place in Parliament, it seemed that fate had intervened again. This time it was in my favour, and I did not have to think twice. My long journey to Parliament was over.

I am delighted and very proud to be standing before you today as a National member of Parliament. It is both an honour and a privilege to be here. I would like to acknowledge Dr Brash for the outstanding role he played in rebuilding the National Party and thank him for essentially giving me the opportunity to now play my part in shaping the future of the party and, ultimately, my country.

I would also like to acknowledge some very special people who have played pivotal roles in helping me to reach this point and without whom I would simply never have made it to the start line back in 2005. First and foremost, I acknowledge my husband, Bill. We met, fell in love, travelled the world, and returned to New Zealand to have our own family and to raise our children amongst our family and friends. Bill is my rock, and I thank him for his unwavering love and support. I thank my mother, Annette, my sister, Jill, and my parents-in-law, Maureen and John, who are also in the gallery, for the support they have given me and my family throughout my journey here today. I thank my party president, Judy Kirk, my leader, John Key, and my regional chair, Patricia Morrison, for believing in me and in my ability to add value to their very talented team. Their support and counsel are most appreciated. The last thanks goes to the team in the Ohariu-Belmont electorate—in particular to the two Tonys, Mike, Fleur, and John, and also to the rest of the team, who fought a tireless campaign and kept the electorate organisation humming. I also make mention of my children, Sam, Annabelle, and Lachlan, who are three bright lights in my life. Lastly, I say a great big hello to friends who are listening to me via the radio waves. I will do my utmost to live up to their expectations of me as a member of Parliament.

I am very pleased to now join my fellow National MPs Mark Blumsky and Chris Finlayson in representing the good people of Wellington. I was born and raised in Dannevirke. I came to Wellington at the age of 22, after completing my Bachelor of Business Studies at Massey University, to take up my first professional role with Audit New Zealand. Apart from the times when Bill and I have travelled, I have lived here ever since and have raised my family here. I now consider myself very much to be a Wellingtonian. I have seen a lot of the world’s great cities, but I truly believe that Wellington outshines them all. Nothing compares to the first glimpse of Wellington when one rounds the bottom of Ngauranga Gorge. It is just sensational, especially on one of our famous good days, and especially when one has been away for a while. When we see that cityscape, we know we are home.

I am looking forward to working with Mark Blumsky and Chris Finlayson, and, indeed, the region’s other MPs, to represent the people of Wellington and their issues in Parliament. All in all, I am very fortunate to have become a part of National’s diverse parliamentary team, led by John Key and Bill English, both of whom have great vision and an even greater determination to succeed in implementing that vision. All my colleagues are talented, vibrant, energetic, passionate New Zealanders. They do not believe in old slogans but rather they believe that actions speak louder than words. They are not sitting back waiting to get into Government in order to make a difference to people’s lives; they are out there making a difference now.

I sought to join this team because its values are my values. These values are letting people take the ultimate responsibility for themselves, allowing people the freedom to make informed choices, ensuring that people enjoy equal opportunities, encouraging competitive enterprise, rewarding achievement, placing great emphasis on strong families and caring communities, and promoting sustainable environmental development. I regard our values to be the best way towards achieving a better New Zealand for all New Zealanders. To that end, these values would underpin a successful, caring, and safe society.

I believe that our values will ensure first-class education and globally recognised qualifications for all New Zealand children, which will stand them in good stead for successful careers in whatever they choose to do. These values will also ensure quality teachers and will enable parents to have the choice of where they send their children to schools, regardless of what neighbourhood they live in. I believe that our values will create the first-rate, reliable health system we all deserve—namely, a structure where funding goes to where it is most needed—so that people receive the services and care they need in a timely manner. Most Kiwi families will have had some experience in the education and health systems over the last few years; too many of those families have had unfortunate experiences to share. This must change.

I believe that our values will establish the right economic conditions for our great, innovative country to grow and prosper into a country where taxes are low, enabling people to keep, save, and invest more of their own money, where businesses can thrive thanks to low compliance costs and more investment, and where sought-after jobs with internationally competitive salaries are in abundance, so that our children will stay on our own shores. I believe that our values will put us on the track towards once again being a nation where our loved ones can walk safely to school or to the shops and can sleep soundly in their beds without the fear of an attack or invasion. Our values will mean that all New Zealanders in need are provided with a safety net, enabling them to have a good quality of life and to live their dreams. These same values will mean that those who choose welfare as a way of life, rather than as a helping hand when it is needed most, will not be rewarded for that lifestyle choice.

Our values will recognise the true worth of volunteers, who are the unsung heroes of our communities, whether volunteering for an organisation, acting as parent helpers at school or in kindy, providing Meals on Wheels, organising Neighbourhood Watch, or coaching the hockey team—the mere tip of the iceberg. Volunteers are our society’s lifeline. Quite simply, we could not operate without them, and we need to look after them.

Our values will mean we have a clean, green New Zealand, which will be preserved for the next generation—a generation that can swim in the sea, drink water from a river, and walk in the bush. Certainly, I know that I am looking forward to walking on a pristine beach with my grandchildren in years to come.

I am very lucky to finally be standing here, delivering my maiden statement today. I am a firm believer that, to a certain degree, a person makes his or her own luck. In fact, our late Nobel Laureate Alan MacDiarmid said that he was indeed a very lucky man, and that the harder he worked, the luckier he got. I will work tirelessly during my time here to strive towards accomplishing the things that I believe will enhance our country for present and future generations. In this respect—and just like Alan MacDiarmid—hopefully, the harder I work, the luckier I will get. Thank you.

Bills

Appropriation (2005/06 Financial Review) Bill

Second Reading

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Energy) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I move, That the Appropriation (2005/06 Financial Review) Bill be now read a second time.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Appropriation (2005/06 Financial Review) Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 61

New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand First 7; United Future 3; Progressive 1; Independent: Field.

Noes 50

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 2.

Abstentions 10

Green Party 6; Māori Party 4.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Major Events Management Bill

First Reading

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Energy) on behalf of the Minister for Sport and Recreation: I move, That the Major Events Management Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be considered by the Commerce Committee, and that the committee report finally to the House on or before 15 June 2007.

This bill results from New Zealand’s successful bids to host the Rugby World Cup in 2011 and to co-host the International Cricket Council Cricket World Cup in 2015, both of which included a commitment to ensure that adequate provisions are in place to prevent ambush marketing. This type of legislation is now a reality for hosting major events. The financial investment made in major events by organisers and sponsors is such that it is now common practice for the organisers of those events to require appropriate ambush marketing protections to be implemented as part of the hosting agreement. Free riding of that investment by companies not associated with the event is damaging, not just for the official organisers and sponsors but also to the credibility of the event itself and the country hosting it. Legislation containing ambush marketing protections has been introduced in other jurisdictions, including those in the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, and the Caribbean.

The bill is a piece of generic legislation that will apply to major events of all kinds, sporting and otherwise, as long as they meet the criteria set out in the bill. It is crucial for New Zealand to be seen as a viable host country for major events of international significance. The Government is interested in submissions about whether events other than sporting events could meet the criteria and, if not, whether the bill should be narrowed accordingly. It is important that this type of protection is available only for truly major events of international significance. It must be acknowledged that it places a limitation on business practice and commercial speech, and to apply it too widely would be to cause more problems than it solves. So the bill is based on the basic premise that the protection of those events should be for the overall benefit of New Zealand.

The bill sets out a number of criteria that determine whether an event should be declared to be a major event and attract the protections contained in the legislation. They include things such as whether the event raises New Zealand’s international profile, generates significant tourism opportunities, and offers significant sporting, cultural, social, and economic benefits. Event organisers will need to apply to the Minister for Economic Development for major event status, and the Minister will be required to take all those criteria into account. The event organisers will also need to satisfy the Minister that they will use all practicable measures available under the existing law to prevent the unauthorised commercial exploitation of a major event. Those will include, for example, protecting their intellectual property through registering their trademarks. Once a major event has been declared, the Minister will also be able to declare certain words and emblems to be the major event’s words and emblems. That will mean that they can be protected under the provisions of the legislation.

Two types of activity are regulated by the legislation. The first is ambush marketing by association. That is aimed at businesses who are not the official sponsor, but who try to create some kind of association between themselves and the event. In essence, they are seeking to unfairly trade off the goodwill and reputation surrounding an event, without making the significant financial commitment that official sponsors make. Clearly that type of free-riding activity could discourage potential sponsors from investing in an event. The legislation puts in place prohibitions against that type of activity during the period of protection specified by the Minister, whether the activity is done explicitly or by more subtle means. That includes the use of tickets for promotional purposes without the authorisation of the event organiser.

Another major form of ambush marketing is ambush marketing by intrusion. That refers to the practice of unfairly intruding on the attention of spectators who are essentially gathered solely for the purpose of the major event. In essence, they are a captive audience. The legislation prevents those who are not authorised by the event organisers from displaying advertising in the area around a major event venue or, in some circumstances, if it is visible from the major events venue. It also prevents unauthorised advertising from being visible when approaching the venue. The Government is not wedded to the detail of the boundary around the venue, and I expect that will be the subject of debate at the select committee.

It is important to recognise, though, that this type of legislation could unfairly restrict honest practice. Plenty of businesses go about activities on a day-to-day basis that we do not want to fall foul of this legislation. Freedom of speech, including commercial freedom of speech, is crucial in a fair and democratic society, so the bill has many safeguards for honest business practice and existing right-holders. If any activity forms part of a business’ honest everyday activities, it will be able to continue the activity regardless of the legislation. The legislation will not override the rights of existing trademark holders or prevent a person from using his or her own name or address in trade. Clearly, this legislation would not fulfil its aim of promoting the interests of New Zealand if it went too far or was too far-reaching. All those issues have been given consideration during the drafting of the bill.

As I have already said, the use of tickets is incorporated into the ambush marketing provisions. The bill also prohibits the on-sale of tickets at above their face value. As recent events show, those who buy up tickets and then seek to sell them at an unfair profit have deprived many Kiwi sports fans of the opportunity to attend big events. Obviously, if a consumer buys a ticket to an event and for some reason cannot attend, we do not want to prevent that person from selling his or her ticket or recouping his or her costs. It is not fair, however, when people knowingly buy up batches of tickets for the sole purpose of selling them at sometimes substantially inflated prices well beyond the means of many New Zealanders.

In conclusion, this bill is an important step in ensuring that New Zealand is seen as a viable host country for major events of international significance. The role of those events in attracting international visitors and raising New Zealand’s international profile has obvious benefits for all New Zealanders. In addition to the Rugby World Cup in 2011 and the International Cricket Council Cricket World Cup in 2015, New Zealand will also host the World Rowing Championships in 2010 and the Under-17 Women’s Football World Cup in 2008. New Zealand is, of course, challenging for the America’s Cup in Valencia in 2007, and if that challenge is successful the America’s Cup will be held in New Zealand again in 2010-11. This bill places New Zealand well to successfully bring those events and many others to the world. The bill represents the best effort to get a balance between the competing interests that will be affected by the legislation. Different approaches can be taken on many areas in the bill. I encourage all New Zealanders, individuals and businesses, to make their submission during the select committee process so that we can end up with the fairest and most effective piece of legislation that we can.

Hon MURRAY McCULLY (National—East Coast Bays): I indicate to the House at the outset that the National Party will be voting for the Major Events Management Bill to receive its first reading and be referred to a select committee for further study—a process that will be more meaningful in respect of this bill than is usually the case. As the Minister David Parker has already indicated to the House, there are some fine lines that are required to be drawn between the interests of event organisers and the commercial and private interests of members of the public. The select committee will have the delicate task of ensuring that those lines are correctly drawn if the bill is to enjoy the support of members when it comes back to us.

I will say a few words about why I think this bill is welcome and why the House should give it serious consideration. The Minister ran off a list of important events that are upcoming over the next few years. I am bound to say that some of them will probably not meet the criteria that are set out in the bill, although some of them undoubtedly will. Looking back into the past we see that the America’s Cup event, which we hosted in New Zealand in 1999-2000, would have met the criteria set out in the bill. Clearly, the Rugby World Cup in 2011 would meet the criteria. A range of smaller events may or may not make the cut, as the case may be. But the simple fact of the matter is that events of that scale—as large as the Rugby World Cup and the America’s Cup—cannot be hosted or conducted without very substantial commitments of sponsorship.

The reason for this bill being before the House today is that sponsors are not prepared to make those commitments in today’s world unless they can see that certain protections are going to exist to make good their investments. We have confronted those problems before in relation to the America’s Cup, and found our way through them, but, as people have got more sophisticated in the marketplace and more clever at challenging the rights and investments of sponsors, the need has become clearer for a framework of rules within which to operate, in this respect. So I welcome the fact that the bill is at least an attempt to deal with such a framework.

New Zealand has a simple choice: either we decide to listen to the needs of the sponsors or we just decide we will not be in the business of hosting those sorts of events. Again, the Minister referred to a number of jurisdictions where similar issues have arisen. I am bound to say that we are somewhat behind the eight ball in relation to the hosting of major events in this country. I have been on public record for many years suggesting that this is an area of activity in which New Zealand should excel. There are examples of jurisdictions close to us that are not especially large but that have been very innovative and successful in the hosting of major events.

The most successful I can think of, going back over a couple of decades, are major events in Melbourne, in the state of Victoria, where a large number of highly successful events not only have been encouraged but have, frankly, been bought by the state using taxpayers’ money, because there has been a recognition that the spin-off benefits of hosting those events—in terms of tourism, trade, promotional activity, and investment opportunity—make valid the scale of the investment of taxpayers’ resources. The state of Victoria has, over many years, developed this to a fine art. Other jurisdictions in Australia have been participants—some on a lesser scale; some on a more significant scale—but I think the shining light in this regard is, unquestionably, the state of Victoria.

I refer the House to the fact that the bill before us today is but a very small part of the fabric that is required to be dealt with if we are to become true players in this respect. The most important leading edge in this area is the process of bidding for, and attracting, these events. Currently in this country that is a relatively haphazard process. True, the Government, at a very high level, participated in the bid process for the Rugby World Cup—it being for New Zealand the premier event of its type—but many other events are left to the preserve of the sporting code concerned or a group of enthusiasts, as the case may be. I think there is room for greater recognition of the role of central government agencies in the bidding process, for a start. Certainly there is scope for a greater investment of the funds that are available for trade, tourism, and investment promotion in New Zealand in this area. That, too, is an area where I hope there will be an added focus if this House is to take this bill forward, because it will make that sort of attention more meaningful.

The framework that is addressed by this bill relates purely to the area of ambush marketing, and there is some attempt here to address the issue of scalping. Those are a very small part of the total vista that is the management of a major event. As I said in my initial comments, there are some fine lines that are required to be drawn by the House, and the consequences of getting those lines wrong will be serious.

One of the obvious areas is the buffer zone, which is provided for in this bill. Once the Minister has managed to persuade Cabinet and Cabinet has asked the Governor-General to sign off on an event as being a major event within the context of this bill, it is not just the area of the immediate event that can be the subject of restrictions that are outlined in the bill; there is a buffer zone around it so that ambush marketing cannot be embarked upon by an opponent of one of the major sponsors of the event. Obviously, some massive value judgments will be required around that. If, for example, New Zealand was to host the America’s Cup again—if Team New Zealand is successful—then some restrictions would apply to the Viaduct Basin and the area where the event itself is contested. But the judgment call about what sort of buffer zone would be required, and what sorts of restrictions should operate within that zone, calls for the most delicate of judgments as to the competing rights of the event organisers and its sponsors, on one hand, and those who normally conduct their business in that locale, on the other hand.

I say to the members of the select committee that this is an enormously complicated job and I hope they apply their minds to the task at hand in the way that is required if we are to get this matter remotely right. I commend to them the wisdom of looking at some of the examples from other jurisdictions. I emphasise, again, that we are far from market leaders in this respect; there is a lot we can learn from others. I welcome the fact that the select committee will have that opportunity.

I have had the opportunity to discuss this bill with the Minister Trevor Mallard, in whose name it sits, and I know that he is of an open mind about these considerations. I encourage not just those who are in the event management business today but those who are involved in the many sporting codes that will have an opportunity over future years to bring major events of this sort to New Zealand to take an interest in this framework, because it is something that will profoundly affect them if they do get to that stage. An investment in time and effort now to understand the bill and get it to some state of perfection—if it is to come back to this House for further consideration—is well warranted. We will see this bill go to a select committee, and I urge the select committee to do its work well, because it will be important to the final product that it does so.

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour): I rise to support the introduction of the Major Events Management Bill and to welcome the support of the previous speaker, Murray McCully, who indicated that the National Party will support the bill going to a select committee. That is the correct approach to take, and it is pleasing to see a constructive approach being taken to the legislation. It is important to deal with ambush marketing, given the amount of sponsorship dollars that are spent by major corporates on major events such as those that the bill will deal with. As the previous speaker observed, it is a good thing to be able to attract major events to New Zealand. In order to do that we need to have a competitive regulatory regime, similar to the regimes operated in jurisdictions that have considerable success in attracting those events.

It is interesting to consider the situation in regimes comparable with ours, particularly those in Australia. There, Olympic-related legislation and two statutes—one federal, and one a statute of the Parliament of New South Wales—were used to protect the Sydney Olympics. Those Acts are the Sydney 2000 Games (Indicia and Images) Protection Act 1996 and the Olympic Arrangements Act 2000. That legislation controlled street trading, the sale of tickets, and airspace and aerial advertising, and prohibited advertising on buildings or structures. Australia also has Commonwealth Games - related legislation that protected the interests of Victoria as Melbourne hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2006. It is a very similar scheme to that of the New South Wales and federal legislation. Victoria also has the Australian Grands Prix Act 1994 and the 1996 regulations made under that statute.

In South Africa there are two relevant statutory provisions, both introduced in 2001 to cater for the 2003 Cricket World Cup, and in the UK there is the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006. Finally, by way of comparison, in the Caribbean nations the ICC Cricket World Cup West Indies 2007 Bill has been introduced. All that legislation has broadly similar provisions to those in the bill that the Minister Trevor Mallard has introduced. They are appropriate in order to ensure that New Zealand can continue to attract major events, with the consequent benefit for our economy and the world publicity that we receive.

This bill is a good bill, in my view, and I commend it to the House.

GORDON COPELAND (United Future): United Future will also be supporting the Major Events Management Bill 2006 going to the relevant select committee. I must say that when I read through the bill and its contents, my mind immediately went back to the role I had in being part of the organising committee for the visit of Pope John Paul II to New Zealand in 1986. It was a massive undertaking. He was here for 48 hours and had face-to-face contact with more then 200,000 people, and many hundreds of thousands also saw him on TV during that time. The first thing we did was to form a company and copyright a logo for the visit, because we were so conscious, given the entrepreneurial inclinations of many Kiwis, which I greatly admire, that there would be all sorts of hucksters who would be crowding in on the events to line their own pockets with what might have been all kinds of inappropriate souvenirs and memorabilia, etc. We thought it necessary right from day one to take control and ensure we had a proper systematic system for ensuring that people who were reasonable and responsible in what they wanted to do were the only ones who could officially participate in the event.

So from that first-hand experience I can really appreciate the need for a bill such as this one when we come to the major events that are planned in New Zealand, starting with the Netball World Championships later this year and going through into 2015 when we host the Cricket World Cup. I guess there will be other major events that come along in the interval.

I thought the bill bulletin issued by Parliamentary Library was very, very good in the way it set out all of the reasons we need such a bill, under very interesting headings: “Faking It”, about rogue traders who move in; “Facility Marketing”; “Individual Sponsorships”; and “Using the Fans”. It really does prove the ingenuity, I suppose, of entrepreneurs in places like Germany who for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, where people who had no sponsorship rights whatsoever in the event, actually got a group of fans to come along—for a fee, of course—and wear their T-shirts. Some of us will remember that that had a pretty unfortunate effect on the sponsorship of Budweiser, which was probably short-changed by the way in which its sponsorship was ambushed by others who seized the opportunity to make a bob or two at the expense of the official sponsors.

The issue of scalping tickets, etc., is also there in the bill bulletin. So we have no doubt at all that there is a need for a bill like this one if we are to adopt world best practice in terms of sponsoring these major events. We will follow the bill through the select committee process with interest, and hope to see it reported back to the House and eventually passed into legislation so that New Zealand can continue to be a destination of choice for major events.

CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier): I refer to an article by Abram Sauer, who talks about ambush marketing, which, in fact, is the principal focus of the Major Events Management Bill 2006. Abram begins his article by saying: “Imagine you throw a party and invite heaps of brilliant, interesting people. Imagine your roommate fails to help with the planning or the cost. Imagine the night of the party, your deadbeat roomie shows up and claims co-sponsorship. Imagine watching in awe as the freeloader takes credit for your expense and effort. Now imagine that party cost you $20M.” There would be some concerns.

What we are talking about here is a party that we are looking to hold in 2011. We wish to protect the rights of the sponsors that are going to put a significant amount of money into that tournament, and to give them as much protection as possible for their sponsorship dollar. It is something that unfortunately we did not do back in 2003 when we had the right to co-host the 2003 Rugby World Cup with Australia.

I will refer to my own electorate, Hawke’s Bay, and to a gentleman by the name of Tom Johnson. Tom was a colleague of my father, Kel, and played in the Hawke’s Bay Ranfurly Shield era in the 1960s. Tom was a very influential man in the New Zealand rugby scene, and rose to the status of the New Zealand rugby board. It was an instigator in bringing about the initial Rugby World Cup, and as a result the initial tournament in 1987, when ambush marketing was not at its foremost. But since those days, ambush marketing has become a true science—as Mr Copeland referred to it before—that we should have known about when we were looking to host the 2003 Rugby World Cup.

I want to talk members through some of the stories about ambush marketing and how complex it has actually become. Let us have a look at the 1984 Olympics, where Kodak sponsored TV broadcasting of the games, as well as the US track team, despite Fuji being the official sponsor. Kodak was able to get significant mileage out of that. Let us go to the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, where Nike sponsored the press conferences with the US basketball team, despite Reebok being the games’ official sponsor. Perhaps one of the greatest ambush marketing efforts of all time was the marketing feat of all-time Nike man, Michael Jordan, who was “Mr Air Sponsorship” himself. He accepted the gold medal for basketball but covered up the Reebok logo on his kit. Nike has been the all-time champion of ambush marketing. With its association with the Rugby World Cup, it is something that I guess we need to take into consideration.

Let us have a look at Nike’s ambush of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, which is probably seen as the ambush of all ambushes, according to writers on this subject. Saving the US$50 million that an official sponsorship would have cost—so Nike did not actually front up with that $50 million—Nike plastered the city in billboards, handed out swoosh banners for people to wave at the competitions, and erected an enormous Nike centre overlooking the stadium. It was able to obtain significant mileage over the event without putting one sponsorship dollar into the event itself. In fact, Nike has moved to the point now where it tends to sponsor individuals in teams, as opposed to events, so that it can use that as a legal form of ambush marketing.

If we have a look at the Atlanta debacle we see that many thought that Nike had been an official sponsor of the games. More recently, in a poll in 2001, a study found that from a list of 45 likely sponsors of the 2002 World Cup, 20 percent of those polled thought Nike was a sponsor when, in fact, it was not.

It is not limited to large corporates like Nike. There is a fantastic example at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City when Anheuser-Busch paid more than US$50 million to sponsor that particular event. In accordance with its agreement it got all the rights to use the word “Olympic” and the five rings logo.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

CHRIS TREMAIN: Before the bell rang for the dinner break, we were debating the Major Events Management Bill, and I had just traversed the issues around ambush marketing, in particular those relating to large corporates. I talked about Nike’s involvement with the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where Nike had plastered the city in billboards, handed out swoosh banners to wave at the competitions, and erected an enormous Nike centre overlooking the stadium—all ambush tactics designed to obtain a greater profile in Atlanta, even though Nike was not a key sponsor of the event.

I then moved on to discuss, and I wanted to finish with, an example of a smaller company that used ambush marketing at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Anheuser-Busch paid more than $50 million to be a major sponsor at that event. The Schirf Brewing Company, which is a small, local company, came up with a rather ingenious and apparently legal idea of marking its delivery trucks with a brand called “Wasutch Beers—the Unofficial Beer of the 2002 Olympic Games”. So in accordance with the copyright rules, Schirf avoided using either the word “Olympics” or the five-ring logo. However, it had, without doubt, connected itself with the games and therefore benefited from the marketing that came from that connection.

So there are big companies and small companies that benefit from ambush marketing. We even have local examples. Recently some of our own athletes used a type of ambush marketing at the last Olympic Games, with the likes of Sarah Ulmer, Bevan Doherty, and Hamish Carter, who had contradictory sponsorships between the main-game sponsors, their team sponsors, and their own personal sponsors.

The fact is that there will be ambush marketing efforts at Rugby World Cup 2011. Despite this legislation that is before the House tonight, companies will not stop from working for the best position for their brand. We as a nation need to do everything in our power to stop these efforts and to maximise the genuine return for sponsors at the 2011 Rugby World Cup, at the rowing championships in 2010, at the under-17 women’s football world cup in 2008, and at the Cricket World Cup, planned to be hosted here in 2015.

I suggest that if this legislation had been in place when the final stages of the negotiations for the joint hosting of Rugby World Cup 2003 were being held, we would have been in a far better position and $90 million in co-hosting rights would not have gone out of the window.

This legislation will help in four key areas, and I will focus on those as I draw to the end of this speech. Firstly, clause 6 looks at declarations of major events, and protections for major events. So the legislation does not relate to smaller sporting occasions, or down-a-level sporting events, such as the Super 14, the National Provincial Championship, or, for that matter, other competitions on a regional or national basis.

Subpart 1 of Part 2, clauses 7 to 14, deals with ambush marketing by association. Subpart 2, clauses 15 to 25, deals with ambush marketing by intrusions. Clauses 24 and 25 also deal with ticket scalping protections.

I close by suggesting an area on which I think the select committee will need to focus, which is the offence and penalty regimes of the bill. A good example is the Rugby World Cup 1999 in Cardiff, where scalping was at a premium. Tickets were being marketed for prices in excess of £500. Members on a tour party I was with had bought tickets, the face value of which was about £125. They were scalped for £500. Significant money was to be made by scalpers doing that. I suggest that a $5,000 penalty to avert scalpers will just not work. Likewise for larger companies, like Nike, a $150,000 penalty will do nothing to avert them from looking at ambush campaigns—campaigns that will benefit them significantly without their having to put one iota of sponsorship into the Rugby World Cup 2011.

In summary, I believe that had this legislation been in place in 2002 it would have helped us avert the situation where we lost the joint hosting rights. I believe that this legislation will help to ensure that we get the best sponsors for the event in 2011 and that we will maximise the economic growth and the return on this investment to the whole New Zealand economy.

NANDOR TANCZOS (Green): I rise to give a fairly brief contribution to the debate on behalf of the Green Party and to say that although we will be supporting this bill going to a select committee, we will not commit ourselves to any support beyond that. It depends on what comes out of the committee. So although we will support this reading, we have a few difficulties with the bill that we think it would be useful for the House to address, particularly in the select committee.

I have listened to the debate so far and heard a lot of talk about the disagreeable nature of ambush marketing. I do not think there is a lot of disagreement about that. It certainly seems quite wrong for a company that has contributed nothing to an event, by way of sponsorship or support in any way, to be able to hijack the event for its own promotional purposes and make a profit from the promotional opportunities it gets out of it. That seems quite wrong.

Having said that, I have to say I have a little bit of sympathy for some of the small guys. It is one thing to talk about Nike versus Reebok, for example, but I have a little bit of sympathy for New Zealand small-business operators, who certainly do contribute to such events through their tax dollars and who, for those who are local, suffer all kinds of inconvenience and hassle. They do not benefit particularly from the event, because a lot of the commercial opportunities are gobbled up by the big players. If the legislation does pass, I hope to see the enforcement agencies show some discretion, with the idea that the legislation should be used to target large commercial operators and a little bit of leeway given to some smaller businesses.

So we heard a lot about how disagreeable ambush marketing is, and how it is a terrible thing. Chris Tremaine gave us a long list of examples of how ambush marketing has been used in the past, and I do not think that any of us would say that it is not disagreeable. The question for us as parliamentarians, though, is whether this bill is a proportionate response to the problem. This House has a longstanding reputation and history of passing wildly inappropriate legislation in order to crush a minor problem

The foreshore and seabed legislation is a very good example. We were talking about that in the House today during question time. Questions from the Māori Party very clearly demonstrated to us, once again, that we had a potential in a court finding, and the extent of the rights recognised by the court had yet to be tested. We had yet to see how large an area would even be covered by any future court findings. We had no idea of that, and the Government introduced a massive confiscation, the likes of which we have not seen for over a century in many parts of the country, in order to stamp on that. That is just one example of the kind of wildly disproportionate legislation we pass in this Parliament all the time.

My question is not whether ambush marketing is a bad thing—not whether we disapprove of ambush marketing—it is whether this legislation is proportionate to the problem we are trying to address. I think it is something to which we should give a lot of consideration, and it is something I do have some concerns about. We know that it is politically useful for the Government to be passing this legislation, but is it good law? We know the real reason for the talk about fairness and whatever. The real reason we are passing this legislation is so we can make sure we lock down the Rugby World Cup and the commitments that have been made in order to secure that event. That is what this is really about. So let us be clear about that in the debate we are having.

The Green Party has a few difficulties with the bill, and I would like to touch briefly upon a couple of them. There will be an opportunity to deal with these difficulties in much more detail in later stages of the debate. I go, first of all, to clause 4, the “Interpretation”. This bill is an attempt to stop commercial operators promoting an association between their products or services and the event in question. We see that “association” means “a relationship of connection, whether direct or implied,”. The phrase “direct or implied” is kind of interesting, because we are talking about not just people who make a direct, blatant claim that their product is in some way associated with the event. “Implied” is a pretty ambiguous term and can cover a wide range of goods and services that are being quite legitimately promoted. So I think we have to look very carefully at the scope of the kinds of promotions that are covered by this legislation.

The same section states that “association” includes “offering, giving away, or selling a ticket to a major event activity in connection with the promotion of goods or services”. So, for example, it seems to me that a radio station could not even give away a ticket, because inevitably that would be a promotion for its own radio station. So a radio station could not give away tickets to an All Black game, because it would be forbidden from doing so by this definition of “association”. That is something we should think very carefully about. Is that what we are trying to cover? Is that what we are trying to capture by means of this legislation? I am not sure, despite all the talk about Reebok and Nike, whether that is actually what we are trying to get at.

I move on to Part 2, “Declaration of major event and protections for major events”. This part does not cover all events but simply ones that have been declared to be major events by Order in Council—by the Governor-General, on the recommendation of the Minister for Economic Development after consultation with the Minister of Commerce and the Minister for Sport and Recreation. So they can declare that an event is a major event, then the bill covers that event.

We would like to see something added to this part, because one of the conditions in relation to declaring an event to be major is that the Minister must be satisfied that the event organiser has the capacity and the intention to successfully and professionally stage and manage the event. One of the things it would make sense to say in a world where climate change is happening as a result of human activity—it is something that is on the political agenda, and the Prime Minister has talked about us being carbon neutral—is that professionally and successfully staging and managing an event includes the condition that it has to be carbon neutral and a zero waste event. Surely, in today’s world that should be a criterion for successfully and professionally managing an event. It seems quite sensible that that criterion would be put in here, because if the draconian aspects or powers contained in this bill are to be brought to bear, and we are passing law to protect commercial interests, there has to be some balance in that, and there has to be something going back the other way.

It is interesting that in declaring a major event, the Governor-General also has the ability to declare “a major event emblems and words”. The Governor-General can declare “any or all of the following: (a) an emblem to be a major event emblem: (b) a word, words if combined with other words, or a combination of words to be a major event word or major event words.” That provision goes far beyond trade-marking legislation. Again, we are seeing a pretty broad application of legislation protecting commercial interests, and we have to give it some real consideration if we want to cast the net as broadly as that.

Clause 7(3) states: “Before making a recommendation, the Minister for Economic Development must take into account the extent to which, in relation to the major event, emblems and words require protection in order to—(a) obtain maximum benefits for New Zealanders: (b) prevent unauthorised commercial exploitation at the expense of either a major event organiser or a major event sponsor.” So this is all about protecting commercial interest. There is no balancing there, there is no test of reasonableness, and there is no test of whether that infringes the rights of other operators.

It seems to me that this is wildly unbalanced legislation. It contains some pretty draconian and wide-reaching elements, and we need to give serious consideration as to how we can tighten up the scope of this bill.

PITA PARAONE (NZ First): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am standing in for my colleague Ron Mark, who is our spokesperson on this issue. Due to unforeseen circumstances, he is not able to be present in the House at this moment. I will take a short call just to make sure that New Zealand First’s contribution is made to this debate.

I say from the start that we will certainly support the Major Events Management Bill going to the Commerce Committee, because it is important that the people of New Zealand are given the opportunity to have a say on what is, I believe, very important legislation. The fact that our country will be hosting a number of international events means it is important that we ensure that those responsible for carrying out those events are protected in some way.

I want to make a point in respect of the declaration of a major event. The bill states that ambush marketing protection should not be overused, and that the bill will apply only to major events. The exception to that rule will be the events that New Zealand hosts on a regular basis. I want to ask a question in regard to events like the Bledisloe Cup, which is an annual event and, for those who follow rugby, is probably considered to be a major event. I have seen on the Internet that a number of tickets have been scalped—those who are selling them have obtained them through legal means, of course—and I just wonder whether events like the Bledisloe Cup should not be covered in this legislation. However, having said that, I would expect that during the select committee process particular issues like that one will be covered.

As I said, this would be a short call, and I say that New Zealand First will be supporting the bill going to a select committee. Kia ora.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I advise members that the member Te Ururoa Flavell will speak in Māori, then there will be an interpretation for the benefit of members.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki): Kia ora tātou, kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koe, tēnā tātou katoa. Hei te Rāwhā e tū mai nei, ka tū tētahi kaupapa whakaharahara nui nei i Te Papa-i-oea, i te papa tākaro o Manawatū. Ka kitea mai ai ko te pōhiri, ko ngā manuhiri tūārangi, ko ngā momo whakaari, ko te tini, ko te mano. He aha te take? Ehara i te mea ko Tākuta Pita Sharples e pekepeke ana, e haka ana, e hītekiteki ana me tana taiaha pēnei i ngā tau toru tekau kua hipa. Ko te take e kōrerohia nei, ko te whakataetae ā-motu nei e eke ai ko te kotahi mano toru rau kaihaka, ko te toru tekau mā rima mano tāngata ka tae atu ki Te Matatini.

E ai ki tā te motu, kāore e kore kua nui ake, kua pai ake, kua rahi ake tēnei whakataetae ki ērā o ngā tau kua hipa. He momo pakanga kei te haere ā-kanikani nei, arā, mai i Te Rōpū Taikura toru rau kaiwhakaari, koroua mai, kuia mai, kōeke mai. Rima tekau mā rima tau te pakeke o tēnei hunga whakaora i ngā waiata o ngā tau kua hipa.

Ka rere te tangi mai o ngā manu tīoriori, o ngā reo kapahaka nei ki Te Papa-i-oea tonu puta noa i te motu ki Awarua, ki Te Kao. Nā ngā āhuatanga o te ao hōu ka taea e te hunga kāinga te whakatau ngā rōpū whakamīharo pēnei i te NZ Idol, arā, mā te waea. Ka pāohotia anō hoki e te Pouaka Whakaata Māori, arā, ngā ārai nui ā-pāoho nei, ā, mō te wā tuatahi, arā anō te rōpū whakamārama ā-reo Pākehā nei, arā, ko Hakarongomai tērā.

Kua pēnei mai taku whakamārama e te Speaker mō Te Matatini ki tēnei whare i te mea, koi nei tētahi o ngā kaupapa whakaharahara nei e ai ki tā te tangata whenua titiro. Arā noa atu te nui o tēnei hui ā-whā rānei ka kitea mai ai ko te matatau o te hunga kāinga ki te whakariterite i a rātou anō, ka mutu, ko te hunga whakaeke, te kaha o te manaaki, ngā momo whakaari, ko ngā momo whakahaere katoa, kia eke ki te taumata o tērā kōrero: “A tika ā muri, ka tika ā mua.” He aha tōna mutunga ake? Ko te kapa haka whakamīharo rawa atu o te motu.

Mai anō, koi nei tētahi hui whakahirahira o te ao tonu, ā, i tēnei tau ka whakamanahia hei wāhanga o te Mātauranga Tau Tekau a Te Kotahitanga o ngā Motu o te Ao. I puta te kōrero i te mutunga o tērā tau, ka riro mā Unesco Te Matatini e hāpai i runga i te rātaka o te ao.

Nā, hāunga ēnei kōrero ka pātai au i te pātai i a tātou e wānanga nei i tēnei pire, he aha te take i kore ai Te Matatini i noho hei hui whakahirahira mō Aotearoa, mō te ao tonu i roto i ngā kōrero mō te pire nei? E ai ki tā te pire, e whā noa iho ngā hui nui nei: ko te whakataetae poitarawhiti o te ao a te tau nei, ko te whakataetae hoe waka o te ao i Karapiro a te tau 2010, ko te whakataetae whutupaoro o te ao a te tau 2011, ko te whakataetae kirikiti o te ao a te tau 2015.

Ehara i te mea he tangata whakaiti nei au i te kēmu whutupaoro engari, arā anō te pātai, kei hea te wāhanga o te ao Māori i roto i ngā whiriwhiringa o tēnei mea mō te hui ā-motu?

Mēnā ka huri tātou ki te roto o Karapiro, i reira tonu te whakataetae o te ao mō te waka ama. Kua tae atu tēnei mea te waka ama ki ngā iwi Māori katoa o te motu ka mutu, kua eke mai te tī me te tā o uta, o tai o Aotearoa nei, o tāwāhi anō hoki ki konei. He kaupapa whakakao tēnei i te hunga tūruhi. Ko te mate e pēnei ana. Ahakoa i tau atu te ao ki Karapiro mō taua whakataetae whakaharahara, kāore anō taua kaupapa rā kia whakamanahia hei hui nui e te hunga pāpāho ā-pākehā nei. Nō reira, ko tā mātou māharahara tuatahi e hāngai tonu ana ki nga tikanga hei whakatau, he aha tēnei mea, arā, te hui nui whakaharahara e ai ki tā te pire nei? Kāore he take o ngā wāhanga e rima o roto i te wāhanga marketing ambush mēnā e kore tō hui e eke ki te whakamārama i roto i te pire.

Ko tā mātou e kī nei, mēnā kei te Kāwana Tianara te kupu whakamutunga, me kōrero te Minita Whakatipuranga Rawa ki te Minita Tauhokohoko, ki te Minita Hākinakina engari, me kōrero anō hoki ki te Minita Māori.

Arā noa atu ngā take e pēnei ana ō mātou whakaaro. Ko te tuatahi ko tērā e pā ana ki te hunga hokohoko me tō rātou piringa ki te hunga tae mai ki Aotearoa nei i tāwāhi. Ki taku mōhio, kia tae mai ngā manuhiri tūārangi i tāwāhi ki konei, ki ngā kōrero, ki ngā tikanga, ki ngā āhuatanga o te tangata whenua o te Māori, ērā mea katoa te mea e hiahiatia ana. Me kī, koi nei te mea hoko.

Koi nei te āhuatanga i Whakarewarewa, i te kāinga. Kua roa a Te Arawa e mārama ana ki ngā painga o te tūruhi, ahakoa ko te mahi nui i taua takiwā, ko te peke i te piriti ki ngā wai ki reira ruku kapa ai. Ko te toa e pūkanakana ana, ko te wahine ātaahua whiu poi nei i nga kāri pikitia nei, he āhuatanga kua roa e kawea ana i te kanohi me kī, o Aotearoa ki tāwāhi.

Ko te noho o te Minita Māori i waenganui i ngā whiriwhiringa tētahi huarahi tonu hei tiaki i te taha ki te tangata whenua, i roto i ngā mahi whakarite, whakahaere anō hoki o ngā hui nei.

E tika ana kia kōrerohia te take nei i tēnei wā i te mea, kua ara anō rā te Kerēme Wai 262 ki mua i te aroaro o te Taraipiunara o Waitangi, e iwa tau i muri mai o te wā i tae tuatahi atu ki reira. I tōna whānuitanga e ai ki taua kerēme, kāore te Karauna i tuku i a ngāi tātou a Ngāi Māori nei ki te whakatinana i tō rātou tino rangatiratanga e pā ana ki ō rātou taonga tae atu ki ngā momo tipu, Te Reo Māori, te mātauranga Māori me ngā taonga tuku iho Māori.

Ko tāku e kī nei, kia kaua tātou e huri ki te whai i ētahi ture hōu pēnei i tēnei pire i tōna kotahi. Me titiro anō hoki tātou ki ngā huarahi hei tiaki i ngā taonga tuku iho me ngā mātauranga tuku iho. E hia kē nei ngā wā he whāiti te titiro, arā, he titiro ki te mea kotahi me te kore titiro ki ōna whānuitanga, arā, ki ōna pānga ki ētahi atu ture.

Kātahi anō ka puta mai te Protected Objects Amendment Act, ā, kei reira tonu ngā kōrero mō te tiaki i ngā taonga, te rangatiratanga o te mana whenua, tēnei mea te mana, otirā, te wāhanga ki te Karauna.

Ko te aronga ki te ao Māori, ngā tikanga, ngā kōrero, arā, ngā āhuatanga katoa o ēnei kupu “ngā taonga tūturu” he mea nui nei hei tiaki, hei pupuri nei i ngā taonga tuku iho. Kaua tātou e waiho mā tēnei pire i tōna kotahi, ā, i tēnei pire, kua ngaro, kua warewaretia. Nō reira i a tātou e hāpai nei i ngā kupu, taputapu, tohu, haki rānei me ērā atu mea, kia tūpato tātou ki ngā mahi rāwekeweke ā ētahi i ngā āhuatanga o roto i te ao o te tangata whenua.

Koi nei te take tuatoru kua kī ake mātou, me noho te Minita mō ngā Take Māori i te tēpū me te Minita Whakatipuranga Rawa, te Minita Tauhokohoko me te Minita Māori. Me noho te Minita i te tēpū i te wā ka wānangahia ngā kōrero kia tiaki tonu i te āhuatanga ki te tangata whenua.

Me tae atu te Minita ki ngā tohunga pēnei i ngā mea o Waka Toi me ērā atu rōpū kua roa e kauhau ana mō te kaitiakitanga o ngā taonga tuku iho. Anā, mā tēnei kua whai mana te kupu o te Minita ki te tiaki i ngā taonga. Nō reira, ka tautoko te Tōrangapū Māori i tēnei o ngā pire i a ia e tiaki ana i ngā taonga tuku iho. E tautoko ana mātou kia noho te Minita Māori i roto i ngā whiriwhiringa. Kia aha ai? Kia noho mārama tonu te ao Māori kai reira tonu te āhuatanga o te ao Māori i roto i ngā nekeneke o tēnei pire. Kia ora tātou.

[An interpretation in English was given to the House.]

[Thank you, and thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Greetings to you and to us all. An event of national significance will take place at Arena Manawatū in Palmerston North this coming Thursday. A welcome, overseas visitors, and all forms of visual displays will be seen by a vast audience at the opening pageant. And what is the occasion? It will not be Dr Pita Sharples springing to his feet, wielding his taiaha, and strutting his stuff as he has done for the past three decades, but rather a national event of major momentum, involving some 1,300 performers attracting crowds of up to 35,000 to the Te Matatini National Kapa Haka Festival.

This year’s festival promises to be bigger, better, and larger than previous ones. A kind of national showdown is expected from 300 performers of Taikura made up of grandparents and great-grandparents of the 55-plus age group that will bring to life old treasured songs of their day.

Communications will be high-tech and designed to pump up the vibe, whether in Palmerston North or throughout the land from Bluff to Te Kao. Because of present-day technology, people at home will be able to take part in the voting by using the same format as that of the ever popular NZ Idol by texting in their vote for the top kapahaka group. Māori Television will cover the event and provide a simultaneous webcast. There will be big screens, a live-to-air broadcast, and, for the first time ever, Hakarongomai, an interpretation service.

I have taken the time to introduce the House to the magic of Te Matatini because it represents a major event of all major events, in the eyes and ears of tangata whenua. This 4-day festival is on a spectacular scale requiring huge organisational efforts, corporate and hospitality facilities, exhibitions, and of course technical administration and management to satisfy that saying: “When the work at the back is right, what happens in front will be right as well.” What will come of this? The greatest kapahaka festival of the land!

The festival has established such a significant reputation on the international scene that this year it was recognised as part of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. In a partnership announced at the end of last year, Unesco will promote Te Matatini as a premier cultural event on the international festival calendar.

Given all of this as we debate this bill, I have to ask the question why Te Matatini is not recognised and contained in this Major Events Management Bill for New Zealand and indeed the world. The bill specifically identifies four key sporting major events: the Netball World Championships in 2007, the World Rowing Championships at Karapiro in 2010, the International Rugby Board Rugby World Cup in 2011, and the International Cricket Council Cricket World Cup in 2015.

It is not as though I am one to belittle the game of rugby, but there is the question of where Māori fit into the decision-making process around the determination of what constitutes a national event.

If we turn to Lake Karapiro, where the international waka ama competition was held: waka ama has impacted on all Māori, up and down the land; consequently, it attracts participants, supporters, and onlookers from within New Zealand and overseas. It has been a huge drawcard for a raft of marketing and tourism opportunities. But the catch is that even though the world has come to Lake Karapiro for that magnificent competition, mainstream media have yet to recognise it as a major event. So our first concern for the purposes of this legislation relates to what constitutes a major event. The five categories of ambush marketing amount to nothing, if an event cannot even make the criteria in the bill.

What we are advocating is that if the Governor-General has the final say, then the Minister for Economic Development should consult not only with the Minister of Commerce and the Minister for Sport and Recreation, but also with the Minister of Māori Affairs.

There are a host of other matters that concern us. The first relates to obvious commercial imperatives associated with the opportunity for a large number of international participants or spectators who come to this land. My understanding is that when international visitors come to this land the unique cultural capital and heritage of the first-nation people, the people of the land, is an obvious marketing point.

This is the situation at home in Whakarewarewa. Te Arawa has been aware of the benefits of tourism for a long time, even if the main focus of that area was jumping off the bridge and diving for pennies. Postcard images of warriors grimacing, and of beautiful maidens twirling poi, have long been the face of New Zealand on the international scene.

The involvement of the Minister of Māori Affairs in negotiations regarding the appropriate management and coordination of these major events is a way of protecting tangata whenua’s longstanding and established profile.

It is appropriate that this matter be aired at this time, because Wai 262 has been brought before the Waitangi Tribunal once again, 9 years after its first hearing. In its broadest sense, Wai 262 claims that the Crown has failed in its responsibility to allow Māori to exercise their rangatiratanga in respect of their taonga, including flora and fauna, te reo Maori, mātauranga Māori, and Māori cultural property.

What I am saying is that we should not head off in pursuit of other pieces of new legislation like this stand-alone one. We should be looking at ways to protect Māori cultural and intellectual property. There have been numerous times when a narrow view has been taken—for instance, where a piece of legislation is viewed in isolation without looking at how others are affected.

The impacts of the Protected Objects Amendment Act have only just come into force—provisions that consider the protection of taonga, the rangatiratanga of mana whenua, the vexed issue of ownership, and the appropriate role of the Crown.

Respect for Māori culture, history, or society, as preserved under “ngā taonga tūturu” is a key means of protecting and retaining our cultural heritage and must not just rest within the parameters of legislation passed last year and seemingly in the context of this Act now forgotten and lost. So in the promotion of major event emblems and words—devices, seals, badges, logos, flags, banners, signs, or other visual images—we must take ever-practicable measures to prevent commercial exploitation or misuse of images that are indigenous cultural property.

This is the third reason why we say that the Minister of Māori Affairs should sit at the table with the Minister for Economic Development, the Minister of Commerce, and the Minister for Sport and Recreation. At the time of negotiations, the Minister must be at the table to safeguard aspects that relate to tangata whenua.

The Minister of Māori Affairs has access to appropriate cultural expertise of organisations such as Te Waka Toi, and those groups and specialists who have for years advocated for the protection of intellectual and cultural property. In other words, what the Minister has to say about the preservation of indigenous taonga has integrity. As long as the Minister is there to protect cultural property, the Māori Party will support this bill. We support the Minister of Māori Affairs’ involvement in the negotiations, so that Māoridom is clear that aspects relating to them are retained as the bill is progressed. Greetings to us. ]

ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki): I am very pleased to be able to rise and speak in support of the Major Events Management Bill. New Zealand is a great sporting nation, and New Zealanders love their sport. It means an enormous amount to us that in the coming years a number of world championships will be held here, and it is very important that we hold them very, very well. Right at the forefront of our minds, of course, is the Rugby World Cup. I guess one of the reasons it is right at the forefront of our minds is the dithering of the Minister for Sport and Recreation. But, in addition to that, the world rowing championships are coming and, of course, the Cricket World Cup.

What is being proposed in this bill is no different from what is happening in other jurisdictions. The Black Caps will shortly be off to the West Indies, with a magnificent series victory against Australia behind them. They will be competing in a sports event where the same sorts of rules will apply, just as they applied at the Olympic Games in Sydney and the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. What New Zealand is doing is no different from what is happening everywhere else. But it is great to see the way that we are positioning ourselves now, as a country that is capable of hosting major world events, and capable of doing it in such a way that people from other countries will come down here and support them. The Government’s role is to ensure that the environment is right so that those people who put their time, their effort, their expertise, and their money into making an event successful actually have a fair opportunity to make sure that that happens.

This is not unduly restrictive legislation; there were significant protections in the Act. The threshold at which the legislation will cut in is very high. Obviously, I have some reservations that the present Minister for Sport and Recreation will have powers in a matter such as this, but I do take a lot of confidence in the knowledge that by the time the Rugby World Cup reaches New Zealand a National Government will be in office, and it will be a National Minister who will have this responsibility.

It is right that those who make a significant financial contribution to enable these events to be held have the opportunity to get a fair return. I know, from my experience of years spent being involved as a volunteer at national and provincial level in sporting organisations, just how difficult it is to put things together to get the funding to run the activity, and to give those who support us a fair opportunity to get the publicity, the business, and the rewards they are entitled to, as a result of their investment. There are those who will tell us that a totally free market should operate, and that it is fair somebody should take advantage of a commercial opportunity to grab the moment and make a dollar. But we need to understand that if we are going to host these major events and make a success of them, the environment must be such that those who support an event, often over a large number of years in an ongoing commitment, have a fair opportunity to get a return. That is what this bill will provide.

One of the particularly pleasing features of the bill from my point of view is the restriction it puts on what is described as the scalping of tickets. When I think back to my years as a school principal, I know that one of the things that really used to frustrate me was that the schoolteachers who worked for me Saturday after Saturday, evening after evening, and year after year, were never able to get tickets to the big events in the sports to which they gave so much of their time. I very well remember on one occasion being in the hospitality box at Eden Park, and looking around and wondering where the schoolteachers were. Where were the people who week after week, year after year, were providing the framework for sport for our young people? They were not in the hospitality boxes. Often, they were not even in the ground. At least, with some protection against scalping, those ordinary New Zealanders who year after year make a voluntary commitment to their sport, who do not work for some big corporate or some big organisation, and who do not have the ability to somehow fiddle tickets, will get a bit of an opportunity to have a fair go.

Let us never, ever forget that the base for any successful activity lies in its roots. It lies in those ordinary New Zealand volunteers who, as I have said, day after day, week after week, year after year, front up because of their love for their activity, and their commitment to young people and to making sure these things happen. It is very important that when the Rugby World Cup reaches New Zealand in 2011, for example, and when the Cricket World Cup is here a few years later, those people have a fair opportunity to participate and to be involved.

This is thoughtful legislation. It is carefully thought out. It is to meet a specific purpose. It is not unduly restrictive but it is fair. It is fair to those people who are prepared to put their money where their mouths are, who are prepared to make their commitment, and who are prepared to make something happen—and it is very important. I know from my own experience that it is very important that when people make a commitment to an activity, particularly a big commitment, they have to make that commitment some years out. They need a degree of certainty around what they can expect, what sort of return they will get, and what sort of environment they will be in. They need to have the incentive to keep that commitment ongoing. No business interest in its right mind will be in a position to put up large sums of money to promote activities if it cannot see that the environment will give it a fair opportunity to promote its product, to promote its name, and to make the community aware of the support the business is giving.

These days there are partnerships between volunteers, participants, business interests, administrators, ground authorities, local authorities, and Governments. Each bit of the partnership has to be made to work. The partnership will not work if some of its elements feel they are not going to have an opportunity to have a fair go. For those reasons, I am very pleased to be able to support this bill.

Bill read a first time.

Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) on behalf of the Minister for Sport and Recreation: I move, That the Major Events Management Bill be referred to the Commerce Committee and that the committee report finally to the House on or before 15 June 2007.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Judicial Retirement Age Bill

Second Reading

Hon RICK BARKER (Minister for Courts): I move, That the Judicial Retirement Age Bill be now read a second time. I thank the Justice and Electoral Committee for its efficient consideration of this bill. The bill raises the retirement age for all judges of all courts, Associate Judges of the High Court, coroners, and community magistrates from 68 to 70 years. The committee sought comment from the Chief Justice and the Chief District Court judge, both of whom agreed wholeheartedly with the bill. As a result, the committee has reported this bill back quickly and recommended that it be passed without amendment.

The bill is very simple and straightforward. Its sole purpose is to raise the statutory retirement age for all judges and certain other judicial officers. This will bring New Zealand in line with other jurisdictions including Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. The bill will enable experienced judges to provide their services for a longer time. It will also ensure that those who are eligible for appointment to the bench will be more attracted to it, because they will have the ability to remain on the bench for a longer time. This will, hopefully, encourage more practitioners and academics to consider a career on the bench. I mentioned earlier, in my first reading speech, that there are two other things that the bill will do: it will help ensure judicial independence, and it will help ensure that there is no reason for judges to be monitored for incapacity reasons.

I have circulated two Supplementary Order Papers to the bill. The first Supplementary Order Paper removes clause 3, which provides the purpose of the bill—namely, “to increase the statutory retiring age of Judges, Associate Judges of the High Court, coroners, and Community Magistrates”. Once the bill has been divided into six bills, clause 3 will no longer be necessary. The second Supplementary Order Paper divides the bill into six separate amendments, respectively amending the Judicature Act 1908, the District Courts Act 1947, the Employment Relations Act 2000, Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993, the Coroners Act 1988, and the Coroners Act 2006. Again, I thank the Justice and Electoral Committee for its swift consideration, and I look forward to the swift action of this House to pass this legislation.

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National): National supports the second reading of the Judicial Retirement Age Bill. I thank the Minister for Courts, the Hon Rick Barker, for his generous comments about the work of the Justice and Electoral Committee. For reasons that I will develop later, perhaps it could be said that we in the committee moved too quickly. Certainly, that is what the Law Society thought. It submitted a letter to us after the bill had been reported back to the House in which it raised a number of points. Out of deference to the Law Society I will mention in the course of my speech some of the arguments it advanced.

As the Minister said, we resolved not to call for public submissions on the bill, as we considered that it was straightforward and uncontroversial. We certainly did invite comments from the Chief Justice and the Chief District Court Judge on the bill, and both endorsed its intention and supported its progression.

Because this is the first time the issue has been before Parliament for over a quarter of a century, I thought it would be useful simply to trace, by reference to the Judicature Act, how the question of the age of retirement has developed over the years. Section 13 of the Judicature Act 1908 was amended as from 24 December 1980 to substitute the expression “68” for the expression “72”. So for a number of years there were judges who could retire at 72, but the age was reduced to 68 from 1980. I took the liberty of looking up the Hansard of the debate in 1980—Volume 434, at page 4172. In fact, the only reference to the provision—it was part of a Courts Amendment Bill—stated that clause 86 reduced the age of retirement to 68 years, and that it was based on the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Courts, which had been chaired by the late Sir David Beattie. There was no discussion on the rationale for the provision.

So it may be helpful today to set out some of the thinking behind this current legislation to increase the retirement age from 68 to 70. The first point that can be made is that, as the Minister said, the age of 70 is in line with other jurisdictions. The Minister mentioned the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, and reference could also be made to 24 states in the United States. Apparently, there is no mandatory retirement age at the federal level in the United States. For example, Justice Stevens of the United States Supreme Court is aged about 85, and over the years a number of judges have served in that great court who have been even older than that.

For many years there was no specified retirement age for certain classes of judge in the United Kingdom. Lord Denning, for example, a former Master of the Rolls, was still going in his 80s. Apparently, he was on record as saying he had all Christian virtues except resignation. I think he finally retired when he was about the age of 90. That probably is far too old to be sitting as a judge—although, apparently, the age of 90 for retirement is still the law of the state of Vermont. [Interruption] Jonathan Hunt will be long gone before he is 90.

The Law Society made the point that perhaps the age could be increased back to 72, but when one looks at the international comparison, one sees that the age of 70 seems to be consistent with those of other jurisdictions, and I support 70. It could well be that within a reasonably short period of time we revisit this issue and decide to bump it up to 72.

Another point the Law Society made in its belated submission was to express concern that if the age was kept at 70 it would not be possible for some judges, in the course of their careers, to have a decent period of time on the Court of Appeal then a decent period of time on the Supreme Court if they were promoted. For myself, I do not think that is sufficient justification to move the retirement age to 72 for Supreme Court judges. I think it is best to keep the age at 70 for all judges, as the bill, indeed, provides.

Another matter the Law Society raised was the possible impact on judicial superannuation. It expressed a concern that if the age was moved, the subsidy rates for judicial superannuation could be decreased. Nothing of that sort has been referred to in the bill, let alone discussed. I really think that is an argument that need not detain the House, at all.

The Law Society makes a very important point that, from a constitutional point of view, it is important that we not have too many temporary judges, or judges who are appointed on a short-term basis. I certainly endorse that view, but I do not really think it is a problem at the moment, notwithstanding the relatively short careers of Justice Gault and Sir Kenneth Keith, for example, on the Supreme Court. Indeed, increasing the age to 70 will mean that people are able to go on to the bench at the age of 55 and expect to have at least 15 years on the bench, during which time they can make a huge contribution to the law in New Zealand.

The final point that the Law Society raised was that if a judge is appointed then retires, he or she can still be an acting judge until the age of 72. The society suggested that that age could be altered so that judges could sit as temporary judges until aged 75. For myself, I do not agree with that. I think that if a judge serves as a full-time judge up to the age of 70, there may be special reasons why that person could stay on for an extra couple of years, but I do not think it is a good thing from a policy point of view for judges to be able to come back and sit for as much as 5 further years.

The Law Society was concerned that we had not considered these arguments. I can assure the House that I read very carefully what the society said and reflected on it, even though the submission was received a little late. But, on balance, I think this bill strikes a very good balance. Seventy years seems to be the right age, and, as I said, at some later stage we can always revisit that question.

I do not know that there is too much more that one can say about this legislation. It should be able to move through its remaining stages reasonably quickly. I think it is a good move, and for that reason the National Party supports the second reading of this bill.

Dr RICHARD WORTH (National): This is a short bill with a planned, speedy passage. Its history is that having been introduced on 8 November last year, it was read a first time on 15 November. Then, as Mr Finlayson has said, it went off to the Justice and Electoral Committee where it was robustly dealt with. It returned on 8 December last year to this House, and now it faces a second reading, which National supports—as I understand do other parties in Parliament tonight.

It is an interesting point that most people the world over want to retire, generally, in their early 60s, but there are dramatic exceptions including popes, United States Supreme Court justices, and dictators. I would say that the exceptions are becoming increasingly problematic, with the extension of life brought about by modern medicine. If the only effect of medicine were to postpone incapacity, so that instead of becoming incapable of work at 70 one became incapable of work at 80, increased longevity would not pose a social problem—or at least a problem that concerns us here. The problem arises from the fact that medicine increases the average period in which a person remains alive, despite physical or mental incapacity. Medicine does not merely increase the length of life; it also increases the length of “sick” life.

If one looks around the world, one sees that the entire trend is against fixed retirement ages. That seems a mistake. It is premised on the correct observation that people decay at different ages, so setting any age of mandatory retirement, designed to make sure that people incapacitated by age are removed, will remove some people who are not incapacitated. But, I guess, that observation merely identifies one cost of mandatory retirement, and the benefits must also be considered. And they are, in fact, quite great, because of the cost of removing people on the basis of individualised determinations of incapacity. Not only are such determinations often very difficult to make, unless the individual has deteriorated to an extremely low level, but there is a justified concern that they may be used selectively to remove political enemies or professional rivals.

The crunch issue in the New Zealand Parliament that relates to fixing a mandatory retirement age revolves around two pieces of legislation. The first is the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the second is the Human Rights Act. In terms of those two pieces of legislation, fixing a mandatory retirement age necessarily gives rise to a case of discrimination on the grounds of age, which is contrary to those two Acts. So it becomes necessary to consider whether that prima facie—as the lawyers would say—discrimination is justifiable, and that involves considering section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Without wading into legal swamps, I tell members that that provision states that subject to another provision of the Bill of Rights Act, “the rights and freedoms contained in this Bill of Rights may be subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

This is not a local or domestic New Zealand issue; this same issue is before the United Nations, as is indicated in comments made by the United Nations Human Rights Committee. The committee, in one of its statements on the issue of non-discrimination, stated, “… not every differentiation of treatment will constitute discrimination, if the criteria for such differentiation are reasonable and objective and if the aim is to achieve a purpose which is legitimate under the Covenant.” That is the examination I would like to speak about, in the short time I have.

The New Zealand Court of Appeal has discussed the question of justification on several occasions. Very broadly, the court has stated that one has to look at three issues in seeing whether discrimination is justified. First, what objective is Parliament endeavouring to achieve by the provision? Second, what is being done rationally connected to that objective? Third, is the means chosen to achieve the objective “proportionate”, given the nature of the right being limited?

Just looking briefly at those issues, we see quite clearly that the independence of the judiciary is an objective of fundamental importance, and other provisions in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act spell that out. It is fair to say that mandatory judicial retirement is rationally connected and proportionate to that objective. As Mr Finlayson has said in his review of what the case is in other jurisdictions, the appropriateness of mandatory retirement ages has been recognised in a number of them. Some jurisdictions, as Mr Finlayson has said—notably United States federal courts—have lifetime tenure, so without a retirement age one can be there literally till one drops, although others, such as transnational courts and the Constitutional Court of South Africa, have term appointments with or without a mandatory retirement age. That is another way this issue could have been addressed. Instead of having a mandatory retirement age, the New Zealand Parliament could have said that judges would have security of tenure, could discharge their obligations in a fearless manner, and would have 20 years to do that in, if they lasted that period. So there are some real issues around lifetime tenure.

In completing my comments on this legislation, I will just pick up on two points. The first one is that this legislation is not a significant change in any real way. We are lifting the age of retirement from 68 to 70 years and, as others have said, the age used to be 72 years. But I am aware that there is a wish by some members of the judiciary to be part-time judges. I express the hope that as a result of making this change and lifting the retirement age to 70, the system will not yield for the possibility of judges to become part-time judges, because I would say to the members of this House that judging is a full-time profession. There is not, and should not be created, an opportunity for judges to come and go as they fit their judicial obligations around, perhaps, a score of other activities. I say firmly that there is no place in New Zealand—despite judicial requests to the contrary—for having part-time judges.

The other point, which I just note in passing, is that those of us who were in Parliament when we looked at the abolition of the Privy Council and the establishment of the Supreme Court, thought that it was appropriate to provide the possibility for acting judges of the Supreme Court—our highest court—to remain in office until the age of 75. I am talking about only acting judges.

So we have come to the view that it is appropriate to lift the age of retirement for judges, associate judges of the High Court, coroners, and community magistrates, from 68 to 70. There is no necessary magic in that 70-year age barrier, but let us see how that works and whether it has the intended consequences for which the Government hopes. National supports the bill.

HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa i te Whare. Six sentences is all that the Justice and Electoral Committee came back to us with on this Judicial Retirement Age Bill, because, the report states—and I like this bit: “We resolved not to call for public submissions on this bill as we considered that the effect of the bill was straightforward and uncontroversial.”

At first glance, so it might seem, because all the bill talks about is raising the age when judges have to retire from 68 to 70. But when we look at the statistics and we see that Pākehā men live to 77 but Māori men die at around 69, we very quickly realise that becoming a judge is not such a wise career choice for tangata whenua. If we are Māori, we ask ourselves how a society that can value its judges so highly can allow its indigenous people to die younger than the rest of the population every single year for as long as statistics have been kept.

Raising the age for judges to retire fits with the way the rest of the world is going, and 70 seems to be the norm. But, thankfully, this bill is not just about age; it also confirms the independence of the judiciary from politicians, and that is a very important principle in a world driven by politics that are clearly anti-Māori. This bill will let judges do their jobs free of any concern about job security, and free of the rantings and ravings of loose-lipped politicians who demand that judges jump through their twisted hoops or be dumped from the bench. The judiciary needs as much separation from that kind of thinking as possible if it is to function effectively, and any protection this bill can provide will be welcome.

The other positive spin-off, of course, is that the bill enables the judiciary to retain the expertise and experience of people who still have much to offer. It is appropriate here that I mihi to our longest-serving judge, Eddie Taihākūrei Durie, who has served in a wide range of jurisdictions for more than 32 years. Hon Justice Durie, the first Māori Chief Judge of the Māori Land Court and, later, a judge of the High Court, retired just a couple of months ago, in December 2006. During his time as chairman of the Waitangi Tribunal Justice Durie oversaw many important land claim reports that led to the Treaty of Waitangi being enshrined in law almost 20 years ago. During his time he also promoted the importance of the values and ethics of Māori research, and showed how a lot of research was being judged according to the colonisers’ agenda and ignored what he described as “the depth of the ancestral opinions that influenced Māori thinking”.

Yet this most brilliant of judicial minds is now lost to us because he is too old—a huge loss to Māoridom, to the judiciary, and to our society at large. This is a man who at 34 was the youngest judicial appointment to the Māori Land Court, rose to become Chief Māori Land Court Judge, then at the tender age of 40 became the first Māori appointed to the High Court. Now, because he has reached the age of 68, his judicial expertise is lost to us all.

How frustrating that must be for him, particularly in the light of the work that his brother Professor Mason Durie has done in voicing the experiences of older Māori in his 2002 report, Ngā Āhuatanga Noho o te Hunga Pakeke Māori: E tū te huru mā, haramai e noho, subtitled, “To the elderly who have reached the pinnacle, remain as a guiding light for us all”. Mason Durie’s report recognises clearly that Māori still hold dear to the view that kaumātua and kuia are to be valued for the wisdom, experience, and learning they bring to everyday life, and also recognises the many and varied roles expected of an older Māori person: “The roles of kaumātua include: resolving disputes and conflicts between families and between iwi, carrying the culture, recognising and encouraging the potential of younger members, cultural guidance and advice, maintenance of protocol, reception and care of visitors, protection and nurturing of younger adults and children, performance of ceremonial duties, spiritual leadership, and attendance at tangihanga.” So much is expected of our old people that one gets dizzy just thinking about it. Maybe that is what Te Ururoa Flavell means when he says that we need to keep going to the gym every day just to train for our greatest role: being old.

For some cultures, getting shunted into an old people’s home and left to die lonely is what an old person has to look forward to. But for Māori, being a kaumātua or kuia is an extremely busy and productive time. For Māori, being old is not a sin. It is an opportunity to use one’s experience to help guide the next generations, and, of course, to help spoil the mokopuna.

Making our most experienced and capable judges redundant because they have reached a particular age simply does not make sense. Extending the age for retirement has to be a good idea, and the case of the Hon Justice Eddie Durie simply confirms the need for this bill.

This brings me naturally to the question of what we do with people of such knowledge, people who have the respect of all sectors of our society and the confidence of jurists the world over. Well, it just so happens that there may indeed be a position befitting a man of such unquestioned qualification in the field of Treaty issues. On Waitangi Day I proposed the idea of a Treaty Commissioner to protect and promote the rights and interests of the Treaty of Waitangi in the same way that Laurie O’Reilly so passionately advocated for children’s rights during his time as Commissioner for Children. I referred to the Treaty Commissioner’s role in my reply to the Prime Minister’s speech, and I repeat that role here: to honour the vision of those who signed the Treaty; to promote the Treaty’s commitment to partnership; to support Māori rights to control and authority over their treasures; to ensure that Waitangi Day is meaningful for all citizens of Aotearoa; to review any decision made in respect of the Treaty by the Government; to raise awareness and understanding of the Treaty; to be an advocate for the Treaty; and to promote the proper application of the Treaty in legislation.

The next thing I thought about, of course, was the kind of expertise, experience, and status required for such a key role: the intellectual capacity to review Government decisions regarding the Treaty; the legislative know-how to be able to promote the application of the Treaty across our statutes; the background required to honour the vision of those who signed the Treaty; and the special leadership needed to make the Treaty live in the hearts and minds of all citizens of Aotearoa. When I started looking for suitable contenders one name kept coming to mind: the Hon Justice Eddie Durie, a hugely significant figure in our legal landscape who is noted for saying: “If Māori are the tangata whenua, the original people, then Pākehā are the tangata Tiriti, those who belong to this land by right of the Treaty.”

The Māori Party welcomes this Judicial Retirement Age Bill as a positive way of keeping the senior members of the judiciary so that we can keep some of the finest thinkers and practitioners of the legal profession, and for opening up the pool of contenders for the unique position of New Zealand’s first Treaty Commissioner. We look forward to working with those proactive and intellectually superior politicians and their equally superior parties who are willing to support the establishment of this new position. Kia ora tātou. Tēnā koe.

LYNNE PILLAY (Labour—Waitakere): It is a pleasure, as the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee, to stand and speak in support of the Judicial Retirement Age Bill. In doing so I want to acknowledge all members of the select committee who, with their unanimous and common-sense approach, enabled this bill to come back to this House in a timely manner, which means that it can very quickly take effect .

The bill raises the statutory retirement age for all judges, associate judges of the High Court, coroners, and community magistrates from 68 to 70 years. The committee sought comment from the Chief Justice and the Chief District Court Judge, both of whom agreed wholeheartedly with the bill, and that enabled us to report it back very quickly. The current retirement age for judges is low by international standards. Increasing the retirement age retains the valuable knowledge and experience of judges for longer and brings us into line with other jurisdictions, including Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

The Justice and Electoral Committee recommended that the bill be passed without amendment, and I am very happy to stand here in this House and reinforce that position.

PITA PARAONE (NZ First): Tēnā koe. Again I stand on behalf of New Zealand First, and particularly on behalf of my colleague Ron Mark.

I want to say right from the start that there is a saying: “There is nothing like experience.” It seems to me that this bill recognises the experience of those who are charged with the responsibility of looking after our legislative requirements. It is good to see that although we accept New Zealand is a unique country, we do not believe its uniqueness should extend to the fact that we are the only country at this point of time where members of the judiciary are required to retire at the age of 68. Given that the bill highlights a number of countries where members of the judiciary do not need to retire earlier than the age of 68, it seems appropriate that we should make the best use of our best legal brains. It also seems to me that it is appropriate that this legislation provides an opportunity for those practitioners who want to give up work as a practitioner and sit on the bench. This bill certainly provides that.

I just want to make some comments about a member’s bill that New Zealand First is responsible for: the Treaty of Waitangi (Removal of Conflict of Interest) Amendment Bill. It suggests that retired High Court judges and Māori Land Court judges should be able to fulfil the position of chairperson of the Waitangi Tribunal. I hope, given the comments made by the spokesperson from the Māori Party, and particularly recognising the experience of and the high regard we have for the Hon Justice Durie, that the Māori Party members will lend their support to that bill.

I reiterate the support of New Zealand First for this legislation. I note that the report from the Justice and Electoral Committee does not identify who was on that committee. I am not quite sure whether that is an oversight that needs to be corrected. But suffice it to say that we will be supporting this bill.

KATE WILKINSON (National): I will take only a brief call in relation to this bill, in support of it. In speaking to the bill, which as we have heard increases the retirement age for judges, coroners, etc., from 68 to 70 years of age, it is perhaps opportune to reflect on the arbitrary nature of age itself, and age limits themselves. When is old too old—when is one too old to function—and, conversely, when is one old enough? This bill is not about saying that at 70 one is too old to carry out one’s duties and obligations; it is about setting an arbitrary age at which judges, coroners, justices, etc. must retire.

Whenever we look at the issue of age, whether in terms of too young or too old, we will always see inconsistencies. For example, throughout the alcohol purchasing age legislation we learnt that someone can marry at 18, go to war at 18, hold a firearms licence at 16, drive a motor vehicle at 15, and sell adult material at any age—although not buy it at any age—yet if the bill had progressed young people would not have been able to buy a beer at 18. What arbitrary age restrictions do is remove the requirement for any subjective assessment as to a person’s maturity, sense of responsibility, and ability. It is similarly so with judges, because under the Judicial Retirement Age Bill the age of retirement is upon them at 70, whether or not they like it.

We have heard the comparisons with other countries. Our existing retirement age is 68, which is relatively young—it is interesting that the closer one comes to such an age, the younger that age seems. By comparison, in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Ireland the retirement age is 70. In Canada it is as high as 75. Just out of interest I asked the Minister the current ages of our judges, and I would like to mention them for the record. Of our current District Court judges three are under 40 years of age, with 25 between the ages of 41 and 50, 82 between the ages of 51 and 60, 12 between the ages of 61 and 64, and nine between the ages of 65 and 68. By comparison, of the High Court judges seven are between the ages of 40 and 50, 14 between the ages of 51 and 60, nine between the ages of 61 and 64, and two between the ages of 65 and 68. So I think we could say that they are a pretty young bunch, really.

One of the reasons given by the Minister for a compulsory retirement age is that of judicial independence. I totally agree that the separation of powers is vital to the integrity of our democracy. Judges must—and must be able to—act independently of the executive, and of us. Similarly, we should not blame judges for giving inadequate sentences to criminals when it is members of Parliament as lawmakers who provide them with the rules for such sentences. If we do not like that we need to change the law, not criticise the judges. That is the essence of judicial independence and separation of powers.

So I speak in support of this bill, although it must be re-emphasised that 70 years of age is not an indication of either ability or inability; it is an arbitrary age limit, and for many it is still very young. Even by fixing the age limit at 70 years we will be losing valuable judicial resources on the bench, but it is important that we set some age limit, and 70 years of age certainly seems consistent with other jurisdictions, and reasonable in the circumstances. Accordingly, on behalf of National, I speak in support of this bill.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister for ACC): I move, That the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This bill builds on the framework provided for in the existing legislation by ensuring that the accident compensation scheme is funded in a fair and sustainable manner. The primary purpose of the bill is to merge the self-employed work account and the employers’ account of the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) into a single work account, so that levies are more stable and better reflect industry risk. The account merger will allow levies paid by businesses to be based on the industry risk associated with their industry grouping, rather than on their business structure. The bill also renames the medical misadventure account.

Some submissions to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee expressed concern that the merger would be contradictory to the basic insurance principle of grouping industries on the basis of discernible risk factors. The merged work account will continue to group enterprises on the basis of discernible risk factors, but it will not group enterprises according to their business structure. The use of self-employment as a rating factor results in the different treatment of small businesses that carry out similar—or even the same—activities, with similar risks. For example, a self-employed plumber currently pays a different levy rate from a sole-trading plumber operating within a company structure, even though he or she faces the same risk of workplace injury.

The self-employed work account has had a high degree of volatility, due to its small earnings combined with a high turnover of levy payers from year to year. Small businesses, particularly, have cited levy instability as creating problems for their business-cost planning. The account merger will ensure that levies are more stable for both the self-employed and employers. It will also encourage industries to better coordinate health and safety across their workplaces, regardless of their business structure.

This merger is not intended to redistribute the excess reserves currently in the employers’ account to the self-employed. The transition period of 3 years provided for in the bill will allow the self-employed and employer levy rates in each industry or risk class, and the relative funding positions of the employers’ and self-employed work accounts, to be equalised. The Government is proposing to ring-fence approximately $100 million of reserves in the employers’ account, and to reimburse those funds to employers through rebates during the transition period. Also, during that period levy rates for classification units will be able to either increase or decrease only by up to 25 percent in relation to the previous year’s levy for those units. After the transition period, employers and the self-employed in the same industry or risk class will pay the same levy rate. If, as some had requested, the entire excess reserves in the employers’ account were to be refunded to levy payers in one year, then employers would experience significant increases in levy rates in years to come, which would defeat the objective of levy stability. ACC Partnership Programme employers would be more likely to exit the programme to take advantage of the rebate of the excess funding, to which they have contributed little, and that would also jeopardise the functioning of the programme.

The proposed commencement date for this merger to take effect is 1 April this year. Because both accounts are projected to be adequately funded for the 2007-08 year, that will make the transition to a single work account easier by reducing the impact of the merger on levy payers. The public was informed of the proposal to merge the accounts during the 2007-08 levy round. ACC provided information about the proposed policy package, and indicative levy rates, for the merged work account. In November of last year ACC also published updated indicative levy rates on its website, to assist those seeking to understand the levy impact of the merger proposal. Furthermore, the Department of Labour wrote to everyone who made submissions on this bill, and on the proposal during the levy consultation, with information as to how the proposed rebates would be funded.

As I mentioned earlier, the bill also renames the medical misadventure account as the treatment injury account. The Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Act (No. 2) 2005 replaced the “medical error” and “medical mishap” definitions with a definition of “treatment injury”. That bill also removed the necessity to find fault in order to obtain cover for treatment injuries, and the new provisions were implemented on 1 June 2005. Health professionals and health organisations are now familiar with the new systems, terms, and cover provisions. It is appropriate that the medical misadventure account now be renamed the treatment injury account.

The bill returns to the House unchanged. However, the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—to which I give my thanks—has recommended that a few minor corrective amendments should be made during the Committee stage. I will release a Supplementary Order Paper to make the minor corrective amendments recommended by the committee.

I conclude by thanking the select committee for its consideration of this bill, and commending the progress of the bill to the House.

PANSY WONG (National): National will continue to oppose the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill, because it legalises stealing from the employers’ account. The only reason that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee did not bother to make any amendments was because National—and other rational parties—realised that there was no goodwill and no open-mindedness from the Labour Government side about even considering any changes. So we will simply oppose this bill.

Let us look at this position. As at June 2006 the employers’ account, which is to merge with the self-employed work account, was standing with a very healthy margin of 77 percent above estimated claims liability, while the self-employed work account’s margin was 16 percent. This bill simply indicates that the combined, merged account would maintain a margin of 53 percent and equalise the amount. Let me illustrate this. It is, for example, as if I have $10 in my pocket and the Minister Ruth Dyson happens to have $40 in her pocket. I come along and say what a good idea it would be to pool together our two sums of money and spread it equally. I want to know how many people in this House would believe that the Minister would hand over $15 to me so that we could both end up with $25. None. That is what I expected. All rational, intelligent members of Parliament know that. No two people would be willing to simply pool together their money for no good reason. Yet the Labour Government is passing this legislation to force employers who have collected levies due to the number of their employees and their earnings to pay those levies over to the merged account.

If the Minister is actually reasonable and says there is good reason to merge the two accounts because business structure should not dictate the risk, then why not, at the minimum, allow the employers’ account to start off in the same position as the self-employed work account margin? The funding policy of the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) is that within 5 years it would refund the excess margin in those accounts to the people who pay the levy, or collect extra levies if there is an insufficient amount in the account—and we are only 1 year off that place. ACC also indicated that by 2009-2010 the levy margin should be only 10 percent. Even if we are generous and let the employers’ account margin drop to the same position as the self-employed account margin, it would mean that employers would be entitled to a refund of over $600 million.

The Minister stood there and pretended that the Labour Government is generous. She said we should let them have $100 million—but it would be not even in one single year but over 2 years. Even the Inland Revenue Department—the department that helps people—recognises that the use of money attracts interest. If taxpayers had overpaid their tax, then even the Inland Revenue Department would pay them some interest for the use of money.

ACC explained why the employers’ account is in such a healthy position. It is partly because of the additional premium collected. The other reason is that, ACC says, it makes good investments. Good on them! But members should think about which principles those premiums were paid under. ACC is a statutory monopoly insurer.

So, for this very, very basic reason, National will say that no legislation—and I am challenging parties that support this bill—should be passed in this Parliament that will legalise stealing from the employers’ account, because that money is collected into a monopoly organisation and employers should be entitled to their refund. I urge the other parties to think about that. Let us put aside whether the employers’ account and the self-employed work account should be merged. There is no excuse for legalising stealing. I will be introducing an amendment during the Committee stage to state that, as a minimum, parties that are responsible should say that if the employers’ account ends up with overpayments, then they should be entitled to those refunds.

I also want to touch on the issue of the process. The Minister said that ACC had written to all those people who made submissions, so there should be no excuse for people not understanding what is happening. Well, no submission was open to the public. Because of the truncated period of submission, only certain organisations were invited to make submissions. We also know that the original bill in 2001 promised full consultation in setting the levy. I invite the next speaker from the Government benches to explain the meaning of “full consultation”. Does it mean that ACC will publicise some figures on its website? What is the process of verification of the premium that was set by ACC?

So National has a lot of problems with legalising the stealing of money from the employers’ account, which should be properly refunded to those employers. We have a lot of problems with the process. All the submitters—even the ones who were invited to make submissions—have problems with the short time period. National also had problems with the very clear body language of the Labour Party members in the select committee, which indicated that they are not open-minded about any suggestions.

The last point I want to touch on is that this is meant to be an insurance policy. The insurance premium is based on risk and reward for good behaviour. Yet the Minister mentioned that the objective of an insurance policy is levy stabilisation. If levy stabilisation is the key objective, then this should not be treated as an insurance-based policy for work injury. The Government should not even pretend it understands what is meant by insurance that takes risk into account.

The other thing that really worries us is the Government once again urging the so-called industry to reach over and help each other to achieve a good outcome. National would consider at this stage that there is no way we can reach over and help Labour in terms of managing its members. For example, Mr Field’s present predicament, I hope, is not something that all members of Parliament can reach over and share the blame for. This is a socialising insurance premium policy that takes into account the risk of the type of industry, but does not take into account how individual self-employed people or business owners can behave in order to reduce their premiums.

Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie): It is no wonder the insurance companies that tried to write the policy for the National Party and funded it for its last election are so disappointed. They thought it was bad having Dr Paul Hutchison fronting up for the National Party, but now they have to put up with Pansy Wong. She presented us with a most muddled set of nonsenses about the process in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. The process was actually very simple. It was straightforward and would have taken half the time had it not been for the idiotic questions that came from the two National Party members I have just named—

David Bennett: Aw!

Hon MARK GOSCHE: —not from those who are sitting down the back on the other side. They are much more sensible.

National has to get over the ideological position that it wants to sell off accident compensation, as it tried to do when it was last in power. It opposes this Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill because that is what it wants to do. Why did it have a separate account for self-employed people? It was because the insurance industry did not want them. The National Government was going to allow its mates in the private insurance market to cherry-pick the best part and leave the Government-owned organisation to cover the rest.

Members opposite are still thinking that way. They still want to privatise what I think is the best accident compensation system in the world—a system that is held up throughout the world for all sorts of reasons, because it is fair and, even more important to business, cheap. It is cheaper than all those schemes National members point to in their examples from Australia and the United States. But that does not matter. Ideology is always going to win, over on that side of the House, over common sense and good policy—which this bill is. For people who are listening to this debate, we are simply saying that for people whose risks are the same—for example, unemployed plumbers doing exactly the same work as plumbers who are set up under a company structure—over time as we equalise the premiums their levies will be the same.

We received very interesting submissions from, I think, the seafood industry. It was represented by one of its officials, who did not—after the National Party asked him numerous times—want to say whether he was opposed to the bill. His life was worth more than that, because he was in the unenviable position of having half his members opposed to the bill and the other half in support of it. Why? The reason was that two guys could be standing next to one another on the back of a fishing boat, one self-employed and the other working under a company, but each would be paying a different rate. They could be doing exactly the same job and carrying exactly the same risks—and the National Party says that that is the way it should be.

Where is the logic in that? We look forward to some National Party speaker further on in this debate getting up and telling us what the logic is behind that. It is not as though at the moment we are saying to employers who have built up money in their fund that we are going to take it all off them and give it to the self-employed. That is not what the bill says. But Pansy Wong over there would say that we are stealing off people. Well, she should actually do her work—that is what she is paid for in this place—and read the bill. She sat in on the submission process and heard it. She questioned the officials and heard their responses. They were very sensible, very straightforward, and very easy to understand. Some valid questions were raised by submitters, such as what their levies would be. So we asked the officials—as a good select committee does—to send out that information, and they did so. I congratulate those officials on an excellent job well done, and on being able to put forward the information submitters asked for.

But National Party members, still too lazy to do their work, have not even read that yet. This country deserves a better Opposition than the one we have here. Why do those members not just leave the place and give their jobs to the insurance companies? Those companies would write their policies, fund their campaigns, and expect to be delivered accident compensation on a plate, except for the bits that do not become very profitable, such as provisions for self-employed people.

Oh no, no! Their mates in the insurance industry do not want that. And if Pansy Wong dares to say that this is about stealing, then I would like her to come up with some words to describe the behaviour of the National Party in the way it is beholden to private insurance companies, whose representatives sat up in the gallery week after week and watched this House debate the privatisation of accident compensation. I remember watching them. They were from that company called HIH Insurance—that really great company the National Party gave accident compensation to. How many billions of dollars did that company lose in Australia when it went under?

Hon Ruth Dyson: And who paid for that?

Hon MARK GOSCHE: Who paid for that? Was it the company’s shareholders? No, not on your life! It was the ordinary people of Australia who paid for that massive failure—and the National Party wants to revisit that sort of thing.

This is a fairly small, innocuous sort of bill. It is not hugely earth-shattering, but I congratulate the Minister on bringing it before the House. Yet National members are stuck in their old ideological mode. Its members have put on fresh new faces, as they do with their new leader, and pretend that they have changed, but they prove every time they do this sort of thing in the House that they are just the same right-wing old Tories they always were. No—I apologise to those right-wing old Tories—this lot is even worse. Even those right-wing old Tories told us what they thought. They got upfront and said what their real policies were. They did not go running around pretending to have friendly faces, when in fact everybody knew they were not friendly.

But this lot still have their policy to privatise accident compensation, just as they want to sell off State houses and all the other things that prop up society in the way we should. We should make sure that people’s risk—whether those people standing on the back of fishing boats are self-employed or people who happen to be employed by the company—is the same, that their levy is the same, and that they are in an equal situation. I do not think that anybody in his or her right mind could actually argue against that, except for those in the National Party.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): I appreciate the call on the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill that is before us. In looking at what the Labour Party has been saying, I believe there is a fundamental difference in society, and especially in business, that its members just do not understand. There is a difference between being an employer and being self-employed. Employers generally have commitments to their employees that they have to maintain. They have to provide a safe environment in which people can work and they are generally audited to make sure they comply with those regulations, whereas self-employed people are generally people who are starting out and taking a few risks. They will go out there and do what they have to do in order to get their product, or their job, completed. They will take risks that employers just cannot afford to take because of their responsibility to other people. That is a concept we would not expect Labour Party members to understand.

They cannot understand it because they have never been in that position, whereas a lot of people on this side of the House have been there and done that. They know what it is like to go out and milk cows, or do whatever they have to do to get by, to get going, and to make a business successful. They know what it feels like to take the risk of doing the extra work they would not ask employees to do, because they know they have to save some money to make their business successful. That is the fundamental difference we have in relation to this legislation, and that is why we have a difference in the way those two business entities have been treated.

This legislation seeks to change that. It seeks to put everyone together in a great universal pot, which I guess is the collective socialism one would expect from the far left. Those members think that if those two ingredients are put together things will be equal, and that the great ideals of a society based on equality will come about by treating everyone the same. Well, it does not work that way. People are different and businesses are different; they deserve to be treated differently.

We see a number of things in this legislation. The first is the difference between employers and the self-employed. The second has to do with the reserves employers have built up, which equate to about $511 million. That is money employers have paid into an account they did not need to pay into, because the account is being merged with another account that has only $115 million in it. Effectively, over a number of years employers have been paying excessive levies, and the Government has decided that it will put that money into one big pot, worth about $700 million. I do not know why the Government has such resources there—perhaps it wants to raid them in a year’s time for its election spending. The real reason it should have the account there is so that it can give the money back to the employers who have actually paid into it. The Government should not take money off the employers and put it into some great merged account that it thinks will achieve its goals of equality. The employers have paid in that money and they deserve to get it back.

The Government is talking about some kind of scheme—a 2-year window of opportunity—where it will rebate some of its new levies for employers. That will account for about $105 million of that $500 million. That may seem fine, but the reality is that Labour is doing that just for show. It is just keeping the employer levy down for 2 years. Why would it want to do that? The reason is that when the two accounts are merged, the employer levy will have to go up. So if Labour uses the $105 million to keep the levy down, employers will not notice the change for the next 2 years. But once that rebate has come off, employers will see their levies go through the roof. That is the real reason Labour is doing what it is doing with that levy rebate.

Labour should be giving the whole sum of money back to the employers, and it should be treating employers and the self-employed differently. Members may ask what that actually means. Well, the ministry has told us that there could be an increase of up to 25 percent in relation to the levy of the previous year. Can members imagine running a business and increasing the price of their product by 25 percent in one year? At the end of that year there would not be a business. But it is all right for the Government to do that to employers. It is expected that 8 percent of employers will get a levy rate increase of between 5 and 45 percent—that is, up to 45 percent more in levies than exists under the current regime. Members should imagine businesses getting a 45 percent increase in their levies. That is not exactly the kind of thing people should be doing to New Zealand business if they want to transform the economy, grow the economy, or—more likely now—just sustain it.

Let us look at some of these numbers. For employer classification levies in 2007-08, we are at present looking at levies of about $2.43 for lobster fishing—basically, for ocean and coastal fishing. Under this new scheme, without the employer rebate, it will mean that in 2 years’ time the figure will be $4.31. So the levies will go from $2.43 to $4.31 for the fishing industries. Those industries are really struggling under a high export dollar, but these guys in the Government are going to give them another kick in the guts through their employer levies under the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) scheme.

I turn to meat inspection services. The figure will go from $1.26 to $2.02. I say to Mark Gosche that we have read the legislation and we have read the numbers, and the Government cannot do that to another industry that is really struggling in New Zealand. I take another example, the timber industry, where the levies will rise from $1.13 to $2.74—a huge increase for an industry like that one.

Members should look at other industries that they would not expect to have such big increases, such as sport. That will be good for Trevor Mallard, will it not? Let us look at what the Government is going to do there. The levies in equestrian sports will go from $4.83 to $5.65. Labour should be encouraging people into sports in New Zealand. Rugby league levies will go from 75c to $1.01. Effectively, levies in the sports area will increase by about 17 percent.

This Government prides itself on culture, does it not—a Government that has an interest in the cultural affairs of this country? What has it done there? The levies will increase from 24c to 36c—a big increase on a percentage basis. This Government does not really care about our youth—it does not care about getting them into sport—it does not care about cultural interests; it is just prepared to do whatever it has to do in order to get more money. This is another tax-and-grab from this Labour Government.

There will also be an effect on self-employed people; some of them will have from 20 to 50 percent increases. The police, and those in stevedoring, plastic products, and chemical products will have increases at large rates, as well.

This bill was intended as a means of putting together two pieces of the ACC components that should always have been separate. They represent different ways of doing business. They represent the different structures of New Zealand business. Yet the Government has put them together in a process it believes will create equality and fairness. Well, it will not create equality and fairness; all it will do is make employers pay through the nose for the self-employed. It is a farcical attempt by this Government to push through something without any consultation.

In the select committee we were very surprised to see such legislation being proposed without there being time for genuine consultation. The reason there are not many submissions on this legislation is that people simply were not given time to make submissions. It was within about a 6-month period that people became aware of the changes, and those changes were forced upon them this year. That is simply not good governance for business. It shows that this Government has no idea of how businesses plan ahead. It shows how this Government is prepared to make its changes just willy-nilly, as it desires, without having any knowledge of the consequences or the approaches to take.

New Zealand business deserves more. New Zealand culture deserves more. New Zealand sports deserve more. But what will we get? We will get a regime that lumps it all together for the sake of this Government. There is a sum of $500 million that has been stolen off employers. It is time for the Government to give the money back to them and show that it really cares about transforming this economy.

SUE BRADFORD (Green): The Green Party supports this short and, for bills concerning accident compensation, unusually simple bill. The primary purpose of the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill is to merge the Accident Compensation Corporation’s (ACC) self-employed work account with its employers’ account. This is just sensible. There is no good reason why a self-employed person carrying out a business should be levied differently than a person who registers a company that employs him or her as its sole employee. Yet that was the consequence of the anachronistic legacy of the two separate accounts that flowed from the National Government’s failed privatisation of accident compensation in the 1990s.

This bill presents an opportunity for the National Party to distance itself from the hard-right policies and the hollow men of the Brash years. It is a chance for National to show that it is acting in the interests of New Zealanders who have the misfortune to be injured, rather than in the interests of its mates in the insurance industry. Yet what we see in this House is the National Party opposing this bill, perhaps on the basis that the merger of the accounts would make it more difficult for some future National-led Government to privatise accident compensation again.

It is time for the members on the National benches to come clean about their accident compensation privatisation policy. Who wrote it, or at whose behest was it written? Was it written by Stephen Cosgrove of QBE Insurance, who reportedly met with Dr Brash in August 2004 to discuss the re-privatisation of accident compensation insurance? Or was it written by Ross Chapman of the same company, who reportedly met with Dr Brash in July 2005? Or perhaps it was written by the chief executive officer of the Insurance Council itself, Chris Ryan, who reportedly had numerous meetings and communications with Dr Brash and Dr Hutchison on the privatisation of accident compensation.

It is also time for the members on the National benches to come clean about some other matters in relation to its accident compensation privatisation policy. Did National receive a $1 million-plus anonymous donation through one of its dodgy trusts from the Insurance Council, in recognition of its privatisation policy, as Nicky Hager claims it did in The Hollow Men, as advised by a confidential National Party source? It is time for the National Party, which had the temerity to make allegations of corruption in this House for most of the past year, to come clean about its own links with the insurance industry and the funding it may have received from it. It is also time for the electoral law to be changed, to ensure transparency in the funding of political parties. Whatever the links were between the National Party’s accident compensation privatisation policy and the allegations of it receiving substantial donations from the insurance industry, the public, in the interests of democracy, has the right to know.

What the National Party forgets, or chooses to forget, is that its short-lived privatisation of workplace accident insurance was a disaster for people injured at work. A few weeks ago I received an email from one such person, who is still suffering under the sorry legacy of that scheme through the transitional provisions of the 2001 Act. His email has the subject line: “WorkAon unfair and ruthless.” It is an email that I imagine most other members of this House also received.

He says: “The thought of having to pay out money to injured people is an insult to their agenda, so it goes without saying that they will put whatever obstacles in the way of injured people to avoid paying any money. They are not operating under the ACC laws. WorkAon’s efforts in the field of accident compensation are probably the worst that you could possibly come across. I have been told by some doctors that it was commonplace to have to wait for more than a year for their bills to be paid. What way is this to run a business? It would appear as though their first duty was to the organisations that are paying levies to them and also their shareholders not for the injured people that are unfortunate enough to have to rely on them for compensation as a result of the Government allowing big business to arrange their own cover.” The letter writer went on to detail a sorry sequence of events, including WorkAon refusing to accept medical reports from specialists who had examined him and referring him to its own tame specialists whose opinions it then preferred.

This highlights the problem with privatised workplace accident insurance that the National Party just does not seem to get—or chooses to ignore—in the interests of its friends in the insurance industry. The National Party says it wants to introduce competition into the scheme, but the competition the National Party proposes advantages only the employer. There is no competition for the injured worker. Accident compensation insurance is not a normal insurance arrangement. Cover, compensation, and other entitlements are prescribed by statute, not by contract. The easiest way for private insurance companies to be profitable and gain market share in the area of accident compensation is to deny the cover and entitlements that an injured person is entitled by statute to receive. They can do so in the knowledge that the accident compensation law is extremely complex, and the injured person will often not know how to challenge an unfavourable decision. They can do so in the knowledge that many claimants will not be able to afford the legal representation they need in order to challenge anything that goes against them. They know that the health professionals doing the assessments will often be contracted to the employer, and the perception, if not the reality, is that their assessments are far from independent and unbiased.

They know, too, that the purportedly independent review process involves a reviewer appointed by the employer, which further undermines any perception of independence. The consequence, of course, was that the private insurance companies in 1999-2000 deliberately, or negligently, refused to extend cover and entitlements that they were bound by statute to extend. They knew that most injured people would not challenge those erroneous decisions, and that this was a far easier way to reduce their levies and increase their market share than their spending money on advising their employer clients on how to reduce risk.

The other thing the National Party refuses to understand about accident compensation is that it is a no-fault scheme. This distinguishes it from most insurance arrangements, where the insurance company can recover funds expended on a claim from the party responsible for the action that gave rise to the claim. That is not a possibility when it is deemed no one is at fault, and this, too, leads to competing private insurance companies attempting to minimise claims expenditure by wrongly declining claims. These are the reasons that accident compensation should be retained in the public sector. The National Party’s blinkered view that everything that is private is good and everything that is public is bad is one reason that it is not yet fit to be Government again. The Green Party believes that there are some things the public sector does do best, and accident compensation is one of them. Despite the shortcomings of the public accident compensation scheme—and I am the first to accept there are still some significant shortcomings, particularly regarding the definition of personal injury—that scheme operates infinitely better for injured workers than did National’s privatisation experiment, which they propose to revert to.

I am pleased that New Zealand First, which supported the disastrous accident compensation privatisation experiment back in the late 1990s, is now supporting the aspects of this bill that merge the employers’ account and the self-employed work account. At least it appears that that party has moved on and can now see sense. The National Party, however, still seems to be stuck in a time warp, promoting yesterday’s failed policies. Its record on accident compensation is one of failure and duplicity. This is the party that went into the 1996 election campaign promising that it would not privatise accident compensation, yet, by the end of the following parliamentary term, it had partially privatised accident compensation.

If National is serious about again sitting on the Government benches, it should front up to this House and to the public of New Zealand and tell us the full story, for better or for worse, of its links with the insurance industry. It should acknowledge that the privatisation of accident compensation in the late 1990s was a disaster for injured people, and repudiate that policy. It should also withdraw its misguided opposition to this simple little bill, which does no more than rectify an anomaly that causes wildly fluctuating ACC levies for self-employed people, and redress the situation that different people carrying out essentially the same business with the same injury risk can still pay vastly different ACC levies—just because of the way they have chosen to structure their businesses.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First): I want initially to respond to something the honourable member Sue Bradford referred to, in relation to New Zealand First. She said she was pleased that we were finally supporting the accident compensation system and had given up our thoughts of privatising the system. Let me put the facts straight.

Sue Bradford: Oh, didn’t you support privatisation?

PETER BROWN: No, no. If the member listens to me, she will hear our viewpoint. When the system was privatised—shortly after National had dispensed with us as a coalition partner—we did not agree with that privatisation. We thought it was too quickly done. But, in fairness to National, after the privatisation had had its 6-month trial we thought it was working better than National had envisaged. It was certainly working better than the way in which we had thought it would be working, at the time of the change of Government. I see the member there is nodding her head. So we did not see any reason to change it after the 6-month trial; we felt it should be given a 2-year trial, at least. Then it could have been changed back, nationalised, if need be.

However, the Government nationalised the system and brought back the Accident Compensation Corporation being the sole provider. In all honesty, the Government did not do the job properly in the first instance. The Minister for ACC, Ruth Dyson, will acknowledge that. New Zealand First had about five areas of concern at that time—significant areas of concern. One of them was medical misadventure. We thought that that should have been covered by accident compensation from the word go. I made personal representation to the Minister—and her predecessor—on that very issue, and was told that it was too costly. Since then the Government has addressed that issue and medical misadventure has been embraced by accident compensation.

National members have come to the party and have raised all sorts of facts and figures. I listened to David Bennett with some interest. He said—and I hope I am correct in this—that the employers’ account is worth $511 million and the self-employed work account is worth $115 million. He said that both of them together are worth in the vicinity of $700 million. Actually, they add up to $626 million, which is $74 million short of the member’s figure. There is a gap in his mathematics, or maybe he is trying to hoodwink people.

It is well known in the public arena and in this House that the National Party wants to sell a few of our assets and privatise them. I can list quite a few, such as Television New Zealand (TVNZ)—[Interruption] That was Rodney Hide. He would sell everything, with due respect. The National Party would sell TVNZ, Air New Zealand, Meridian Energy, Genesis Energy, and Mighty River Power, and we know that it would privatise, at least, the Accident Compensation Corporation employers’ account and the motorists’ account.

We think there are very good reasons for amalgamating the employers’ account and the self-employed work account. I listened to Pansy Wong; indeed, I have spoken to her, and she has outlined her concerns personally to me. She may or may not have a point. I am not sure I have got fully to grips with where she is coming from, but I am certain that when we come to the Committee stage she will give us a better understanding of this.

Let me read what the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee said: “The bill, however, allows levy rates to differ between the self-employed and employers until the end of the 2009/10 tax year.” David Bennett listed a whole range of figures to show how much levy rates are going up and what have you. It was convenient for him to say they are going up by so much and, by inference, say it is because the two accounts are being combined. That is not true. The levy rates are going up for some reason, but it is not because the accounts are being combined.

The report goes on to say: “The Government has proposed a mechanism utilising different levy rates to equalise the funding reserves. This mechanism would provide rebates totalling approximately $100.5 million to employers and a loading to be applied to self-employed classification units to bring the total levy income up to the level ACC would otherwise receive under separate accounts.” The worst thing I can say about that statement is that it is a blasted long sentence. It should have been split into two, or more. But, basically, it explains that there is a degree of flexibility in the mechanism.

To some extent, all politicians form their responses by gauging the submissions received by the select committee. But, equally so, they gauge public concern by the number of people who contact MPs about an issue. On this issue, I am not aware that any New Zealand First MP has been contacted privately at all, by anyone.

Rodney Hide: Why bother?

PETER BROWN: I say to Mr Hide that we are involved with this Government on confidence and supply. We have a great deal more influence with the Government than he has. Mr Hide has achieved exactly nothing since he has been in Parliament. In the last year New Zealand First has achieved a great deal in cooperation with the Government. That is true.

Much has been said about this bill, but the little bit that concerns us the most—and, again, the public have not raised it with us—is the change of the name of the medical misadventure account to treatment injury account. That sticks in our throat a little. We think that the original name, “medical misadventure account”, better reflects what it is all about, and that the name “treatment injury account” makes it all sound too nice and cosy. We are talking about an account that covers people for accident compensation when a doctor makes a stuff-up or something else goes wrong. To call it a treatment injury account does not sit comfortably with us, and we would have preferred to keep it as the medical misadventure account. But, having said that, we are not prepared to pull the bill down on this.

Rodney Hide: Oh!

PETER BROWN: No, we are just saying that this does not sit comfortably.

Pansy Wong: Would the member bring an amendment?

PETER BROWN: I do not know. We may well do that. We will be voting for this bill, whether or not the name of the account changes. I say to the House that the name change does not sit comfortably with New Zealand First, but in all other respects we are comfortable with the bill and we will be supporting it.

TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa. There are three critical components to this bill that the Māori Party seeks to bring to the House. The challenge when considering any merger such as is proposed in this bill, in merging the employers’ account and the self-employed work account into a single account, is that there is a risk that specific issues may be submerged in the joining. The specific issues that we seek to highlight are: the context of Māori as employers and as self-employed, the relationship of tangata whenua to the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), and the adequacy of this bill to ensure a responsiveness to Māori alongside the pursuit of whānau well-being.

The proposed changes in merging the employers’ account and the self-employed work account into a single work account will impact on Māori employers in terms of the way they will support an ongoing commitment to a fair and sustainable accident compensation scheme. The household labour force survey in June 2006 identified that there are 4,500 Māori employers, and that number is growing fast. The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research has described the rapidly increasing participation of Māori as employers, to the extent that economists now talk meaningfully about a Māori economy. Indeed, in 2003 the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research quantified an annual tax contribution of $2.4 billion from the Māori economy.

A recent 2006 study of Māori employers by Eljon Fitzgerald and Eva McLaren gives us much room for optimism about the way in which Māori employers will respond to this change. Employers were asked about their strategies to retain and care for staff. Good relationships, working conditions, and management strategies were seen as important means of retaining employees. Innovation was favoured—for example, one employer takes his shearing gang to Australia every year during the off season. An interesting observation from the study was that 13 percent of the employers felt that an easing of compliance issues would be helpful in facilitating employment growth. As one employer noted, accident compensation charges have increased 800 percent per staff member, which takes a big toll on business.

The burden of compliance issues also impacts on the self-employed. Over the past two decades, Aotearoa has witnessed an unprecedented rise in the numbers of self-employed Māori—in fact, there has been a massive 156 percent increase between 1981 and 2001. Perhaps one reason to account for the growth in the number of the Māori self-employed comes from a simple financial risk assessment. The median earnings for self-employed—$30,350—are now higher than salary and wage earners, which is $29,280. Māori males make up the majority of Māori self-employed. In 2005 there were 9,750 men self-employed compared with 5,800 women. The number of Māori women who have grown their businesses to a point of being able to employ others has barely moved in 15 years and makes up only 1.3 percent of Māori women in employment.

I was really interested when I was listening to Mr Bennett talking about the notion of self-employed people taking short cuts and taking more risks. I thought about my own husband, who was self-employed as a bricklayer and plasterer, and I do not ever recall him taking short cuts and taking risks, because his business was dependent on the quality of job. So I could not quite get the gist of that.

Given the relative youthfulness of the sector, and the recent growth, there is concern that the impacts of this proposed legislation will mean that levies will almost certainly increase. Instead of levies being calculated on the earnings indicated in the tax return, they will be allocated according to risk. This will mean, in effect, that levies will be calculated according to the risk of injury in that sector, and by wages. For those high-risk industries that so many of our people are employed in, such as fishing, farming, and forestry, levy increases are likely to be very significant. For new businesses and new self-employed, the costs will be even more dramatic as ACC will require the next year’s levy in advance.

In many ways then, for both employers and self-employed, it is a case of balancing the see-saw. On the one hand, the advantages of a single work account cannot make both policy and practical sense. It will provide greater levy stability and ensure a clearer focus across particular industries and enterprises for both injury prevention and health protection. On the other hand, we recognise that the consequences of merging accounts might mean that small businesses and the self-employed are faced with choices that may, in effect, set them up for future accidents. We would be concerned if any resulting levy increases might cause employers to compromise health and safety standards by cutting back on the appropriate equipment or putting strain on the work environment by employing fewer staff.

The second key issue is related to whether Māori will perceive any benefits from the single work account, given the limitations that have been previously reported on Māori uptake of accident compensation. Research points out that although Māori workers have a higher injury rate, they are less likely to make an accident compensation claim and more likely to be declined cover. ACC General Manager for Māori development, Chad Paraone, outlined that in 2005, the rate claim per 1,000 for European was 361 compared with 289 Māori. The corporation identified several reasons for the lower claim rate: a lack of awareness from Māori about accident compensation entitlements, communication issues and difficulty in navigating the system, and concern about the loss of a job and a working income. Many believe that the 80 percent of previous income that accident compensation covers will be inadequate to cover household expenses. In the light of these findings, the corporation has allocated $2 million for a Māori access strategy to look at marketing, capacity building, provider development, community partnerships and advocacy, and knowledge management. We would actually be quite happy if Māori were treated equally and with respect by ACC.

Finally, having looked at the implications of this bill for employers, the self-employed, and recipients of accident compensation, we turn, as we always must, to the well-being of whānau. By merging the accounts, we support the drive to simplify compliance costs and to provide a clearer focus on injury prevention and health protection purposes. But we cannot be complacent that a shift in compliance structures will necessarily fix up the other longstanding issues occurring in the field of injury prevention, rehabilitation, and compensation. The Māori Party has been aware of the pivotal research undertaken by Dr Peter Jansen on Māori consumer use and experience of health and disability and ACC services that reveals that Māori are currently not receiving entitlements to care, rehabilitation, and compensation at a level comparable with the proportion of Māori in the population. That is despite the fact that Māori have a greater need for, but less access to, treatment.

We have been reassured by the Minister, who has also been concerned about the statistics relating to workplaces for Māori in New Zealand. She has described Māori as overrepresented in high-risk industries and under-represented in claims and entitlements from ACC. We also point out that sports activities are the main cause of injury for Māori, resulting in 30 percent of injuries. Once injured, Māori are less likely than non-Māori to receive treatment from a physiotherapist for their injury. It may be timely to consider how sporting bodies take into account the needs of treatment and rehabilitation for sporting injuries.

The Minister has given her commitment, in this House, that Māori, like all other New Zealanders, will receive the compensation and rehabilitation to which they are entitled. We welcome this commitment and hope that it is translated into action for this bill—and any other related to injury prevention. The issues raised by our constituents about accident compensation, or by employers and the self-employed about the single work account levies, point to an urgent need for education about safe working-practices and measures to adopt safety standards. Also evident is the need for the corporation—which it has recognised—to change the way in which it operates, so that it can be responsive to Māori whānau.

The Māori Party will support this bill going forward.

JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future): I stand on behalf of United Future to speak in support of the second reading of the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill. Business structure is not, in itself, a risk; the risk is in the activity of the business. I challenge one of the earlier National Party speakers David Bennett, who tended to suggest that if one were self-employed, one was some sort of cowboy. Speaking as somebody who has been self-employed, my experience, as part of that community, was that we were quite risk-averse due to the fact that we did not have a backstop, should anything go wrong. I have also been an employer in a reasonably high-risk category and I understand the costs, constraints, and compliances in that sector.

So United Future welcomes this chance to maintain an activity-based classification, and we are also pleased to see that what remain are the programmes that allow for levy adjustments based on safety practices of the company involved. We also acknowledge in the second reading that although it may seem a small technical point that we have renamed the medical misadventure account the treatment injury account, it is important to reflect on the fact that although this is technical, and merely aligns the name of the account with the new terminology enshrined in the Act, the change in terminology happened to reflect a new approach by the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) to respond in a speedy way to injuries that were sustained due to a medical procedure, and to ensure that the victim gets what he or she needs: a rapidly funded response, which is not hampered by a lengthy process, setting in motion the need to apportion blame for why that injury happened. That matter can happen as a separate process, and ACC is now not able to withhold important funding and treatment for somebody in need, who has sustained a treatment injury.

United Future would like to congratulate the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. We do not have representation on the committee but we did read with interest the report back, and we are happy to support the second reading.

RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT): The ACT party opposes this Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill, and let us make it quite clear why. It seems that in this House there is a failure of memory in preference for an ideological position. The failure of memory relates to the success of giving people choice in accident insurance, rather than having a State-run monopoly, and I would remind members of the House that that experience was overwhelmingly positive. It was positive from the point of view of the costs to employees but also—most important—to the incentive to get accidents down and to the rehabilitation of people who were injured. I heard the Labour Government, and I heard the Green Party—and I do not know where New Zealand First members were—talk as though this was some experiment that was a miserable failure. It was not an experiment at all; it was called choice. It was called private enterprise, entrepreneurship, and competition, and—like when that is tried everywhere else in the world—it worked.

So who is being sold out by the ideological commitment of this Government, and that of other parties, to oppose privatisation at every opportunity? Well, actually, it is every New Zealand business; it is every New Zealand worker; it is every person who has been injured and denied an opportunity to become well. It is Māori and Pākehā; it is Chinese and Indian.

The idea that we stand up in this House and say that it was terrible and that it was all an ideological commitment is bollocks, because, when given a choice, New Zealanders are not stupid. Certainly, New Zealanders are not as stupid as this Government and this Parliament, because when New Zealanders look at this legislation, they ask what it will cost. They ask what they will get and what is best for them and for their businesses. They ask what is best for them as workers. That is not what we see this Parliament deciding. That is not what we see the Accident Compensation Corporation deciding, because what it cares about is what is best for the corporation over the worker and over the business—and for this Government and its short-term political interests over the interests of the entire country.

We oppose this bill because the ACT party stands full square for choice, privatisation, and free enterprise. I look forward to the day when there is a majority for some common sense, and for some decent policy that will deliver for the working people of New Zealand—not this policy from those namby-pamby socialists over there, who would not know a working person or a business if they fell over one. Thank you.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote): That was a great speech from the leader of the ACT party, and I think he pretty much expressed the National Party’s view as well in that couple of minutes. I must say that it is quite unusual for Mr Hide not to take his full 10 minutes, but I think he put the argument very succinctly.

The National Party strongly opposes this Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill.

Rodney Hide: Privatisation’s better, eh?

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: What do you think, Rodney! My colleagues Pansy Wong and David Bennett have already spoken on this bill, and they have laid out the issues exceptionally well. In a nutshell, we are opposing this bill because the issue is really about the efficiency of a system enabling people to have choice in accident insurance. This bill will place a quite considerable burden on New Zealand businesses and employers, and, to be honest, it has been brought into the House in a most devious and deceptive manner. As my colleague Paul Hutchison noted in his speech in the first reading of this bill several months ago, this bill is another example of the “classic, arrogant behaviour” that has now become synonymous with the current Labour Government.

Rodney Hide: I feel so bad about this bill, I’m going to vote against it twice.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, why not? The first thing I will talk about is the deviousness of the bill as a whole. It purports, as members are aware, to bypass the normal consultation period. The reason given is that the transition period to the merging of the self-employed work account and the employers’ account needs to be as short as possible in order to ensure that the transition is fair and smooth. Apparently, to achieve this, the normal consultation period must be bypassed. So, essentially, the Government is planning to put through legislation without even hearing submissions from the industry—an interesting and not at all democratic concept. I am very interested to know how not consulting the appropriate stakeholders fully and not allowing them the time to give full submissions will result in a fair and smooth transition.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.