Wednesday, 18 July 2007

Wednesday, 18 July 2007

Wednesday, 18 July 2007

Madam Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Visitors

Niue—Speaker of the Legislative Assembly

Madam SPEAKER: I have much pleasure in informing members that the Hon. Atapana Siakimotu, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Niue, is within the precincts of this Chamber. I am sure that members would wish that he be welcomed and accorded a seat on the left of the Chair.

The Hon. Atapana Siakimotu, accompanied by the Deputy Speaker, entered the Chamber and took a seat on the left of the Chair.

Questions for Oral Answer

Questions to Ministers

Reserve Bank—Policy Targets Agreement

1. Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Finance: Did he consult Rt Hon Winston Peters prior to reappointing Dr Bollard and signing an unchanged policy targets agreement earlier this year; if not, why not?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance): No; because Mr Peters is not part of the Cabinet and is not bound by Government policy or decisions on matters such as that.

Hon Bill English: Does the Minister believe he still has the confidence of the Government’s coalition partner, when its leader has stated that the Reserve Bank governor, whom Dr Cullen has just reappointed, is not fulfilling—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. We surely do not need to have to inform the former leader, now the deputy leader, of the National Party that there is no such coalition between the Government and New Zealand First. It is a confidence and supply agreement, and I would hope that he would come up to date with the 21st century and the evolving forms of democracy that are helping New Zealand today.

Madam SPEAKER: I thank the member for his comment, and I am sure the member Mr English has noted it.

Hon Bill English: Is the Minister aware that the Rt Hon Winston Peters has stated Dr Bollard is not carrying out the terms of the policy targets agreement, and does he believe that his reappointment of Dr Bollard is consistent with the confidence and supply agreement with New Zealand First?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Yes, and yes.

Hon Bill English: Why did the Minister agree by prearrangement with Mr Peters yesterday to assist him in introducing into the House a bill to amend the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: First of all, the word “prearrangement” is not quite loaded with the devilish intent the member seems to ascribe to it. It is quite normal for parties in this House to talk to each other before things happen in the House. I frequently talk to Mr Brownlee in the morning about what is to happen in the House, and despite that he still gets it wrong often when he gets in here at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. On the second point, I am not afraid of discussion of ideas and alternatives. I recommend that possibility. While the member is grinding around at the bottom of the National Party, his leader is bouncing from cloud to cloud with all kinds of ideas that the member does not seem to know about.

R Doug Woolerton: Has the Minister considered using the powers of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act to direct the bank to formulate and implement monetary policy for different economic objectives?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Under section 12 of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act there is the power to suspend the policy targets agreement and to incorporate objectives other than the primary objective outlined within the Act. I have given no specific consideration to that matter, but the section is clearly there for a purpose and as Minister of Finance I would never rule out its potential use.

Gordon Copeland: Is he continuing to investigate ways to cool the housing market through, for example, increasing the land supply for new housing subdivisions or ending the tax advantages now enjoyed by property investors, to supplement the policy targets agreement, thus creating some scope for lower interest rates and a more favourable exchange rate?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: There is still a range of work occurring within that area, and I will be happy to report to the House on it at the appropriate time.

Hon Bill English: Does Dr Cullen’s previous reply—that he is open to ideas and to discussion about the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act itself—mean that Labour has now moved away from 20 years of consistent bipartisan support for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act as it is now?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: No, it does not, but I am quite happy for a matter such as that to be discussed. I am quite confident about what the conclusion of that discussion would be, but, unlike the member, I am not afraid of discussion.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could the finance Minister advise the House as to whether—

Gerry Brownlee: Next Treasurer.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well! I think it is quite churlish to ridicule the protocols and values of another culture, such as that of Samoa.

Madam SPEAKER: Would the member please continue asking his question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: That is what I would expect from the Dominion Post. But I would not expect members of Parliament to take that arrogant, ethnic, prejudicial attitude towards Samoa.

Madam SPEAKER: Please be seated. Members who make such interjections are coming close to creating disorder in the House. So you are warned. I now ask the member to complete his question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Could the finance Minister advise us as to whether he is aware of any other OECD country that has seen huge depressions, fluctuations, and rises in the value of its currency to the extent that New Zealand has seen in the last 20 years, since the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act came into effect?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I think a range of countries have seen wide fluctuations in their currency values. The Australian currency has not fluctuated quite as much as New Zealand’s, but the difference is definitely not one that is of an order of size. There have been very strong fluctuations in its currency. The most freely floating currencies have seen wide variations over that period of time.

Hon Bill English: If, as the Minister says, he is sticking by Labour’s position that it supports the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act as it is, then why did he not block Mr Peters’ attempt yesterday to introduce an amendment to it—or is he just treating Mr Peters as a kind of plaything?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: It is definitely not the latter. I would remind the member that he signed up, in the select committee, to a discussion of the operation of monetary policy. The terms were agreed with the National Party, and then it said it was not part of it. That is the way National usually behaves on anything to do with Parliament, at the present time. It is part of it but not part of it—some kind of strange transcendent experience, in terms of Parliament. [Interruption] National has to get off the clouds and get back down to grinding again, in that regard.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can the Minister tell us which other OECD country’s currency has appreciated in value to the more than 100 percent extent that the New Zealand currency has done in the last 5 years, and how that would affect any exporter with a long-range sales programme; and has the Minister received any reports as to who, yesterday, when offered a chance to rectify, by discussion and perhaps resolution, the serious damage that is being done to our exporters, opposed such a motion?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: On the last point, my recollection is that the only person who said no was actually Bill English, which was a change from Tony Ryall being the only person to say no on something of importance to the country. On the former matter, I do not have the comparative figures in front of me. Clearly, the New Zealand currency has been highly volatile over that period of time; it has been for the last 20 years. But as a small, relatively illiquid currency, it is always going to be relatively volatile as long as it is freely floating. New Zealand does not possess the kinds of levels of overseas reserves that would enable it to directly intervene all the time, as say, for example, the Singaporean central bank does.

Hon Bill English: Can the Minister tell the House once and for all whether he supports New Zealand First’s proposed amendment to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act, and if he does not support it, what kind of silly game is he playing in humouring Mr Peters by pretending that he might let it in the House even though he is against it?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I am not in the least afraid of that bill going to the select committee for an intelligent discussion. Unlike the member, I actually believe that that discussion would lead to confirmation of the broad outlines of the current Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act, including section 12. The point I made in the House yesterday was that section 12 gives some of the flexibility that Mr Peters was seeking by changing the Act.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is the Minister aware of the prevailing economic opinion that says that had the Government taken some steps such as establishing the Cullen fund and the KiwiSaver fund earlier, this country would be in somewhat the same position as Singapore when it comes to our currency, and that being the case, is he aware that the National Party has now offered to New Zealand First, should it present its motion again, to back a debate in this House on that matter—it is all over the place, every second day?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I would not be surprised by the latter. Given the nature of two or three conversations I have had with Mr Key about the trans-Tasman therapeutic goods agency, that would not surprise me at all.

Hon Bill English: Can the Minister confirm that the little ploy of pretending that New Zealand First might have an amendment that he might entertain and might send to a select committee will go down the drain in exactly the same way as the mortgage interest levy, the capital gains tax, the ring-fencing of housing investment losses, and the select committee inquiry into monetary policy, all of which are attempts by him to avoid any responsibility for the highest interest rates in the OECD and the highest exchange rate the country has ever seen?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: It is interesting that the member thinks that an exchange rate of about 79c to the US dollar is the highest rate we have ever seen. It used to be about three times that, at one point.

Hon Bill English: Does the Minister agree that the credibility of his economic management is shattered; and when every time he proposes another way of avoiding responsibility it gets trashed and interest rates and exchange rates go up, will he please stop doing that?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Actually, the most important thing the Government is doing in that respect is to increase New Zealand savings, to be a net saver itself, and to promote savings by New Zealanders. All of that has been opposed by the National Party at every point along the way. It is a purely destructive party with not a single idea for the future, except going back to the past. That man is the Macaulay Culkin of New Zealand politics.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I seek leave to table two pages from the Oxford Dictionary—one describing the word “conservative” and the other one describing the word “reactionary”.

Documents not tabled.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Is it the Minister’s view that section 12 is in the Act for very good reasons, and is he prepared to indicate to the House now that he will never rule out its use?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Section 12 is clearly there for very good reasons. It was put in by the fourth Labour Government, though I should note that the National Party at the time had great trouble in making up its mind whether to support the passage of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act. I would certainly not rule out the use of section 12.

Research Funding—Sustainability and Economic Transformation

2. Dr ASHRAF CHOUDHARY (Labour) to the Minister of Research, Science and Technology: How is the Government’s research funding contributing to sustainability and economic transformation?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Research, Science and Technology): This morning the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology announced the results of its biggest research investment in 4 years, involving $628 million in total contracts over the next 8 years. This will target key priorities, with $150 million to investigate how to promote sustainability and to respond to climate change and $311 million to boost the primary sector. All this research is designed to transform the New Zealand economy.

Dr Ashraf Choudhary: Has he received any reports on the international competitiveness of the research and development credits announced in Budget 2007?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: The research and development tax credit was a $630 million investment made in an effort to encourage the private sector itself to invest in research, and the response from overseas has been very positive. I report, for example, that Deloitte’s Australian research and development tax expert Serg Duchini said that, all things being equal, it definitely increases the attractiveness of undertaking research and development in New Zealand over Australia, and David Gelb of KPMG in Australia has stated: “There are companies which in the past have relocated R and D facilities from New Zealand to Australia. This may well reverse that trend.” I think the research and development tax credit has been extremely well received.

Hon Brian Donnelly: Can the Minister confirm that biotechnology, upon which the Government is pinning some of its hopes for economic transformation, has not shown returns on investment internationally at this point in time?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: Not just this Government but many Governments have identified biotechnology as the future of science. Of course, in a biologically based economy one would expect us to be investing in that area. Therefore, for example, the member might be encouraged by the fact that one of the contracts signed in the biotechnology sector in New Zealand last year was the sixth biggest contract around biotechnology in the world last year. So we are now beginning to see the chain of investment come to fruition.

Hon Brian Donnelly: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The question I asked was about whether biotechnology has shown returns on investment internationally. The Minister did not approach that question, at all.

Madam SPEAKER: I thought that the Minister had addressed it, but if he wishes to address the international aspect of it, he may.

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: If I understand the question correctly, the example I chose was an American co-investment with us that resulted in it being the sixth largest in the world last year. So internationally we are beginning to see our biotechnology begin to get investment of the kind that we are after.

Hawke’s Bay District Health Board—Conflict of Interest

3. Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) to the Minister of Health: Why did he say, regarding the conflict of interest allegations at the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board, that “I feel anxious about troubling the Auditor-General over something which is almost nothing.”, and is he confident that the investigation headed by Syd Bradley, who was appointed to chair the Canterbury District Health Board by the Hon Annette King, with whom he reportedly has a “strong relationship”, has the powers to appropriately investigate these matters?

Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health): The Auditor-General can decide whether to investigate something when invited to by me, by any member of this House, or by any other person, or he can decide to do so on his own volition. As I said yesterday, the audit committee of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board has already investigated conflict of interest issues surrounding Mr Hausmann. But at Mr Hausmann’s request to me, I asked the Director-General of Health to arrange a further review of the same issues. My best guess is that the review will come to similar findings, as did the audit committee. But the terms of reference are wide, so that any stone that might need turning can be turned. If the Auditor-General wants to involve himself, he will. So far, he has chosen not to, beyond the usual audit cycle.

Hon Tony Ryall: How can the public have any confidence that an inquiry headed by Mr Syd Bradley, who was appointed by Annette King, who appears to be involved in some of the complaints that have been made publicly about this matter, can provide a full and fair inquiry?

Hon PETE HODGSON: If my memory serves me correctly, I can say that Mr Bradley was first appointed to health positions by a National Government. However, matters have shifted, and Mr Bradley has written to the director-general earlier this week to say that because of changed personal circumstances he is obliged to withdraw. The director-general has appointed Mr Ian Wilson, chair of the MidCentral District Health Board, as the new chair of the review, and a press statement to this effect either has been released or soon will be. I can say that the review team has, or is about to have, today, its first meeting.

Maryan Street: Are the conflict of interest provisions in the law sufficient, or is the Minister considering an upgrade?

Hon PETE HODGSON: The ministry advice is rather strong, and it is that the law as it stands is robust. However, it has one obvious weak link, which is that it requires honesty on behalf of board members. Mr Hausmann’s declaration of interest is, to my knowledge, complete. Dr Bierre’s was not, and, as a result, a contract worth many, many hundreds of millions of dollars came tumbling down.

Hon Tony Ryall: So is the Minister confirming in the House today that the Government’s hand-picked appointee, Syd Bradley, has thrown in the towel on this inquiry and that the public will be expected to rely on an inquiry of another appointee of the Minister of Health; and is he actually admitting that even one of the Government’s favourites can smell the stench of cronyism around the sham inquiry that this Government has set up?

Hon PETE HODGSON: The facts of the matter are a little more tame. Mr Bradley was not chosen by me. He agreed to head this inquiry when approached by the director-general—not by me, nor on my advice—last week.

Hon Bill English: He was in your office that day.

Hon PETE HODGSON: Last week—

Hon Bill English: Yes, he went to your office.

Hon PETE HODGSON: He did not—

Madam SPEAKER: Please be seated. The Minister was asked a question; he is attempting to answer it. If there are to be other questions, they can be asked when there is a supplementary question, not during the answer to a question.

Hon PETE HODGSON: Last week the director-general announced that Mr Bradley would head the review team. This week Mr Bradley advised the director-general that because of changed circumstances to do with overseas travel, he was unable to. Therefore, the director-general approached Mr Wilson. Mr Wilson agreed and his appointment has been, or will be, announced, and the first meeting of the review team has been under way earlier today, or will be under way later today—I am not sure.

Hon Bill English: Without a chairman.

Hon PETE HODGSON: No, with a chairman.

Hon Bill English: Which one?

Hon PETE HODGSON: Ian Wilson.

Madam SPEAKER: Is that a supplementary question? I want the House to settle before I call the next supplementary question.

Hon Tony Ryall: How can the Minister say there is nothing wrong here, when these emails show that the chief executive of the Hawke’s Bay’s District Health Board asked for a confidential copy of a $50 million tender proposal to be sent to Mr Hausmann 2½ months before any other tenderer got to see the documents, and while Mr Hausmann’s appointment to the district health board was being fast-tracked by the Government?

Hon PETE HODGSON: The issues that the member raises—and he scrapes with all the conspiratorial intentions that we would expect of a hollow man—were looked at in the first instance by the audit committee of the very board that Mr Hausmann—

Hon Bill English: They abandoned the contract.

Hon PETE HODGSON: They did dump the contract, and they did find also that Mr Hausmann had not been particularly advantaged by it. However, Mr Hausmann, concerned that the allegations continued to simmer, wrote to me saying that he would like a further review, and I decided that he should have one.

Hon Tony Ryall: Will the Minister explain this email of 10 May 2005 from the executive assistant of the district health board’s chief executive, Chris Clarke, sent to a senior manager at the district health board: “Chris has asked if you could send Peter Hausmann a copy of the RFP for community services pointing out that it is confidential.”; why would the chief executive officer be sending an advance copy of a commercially sensitive document to a bidder 2½ months before the tender was publicly notified and when that chief executive knew that that contractor was about to be appointed to his board?

Hon PETE HODGSON: That is precisely the reason, I presume, that Mr Hausmann wrote to me asking that these matters be investigated afresh. Those are the sorts of simmering allegations that continue, despite the fact that the audit committee of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board looked at it around February-March 2006. It found that no particular advantage had accrued to Mr Hausmann, and the contract was stopped. That is what a board does. That is its job, if it thinks that there is anything unsafe about process. What has happened since is that the allegations against Mr Hausmann continue to simmer. He wants them cleared up. He asked me for a review. I asked the director-general whether he would arrange such a review, and the review is under way.

Heather Roy: Are there not strong parallels in process between Hawke’s Bay District Health Board’s conflict of interest situation with board member Peter Hausmann and that at Capital and Coast District Health Board, where deputy chair, Ken Douglas, stood aside in March, citing a conflict of interest; and is he confident that the process used by the previous Minister of Health to appoint Mr Hausmann was appropriate and that best practice was followed?

Hon PETE HODGSON: In respect of the second part of the question, yes, and I explained why in some detail in the House. All of the papers concerning that gentleman’s appointment were released to the National Party 20 months ago. If National members opposite have lost them in the meantime, I am happy to give them another copy, but they should stay on top of the job. That is how long they have had them. In respect of the first part of the question, the whole point of the conflict of interest legislation in this country is not so that people with a conflict of interest are never appointed to a board. By way of example, nearly all of the members of the Auckland District Health Board have a conflict of interest. That is not the issue. The issue is how it is managed. Mr Hausmann’s conflict of interest formed part of the original Cabinet paper, so the whole Cabinet knew that he was conflicted, as indeed—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: So the whole Cabinet knew?

Hon PETE HODGSON: Well, since we are saying that, let me just say some more. Many, if not most, district health board appointees have a conflict of interest or a potential one, including, for example, a member in National’s own ranks, Jackie Blue, when she was a member of the Auckland District Health Board. It is not the conflict that matters; it is being honest about it.

Hon Tony Ryall: Is the Minister of Health telling Parliament today that Cabinet was aware that Mr Hausmann was commenting on the confidential draft tender documents for the $50 million community services, that he declared that in his interview with the Ministry of Health, and that it was advised to Cabinet that he was commenting on these commercially sensitive tender documents—is the Minister saying he knew?

Hon PETE HODGSON: What Cabinet was advised of was that Mr Hausmann holds a position with a health provider—a significant health provider—and that that is an obvious conflict of interest. Cabinet was also advised that Mr Hausmann understood his obligations to manage that conflict of interest.

Hon Tony Ryall: Is the Minister endorsing as acceptable that some 2½ months before the opening of a $50 million tender, and at the same time as Annette King was fast-tracking Mr Hausmann’s appointment to the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board, the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board boss, a former personal assistant to Helen Clark, was wanting to send an advance copy of the $50 million tender documents to Mr Hausmann and telling him to keep them confidential—can he not smell the stench of cronyism around this?

Hon PETE HODGSON: As to the issue of the appointment, can I just assure the House once more that Mr Hausmann’s appointment to the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board was unexceptional in every respect. In respect of the issue of the request for proposal that was disallowed by the audit committee in, I think, February or March of 2006, that is what a board’s job is—to look at any issues that might be unsafe and to come to a view about them. In respect of the last matter of why it is that these issues continue to recur, Mr Hausmann wants to know the answer to that question, which is why he asked me to put forward a review. The review, by the way, has terms of reference that are sufficiently broad that any matter can be investigated.

Dr Jonathan Coleman: What do you think the public makes of all this cronyism when the district health board chief executive, who just happens to be Helen Clark’s former assistant, rorts a $50 million contract by giving his mate a copy of the documents—

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The member has been here for some time and I think he should know by now that he should not ask you questions as he did.

Madam SPEAKER: Yes, I do remind the member, who has been here a while, that when he has plenty of time to think about his question he puts it—[Interruption] Be seated while I am on my feet. That is also a rule in this House. When the Speaker stands, members sit. I just ask the member please to rephrase his question consistent with the normal rules.

Dr Jonathan Coleman: What does the Minister think the public would make of all this cronyism when the district health board chief executive, who just happens to be Helen Clark’s former assistant, rorts a $50 million contract by giving his mate a copy of the documents months before anyone else, at the same time as the Minister of Health is fast-tracking the same mate on to the same district health board that is about to award the $50 million contract?

Hon PETE HODGSON: The member has now, in my view, crossed a line and has started to impugn the integrity of very good servants of the New Zealand health system, without a lot of evidence. There was no $50 million contract. This was a precursor to a request for proposals. The issue will be further examined by a quality review team. The results will be made available to the director-general; he will make them available to me, and I will make them available to this House. We will wait for that; why do we not?

Hon Tony Ryall: Does the Minister think it appropriate that a chief executive of a district health board should make available to one preferred bidder a copy of that request for proposal some 2½ months before it was made available to any other bidder, and ask for comment on it; is that appropriate behaviour?

Hon PETE HODGSON: I am sorry if I am sounding repetitive, but these are the issues that will be, or might well be, subject to discussion by the review team. That is why we have the review team; they have been set up to look at the review. These things are usually managed by the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board, or the district health board in question, itself. In this instance, however, the district health board has looked at it and found no material advantage—or words to that effect—to Mr Hausmann, but the rumours continue, so we will have a fresh look. Members opposite can continue to rumour-monger and quote emails out of context for as long as they like, but the fact of the matter is that it was a member of their own party in another district health board who was not honest and who brought down a multimillion-dollar contract. That is serious indeed. That is the worst thing that has happened in the history of the New Zealand health system as far as conflict of interest is concerned.

Hon Tony Ryall: I seek leave to table three emails released under the Official Information Act relating to the chief executive’s instruction that a copy of the confidential request for proposal for—

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

Hon Tony Ryall: I seek leave to table the media release from the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board advising the request for proposals called on 28 July, 2½ months before—

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? Yes, there is objection.

Hon Dr Michael Cullen: Can I ask the Minister to confirm that the relationship between the chief executive of the district health board and the Prime Minister was when Mr Chris Clarke was, I think, a Treasury official working on secondment for Helen Clark in the 1980s?

Hon PETE HODGSON: My memory is stretched, but I do believe that it was around 1988 or 1989. It is also a matter of fact that Chris Clarke is not appointed by this Government. Chris Clarke is appointed by the board. Trying to get a linkage when there is as much distance as that between one set of people and another—

Hon Tony Ryall: You are sensitive.

Hon PETE HODGSON: I am not sensitive at all. I am very, very open to the idea of a full inquiry, and it was I who asked that the terms of reference be broad enough to cover all matters. They can cover all matters, and the member needs to be just a little patient.

Film Industry—Government Assistance

4. LYNNE PILLAY (Labour—Waitakere) to the Minister for Economic Development: What is the Government doing to support the development of the New Zealand film industry?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister for Economic Development): We are boosting the film industry by improving the Large Budget Screen Production Grant and providing ongoing funding for Film New Zealand. We know that large-budget productions hold fantastic opportunities for our country and we want to take full advantage of these. In particular, the post-production digital and visual effects incentive recognises New Zealand’s strengths in design. This boost to our film industry is important to New Zealand’s transformation into a high-wage innovative economy. I note that it is broadly supported by everyone other than Rodney Hide and the editor of the Dominion Post.

Lynne Pillay: What other reports has he seen on action the Government is taking to support economic transformation?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The other main announcement was around the food and beverage sector. We know that farming has traditionally been the backbone of our economy but we do need to think differently to really drive future growth in the food and beverage sector so that innovative nutrition solutions can be the new backbone to this economy.

Teachers Council Disciplinary Tribunal —Internet Sex Sites

5. KATHERINE RICH (National) to the Minister of Education: Does he back the recent decision of the Teachers Council Disciplinary Tribunal to allow an art teacher who posted hard-core pornographic pictures of himself and two women on Internet sex sites, with messages for girls “the younger the better” to contact him, to continue teaching; if so, why?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Education): The Teachers Council disciplinary tribunal is a quasi-judicial body, and I am proscribed from directing the actions of the Teachers Council over a particular individual, nor can I overturn its decisions. I would, however, note that it was a split decision. I also inform the House that the decision of the Teachers Council’s disciplinary tribunal is reviewing its criteria in order to tighten up on cases like this. Secondly, I would note that a Cabinet paper is being drafted to look at privacy issues to ensure that there is better data-matching between the Teachers Council and the Ministry of Education. Thirdly, I would note that the teacher does not have a current practising certificate and is not employed at any school.

Katherine Rich: Can the Minister answer my primary question, which was: does he back the decision of the Teachers Council disciplinary tribunal to allow someone who has published hard-core pornographic images of himself and others, and advertised for girls as young as 17—the age of some of his potential students—to continue teaching, when some of those dissenting tribunal members went on to say that such behaviour “adversely affects, or is likely to adversely affect, the well-being or learning of one or more students.”?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I want to answer the question directly by saying of course not.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Do you back the decision or not?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: Of course not—I know that the member is a little deaf, but of course not. What I said originally, though, is that the Minister of Education is proscribed from doing anything directly about an individual decision. But I applaud the fact that it was a split decision, and I know which side of the decision I would have been on if it had been me. Therefore, I also listed the fact that I applaud the Teachers Council for reviewing its criteria, and I applaud the fact that it will have legislation to allow it to data match, and I am very glad that this person does not have a teaching certificate and is not in front of a class now.

Dianne Yates: What has the Labour-led Government done over time to ensure a high standard of conduct on behalf of teachers?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I should note for the House that through most of the 1990s the registration of teachers was completely voluntary. Registration became mandatory in 1997 but there was no requirement for police vetting of teachers before they were employed at schools. However, in 2001 this Government changed the Education Act to require police vetting for all personnel occupying positions in schools and early childhood centres. The Act also established the Teachers Council, including a disciplinary tribunal with powers either to deregister teachers or to impose conditions on their ongoing registration. In 2004 new rules came into effect enabling the council to consider complaints of serious misconduct at any time rather than wait for the expiry of the current registration. Those arrangements are ones that can give us confidence in a robust professional process, but I repeat that I applaud the fact that the Teachers Council is now reviewing again its criteria and that it will have changes in the Privacy Act to assist it, and that I am very pleased that this person is not teaching anywhere right now.

Katherine Rich: How can the Minister be absolutely sure that this teacher is not teaching in a New Zealand classroom today, when the Teachers Council has told our select committee that it currently has thousands of unregistered teachers teaching in New Zealand classrooms and that it does not track censured teachers in any way in the workplace once that censure has been given?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I can only give the House the assurance that I have checked today and asked whether this person has a current practising certificate, and the answer was no. I checked whether the person is currently employed, and the answer was no. That is all I can give the House.

Katherine Rich: What changes to the Teachers Council is he proposing, because the situation it found itself in, with two dissenting members and a casting vote being made on such a controversial decision, is basically a result of a structure he set up?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: If the member cares to have a look at the dissenting opinion she will note that it pointed out that the criteria were a problem in this particular area for people who had dissented. They believed that there ought to be different criteria. That is what has led to them now reviewing their criteria—they believe that they need to have different criteria to work on. I believe that is a very good step to take.

Katherine Rich: Does the Minister accept that it is his criteria, set up by his Government, that they are using, and what changes is he proposing; and does he accept that his ivory-tower argument that the difference between misconduct and serious misconduct is largely academic, as most parents would be horrified to think that someone who had posted hard-core porn pictures of himself and had actively sought out young girls could be allowed to teach in New Zealand classrooms?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: The member may be seeking a disagreement when there is not one. I do not think anybody in the House disagrees with her on the fact that this person should not be teaching in a New Zealand school. What we are saying here is that the Teachers Council understands that the criteria should be changed. The member asks what is changing; the criteria are changing. We agreed last time we had a debate about these kinds of issues that the Teachers Council has a robust and professional approach; what we will ensure is that it has an even better one.

Electricity Supply Companies—Social Responsibility

6. LESLEY SOPER (Labour) to the Minister of Energy: What is the Government doing to ensure that social responsibilities are taken seriously by electricity companies?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Energy): Legislation introduced today by the Labour-led Government will increase the threshold for eligibility for the low fixed-charge from 8,000 kilowatt-hours to 9,000 kilowatt-hours per year for domestic consumers from Christchurch to Bluff, excluding the West Coast. Increasing the threshold for colder parts of the South Island makes the scheme fairer, and it means that tens of thousands of families will be better off.

Lesley Soper: Can the Minister please inform the House how the Government is going to ensure that the interests of vulnerable customers are further protected?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Procedures for electricity companies are being strengthened to ensure that the electricity of vulnerable consumers like the Muliaga family is not wrongly cut off. The bill being introduced today will ensure that the Government can regulate to impose those rules if retailers do not adhere to them voluntarily.

Jeanette Fitzsimons: When the Minister received a Ministry of Economic Development report in March last year on progressive pricing, whereby a basic block of power is sold to each household at a low price with higher consumption costing more, was he satisfied with the advice in the report that although basic needs would be more affordable and we would be likely to have more conservation of energy, progressive pricing was not recommended because, and I quote the report, “this is not compatible with competitive market arrangements”?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I do recall the report, and I do agree with the advice that progressive pricing, although on its face apparently appealing, is so problematic as to be impossible to implement fairly. The main reason for that is that progressive pricing does not properly cater for the differing circumstances of large families compared with small families. The effect of progressive pricing would be to make power cheaper for a dual-income, high-income family living in an Auckland apartment, and more expensive for a low-income family of five living in South Auckland.

Jeanette Fitzsimons: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. My question related specifically to whether the Minister was happy with the advice that progressive pricing should not proceed because it was not compatible with competitive market arrangements. The Minister did not address that issue

Madam SPEAKER: Does the Minister want to add to his answer?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I am quite happy to reinforce the point that the reason I did not proceed further with progressive pricing was that it would be unfair to a large, low-income family compared with a small, high-income family—a problem that cannot be overcome. The Government is implementing measures to increase the efficiency of use of electricity by all consumers, which is a more appropriate way to address the issue.

Peter Brown: Noting the Minister’s answers to the principal question and to the first supplementary question, will he give the House an assurance that if a contractor who walks into a house to turn the power off sees somebody on a life-support system, the contractor will have the common sense and the compassion to at least check with somebody? There is a limited time frame to take any positive action, and we want to ensure that the circumstances that occurred a few weeks ago do not occur again. Will the Minister guarantee that they will not happen again?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Yes, the rules will say that. I would also say, though, that we should not need rules for that to happen; basic human decency, I would have thought, would cause that checking to occur, irrespective of the rules. I am hopeful that the electricity companies will agree to do it voluntarily and we will not need to use these regulatory powers, but if we need to use them we will.

Housing New Zealand Corporation—Confidence

7. PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) to the Minister of Housing: Does he have confidence in Housing New Zealand Corporation; if so, why?

Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Housing): Yes; but there is always room for improvement.

Phil Heatley: Is the Minister at all concerned that the corporation allows 7,064 of its tenants to rent extra rooms to paying boarders—1,740 of whom are renting to non-family boarders—when thousands of large families on the waiting list are struggling in cramped conditions; if so, what is he doing about it?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: The ability of Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants to allow boarders in their houses has been a long-standing practice. It is one, I believe, that existed right through the 9 years of the National Government, and for very good reasons. Many of those boarders are young people who are starting work, or older people who are living with families. We provide that provision so that people can have a normal family life.

Russell Fairbrother: Is Housing New Zealand Corporation delivering on the Labour-led Government’s manifesto commitment to provide affordable, good-quality housing for those on low or modest incomes?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: It certainly is. For example, in the last 7 years we have added more than 7,000 new homes, and indeed we had to, because Murray McCully and his National mates sold off 13,000 of them, mostly to developers. We have introduced fair and affordable rents, whereas in the 1990s State house tenants were forced out of their homes by high rents and replaced by the very market renters that Mr Heatley now wants to throw out. Finally, we have been funding local authorities and organisations like Abbeyfield to develop their own social housing complexes—groups that National continues to ignore.

Phil Heatley: Why is there a tenant in Māngere with five paying boarders, when the waiting list in Māngere has 280 families categorised as having “severe and significant housing needs” who are probably all living in cramped and unhealthy conditions, and all of whom could do with this larger home with five boarders living in it?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: For the reason I explained earlier, which was perfectly acceptable to National in its 9 years in Government, State house tenants are allowed two boarders. For every boarder over that they pay a market rent that is assessed as part of their income. I would think those boarders would be really, really grateful for some of the 13,000 houses that that member’s party sold off.

Phil Heatley: Is it still the case that State house tenants can charge boarders what they want to, even if it is over the rent that they pay, and what is more, that they do not have to pay extra rent to Housing New Zealand Corporation until they have three or more boarders; if so, does the Minister think it is right for them to profit from their spare rooms while large families languish on the waiting list?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: Once again, the member deliberately tries to mislead the House. State house tenants are allowed two boarders, as they have been since the 1970s. It is something the National Party never changed because—like the Labour Party—I assume it thought it was good for young people in employment to stay with their parents or for older people to stay with their families. For any other tenants above that number, State house tenants pay a market-related rent, because their income from rent is assessed as part of their income. Again, I remind this House that if National had not hocked off 13,000 houses, we would not have a waiting list.

Phil Heatley: Why is it that when he and Mr Bridgeman of Housing New Zealand Corporation promised, in 2005, that they were going to review the boarder problem there were 6,931 State boarding houses and now, 2 years later, there are 7,064?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: We do not have a problem with people allowing boarders to stay in their houses. I have already explained twice today in this House why State house tenants are allowed to have boarders, and why they are allowed to have two boarders without that being assessed as part of their income. It is so that families can stay together. We would not have a problem about a waiting list if National had not sold 13,000 State houses, mostly to the speculator mates of its members.

Phil Heatley: What is he doing to shift at least the 1,700 State house tenants who have non-family boarders into smaller houses, so that desperate families on the waiting list can live in less crowded and healthier conditions?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: Already in the last year we have moved 303 tenants into smaller houses, thus saving the taxpayer $39 million and releasing new housing opportunities for people on the waiting list. Quite frankly, it is hard to listen to the questions from that member—a member of a party that sold off 13,000 houses when it was in Government.

Phil Heatley: I seek leave to table estimates questions that show 7,000 tenants rent out extra rooms, many of them to three, four, or five boarders.

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

Phil Heatley: I seek leave to table an article from 2005 that states that the Minister was getting on to it.

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? Yes, there is objection.

Housing—Overseas Buyers

8. PITA PARAONE (NZ First) to the Minister of Finance: Does he still believe that overseas buyers buying residential property are not one of the major drivers of the increase in housing costs, especially given that the Reserve Bank, in its June Monetary Policy Statement, said it could not confidently say what the impact of foreign buyers on the property market was, but that it was “quite influential” in some areas; if so, on what information does he base his belief?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance): The available evidence is from the Inland Revenue Department and from Quotable Value, and continues to suggest a limited impact by foreign buyers. The most recent Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Statement makes the same point. But I have asked for further work on the extent of foreign purchasing, given some concerns about the quality and the coverage of the data.

Pita Paraone: Why does the Government consider that lowering its resident migrant target is an important means of easing inflationary pressure, yet it does not consider collecting information with which to properly judge the impact of foreign buyers on price inflation within our housing market to be important enough for it to gather?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: As I said, I have asked for some work to be done on this matter to see whether the numbers are significantly larger than the data shows. I remind the member that the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Statement he refers to concludes: “However, on the limited evidence we have, it appears that any national effect is likely to be small.” One thing that all the data does strongly suggest is that the rate of foreign purchasing has tailed off over the last couple of years or so, which is to be expected given the high level of the dollar, of course.

Dr Pita Sharples: Tēnā tātou katoa. Does the Minister recall the comment of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions President, Ross Wilson, that homeownership is increasingly out of reach for low and middle income New Zealanders, because house prices have increased by 38.5 percent in the last 3 years, outstripping wages by 4:1; and what actions will the Minister be taking to address the housing affordability crisis?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: There are a number of actions—almost too numerous to mention. Obviously, the growth of KiwiSaver will, first of all, divert a good deal of investment income away from purely property income, into other vehicles. We need people to be investing in more than simply the property asset class within New Zealand. Within KiwiSaver, there is assistance for the first-home buyer, which is quite significant assistance, as time builds up. The Government has a range of other programmes, which my colleague the Minister of Housing has outlined to the House on a number of occasions. Of course, at the point where we do start to enter the monetary policy easing cycle, interest rates will have come back. Already we see some signs of some easing in the housing cycle, but, as yet, not very strong signs.

Pita Paraone: Does the Minister agree that as our dollar readjusts downward, foreign buyers will find themselves in an increasingly strong position to buy our property; if so, why does he not accept that it is important to at least know the situation now, before the trickle of foreign buyers turns to a flood, and the situation for Kiwis buying a home worsens considerably?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: One of the issues we do not know about is the extent to which foreign purchasing is counter-cyclical or pro-cyclical in the housing market. In fact, for the monetary policy cycle to ease requires that the rate of growth in house prices also ease. Of course, this is the irony of the situation: if houses become cheaper, they are easier to buy; if the dollar comes back down, they are easier to buy. I am sure nobody in the House will be arguing against a slowing down in the rate of house price increases, or arguing for the dollar to continue to push upwards. It has to be remembered also that quite a lot of these purchasers appear to be in two categories: firstly, New Zealanders overseas who, at some point, are intent on returning home to New Zealand; and, secondly, foreigners who are intent on coming to New Zealand.

Dr Pita Sharples: I seek leave to table the article by the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions headed “House prices outstripping wages”.

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

Benefits—Single Core Benefit

9. JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: Does he stand by his statement in the House on 22 May 2007 in relation to the single core benefit that “phase two will be introduced when Cabinet makes appropriate further decisions.”?

Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Minister for Social Development and Employment): Yes. It will be no surprise to the member that Cabinet needs to approve the detail of phase two before it is implemented. Phase one, I am pleased to tell the House, is progressing well, and, as I informed the member on 14 June, 13 June, 24 May, and 22 May, phase two is about further simplifying the benefit system so as to better align individual needs with support services. That phase is currently being worked on by officials, and final decisions about the detail of phase two will be made in 2008.

Judith Collins: When and why did the single core benefit become phase two of the Working New Zealand reforms?

Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE: I know that an Official Information Act request released recently to the member makes it clear that the Cabinet decision was to split that policy development. I can provide her with the exact date in due course. I do not have it in front of me at this time.

Steve Chadwick: Can the Minister advise what success Work and Income has had to date in supporting New Zealanders into work?

Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE: I am pleased to advise the House that in 1999 the total number of working-age clients receiving a benefit of any kind was 401,415. That number currently, as of June this year, is 261,009—for all benefits received—and is a 35 percent reduction. In respect of the total number of people receiving the unemployment benefit, the reduction is, however, 86 percent, from 161,000 to 23,000 last month. Māori figures show a reduction from 44,378 to just 7,873 in June, which is an 82 percent reduction. For Pacific Island recipients, the reduction is from 12,317 in December 1999 to 1,753 now, which is an 86 percent reduction. Probably the most pleasing statistic for members to hear is the reduction in the category of 18 and 19-year-olds receiving the unemployment benefit, from 17,514 under National to just 990 this month.

Judith Collins: Will the Minister confirm that he, the Prime Minister, and Steve Maharey met on or about 15 August 2006 and decided to abandon the single core benefit, but, to save face and to avoid announcing that decision, they chose to rename it phase two, and will the Minister now admit that phase two will never happen, because the single core benefit has been abandoned?

Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE: I can confirm no such thing, but I would say that it must be obvious to the member that the Government would, understandably, focus on the success of phase one of that project. Not only have we seen the extraordinary achievements that I have just detailed, but some of the more lasting legacies of the National Government have already been significantly attacked. For example, the member will be interested to know that the number of people receiving an unemployment benefit for more than a year has reduced by 86 percent since these policies were introduced. The number of Māori long-term unemployed—for more than 1 year—has also seen massive drops, from 20,500 under National to just 2,916 under Labour. Similarly, those successes are mirrored by the results for Pacific Island recipients. In December 1999 over 5,600 Pacific Islanders had been receiving a benefit for longer than a year; in June this year that number was 711.

Judith Collins: Is it not true that until that meeting between the Minister, the Prime Minister, and Steve Maharey, when the single core benefit was secretly shelved, the single core benefit was the key feature of Working New Zealand single core benefit reforms, and that what the Minister now calls phase one reforms were only ever designed to enable the implementation of the single core benefit, which was the policy Labour campaigned on in 2005?

Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE: I say to the member that she allows her fantasy to run away with her.

Judith Collins: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. That was not addressing the question.

Madam SPEAKER: Would the Minister like to add a further comment?

Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE: If the member wants a specific, short answer, the answer is no.

Judith Collins: Why did the Minister rush ahead with legislation to implement phase one, even though those changes were designed to support the implementation of the now shelved single core benefit, when the benefit had already been abandoned, and when the repeated and strenuous advice from Treasury was that the phase one reforms do not offer value for money and that we can get better value for money in other ways?

Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE: I think the numbers speak for themselves. Frankly, I am not sure I would wish to tempt the patience of the House by repeating them. Clearly, the value to this community, to this economy, and to New Zealanders of making that huge inroad into the number of New Zealanders whom the National Government left on the scrap heap has been very good value for money indeed.

Judith Collins: Does the Minister agree with the following statements from Treasury in relation to phase one of the Working New Zealand reforms: “There are major issues with parts of the proposals with respect to value for money.”, “The phase one proposals do not offer value for money.”, “The proposals do not offer value for money.”, and “Treasury has concerns about the value for money of this additional spending.”?

Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE: It is nothing new for that member to provide selective quotes out of documents she has received. What I would say is there is absolutely no doubt of the difference between the policy delivery of that party, which left 161,000 people receiving the unemployment benefit, and the policies of this party, including Working New Zealand, which saw that number at 23,000 last month.

Far North District Council—Flooding of Towns

10. HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) to the Minister of Local Government: He aha atu ngā whakamaherehere kua whiwhi i a ia mai i te Kaunihera ā-Rohe o Muriwhenua whai muri i tā te Pirimia i kī rā, whiriwhiria, wānangahia e ngā kaunihera ā-rohe ngā take, ki hea ngā tāone tū ai?

[What advice, if any, has he received from the Far North District Council following the Prime Minister’s reported comments that local councils need to talk through issues about where towns are situated?]

Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Local Government): I have not received any advice directly from the Far North District Council, although I am sure the member can understand that it is somewhat occupied at this time. But I have had the benefit of direct advice from my colleagues, including the Prime Minister, Rick Barker as Minister of Civil Defence, and local MPs Dover Samuels and Shane Jones. I agree with the Prime Minister’s comment that in an age of human impact on climate change, the future-proofing of communities needs to be seriously considered. Both central and local government have a role to play in resolving issues such as the location of settlements and whether any engineering solutions could minimise the impact of changing weather patterns. We need to balance the right to determine where we live and how we live against the Government’s responsibility to ensure the security and safety of our communities.

Hone Harawira: Ā, he aha rā tō whakautu ki ngā whānau o Mātangirau, ki ngā uri o Karangahape marae i kōrerohia atu ki te Pouwhakaata Māori, anei rā tā mātou marae, tā matou awa, tā mātou maunga me wā mātou whenua katoa, ā, ka noho tonu mātou ki konei mō ake tonu atu.

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

[What response can the Minister make to the people of Mātangirau and Karangahape marae who told Māori Television this is where their marae, their river, their mountain, and their lands are, and this is where they will continue to live?]

Hon MARK BURTON: I would say that it reinforces the point the Prime Minister was making—that the issues about the security and safety of our people in their communities are serious issues that need proper consideration. The answer to those questions may well be relocation in some cases, and in others, clearly not. In many situations it will be about finding solutions, and it may include engineering, elevating houses, and all manner of possibilities. But the issue is that we have to make changes in some situations in order to secure the safety and security of our people.

John Carter: Is the Minister aware that the council and the lead agencies called a meeting, sponsored by the local iwi, in Whangaroa - Kaeō on Monday—there are to be further meetings tomorrow and in a fortnight’s time—where the community came together to discuss the issue in a very positive way to the extent of considering the raising of houses, the widening of the river, land-management issues, the impact of roading and forestry, and perhaps addressing issues around stopbanks and silting; and can the Minister also advise whether he has the opportunity yet to discuss with the Minister of Agriculture the matter of the problem around the Hikurangi Swamp farmers and the devastation they are facing with having had two floods in 3 months?

Hon MARK BURTON: The latter matter is a matter that the member has raised with me, as have a couple of my other colleagues from the north. As to the former matter, yes, I am aware of that meeting. I think it illustrates the point I was making in the primary answer. It is encouraging that the local community is taking the initiative and understands that these are complex and serious issues. Local people will be at the heart of making the decisions about their own future.

Hone Harawira: Tēnā koe. Ā, he aha te tino tautoko a te Tari Kāwanatanga ā-Rohe o Aotearoa ki ngā whānau o Mōtatau, Kawakawa, Waikare, Matawāia, o Kaeō, o Whangaroa hoki mō ngā whare e noho waipuke tonu ana?

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

What immediate support can Local Government New Zealand provide to the whānau in Mōtatau, Kawakawa, Waikare, Matawāia, Kaeō, and Whangaroa whose homes remain waterlogged right now?]

Hon MARK BURTON: I clearly cannot speak for Local Government New Zealand, but certainly central government has already made a number of provisions. Cabinet will continue to take advice on a daily basis as to further support that will be required to work alongside local government and local communities.

Question No. 3 to Minister

DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki): During question No. 3 there were quite a lot of theatrics from Mr Tony Ryall about cronyism, so I seek leave to table a document showing that Chris Clarke worked as an executive assistant to Deputy Prime Minister Helen Clark on her health portfolio from 1989 to 1990, and prior to the appointment he was a Treasury official working in the housing portfolio, during which time he shared an office with then Treasury officer Bill English.

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

Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty): I seek leave to table the biography of Mr Chris Clarke, which he proudly displays on the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board website, as he is very proud that he was executive assistant to the then Deputy Prime Minister Helen Clark.

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

Local Government—Council Sizes

11. JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) to the Minister of Local Government: Does he agree with the president of Local Government New Zealand that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to local government issues in New Zealand?

Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Local Government): Indeed I do. That is why this Government is engaged in an ongoing and consultative working relationship with local government, in stark contrast to the icy relationship between the Beehive and local government during the 1990s. Our relationship is, I think, epitomised by the Central / Local Government Forum, which was jointly initiated and is co-chaired by Prime Minister Helen Clark and the president of Local Government New Zealand. This Government is committed to maintaining and building that strong working relationship.

John Carter: What advice has the Minister given to the Minister of Health regarding the inability of smaller rural and provincial councils to pay for the Labour Government’s one-size-fits-all approach to drinking-water standards; and what advice has he given to the Minister of Health regarding the statement of the president of Local Government New Zealand that the proposed drinking-water legislation is unnecessary and unjust?

Hon MARK BURTON: There is no need for me to give advice to the Minister of Health, because flexibility is provided for in the bill relating to drinking-water standards. It requires that councils take a responsible attitude. But I say to the member that it is just not good enough for the cloud-jumper to go to Dunedin and make a speech suggesting it is acceptable for people in small communities to have substandard water supplies. He would not accept that for his family in Auckland.

John Carter: What is the Minister’s reaction to research by Local Government New Zealand that shows councils are increasingly concerned that they do not have the resources or the funding to undertake all the functions devolved to them by this Labour Government?

Hon MARK BURTON: The member may be aware—I would have thought he would be, given the portfolio he carries as an Opposition spokesperson—that there has been a rate and funding review. That panel is due to report to me shortly, and that information will be of central importance to future funding arrangements. The member and his leader trot around the country suggesting that a lot of legislation—the quote is usually between 60 and 67 pieces of legislation—is being imposed on local government bodies without any assistance being given, which puts costs on them. But if we analyse the list the member puts forward, we see that 28 pieces of legislation were specifically asked for by local government and 26 of them have absolutely no cost attached to them. The facts, I say to Mr Carter, should occasionally get in the way of his statements.

John Carter: In view of that answer, what is the Minister’s reaction to the statement made by the Hamilton City Council—not me—that it has identified 60 pieces of legislation that impose compliance costs on local government without adequate resourcing and cost recovery tools?

Hon MARK BURTON: I would need the council to provide me with its evidence; I could not rely on it to come from over there. But I would say to the council that New Zealand ratepayers and residents of Hamilton City expect First World standards. They expect the conditions, water supplies, waste water disposal, and regulation of a First World community. That is a fact of life, I tell Mr Carter. They will not tolerate lesser conditions, and they ultimately expect to pay for fair services.

Food Safety—Exports from People’s Republic of China

12. SUE KEDGLEY (Green) to the Minister for Food Safety: Does she have any concerns about the safety of food imported from China, given a report earlier this year by the Asian Development Bank and World Health Organization which concluded that “Unsafe food in the People’s Republic of China remains a serious threat to public health.”; if not, why not?

Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister for Food Safety): Unsafe food is an important public health issue around the world. I am advised that the Chinese Government is taking that issue seriously within its own country. In relation to Chinese food imported into New Zealand, I am advised that New Zealand has systems in place to ensure that the food for sale in New Zealand, regardless of where it is from, is required to meet safety and suitability standards. We will always take food safety issues seriously, which is why we have a world-leading New Zealand Food Safety Authority.

Sue Kedgley: Is the Minister aware of another report, released a few weeks ago by a Chinese authority, that revealed that nearly a fifth of the food and other consumer products checked in China were found to be substandard or tainted with formaldehyde, illegal dyes, excessive preservatives, and additives; and is she aware of other reports that have found examples of farmed fish fattened on birth control pills, kids’ snacks laced with hormones, seafood contaminated with DDT, tomatoes contaminated with the banned pesticide Lindane, and pigs fed asthma medication in order to produce leaner and redder meat; if so, how can she guarantee that similarly contaminated products are not on sale in New Zealand?

Hon ANNETTE KING: I am aware of a number of reports coming out of China regarding food safety. I am also aware that the World Health Organization has said that it has not singled out China as being of particular concern over food safety. It is a problem in rich and poor countries, and—I ask you to listen to this, Madam Speaker—“must be tackled through better regulation”. I would also like to inform the House that none of the New Zealand Food Safety Authority’s range of testing programmes to date has found any serious issues with regard to levels of residue in food imported into New Zealand from China. The authority’s testing and surveillance programmes show that produce available within New Zealand, both imported and domestically produced, has extremely low levels of chemical residues.

Barbara Stewart: Does the Minister still consider it unnecessary for the country of origin to be displayed on food labels, as without that information New Zealand consumers are effectively denied their right to make informed choices about the food they buy?

Hon ANNETTE KING: Perhaps I could remind the member that in 2006 the Consumer’s Right to Know (Food Information) Bill came to this House. It was voted against by 99 members of this House, with 20 voting for the bill, because people in this House know that putting a label on a product and saying that it may come from somewhere does not necessarily tell us what is in that product. It could have a number of ingredients. Some could have come from one country, and some could have come from another. It may be a product of, or made, somewhere else. In fact, that label does not give the information that consumers seek. The best way for consumers to know what is in their food is to ensure, first of all, that they buy Kiwi-made products.

Sue Kedgley: Is she aware that testing of Chinese food at American ports found pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums, and farmed seafood contaminated with carcinogenic compounds, and that, as a result, the Americans are turning away several hundred shipments a month and are putting very serious restrictions on farmed seafood; will the Minister agree, therefore, to follow the Americans and impose stricter testing—indeed, will she agree to random testing—on all food imports from China, to reassure the public that the food they buy in New Zealand that comes from China is safe?

Hon ANNETTE KING: I am confident that, with the work carried out by the New Zealand Food Safety Authority, food coming into New Zealand is safe. The Food Safety Authority has strong links with its international counterparts, and remains on the alert for issues that may impact on New Zealand. In cases where there have been incidents overseas, the authority’s relationship with its international counterparts has given it no cause to suspect that the affected foods have been sold in New Zealand.

Sue Kedgley: How can she be confident that the 23,000 tonnes of food imported from China into New Zealand last year were safe, when the Food Safety Authority refuses to conduct even random testing; and why should New Zealanders not be entitled to know whether these imported prawns are from China or from some other part of the world, particularly when they are exactly the same prawns that the Americans have found to be laced with carcinogenic compounds; if her Government refuses to take precautions to assure New Zealanders that they are safe, should we not at least have mandatory country-of-origin labelling, so that we can avoid these products if we so choose?

Hon ANNETTE KING: Since 1963 the Codex Alimentarius Commission set up by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations has developed food standards and codes of practice to protect health worldwide. We follow those standards in New Zealand. We make sure that we do have safe food in this country. The scaremongering from that member—who consistently gets her facts wrong, who consistently says that we bring in a certain tonnage of food from China, only to have to correct her press statements later—is not doing any good in New Zealand. I find that it is more to do with China than it is to do with the foods that are coming in.

Sue Kedgley: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I specifically asked whether people had a right to know whether their prawns came from China or from some other country.

Madam SPEAKER: I thank the member. I think the Minister addressed the question.

Hon Dr Michael Cullen: Does the Minister have any concerns about the safety of dietary supplements imported from China; if so, what are those concerns, and has she received any approaches from Sue Kedgley on those matters?

Hon ANNETTE KING: In respect of the last part of that question, as far as I can remember Sue Kedgley has never made any representations to me on complementary medicines coming in from China. She has not made any representations in terms of whether they are contaminated. I believe that a rather double standard is being applied here, whereby Sue Kedgley would like every piece of food in New Zealand to be tested but does not ask for the same when it comes to dietary supplements.

Sue Kedgley: I seek leave to table a number of documents. The first document is a submission that I made on the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill—

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection?

Sue Kedgley: —that called for stronger regulations for dietary supplements—

Madam SPEAKER: There is objection. I remind the member to just identify the document. You said it was your submission—that identified it. You do not read out what is in the document. The next document, please.

Sue Kedgley: This is a document that shows kids’ snacks laced with hormones—

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection.

Sue Kedgley: I have another document here from Greenpeace, which found that 70 percent of tomatoes were laced with—

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? Yes, there is objection.

Sue Kedgley: I have one here from the Food and Drug Administration, which has found farmed seafood laced with—

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? Yes, there is.

Sue Kedgley: I have a report here of fake baby-food formulas that cause severe malnutrition—

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? Yes, there is.

Sue Kedgley: I have a report here showing that 23,000 tonnes of food are imported into New Zealand from China.

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? Yes, there is objection.

Sue Kedgley: I have a report here from the World Health Organization that states that unsafe food from China remains a serious threat.

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? Yes, there is.

Sue Kedgley: I have another one here, which is a report showing that soy sauce was bulked up with arsenic-tainted—

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? Yes, there is.

Sue Kedgley: I have one final report showing that asthma medication is fed to pigs in China.

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? Yes, there is objection.

Hon Mark Gosche: I seek leave to table a transcript of a Sunday programme, which identified Chinese herbal remedies sold in my electorate that contained diuretics and steroids.

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection.

General Debate

General Debate

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. It is becoming clear, day by day, that the Labour front bench is cracking. It is cracking under the pressure of bad policy, bad judgment, and bad polls. How do we know it is cracking? Well, Steve Maharey, who is meant to be in charge of the education of all of the children in New Zealand, is busy applying for the job of vice-chancellor of Massey University. I wish him well, because if he does not get that job, his future after he leaves Parliament will be that of a discredited Minister without a job. It would be great for Steve Maharey to get that job, at a quarter of a million dollars a year, but I tell members that it would be terrible for Massey University. For the good of the students that job should not be given to him.

Steve Maharey should announce his retirement. What credibility does he now have as a man dedicated to the future of our children? He has none. He is now dedicated to his own future, not the future of our children. He should go.

We are told that Annette King wants to go, but Helen Clark will not let her because Annette King is meant to be the competent one. Until 10 days ago that might have been the case, but then she landed on the Government the sheer embarrassment of the foreign policy failure of the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill. That showed arrogance and mishandling—if Phil Goff had been handling it, it would have got through. Phil Goff knows that, and that is what he is telling anyone who will listen, including members of the National Party.

I am sure Annette King is worried about her involvement in the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board scandal. What a scandal that is. As my colleague Tony Ryall pointed out today, she was fast-tracking the appointment of Peter Hausmann, the principal tenderer for $50 million of public money, when he was being fed the tender documents for comment by the chief executive of the district health board. And, of course, I am sure that Mrs King is worried about the role of her husband. He was second in charge of the district health board, and he is now working for Peter Hausmann, the principal tenderer for the $50 million contract whom she appointed to the board. So if Annette King does not want to go now, I am sure she will want to go soon.

Pete Hodgson cannot smell the smell, the stench, of cronyism. There is the implication—and at the moment I say the implication only—of an inside job between the previous Minister of Health, her husband, their mate who was appointed to the board, and the chief executive who made it all happen. Pete Hodgson said there is nothing wrong. That is the measure of his inability to understand the public good. He says that nothing is wrong and that nothing will be found, and, to make sure that nothing is found, on Friday he appointed his mate Syd Bradley to run the inquiry. Then today he sacked him, because he realised it would look completely stupid to have the Minister’s best friend in the health sector inquiring into the Minister, her husband, and all their mutual friends.

Then we come to Dr Cullen. For 20 years the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act has been a cornerstone of the economic management of New Zealand and a cornerstone of the credibility of this country. It means the country can borrow hundreds of millions of dollars overseas at reasonable interest rates. That is what it comes down to. Others lend us money at reasonable interest rates—rates are a bit high at the moment—because of that Act. Dr Cullen, in trying to deal with short-term pressure on his economic management, has now virtually invited Winston Peters, whom no one trusts on economic management, to change the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act. And Dr Cullen thinks he is clever.

The only reason this Parliament is not debating a change to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act is that National said no. So now the Opposition is the only thing that stands between this country’s creditors and a total shambles. Dr Cullen is inviting trouble, and he should go.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of State Services): It has become obvious, day by day, that the front bench of the National Party is not cracking. It is not cracking, because it is already cracked. It is cracked from Nick Smith right through to the whole line-up. It is not cracking; it is cracked.

I want to tell this House a story that John Key hoped would never emerge. He has worked hard to keep this under wraps and under a modicum of control, but he has failed because there are too many loose lips in his caucus; too many people talking to too many outsiders after too many tipples at the caucus party. His secret is out. John Key cannot control his caucus. He is being led by the nose by the former Young Turks, who are now called the “Old Jerks”, in the form of Bill English, Tony Ryall, and Nick Smith. In the words of Bill English, they just leave John Key to bounce from cloud to cloud while the boys do the real politics in that party.

The failure to support the joint regulator bill—the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill—has exposed John Key’s inability to control his caucus. If he cannot control a caucus, he cannot lead a country. The end gain for Tony Ryall was never to get a compromise on that bill. He set out to destroy it from day one, and John Key could not stop him, unlike the leader of the National Party before him, Don Brash.

Don Brash wrote to Helen Clark on 7 July 2004 and said: “In principle I see advantages of New Zealand and Australia being able to make progress in this area together. I agree that the proposal for a fifty-fifty participation in the governance is an important advance. I am prepared to recommend to my caucus colleagues that we work together supporting the proposals in principle, provided we can see changes that will accommodate reasonable concerns raised, including the need to have a separate process for high-risk medicines and low-risk complementary medicines.” It was not about removal, but a sensible approach.

That quote was from Don Brash in 2004. That is very different from what National says—that it never supported the legislation from day one. That was a porky then, and it is a porky now. Members should compare Don Brash’s approach to the dithering of John Key. And members should have watched the reaction of Tony Ryall when he was advised that the bill would be postponed. Did he talk about public safety? Did he talk about the quality of products? Did he talk about the relationship with Australia? Did he even talk about people? No, he did not. He went straight to the political soapbox and branded us a lame-duck Government. Well, if not being able to proceed with bills about dodgy pills and dog microchips is the benchmark of a lame-duck Government, then if National members ever do get into Government, they will be sitting ducks, because they will be there for quick removal.

John Key has told people privately that Tony Ryall threatened to cross the floor if the Nats supported the bill. Crossing the floor, of course, would mean crossing it to work with the Green Party. John Key said he could not afford that sort of division in his caucus. John Key is also being rather economical with the truth in saying that he never talked to Labour about a two-tier system, as proposed first by Gordon Copeland and then by Winston Peters. In fact, Gordon Copeland has just confirmed with me that that proposal was taken to John Key. On the day it was taken he was in favour of it; the next day he was opposed to it.

John Key said that we never talked to him. National refused to believe that it had been spoken to. Michael Cullen spoke to John Key about a two-tier system, but according to John Key that was not an approach. Well, hello, it took only a note from the Prime Minister and a wee meeting in the lobby before John Key was able to work on a compromise on the anti - child beating bill, but two or three calls from the Deputy Prime Minister are not considered to be a real consultation or any sort of discussion. John Key could not get any change out of the power brokers in the National Party. They were for it once; they are not now. They should be ashamed of themselves.

GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): Where were they? Where were Minister Annette King’s mates? Why did the Labour Party front bench desert this Minister at this difficult time for her? Why did they walk away? Well, let us have a look at it. First there is the debacle over the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill. None of what was presented by the Minister today is true. She is an extremely arrogant Minister who would not know consultation if she was instructed totally in what it is. Then there is the issue of the police and the lack of standards in the new recruits. We will have police officers on our streets who cannot even write, let alone bring a successful prosecution to court. And now there is the horrible spectre of potential corruption at the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board hanging over the Minister’s head, as well.

Is it not interesting that only now Mr Trevor Mallard comes to sit alongside the Minister? This has nothing to do with supporting her, of course. Everyone in this House knows that we have gone past the shortest day. We are on the long road to summer, and Phil Goff has the barbecue list out to revise who should be there in the summer, because he knows that his opportunities are not too far off. He has told us—and anyone who wants to listen—that if he had been handling that Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill, the House would be voting for it now. We look at him every day as various Ministers are in trouble. Mr Hodgson today had a big grin on his face, and where is he now? He is out in his caravan talking to the people—waiting, waiting for his time. Of course, he must be enormously comforted that his running mate David Cunliffe is off filling up the liquefied petroleum gas bottles ready to make sure that the barbecue fires up in the right direction.

These are people who are in severe political trouble, and this is a Government that is on its way out, not just because of the trans-Tasman therapeutic products legislation, not just because of the police issue, and not just because of the debacle at Hawke’s Bay—all the responsibility of the one Minister—but because of so many things that have gone wrong: 20 free hours’ early childhood education that are perfectly free as long as one pays for them; the vicious attack on the mortgage holders of this country in order that we might somehow stem a rising exchange rate; and, of course, health services throughout the country being in crisis everywhere. My own city has an emergency room that simply cannot cope, and people are suffering the consequences of that.

The education sector is struggling to provide for the realities of life for many young New Zealanders and is not giving them the opportunities that they need. We have a Minister of Education who now knows he has made such a hash of it that the best thing he can do is to get out. It is only a matter of days before we hear the announcement that Steve Maharey is the new vice-chancellor of Massey University. Well, good luck, Massey University—all the best. That will not be a good move for that university or for any of the students who go there.

But there are a few bright spots on the horizon. I understand that Clayton Cosgrove is now the “go-to man” inside the Labour Party. One only has to look at the Order Paper to know that that is the case. A few weeks ago the Order Paper had nothing on it. Now it has substantial legislation on it, such as the Wills Bill. It has substantial legislation on it, such as the Arbitration Amendment Bill. It has important pieces of legislation on it, such as the Succession (Homicide) Bill. Who is the Minister behind all of this? The young cut-and-thruster, Clayton Cosgrove himself.

Well, all I can say to Clayton Cosgrove is: get home on a Friday, stay there on a Saturday, stay there on a Sunday, and do not be too eager to come back on a Monday, because those boundary changes are looking pretty dodgy. Would it not be a great shame if the great future light of the Labour Party lost his seat? He will not go on the list. He has promised the people of Waimakariri that he will not go on the list. It will be a great shame if he loses his seat just by the stroke of a pen.

The point here, of course, is that this is a Government that now cannot do anything right. It now cannot achieve anything at all. That is demonstrated so clearly when the Minister of Finance has to stand up and explain why it is OK for Winston Peters, the coalition partner, to undo 20 years of bipartisan agreement on the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act—20 years of bipartisan agreement on that Act, which has allowed the New Zealand economy, one way or the other, to flourish more than it might have without it. Michael Cullen sits there quietly and allows Winston Peters to have a go at advancing that legislation simply so Helen Clark can stay as Prime Minister.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Minister for Building and Construction): I have one thing to say to the former member of a band called the “Minetti Brothers”—I think he was on the double bass or the bassoon—which is that if he is so keen on Waimakariri, he should run against me and have a go. I say that this man is cracking—all right—the man who as I said before in an interjection has as much credibility as a Mississippi riverboat gambler. This is the genius from that side of the House who signed up as a director of a company, thinking the company was going to clean up the casino industry, and then found out that it wanted a casino licence. I tell Gerry Brownlee of the “Minetti Brothers” that I know that the band was not a country and western band, but I invite that member to reflect on that great Kenny Rogers song, “The Gambler”, where Kenny said:

You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em,

Know when to walk away and know when to run.

Well, we know now that he did not “know when to hold em”, he did not “know when to fold em”, and he certainly did not “know when to walk away”. But, my word, when the media caught him out, he ran, he bolted—which was physically impossible, I would have thought.

This is the “Boss” Hogg of Parliament. We can imagine Gerry in a Western movie, perhaps called The Maverick, in the white suit, the white pants, the little black string bow tie, and the big Stetson, riding into town on the Clydesdale for the big game, with the pearl-handled knife and fork strapped to his belt. Members can imagine that—old Gerry—can they not?

But Mr Brownlee got up and talked about conflict of interest. I say that this is a man who, if he cannot govern his own conduct in his own life, cannot hope to be—as he is now—the spokesperson on State-owned enterprises governing some of the biggest companies in New Zealand. He wants to be Minister for State Owned Enterprises, but he cannot work out when a conflict of interest exists. He teamed up with a couple of blokes who have a bodyguard—you know, a Dirty Dog sunglasses bloke—trundling along behind the guys. I want to know whether Gerry had a bodyguard, or many bodyguards actually; there is a lot to guard, of course. So I say to him that he should not get up in the House and talk about conflicts of interest.

I also say to him that there has been an unwritten Standing Order in this House that has been broken yet again today. It used to be broken frequently by Mr Hide, but even he has sort of had a dancing road to Damascus experience. That unwritten order used to be that we did not bring kids, spouses, or people who are not elected but who are family members, inside this Chamber. Well, he broke it; be it on his own head. I say to that member that he should reflect on the Kenny Rogers lyric that goes like this:

… if you’re gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.

That member is a disgrace. That member got hauled over the coals by his own leader because he could not work out that as a member of Parliament it probably did not pay him to become a director of a company. It certainly did not pay to become a director of a company when the member did not know what the heck the company was doing. The member joined a company as a director supposedly to clean up the casino industry—I do not know how that would have happened—and then it turned out that the company was actually seeking a casino licence. Well the egg, poached, fried, or scrambled—and there is a fair bit of it—is all over him.

It is bad enough that the silly National Party put up the two-time loser first in this debate, the one who is going to pull the rug out from under old folk’s superannuation, do over KiwiSaver, and rip the entrails out of Working for Families, but then that party picked the gambler to come up—the sort of human bassoon out of the “Minetti Brothers”—and have a crack at us. Well, I say that if Gerry Brownlee is so confident in Waimakariri, have a go, mate—roll the dice. If you are so confident of your credibility, stand up and give us an explanation in this House as to why you were so silly, why you have no judgment, and why you do not have the confidence of any of your colleagues.

Hon Bill English: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member has been here for a year or two, I think, and he knows that the use of the term “you” is regarded as a direct address to the Speaker, so is not allowed.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member is absolutely right. I have called the member to order several times.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: I withdraw and apologise. The member should tell the House why he does not have the confidence of his leader, why his leader raked him over the coals, and why he has no credibility in this House, because this ain’t the first time for this person. We remember the top of the stairs and the poor old fellow who was bowled down them.

Hon Member: The pensioner!

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: We remember the pensioner; we do remember that.

This member is the big hitter of the National Party. There might be some Young Turks over here, but there are some big turkeys over there. I say to the member that he should give us an explanation. He should not talk to us about credibility, he should not talk to us about conflict of interest, and he should not bring family members and the spouses of members of Parliament into this debate.

GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I realise that you gave that member 10 minutes, but not once during that time did he mention anything to do with the Government or the Government’s programme. Perhaps he could have another turn.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you, Mr Brownlee; that was not a point of order.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Minister for Building and Construction): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Part of the Government’s programme is to hold the Opposition to account. I have just spent 5 minutes discrediting the member.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): No, that is not a point of order. The member will be seated.

Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty): I thought Mike Moore used to write his own rambling, incoherent speeches, but it is absolutely clear that the “beagle boy from Waimak” was right behind writing his speeches. We have just heard an absolute nonsense of a diatribe from Clayton Cosgrove that made no contribution to the sum total of human knowledge.

What he could have spent time talking about in this House is the Succession (Homicide) Bill. This bill is on the Order Paper to protect the Labour backbench, because Helen Clark is cruising the backbenches looking for the unsuspecting in order to give them the chop out of this House by this time next year. Who is next? We saw Mr Swain go; we have seen Dover Samuels go. Moana Mackey will not survive the cruising of the Prime Minister through the backbenches. Martin Gallagher will not be able to survive in Hamilton West; nor will Sue Moroney stay in her position in the Labour Party. All the ineffectual, inconsequential, hopeless Labour backbenchers are part of the Succession (Homicide) Bill, because Helen Clark is completely fixated on succession, and the homicide will be that of the Labour backbench.

Let us remember that this Prime Minister is on wind-down. Two months ago the pollsters from her polling company were asking New Zealanders what Helen Clark’s legacy would be. Well, what will Helen Clark’s legacy be? Her legacy will be the missed opportunity to lift this country way beyond where we could have ever expected it to be. She simply squandered the best of times, and she is making it even harder for this country to compete with the Australians. That is her legacy. We have the highest interest rates in the world and the highest taxes. She is strangling this economy and this country from going forward with Australia, and she is ignoring the very big issues confronting this country today.

The most important issue is the huge pressure put on New Zealand families by the highest interest rates in the Western World. The wasteful spending of billions and billions of dollars by this Labour Government is driving up interest rates and really squeezing New Zealanders. In the next few months a huge proportion of New Zealanders will come off fixed mortgage interest rates. They will find themselves going from interest rates of 6.5 percent to 9.5 percent. This Government offers them no hope and no chance of getting anywhere.

Chris Auchinvole: The mortgage levy!

Hon TONY RYALL: That is the mortgage levy. Because of Michael Cullen’s incompetence and the hopelessness of the Prime Minister, ordinary New Zealanders will pay the highest interest rates in the Western World.

I can also tell members that although New Zealanders are paying huge taxes, they are not getting the quality public services they deserve. People in New Zealand emergency departments are lined up in trolley after trolley after trolley in the corridors, waiting to get into our public hospitals. People in the Waikato and in Waitakere are waiting 24 hours to get into a hospital ward. We know that the length of time it takes to get one’s care has a direct impact on the ability to survive whatever illness one might have, but this Government does not care. There is $5 billion of extra funding, but not one extra operation for New Zealanders. In fact, under this Government fewer New Zealanders are getting elective surgery than at any other time, and fewer New Zealanders are able to get a specialist appointment to enable them to even try to get into the system.

What is more, real problems are happening in district health boards throughout New Zealand. In question time today we asked the Government to explain a series of emails from the chief executive of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board.

Chris Auchinvole: Did they explain?

Hon TONY RYALL: They did not explain what is going on here. We asked just a simple question: is it right that 2½ months before a tender was released publicly, the chief executive of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board was asking one of the likely tenderers to comment on the tender documents? Is it right that 2½ months before anyone else got a copy, the chief executive of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board asked for a copy of the documents to be sent to a contractor likely to bid—a contractor whom Annette King was fast tracking for appointment to the very same district health board? What is going on?

NANDOR TANCZOS (Green): Today the Minister of Research, Science and Technology announced $150 million to investigate sustainability and climate change, and $311 million to boost primary sector research. The extraordinary thing is that he seems to see these two areas as distinct. Agriculture contributes around half of our greenhouse gas emissions from this country. Deforestation and the intensification and expansion of dairy farming are significant contributors to our looming Kyoto deficit. In addition, water allocation and water quality are being impacted on.

Many of our farmers are taking this challenge seriously and are looking at how to improve their practices, and they are being encouraged to do so through initiatives such as the Dairying and Clean Streams Accord. But there is a fundamental contradiction between increasing intensification and expansion of dairying and farming in a way that has low environmental impact. It is a nettle that the Government, riding on the back of a national boom driven by dairy profits, is loath to grasp. How do we circle the square? Next month the National Organics Conference will be discussing just that.

The potential of organic farming to boost farmers’ incomes, to reduce environmental impact such as the nitrification of waterways, and to improve producer and consumer health has not been well appreciated by this Government. For example, research is beginning to demonstrate the importance of humus in soils in sequestering carbon. It may be that building healthy soils naturally, through improving the organic content and thereby the soil structure, soil microbiology, nutrients, water, and nutrient-holding capacity, is as important as planting trees in holding carbon. How many of the research dollars announced by the Minister today will be spent on organic farming? Not many, if any.

There is some Government support for organics—for example, the funding of Organics Aotearoa New Zealand and the Organic Advisory Programme run through that. I acknowledge our erstwhile colleague Ken Shirley and his role as executive director of Organics Aotearoa New Zealand. I know that he is extremely appreciative of the fact that the only reason there is any Government support for Organics Aotearoa New Zealand at all is that the Green Party got it for it. But even with minimal support from the Government, and a lack of commitment to organics from this Government, organics is growing. I make the point that organic farming was not even mentioned in the Government’s sustainable agriculture discussion documents. That shows the lack of commitment from this Government.

But, even so, organics is growing because it is being driven by truly innovative and creative people—people who are seeing the future and establishing the foundation for our nation to move into greater organic production. Between 1999 and 2005 the amount of New Zealand land that was either certified organic or under conversion increased by more than 400 percent. Organic exports are worth around $100 million a year, the domestic market consumes around $60 million worth, and another $40 million worth are imported into this country.

Organics Aotearoa New Zealand wants to boost New Zealand’s organic exports to $1 billion by 2013, and there is a broader vision in the New Zealand organic sector of New Zealand being 50 percent organic by 2020. Between 1996 and 1999 the premium for organic kiwifruit averaged 50 percent above the conventional price. In 1999 organic peas had a premium of 41 percent and organic sweetcorn a premium of 57 percent, and today organic-certified apples are enjoying a 100 percent premium, as is organic-certified lamb. So the profits are there to be made while reducing the environmental impacts. We do not need to intensify, in the way we are doing, to get the returns. The issue is not about increasing turnover; it is about increasing profit.

Researchers from the University of Michigan found that in developed countries yields were almost equal on organic and conventional farms, and then, of course, there is the price premium. In developing countries—and members should take note, because this is interesting—food production could double or triple using organic methods, according to the research by the University of Michigan. It is time the Government started getting serious about supporting organic agriculture and, as part of its commitment to sustainability, got behind the vision of New Zealand being 50 percent organic by 2020.

Hon MAHARA OKEROA (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I have listened to a diatribe from those benches over there, but those members have not actually answered any of the key questions that I want to pose. Do members know why? Their leader has had his head on cloud nine, up there with Rangi, e tū nei. This Government has had its feet firmly planted on terra firma, committed to policy development and absolutely tangible delivery.

Chris Auchinvole: Hopeless!

Hon MAHARA OKEROA: So the question still remains—and it is hopeless—“Where are National’s development policies for Māori?”.

Hon Members: What policies?

Hon MAHARA OKEROA: Yes, what policies? What policies, and for whom? Here is a snapshot—and a snapshot only—of what Labour’s Māori MPs are delivering for Māori: Māori unemployment is down to an all-time low; over 15,000 Māori are enrolled in tertiary education; nearly 3,000 Māori are enrolled in postgraduate courses; over 22,000 Māori trainees are participating in Modern Apprenticeships and industry training schemes—a great Government—and over 500,000 Māori are enrolled in primary health organisations and are receiving cheaper, more affordable health care; and let us not forget who established Māori Television.

But the National Party does have a discernable Māori policy. Do members know what that is?

Moana Mackey: Finding out what they are?

Hon MAHARA OKEROA: No, National members have got past there. Their policy is to abolish the Māori seats. That cloud nine leader says that the position he has on the Māori seats is that they should be abolished at some time, but that it is a timetabling issue. What does that mean? What that means, as far as I am concerned—

Chris Auchinvole: It means that your time is running out!

Hon MAHARA OKEROA: If that member does not know this, that is not my problem. National is totally removed, totally remote, and totally disconnected from Māori. Mr Brownlee talked about consultation. There is nothing here about consulting with the tangata whenua. There is absolutely no suggestion of assimilation at all.

Chris Auchinvole: He is on his way away.

Hon MAHARA OKEROA: I am not a list MP, like that member from the West Coast.

This policy is a thinly veiled attempt at assimilation. Let us have a look at it. Historically, the contributions of Māori members holding Māori seats are indelibly etched in the social, cultural, and political fabric of Aotearoa New Zealand. Let me give an example. Do those members opposite think that the formation of the 28th Māori Battalion, and its legendary and costly contribution to the war effort, was the outcome of some politically remote, osmotic process with liberal lashings of divine intervention? If those members opposite believe that, then they have failed to understand Māoris’ contribution to our history. In my view, that formation was a result of the inspired political and tribally strategic leadership of Sir Apirana Ngata, if I may say so.

More recently, the New Zealand First Party, with its six electorate MPs in coalition—with guess whom—were able not only to initiate an inquiry into the historical inequities of the Māori reserve land regime but also to have positive outcomes that heralded unprecedented economic progress for Māori owners. I must give some acknowledgment to New Zealand First—and that was before the Hon Tau Henare’s chameleon-like behaviour.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga): One of the greatest adages in life has always been that if one does not learn from history, one is doomed to repeat it. For those of us who have been around this place for some time, there is absolutely no better case to look at than that of the Labour Party in 1990 to see the absolute similarities to what that party is going through in this particular term.

A lot of people will say that that was a different Labour Party back then. Actually, it was not. Helen Clark was the Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Cullen was the Associate Minister of Finance, and Phil Goff, Trevor Mallard, and Annette King were Ministers on the front bench. [Interruption] Oh yes, they were! They were Ministers. Guess what? In 1990, as the rot set in, no matter what they tried to do they had gone past the tipping point, and Labour ran headlong towards annihilation—so much so that we in the National Party had something dreadful happen to us. We won seats we did not expect to win. We won seats that I think, in hindsight, we actually wish we had not won, because we got a couple of fruit loops on the team at the time. We won seats like Roskill off Phil Goff, which we had never expected to win. To my colleague over here, Chris Auchinvole, I have to say that we won the West Coast, and I think we will win it again this time with Chris Auchinvole as our candidate.

I have just been up in Ōtaki. Let me tell members that the entire group of people that we met in Ōtaki today said, across the board, that Nathan Guy will be the next member of Parliament up there. That is what they said. So I came back to the House this afternoon and I thought, “Boy, are we into a case of retire now and avoid the rush!” That is what we are into. It was Paul Swain and Dover Samuels yesterday and now, like rats deserting a sinking ship, the list has started.

So I thought that what I would do now is to look to the luminaries. Where are the new lights—the fresh blood—that might save the ship? That is what one often does; one turns to anywhere there is any sort of hope of keeping the ship afloat. I keep looking at stuff like the columns of that incredibly impartial columnist Colin James, who says that the two stunning new lights of Labour are the two Davids: David Parker and David Cunliffe. Really? Oh, really? They are the two leading lights? They are the two luminaries? David Parker gives truth to the old adage that behind every great man stands an amazed mother-in-law, and David Cunliffe’s motto is that eagles may soar but weasels do not get sucked into jet engines. That is his motto.

I tell members that David Cunliffe’s performance as a Minister has been appalling. The first thing he had to do as Minister of Communications was to deal with the issue of getting broadband into New Zealand. I ask members to work with me on this one. The first thing he always says at every meeting is: “It’s the National Party’s fault”. That is what he says. I can accept that argument if we are talking about roading, which was an issue around the time back when National was the Government, or the electricity network—I can accept that because it was an issue around then.

But I tell members of the House, as they have probably forgotten—I know Paul Swain will not have—that broadband did not come to New Zealand until just at the end of 1999 as ADSL was rolled out, and that is when National left office. Any roll-out of broadband over the last 7 years has nothing to do with National because there was no broadband in New Zealand when National left office. There was no broadband anywhere. If members go to the OECD tables, they will see that the broadband tables start from 1999, because there was no broadband before that. It is a new technology; it is a brand new technology.

Chris Auchinvole: It’s our fault!

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Yes, it is true. I admit now that National delivered no broadband, because during its 9 years in Government there was no broadband. But now David Cunliffe is the master and he is going to deliver it. I ask members to let me read from a release that came out yesterday. They will love this; it is my personal favourite: “A new OECD report shows New Zealand is still lagging well behind other developed countries in its broadband uptake.” It says that we are “fifth from bottom” of the 30 countries. We are fifth from the bottom of the 30 countries. Now, where did we start out in 1999? We were 22nd out of the 30 countries, and now we are 25th due to that man’s magnificent management of the broadband issue.

DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki): That speech was sponsored by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. That speech was from a political dinosaur, a man whom, thank goodness, the National Party made the transport spokesperson. I say that because when he was Minister of Transport in the 1990s not a single new highway was built in New Zealand.

Hon Maurice Williamson: Yes, there was.

DARREN HUGHES: Oh, no, no. I look around my electorate of Otaki and I see that in the time Labour has been the Government we have had a new overbridge at Mackays Crossing—and Paul Swain was very influential in that. There is a 90 percent subsidy on the Western Link Road. I see that the electrification of the railway line is coming through to Waikanae—and it needs to be pushed further up than that. And I see that just today the contracts for the final stage of the preliminary designs for Transmission Gully have been awarded. The Labour-led Government is making progress on transport issues.

I say to my constituent Mr Guy that if he has Maurice Williamson up at home today giving him political advice, I am fantastically grateful for that. Maurice Williamson and detail, Maurice Williamson and policy, and Maurice Williamson and progress are not words that go together, but there he sits on the front bench. I am glad that he is there, because there is nothing better than what is happening in politics at the moment, with the National Party sleepwalking its way to defeat. National Party members believe they have a ginormous opinion poll lead, and they are watching it ebb away through their own arrogance, through their conceit, and through dividing up the spoils of victory 18 months before a general election. Watching the National Party perform in this way is political gold for the Labour Party.

The new National Party MPs are the worst, because they cannot believe their luck. They watched old Don Brash fumble his way through Parliament. Now, all of a sudden, they think they are on an enormous wave, the election is this Saturday, and soon they will be brought into office.

Jacqui Dean: Not us!

DARREN HUGHES: Jacqui Dean should get an economics job, because she says that National would not borrow the money, and that it would just get it from overseas. That is the sort of fantastic policy development we are seeing from people who, 18 months before a general election, have a born-to-rule arrogance that is just absolutely extraordinary.

The National Party members’ speeches so far say they believe they can win office if every member of the Labour Party front bench retires or resigns. That is their strategy, so they say: “Please, Dr Cullen, move on; please, Mr Maharey, go to Massey University.” Gerry Brownlee is very keen on that, as the only way he would get into the extramural programme at Massey University would be if his old mate Mr Maharey enrolled him at mates’ rates. They want Mrs King to go. They want Mr Mallard to go. If all the front bench of the Labour Party left, National members would be very happy. Well, I am sorry. Dreams are free, but around here we have to deal in facts.

The only dream I have heard of recently is that of Mr English saying that his leader goes from cloud to cloud, making pronouncements about policy, while he is left grinding away, doing the work. We totally agree with that. We hear from over there talk of the wasteful spending of the Government. I ask members opposite which area of wasteful spending should be cut first: health, education, law and order, or transport.

Craig Foss: Cullen, Mallard, Goff.

DARREN HUGHES: Mr Foss says that if we sack three Cabinet Ministers, that will be enough to bring down interest rates. If we sack three Cabinet Ministers, we will save about a million dollars a year, and that will be enough to lower interest rates, lower the exchange rate of the dollar, and bring about an economic revival in New Zealand. That is the level of intelligence and integrity of those people over there.

Last night it was my privilege to host here at Parliament a pre-screening of a movie called Amazing Grace, which is based around the work William Wilberforce did to end slavery over many, many years in Great Britain. He was a man who stood up for his principles years and years before they were popular. He did not bounce from cloud to cloud; he stood firmly and said what he believed in. We were pleased to watch that movie.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the House, National Party members are not interested in firm principles that are stuck to in good times and bad. They have been busy watching the new movie Transformers, because that is about the only thing the National Party stands for now—transforming what its political policies are. I was amazed to see that the bad guys in Transformers are called the Decepticons. There is no bigger bunch of Decepticons in New Zealand politics right now than those guys over there. “Mega-John” is their leader, and if we look at the National Party, we find there is more there than meets the eye, just like the Transformers in that regard. They will do anything, they will say anything, and they stand for absolutely nothing.

When we ask National members questions such as “OK, the Government is spending too much. Where should we cut spending?”, we hear nothing. Mr Foss says we could cut the ministerial services budget by a million bucks. I do not think that will get us very far. Mrs Dean says that maybe we could get the money from overseas because that is not really borrowing. That will not go very far, either. So I ask National members to tell us what their policy will be. Are we going to can Transmission Gully to bring down interest rates? There is silence from National members of Parliament on that. Are we going to stop building hospitals like the one in Dunstan in order to bring down Government spending? Mrs Dean is screeching about that in a Decepticons kind of way, but I am not sure what she means.

It does not matter where people look; they will see that on 1 July we brought in new policies that represent good spending for people: KiwiSaver, lower fees for doctors’ visits, and 20 hours free for our children in early childhood education. The National Party members are complaining about all those policies, but are they going to keep them or jettison them? How can there be so many windbags and no noise? Vote Labour!

GORDON COPELAND (Independent): The Conservative Party in Britain last week announced a policy initiative to support marriage education and marriage enrichment courses in that country. As that is also the policy of the new Future New Zealand political party, which I am honoured to co-lead, that announcement has prompted me to make that theme the subject of my contribution to today’s general debate.

However, before I do so, I will share some distilled wisdom on the steps that lead, for the great majority of people, to a successful and fulfilling life. They are really pretty simple: to get the best education one can, to look after one’s health, to not get pregnant before one is married, to prepare well for marriage, to put effort into the ongoing enrichment of one’s marriage, to prepare carefully for parenthood, and to keep educating oneself in parenting as one’s children grow up. All of that will also be part and parcel of the policy of the Future New Zealand party.

The evidence is absolutely overwhelming that, on average, children raised by a married couple have the best life outcomes in terms of health, education, and income level, and they have by far the lowest involvement in the criminal justice system. An evidence-based policy, therefore, would inevitably lead to the conclusion that the Government should do all it can to foster and strengthen marriages.

The family unit is the living cell of society. Indeed, society itself is no more than the sum total of its families. The health of one affects dramatically the health of the other. They are always directly interconnected, and that is an inescapable truth.

First-rate courses for both marriage preparation and marriage enrichment are already available in New Zealand, and they are normally offered by churches and charities. However, they tend, still, to cater to a motivated minority. That is why Future New Zealand will have a policy to make marriage preparation and marriage enrichment courses available to as many New Zealand couples as we possibly can. We will do that by a combination of course fee subsidies and TV advertising. It is a top-of-the-cliff policy, and it is vitally important to the whole of our society.

Let me give just one example. Each year 7,000 young people are involved, in one way or another, with the youth justice system. A representative sample of those 7,000 young people has been taken through a research project, and it shows that just 12 percent of those 7,000 young people come from a home where they are living with both parents. A further 28 percent come from a home with just one parent. The remaining 60 percent—an amazing figure—come from a home where they are living with neither their mother nor their father.

Clearly, there is a stunning and an obvious link between marriage breakdown, separation, and fatherlessness, and our growing crime statistics. It is obvious, therefore, that an investment in marriage preparation, which is aimed at reducing the rate of separation and divorce, has the potential to reduce dramatically the number of young offenders in this country.

I hear much lip-service about getting tough on the causes of crime, but I have never heard the relationship I have just spoken about even mentioned in this House. It is almost as if members have somehow or other decided that the so-called “m” word—that is, marriage—is against Parliament’s Standing Orders, because we seldom hear it mentioned in this place. Yet it is so obviously fundamental to the progress of our society and to its health. Of course, some will be quick to point out that marriage is not perfect. I agree, but it is like democracy: it is not perfect, but clearly it is the best that there is.

I am staggered at times when I hear Ministers of the Labour Government make ridiculous statements about wanting fence-at-the-top types of policies, and at the same time they say family structure is not important. Steve Maharey, a few years ago, was quoted as saying: “It is simple, really: every man should be able to do everything that every woman can do, and every woman should be able to do everything that every man can do.” Those are failed policies and we need to change.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour): One of the funniest cartoons I have seen recently is this cartoon in a Hawke’s Bay newspaper today, which shows the National Party leader, John Key, bouncing from cloud to cloud—except this time he has wings and a wand—saying: “A wave of my magic wand and the underclass will become the upper class, the gangs will become the social workers, and all Kiwis will come together to hold hands and rejoice together on Waitangi Day.”

Hon members: Ah!

DARIEN FENTON: That is what it is about: having a bob each way. I have been keeping an eye on the rest of his caucus, and I see Bill English grinding away; that is what he does. He contradicts his leader, and that reminds the public that National has not moved from its agenda—its boring, hard-line, right-wing agenda of the past.

Judith Collins continues to pick on sickness and welfare beneficiaries. That is nothing new; it is pretty boring really. Paula Bennett and Katherine Rich are so jealous and bitter about Labour’s 20 free hours early childhood education policy, because they really wish that National had thought of it. Parents are telling them that that is a great policy. Indeed, it is good for parents and it is good for children. So National has really messed that up, as many of their caucus members are doing.

Then there are the very confused messages about KiwiSaver that the National Party is putting about. This bold move from the Labour-led Government has left National bereft. It just did not see it coming. KiwiSaver is receiving wide support from business and from the community, and that has left National in another pickle. Mr Key says National will keep KiwiSaver. Mr English says that maybe it will not. I say to “Mr and Mr In-between” they should make up their minds. New Zealanders of all ages think the enhanced KiwiSaver is great, and they are signing up in droves. For thousands of workers it is the first time they have ever been able to consider workplace superannuation, and they are delighted.

I have been keeping a deft eye on National’s employment relations area, and that will not surprise anyone. National is trying to pretend it has gone all soft and that it quite likes workers and thinks unions are OK, but it is not doing a very good job. I have to say that Murray McCully’s opportunistic attack on Ross Wilson’s appointment to the board of the Accident Compensation Corporation is a disgrace. Ross Wilson has served the working people of this country for decades, and his credentials in and knowledge of accident compensation are impeccable. He is the right person for the job, but it just goes to show that anybody with “union” attached to his or her name has to be opposed by the National Party. It has not changed.

I have been listening carefully to Kate Wilkinson’s pronouncements about employment relations, and they have been very interesting. I know she is a rookie, but to be honest I cannot see any difference between the things she says and National’s 2005 policy—on which it lost the election. The workers did not support it. National says it will refine the Employment Relations Act to create the right balance between the rights of employees and the rights of employers. It says it will ensure equal bargaining powers for employers and employees. That is the same old National Party line. What would “the right balance” mean to the workers who are locked out by Spotless Services right now? Would National give that employer even more power that it has now? What would it mean to the thousands of workers who rely on the minimum wage increases that this Government has provided? Those workers have no power, at all.

Kate Wilkinson says that unions have a role in representing the views of employees, should they choose to be represented. That is nice of her—if somewhat patronising, given that freedom of association and the rights to collective bargaining are fundamental human rights. The National Party needs to learn that. Wayne Mapp’s probation periods are still alive in terms of National’s approach to employment relations. Ms Wilkinson says that is a useful thing for hiring older workers, young people, or immigrants. In other words, let us have fewer rights for people whom the National Party consider are completely hopeless. That is the same old National Party line.

National is sticking to its dogmatic determination to change our world-leading, easy-to-access, and affordable accident compensation system. It wants to put the money into the hands of big business, have workplace accidents dominated by profit incentives, and make ordinary New Zealanders pay for that. That is the same old National Party line. Kate Wilkinson has repeated National’s opposition to anything interfering in commercial relationships. I remember the National Party’s rhetoric in the 1990s—that an employment relationship is no different from a commercial relationship, and, as such, workers should not have any special rights. So we are hearing the same thing over again from the same old National Party. Workers who fought hard for the 2006 amendments for vulnerable workers will have heard National say that it is not persuaded that those amendments should stay in place. Working people will not be fooled by Mr Key floating on soft, fluffy clouds, or by his caucus. Those people know that the only way to keep making gains for themselves and their families is through a Labour-led Government.

R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First): Yesterday, just after question time, New Zealand First attempted to introduce a bill that would have changed the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act, or at least widened the targets the Reserve Bank governor is asked to adhere to. But we hope that after a little chit-chat with the National Party and a few others, we may indeed succeed in getting that bill into the House, rather than taking a pot-shot by using the ballot system. I hope that we do.

New Zealand First has long said that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act, with its focus on just inflation, is a pretty blunt instrument for us to use to run monetary policy in this country. We think that if the Reserve Bank governor was asked to consider—and I am sure he would be glad to—other things, such as employment, the effect the Act may have on exporters, and things of that nature, then he would have a broader base on which to decide whether to put up interest rates, intervene in the market and sell dollars, or buy dollars, if the situation changes at some time in the future. After all, they are things we have to grapple with in this Parliament. They are very real things, and they are the sometimes conflicting issues that people have to consider and that the Minister of Finance has to consider when it comes to monetary policy in this country. I say this with some certainty, because it has been mentioned many times in this House that the Finance and Expenditure Committee, of which I am a member, has been asked to look at these very situations.

All of the reasons that people give us for retaining the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act as it is are, in fact, in respect of things that are happening now. I have been told as late as this morning, during a select committee meeting, by Mr Foss of the National Party, that any alteration to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act would put fear into the financial markets, put up interest rates, and put up the exchange rate of the dollar.

Shane Jones: What an exaggeration from Mr Foss!

R DOUG WOOLERTON: I hear my worthy chairman, Mr Shane Jones, interjecting. He is right. Those very things are happening now. I believe that if something is not working, it is no use sticking just to the ideology. We have to look in some depth at ways to fix the problem.

Sadly, up until this point we have seen both the bigger parties in Parliament take a hands-off attitude to this problem. I have to say, though, that we are now hearing the Labour Government say that something must be done. It is not promising anything, but it is saying that it is happy for these issues to be looked at. New Zealand First is hopeful, if not confident, that the National Party will see sense and at least send the bill that we are proposing to a select committee, so that we can look at it in a proper bipartisan manner.

I think that the people of New Zealand are not too worried about ideology at this point. If there is an answer out there somewhere to their problems, they want to know that it is being investigated by this Parliament and that something may come of it. It is no longer tenable for us to have a situation where house prices go up and the demand for consumer products goes up, so in attempting to dampen that demand the Reserve Bank governor puts up the interest rate. Putting up interests rates attracts more money from the Japanese—the interest rate currently in Japan, I am told, is 1.5 percent—then the dollar goes up accordingly. That is no longer tenable. We must do something.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Estimates Debate

In Committee

Debate resumed from 17 July on the Appropriation (2007/08 Estimates) Bill.

Vote Justice (continued)

Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Justice): I have had to wait for close to 18 hours to respond to those sad characters opposite. I think we heard from Mr Power and from the member from Wanganui—no, it was Mr Worth. They all look very similar, actually. What a sad place the National Party caucus must be! Those members are all so miserable. Every word that came from those two members was a litany of misery. I have to say that if we ever want a study in breathtaking irony, we need only look to Mr Worth.

We listened to what Mr Worth had to say and to his criticism of, of all things, the legal aid system and this Government’s performance with it. I have to say that the criticism was, in essence, that access to justice for all is absolutely critical, and we stood criticised by Mr Worth because we have not yet reported on a process, in which the legal profession is directly involved, of reviewing the remuneration for legal practitioners because the work is still being done. We were criticised because a thorough process, which that the Law Society is intimately involved in and is part of, is not complete and we have not reported on it.

We have committed tens of millions of dollars as a first priority to increase the eligibility of low and modest income New Zealanders, because that was this Government’s first priority, and for that I make no apology. It may be that the order of priority is different for those Tories on the Opposition benches, but for this Government the first priority was to address those low and modest income New Zealanders who for more than 20 years had seen no increase in the rate of eligibility. Dr Worth suggests that the National Party is in some way concerned about access to justice for all, but for 9 years in the 1990s it did nothing to lift the eligibility levels for low and modest income New Zealanders. It did not a thing. Further, I ask Mr Finlayson what the National Party did for lawyers in those 9 years. What did it do to address the remuneration rates for lawyers? Did it adjust the rates during those 9 long years? Well, to be fair, yes it did—once. Once during 9 years the National Party adjusted the rates. Do members know what it did? It put the rates down.

Chris Auchinvole: Tell us what you have done.

Hon MARK BURTON: This Government has lifted the eligibility for 450,000 low and modest income New Zealanders. That member, for once, should stop shouting and just occasionally listen. [Interruption] The member seems not to understand. The legal aid system is, first and foremost, about those who need legal aid. More than 400,000 additional New Zealanders have eligibility. The work is being done with the legal profession. I have to say—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Please be seated. Can I just say to the member that constant barracking is not acceptable. The member is really going over the top. I ask him to desist.

Hon MARK BURTON: I put this question to members of the House and to any New Zealanders listening. If the first—

Christopher Finlayson: It’s the Committee.

Hon MARK BURTON: The Committee of the whole House is in the House, I say to Mr Finlayson. This is still the House. I am sorry; I know that the member is new and I guess we can forgive him.

I simply ask anyone who is listening, and certainly any member in the Chamber, whether the first priority should be a low-income New Zealander who is on $9 an hour or a lawyer who is on $150 to $500 an hour. That is the question that any responsible Government was confronted with. I make no apology for putting low and modest income New Zealanders as this Government’s first priority.

The other extraordinary contribution was from Mr Power, who for some reason has a problem with the idea that the Law Commission is busy getting about business and is doing work, and with the fact that this Government then gets on and does some work and deals with the reports that the commission gives to this House. I know it was the habit during 9 long years of National to pretty much ignore such reports. This Government is getting on and doing the work.

Mr Power then went on to say that the Ministry of Justice is doing nothing. What absolute nonsense! I can assume only that that member simply does not do his paperwork and does not attend to the business that he should as a diligent Opposition MP. I suggest to him that he pay a little more attention to what is going on. The list of work is extraordinarily long. The Ministry of Justice has never been busier. It is working on a wide range of projects. I suggest to Mr Power that he spend a little more time doing the work and a little less time simply sitting on his backside and not doing the job that he is paid to do.

LYNNE PILLAY (Labour—Waitakere): It is a pleasure to stand and speak after the hard-working Minister of Justice, and I would like to put it on the record that this Government is indeed investing heavily into justice. How do I know this? I know this because of the amount of work that comes before the very hard-working Justice and Electoral Committee.

This Government is putting its money where its mouth is. It is investing heavily into justice in this country because we know that investing into justice, and into the programmes in the justice sector, gets the results. If we look at the appropriation, which is what this debate is about, then we see that the over $200 million that has already been spent on justice has been increased by another $30 million in this appropriation. That is very much a worthwhile investment. I know that much of that investment will be going into ensuring the effectiveness of the Criminal Justice Reform Bill.

I was disappointed, as was the previous speaker, the Minister of Justice, to hear criticism about the legislation from members on the other side of the Committee last night. We believe this legislation will be a major initiative for this country, and certainly we were very disappointed to see the National Party opposing the establishment of the Sentencing Council. We know that it will produce real consistency and fairness throughout the country and will be a council that all New Zealanders will have confidence in.

I also acknowledge, as I have in earlier speeches, the Law Commission, because I know that this bill and many of the bills that have come before our committee have resulted from the very good work the Law Commission does. I will also talk about legal aid because I heard Dr Worth banging on, as he always does, about legal aid. It is really interesting because when the Minister came to the committee, he reminded us that remuneration rates for legal aid are under review currently. Well, under the previous National Government, legal aid rates were reviewed and they were actually cut. They were cut. Those rates were cut under a National Government, so it is a little bit rich for those members now to be banging on about how badly reimbursed and remunerated legal services providers are. We look forward to that review and, I am sure, along with everyone in the Committee we will be looking at that one with interest.

I also heard Dr Worth criticising the Government’s position on electoral reform. Dr Worth was not at the committee, but the Minister assured us that electoral legislation would be coming before the committee in the near future. We are very confident, with our hard-working committee, that that legislation will be in place for the next election. In fact, the Justice and Electoral Committee secured a select committee trip to Australia on the basis that we would be looking at electoral issues over there. I will not ponder too much on that; the legislation will come before the committee and the legislation will be in place for the next election. It is as simple as that.

The sexual violence task force is another big investment for this Government. The task force was formally established on 1 July—this month—so that is fantastic. I know that nine Government agencies will be working together on that, as will many agencies from the non-government sector, and we know that that move is good. Also, in the area of restorative justice we are working on continuing to increase access to restorative justice. Again, we believe that is very much a good investment for this Government. A centre will be opened at the Auckland University of Technology to further academic research into restorative justice. We know that this is a good investment being made by this Government.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Local Government

JOHN CARTER (National—Northland): I want to speak to page 797 of the Estimates regarding local government. I would first of all just draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that this Minister in the chair, Mark Burton, goes around talking about all the wonderful things the Labour Government has done for local government. Well, there are a couple of things that we do have to acknowledge.

Chris Auchinvole: What were they?

JOHN CARTER: Let me give members just one. This year the Government has increased the rates rebate from $50 million to $70 million, which is very helpful for people on low incomes and fixed incomes. What the Minister never ever acknowledges, however, is the reason we need rates rebates to help people on low and fixed incomes. It is that this Government is actually increasing rates. It is causing rates increases across the country because it keeps shovelling legislation on to local government with no accompanying funding. So the Government is causing cost increases across this country for rates and ratepayers, and then it goes along and says that it is wonderful because it is shovelling this bucket of money back at ratepayers. It is money that the Government has already taken out of taxes and rates. But I will acknowledge that, because the Minister will stand up and tell members about that.

He will also tell members about the subsidies the Government is giving for sewerage and for the new water standards. It has put in $150 million for water standards—that is over the next 10 years; $15 million a year—but local government authorities tell us that they will have to spend $800 million just to try to reach the standards put in by this Government. What interests me is that no one has yet told me how many people have died from drinking the water at Ōwaka, for example.

Jacqui Dean: How many have?

JOHN CARTER: Well, there are not any, actually, but we got these new fancy standards that will cost lots of money and lots of rates. But this Minister will go around saying that the Government is putting in the money for the water subsidy and for sewerage. It is never enough, and it is causing huge costs for local government.

What is really interesting is that local government has issues around infrastructure. It is estimated we will spend $60 billion on infrastructure in this country over the next 10 years, and $30 billion of that will be from local government. Half will be from central government and half from local government. Do members know that local government authorities have told this Minister that they can put in probably $9 billion, so there is a $21 billion shortfall?

The Minister went to the local government conference on Monday and Tuesday, and do members know what he spoke about? Dog control! He was worried there were a few issues around dog control. He never mentioned the issue of infrastructure. He talked a bit about water supply, but he said that the problem was a couple of issues around dog control. It was the main focus of the Minister’s address. Why did he not talk about the infrastructural problems? Why did he not talk about the compliance costs that local government authorities are having? Why did he not talk about the impost that this Government is putting on local government in resource management, for example? Why did he not talk about the impost that the out-of-control Department of Building and Housing is putting on, which is causing so much cost to be put on to local government through its building regulations that the whole building industry is becoming dysfunctional? Why did he not talk about those things? I am starting to wonder whether it is because the Minister does not know.

Let me tell the Committee this about the building industry. The compliance costs and bureaucracy are increasing in local government, because it has to match what central government does. The bureaucrats in the department in 1999 numbered about 30, and now they number over 300. The number of bureaucrats in local government has risen from 1999, when there were 30,000, and it has now gone up to over 40,000. The figure has grown by 25 percent, and the reason is that this Government keeps putting more and more compliance costs and regulations on to local government, and local government has to match. It puts up big departments like the Department of Building and Housing. I tell the Committee that, quite honestly, someone needs to build something and put this department in it, because, seriously, the whole industry is becoming dysfunctional. This department has now got to the stage, I tell Mr Minister, where the building industry is starting to become more and more dysfunctional.

Do members know that if they are ordinary citizens and they want to go and apply for building permits, they cannot do it now? The normal layperson is not capable of filling out a building application. He or she has to go and get a consultant to fill out the building permit, because it is so complicated. This department is meant to be making sure there are no more leaky homes. Would members not think that we would have the materials that go into homes certified? Not under this Government!

Vote agreed to.

Vote Treaty Negotiations

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National): I want to speak to Vote Treaty Negotiations, at page 1261 of the estimates. When this vote was being discussed in the Māori Affairs Committee, I really looked forward to having some important questions answered and to gaining a greater appreciation of what the Minister is doing to secure the just, speedy, and durable settlement of Treaty grievances. Well, more fool me, because I should have known better than to have any expectations of this Minister, even low ones. The select committee process raised more questions than it answered. Trying to get this Minister to answer questions is like trying to pin jelly to a wall.

I can recall questioning the Minister about “large natural groupings”, because the Office of Treaty Settlements tells potential claimants that the Crown looks to negotiate with such groupings. But, certainly, one cannot tell what a large natural grouping is by following what the Office of Treaty Settlements does. For example, the Office of Treaty Settlements refused to engage with six claimant groups in Tāmaki, partly on the basis that they did not comprise a single large natural grouping, yet it happily negotiated with one of the four Ngāti Whātua whānui subtribes. It is that kind of behaviour that generates such uncertainty among claimant groups and creates such hurt and disillusion.

As of today, 19 final settlements have been reached. Fourteen settlements have required legislation, and five smaller but no less important settlements have not. Of the 19 settlements, 10 were taken from negotiation to final settlement under National in the 1990s, and negotiations on another eight were initiated by National. But since late 1999, under this useless Government, negotiations have been started and taken through to final settlement in—how many, I wonder?

Chris Auchinvole: How many?

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: In just one, I tell Mr Auchinvole. The Minister told the House less than 4 weeks ago that 21 settlements have been completed, but the Minister has counted two settlements that have yet to have their legislation passed as being completely finished and requiring no further effort by this Government. I will leave other members to draw their own conclusions about the Minister’s arithmetical skills.

But perhaps the Minister’s careful attention to detail explains why the legislative process in this area has lurched forward with all the momentum of a beached whale. Under National, settlement legislation took an average of 9 months to be passed from the date when a deed of settlement was signed, but under Labour it now takes almost 21 months. Let us face it: the record of this Minister is very poor. It is even worse than that of his predecessor, whose main achievement was to put all negotiations on hold until she was ready for them. She will go down in history as the “Minister in Charge of Stopping Treaty Negotiations”.

When Mr Burton appeared before the select committee on 13 June, he assured us there were no problems with regard to the Crown’s negotiating process with Ngāti Whātua, yet 2 days later the Waitangi Tribunal delivered what was probably its most damning indictment of the Crown ever. The tribunal condemned the Crown’s behaviour as “cavalier”, “unfair”, “generally uncooperative”, “providing only partial answers to questions”, and “being less than open” in its dealings with the tribunal. The tribunal referred to the Crown’s behaviour as leaving other tangata whenua groups feeling degraded and insulted. Yet we had the spectacle of this Minister telling the select committee that the Crown’s behaviour was acceptable. The question that really does need to be asked is whether the Minister is even aware of what is happening in his own portfolio.

What is clearly needed in the Treaty settlements area is political leadership and some real enthusiasm for the job. We had political leadership under National, with Jim Bolger and Doug Graham; we have not had it in the 9 dreary years of this Clark-led Labour Government. Just a few minutes ago we had the Minister going on in his pre-prepared speech about the so-called awful 1990s. Labour members love talking about the 1990s. Well, one thing they do not talk about from the 1990s is the record of the National Government in the Treaty settlements area. They know that under Doug Graham and Jim Bolger that record was outstanding, and they also know that under this Government the performance is quite simply lamentable. This Minister is a failure, and his predecessor was a failure. I am sure that all Māori look forward to the day when National can take the Treasury benches and finish the job.

Hon MARK BURTON (Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): There we have heard from the member who came to this House pompously, telling members that they should play the issue, not the man. But, ever since, he has been incapable of getting to his feet without giving personal abuse. In every single speech the member has had the gall to stand up and read that vitriolic drivel, then accuse others of giving pre-prepared speeches. I say to Mr Finlayson that in the last speech he delivered in this House on a matter of a particular bill, he commented on the further delay for the delivery—[Interruption] Well, if that member would be quiet for once, he would hear that I am talking quite specifically about the Treaty settlement process.

One of the reasons the settlement process requires time is that increasingly in this House there are those who will sacrifice principle for cheap political point-scoring. Let me give members an example. Two reasons were given by the National Opposition recently for its opposition to the progress of Te Roroa Claims Settlement Bill—

Chris Auchinvole: Is this not a Treaty settlement?

Hon MARK BURTON: Yes, it is a Treaty settlement, sir! The member should listen. The first reason was the failure to return kōiwi. I have to say that the member has been informed repeatedly that they have been returned. They were returned years ago, yet the member cited that as one reason. He did that on public radio—I have the transcripts. It was one of two reasons he gave for National’s opposing both the settlement and the will of the people who were the mandated representatives.

The second reason for National’s opposition to the bill was the failure to return the taonga of the burial chests, which were moved from the caves in 1902. Again, that matter has been resolved with the people from Te Rōroa. In their view, because the matters of the taonga are disputed in terms of the various tribal interests, they should be left where they are for the time being until tangata whenua can sort it out among themselves in a manner appropriate to them. I accept that others in the House perhaps do not support the settlement, for their particular reasons—fair enough. We may agree or disagree. But for the National Opposition to give two reasons that are factually incorrect, and for one of its members to get up and make fatuous speeches in this Chamber, simply beggars belief.

This process, I tell Mr Finlayson, requires honesty and integrity of engagement. That member sits, stands up, and makes silly speeches that are absolutely factually incorrect. I ask the member to consider carefully the fact that he has brought his party, an entire party, into opposition against the will of a group of mandated negotiators for two reasons that have no basis in fact. Therein lies the problem with the Treaty negotiation process: it is the easiest of areas in which to score cheap political points.

I will acknowledge that Doug Graham did some good work in this area. But I also say to the member—as Doug Graham would himself—that it was not all done well. It was not all done correctly. Mistakes were made, and we learn from those experiences. Certain settlements were in disarray at the time of the change of Government; they fell apart within weeks, actually. Two settlements that people attempted to rush through fell apart within weeks. The point is, I tell Mr Finlayson, that to make progress with the settlement process requires honest engagement and integrity—something that clearly is lacking in the sort of presentation we have seen from that member. And that will not do.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki): Tēnā koe, Madam Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tātou e tēnei pō. Six months ago, not far from here down at Pipitea Marae, there was a gathering of some 45 lawyers, a number that by all accounts appears to be unprecedented in the history of the Waitangi Tribunal. They were brought together by the call from Judge Carrie Wainwright to attend a judicial conference in response to the complaints from more than 50 Māori groups concerning unfair and prejudicial treatment by the Crown’s Treaty settlement process.

The report of the Māori Affairs Committee on Vote Treaty Negotiations gives little hope that there has been any change to this dire situation. The report describes the Minister assuring the committee “that officials acted in good faith but that the document discovery process was inadequate at the time”, that an “exercise of judgement is required”, and that further advice on the process is required “to ensure that such oversights in the supply of evidence to claimant groups will not be repeated.” The key words are: “inadequate”, “exercise of judgment”, and “oversights”. What the Minister could have said comes straight from the report of the tribunal into the Tāmaki-makau-rau settlement process—namely: “The Crown’s policy and practice have been unfair, both as to process and outcome.” In reviewing the 2007-08 appropriations, we cannot ignore the conclusions of claimants and the tribunal that fair and equitable settlements are being thwarted by inequities in the terms of settlement, the fact that proposed redress has been set aside, and a process too flawed to achieve progress.

Indeed, so desperate is the situation that the Waitangi Tribunal report on the Tāmaki-makau-rau settlement process urged that Crown negotiations with Ngāti Whātua o Orākei must be halted immediately. This crisis seems to have fallen on deaf ears, although the select committee cuts to the chase. In relation to concerns that the Crown had not consulted with other tangata whenua throughout Tāmaki-makau-rau, the Minister assured the committee that “… Ngāti Whātua o Orākei has engaged extensively with other claimants,”. Who will take responsibility for the Crown’s failure to interact with cross-claimants, as it promised, and failure to provide accurate information about their status in negotiations, evidence the tribunal described as being provided “late, reluctantly, and piecemeal”. This is not just a one-off, isolated crisis. Less than a week after the Tāmaki-makau-rau report was issued, the tribunal released another damning report, this time stating that during the Crown’s process in Te Arawa: “OTS failed to act as an honest broker in the negotiation process … failed to discharge its Treaty and fiduciary duties to all Māori … OTS did not act honourably and with the utmost good faith.”

Under the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, section 8I, “Annual report on implementation of recommendations”, the Minister of Māori Affairs, apparently, is required to report on progress each year. Well, the Minister has not tabled a report at all since 1995, but apparently will do so in the next couple of weeks, in order to catch up for 12 years. Well, he may as well not do it now, because the Waitangi Tribunal has done the job. Twelve years of no monitoring by the Minister is not good enough, and our people expect more.

There are longstanding concerns of claimants. The select committee report makes it quite clear that despite the unanimous and ferocious opposition to the 1992 fiscal cap, the Government is working to a fiscal cap—a cap that has continued to be applied to the Treaty settlement process since day one. The report spells it out as a general assumption of three $19 million settlements per year. We believe that it is essential that claimant funding needs to be reviewed and increased so that all parties are on a level playing field. As part of this, the fiscal cap on Treaty settlements must go. The Māori Party will not minimise the actions of the Office of Treaty Settlements as being mere oversights—oversights that the tribunal views as “cavalier, unfair, and generally uncooperative”. Something needs to change today.

The tribunal has concluded that in many cases the process of settling is damaging more relationships than it is improving. It is in light of this that we in the Māori Party are calling for an independent settlements authority to achieve greater resolution to settlements, so that settlements can be settled earlier, fairly, and with a broad consensus for the process. The Māori Party will not ignore the urgency of an underfunded and oversubscribed tribunal. We know that the tribunal needs to be resourced sufficiently so that it can deal with claims more speedily.

In closing, I want to return to the Minister’s words in response to the 2007-08 estimates in Vote Treaty Negotiations: “inadequate”, “exercise of judgment”, and “oversights”. What we in this House, and, indeed, others outside, want to hear is a commitment to ensure impartiality, fairness, greater transparency, faster processing, and better access to mediation. The time for oversights is well and truly over. What we in this House want to hear is a commitment to justice—Treaty justice. Kia ora tātou.

Hon MITA RIRINUI (Associate Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): It is a privilege to take a 5-minute call in what we consider to be an important debate. I congratulate the current Minister and the previous Minister, in their role as Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, on the incredible work they have achieved over the last 9 years. Certainly, it is a track record that no one in this Chamber can criticise when he or she considers the difficulties that any Minister, or any Government, faces in dealing with historical claims. It is interesting that in the Committee today we have heard more about the recent findings of the Waitangi Tribunal in relation to the processes of two particular claims than about the position in which those tribes, those iwi, who have settled over more than 9 years are now in, in terms of building a future for the generations that come after them. That, without a doubt, is the biggest issue we need to talk about.

We talk a lot about the acceleration of Māori economic development and the opportunities that have emerged for Māori entrepreneurs. Those opportunities have been capitalised on, and the settlements that specific iwi have received have grown as a result of the support from this Government and the entrepreneurial skills of iwi. It is easy to criticise, but it is very, very difficult for anyone in this Chamber—although I have heard it here today and on many previous occasions—to get up and congratulate those who are responsible for accelerating Māori development, particularly where Treaty settlements are concerned.

I heard the previous speaker from the National Party, Chris Finlayson, boast about the record of the National Party when in Government. Certainly, he cannot take any credit for that. Those in the National Government in the early 1990s who pioneered what we call the historical claims have all left this House. They have all left. There are no longer any of those types of people in this House. So if that member thinks he is going to fill the big shoes of Doug Graham, Doug Kidd, and all those who supported the Treaty settlements in the 1990s, he is kidding himself. I heard his contributions the other day at the Māori Affairs Committee. They were not progressive or productive; they were actually driven from a negative base, and I think that that is what we will see from that member during the rest of his time in this House, short as it may be.

I want to go back to the issue regarding Māori development. The Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, the Minister of Māori Affairs, and myself last week attended a hui in Turakina to sign off the deed of settlement for the Ngāti Apa claim and to acknowledge the important work that has been done by the local member, Tariana Turia, to encourage her people to the negotiating table. Her son, and her nephews and nieces, also contributed to bringing this settlement to this stage. We spoke to her people and heard the excitement, the positive attitude, the determination, and the kōrero that came from them on that particular day when they looked to the future and said: “We are going to do something. We are going to build a future for our mokopuna.” That is something that no one in this Chamber has a right to trample over, and that can be said about many of the claims that have been settled today.

In respect of the Kaihautū Executive Council for Te Arawa, in terms of Te Pūmau-tanga o Te Arawa and their settlement, although the tribunal has made some scathing remarks about the process towards the settlement of that claim, it did not say that the claim should not proceed. I am sure that most members on this side of the Chamber are determined that we will proceed with settling this outstanding claim. There are 27,000 Te Arawa people who are looking forward to an opportunity to put the grievances of the past behind them and build a future for themselves. Come what may, at least their future, their self-determination, is in their own hands. Who in this Chamber would deny them that?

There are issues around the process. We encountered a number of flaws in the process when we came into Government in 1999, and we have worked diligently to overcome those flaws. Of course, there is an attitude that one size fits all, in terms of claimant groups. Well, that is not the case. Different issues and new issues arise every time we deal with a different group. I can say on behalf of those of us on this side of the Chamber, to compliment the Minister and previous Ministers, that those issues are taken on board and dealt with at the time. Kia ora, Madam Chair.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Customs): I rise to take a call on this particular debate in the first instance to rebut some of the issues that were raised by Mr Finlayson. The Treaty settlement process in and of itself is a very difficult process. In fact, it would take a very brave person across this Chamber to take on this portfolio, because by its very nature the whole process of reconciling historical grievances—and we know how disparate our past has been throughout this country—is a very difficult process. So any suggestion that this Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations is not interested in trying to get a genuine outcome is flawed, should not be tolerated, and is not accepted by this Government. In the second instance, in respect of the nature of how the Treaty settlement process began, far be it from me, who knows probably on both sides of the table how difficult it is to get an outcome, to stand here defending in and of itself the Office of Treaty Settlements. However, the office plays an important role in order to achieve an outcome.

Let us look at where Treaty settlements started with National. By definition of the process that National started, by and large the whole assumption was that a large natural grouping would be the basis upon which it would enter into negotiations. Both Tainui and Ngāi Tahu are evidence of that in itself. At not one point through this process has National ever said that it would ever go to Treaty settlements on a hapū by hapū basis. National has never said that, and it should come clean, because it is clearly raising expectations that it does not intend to deliver on, and that it is criticising the Government for. However, National started a process, and we are really trying to work forward and learn over time from a range of Treaty settlements that have been resolved.

The other issue that I want to address very briefly is the issue of quantum. Everybody could say, hand on heart, that a certain dollar figure should be ascribed to various Treaty settlements, and I am sure that Māori members would be the first to try to get the best opportunities for their region, but we have to ensure that the genuine ability to ensure an outcome that is not just about quantum but that is about returning resources and taonga to iwi is a genuine part of this Treaty settlement process. This is where I think the Government has made some advance to the benefit of iwi—not merely on a dollar-value quantum but also on cultural redress. We have seen here the ability to include, in quite innovative ways, aspects of cultural redress that restore confidence that this is an attempt to try to get an outcome that meets the needs of local iwi in trying to get a settlement. The other issue—and this is one that I think people look at all too scantly—is the role of the Waitangi Tribunal. If it was the role of the Waitangi Tribunal to give out binding recommendations, you bet your bottom dollar that the tribunal would be considering very carefully exactly what it said, because of the implications.

But let us not stop there. By and large, iwi should have the right to go towards direct negotiations. Some may not choose to go to the tribunal; that is their choice. I will not sit here in judgment and say which is the right way or the wrong way. However, should iwi across the land decide to go into a direct negotiation process with the Crown, boots and all and accepting, warts and all, that this is a head-to-head opportunity to get the best outcome with people talking to people, then we should preserve that ability. It takes courage, it takes leadership, and it is a difficult choice to make. But none of us in this House can make it. We have to leave the ability for direct negotiation from iwi to occur unfettered by everybody’s opinions. So I think that really is an important point that is always overlooked in terms of the voice of the tribunal and the types of recommendations it makes. We need to take into account that iwi continue to want to preserve their ability to have direct negotiations with the Crown.

Whether an independent panel will actually achieve the type of outcome that was being proposed by the previous speaker for the Māori Party, I think remains to be seen. I think, at the end of the day, that any genuine attempt to get an outcome that is durable in the eyes of those negotiating the outcome must be upheld by this House of Parliament. It is woeful that National has adopted the tactic of not supporting various Treaty settlements that have gone through this House since the time we have been in Government. It is woeful, because it signals that there is no confidence at all to go down a path of reconciliation. We just cannot, as members of Parliament, be sending that kind of message to New Zealanders, who really want to move on. They want everybody to try to resolve these grievances and move on. Thank you.

Vote agreed to.

Vote ACC

PANSY WONG (National): The estimate of the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) took place during the time that the position of corporation chair stood vacant for 11 months. This was very interesting. We learnt recently that Mr Hausmann’s appointment to the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board was fast tracked by the former Minister of Health, the Hon Annette King. Yet the ACC chair position was held open for 11 months for another Labour favourite, Ross Wilson, to finish his term as the president of the Council of Trade Unions. It just shows that the Labour Government can be extremely flexible when it comes to appointing its people to the various posts.

I want to test the water with some of the senior members on this side of the Chamber. When the Hon Ruth Dyson explained to the media why it took her so long to appoint Ross Wilson, she is quoted as saying that there was no one else on the board that she was happy to have as chair in the long term. Now, I have to consult with a senior diligent member on this side, Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith. I ask Dr Smith, whether, when he was the Minister and appointed members of the board, he ever said that he could not see anybody on the whole board competent enough to be appointed to the chair, and held the position open for 11 months. That is a public vote of no confidence in the whole of the ACC board. I find it staggering that Labour actually went out and said that it had no confidence in the whole board of ACC. If Labour had no confidence in the board members, it should have sacked them.

That might explain why the Hon Ruth Dyson took on the job of apologist for ACC for 11 long months. Not that long ago Ruth Dyson stood in the House and claimed that she was 100 percent behind the $5 million spent by ACC on branding and spin advertising that told New Zealanders that they were covered. The advertisements attracted only complaints, and the Advertising Standards Authority duly ruled that they were misleading. In fact, not everyone was covered. There was fine print. The Minister was blissfully unaware, even during the consultation phase of that advertising campaign that said some of the staff in ACC that was not smart and it would promise overmuch. That branding exercise actually drew more problems for ACC, because a lot of the long-term claimants then came forward and disclosed to the public. It is really quite frightening to hear the tactics with which the corporation, in conjunction with private investigators, tried to prove whether a claim was valid.

Well, once again the Minister showed that she knew nothing of what was happening in the corporation, because a contract between ACC and private investigators clearly established a key performance indicator where the private investigators have to prove they are successful by making sure that 80 percent of the referral cases should result in prosecution, termination of claims, suspension of entitlement, civil action, positive change to claimant capacity status, complaint to the appropriate medical board, etc. But when we queried the Minister during the estimates she told us that that was not the case. A significant number of referrals required no further action because the legitimacy of the claimants’ cases were validated. Well, obviously she has no idea of what is happening in ACC.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Child, Youth and Family Services

TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Tēnā koe, Madam Chairperson. Tēnā tātou katoa. The protection of children is the greatest goal of society. The interests of the child, the youth, and the family existed long before there was a department of the same name, and will remain long after the department’s latest reform into another tier of the Ministry of Social Development. The protection of children outdates any Budget cycle, and must remain our greatest priority as a society. For ultimately it is the whānau, hapū, and iwi; it is āinga; and it is family that hold the key to the successful outcomes set out in the 2007-08 estimates.

The State has a critical role in investing in communities to help them to ensure the health and well-being of their own. Nowhere has this concept been more apparent than in the rhetoric of the last fortnight as we have seen all Aboriginal people in Aboriginal communities demonised for the child welfare crisis that they have themselves been speaking about for decades. Dr Chris Sarra, the 2003 Australian of the Year and Director of the Institute for Indigenous Leadership in Education and Development based at Cherbourg, has been one of those speaking out and reminding the world that, politically speaking, there are no votes in ameliorating concerns in Aboriginal communities—hence, it is a case of calling in the army—but there is every reason to do so in terms of what is right. He said: “I challenge the Prime Minister to approach an Aboriginal child on his next visit to a remote community and hold that child close so that he feels their heart beating close to his, then look into their brown eyes and say, ‘You and your family are my family … I can see you need help … and we are going to help your family and your community to fix things here and make it right for you.’ ”

I took the time to share that story today because I think it illustrates a principle so central to how we should approach Vote Child, Youth and Family Services; how we approach the issues associated with placements for children and young people; how we approach respite care; and how we approach social work, care, and protection. When I read the report of the Social Services Committee—with its concerns about the number of times children placed in Child, Youth and Family’s care are moved, repeatedly and frequently; the question of inappropriate or undesirable placements; and whether the differential response model will be effective in reducing the recurrence of abuse and neglect—I wonder what we are doing for our families and our communities to fix things here and make it right for them. The cost of creating more harm is, of course, substantial.

I remind the Committee of the context for comments we made last week urging that the political focus abroad and at home should not be a case of “Ask what we can do to you.”, but, rather, “Listen and learn and support what you can do for each other.” The context of the Little Children Are Sacred report was one of gross endemic child sexual abuse. It is a context that communities seldom have the courage and the commitment to name and to talk about aloud. We even have an estimated financial cost for such a crime. It costs the victim, the offender, and the Government, on average, $84,175 to respond to each case of child sexual abuse occurring here in Aotearoa. Included in this breakdown are the general practitioner visits; mental health care; loss of income for victim and offender; police, prison and court costs; accident compensation counselling; and the victim’s pain, suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life.

Excluded from that figure, however, are the economic costs that spring from the ripple effects of child abuse and child sexual abuse. How do we account for the costs imposed on other people as a result of a lifetime scarred by sexual abuse? How do we measure the impact on alienated families, on families torn apart by such crimes, and on children forced to flea to escape the hurt of allegations that are not believed?

Child victims of sexual abuse are more likely to underachieve educationally. Between 31 and 51 percent of inpatients and outpatients of mental health services have been found to be sexual abuse survivors. Drug and alcohol abuse patterns are more prevalent amongst survivors, and there are higher rates of substance abuse. Primary health centres have found higher rates of health problems amongst women who have been sexually abused, and each of us will know from our constituents that the most common pathways to crime are based on survival of abuse and poverty.

So why is it invisible? Why do we shift children from pillar to post, transfer Child, Youth and Family to yet another department, and dream up another differential response model? The answer surely lies in the problem, and how and who responds to it. In the Otago women’s health study of 3,000 women it was found that the vast majority of the abusers were young men who were known to the victims, yet only 7.5 percent of all abuse was ever reported to the statutory agencies. If the notifications are not happening, and the abuse clearly is, what will we do to ensure our little children are, indeed, sacred? Although the bean counters may rejoice that this year’s appropriations for Vote Child, Youth and Family Services have plummeted by a mere $9 million, I have to ask whether saving money will save lives?

As a society and as a Parliament we seem to be obsessed with punishing the manifestation of the impact of child sexual abuse. What if we were, instead, to have as a vision the challenge of closing down prisons, reducing the demand for psychiatric services, and taking dramatic action to address our dramatic suicide rates? Twenty years ago Jane von Dadelszen released a ground-breaking study that examined the histories of sexual abuse among girls in the care of the Department of Social Welfare. In the report, 136 15 and 16-year-old girls were interviewed. Over two-thirds had experienced sexual abuse. Half the abuse was perpetrated by family members. Just under one-tenth of the abusers fitted the profile of “stranger danger”. The average age of the girls when they were first abused was 10 years old, and the average age of the abuser was 28. There were no ethnic differences in the incidence of abuse, but Māori girls were more likely to show anger in response to the abuse, and Pākehā girls were more likely to report fear and confusion. It would be fascinating now to interview that same group of 136 35 and 36-year-old women and to understand the true lifetime cost of sexual abuse. The nature of sexual abuse has kept this hidden and has prevented victims from having a platform to bring it out into the open.

Aboriginal communities have demonstrated that some exceptional leadership capacity exists in their communities, and they have brought the prevalence and the impact of childhood sexual abuse in their communities out into the public arena. Are we brave enough in New Zealand to take a serious look at the social and economic harm, and at the devastation upon individuals and families, associated with sexual abuse?

I was pleased to see in the estimates report that Child, Youth and Family talked about its vision of supporting families, consulting with families, and, wherever possible, ensuring that children and young people remained within their own family. I absolutely endorse this approach. I also understand the concerns of the Social Services Committee that we must ensure that children’s welfare must not be compromised. But the solution to situations of risk or danger within families does not rest in punishing the child and extracting such children from all that they know, and in pulling them out from the shelter of their family home—quite the contrary. If the problem lies in the whānau, we should let the hapū or iwi be the solution. It is about using the right process for reconciliation to occur. The key is that we do not make one wrong right by creating a fresh wrong. The Government’s history and reputation in implementing a flawed Treaty settlement process is a classic example of this. The solution lies in working with families to restore their natural responsibilities and obligations to care for and protect their own. The costs of any other approach will lead this nation into ongoing moral and social bankruptcy. Tēnā koutou.

JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future): At the time that the Social Services Committee considered the estimates for Child, Youth and Family, the Audit Office was unable to supply us with a report. The committee took advantage of the kind offer of the Minister Ruth Dyson to return after an audit report was provided. Even at that second visit, internal budgets for the 2007-08 year were yet to be set. However, we did ascertain that extra money was being budgeted for foster care, and United Future supports that.

But, of course, such an allocation begs the question: what about grandparents raising grandchildren, and other kinship caregivers raising children, considering that it is often Child, Youth and Family that calls on grandparents to step up to the plate? Once it is clear that kin caregivers are going to be the permanent caregivers for a child, then the costs seriously kick in for those people. They have a new mortgage on the bigger house they have to buy, having previously downsized for their retirement. They have ongoing legal bills, counselling costs for the traumatised children in their care, plus all the other expenses that are covered by additional allowances for foster parents, but those allowances are not available for grandparents.

So we see grandparents failing to fill their own prescriptions, leaving employment to focus on the children, and ploughing through retirement savings at a great rate of knots. When will the Government face up to the fact that the failure to invest that little bit more in these families will not ultimately save it a cent? These children typify the category identified by countless research papers as at risk, but are responsive to early intervention.

One of the other concerns of Child, Youth and Family is the unacceptable number of times that children in the department’s care are moved around. Although the select committee was told that respite care accounted for some of the movement, the department admitted that it was unable to distinguish in its records and statistics between moves between carers, respite care, and time back with the child’s family. The select committee in its report suggested that differentiating between care options may help identify undesirable and temporary placements that need to be addressed.

This highlights for me one of the most serious holes in this department’s service at present. Currently, there is no independent advocacy for children or their families. There are no independent mediation services and no independent complaints service. If people are reliant on the goodwill of their case manager to honour decisions made in a family group conference, reliant on their goodwill to determine how often they get to see their children and in what circumstances, then without independent advocacy the imbalance of power is extreme. Constituents whom I have dealt with are too scared to question or complain, fearing that a further downgrading of their contact arrangements will occur. They are rarely equipped with the calm and coherent verbal skills to negotiate or appeal decisions made, and if they do complain, often it is noted evidentially on a file where it can be used against them.

Nobody resents the statutory powers that Child, Youth and Family has, but even the police have a complaints authority. The Minister has told us again that the differential response model, having been piloted extremely successfully in New Plymouth and Royal Oak, will be rolled out across the country. In the opinion of United Future, that cannot happen soon enough. The previous speaker was concerned about a lack of consultation with not just community organisations but also iwi. I believe that such consultation would be strengthened with the differential response model as it would allow community groups and iwi to be involved in the decisions made around children.

To have a department that is drowning in ever-increasing notifications, most of which are medium to low-level neglect notifications, and at the same time to have competent social service providers and iwi providers who are well able to execute professional interventions where no statutory powers are required sitting around waiting for the Government to trust them enough to pass on the work to them, is completely criminal. It is criminal when we consider that a large percentage of the high-criticality notifications are second and third notification cases that deteriorated while waiting for proper social work to be done. Having said that, I point out that I do not blame Child, Youth and Family staff, but I do blame Child, Youth and Family policy for this problem.

The multimillion-dollar questions are these: why is there such a culture of mistrust in the profession of social work, and does the department contribute to this mistrust? For instance, do teachers, lawyers, and accountants mistrust the professional standards of those who do not work in the same building as them, but are of the same profession? No, they do not. I say to the Minister that there is a huge amount of scepticism right now in the non-governmental organisation sector as to whether the department really will roll out the differential response model. In some regions those organisations do not believe that there is the will and intention to repair the relationships that exist between themselves and Child, Youth and Family to the state whereby low-level risk work can be passed on to them in order to free Child, Youth and Family staff to do the high-risk work we want them to be doing.

There is a huge difference from region to region as to the quality of the relationship that exists between Child, Youth and Family and local non-governmental organisation providers. In some regions there is a culture of active antagonism. I have had reports from the chief executive officers of some non-governmental organisations who have said that they believe that, at a local level, their Child, Youth and Family branch will not cooperate with any ministerial directive for it to pass on work. The staff will pay lip service, they will sit in the meetings and nod their heads, but they have absolutely no intention of moving towards a place where they can pass on this low-level work to these highly competent providers. I think it is a crying shame that this issue is not being addressed very, very seriously.

If the Minister is serious about engaging in a much more relevant way with the non-governmental organisation sector to have it help provide the work that needs to happen, she needs to show equal sincerity in following up on branches that seem to be making slow progress in this regard, to find out what the real problem is. The feedback I am getting is that in some places there is huge resistance. I understand that in some sense social work is a young profession. We have created a Social Workers Registration Board and have given social workers 6 years to comply. The ministry itself is working at a reasonably good speed to make sure that all of its social workers are registered, and so is the non-governmental organisation sector.

What I cannot figure out—as somebody from the teaching profession who has enjoyed amazing collegial support and interaction all her teaching career—is why, in the profession of social work, it depends on the provider one is working for as to what one’s attitude is towards others. I find that really concerning, and I believe that the Minister and her department could do a lot towards rectifying the situation.

I believe that the differential response model is a step in the right direction. I believe that the evidence is extremely clear that, in the places where it has been piloted, it has worked extremely well. I am concerned that, even in the pilot schemes, Child, Youth and Family has been very selective and limited in terms of the non-governmental organisations it is prepared to work with. However, even putting that aside, I think there is the opportunity to reduce the department’s workload, which is ever-increasing. Notifications currently go up at a rate of around 15 percent a year. After incidents like that of Coral Burrows the rate jumps 30 percent as people respond with concern to the situations they see around them. We expect the current staffing ratios to cope with this work.

I also have a concern that Child, Youth and Family seems to still be very output orientated. It says that, yes, its unallocated case rates are down, but what I am hearing is that, yes, its unallocated case rates are down but the quality of the actual social work being done is very, very limited. The social workers have made the phone call, they have knocked on the door, and they can tick the box—the case is no longer an unallocated case—but is there quality social work going on, is there quality intervention, are family and community groups that already have active roles with these families being included in the decisions that are being made? That is another matter, and I have serious doubts.

I encourage this ministry to use Vote Child, Youth and Family Services to start to progress those very vital community relationships. If we want every community in New Zealand to have a true safety net around every child who lives in that community, the last thing we can afford to do is to have holes in that safety net created by the fact that agencies that should be working together cannot even get on the phone to talk to each other and work collaboratively around case management. I do not think it matters which agency is the lead agency.

I compliment the Government on its Vulnerable Families project. I love what I have seen and heard about the project, and I believe that it is the way forward. But I also think there is room, in that regard, for non-governmental organisations to be included in that project.

ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast): I want to raise a number of issues with the Child, Youth and Family estimate, too, and I echo my colleague, Judy Turner. I felt that the Government and the Ministry of Social Development perverted the process of this estimate around Child, Youth and Family. First of all, the Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment (CYF) appeared before the Social Services Committee before we had an audit report. So we were unable to have any prior briefing from the Audit Office on the performance of Child, Youth and Family—and, in fact, the office later raised some quite significant issues. The Associate Minister did come back a second time to the select committee, but even the answers to the questions that we had asked of the Associate Minister and her officials were not available to us by the time the Associate Minister appeared before the select committee on the second occasion.

That really is a perversion of the process. That is not how it is supposed to work. Even to date, we have not received the internal budgets from Child, Youth and Family, so we have no idea—even as we are discussing the estimates here today—what its internal budgets are. Now, that hardly gives us confidence that this ministry, which handles the most vulnerable people in our community, is doing an adequate job or that it is a good manager, because it cannot even manage this very simple process, which is supposed to be transparent.

The other issue that I raised with the Associate Minister was Child, Youth and Family’s permanency policy. There are lots of fine words in the statement of intent, and the ministry itself and the Associate Minister say that they understand how important it is to a child’s life that he or she has stability and a secure environment, and that they understand the damage that can be done to a child by being constantly moved from pillar to post. Yet the figures that the Associate Minister released to me for last year show that over 1,000 children in Child, Youth and Family care last year were moved more than three times. In the life of a child who is in a vulnerable state, that can have catastrophic effects on the future of that child.

The Associate Minister said to me that social workers are doing their best and I believe they are. Most of those front-line social workers are doing the very best that they can within a system that is not supporting them. But the figures show quite clearly that a 6-year-old Manawatū boy was moved 11 times last year, a 5-year-old girl from Hastings—my colleague Craig Foss’ electorate—was moved nine times in one year, and a 2-year-old girl in Whenuapai was moved seven times. What does that do to the life of that child? The worst case that Child, Youth and Family has is a boy, now 14 years old, who, while he has been in Child, Youth and Family care, has been moved 43 times. How can that child ever hope for a normal, happy, fulfilled life when he has had no opportunity to have a secure home environment? This is destroying lives.

I heard Tariana Turia talking before about making the children pay for the fault of their family, and punishing the children twice—once because their family is dysfunctional, and the second time because the State has stepped in and is supposedly making things better for them. Well, the State is not making things better if it has not got that permanency sorted out. It is actually destroying the lives of these children, and condemning them to a life that will probably be related to drug and alcohol dependency and that could well be a life of crime.

The Associate Minister fobbed me off a bit, because she said that these figures include respite care and that respite care does children no harm. I disagree. Any movement of a child from one environment to another causes problems for children; any parent knows that. Even a child that has a warm, loving, secure home environment will suffer when moved into a strange environment. It can be very upsetting for some children. These children do not come from that environment in the first place, and the Associate Minister could show no research that has been done to show that respite care does no harm.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Labour

KATE WILKINSON (National): I rise to take a call on the estimates portion of Vote Labour. I want to raise three main issues at this stage, but to my mind they are very serious matters and they were raised in the questioning of the Minister during the estimates process in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.

I am not quite sure whether the Minister is aware that in the Employment Relations Act there is a very important section. It is not a very big section, but it is a pretty important one, and it basically states that the Act binds the Crown. Unfortunately, that small but crucial section seems to have been ignored, or disregarded, by the Government. Under the employment relations law nobody, not even the Crown, is above the law, so I would like the Minister in the chair, Nanaia Mahuta, to comment on a matter that I will now elaborate on a bit more.

Under our employment relations legislation there is a clear, unambiguous provision that a contract or an agreement between persons must not confer on a person a preference because that person is or is not a member of a union. So no preference can be conferred on a person in relation to the terms and conditions of employment because that person is or is not a member of a union. It is quite simple. Members can imagine our surprise at the response when we asked for an explanation of the preference payment of $500, which is taxpayer money, that is paid by this Labour Government specifically and only to union members: to members of the Public Service Association. They get a preference payment of $500. The response from the department was quite amazing, and, actually, worrying. Department officials said: “It’s not a preference payment. It’s a payment that’s negotiated by the collective agreement as part of the settlement of that collective agreement.”

So we inquired a bit further, and asked: “Is this not giving some staff an extra $500 over other staff?”. We were then told: “Well, it might not be. It might not be additional.” Then we were told—and it gets worse—that the union members get an extra $500 “not because they are a member of a union; it’s because they’re part of the collective agreement.” We all know that that is absolutely, totally, and completely absurd, because under our labour laws a person cannot be a party to a collective agreement without being a member of a union. So it is a preference payment. It is a preference payment that is prohibited under the Employment Relations Act. That Act does, in fact, bind the Crown. It does, in fact, bind the Labour Government, and it should be abided by.

Workers should not have their pay docked merely because they do not belong to a union. In the aged-care sector this Government is using taxpayer money—taxpayer money—to actively recruit New Zealanders to join the unions that provide it with support. The matter is worse than that. People will have read the recent media releases about the dispute between people at district health boards and Spotless Services. I do not intend to get involved in the merits or otherwise of that dispute. It is actually the form of it that is concerning, because that dispute reveals that 5 percent of the funding—this is taxpayer funding—will be paid to the union as a bargaining fee. That could be anywhere between $800,000 and $1 million, and do members know to whom it will be paid? It will be paid to the Service and Food Workers Union. Are we surprised at that, when this is the very same union that we are told received some $300,000—$350,000; $380,000—and paid it to the Labour Party, no doubt to get the future Minister of Finance Darien Fenton her place in this Parliament? I am concerned about this matter and I really do think the Minister needs to take a stance on it, because it is a lot of money, it is taxpayer money, and we have a duty to ensure that taxpayer money is spent properly and not contrary to the provisions of the law.

In this department we also have another admission that the department is again flouting other rules, this time by handing out $8 million worth of contracts—as my colleague Paula Bennett revealed—without going through the process of tendering.

Craig Foss: Sounds familiar.

KATE WILKINSON: Exactly. Both those instances involve taxpayer money. The rules are there to safeguard that money, and those rules should be abided by—they should not be flouted.

When we have the spending of all of that money, we need to ask whether we are getting value for money. In the select committee we asked how productivity is measured; if we are spending all of that money on the public service, how do we know we are getting productivity across the public service? Do members know what the answer was? It was: “I don’t think we are in a position to say too much about that at this point.” Frankly, I think that is not good enough. We have an issue with regard to productivity, and it has been raised in the Minister’s briefing paper. We are not highly up there in the productivity stakes, the issue needs to be addressed, and an answer that says: “I don’t think we are in a position to say too much about that at this point.” is, I think, negligent.

That is not good enough, and I would like the Minister in the chair to take a call and be accountable, please, for the deliberate flouting of the law by the department.

LESLEY SOPER (Labour): What we had there from that National Party member, Kate Wilkinson, was a rave—an anti-union rave. Let union members negotiate the deals for union members and let people who are on individual contracts, who refuse to join unions, negotiate their own deals. Let them do that. But I ask the member not to come here and give an anti-union speech across this Chamber as though she somehow has gold in her hands. That is just absolute nonsense.

The fact of the matter is that the National side of the House is anti-union, and that member used that speech to attack some very good unions that are working hard for their members. The leader of the National Party and other National Party members bounce from cloud to cloud, trying very hard to find something to give themselves a little bit of substance, and another member of the National Party by the name of Mr Bill English claims to be the one grinding away at the real work. The real work is actually being done by Labour Ministers in a range of portfolio areas. That is the real work, while those members bounce around on clouds with very little style, looking for a bit of substance and not finding it. Substance is something they know nothing about, as has just been illustrated by that last member’s speech.

I want to talk briefly about the real work in Vote Labour, led by that excellent member my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson. I tell the members of the Committee who did not really concentrate on the vote at all that this vote is about providing services to promote and support fair and productive employment relationships, safe and healthy people in workplaces, and issues—if members across the Chamber can recognise them—like safe management of hazardous substances. This vote is actually about creating innovative and productive workplaces, and that means becoming a high-wage, high-skilled, and high-value economy. From that last speech, I really wonder whether the members on that side of the Chamber know what a high-wage, high-skilled, high-value economy might mean.

To do that we need to focus on things like raising skill levels, and we are doing that work in this vote. We need to focus on producing more globally competitive firms, and we do. We need to concentrate on increasing business investment in equipment and technology, and there are many fine examples of that. We need to concentrate on increasing the value of work through raising workplace productivity, and that means changes in work culture and practices. That sort of work is actually happening, which may come as a surprise to members on the Opposition side.

We need to concentrate on working with business networks, and that is very well done by the Hon Ruth Dyson and by other members like the Hon Lianne Dalziel. We need to concentrate on that particularly in the small and medium enterprise sector. There is some very good work going on there, productive work that it would appear members on the Opposition side know little about. We need to concentrate on things like providing online tools, such as Holidays Online and the Employment Agreement Builder. I really wonder whether the members on the other side have even looked at some of the online tools of the Department of Labour. Perhaps they should look at the “ask a question” feature. It might do them some good. They might get some sensible answers that would help them when they go back to the real world outside Parliament after the 2008 election and actually have to know about things like business progress.

The Labour-led Government has a strong focus on proactive approaches, and those approaches are working. These are approaches that concentrate on higher-value work, higher-quality working lives, social dialogue, and the awareness of fundamental rights for workers like the right to negotiate collectively, which the last speaker might like to do a little bit more research on. All of that is bearing fruit. We now have every employee entitled to 4 weeks’ annual leave. Paid parental leave is available for the self-employed as well, and remember that it is this Government that has increased paid parental leave to 14 weeks. The pay and employment equity 5-year plan of action is under way, and that is something that members on this side are very proud of. National members might remember a certain Employment Equity Act that they repealed in 1990 as soon as they became the Government. Other things like quality flexible work are on the agenda.

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

Vote agreed to.

Vote Senior Citizens agreed to.

Vote Conservation agreed to.

Vote Housing

BOB CLARKSON (National—Tauranga): I would like to ask the Minister of Housing about the State housing sector but I will not do that, because I know that I would be wasting my time, and I know that all I would get from the Minister would be half-baked answers and deviations from the truth. Therefore, I will tell the Committee what I think. I have never, in all my business life, seen such a badly run business as the State housing sector. [Interruption] I suggest the member opposite keeps quiet and learns.

Although I believe we should help less-fortunate people, it should be done in an affordable way. It totally amazes me that the Department of Building and Housing subsidises the State housing sector by $465 million per year. That is a massive amount. This subsidy increased by $100 million in the past year alone, and equates to approximately $140 per house per week. I ask members to listen carefully. That is $140 per house per week. That is a stunning subsidy, and that is after the rent has been paid by the tenant and collected by the department.

If we add interest on to the cost of the value of the house, we get a total subsidy of $480 per week per house. This is more than the average person pays in weekly payments for a mortgage to buy a house. It might be sensible for the Government to give State house tenants the house they occupy, and close the State housing department. On my calculations, the Government would save millions over the years. I am not recommending this, but it just proves that the Minister has made a total mess of handling the State housing sector.

The Minister bleats on about buying houses to put into the State housing pool. What a waste of money! I know of many cases where the department has paid $370,000 to $420,000 for houses in Tauranga that have three bedrooms and two-car garages. One of those houses was let for $60 a week to an elderly lady who lives on her own and has no car.

This is a typical example of the failure of this Government’s Minister to be logical. Does anybody in this Government work out the financial cost in owning these houses? It would be a lot cheaper for the Government to pay the full rent for that elderly lady to move into the private sector, and the Government—or taxpayers actually—would be better off by about $300 or $400 a week. We need a National Government in power to sort this problem out.

The Minister of Housing is now thinking of moving into shared equity schemes. I warn him that that scheme is full of problems. I have studied it myself, overseas. Who pays for and who benefits from an extension or any other upgrading of the house—for example, a small room added on to the back? On second thoughts, this Government will have no problem—it will just start up another Government department to deal with the problems caused by this Government department. It will cost millions to set up, but this Government does not care. It is only taxpayers’ money!

This housing Minister needs to wake up, talk to the right people, do some ground-breaking research, and come up with an overall plan for State housing and affordable homes. The Minister is running around and achieving very little. For example, this Labour Government’s home equity scheme was promised in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007, and it might, with any luck, start in 2008. The Minister is very consistent with his promises, but he just keeps failing to deliver. We are lucky he will not be here in 2009; he will not be in Government.

The Minister also intends to mix State housing with expensive houses in Hobsonville. This will top off the Minister’s foul-ups. This idea will offend both the top end and bottom end of the housing market. In answer to a written question, the Minister would not tell me how much the sections in Hobsonville will cost. I want only an estimate of the price of the sections, so that I can warn him how big a mess he will be in, and what it will cost the taxpayers to get out of this mess and for this stuff-up.

The Minister has been given two ears and one mouth, so that he can listen twice as much as he talks. He has failed in that area. I finish off by saying that I look forward to a National Government being in power. Thank you.

Vote agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Before we go on to the next one, I just say to members that we are debating the appropriations, the estimates, for 2007-08. All contributions should be geared towards that time frame. Members may deal with the past only if they are making comparisons or giving examples to illustrate what they are talking about in relation to 2007-08.

Vote Courts agreed to.

Vote Emergency Management agreed to.

Vote Internal Affairs agreed to.

Vote Veterans’ Affairs (Defence) agreed to.

Vote Veterans’ Affairs (Social Development) agreed to.

Vote Employment agreed to.

Vote Environment agreed to.

Vote Social Development

JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon): It is very unusual in an estimates report from a select committee to have to say that the Minister had not answered the questions that we on the select committee had submitted in time for the estimates review. It is simply an indication of the fact that this ministry and this Minister simply cannot get their act together, and do not wish to answer the questions that the select committee legitimately poses, at the right time, so that the answers can be elicited before the Minister and the ministry turn up in the select committee.

For a ministry that has grown in size massively under this Government, one would think that somewhere in there someone could be found to answer the questions. That was one of the comments that was made in the select committee—and it was a cross-party view—that people felt very strongly that an effort should have been made by the Minister and the ministry not to appear arrogant, and to actually take the questions on board, and to answer them. At the end of the day, it is by that select committee process that we hold to account the ministry and the Minister for the taxpayers’ money. In fact, it is not OK just to ignore it and say: “Too bad. We won. You lost.”, which is what Michael Cullen said when the Labour Government came to power.

One of the issues that we raised with the Minister and the ministry was that of sickness beneficiaries and the way in which sickness beneficiary numbers have massively increased under this Government. One of the concerns we have is the level of low-quality but high-cost programmes that have been operated. One of the concerns we have had is the fact that, for instance, the designated doctor scheme, which this Government runs in relation to sickness benefit numbers, means that there is a doctor who has issued 325 medical certificates for sickness benefit entitlements within one quarter—that is 3 months—or 5.1 every working day. The cost rose from $67 to $119 for each person. That is $600 a day, just for signing off sickness benefit applicants. Then there are all the other times of the day in which to make even more profit.

We have said to this Minister that we should be asking questions. We should be asking why it is that suddenly we are a country with a massive epidemic of sickness. After all, we now spend so much more on the public health system that one would have to wonder why it is that we cannot keep people well. We have never had a proper answer, other than that apparently people are getting older. When they get past 65 they are on New Zealand superannuation and would not be on the working-age benefit, so most people have not quite worked out what the Minister means by that.

One of the things we would really like to talk about is the single core benefit and the amount of taxpayers’ money that has been thrown into it. In 1989 Michael Cullen was Minister of Social Welfare. That is a long time ago. Except it is not so long ago, because that was when he first started talking up a single core benefit. We were going to have every working-age beneficiary on one benefit. That scheme emerged again in 2000 and again in 2002. Lo and behold, it became Labour Party policy again in 2005.

I remember, during that election campaign, attending a meeting with Steve Maharey, who was then the Minister of Social Development—because the portfolio turned from social welfare to social development, for some reason. He gave this very long presentation at Victoria University, with lots of PowerPoint things flashing across the screen, about the single core benefit and how tying in—I think it was—seven benefits into one and adding multiple add-ons, about another nine or 10 add-ons, was somehow going to sort out benefit issues and make everything easier.

We have found out from getting our work done and looking at what Treasury said and at the Official Information Act requests, because clearly the Minister is not very good at fronting up with answers, that the single core benefit has died a very, very quiet death. It died in August last year. But it was never announced. It was one of those silent things—the sort of thing that happened when we used to be secretive about our SAS if anything secret happened. But in fact it was swept under the carpet, and it has now reappeared only because we have decided to say: “By the way, whatever did happen to the major welfare plank of the Labour Party in 2005 or, by the way, in 2002?”. It has gone, just the same way as the taxpayer dollars that paid for it have gone.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Commerce agreed to.

Vote Women's Affairs agreed to.

Vote Corrections

CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui): I guess there has not been a worse year than this year for the Department of Corrections. Every time someone gets up and holds the Minister to account for the performance of the department, he keeps going back to the point that the number of escapes has dropped by 73 percent. He then goes on to talk about three escapes, instead of four, or something along those lines. But if we have a close look at the Department of Corrections and where it has been over the past 12 months or so, there has been one little mess after another.

Let us have a look at the Graeme Burton debacle, for instance, which quickly followed the Liam Ashley one. Graeme Burton killed Karl Kuchenbecker and wounded three others. Who was in charge of Graeme Burton at that time? The answer is that it was the Department of Corrections. Burton was on parole, and it was the department’s job to watch over him to ensure that his movements were compliant with his parole conditions. We know that he was released into the community on 10 July on parole, and his exact location was withheld. He set about attending a course. Later on, the police had information from good informants that he was wandering all over the place, and was hitting up lower-order drug dealers, using stand-over tactics—beating them up before robbing them. On one occasion Burton is said to have threatened to shoot all six witnesses to one of these robbings and beatings. We know that that took place on 30 November. He carried on like that.

On 5 December Burton breached his parole, and the Department of Corrections sent him a letter. No one went to look for him. No one told the police. No one followed up. His parole officer went on holiday. More things happened—the sorts of things we would expect him to be pulled up for. The police were worried sick. They were getting information on a frequent basis as to what he was doing—home invasion, standing over other drug dealers, making threats, and gathering arms—but nothing was done. Eventually, as we know, he killed Karl Kuchenbecker on 7 January. What happened then? There was a storm in the media. The Department of Corrections was supposedly held to account, and we had the further debacle of the CEO of the department appearing on television, holding out his hands and saying: “There’s no blood on my hands.”

Last night we had a vein-popping tirade from the Hon Phil Goff. He went on and on about National’s record in corrections. He was the one who made accusations around a project called INCIS, which we all know is a part of history as a failed project. What he did not point out was that this Government appointed “Mr INCIS” as the CEO of the Department of Corrections.

This year the Labour Government, through the Department of Corrections, will spend $311,000 on chartered flights to move prisoners around the country. We have to wonder how it can spend so much money on doing that. The department spent $31 million on consultants in the past 4 years. I know that running up to the 1999 election there was an article in our local paper written by the Labour Party candidate who caned the National Government for having spent $5 million on consultants in the previous year. The Department of Corrections spent $3 million in the first 3 months of this year on consultants. Who would argue that they are any better than they were then? An amount of $2.6 million was wasted on removing the contract for the remand centre in Auckland and putting it back under the Government sector because there was a clash of philosophical extremes on the part of the Labour Party.

The Labour Party, through the Department of Corrections, spends $190 a night on people staying in police cells. Last year 57,000 prisoners—Department of Corrections inmates—stayed in police cells, at a cost of $10.8 million. We have to wonder just where it is going. Jails can have flat-screen TVs and underfloor heating, but when we ask the Department of Corrections about that, it says: “Well, you can’t build old. We’re building these new prisons, and you can’t build old.” Well, actually, the department can build something that is not luxurious. It can tone it down a bit. We have to wonder just how much rope this Government wants, when it can double the amount quoted—from $500 million to $890 million—to build four new prisons, get 500 extra beds, and spend $1 million per bed. If the Government cannot get a prison bed for less than $1 million, it is doing it wrong.

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Corrections): It is hard to know whether that speech justifies any reaction, but on behalf of the over 5,000 people who work in the Department of Corrections I will stand up and explain what we do, because those people end up being the whipping boy too often for too many people in this country. They end up being a mere target for the National Party—a party that has not one policy in the area of corrections. I am sorry; it has two policies. One is to privatise the prison system and the other is to do away with parole. Both those policies are, quite frankly, ridiculous.

The Department of Corrections does a very good job by any international measure, and it does so in a very difficult area. Over the last 7 years we have increased the prison capacity by 2,100 beds. It has cost over a billion dollars. We do not like spending money on prisons in this country, but we came into Government facing a system that had been left to languish and had been run down under the likes of Nick Smith and other Ministers. We grasped the mantle, and we built over 2,100 new cells in this country to address the sad but realistic situation that New Zealand locks up people at the second-highest rate in the Western World. That is something we are not proud of. No one in this country should be proud of that.

Every year the corrections system deals with over 68,000 sentences in the community. Currently, over 8,100 people are in prisons around this country. We are determined, as a Government, to do more than just invest in prisons, as we have had to do—and yes, we do have underfloor heating, because it is the most efficient and safest way to ensure we have minimum standards of heating in our prisons. I make no apologies for that. I make no apologies for building prisons that are of an international standard and will be there for 100 years, conducting what is a necessary but sad part of Government responsibility. [Interruption] Oh yes, Nick Smith is there, desperate to try to justify his management of the corrections system in the past. The only thing the previous National Government did was to attempt to start the privatisation of prisons. Those members initially signed a contract with Chubb. They initially built Auckland Central Remand Prison, which we took back into the public prison system.

Correction is a very difficult area of Government responsibility. We will maintain that responsibility under the wing of the Government. We will not attempt to disengage ourselves from that responsibility, as the National members have said they would do, by privatising prisons. All I would say to those people who think doing that might be better is that they should look offshore. They should look to Australia, the US, and other areas around the world that have attempted to privatise the prison system. It has failed.

What we are doing is moving to improve the system we have within prisons in order to ensure that we have better programmes of rehabilitation, and we have revamped them. We have invested huge amounts in reintegration so that at sentence end those prisoners will be better able to move back into the community and participate in a worthwhile way. Internationally, the sad statistics are that far too many prisoners do reoffend. We are at the forefront of rehabilitation programmes and of initiatives to try to reduce that rate of reoffending.

I stand up for each and every one of those people who work in the corrections system. Some have broken the rules and some have taken short cuts. We have put in place a new intelligence system whereby skilled people within the corrections system gather intelligence and information. They can identify any prison officer or any person employed by the Department of Corrections who is breaking the law or not abiding by the code of conduct and the policies we have laid down. When we identify one of these individuals and that person is stood down or the matter is taken to the police, members of the Opposition stand up and say it is an indication of failure. Well, I have to say that we will be identifying more individuals, and there are only a few who may have been breaking the law or breaking the code of conduct or our policies. We will identify them because we have better systems of intelligence-gathering within the prison system now, and we will be dismissing and prosecuting those people.

Corrections is a difficult environment. Wherever one has 8,000 criminals in any one system, there will no doubt be some problems. We are not running kindergartens here—it is a very difficult area. Every measure against the corrections system—assaults on prisoners themselves, assaults on staff, and escape rates—in international terms, has declined dramatically under this Government and will continue to do so. We have invested a huge amount in better security systems, drug-dog teams, single points of entry, 17 kilometres of perimeter fencing, and on and on it goes, because we are committed to running a properly resourced, effective, and efficient corrections system in this country, and we will continue to do that.

The only alternative we have heard from the National Party, from the bleating of Simon Power and Chester Borrows, is that National would privatise the prison system and all parts of it, and that it would do away with parole. Well, that begs the question—if anyone were to ask anyone intelligent—of how we attempt to reintegrate people back into society when they reach the end of their sentence. Parole is accepted as a key component of any system of corrections, incarceration, rehabilitation, or reintegration—call it what we like. Parole will continue to be part of the system. It must be well managed. We have moved to make changes in that area, as we have whenever we have identified a problem within the corrections system or the justice system.

I look forward to the passage of the Criminal Justice Reform Bill, and to the new community sentences that will be brought into place. They will assist us to reduce over time the number of people who have to be sent to prison and, ultimately, they will reduce the rate of incarceration in this country, which is, quite frankly, a disgrace. This Government will invest in front-end policies like early childhood education, Working for Families, and social support, because we know that ultimately that is the best way to reduce the rate of crime and the rate of incarceration in this country. I applaud the efforts of the people working in the corrections system. I think that they do an outstanding job in the face of very difficult and trying circumstances.

Chester Borrows: Mr Chairman—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Not on this vote, Mr Borrows. You have two calls on Vote Corrections. [Interruption] No, the member had two calls, albeit he did not use too much of the second one.

NATHAN GUY (Junior Whip—National): I seek leave for Chester Borrows to have a call on Vote Corrections.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Leave has been sought for that course to be followed. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui): The Minister asked the question: “Well, how do you deal with people who are being released back into the community if they’re not on parole?”. The answer to that is: “You deal with them while they are in prison.”

Every person who goes to prison has to come out of it in better nick than when he or she went in. We know that at the moment 8,000 prisoners are inside our prisons. The Minister said that himself, and he confirmed it. There are 44 drug and alcohol beds, and 199 people are waiting for treatment in those beds. But no one is addressing the problem. We know that 83 percent of the 8,000 people in our prisons have drug and alcohol problems. Funnily enough, 83 percent of those people have literacy and numeracy problems, as well. But, you know, people serving a sentence of less than 2 years under this lot over there cannot get any help with those problems—none whatsoever—and that keeps people on a cycle that has them going back to jail, back to jail, back to jail.

In Wanganui, a shoe factory was operating out of Kaitoke prison. It was put there, funnily enough, under the National Government, which, according to Mr O’Connor, cocked up corrections well and truly, in spite of the fact, of course, that Labour has been in Government for 14 of the last 22 years. Apparently, anything that has ever gone wrong in corrections is National’s fault. Anyway, a shoe factory was operating within the Kaitoke prison. The prison took 100 inmates a year, the vast majority of whom had never worked. In 2003 that factory was closed down by Labour because it did not make a profit, but what it did do was to save the taxpayers of New Zealand $5 million a year in unreturned prisoners. Anecdotally, every one of those wardens at the Kaitoke prison who were involved in watching over the shoe factory said that none of the prisoners came back—none of them ever came back.

This Government has spent $11 million on landscaping prisons. That is the big plus it can point to when it talks about what it has done around prisons. But members should look at the situation around the Liam Ashley debacle. Look at what happened there. The parents of this young man, through a tough love arrangement, said that, yes, they would allow him to go into prison overnight, believing he would actually be safe within the care of the Department of Corrections, under this Government. But where did he go? He went to the Auckland remand centre, which had been privatised under National, and which this Government accepted had a better record than any other State-run remand centres. He was put there, at that centre run by the Department of Corrections, and he died because he was locked up in a cage, in a prison van, with a guy who had murdered. He was chained to him and, what do you know, that guy beat the hell out of him. What do we ever hear from corrections about that?

Hon Tau Henare: Damien didn’t even say sorry.

CHESTER BORROWS: We did not hear that. We were told that the parents were apologised to, but the parents say: “Oh, funny—we don’t remember that; we don’t remember that at all.”

Then, within a few months, we had the debacle around Graeme Burton, which we mentioned earlier on. The fact is that this Government does not know how to “do” corrections. It stuffed up the budget. The sum of $500 million was set aside for four new prisons, and that figure blew out to $890 million for only another 500 beds—a million bucks a bed. What did we find last year? Well, we found that we gave $1.9 million in bonuses to the administrators of the Department of Corrections. And just this year, so far, over $1 million dollars has already been paid out to administrators within the department. The Minister himself has to accept that the department has never been run so badly, because he cannot point to a single year under a National administration when there was stuff-up after stuff-up in corrections.

Hon Damien O'Connor: Of course you can.

CHESTER BORROWS: Well, I ask the Minister to give us a year. The Minister can give us a year if he wants to, but he can never point to a single year in corrections under our administration when corrections ever performed so badly—not one. I say to him: “The microphone is yours, Minister. Take a call.”

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Corrections): I could sit down here and for the next 10 minutes read off a list of incidents that have happened in corrections under a National Government. I do not think that anyone would pretend that incidents are not part and parcel of corrections life, but we hope to keep them to the minimum, and not to have any tragic consequences as a result of any of them. I acknowledge—and have done so to the families of these victims—that in the case of Liam Ashley, and the Kuchenbeckers through the Burton situation, we have had tragic outcomes from mistakes that were made in the justice system.

I say, though, to go back to a couple of points raised by the previous speaker, that when we came into Government there were two drug and alcohol units, but, yes, they were delivering very few places in the corrections system for people with drug and alcohol problems. At the end of next year we will have six drug and alcohol units operating in this country, and there will be places for 500 inmates. I have opened two new drug and alcohol units myself, and there are two more to be opened. We have committed a huge amount into this area, after years and years of neglect.

The member referred to literacy and numeracy issues, but never has there been more money poured into education in the corrections system than is currently happening. We now have prisoners leaving prison with New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) credits—for many of them it is the first time they have ever achieved anything. I have been very proud to go to those celebrations, where prisoners have broken down in a couple of instances, because they have received acknowledgment of their talents. Each and every one of them has talents, but we cannot turn their lives around overnight. The member says that we should fix up these prisoners while they are in prison. Well, all we can do is offer them opportunities to address their drug and alcohol and literacy problems, and we are doing so.

In terms of employment, less than 40 percent of the prison population were usefully employed when Labour took over. We have set the target, under the Prisoner Employment Strategy, of 60 percent of the prison population being employed or in training. I today visited Tongariro/Rangipō Prison to see the growth in opportunities that we are creating there for prisoners to get NZQA credits, and to try to make something useful of the time they spend in prison, so that when they leave they will be able to move into useful jobs, and, hopefully, not return.

Mr Borrows said—and I would like to check this out, because I think I would certainly issue instructions to start a shoe factory again if what he said were true—that none of those prisoners ever returned to prison. Well, I do not think there would be one programme in the world of which that could be said—unfortunately. It is not that we should not strive for such an outcome, but that member said that no one ever returned. I think that that might be stretching the truth a little bit, I tell Mr Borrows.

We do our best to provide useful employment and training within the prison system. We have moved to get accreditation for that skills training so that people can leave with credits, and I am very proud—as are most of the people in the corrections system—of the progress we have made in these areas of drug and alcohol rehabilitation, of better health services, and of improved opportunities for employment. Once again, I say thank you to the people who work in the corrections system for their commitment and their work in the face of very trying times.

Sandra Goudie: Well, the taxpayer isn’t thanking the Minister for the incredible waste of public money.

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: But National members, like that member there, just want to harp on and criticise each and every one of them, time and time again, for no good reason.

LESLEY SOPER (Labour): I stand to take a short call on corrections. We have just heard, not a lot of time ago, from a National speaker, who basically managed to say nothing at all that was positive about our corrections system. All he could manage to do, as a speaker—and as part of the National Party, once again bouncing from cloud to cloud looking for substance—was to bash our corrections system.

In fact, the Department of Corrections is doing a very good job under a very good Minister. The people who work in corrections are doing a very good job. Let us not forget all those people; one of them is my relative in Invercargill. I pay tribute to those staff members in the prison in Invercargill, in my electorate, who are doing a fantastic job in a difficult area. They do not deserve to be knocked by those members opposite. They do not deserve to be knocked, at all, by those members opposite, for nothing but a bit of cheap publicity. They are dedicated staff, each and every one of them; they do a good job. They treat prisoners like people, which seems to be something that is missing from the spirit of Mr Borrow’s speech—people who might actually have a future when they leave prison.

It might be something new for Mr Borrows to reflect on, that many of the prisoners he talked about in the speech he just gave are people who will leave prison and who deserve the ability and the guidance to rehabilitate themselves back into society and lead useful lives. That is what this very good Minister is helping to lead in our corrections system. He is helping to put in place the actual rehabilitation programmes that give some of those people a chance when they leave prison.

It might come as news to the National Party that we do not help put people in prison then throw away the key and feed them on bread and water. Many of those people will come out of prison, and we want them to come out and lead good lives. The fact is that most prisoners will come back into society. If those members opposite have not worked that out yet, then it will be a very sad thing if they ever get their hands on the corrections system again. Those innovative programmes that the current Minister has helped put in place are making a difference and are giving prospects for the future.

And what is the only thing that National has to offer as a solution for corrections? It is privatisation. Well, National tried that when in office, and it failed. If ever it got its hands on the corrections system and tried to privatise it again, then it would fail again, because the policy is without substance. It is another one of the ghostly raft of non-policies, which are all that National is capable of delivering.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Tourism agreed to.

Vote Communications agreed to.

Vote Immigration agreed to.

Vote Climate Change and Energy Efficiency

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): Today the latest energy data for New Zealand was released, and what we have discovered is that all the talk about carbon neutrality from the Prime Minister in the 8 years Labour has been in Government is an absolute farce. I want to challenge the Government about its record in this vital area of public policy. Firstly, I ask the Associate Minister in the chair, the Hon Harry Duynhoven, how the goal of carbon neutrality matches the figures put out today. In the last year there was a 9.7 percent increase in the burning of coal. That is an extra 15 petajoules of coal going into the system. Does anybody believe that the fastest-growing area of energy is coal? And we are meant to believe that this Government is about carbon neutrality!

Colin King: No!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I agree with the member. We are expected to believe in Father Christmas, the tooth fairy, and now the Prime Minister on carbon neutrality.

Then when we look at the electricity sector specifically, we see that in the period of this Labour Government the amount of electricity produced from burning coal has trebled. I remind Ms Soper that that is right. Since Labour has been in office we have seen a lower proportion of electricity produced from renewables than at any time in New Zealand’s history. We are now down to a level of just 59 percent. I ask the Associate Minister in the chair why it is that Labour came into office saying it was going to reduce emissions, when, in the sector that is dominantly owned by the State, the electricity sector, we have seen the proportion of renewables drop and the proportion of electricity produced from coal treble.

Let me bring this back to the attention of the Associate Minister. How does he justify that the Prime Minister does a photo opportunity every time a wind farm is opened, when the increase in the amount of electricity produced from coal is seven times the amount of that produced from wind? For every megawatt that is being produced from wind farms under this Government, 7 megawatts are produced from coal. Does the Associate Minister in the chair deny those statistics from his own ministry? No, he does not, because they are the facts. How can we possibly be running this line about carbon neutrality and about all the talk internationally of this Government taking climate change seriously, when the amount of power produced from coal is increasing at seven times the rate that it is from wind farms?

Then I have to ask this question: why is it that we have the Government objecting to every new hydro scheme that is proposed? Just last week we saw the Environment Court give a tick to the Wairau hydro scheme, in my part of the world. This is the biggest hydro scheme that has been proposed since the Clyde Dam. The part I cannot work out is that the Prime Minister talks carbon neutrality and the Department of Conservation appeals the Wairau hydro scheme. I would love the Associate Minister to explain that.

Then in the adjournment we had the Prime Minister talking about the opening up of the Great South Basin to new petroleum. I said to myself: “Well, I’ve still got a bit of a difficulty here, Harry. How can opening up new hydrocarbon resources in the Great South Basin match with carbon neutrality?”.

Hon Harry Duynhoven: Easily.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, I am not a petroleum expert, but I would expect that if oil is taken out of the ground it is probably going to be burnt, and that does not sound too much like carbon neutrality. I say to the Associate Minister that if he wants to be honest with the public of New Zealand, then he should tell them that carbon neutrality is just a big fraud. It is just a con job. The Prime Minister does not believe it. None of the Ministers believe it. The Government is desperate. It has been in office for 8 years and has failed so badly on climate change that it would invent anything—anything at all—to try to justify its position.

I have a very simple question for the Associate Minister—

Lesley Soper: The member has no credibility on climate matters.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Maybe Lesley Soper will answer this for me. When will this Government meet carbon neutrality?

Lesley Soper: You have no credibility on climate matters. You haven’t got a brain in your head.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I say to Ms Soper, who has the cheek to interject and say there is no credibility on climate change, that she is dead right. This Government has absolutely no credibility on climate change. I ask her, or the Associate Minister, again. When will Labour achieve its goal of carbon neutrality? Oh, she is quiet now. It is a simple question. When?

Lesley Soper: How many wind farms did you open?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: What I can tell the member is that a National Government will reform the Resource Management Act so that wind farms like Project West Wind do not get tied up in bureaucratic red tape for 4 years, as has occurred in this very city of Wellington.

I can also say to the member opposite that a National Government will reform the Resource Management Act so that we can build hydro stations rather than trebling—

Hon Lianne Dalziel: You passed it in 1991!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Lianne Dalziel is piping in. Would she like to explain—

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Who was in Government in 1991?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The National Party was in Government. Let me read the figures for her. I think that this Parliament would want to see an increasing proportion of our power being produced from renewable energy, and through the 1990s we saw the commissioning of the Clyde Dam and an increase in the amount of renewable energy. The Associate Minister in the chair looks sceptical. I ask him why it is that in every year that Labour has been in office there has been a reduction in the proportion of our power produced from renewables. How can we have the Prime Minister open Parliament at the beginning of this year and say the word “sustainability” not once, not twice, not three times, but 39 times? Yet we have the least sustainable Government in the history of New Zealand in respect of electricity, in that we have the lowest proportion ever of electricity that is produced from renewable resources.

I ask the Government when we will have a policy on climate change. It has been in Government—

Lesley Soper: You don’t have a policy.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Let me tell the member what our policy is. National has a policy of a 50 percent reduction in emissions by 2050. National has a policy of a comprehensive emissions trading system to deliver that outcome. National has a policy of reforming the Resource Management Act so that we can have wind farms and hydro stations. National has a policy of smart investing in energy efficiency. I could go on and on, but now we are to debate what Labour’s policy is.

I ask Lesley Soper why it is that, 8 years after Labour came to office, the independent Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment says that the climate change policies in New Zealand are a disgrace and a vacuum, and that we are going nowhere. Does Lesley Soper disagree with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment?

Lesley Soper: You have no credibility.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, let us talk about what the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment says. She says that there is a vacuum in climate change policy, 8 years into a Government that promised to reduce emissions by 20 percent by 2005. In fact, emissions went up by 12 percent. And Government members want to talk about credibility! The Government has no credibility on this issue.

I want Harry Duynhoven to answer a few simple questions. When will we have an emissions trading system? When will we have some idea as to how the Government will meet its Kyoto Protocol requirements? Will we have to send a cheque for hundreds of millions of dollars of hard-earned taxpayers’ money to foreign Governments for the botch-up that this Government has made in this critical area of climate change? I also want to know from the Minister when we will actually see a change in the trend around renewable energy. I want to know from the Minister when we will achieve this bizarre goal—which nobody believes—of carbon neutrality. I want to know from the Minister his response to the statistics out today showing that this New Zealand Labour Government has the worst record of any country in terms of climate change, with three times the growth in emissions of Australia and four times the growth in emissions of the United States. I say to the Minister that it is disgraceful. When will we finally see some policy?

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN (Associate Minister of Energy): Well, it is a pleasure to follow the former deputy leader of the National Party, a member who very briefly held that role. Can I just say a few things to the member and correct a few of the myths he has been portraying here for us tonight.

First of all, the member must remember that New Zealand has the third-highest level of renewables in the world, and we are going to build on that. The country with the highest level of renewable energy in the world is Norway, with 110 percent. Why 110 percent? Because it exports electricity from its hydro systems. The country with the second-highest level of renewable energy is Iceland. Why Iceland? Because it has a huge geothermal resource it widely uses. And we—I say to Dr Smith for his information—are third in the world.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: And we’re going down!

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: No, no. The member, of course, counts all sorts of interesting things in his calculation. He very conveniently forgets that the vast majority of the coal mined in New Zealand is exported, and that other countries use it. Is mining and exporting coal a good activity? Well, if one is a steel maker in Korea, one might get—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: The figures I have quoted are of New Zealand’s use of coal and not of exported coal, so I seek leave to table today’s energy statistics that list New Zealand’s burning of coal and not that which is exported.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): We will take that tabling, but you should not interrupt the speaker for that purpose.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: The Minister was making claims that were quite false. The Minister was making a claim that the figures I had quoted included coal that was exported. That is incorrect. The New Zealand energy figures today refer to consumption, and they are the figures I seek leave to table.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Leave has been sought for that course to be followed. Is there any objection? There is.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: The level of coal use in New Zealand—just for the benefit of the member—is actually down. The level of coal use in New Zealand to generate electricity is down.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: No, it’s not!

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: Well, that is what the officials tell me. Dr Smith can seek leave to table what he likes. Can I suggest that as I did not interrupt Dr Smith from close range during his speech, he does me the same courtesy . I say to the member that carbon neutrality has always been a long-term goal. I find it very interesting that he keeps asking when Labour will tell everyone the time we will reach carbon neutrality.

Well, I have a question for the member and for every National member here. Would National, if elected, pull out of the Kyoto Protocol agreement? That is the critical question, because National makes lots of noise about the protocol. Members should remember that the Hon Simon Upton, a former very distinguished National Minister, signed the Kyoto Protocol agreement on behalf of New Zealand. But Dr Smith talks about how energy use is going up and how New Zealand is being less efficient in terms of the percentage of renewables, etc.

There is a very good reason for that, and more than any other member I am aware of it, because I come from the energy province of New Zealand, Taranaki. In Taranaki we know that in the entire period of the National Government extremely little exploration—it is going down every year—was done in the oil and gas industry. Why is that important? That is important because the massive Māui gasfield, we all knew, had a finite life. We have actually extended its life a little in my time as the responsible Minister. But leaving that to one side, I tell members that the problem is that if we run out of gas, we have to keep our electricity system going. We are using gas at Huntly, the largest thermal power station in New Zealand—the only coal-fired power station in New Zealand. So why has coal use gone up in the term of this Government? It has gone up because there was insufficient gas to continue running the Huntly power station on gas, and therefore that station has reverted to using coal. Thank God there was the ability for it to be dual-fuelled.

What else have we done? The Government-owned company Genesis has built E3P on the site of the Huntly gas-fired power station—which is now largely coal-fired—and that particular project has increased the efficiency of the Huntly power station and reduced the need for the burning of gas, coal, and other fossil fuels. Why has electricity consumption gone up in the period of this Government? The answer is very simple. We have a massive increase in the economy, a massive increase in productivity, and a massive increase in the use of energy. So I want to tell Dr Smith that if he cannot answer the question of whether National will stay in the Kyoto Protocol—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Yes.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: National will stay in the Kyoto Protocol? That is the first time we have heard that. I will tell members what Mr Key, the current leader of the National Party, has said about the Kyoto Protocol. First of all, in regard to climate change he said: “This is a complete and utter hoax, if I may say so.” I am quoting John Key. He asked next what would happen down the track on emissions. He then said that the Kyoto Protocol was not a good idea for the people of New Zealand. Those are all quotes from Mr John Key, the current leader of the National Party.

Dr Smith has made a lot of noise about the Resource Management Act. I tell the member that Project Aqua, which he claims was scuttled because of the Resource Management Act, actually had nothing to do with that Act. Project Aqua, that proposed hydro project, was actually scrapped—

Colin King: I think it did have something to do with it, Minister.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: No, I am sorry. It was actually scrapped for a very good financial reason. The cost of building it grew greatly because of the fact that it was suddenly discovered that miles and miles of concrete culverts had to be built, and the loss of water that would have escaped from the project when diversion canals were built, and then used to make the project work, would have been so high that the loss was unacceptable. It was discovered that all the channels of those canals actually had to be concreted. I am reasonably familiar with this sort of engineering; I have a Dutch background and I know just how expensive that engineering is.

I also say that there are only so many places in which one can build major hydro dams. If the Government is using its thermal resources in New Zealand to generate electricity, it makes real sense to try to establish as much alternative production of energy as we can. That is why, in the time of this Government, I have personally opened one wind farm in the Tararuas. As well, three more projects are under way—three large wind projects are in train—Mākara, Māhinerangi, and Project Hayes. They are all on the way and are all going to produce energy for this country.

We have repeatedly said that New Zealand, like every other country that has a fossil fuel base for its energy, will be reliant on fossil fuels for some time yet. Those who import our fossil fuel resources—our oil, our gas, if they are importing gas; they are not yet, but maybe in the future they will be, and that is one of the purposes of the Great South Basin—are responsible for the thermal resource. But if people are burning New Zealand coal in Korea, is that a good thing or a bad thing? It is a good thing if the other coal they might use is vastly less good for the production of steel, because our coal is the best steel-making coal in the world. How good is our coal? The largest coal-exporting port in our part of the world—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Is it carbon neutral?

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: If the little member would be quiet for a while he might learn something.

The largest coal-exporting port in our part of the world is Newcastle in Australia. Our coal, our high-quality thermal steel-making coal, is so good that we export coal from the West Coast of New Zealand to—where? It goes to Newcastle in Australia, the largest steel-producing area in our part of the world and the largest coal-exporting port in our part of the world. Why would Australians import New Zealand coal if they have the largest coal-exporting port in our part of the world? They import it because it is such good coal for the basic steel-making process that it reduces the need to burn inferior-quality coal.

I tell Dr Smith that that is why it is important that we keep these things in perspective. Dr Smith is an engineer, a professional engineer, and I would expect logic from a professional engineer. I would expect a professional engineer such as Dr Smith, who is professionally trained, to use his brain for the good of this country and not to slag the things that have to be done.

I do not like the fact that we have to burn more coal in Huntly, and that we do not have the gas to do it. I would have liked the National Government to be a bit more responsible and get some oil and gas exploration under way so that we could have discovered some more gas resource in order that we did not have to burn coal in the Huntly power station. But I tell Dr Smith that we have done that. We have been doing the things that make sense in terms of climate change.

We have been doing those things anyway. We have been putting in place insulation in houses. We have been putting in place solar water heating. The National Party members are baying at me because they know the truth. They know they did nothing. They know they sat on their hands, not only in the time of the last National Government but, even worse, in the Muldoon era, and there are probably still a few refugees such as Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith from that era.

We want our children to have a world that is in as good a state as, or in a better state than, the one we inherited. I have small children. I want them to inherit a better world than we have now. But National members argue that we should scrap the Resource Management Act. What will that do for the environment? The National Government—which passed the Resource Management Act, by the way, in 1991—had 9 years in Government and did not change the Act, at all, but its members ever since have bayed that the Resource Management Act is a problem.

We have a whole bunch of initiatives going on right now. I could spend a lot of time reading them, but I want to say that we have a responsibility to keep New Zealand functioning, and to be aspirational and lead to the future in terms of going to a carbon-neutral future sometime in the future.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: When?

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: I tell Dr Smith that no one can tell, because nobody knows how big the wind farms will be able to be, how big our energy efficiency programmes can be, and all those things. All I am telling Dr Smith is that it is really simple. If he stops heckling and stops being rude for a while, we might get somewhere.

I want to say to members that I take my responsibility—[Interruption] I am sorry, but Sandra Goudie is a very rude woman and she should be quiet. I tell members that I want to see a world for my children where they inherit things in better shape than the things we had. Part of that, temporarily, is that we are burning more fossil fuel. I tell Dr Smith that that is correct, because we have no other hook to hang our hat on. But I tell members that as time goes on we will get more efficient, we will get more energy efficiency in place—

Sandra Goudie: But we aren’t—that’s the point.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: —I tell Sandra Goudie that we are, I am sorry—and we will get more insulated homes in place. We are hearing a whole lot of noise from National members, and it is like static on a short-wave radio. They are talking about scrapping the Resource Management Act. They keep throwing up these issues as red herrings. The very simple fact is that we have an economy that is producing and using more electricity. There was no forward planning. There was no oil and gas exploration for the longer term. We are now seeing a considerable advance on that. We are seeing oil and gas exploration producing resources for this country. It means we will need less coal to be burnt in electricity generation, and the end goal, is to have an economy that is viable and dynamic—as we have—but that uses less energy to be so. That is a huge challenge, particularly when we have not done the background work—and National left us exactly in that spot. It mucked up the electricity system. It mucked up, comprehensively, in terms of oil and gas exploration.

What we will see as time goes on is a country that gets more efficient as we put these solutions in place. We will see a country that takes its responsibilities seriously in relation to the Kyoto Protocol. We will not hear the double-talk from the Labour Party that we have heard from the National Party over these issues, and we are still hearing it. The emperor has clothes, according to the National Party; it has not learnt the lessons.

We have to continue down a path that will see for New Zealand an energy-secure future, a dynamic economy, and jobs for our people. We have achieved on most of these things and, as well, we have to ensure that our responsibilities under the Kyoto Protocol—which I remind members was signed up by a National Minister—are going forward to a day where we can make the best use of our resources, and ensure that our children have a future that is more sound, more environmentally sustainable, and in better shape than that we unfortunately had to inherit.

I want to be part of that. I want to ensure that this Government is doing the right things—and so far we have done pretty well when we consider the mess we inherited. I know that my time is almost up on this particular call. I will wait and see what National members have to say, and I just might come back for another call. Thank you.

GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): Members can see why this Government’s climate change and energy conservation policy is in such trouble. The Minister in the chair, Harry Duynhoven, packages up a whole pile of fairy tale, fictional rubbish, and presents it as if it were fact. He says that we are to be a sustainable nation because the Prime Minister says so. In the meantime we will burn more coal than anyone has ever seen before. We will burn it here, we will burn it in Newcastle, we will burn it in China, and we will burn it anywhere. In the meantime we will go around tilting at every windmill we can see in the hope that it might make some difference to our children’s lives in the future because we want this country to be a nice clean, green country, etc.

The Minister’s view is totally divorced from the reality of what his Government is doing. Here it is, in black and white. The Government’s own agency is reporting, not last year, not last month, not last week, but today, that coal production, and the use of coal for energy in this country, has seen a 10 percent rise in the last 12 months.

Why will Helen Clark not accept the invitation to go up and open the E3P plant in Huntly? It is because of—in a word—embarrassment. The word “sustainability” was mentioned 39 times in her speech at the beginning of the year, but, my goodness, at the very time when she was saying that, we had a record use of coal for energy production in New Zealand last year, and the only reason the lights are staying on this year is that a gas-fired plant, a three-stage turbine, is fired up at Huntly.

The Minister in the chair, Harry Duynhoven, is telling an absolute porky when he says there is not enough gas to fire up Huntly. Rubbish! There is plenty of gas and the Minister knows that. He knows that the predictions for the Māui gasfield have been extended and extended and extended. He knows that there is lots of gas in Pohokura. He knows that suddenly the Māui field, which for years was considered to be a pretty low-level, low-flow field, is now in full-on production and is entirely backing E3P. What he does not tell us is that it is convenient to burn coal, it is cheap to burn coal, and it works to burn coal. If that coal was not being burnt and that 1,000 megawatts was taken out, then the lights in the country would go out.

So here we have a Government saying that it will do something for the environment; that we are to have a sustainable New Zealand. It is not a target. At least the National Party has said that we will try to reduce emissions by 50 percent by 2050. But from this Government there has been absolute silence on any target.

Everywhere anyone looks, the picture is bleak. The Minister said: “We have a range of wind farms.”, and I think he said they are about to come on to production. Every one of those projects is held up in the Environment Court. Every one of those projects will end up with a greatly compromised consent. Everyone knows that that is how it works because the deck is stacked against renewable projects. But it is interesting that E3P and Whirinaki never went near that process, because those sorts of projects are easy to get consents for.

National members ask a simple question. If the Prime Minister is out there saying that we want a sustainable environment and a sustainable economy, then why does her Government not make the changes that are necessary?

The Minister also said that Project Aqua was scrapped because water would have spilled all over the place. That is rubbish. Keith Turner, the chief executive, has told anybody who wants to listen that the prospect of going for more than 360 individual consents on that project made it economically unviable. There was far too much time and far too much capital tied up for far too long.

Hon Harry Duynhoven: Talk to the engineers.

GERRY BROWNLEE: Well, the interesting thing is that the irrigation projects that were a consequence of that are actually going ahead. There was no problem with those. It might surprise the Minister if he looked at where the water was coming from, at where the water will now go, and at what is missing in the middle, which is the generating capacity from a renewable source like that. It is what this country so sorely needs.

The Minister also challenged the National Party as to whether it would pull out of the Kyoto Protocol. In my view that is a somewhat stupid question. Clearly, we will not pull out of the Kyoto Protocol, and we have said that over and over. But the Kyoto Protocol will not survive beyond 2012. I think the question is what the Government will do when we get to 2012. There is silence.

David Parker came to the Commerce Committee a couple of weeks ago and, for a start, he told us that the expected emissions first stated by the Ministry for the Environment, which showed us in credit, were wrong. But now the Minister also tells us that the figures showing we are in some sort of deficit are equally wrong, and that rather than a $1.8 billion deficit, he thinks it might be somewhere around $600 million.

Does that mean that the Government will simply pay it and not do the things it should do to try to lessen the effects of carbon dioxide emissions in our own country? Does that mean that we listen to what Minister Duynhoven had to say today—that burning coal is not such a bad thing after all and, because we have such good, high-quality coal, why should we not burn it here and simply pay our way out somewhere else in the world? A question arose as to where the payment goes to in 2012. Where does the Government write the cheque to?

I would like the Minister in the chair, Harry Duynhoven, who is a different Minister, to confirm this statement from Minister Parker, because different Ministers have different views, which is the only consistent thing with this Government in any portfolio. Minister Parker told the committee members that New Zealand emitters could either spend that money reducing emissions in this country or—and this is straight out of a transcript—they may choose to invest in carbon reduction programmes offshore, and if they can gain a greater amount of credits, then so be it. The question though that sits in behind all of this is whether it is now the Government’s intention simply to give up on the prospect of having a greater level of renewable energy, to do away with some of the energy efficiency options we have in this country, and to create some sort of domestic trading market that is largely predicated on purchasing our way out of the particular mess we are in.

One of the things we can be certain of is that beyond 2012 the whole world will get into this—the recent G8 conference makes that extremely clear. Our opportunity is to get ahead of it, but it is alarming to hear people like David Parker giving trite explanations such as those he gave to a select committee just a few weeks ago. I wish his officials, who appear to be in the Chamber tonight, had been at that select committee meeting, because then they would know what he had said, and this evening they would be giving accurate advice to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Harry Duynhoven, who, as we have already discussed, has very little idea of what these particular issues are all about.

But we are talking about climate change in these estimates, and I wonder whether the Minister might be prepared to tell us when we are likely to see some papers indicating the Government’s thinking on a trading market, when we would expect that trading market to be up and running, and just where the Government thinks it will get some of the credits it needs in order to start that particular market. These questions should not go unanswered; they are questions that the current Minister should get up and explain.

I think it would also be nice if the Minister was prepared to apologise to the officials who sit behind him for denying the information they have put out today in the New Zealand Energy Data File dated 18 July 2007, which makes it absolutely clear that electricity generation from renewable sources accounts for 66 percent inside a growing market. That means that a greater percentage of our electrical energy consumed now comes from thermal sources than was the case just a few short years ago.

I further want to ask the Minister how many gasfields have come on in the last 8 years that were explored, consented, and developed entirely in the time of the Labour Government. The answer is very, very few and at a very, very low level. But let us think about the volume of them. The reality is that Pohokura was started and developed under a National Government, and it was finally approved during this Minister’s term, and that the extensions on Māui and on the small field Kupe have all come about as a result of work commissioned by the previous National Government.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN (Associate Minister of Energy): I just want to clear up a few of the myths that are being promoted around here, but let me begin by asking Mr Brownlee a question. He talked about a need for the Government to get away from the use of fossil fuels. The only way I can think of travelling in this country without using fossil fuels is by either bicycle or horse. I ask Mr Brownlee to tell us when he last rode a bicycle or a horse. It has all gone quiet. I tell Mr Brownlee to sit down; he will get his chance to come back to me with an answer.

Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I rise to answer the question asked of me by the Minister, and seek leave to do so.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The member seeks leave to answer that question. Is there any objection? There is.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: I will deal now with some of the myths that Mr Brownlee talked about. First of all, in the December quarter of last year 74 percent of New Zealand’s electricity use was from renewables. On average, it is around 70 percent. We are ranked third-highest country in the world in terms of electricity generation from renewables.

Let us talk about targets for Kyoto. National’s target for climate change initiatives to get to a sustainable, carbon-neutral point is 50 percent by 2050. That is 43 years away. That is a 43-year kick for touch. This is the promise one makes when one knows one is going to be dead before the promise has to be honoured. That is what National is doing. Labour is actually dealing with the issues here and now in New Zealand.

The important thing about burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, or gas is that one takes responsibility for its emissions, as we do in New Zealand and as we expect other countries under the Kyoto agreement to do. When we export coal, we expect countries that are buying it to do that. Coal use for generating electricity is down in New Zealand. As a result—

Gerry Brownlee: No, it’s not!

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: I say to Mr Brownlee that I have not interrupted him. He should do me the courtesy of being quiet and listening instead of being rude. Coal use is down in New Zealand—[Interruption] I say to Dr Smith that he should be quiet and listen. Coal use—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Three times!

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): No, please be seated. The member knows that—[Interruption] I am on my feet, members. There will be silence. [Interruption] We will just have some order, please. There is to be silence when I am ruling. The point is, Dr Smith, that you were just barracking too much and I would ask that you have reasonable interjections.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: Coal use is actually down since the E3P project came on, because it uses the energy of that power station much more efficiently and generates more electricity for the same amount of coal use. Coal use in New Zealand has actually gone down since E3P was commissioned. But according to Mr Brownlee, E3P was a massive mistake because it uses more fossil fuels. I just do not understand where he is coming from at all. Genesis—

Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I never said that. I think that E3P is a marvellous machine, and we most certainly need it. The lights would be out right now if we did not have it. It is the only thing that is saving the Government from extreme embarrassment—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): Please be seated.

Gerry Brownlee:—and it is a great thing.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Mr Brownlee, I give you a warning. You know very well that that is not a point of order, and to interrupt a member’s speech like that is just not on.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: When there is little one can argue about, I suppose that is the only tactic Opposition members have left. When they were in Government, they did not take the initiatives or make the moves needed to ensure we had a secure energy future, and now they oppose things like transmission line upgrades in order to ensure we can keep, as Mr Brownlee says, the lights on in our key cities. Genesis Energy says that the introduction of E3P—that massive, three-stage gas turbine at Huntly—will actually reduce New Zealand’s carbon footprint in the energy sector by around 10 percent. That is substantial, but it also ensures security of supply, which is a major, major objective.

In 2012 this Government will be involved in whatever agreement the world is involved in at that time, because climate change is a global issue. We cannot do it on our own, but, together with other countries that have a progressive and like mind, we will make a difference, and, as is so often said, New Zealand regularly punches above its weight in the world environment. Will the National Party still be following the lead of Kazakhstan by 2012, or—if it happens to be the Government at some stage in the future—will it be at the table negotiating in New Zealand’s interests?

We were challenged a few minutes ago about climate change initiatives. I just wave a small document of 12 pages of Labour’s climate change initiatives. Now, I could go through them one by one and tell the National Party and others in the Chamber precisely what the Government is doing.

Gerry Brownlee: Table it!

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: I am very happy to table it, if the member would like me to. But what we have is a lot of crocodile tears and a lot of nonsense from the National Party, which is actually jealous that it did not have the foresight when it was previously in Government to do much about security of supply for New Zealand, or to do much about looking ahead for energy use. Mr Brownlee talked about—and he was, I think, energy spokesperson or deputy energy spokesperson for a while—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: No, that is an oxymoron, Gerry and energy.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: Well, he will maybe answer the question about when he was last on a bicycle or a horse. But he must know, having been in this place a while, that one cannot simply bandy figures about on things like Maui. The Maui project was a huge project, and with the technology of the day it was estimated that it had a finite field life that would end in about 2007, 2008, or 2009. It was estimated at about that. What we have done in the period since, by renegotiation of the Maui gas contract, is make it possible for the operators of the field to extend the life of the field. This is very common in the oil and gas industry.

Another marvellous example is the Kapuni field, which was originally scheduled to be long closed. I remember at the age of 4 years old, as a little tacker, being taken by my dad to see the first flare at the Kapuni gas production site. Kapuni has—

Simon Power: In a horse and cart.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: No, not quite in a horse and cart, but it was close. It was a 1934 Morris Ten.

The issue is that Kapuni, with massive changes in technology, extensions, and horizontal drilling of wells, has had its life extended dramatically. It has produced vastly longer and vastly more than was ever proposed when it was discovered. That is what happens with oil and gas technology. One of the reasons the Great South Basin is now being developed—we have begun the exploration phase—is that we now know that it is possible, if oil and gas is discovered there, to bring that to market.

That is what changed. The technology has changed dramatically. That is why Maui has been extended. As recently as 2 or 3 years ago there was no appreciation of quite how much longer we might get out of Maui. We think now it might be 2014. It may even be a little longer, as extension technology and new techniques are developed. But that is what the oil and gas industry is all about. It is a highly technical industry with very competent, marvellous people who are prepared to go out on a limb to test theories, and they make a difference.

As a country, we have had to be responsible for our future. In terms of energy use, we are a highly intensive energy-use country, largely because of the fact that we are long and thin without too much in the way of, but now greatly increasing, public transport. Without a huge public transport network, most of us depend on private cars for transport. As a result, we are quite energy intensive. I have not heard anything yet from the National Party on what it proposes to do about oil and gas for those fleets of cars around the country, for the trucks that our commerce depends upon, for our railway system, and for our agriculture.

All of those things depend on diesel, petrol, and, to some degree, liquefied petroleum gas fuel. As a result, we have been responsible and said that this country needs to find more oil and gas resources to keep our economy going. I am proud of that. I am proud of the climate change initiatives the Government has done. I am very happy, at the end of my speech in about 30 or 40 seconds’ time, to table all the initiatives.

I can say to National members that it is about time they thought about the interests of New Zealand and of our children and grandchildren. I am 52 years old, I have children who are 15, 13, and nearly 12 years of age, and I want to see that they have a great future in a country that has a dynamic economy, that has a sustainable future that looks ahead, that is part of international agreements on climate change, and that actually does something to ensure a sustainable, viable future for this generation of people coming. National members can carp on all they like; they do not actually do the job.

I seek leave to table a document dated 22 May of this year that is the Government’s initiative on climate change. It is 12 pages of tiny typed A4.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I am sorry, I inadvertently misled the House. The document is 15 pages.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): There was objection. Please, members, there will be silence during points of order.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I seek leave, given that the Minister has told the House that the dependence on coal has reduced, to table today’s Ministry for Economic Development figures—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: —so the House knows what they are.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The member has clearly said what it is. There is objection. Leave is not granted.

GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I seek leave to table a document showing that when the wellhead price for gas was $1.80, Māui was empty, but when it was at $6.50 it suddenly had another 10 years of life.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Madam Chair—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): Point of order?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: New call, Madam Chair.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): No, the member has had his calls. The question is that Vote Climate Change—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Madam Chair, I seek leave for a further call on this important issue of climate change.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The member is seeking leave of the House for a further call. Members have two calls on this. He is seeking leave for a further call. Is there any objection? Yes, there is.

GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. Do I take it then that Ministers have unlimited calls on any particular vote?

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Mr Brownlee, please be seated. This is the estimates debate, and on each vote members can have two speeches of 5 minutes each; the Minister in charge can have multiple speeches of 5 minutes each.

Hon Member: How many?

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The Minister can have unlimited calls.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Vote Climate Change and Energy Efficiency be agreed to.

Ayes 60

New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand First 7; United Future 2; Progressive 1; Independent: Copeland.

Noes 50

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 2.

Abstentions 10

Green Party 6; Māori Party 4.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Energy

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I have a simple challenge for the Minister in the chair, the Hon Harry Duynhoven, concerning his last speech. He told Parliament that there had been a reduction in the dependence on coal under his Government. He gave crocodile tears about the future of the country and the need for there to be progress on climate change. Well, I ask him to deny these simple figures from the Ministry for Economic Development. The figures say that in 2000, 1,533 gigawatt hours of power were produced from coal. They say that for the latest year 5,119 gigawatts were produced from coal. Well, 1,533 to 5,119 does not sound like a decrease to me. It is actually a threefold increase. So how can the Minister in the chair credibly say to this Committee that the Government is focused on climate change and saving the future when there has been a threefold increase in the amount of electricity produced from coal? It sounds like a crock, I say to the Minister. It sounds as if he is misleading the Committee. It sounds totally inconsistent.

Hon Harry Duynhoven: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I have every expectation this will be a robust debate, but I am not going to sit here and take being told by that member that I have misled the Committee. That is not the case and I take exception to that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The point of order is, I think, that it is part of the debate, and we will leave it at that. The time has come for this debate to be concluded.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I again seek leave to table the Government’s own electricity generation—

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

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney): I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I am sitting only less than 6 feet from the member who sought leave to table that document. It was not possible for me to determine what that document was about when you put that leave to the Committee. I know the Speaker has made it clear that she does not want members to go into long details about documents, but if the process of tabling documents is to have any meaning at all, members must know what the document is about. There was no way we could have known what that document was about when you cut off the member’s description of it.

DARREN HUGHES (Junior Whip—Labour): There was a very good way of knowing what it was about, and that was to listen to his colleague. He stood up and said he was going to seek leave again—it is not technically possible but we have decided to agree—and he told us in his previous contribution what exactly it was that he was tabling. We agree with it and are very happy for it to be tabled.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN (Associate Minister of Energy): In the spirit of cooperation, I seek leave again, also, to table the document I tried to table before—the 15 pages of Government initiatives with climate change benefits.

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

The question was put that Vote Energy, Vote Lands, Vote Customs, Vote Youth Development, Vote Statistics, Vote Consumer Affairs, Vote National Archives, Vote National Library, Vote Community and Voluntary Sector, Vote Foreign Affairs and Trade, Vote Official Development Assistance, Vote Racing, Vote Revenue, the preamble, clauses 1 to 12, and schedules 1 to 7 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the votes, the preamble, clauses 1 to 12, and schedules 1 to 7 be agreed to.

Ayes 61

New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand First 7; United Future 2; Progressive 1; Independents: Copeland, Field.

Noes 50

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 2.

Abstentions 10

Green Party 6; Māori Party 4.

Votes, preamble, clauses 1 to 12, and schedules 1 to 7 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

Criminal Justice Reform Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed from 26 June.

Part 2 Amendments to Acts relating to Criminal Justice (continued)

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): When the bill was previously before the Committee, Dr Richard Worth had the call. He has 1 minute remaining, if he so wishes.

Dr RICHARD WORTH (National): What a privilege it is to speak on Part 2 of the Criminal Justice Reform Bill about these important amendments. I would like to start, in the short time that I have remaining, by saying that it seems—and it always has seemed—to me that when one talks about reform there is an element of added value, an element of goodness, if one likes. The quintessence of the legislation should be captured in what is proposed.

But that is not so in respect of Part 2 of this bill, sadly, because here we see a raft of amendments on a whole lot of really important issues, which perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, should never have been placed before this Parliament. The Sentencing Act was much vaunted. It was, from the Government’s perspective, as good as it got, and probably as good as it would ever get. Certainly, that was on offer as to what was involved. Yet I think we see, through Part 2, nothing but unrelieved sadness—a failure of Government policy to come to grips with issues that are incredibly important.

SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei): I am sorry to delay standing, but I was just reminding myself of the vast array of Supplementary Order Papers that have been put before the Justice and Electoral Committee by the Minister of Justice in an attempt to clean up Part 2 of this bill. It just seems to go on and on. There is a serious matter at hand—

Hon Mark Burton: What is it?

SIMON POWER: The Minister should not be so quick to be so glib. I would like him to answer this question, which relates to clause 96, “Start of process”, which amends the Parole Act. It talks about the victim’s discussions or relationship with the Parole Board. This is a substantial change to the current law, and it does warrant comment. This clause amends the Parole Act so that a victim has to be invited by the board to present oral submissions to the board if the victim’s written submissions or other material are relevant to either of the following matters: whether the release of the offender poses an undue risk to the safety of the community, or ways of managing the risk posed to the safety of the community or any class of person by release of the offender. The select committee heard evidence that that was a change to the current arrangements—which it clearly is, otherwise the bill would not amend it—but Victim Support—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Strewth!

SIMON POWER: This is actually quite a serious matter, I say to Mr Cosgrove. Victim Support appeared before the select committee to discuss this clause and raised concerns about it. It said the victim of a crime committed by an offender who is up for a parole hearing should have the right to appear before that Parole Board panel, to put forward the case for the impact the release would have on the victim. I wonder whether the Minister could explain to the Committee why, under the amendments to the Parole Act, a victim will have to be invited to appear before the panel to make submissions about a potential release.

Although the Minister and I have had our disagreements over the years, I do not believe for one moment that this Minister wants to pass legislation that would create difficulty for a victim to appear before a Parole Board panel at the point of the hearing, nor do I believe that this Minister would intentionally deprive victims of a right to be heard. But, on the face of it, the change to the Act states that “the victim may be invited to present oral submissions”, rather than have a right to appear. This is a serious matter, and if I have got it wrong I am happy to hear from the Minister that that is the case. But it has to be said that clause 96 invites ambiguity.

One thing this Committee does not want to do is send a message to victims of crime that although at the moment they are able to appear before a Parole Board panel and make submissions, this new amendment to the Parole Act seems to indicate that unless they are invited to appear they lose the right to make a submission based on public safety or, indeed, the impact on them as individuals. The one thing we want to avoid is the victims of crime having to relive those crimes constantly, but part of the process of gaining that control—which may have been taken away by that crime having been committed—is being able to front up to legal institutions to put their case forward, to have their feelings aired, and to have their views heard. The last thing we want to pass is ambiguous legislation that, on the surface, appears to deny them that right.

Debate interrupted.

AMENDED ANSWERS TO ORAL QUESTIONS

Question No. 7 to Minister

Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Housing): This afternoon, in response to a supplementary question from Phil Heatley MP, I stated that Housing New Zealand Corporation had generated savings of $300 million by transferring tenants from larger properties to ones that better suited their needs. Our efforts to find 303 households more appropriate homes have, in fact, generated savings of $36 million in the last year; those efforts are part of the larger, better utilisation project, which also involves encouraging market rent tenants to move into the private rental market or homeownership. In fact, this project has generated savings of $280 million—I was $20 million out. Thank you.

SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei): I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. There is no way that members of the Opposition would ever deny the Minister an opportunity to correct an answer given to the House, but in the time that I have been here it has been customary for a Minister to conclude his statement by apologising for misleading the House.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I ask the Minister please to—

Hon Chris Carter: Madam Chairperson, sorry. I regret my error.

Simon Power: Point of order, Madam Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): No, please be seated. Would the Minister please stand and withdraw and apologise.

Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Housing): I thought I had, but I will repeat it. I regret my error.

Bills

Criminal Justice Reform Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed.

Part 2 Amendments to Acts relating to Criminal Justice (continued)

JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon): Following on from that very good contribution from my colleague Simon Power, one of the things I would like to talk about this evening in relation to Part 2 is the issue of parole hearings.

Many of the members of the Committee will be aware of Mrs Croskery, whose son Michael was referred to in the media as the pizza delivery man who was killed by the children in Papakura, which of course is part of my electorate. In that particular case one of the things that Mrs Croskery says as a constituent is that every year when parole comes up for these young killers she has to relive this tragedy not once but actually about seven or eight times, depending on the number of children we are talking about. She has to go the hearings and talk about what has happened, how it has affected her, how it has affected her family, and why these people should not get parole.

I would have thought it would be a very good plan to make sure when multiple assailants, multiple criminals, are seeking parole that one hearing would be enough; that they could be dealt with at one time. I know that that might offend some people who are more concerned about the rights of criminals than the rights of victims, but frankly, if they undertake the crime together perhaps they could do the time together and take some of the consequences together, because clearly they want to hang out together. I think it is a good opportunity for people to address this issue. I am sorry that it has not been properly addressed in this area.

I would, however, like to commend to the Committee Supplementary Order Paper 126 in the name of my colleague Chris Finlayson, and in particular the amendment to clause 40 that states that the court must have regard to sentencing guidelines. One of the things we want to do is to make sure that when the court does have regard to sentencing guidelines, as it must, it does so if the guidelines are relevant to the offender’s case. One of the points we want to make sure of—and we have talked about this before in the House—is the fact that sentencing guidelines can become sentencing dictates, rather than sentencing guidelines. That, frankly, means that judges are told what the sentence will have to be, rather than they have the ability to look at the facts, understand what is going on having sat through the case, and then make their judgment based on that, on their experience, and on precedent.

We have talked about sentencing guidelines before as being something that should be only that, rather than the tick the box rules that this Government seems to want to impose on judges. It is hard enough getting good people to want to be judges, and it is very difficult to get very experienced, very good people. One of the things we do not want to do is to dumb down the judiciary just because this Government does not trust the judiciary to do its job and to make the right decisions based on what the judges see. Unfortunately, the media in particular tend to go for the headlines and tend to put in a very concise form exactly what the case is about and what the evidence is. It is very difficult, when we have complicated criminal cases, to be able to put the essence of a case into three or four paragraphs. Maybe the evidence has not been heard by the person in the media, maybe that person has not been able to see the witnesses and test their veracity, but certainly a judge can see that, and a jury can see that.

That is why in many cases we are better to leave more power to the judges to do the sentencing because the judges have sat through the entire case. They have not read just the headline. They have not seen just the television review of it. They have not seen just the basic facts on a piece of paper. They have actually heard the witnesses give their evidence, they have heard it tested, and they have made their own decisions as to whether they think the witness is telling the truth. They have made their own judgment about whether there is something more than what is being told, but which has not come out. Judges are actually the best people to make the decision. That is why one of the concerns we have had is that this Government has wanted to pull judges into line and tell them what they should be doing. Guidelines have the opportunity to become set rules, rather than guidelines. Basically it is the State controlling the judges. One of the principles of democracy is that we have an independent judiciary.

Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Justice): I want to pick up on a point in particular that Simon Power made and also comment briefly on Judith Collins’ comments. Mr Power raised—

Hon Tau Henare: Please speak up. I can’t hear you.

Hon MARK BURTON: Is the member having trouble hearing?

Hon Tau Henare: I know you are a gentle man.

Hon MARK BURTON: I am a gentle man. Mr Power raised an important question around parole hearings, the appearance of victims at parole hearings, and their opportunity to be heard in support of any written submission they might make. I want to reassure Mr Power that the provision currently in effect is that the Parole Board determines whether a hearing will be an attended or an unattended hearing. In effect, the Parole Board makes a structural decision upfront as to the nature of the parole hearing. If it is to be unattended hearing, then under the current provision there is no opportunity for a submission to be made.

Of course one of the fundamental changes that this legislation makes is to be very clear about the singular focus of the Parole Board in looking to the safety of the community in its deliberation and consideration of a parole application. In fact, the range of issues that are likely to be before it are much more focused, perhaps, than has sometimes been the case in the past.

A further point—and this touches in part on the first issue that Judith Collins raised—is the frequency with which some victims and families of victims, whether or not they are attending, none the less may have to consider and relive the issues.

Of course one of the fundamental changes in this legislation is to require a minimum of two-thirds of a sentence to be served. Let us take a 9-year sentence. The first time that a convicted person could even apply for consideration is after 6 years. So that potentially will make a significant difference, as well. The number of occasions almost inevitably will be reduced. I hope that gives both members some comfort as to the concerns they have raised.

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National): I take a call to address clause 40 because it raises an important matter about sentencing practice. As currently drafted, the proposed new section 21A, to be inserted by clause 40, provides: “When sentencing an offender, a court must impose a sentence that is consistent with any sentencing guidelines that are relevant …”. Yet I believe that that approach, as expressed in the bill, is unreal and does not reflect the reality of the sentencing exercise undertaken by the judge.

It is a fundamental principle of sentencing practice that judicial discretion is central when one is dealing with an offender. It is not simply a question of applying Sir Geoffrey’s guidelines rigidly and like an automaton, but, rather, of taking the guidelines as a starting point, looking at the facts of the case, looking at the seriousness of the offence, looking at the age of the offender, and looking at other such factors when determining whether a sentence is going to be of a particular level. This point was very well expressed by the High Court of Australia not so long ago, when it said: “A sentencing judge must take into account a wide variety of matters which concern the seriousness of the offence for which the offender stands to be sentenced and the personal history and the circumstances of the offender. Yet from these the sentencing judge must distil an answer which reflects human behaviour in the time or monetary units of punishment.”

That is the reality of the sentencing exercise and, as expressed, the proposed new section 21A does not recognise that reality. As I said, it expects judges, who are now hijacked into the executive by this odious Sentencing Council, to apply Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s sentencing guidelines rigidly, without giving them very much thought at all. Members should note the words, “a court must impose a sentence”, and, as one can see from clause 35, which inserts new section 6A into the Sentencing Act, the guideline is to apply to the sentencing of an offender in the District Court, the High Court, the Court of Appeal, or the Supreme Court, and—it is interesting to note—“on … the date on which the guideline comes into force, whether or not the guideline was in force when the offence was committed.”, which in itself is constitutionally improper.

I come back to my proposal for amending new section 21A, because what I have tried to do in my Supplementary Order Paper 126 is to recognise the reality of the sentencing exercise that is undertaken by the judge in whatever court he or she sits. It states simply: “When sentencing an offender, a court must have regard to any sentencing guidelines …”, because that reflects the reality of sentencing practice, and that is what lawyers and judges are dealing with, day by day, in the courts. It is something that academics and the people in the Law Commission may not necessarily have to deal with, which is probably why they seek to impose this Stalinist requirement that the “court must impose” a sentencing guideline.

So that is what the Supplementary Order Paper is about. I hope that sensible, practical people in this Committee like Mr Mark will reflect upon it, because it does not seek to apply these guidelines rigidly but has a requirement that judges must have regard to them, which is a much more meaningful and sensible way of dealing with the guidelines. It reflects the reality of the sentencing exercise.

When I was in England a few months ago I went down to the Sentencing Guidelines Council and saw the kinds of guidelines that had been prepared in England. It was interesting that the council had guidelines to reflect seriousness, guidelines to reflect age, and guidelines to reflect the particular crime that had been committed. A judge, when dealing with a sentencing exercise, sometimes has to take into account two or three guidelines. If that is to be the case in New Zealand, then one cannot impose a sentence consistent with any sentencing guidelines. What one has to do as a matter of reality is to take the various guidelines, reflect on them, then exercise one’s judgment and exercise a discretion in reaching a sentencing figure or sentencing a time of imprisonment that reflects the particular circumstances of the case.

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour): I would like to begin by addressing some of the comments made by the previous speaker, Chris Finlayson. What a shame it is that he did not quote in full the new section 21A, to be inserted in the Sentencing Act by clause 40. The section states: “When sentencing an offender, a court must impose a sentence that is consistent with any sentencing guidelines that are relevant in the offender’s case,”. So that is how the courts are able to get to the relevance of the individual case.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: He didn’t tell us that one, did he?

CHARLES CHAUVEL: No, conveniently not.

And the section goes on to provide “unless the court is satisfied that it would be contrary to the interests of justice to do so.” In other words, the court has complete discretion to do what is required by the interests of justice in the individual case to recognise the individual circumstances of the offender. Indeed, great care was taken with the casting of this section to ensure that the principles of judicial independence, and the need to do justice in individual cases, were carefully preserved. So it is a shame that the Committee was not quoted the section in full. I hope my setting it out like this demonstrates the nonsense of the member’s Supplementary Order Paper 126, and shows that the bill as reported back, along with the Supplementary Order Papers proposed by the Minister of Justice, will serve very well to achieve the very important principles set out in the purposive parts of the legislation.

I also note that the previous speaker spoke of the odiousness, as he put it, of the new section 6A to be inserted in the Sentencing Act by clause 35, which requires judges to consider and apply, where applicable, the guidelines whether or not they were in force when an offence was committed. We heard evidence from the judges that because there are no guidelines in respect of most offences that come before the District Court, except for those guidelines that they manage to come up with by exercising common sense, there is actually no way of telling whether a sentence given under a guideline would be more or less onerous than if the guideline were not in force. This is simply because there is no guidance at the moment for District Court judges, who confer 90 percent of the sentences in this country, as to what to do. What a compelling case that is for the guidelines that this legislation would bring into force.

I will speak just briefly to the rest of Part 2. I will speak of it in the round because it is important, in my view, to recognise the achievement that the bill as reported back from the Justice and Electoral Committee represents. There will be a clear hierarchy of sentences. There will be three new non-custodial sentences, including a change to the parole eligibility regime.

It is also important to note that home detention will become a sentence in its own right, rather than being a way of serving a sentence of imprisonment, as it is currently. Home detention will be an option only for offenders who are a low risk to the community, and it will have a maximum term of 12 months. The new sentence will replace front-end home detention, which is currently available for eligible prisoners who are serving prison sentences of less than 2 years. Those who are nearing parole for more serious crimes will no longer be able to apply for back-end home detention, which was introduced by the previous National Government in 1999. The effectiveness of home detention is well established. It has low re-conviction and re-imprisonment rates when compared with prison sentences, and a high level of compliance. Home detention also clearly aids rehabilitation by ensuring that offenders maintain pre-existing responsibilities to their family and community.

Both of these new community-based sentences, community detention and intensive supervision, will provide a higher level of restriction and supervision of offenders than either of the existing community-based sentences. So these measures are tough on crime, and suitably so, but they are based on the science as opposed to being based on rednecked rhetoric. Community-based sentences will also include a greater emphasis on offenders gaining basic work and living skills. These changes mean that judges will have a greater range of options when sentencing offenders, particularly at the lower levels of offending.

So rather than curtail judicial independence, as Mrs Collins suggested, in fact the changes will enhance the independence and freedom that judges have to confer appropriate sentences in individual cases—sentences that can be used to genuinely fit the specific circumstances of the offence and the offender. If a judge believes that home detention is the appropriate sentence, the judge can make that decision at the time of sentencing.

This certainty in sentencing also extends to planned changes to the parole regime. Under the bill, inmates serving sentences of more than 12 months will not be eligible for parole until they have served at least two-thirds of their sentences. In this regard, I note that Mr Power, in an earlier speech, claimed that it was the Labour Government that brought in one-third parole eligibility in 1993. Well, of course—

Simon Power: I didn’t say 1993; I said 2002.

CHARLES CHAUVEL: I am sorry—in 2002. Well, of course, that is wrong. It was brought in in 1993 by the National Government. The 2002 Sentencing Act simply maintained the status quo. So that was another error from the Opposition on this important legislation.

Other salient points in the bill, as reported back, include that of prisoners sentenced to 12 months or less having to serve their whole sentence. All those involved in the case—the victims, the police, and of course the offender—will know from the outset that the offender will serve the lion’s share of the sentence.

At last, we have a chance to have truth in sentencing in this country through enlightened and scientifically based legislation brought in by the Minister of Justice and considered carefully by the Justice and Electoral Committee. I commend the bill to the Committee of the whole House.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I call Ron Mark—

Dr Wayne Mapp: A member of the Government, for heaven’s sake!

RON MARK (NZ First): It clearly must have been a very good dinner, Mr Mapp.

Hon Tau Henare: You were there—you were there!

RON MARK: Don’t tell lies, Tau—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Please be seated. We will have some order, please. The member has not even started his speech.

Hon Tau Henare: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I thought that it was a tradition in this House—in fact, the Standing Orders say that we are not allowed to accuse a member of lying. That member accused me of lying, and I ask him, through you, to withdraw and apologise.

RON MARK: Tau Henare said I was at dinner with him and Wayne Mapp, and if Tau Henare is going to stand up now in this Chamber and put his hand on his heart and say that he was telling the truth, then I will withdraw and apologise. But he is not—he told a lie when he said that. And that is the truth.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Please be seated. The member knows that he cannot call another member a liar.

RON MARK: No, I did not.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The member used the word, and the member cannot say that. The member has to stand up, withdraw, and apologise.

RON MARK: Madam Chair, this may result in my leaving the Chamber and not completing my speech, because I am asking your indulgence. The fact of the matter is that I was with a group of people over dinner time, and I can prove quite categorically where I was. Mr Henare told a lie.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Please be seated. I am on my feet—please be seated. No, the member cannot dispute what I have said. I have made a ruling. The member clearly said that, and he must withdraw and apologise. [Interruption] I am sorry; I have ruled on the matter. The member has said that to another member. He knows that he cannot say that. The member must withdraw and apologise.

RON MARK: Madam Chair, I accept that and I will comply with your instructions. But let me ask you this—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): No, no. I am sorry. Please be seated. I will give the member one more opportunity to just comply with my order to withdraw and apologise.

RON MARK: I withdraw and apologise.

The CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I seek your guidance. You have suggested rightly—and the member has complied—that the member used an unparliamentary word. That is accepted, I think, by all and sundry. But you have another problem, which is that you have the word of a member, the member Mr Henare, who got up and made a claim. You have the word of Mr Mark that that was a false claim, and the language used may not have been appropriate. In effect, Mr Henare has misled the Committee. I take offence at that. He has misled the Committee, but there is a remedy, and I ask you to rule on that, please.

The CHAIRPERSON: If the member is disputing that, it can be dealt with as a matter of privilege. It is not up to me to deal with that. I have dealt with the previous point; I am not going to relitigate that. The member said that, so the matter can be dealt with as a matter of privilege.

RON MARK: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. My understanding of your ruling is that if I wish to contest the veracity of what Mr Henare just said, I must take the case to the Privileges Committee, of which Mr Simon Power is the chair. And he, being a National member, is the person who will be hearing that case.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): No, no, please be seated. I am on my feet. No, the member, as I indicated, must raise it as a point of privilege with the Speaker.

Simon Power: Point of order—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): No, I have ruled on that. Is this a new point of order, Mr Power?

Simon Power: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I have two points, if I may. Yes, they are points of order. First of all, the member should know that if he wishes to raise a matter of privilege he does that with the Speaker, not with the Privileges Committee. Secondly, I take absolute offence at the insinuation that as the chairperson of the Privileges Committee of this Parliament I would hear any evidence or matter before that committee and have a biased view of it because of the political party I belong to.

The CHAIRPERSON: I am on my feet—there will be silence. Mr Power, we have dealt with the previous matter and I have made it very clear to the member—

Simon Power: I have taken offence.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): —no, please, I am just dealing with the first one—that the member needs to raise that with the Speaker as a matter of privilege. On the second matter, as the member Simon Power has said, he has taken offence—a clear offence—that the member has insinuated that Mr Power would not act honourably as chair. He has taken offence at that, and I ask the member to withdraw and apologise.

RON MARK: I withdraw and apologise if Mr Power is in any way offended. Mr Power is an exceedingly honourable member of this House, and one who has been judged as being so on many occasions.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The member wishes to continue his speech now?

RON MARK: Yes. Let me say, Madam Chair—

Dr Wayne Mapp: Ha, ha!

RON MARK: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. Is there something wrong with Mr Mapp—does he need assistance?

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): No, that is not a point of order. I say to members that somebody is going to go out in a minute if members are not quiet while a point of order is being dealt with, and that includes you, Mr Henare.

Dr Wayne Mapp: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I did take exception to what Mr Mark has been saying. Actually, to be fair, it is a little unusual for him, but he has made two statements. The first one I let go; it was actually untruthful. The second one I do take exception to, and I would ask him to observe the decorum of the House and withdraw and apologise for his statement.

RON MARK: Speaking to the point of order, Madam Speaker, the decorum that Dr Wayne Mapp seeks would have been best demonstrated by Dr Mapp himself at the outset of my attempt to start a speech. In fact, this whole debacle has ensued as a result of his absolute lack of decorum, which is totally unbefitting Dr Mapp, in my 11 years of experience in this House of observing him. The fact that he is getting some sort of assistance from the back, from the Hon Tau Henare, does him no good whatsoever in the eyes of anyone who has been watching this entire thing roll itself out on the television screens over the last 10 minutes.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Well, Dr Mapp, I certainly did not hear the remark, but I think there was a lot of interchange previous to that. I ask Mr Mark to withdraw that remark.

RON MARK: I withdraw. To sit as a centre-party member and listen to the debate between National and Labour on the Criminal Justice Reform Bill does give one cause to reflect a little on what has transpired in this House since 2002. It is interesting to hear Mr Chauvel say that the legislative changes to the parole laws enacted in 2002 did not actually taken effect in 2002, and that they happened in 1999. That is not how New Zealand First recalls it. We welcome the changes in this legislation to return ourselves to the situation where people must complete two-thirds of their sentence before they are eligible for consideration for parole. But the fact of the matter is that we are in this position only because in 2002 the Hon Phil Goff came to this House with legislation called the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act, which were supposedly the answer to the problems raised by Norm Withers in his nationwide petition for longer and harsher penalties. The result this Government gave the people of New Zealand was to reduce the time required for eligibility for parole from two-thirds of a sentence down to one-third.

Now we are back where we were in 2002, when we said that that was wrong. That is interesting, because at the same time in that legislation we had discussions about periodic detention. Periodic detention, as we knew it, was virtually repealed, and in this legislation we are now going back and redressing the problems that were implemented as a result of the law change in 2002—a law change that New Zealand First opposed, and I know that the National Party, when it had sensible members in Parliament—before it brought in waka hoppers like Tau Henare—also opposed. We voted against that.

We welcome the changes to home detention. The point the Committee needs to be reminded of is that New Zealand First led the charge against home detention, particularly back-end home detention, and its implementation. It is quite interesting to hear members say that home detention has a low reconviction rate and a low re-imprisonment rate. The fact that it is highly successful—and people have trumpeted its successes for many years now—belies the evidence that New Zealand First tabled in documents, time after time in this Chamber, showing where it was failing.

How can we say that home detention is effective, when the National Government of the day brought it in, saying that it would not be applied to serious offenders, to violent offenders, to wife beaters, or to drug dealers, yet New Zealand First revealed over a 3-year period that not only were wife beaters getting back-end home detention, not only were people who assaulted children—one man with a rifle—getting back-end home detention, but also drug dealers were getting back-end home detention? We exposed the fact that a drug dealer was manufacturing P, and killed himself on an overdose of P, whilst on home detention—back-end home detention. And people have the nerve to stand up and say that home detention is successful and that it is administered well? Well, I am sorry, but it is not.

This change to make home detention a sentence in its own right is something that New Zealand First has lobbied and fought hard for.

Hon Tau Henare: Why aren’t you doing anything about it?

RON MARK: In answer to “Mr Taurekareka”, the Hon Tau Henare, we are doing something about it, and this legislation proves it. For those who have sat in the National Party—

Hon Tau Henare: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. The term Taurekareka, although being the name of my great-grandfather, is not my name. My name is Raymond Tau Henare. I prefer to be called Tau Henare. Taurekareka to me and to some people means “slave”. I am no one’s slave, especially not the slave of that little man over there.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): All members know that they must use a member’s correct name.

RON MARK: I did; I called him the Hon Tau Henare at least three times, and Hansard will reflect that. But the question of who is a slave and who is not is a highly debatable question, and some could say that someone who goes from being an Alliance Party member to being a National Party member in support of right-wing free-market economics has to be a slave to something—whether it is ideology, or something else, we shall never know. All we know is that the man hops from party to party like a bird on a tree looking for a crumb, wherever it may be, in the hope that there is a Cabinet position at the end of that rainbow.

The question Mr Henare put was what we have done about the situation. What New Zealand First has done about it is that it has lobbied and worked hard. We are pleased with the result in this legislation of seeing home detention now as a sentence in its own right.

Let me tell Mr Henare one of the other advantages. Under the old system, when a judge gave leave for someone to apply for home detention, that person got a deferred sentence. And what did we see from a deferred sentence? We saw that an individual up in Auckland—and I know that Mr Worth now recalls this, because I can see the look on his face—was given a deferred sentence and disappeared. The police investigations looked for that man to charge him again, and, hello, he was nowhere to be found—he had gone.

That issue has been addressed. We will no longer see people given leave to apply for home detention, given a deferred sentence, and then not being able to be found by the police, because it will now be given as a sentence in its own right. New Zealand First rightly claims credit for that.

We will just conclude this particular contribution by saying that we are pleased we have finally redressed some of the anomalies. We have our concerns about home detention, but we are prepared to allow this regime to go ahead because we think it is a far better regime than that introduced by National in 1998-99, remembering, of course, that when National introduced that regime it promised that no violent offenders would ever be put on home detention. The problem is that that is all we have seen since then.

Hon Tau Henare: You were there, Ron.

RON MARK: Mr Henare says that I was there, like he said I was at the dinner with Mr Mapp, which I was not. I was not in the National Government when this legislation was passed. New Zealand First had left, but, unfortunately, Mr Henare had been attracted to the baubles of his office—and had other personal circumstances that we will not go into now—and took the bribe from Jenny Shipley, held his ministerial warrant, jumped the waka, and stayed in National with Jenny Shipley. Mr Henare’s reward was to be booted out of Parliament. He should remember that he said he would never be a list MP. Well, let us look at him now.

Progress to be reported presently.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Appropriation (2007/08 Estimates) Bill without amendment, and progress on the Criminal Justice Reform Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.