Tuesday, 18 August 2009

Tuesday, 18 August 2009

Tuesday, 18 August 2009

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Questions for Oral Answer

Questions to Ministers

Adult and Community Education—Cuts

1. Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his reported comments to Papanui High School principal Denis Pyatt, when asked if his Government had seriously underestimated the impact of adult community education cutbacks on communities, that “You’re probably right”; if not, why not?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Acting Prime Minister): The Prime Minister met with a number of school principals, including Denis Pyatt, last month, and recalls him raising the issue of community education and the effects of adult and community education funding decisions on his school. The Prime Minister does not recall the details of the conversation, but it is likely, he acknowledged, that some people have reacted adversely to the decision. He reiterated that the Government stood by its decision to ensure that education funding is focused on high-priority areas, such as literacy and numeracy, and getting young people back into skills and work.

Hon Phil Goff: Does the Prime Minister agree with his Minister of Finance, Bill English, who told the country that “School night classes have been a cornerstone of community education for decades, providing opportunities for learning and companionship for thousands of people. The system has been cheap and flexible.”; and did Bill English justify to him the double standards of believing that, yet slashing adult and community education by 80 percent?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Prime Minister has discussed that matter with the Minister of Finance, who pointed out that in the current fiscal environment, where the Government has to grapple with a very large Budget deficit, the Government needs to be clear about its priorities. It has expressed its educational priorities as being literacy and numeracy, and getting young people into skills and back into work.

Hon Phil Goff: If it is a matter of priorities, why is the concept of continued learning—everything from skills that help one to find employment, to community classes like anger management and parenting—a lower priority than giving $35 million of extra funding to privileged kids in private schools?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: In respect of the funding for private schools, the fact is that if those schools go broke, those kids will all show up in the public system, where the Government funding will be considerably higher—in fact, about three times higher—than it is for the private schools.

Chris Tremain: What statements has the Prime Minister seen that endorse the need to reprioritise tertiary education funding?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Prime Minister has seen some statements, and one in particular from the vice-chancellor of Massey University—who, I understand, used to be a member of the Labour caucus—pointing out that when the Government has constrained expenditure, it needs to make choices about priorities. And that will be the reality of the next 10 years, because it will take 10 years for the Government to get back to having a surplus.

Hon Phil Goff: Has the Prime Minister’s colleague the Minister of Finance explained to him why, after saying “The demise of night schools is bad for schools, for communities and for thousands of people who use them to learn something new.”, he has undermined a century-long tradition of continued learning through life and reprioritised the funding to high-income groups through private schools?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Prime Minister did speak to the Minister of Finance, who reiterated that the Government is spending $124 million on adult and community education over the next 4 years.

Catherine Delahunty: Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou katoa. Does the Prime Minister agree that adult and community education night classes were cut to focus funding on literacy; if so, why did the Government cut funding to Literacy Aotearoa, the country’s main umbrella literacy education provider?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Those two funding streams are unrelated. Literacy Aotearoa is funded through the Tertiary Education Commission.

Hon Phil Goff: How many National backbenchers have raised with him their view that these funding cuts are unsustainable, such as National MP Jackie Blue, who has emailed adult and community education groups, offering to help them to oppose the Government cuts in this area?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Prime Minister is delighted that National’s backbenchers are in touch with their communities. That is the reason that there are so many of them here and the reason that the Labour Party does not hold a single electorate seat outside a metropolitan area.

Hon Phil Goff: Why are community groups like Youthline having their funding slashed as part of the 80 percent cuts to adult and community education funding, when Youthline uses those funds to train its support workers, who do invaluable work and do it voluntarily?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I cannot answer in detail in respect of Youthline, but I would make two points. One is that the Tertiary Education Commission has flexibility about how it uses its funds, and the second is that the Government has set up a Community Response Fund designed to assist non-governmental organisations that are affected by the recession in their ability to raise money.

Catherine Delahunty: Can the Prime Minister outline the benefits of adult and community education, including literacy night classes for new migrants seeking to assist their children with homework or seeking employment?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes, that is one of the benefits of these classes. That is why the Government is going to spend over $100 million in the next 4 years on funding them.

Hon Phil Goff: Before making the decision to slash the funding of those classes by 80 percent, did the Prime Minister or his Government consult with the schools, the tutors, or any of the 220,000 people who enjoy night schools to find out what the costs and consequences would be to them and the community; if not, why not?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: As the member knows, those decisions were made in the context of the Budget round. I do not think there is any lack of opportunity for people to express their views about that. That is self-evident.

Infrastructure—Improvement

2. CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) to the Minister for Infrastructure: What measures is the Government taking to improve New Zealand’s infrastructure?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister for Infrastructure): As part of the Government’s plan for the road to recovery we have outlined a $7.5 billion 5-year plan to improve telecommunications, schools, and hospitals. We have also lifted spending on State highways by $1 billion over the next 3 years, are investing record sums in upgrading the national electricity grid, and have a plan to roll out ultra-fast broadband.

Craig Foss: Why is the Government focused on improving New Zealand’s infrastructure?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: After 10 years of mismanagement of the economy it is very important that we increase our productivity. Better roads, more secure electricity, and faster broadband will help us to increase productivity and grow our exports.

Craig Foss: How does increased infrastructure investment support jobs?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government’s increased investment in productive infrastructure has two benefits for jobs. In the short term it supports thousands of jobs as these projects get up and running, and in the long term the benefits from a more productive economy will support sustainable jobs in the export sector. Unfortunately, many people who are losing their jobs now are finding out that their jobs were based on the previous Government’s reckless spending and too much borrowing.

Hon Shane Jones: When will the Government announce its intentions to use the infrastructure fund to subsidise the development of water storage capacity for the agricultural sector?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: There have been a number of propositions from the agricultural sector for some kind of Government participation, but it is not exactly clear what it has in mind or what might be effective.

Hon Sir Roger Douglas: Can the Minister guarantee for the House that his expenditure on infrastructure is warranted from a cost-benefit point of view, including investment in the cycleway, KiwiRail, and other similar make-work schemes?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: For the broad range of infrastructure I can give the member an assurance that what the Government is currently investing in meets the criteria of productive investment. I must say, however, that KiwiRail is a bit more of a problem. The previous Government spent $1 billion acquiring KiwiRail; today it is probably worth nothing. We are going through a major exercise of trying to work out how much investment is appropriate.

Craig Foss: How will the Government maximise its investment in infrastructure?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The next step in our plan to maximise investment in infrastructure is to produce the first national infrastructure plan, probably early next year. That plan will help to prioritise investment by identifying bottlenecks and investment gaps.

Health Care—Policy

3. Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) to the Minister of Health: Does he still stand by his policy to deliver better, sooner, and more convenient health care?

Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): Despite the fact that the previous Government left the health services delivering $160 million of services that were unfunded, yes.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Will the Minister reject the proposal for the establishment of a national health board, or is he now prepared to admit that this is a broken election promise, with increased rather than decreased bureaucracy in health?

Hon TONY RYALL: The member refers to a report by an independent group of people from across the health sector. It has yet to be considered by Cabinet. But, look, I can rule out anything that will increase bureaucracy or not improve patient services.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Will the Minister instruct Waikato District Health Board to unfreeze its cap on doctors, or will he concede that the promise to deliver more doctors to the front line is now another broken election promise?

Hon TONY RYALL: I first looked into this matter when it was raised with me 2 weeks ago, and I found that the so-called cap on employment actually referred to the level of staff in the Waikato District Health Board’s budget. This year the district health board is forecasting to have more clinical staff than last year, including more doctors, nurses, and allied health staff. However, it is endeavouring to ensure that recruitment focuses on areas of understaffing such as mental health. I have been assured that the district health board has made no suggestion to make clinical staff redundant. That is because we have increased its funding by $54 million.

Jo Goodhew: What responses has the Minister seen in relation to the public release of the ministerial review group report?

Hon TONY RYALL: I have received a number of items of feedback on the independent report. The New Zealand Herald said the “Minister must move fast on health reform”, and that “These are not radical suggestions,”. The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners said: “It is about providing the right care in the right place at the right time by the right person, and this report acknowledges the importance of this approach.” The Public Health Association of New Zealand welcomed the renewed focus on quality as a way to reduce health inequalities.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Will the Minister now apologise to the people of Dunstan in Central Otago for his broken election promise to them, given the reduction in physiotherapy and disability home support, both of which are front-line services provided in their area?

Hon TONY RYALL: I would say to the people of Dunstan that they should have a look at a report that I am holding here, because I am surprised that the previous Associate Minister of Health was silent on this issue when her Government approved cuts to aged-care services in Wanganui, for example. In 2006 her Government agreed that Whanganui District Health Board had to take fairly swift action, resulting in individuals with lower levels of need being reassessed, services removed, and access criteria tightened, and there was not a word from that member.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Will the Minister now apologise to the older people of Canterbury for his broken promise to them, given the reduction in both home support services and access to rest home care?

Hon TONY RYALL: I visited Christchurch Hospital last week and had an opportunity to speak to over 300 doctors, nurses, and students. I am advised that Canterbury District Health Board has not reduced funding for aged residential care, and it does not expect to reduce the number of residential care beds. The district health board is also refocusing its services on providing home support for people with higher levels of need. Its spending on health for older people will increase by $5 million this year. I suspect if one behaves like the Opposition spokesperson on health by reading one table that says there is a cut, when actually there is an increase, one could get confused by that information.

Jo Goodhew: What reports has the Minister seen about district health boards and their decisions about how they allocate their funds in relation to services?

Hon TONY RYALL: I have seen a range of reports about the need for district health boards to live within their means. I have seen statements from Dr Cullen and the previous Minister of Health. But as I have said before, the most interesting statement was made in July 2004 by the Associate Minister of Health, who was defending claims of negligence from the Wellington City Mission over funding cuts for aged care. The then Associate Minister of Health said that how health boards allocate funding was not her responsibility. That Associate Minister of Health was Ruth Dyson.

Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart—Number of Retrofitted Houses

4. NICKY WAGNER (National) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: To the Minister—

Mr SPEAKER: I apologise to the honourable member. Today, for some reason, the basic noise level in the House is very high. If members are having a private conversation, I ask them to please go out into the lobbies. The noise is discourteous to those seeking to ask and answer questions. The noise has been quite high all afternoon. I apologise to the member.

NICKY WAGNER: How many houses were retrofitted in the first month of the Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart home insulation scheme?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Energy and Resources): I am very pleased to advise the House that in the first month of the Government’s Warm Up New Zealand insulation scheme, 3,282 homes were retrofitted. This means that thousands of Kiwis will now be living in warmer, drier, and healthier homes, and it is very pleasing to see the public respond so positively to this programme.

Nicky Wagner: How many houses lived in by residents with community services cards have received assistance under the Warm Up New Zealand scheme?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Although the universal nature of the Government’s new scheme sets it apart from the previous scheme promised by the previous Labour Government, it is extremely pleasing to note that of the 3,282 homes retrofitted so far, some 1,983 homes are lived in by residents with community services cards. That is about 60 percent of the houses done so far. We think that is very good in terms of the health benefits and for the general comfort and warmth of the community services cardholders who live in those homes.

Nicky Wagner: How many service providers are being approved to deliver the scheme; if they are approved, from when will they be available?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority recently opened application arrangements for people who want to become providers to become accredited. It received some 249 applications, and those applications are being considered at the moment. Those new providers will be available to carry out some installation work from 1 October this year.

Charles Chauvel: Is the Minister aware that Government-approved providers have increased their prices as a result of the subsidy, cancelling out the discount for the household; does he think that the Prime Minister’s announcement last week, setting up the 38th review committee so far announced by this Government, will do anything to ensure that families will get access to insulation and clean heating this winter?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: When any new Government takes over the mess left by a previous Government, there is a lot of cleaning up to do. In respect of the claims made by the member, I say he should have read the Dominion Post last Friday, where an apology was printed for the story it ran that suggested that the scheme providers were ripping people off. The case that was cited was of a Wellington couple who had a heating appliance installed in their house. The appliance was a 4.8 kilowatt heater. The quote they had received, which they said represented a rip-off, was for a 6.25 kilowatt heater. The member might like to know that the difference between the two is the difference between the prices that he is hanging his hat on.

Prisons—Private Management

5. Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) to the Minister of Corrections: Does she agree with the recent comment by the Minister of Finance in regard to private prisons: “this is not about ideology: private sector involvement will only happen where it makes sense.”?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Corrections): Yes, I do. I also agree with the Hon Phil Goff, who said he would support the private construction and leasing of the new prisons if the Government is concerned about capital expenditure considerations.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Is the Minister aware of data from her own department showing that New Zealand’s only privately run prison proved to be more expensive to run than its public sector equivalent?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I am aware of information from my own department that in 2004-05, the last year the Auckland Central Remand Prison was privately run, the cost was $57,280 per prisoner, whereas the equivalent in the public sector cost $61,796 per prisoner. I have given that information to the member who asked the question. He really should read his documents before he comes down to the Chamber.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Is the Minister aware that prison officers who have worked at Auckland Central Remand Prison, both when it was privately run and when it was publicly managed, reported that, under private management, incidents such as drug use and violence were much less likely to be identified or reported in order to protect the reputation of the contractor and to ensure that performance bonuses were received?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I find that statement quite extraordinary, particularly when I have just received a letter from Mr Mel Smith, a former Ombudsman in charge of prisons, who stated: “I can say categorically that the ACRP was very well managed, and certainly lost nothing in comparison with overseas examples in Australia, the USA, and Great Britain.”

Sandra Goudie: Has the Minister received any other reports on the operation of private prisons?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Yes, I have; I have seen a press release from Clayton Cosgrove on private prisons and on the four prisons built by Labour, in which he claims: “Labour’s record is incredibly positive compared to National’s.” That is an astonishing claim, given the cost blowout in prison building when Labour was in Government. It was $643,000 a bed in Spring Hill Corrections Facility under the previous Labour Government.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: How can this Government claim that its plans to allow private management of prisons is “not about ideology”, when there is evidence to clearly suggest that private prisons are neither more cost-effective nor safer for the public?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: The member should listen to the answers before he reads out his pre-prepared questions. I am happy to advise the House that in New South Wales private prisons cost 32 percent less per prisoner than public prisons, and in Victoria it is 11 percent less per prisoner. Private management of prisons clearly does work.

Te Ururoa Flavell: Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Kia ora tātou. Does the Minister agree with Māori Council spokesperson Maanu Paul that prisons should be privatised and that Māori should run them because State control has failed Māori; if not, why not?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I have made it perfectly plain that I expect to have better representation by Māori amongst the management of prisons. Frankly, we could never do any worse than we did under the 9 long years of a Labour Government.

Youth Employment—Youth Opportunities Package

6. KATRINA SHANKS (National) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What reports has she seen that support the employment opportunities in the Government’s Youth Opportunities package?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment): I am pleased to say that I have seen a report from the ministry that shows that at the end of yesterday 414 Job Ops positions for young people have been put forward by employers. We are getting young New Zealanders into those employment opportunities quickly. Already, 55 young people have started work, and a further 79 young people are close to being placed in these roles. We are working hard with employers and community groups to ensure we back our young people in these tougher economic times.

Katrina Shanks: What other reports has the Minister heard that support those employment opportunities for young people?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I have seen a report that the ministry is placing young people who have either never been in employment before or been out of employment for quite some time. I heard a media report on Nine to Noon on Radio New Zealand National of a restaurant owner in Te Kūiti who was on the verge of hiring possibly one person, but since he heard about this programme he has taken on another person, and he has now hired two people. Those two young women, aged 18 and 20, had left school and had never worked before. Those entry-level roles are giving them the opportunity they need to get the experience, skills, and on-the-job training to further themselves.

Jacinda Ardern: What proportion of those young people does the Minister expect will still be in work 6 months from now, given that her own department’s website promotes the scheme to business by stating: “There is no expectation that the opportunity will lead to a long-term or permanent role.”?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: That is quite correct; that is the way the programme is designed. It is for 6 months. We have been quite up front about that. What that member might not realise is that young people are really disadvantaged in the workplace. They do not have a reference to take in to a job, they do not have skills, and they do not have work experience. That 6 months will give them work experience, and if they do well it will give them a really positive reference to take on to their next job. That is as much as this opportunity is about.

Katrina Shanks: Has the Minister seen any other reports on the Government’s Youth Opportunities package?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Actually, I have. I have seen a report that says it is “a step in the right direction”, and “Any initiative that creates opportunities for young people is to be welcomed.” That was from the member who promptly stood up just before and bagged the programme. She herself stood up and said not long ago that it was a step in the right direction.

Te Ururoa Flavell: How many Māori organisations have expressed an interest in taking up the Community Max programme, and what are the types of projects that Māori communities are coming forward with?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: In total, to date we have received 119 registrations of interest for the Community Max programme. Of these, I believe around 40 percent are from Māori organisations. Some of them are from Māori trusts, and others are from Māori community groups. There is a wide range of community projects, and an example is a Māori organisation in Rotorua that has come forward with a project to renovate their marae. They are looking at taking on five young people on the Community Max programme over a 7 to 8-month period. Another Māori organisation in Dannevirke is looking at setting up a Māori library and is bringing young people on board to do that job as well.

Jacinda Ardern: I seek leave to table two documents. One is the criteria listed on the Work and Income website for the Job Ops scheme.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is no objection.

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

Jacinda Ardern: The second document is my entire press statement released in response to the Government’s Job Ops scheme.

Mr SPEAKER: The member is seriously seeking leave to table her press statement?

Jacinda Ardern: Yes.

Mr SPEAKER: The member is seeking leave to table her press statement. Is there any objection to that document being tabled? There is objection.

Greenhouse Gas Reduction—2020 Target

7. CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) to the Minister for Climate Change Issues: Does he have confidence in the economic modelling used to inform the Government’s decision on the 2020 emissions target?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Climate Change Issues): Yes, but I also acknowledge that macroeconomic modelling in this area is inherently difficult. There are significant unknowns around the price of carbon and the extent to which other countries will constrain their emissions. The assumptions behind the analysis are reasonable, and the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research and Infometrics are both reputable economic analysts. Treasury’s analysis, which was released today, was very similar. In fact, it recommended a considerably lower target because it was concerned about the cost to the New Zealand economy.

Charles Chauvel: Does the Minister agree with Dr Hugh Saddler that it is inherently contradictory to use a general equilibrium model to determine the impact of a carbon price, and how does he justify commissioning analysis of the 2020 emissions reduction target that is “incapable of describing the way in which real economies can and do respond to changes in selected input costs, like a price on carbon”?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I think it was important for the Government to do some economic analysis so that we balance the ambitiousness of the target with some realism about what the costs to the economy are. I acknowledge that such macroeconomic analysis is difficult, but if we are to make a well-informed decision, it is proper that the analysis is done.

Aaron Gilmore: What reports has the Minister received on the claims made by Charles Chauvel that the Government had cynically and blatantly misled the public with the dubious cost estimate by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research and Infometrics of approximately $30 per week in 2020, when in fact the cost was one-tenth of that, spread over 10 years?

Hon Darren Hughes: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Given the way that that question was put, I ask you what responsibility the Minister has for a member of the Labour Party.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: I do not think I need it. If I recollect, the question was asked correctly. The member asked what reports the Minister had received on a statement. The Minister is at liberty to answer a question such as that, as long as he does not go into detail and himself criticise what the Opposition member has said.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Yes, I have received reports from both Infometrics and the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, which were both stunned by the elementary mistake made by Charles Chauvel in his claims. Of course, the reduction in gross real national disposable income cannot be divided by 10, because it happens to be an estimate for 2020. I suggest members opposite do some elementary mathematics.

Charles Chauvel: How can the Minister claim to have confidence in the modelling, given that it did not take into account likely increases in new forestry plantings, comparable action to be taken by other countries, benefits from improved domestic energy efficiency, or the adoption of new, low-carbon technologies in New Zealand; and will he accept that he has overstated the costs, when more appropriate modelling would have shown that deeper emissions cuts were possible at relatively modest cost?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The simple point I would make to Labour is this: if reducing emissions was so easy and so inexpensive, why did they go up in every single year that Labour was in Government? I would further point out that the Treasury analysis of the costs would suggest that the analysis done by Infometrics and the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research was conservative. The third point I would make is that the member is incorrect in saying that the analysis did not include the impact of what other countries would do; it specifically addressed that point.

David Garrett: Does the Minister agree with the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research and Infometrics report to the Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee that a carbon price of $100 a tonne would still leave emissions 20 percent above 1990 levels; and what price has he been advised would be needed to take New Zealand 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, or does he not know?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I think it is very important for the member to recognise the difference between an emissions reduction target and a responsibility target. What is being debated and what is being agreed in international forums around climate change is a responsibility target—that is, that New Zealand has the option either to reduce emissions, to deal with sinks such as forestry, or to buy units internationally. The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research and Infometrics analysis was based on a responsibility target, which is proper because that is what the debate is about.

David Garrett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The question was quite precise: does the Minister agree with the report’s figure of $100 a tonne to keep emissions 20 percent above 2020 levels, and what price has he been advised would be needed? The question did not go anywhere near responsibility targets or whatever other label the Minister gave.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The point I am making to the member is that the 10 to 20 percent target that the Government has tabled at the international negotiations does not necessarily equate to a reduction in emissions in New Zealand. That is why his question is incorrect, in that New Zealand has the option under the international model to buy units at the international carbon price.

Mr SPEAKER: To deal with the point of order raised by David Garrett, it would appear that the Minister is disputing the information that the member provided in the first part of his question. The Minister does not need to answer the second part.

Aaron Gilmore: Has the Minister received any reports in response to the claim that the 10 to 20 percent target relative to 1990 would result in New Zealand facing trade penalties from North America?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Yes. I have been flabbergasted by the claim that New Zealand’s 10 to 20 percent target would, according to Mr Chauvel, result in New Zealand facing trade barriers and tariffs from North America. The reason it is extraordinary is that the United States has a target of zero percent compared with our target of minus 10 to 20 percent, and Canada has tabled a target of minus 3 percent relative to 1990. It is extraordinary and a disservice to New Zealand that the Opposition is making claims of tariff barriers, when New Zealand is going significantly further than either major North American country.

Charles Chauvel: Why does the Government continue to present climate change policy as a trade-off between economic and environmental outcomes, and in doing so ignore the fact that the future costs of failing to avoid large-scale climate change greatly exceed the costs of starting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions now?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Quite simply, because the repeated claims made by members of the Opposition that New Zealand can radically reduce emissions with absolutely no cost are off in fairyland. This Government is taking a realistic approach of balancing the economic and environmental challenges associated with climate change.

Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In the Minister’s answers he referred to some reports he had from Infometrics and the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research. I wonder whether those are official documents; if so, I would ask the Minister to table them.

Mr SPEAKER: The Minister would be required to table them only if he had quoted from them. I ask the Minister whether he was quoting from official documents.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I am more than happy to table them; they are in the public arena. They were released by the Government 2 weeks ago. If tabling them would please the member, I am happy to do so.

Mr SPEAKER: It seems that the Minister is perfectly happy to provide those documents.

Document laid on the Table of the House.

Greenhouse Gas Reduction—2020 Target

8. Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) to the Minister for Climate Change Issues: Did New Zealand tell the Bonn climate change conference that the Government’s emissions reduction target of 10 to 20 percent below 1990 levels is dependent on developed countries as a whole cutting their emissions to 30 to 40 percent below 1990 levels?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Climate Change Issues): No, the 10 to 20 percent target range is dependent on comparable efforts by developed countries. I note that, to date, other countries have announced target ranges—from the United States at zero percent, or stabilisation at 1990 levels, through to the European Union’s promised reductions of between 20 and 30 percent. The conditionality around New Zealand’s target range is broadly comparable with that set by Australia of a 15 to 25 percent reduction on 2000 levels, taking into account different baselines and economic circumstances.

Dr Russel Norman: Is the Minister denying that when the New Zealand negotiator at the Bonn conference was asked by the Philippines what New Zealand expected from other countries, our negotiator answered that we expected that other developed countries would reduce their emissions by 30 to 40 percent?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member is incorrect. I have read the transcript of exactly what was said by our climate change ambassador. What he said in it is quite correct: a 10 to 20 percent range for New Zealand, given our unique circumstances—around 50 percent of our emissions coming from agriculture, and the fact we are starting from 24 percent behind with the growth in emissions—means that a comparable economic amount and an economic impact would be for other countries to take those targets. But can I make very plain that New Zealand’s target is not conditional on those other countries making targets in the range that the member suggests.

Dr Kennedy Graham: Does the Minister agree, in light of his answer just now, which effectively says that New Zealand is in a unique position on climate change, that our grossly inefficient vehicle fleet gives us a unique opportunity to reduce energy emissions in a cost-effective way, as outlined in the Green Party’s plan released just 2 weeks ago?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Government has a broad range of policies to address the challenge of climate change. Only earlier today my colleague Gerry Brownlee was talking about the home insulation package. We have legislation that has just been passed to provide incentives for electric cars. As we speak, I know that the select committee that has done the review on the emissions trading scheme is nearing the end of its work. It is my ambition to have emissions trading policy settled by the time of the Copenhagen conference. Important work is being done on agricultural emissions. Important investments are being made in public transport. The Government has many initiatives to reduce emissions and to meet its international obligations.

Hekia Parata: Has the Minister received any advice as to the international response to our 2020 target?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Yes, I am advised by our climate change ambassador that New Zealand’s announcement of the 10 to 20 percent reduction below 1990 levels was very well received, including positive comments from Australia, from the European Union, and specifically from Denmark and the United States. I note particularly that the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, which is well respected for its international work around climate change, congratulated New Zealand and said that we had set a very ambitious target given our national circumstances.

Dr Kennedy Graham: Does the Minister agree that although New Zealand is in a unique position in climate change with regard to its agriculture, we are also, with our huge indigenous and plantation forestry assets, in a unique opportunity to sequester carbon as outlined in the Green Party’s plan?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I think it is important in the debate around forestry and climate change to recognise that forestry buys us time, rather than actually provides a long-term solution. Although right now our huge increase in emissions is being offset by the trees that were planted in the 1990s, when those trees become of harvestable age in the 2020s, New Zealand’s climate change position will be quite difficult. So, yes, forestry has a role to play; we should not overstate it, because it simply buys us time.

Hekia Parata: Did the Minister or his Associate Minister recommend a more ambitious target to Cabinet?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Today I have released the Cabinet paper associated with the decisions that the Cabinet took around the climate change goal. I and my Associate Minister, Tim Groser, did recommend a slightly tougher target—a 12 to 20 percent range. The Cabinet paper shows that Treasury actually recommended a far more conservative target range. So Cabinet made a decision to reduce its target range—a decision that I think was quite appropriate.

Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister said that he had read the transcript from the meeting, and then proceeded to quote the statements from the New Zealand ambassador in that transcript, which to me is reading from an official document. If the Minister is quoting from the New Zealand ambassador, from the transcript of their meeting, then he should table that document—it is an official document.

Mr SPEAKER: I was watching the Minister very carefully during his answer. I believed he referred to what the ambassador had said, but I did not see him in any way holding up a document from which he was quoting; he was going from memory of what the ambassador said. Under those circumstances I do not believe that the Minister can be asked to table the document.

Dr Russel Norman: Is the Minister then saying, based on his answers to the earlier questions, that it does not matter whether the developed countries in the world actually collectively reach a 25 to 40 percent reduction, which as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is the only way we can keep global warming under 2 degrees; how is that consistent with the New Zealand statement, which was put at the conference, that says we will make only 10 to 20 percent reduction if we keep it under 2 degrees?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member misquotes what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientists said. It is absolutely proper that the scientists advise Governments, including this Government, as to the reduction in emissions required to avert dangerous climate change. But it is not for scientists to assess what is the fair allocation of emissions reduction between different countries; that is very much a socio-political debate, not a scientific debate.

Redundant Workers—Protection

9. DARIEN FENTON (Labour) to the Minister of Labour: What protection is available to workers who are made redundant?

Hon KATE WILKINSON (Minister of Labour): As the public advisory group noted, redundancy is a form of dismissal and is subject to the personal grievance provisions and other protections of the Employment Relations Act. Compensation, remedies, and other damages are available under those provisions.

Darien Fenton: What advice would the Minister give to the 45 Tritech workers who have just been made redundant without any redundancy compensation?

Hon KATE WILKINSON: For anybody who loses their job it can certainly be an upsetting experience, and we certainly sympathise with them. That is why this Government has made sure we are taking every step we can to get the economy growing again, and to help workers to both stay in jobs and get new ones.

Darien Fenton: Does the Minister think it is fair that some of those workers, who have been with Tritech for more than 20 years, are being sent out the door with no recognition of their service, and with nothing to tide them and their families over in the hard times until they find a new job?

Hon KATE WILKINSON: Redundancy is a matter of agreement between the parties, obviously. I note that 78 percent of collective agreements actually do have redundancy provisions, so unions have obviously negotiated good provisions in that regard. In relation to statutory redundancy, I say that in the public advisory group’s report 14 of the 22 submitters supported the status quo; only eight were against.

Road Safety—Safer Journeys Discussion Document

10. DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) to the Minister of Transport: What work is the Government doing to make New Zealand’s roads safer?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport): Today I launched the Safer Journeys discussion document, containing a range of possible Government initiatives that could help to improve road safety. The Safer Journeys discussion document invites views on a number of priority road safety areas, including alcohol and drug-impaired driving, safer speeds, young drivers, motorcycling, roads, and roadsides. The feedback received from road users will be used to develop a national road-safety strategy for the next 10 years. Initial actions will be implemented over the next year or two, and I stress that public acceptability is an important aspect of any changes.

David Bennett: What else is the Government currently doing to improve road safety?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Last week I announced that from 1 November this year it will be against the road rules for drivers to text or talk on a hand-held cellphone while driving. This is aimed at combating a specific driver distraction that has grown to become a significant problem. Between 2003 and 2008 there were 482 injury crashes and 25 fatal crashes in New Zealand where the use of a mobile phone or other telecommunications device was identified as a contributing factor. Drivers will still be able to use hands-free cellphones, and make 111 calls for genuine emergencies as well.

Hon Darren Hughes: When the Minister set a fine of $80 for talking on a cellphone, did he take into account the fact that for nearly 20 years drivers have been allowed to talk on a cellphone and drive; if so, why did he set the fine so high, when it comes in in just a few weeks’ time, rather than allowing drivers to get used to the change with a lower fine and warnings?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Due consideration—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: I do not know what provoked that outburst from the back of the House, but I think we should actually hear the Minister’s answer before there is all that massive interjection.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Due consideration was given to the appropriate level of fine and number of demerit points. It is equivalent to exceeding the speed limit by 11 to 15 kilometres an hour.

David Bennett: What other initiatives is the Minister aware of that improve road safety?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I have seen a proposal from a former member of this House who was concerned about the use of retreads once they are past their use-by date. He seemed to think that it is a particular issue in and around the parliamentary complex, resulting in some erratic steering. It is not an issue that is expressly raised in the road safety strategy, but I am advised that the Minister is prepared to accept submissions from any members, particularly from those on the Opposition benches who are concerned about the overuse of retreads once they are past their use-by date.

State Sector—Resources for Front-line Services

11. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of State Services: Is it Government policy to move resources to the front line in the State sector?

Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of State Services): Yes. This Government wants to see people and funding move into areas that will deliver best value for money and improve front-line services for New Zealanders.

Grant Robertson: Does the Minister agree with the Nurses Organisation’s response to his ministerial review group report that “if health services were run without good managers and administrators, then nurses and doctors would be lost in the chaos.”?

Hon TONY RYALL: Certainly, there is a very strong role for ward clerks, etc., in supporting the work of doctors and nurses, but the problem the Government has inherited is that the number of managers and administrators in the public health service has grown from 8,000 to 10,500. On top of that figure, there are 1,500 managers and administrators in the Ministry of Health. The Government has sought to slow that growth. That in itself has been a great achievement.

Jacqui Dean: Has the Government heard any examples of Government agencies shifting resources to the front line?

Hon TONY RYALL: Actually, yes. In Budget 2009 the Government announced funding for over 700 additional front-line positions at the Department of Corrections and 600 in the police. The Minister for Social Development and Employment, the Hon Paula Bennett, recently announced additional funding for 300 front-line roles at the Ministry of Social Development, and 100 new positions have been created at the Accident Compensation Corporation.

Grant Robertson: Can the Minister guarantee to nurses throughout New Zealand that the reorganisation of the health system being proposed by his ministerial review group will not lead to them spending more time on administrative work and less time with patients?

Hon TONY RYALL: It is a very serious issue that our nurses are not spending enough time with patients. The average nurse in New Zealand is spending a very low percentage of time on contact with patients. On Friday I will visit a ward in Tauranga Hospital, where, through nurse leadership, staff have increased their contact time with patients by over 50 percent.

Grant Robertson: Will the Minister guarantee to the House today that as a result of the reorganisation of the health system being proposed by his ministerial review group, nurses will not spend more time on administrative work and less time with patients?

Hon TONY RYALL: I can tell that member and I can give him the guarantee that this Government will not approve any recommendations that increase bureaucracy or do not improve front-line services. National indicated before the last election that we do not want another round of distracting change in the health system, whereby we went from hospital boards in 1988 to area health boards in—

Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I asked Mr Ryall the same question twice because he did not answer it the first time. He has not addressed my question the second time, either.

Mr SPEAKER: I invite the member to repeat his question, and the House will listen more quietly to both the question and the answer. I thank members.

Grant Robertson: Can the Minister guarantee to nurses throughout New Zealand that the reorganisation of the health system being proposed by his ministerial review group will not lead to them spending more time on administrative work and less time with patients?

Hon TONY RYALL: I can give that guarantee, because that is the whole purpose of this Government. We have inherited a situation where in most of our hospitals, nurses are spending only about a third of their time with patients because they are spending the rest of their time doing all the paperwork and bureaucracy that Labour put in place when it was last in office. That is why we are looking to clinical leadership and to our doctors and nurses assisting the Government to improve the productivity of the New Zealand public health service.

Regulatory Reform—Initiatives

12. TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West) to the Minister for Regulatory Reform: What recent initiatives has the Government announced to cut red tape and lift the quality of regulation in New Zealand?

Hon RODNEY HIDE (Minister for Regulatory Reform): The Minister of Finance and I yesterday released the Government Statement on Regulation, which guarantees better regulations and fewer of them. Specifically, this Government will, firstly, introduce new regulation only when we are satisfied that it is required, reasonable, and robust, and, secondly, review existing regulation in order to identify and remove requirements that are unnecessary, ineffective, or excessively costly. That is a big step up from the nanny State of the previous Government.

Tim Macindoe: What steps is the Government taking to support the Government Statement on Regulation?

Hon RODNEY HIDE: The statement will be backed up by the following four measures: firstly, regulatory scans will be undertaken by agencies responsible for regulation on a systematic basis, to identify regulation that is unnecessary, ineffective, or excessively costly; secondly, there will be annual regulatory plans of all known and anticipated proposals to introduce, amend, repeal, or review legislation; thirdly, there will be enhanced certification requirements for departments and Ministers, to strengthen accountability for meeting the Government’s regulatory commitments; and, fourthly, there will be post-implementation reviews for proposals that are formally assessed by Treasury’s regulatory impact analysis team as being inadequate.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Why has the Minister simply restated the previous Government’s policy, implemented after the Quality Regulation Review?

Hon RODNEY HIDE: I do not begin to understand why that former Minister would think these measures are anything like what the previous Government actually undertook. I suggest that the former Minister actually reads the statement.

Tim Macindoe: What other steps is the Government taking to cut red tape and lift the quality of regulation in New Zealand?

Hon RODNEY HIDE: The Government has also established a Regulatory Responsibility Taskforce to recommend changes to the Regulatory Responsibility Bill, aimed at increasing accountability and transparency around lawmaking. The task force is due to report in September 2009, and once again I look forward to receiving the support of Lianne Dalziel and of the Labour Party for this measure.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Does reasserting Kiwi values like individual autonomy and responsibility mean that the Minister thinks the owners of leaky buildings and investors in failed finance companies should take personal responsibility for the consequences of their investments; if so, what protection does he think it is appropriate for the Government to offer through regulation?

Hon RODNEY HIDE: No, I do not. What I know is that New Zealanders made a very, very clear statement at the last election, which was that they were sick of a nanny State Government that always thought it knew best and wanted to tell New Zealanders what to do. I have to say that people are very pleased that we actually have a Government that stands up for Kiwis and the Kiwi values of individual freedom and responsibility. I point out that the previous Government talked long and hard—

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Lianne Dalziel: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In respect of that answer, was it acceptable to answer no to a question, and then continue by providing an abusive set of responses that had nothing to do with the question I put to the Minister?

Mr SPEAKER: I hear the point of order the member has made; she makes a good point of order. Where the answer to a question is no, it should not be followed up with a further response that attacks the Opposition, unless, of course, the question that was asked was politically loaded. On this occasion it was not very politically loaded—I accept that. That is why I stood to stop the Minister continuing.

Urgent Debates

SAS—Deployment to Afghanistan

Mr SPEAKER: I have received letters from Keith Locke and the Leader of the Opposition seeking to debate under Standing Order 380 the deployment of Special Air Service personnel to Afghanistan. I have also received a letter from Charles Chauvel seeking to debate the announcement of an emissions trading scheme target range of 10 percent to 20 percent below 1990 levels.

These are both particular cases of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility. I would have been inclined to accept either one of them. However, there can be only one such debate on the same day. The Standing Orders provide that in these circumstances the Speaker must determine which is the most urgent and important. I have concluded, given the immediate significance of the decision to recommit SAS personnel, that it should be given priority. There will be other occasions upon which the emissions trading scheme targets can be debated.

Keith Locke’s application was the first one I received, and I therefore call upon Mr Locke to move that the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

KEITH LOCKE (Green): I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. That matter is the commitment by the Government of special forces to Afghanistan. The Green Party is strongly opposed to the Government’s decision to send the SAS back to Afghanistan. We do not want our soldiers fighting and dying in an unjustifiable war that is not helping the Afghan people. It is very important that we have this debate today, because we as a Parliament should always debate the sending of New Zealand combat troops overseas to participate in foreign military conflicts. We should never lightly risk the lives of our soldiers, and we should never lightly participate in armed conflicts, which inevitably result in much death and destruction and have a huge impact on the lives of local people.

War can never be the preferred means of settling disputes. My colleague Kennedy Graham currently has a member’s bill before Parliament, the International Non-Aggression and Lawful Use of Force Bill, to bind New Zealand not to commit aggression against another people acting contrary to international law. It is important, in particular, that we debate the commitment of combat troops to Afghanistan, because of the important moral, legal, and practical issues it raises. Such commitments of combat troops have been controversial in many of the countries that have contributed forces to Afghanistan, and in particular in countries similar to us such as Canada, Australia, and Great Britain, where half of the population is now opposed to the presence of those combat forces in Afghanistan, and want those combat forces withdrawn.

Half of the New Zealand people, according to public opinion polls, are against the commitment of our special forces, as well, and today in Parliament, the Green Party is trying to represent their views. There is a very strong anti-war feeling in New Zealand. We had a very big movement against New Zealand’s involvement in the Viet Nam War, and there is a strong Kiwi commitment to peace, which is shown by the fact that we became a nuclear-free country and are very proud of that. There is nothing more tragic than our solders dying in an unjust war, as Kiwi soldiers did in Viet Nam.

The Government’s arguments for sending the SAS to Afghanistan just do not stand up. It is claimed that this decision will help the Afghan people, yet, clearly, the American-led offensive has so far only strengthened the extremist Taliban. It has allowed the extremist Taliban to cloak itself in the mantle of Afghan nationalism as the defender of Afghanistan against foreign invaders. That has enabled it to recruit new supporters and fighters hand over fist. In short, the US-led effort, of which the SAS will be a part, has been counter-productive. It has resulted not in the weakening of the Taliban but in its strengthening.

The main rationale used by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence, Wayne Mapp, to justify the sending of SAS personnel to Afghanistan is that the war they will be part of is necessary to stop Afghanistan becoming “a haven for terrorists”. In fact, the war is itself a war of terror, with terror coming from both sides. The Taliban has used terror against Afghans who resist its extremist practices, and the American forces have used terror in bombing targets in rural Afghanistan, where there has been significant loss of civilian life. Even the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, has criticised the bombing and the resulting civilian casualties, and what he calls “a type of military conduct that alienates the population”.

So Afghanistan is already a haven for terrorists of all types, including the Afghan Government itself. The United Nations special rapporteur Philip Alston reported in May that “Afghans are unlawfully killed by police and other armed personnel acting under the authority of Government officials.” The US mission in Afghanistan also reports complaints about torture in Afghan Government prisons, and those reports are verified by human rights organisations like Amnesty International. That provides another problem for a New Zealand combat unit operating in Afghanistan if it hands over prisoners who it cannot be sure will not be tortured by the Afghan authorities. For some years New Zealand has tried to obtain a written agreement on the treatment of any prisoners it hands over, but to date the Afghan Government has simply refused to provide a written assurance. Its assurance is only verbal. There is also the problem of New Zealand contravening the UN convention on torture if it hands over prisoners to US authorities. Even though the treatment of Afghan prisoners is probably improving under the Obama administration—there has been some progress there—US detention facilities in Afghanistan have not yet been given a clean bill of health.

We are now learning more and more about the systematic mistreatment of Afghan prisoners in US bases such as Bagram Air Base and the Kandahar base since the 2001 invasion. Unfortunately, in 2002 an earlier SAS unit was implicated in this problem. It captured some 50 or so prisoners who were passed over to the US forces, and it is likely that at that stage they were mistreated. The New Zealand Defence Force was unwilling or unable to track the prisoners through the US prison system, and, in any case, the prisoners had not been properly identified by the SAS before they were handed over, thus potentially creating, contrary to the Geneva conventions, what are called ghost prisoners.

One brutal military truth is that we cannot win a war if the Government we are defending is not really worth defending and has alienated the people of the country, and that is the case with the Karzai Government. Yes, Hamid Karzai might win the presidential elections that are taking place in Afghanistan around now, but, as respected columnist Gwynne Dyer points out in this morning’s New Zealand Herald, it will be through “bribery, blackmail, and threats”. He will win in a coalition with local warlords, who have run roughshod over their people. Two local warlords, Mohammad Qasim Fahim and Abdul Karim Khalili, are Karzai’s vice-presidential candidates. Even Colonel David Haight, a US commander in Afghanistan, was quoted by Gwynne Dyer in this morning’s New Zealand Herald saying in relation to the elections: “There is going to be frustration from people who realise there is not going to be change. The bottom line is they are going to be thinking: ‘Four more years of this crap.’ ”

The Karzai Government is utterly corrupt, and it is also in an alliance with Islamic conservatives who are not too different from the Taliban. We see that the Karzai Government has just forced through a law, which Karzai himself supports, which allows husbands to starve their wives if they do not give them sex, gives males exclusive guardianship of children, and requires women to get permission from their husbands before they can go out to work. It also does not help that the corrupt Karzai Government is so weak that it has to be supported by foreign troops. That does not give it too much credibility among the Afghan populace.

There is also the whole question of the legality of foreign military operations on Afghan soil. The original US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was not justified under international law. Horrific though the September 11 attacks were, a single terrorist incident in one country is no legal justification for invading a country on the other side of the world. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which justifies self-defence, does not cover that. Operation Enduring Freedom, which was the name of the US-led invasion at the time, which continues today, was not and has not been endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution. Certainly, New Zealand cannot claim an argument of self-defence for sending the SAS to Afghanistan. The sending of the SAS to Afghanistan contravenes the international law against aggression, and may well also contravene the Geneva Convention if the SAS transfers prisoners to possible torture in the jails of either the Afghan Government or other coalition forces, such as the United States.

The Green objection to a unit being sent to actively engage in the war in the south and east of the country does not mean that we wish to run away from helping the Afghan people solve their very deep problems. Those problems have stood for years and years, and have only been complicated by foreign interventions dating back to the British intervention more than 100 years ago, the Russian intervention, and now the American-led intervention. On the political level, what is really needed in Afghanistan today is a dialogue and reconciliation between the different political factions as a prelude to nation-building—and there are some promising signs there. There has been an adjustment of some of the Western policy promoting, to an extent, dialogue between the different political forces, including the Taliban or elements of it. That is very positive, but it runs contrary to also engaging in the frontal war, in particular in the south and the east of the country. There are some promising signs in the ceasefire announced recently between the Karzai Government and the Taliban in the province of Badghis, and hopefully that sort of thing will spread.

We want to be promoting that sort of thing as a peacemaking country, and as a country with some moral standing, as seen through our presence in peacekeeping and peace building through our provincial reconstruction team. We want to build on the framework of possible ceasefires, and encourage the development of more democratic institutions and the development of the rule of law. The rule of law is not followed very much in Afghanistan today; that is something that has been commented on quite strongly by UN authorities. They complain that the rule of law is not really being upheld in Afghanistan. We also want to contribute to the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan, and we have been doing very good work there for the last several years through our provincial reconstruction team in the Bamian province. In the whole period the team has been there, it has been effectively a peacekeeping and reconstruction operation; it has not once had to fire a shot at any armed combatant during that whole time. We want that work to be continued. It is disappointing that when the Government made a decision to send the SAS, it said that it will pull out the provincial reconstruction team in the fairly near future. We support the Government in its announcement that it will be giving more civil aid. The Green Party has been promoting that for some time. We have a positive approach to helping the Afghan people.

The Government’s decision to send the SAS is very disappointing in another way. What is at stake here is the continuation of the path New Zealand has been taking for some years towards a more independent foreign policy, whereby New Zealand is constructively engaged in peacemaking and peacekeeping. Now it appears to be falling back into a role that we traditionally had in the time of the Viet Nam War, for example, of being subordinate to the Western alliance, and particularly to the foreign policy and military policy of the United States. I do not think we should go backwards now; we want to keep going forwards. We have progressed so far since the massive protest against New Zealand’s participation in the Viet Nam War some years ago; since our effective withdrawal from ANZUS to stop nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered warships from entering our waters; in the work we have done in the international arena to promoted nuclear disarmament through, for example, the New Agenda Coalition; and, more lately, in staying out of the illegal war in Iraq. Let us continue this peaceful and independent course.

Hon MURRAY McCULLY (Minister of Foreign Affairs): There are few more difficult decisions for any Government to make than the decision to deploy men and women from its armed forces into a theatre of conflict. No Government in the world makes such a decision lightly, and I assure members of the House today that this Government did not make that decision lightly.

The decision to yet again deploy the SAS into Afghanistan in the near future was a decision taken after careful reflection. It was made in the context of the wider review of New Zealand strategy in relation to Afghanistan. It was made in the light of the review of the wider international effort in Afghanistan that has taken place over recent months. Above all, the decision was made after determining that the further deployment of our SAS in Afghanistan was in the national interests of New Zealand and New Zealanders.

I welcome the opportunity to share with the House today some of the thinking that lay behind the Government’s decision. New Zealand’s engagement in Afghanistan has grown incrementally since the initial deployment of the SAS by the previous Labour Government in 2001. New Zealand’s engagement now includes a significant deployment of New Zealand Defence Force personnel leading and manning the provincial reconstruction team in Bamian province. It includes the assignment of military staff and liaison officers to the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. It includes deployment of military logistics, communications, and medical specialists. It includes a police training team operating under the European Union policing project EUPOL, which is based in Bamian with the provincial reconstruction team. It includes a development assistance programme now worth $9 million this year that is focused on agriculture, education, health, small infrastructure, and the promotion of human rights. It includes diplomatic accreditation from our embassy in Tehran.

As I have already said, the review on which Cabinet based its decisions looked at the totality of our engagement, taking account of the situation in Afghanistan and of the changing strategy of the international coalition to which New Zealand belongs.

As is widely known, the level of violence in Afghanistan has been rising, and the Government of Afghanistan has been less than successful in extending its authority throughout the country. In response, the international coalition has been adjusting its strategy. The key elements of that emerging strategy include a renewed and increased commitment to Afghanistan by the international community, a strengthened Security Council mandate for the UN assistance mission to coordinate international non-military assistance under the guidance of a special representative of the Secretary-General, and a NATO comprehensive strategic military political plan to better coordinate International Security Assistance Force military support to Afghanistan and to improve coordination of international civil and military assistance with the UN assistance mission. The strategy includes a strong emphasis on training the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police to take over lead responsibility for security. It includes a rebalancing of the international effort towards development and governance assistance, including additional aid flows and increasing civilian participation. Finally, it includes injections of additional military forces to stabilise the security situation and to maximise the effectiveness of development and governance assistance.

The decisions taken by the Cabinet of New Zealand last week place New Zealand’s contributions for the medium-term future within this broader international strategy. The further deployment of our SAS is our contribution to the renewed efforts by coalition military forces to improve security so that the non-military aspects of the international effort can be implemented in a sustained fashion. I agree with those who say that military force alone will not achieve our objectives in Afghanistan, but those objectives will not be achieved without military responses to the insurgency.

As a coalition partner from the beginning in Afghanistan, New Zealand must play its part. We have a direct and vital interest in supporting the international effort to deny international terrorism a base in Afghanistan, as the death of a New Zealander in a recent Jakarta bombing reminds us all. The decision to deploy the SAS to Afghanistan was ours. The Government was responding to a formal request from the International Security Assistance Force. Requests to consider further military contributions were also received from coalition partners, including Australia, the UK, and the US. We concluded that the SAS was best suited to the campaign being waged in Afghanistan today. Our decision has been welcomed by the Afghanistan Government and other coalition partners.

Above all other considerations, the Government decided that a further deployment of the SAS to Afghanistan was in the best interests of New Zealand and New Zealanders. New Zealanders are a highly mobile people. New Zealand nationals travel in planes and they stay in hotel rooms and resorts. Where terrorists strike around the world, the chances are that New Zealanders will be at risk. All New Zealanders today have a strong interest in reducing the threat of international terrorism and the ability of Afghanistan to play host to the terrorist groups that are present there.

As required by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1386, we have formally notified the United Nations Secretary-General of the decision to deploy the SAS to Afghanistan under the International Security Assistance Force, which is mandated by the Security Council under chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. We have updated our military technical arrangement with the Government of Afghanistan. We have also obtained a renewed assurance from the Government of Afghanistan that any persons transferred to Afghan custody after being detained by New Zealand forces will be treated humanely, in accordance with the international obligations of both countries.

The review outcome I have spoken of today will change our involvement in the Bamian provincial reconstruction team that New Zealand has led and manned since 2003. For some time the International Security Assistance Force and the coalition partners have been examining the functions and performance of the provincial reconstruction teams. There is no single model of provincial reconstruction team operations. Each lead country has brought its own operating style and personnel mix. Earlier this year I was privileged as a member of this Parliament and the only member of this Government to date to visit our provincial reconstruction team in Afghanistan—

Hon Phil Goff: No, I’ve been there twice.

Hon MURRAY McCULLY: I am the only member of the current Government to visit, I say to Mr Goff. I know that some members of the previous Government have taken the opportunity to visit. I am sure they will share my view that our representatives in the provincial reconstruction team in Bamian have done New Zealand proud. When I visited Afghanistan, all the leaders I spoke to in Kabul—whether they were leaders from Afghanistan or those involved in the international effort—without exception spoke in the highest possible terms of the contribution that has been made by members of the New Zealand Defence Force who serve in the provincial reconstruction team and by those who assist them.

Variations in security conditions between locations have affected the precise role and configuration of the individual provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan today. Some have long had a civilian component, doing development and governance work. Some have had civilian leaders or joint civil and military leadership. Some have patrolled far beyond their bases, and others have worked within a small geographical area close to base.

The re-examination of provincial reconstruction teams that has taken place has informed a new international strategy. From the outset the key function of provincial reconstruction teams has been to provide security and stability in a region in order to facilitate the delivery of Government assistance, capacity building, and governance improvements. As the security situation improves, the requirement for external providers of security will diminish, and the responsibility for security should be transferred to Afghan security forces.

As part of this process, more emphasis will be given by international partners to development and governance assistance, with civilian personnel as providers and coordinators where that is appropriate. Effective development programmes are vital in winning the support of ordinary citizens in Afghanistan. Bamian is among the more secure provinces in Afghanistan today. It is a suitable place in which to begin a transition to Afghan leadership of security responsibility. As this transition proceeds, there will be a phased reduction of the military component of the provincial reconstruction team. The Government expects that the transition will be complete within 3 to 5 years.

The official development assistance allocation for Afghanistan will be progressively increased, with a greater emphasis on agriculture, and continuing high priority will be given to education and health services. A team from NZAID and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade will visit Afghanistan within the next 3 or 4 months to identify options for enhanced engagement in agriculture. The recommendations of the team will shape the future of the official development assistance programme for the 3 or 4 years ahead.

Bamian province will continue to be the focus of New Zealand’s development assistance role. A development adviser will be appointed to the provincial reconstruction team to lead the shift in emphasis towards development. We recognise that New Zealand’s aid allocation is small in relation to the needs of the province, and that other donors, including international agencies and non-governmental organisations, are active there. Part of the adviser’s functions will be helping to bring greater coherence and coordination to international assistance provided to Bamian province. A suitably qualified appointee might in the future serve concurrently as the civilian co-leader of the provincial reconstruction team.

Implementing these changes effectively will require enhanced consultation with the Government of Afghanistan and coalition partners. For this reason we also intend to station a senior diplomat in Kabul for up to 2 years to carry out the work and to oversee and coordinate the reorientation of New Zealand’s engagement in Afghanistan. As a result of the review of New Zealand’s commitment to Afghanistan, we should have a coherent whole-of-Government strategy in operation there.

I am confident today that the vast majority of New Zealanders will join me in saying to the members of our SAS that when they are deployed into Afghanistan they go with the unambiguous and unqualified support of the New Zealand public. All of us wish to see our people who serve overseas respected and to see them return safely. Certainly, the Government will do everything it can to ensure that that is the case.

I emphasise in closing that in taking the steps I have referred to today the New Zealand Government is acting in concert with the thinking of the international community, lifting the level of civilian work and development work that is taking place in Afghanistan today, but also lifting the level of military support that goes there, to make sure that those who carry out the development and governance support work are able to carry out their work safely. I trust that New Zealanders will join us in wishing all of those who serve our country in Afghanistan a safe return.

Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition): If the SAS goes back to Afghanistan, its personnel will go with the thoughts and prayers of everyone in this House for their safety. But in its last term in office the Labour Government made a considered decision not to recommit our SAS forces and it did so for very good reasons, which I want to talk about today. Putting the lives of New Zealand troops at risk is not a decision that any Government takes lightly, nor is it an issue to play politics with. It is too serious for that. It is an issue that requires careful analysis of the risks, of the benefits to be gained, and whether this is the most effective response that New Zealand can make to the situation in Afghanistan. I am the first to say that there are times when it is necessary to stand up and fight for one’s country, for its protection, for our values, for the beliefs we hold, and for what is right. Thousands of New Zealanders of our parents’ generation laid down their lives to fight for their country.

In Opposition, in the past I have endorsed decisions made by the National Government to send troops overseas. I did so after returning from Timor-Leste in 1999 as a monitor for the United Nations in the referendum there. In Government, I have contributed to decisions that have seen our people placed at risk—in Afghanistan, with our SAS, where we were one of the first countries in after September 2001, and in Bamian, where we were the third country to set up a provincial reconstruction team. I have contributed to decisions to send our forces to the Solomon Islands and to redeploy in Timor-Leste after 2006. I stand by those decisions because I believe they were the right decisions to make at the time. There is a huge responsibility in making such decisions. We have to do the right thing, not only in a moral sense but also in terms of the choice of options that are before us. In determining to make a deployment, we have to consider what the cause is that we are fighting for. We have to look at the options that we have, at what positive difference a deployment by New Zealand forces can make, and whether the benefits to be gained outweigh the costs that may be incurred.

The previous Labour Government withstood pressure to commit troops to a war in Iraq that we did not believe in, and we were proven right by history. Regarding Afghanistan, we made a different decision. I think the rationale for sending troops to Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 was understood by most New Zealanders. Al-Qaeda had killed thousands of people in its terrorist attacks, and if left undisturbed it would have continued to do so. But, as I said before, after the third rotation of SAS forces came back in November 2005, the Labour Government reassessed the situation and decided not to recommit the special forces. That in no way reflects on the decency, the discipline, the effectiveness, and the competence of the SAS personnel themselves. I know many of them personally, and they are some of the finest people we could meet. I have absolute confidence in them. The decision we made not to send them back reflected our assessment of the situation that had evolved in Afghanistan, on the basis of the information that the Government had before it, and from our belief that in this new situation there were much better options to contribute to finding peace in that country. The big difference that had occurred was that the conflict had moved from being about rooting out international terrorist forces of al-Qaeda to a much more local conflict between disparate ethnic, religious, and political elements in Afghanistan.

If we were worried about al-Qaeda in the world today, we would be deploying troops to Pakistan, where most of its leaders are now based, not to Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is in many other countries—in the Yemen, in the Sudan, and in Somalia—but we have not found it necessary to send combat forces to those countries. Most people in this House know that although Afghanistan is a country, the primary loyalty of its people is to its ethnic and religious groups, whether they are Pashtun, Hazara, Uzbek, or Tajik. The lack of successful interventions by the United Kingdom over hundreds of years, and by the Russians more recently, demonstrates how difficult it is to establish a centralised form of control. I do not believe that Afghanistan can be reconstructed, from the top down, today.

We rightly deplored the excesses and the fundamentalism of the Taliban, but we should not pretend in this House that the conflict in Afghanistan today is a simple one between the forces of good and evil. The values of the current Afghan Government are such that many of us find it hard to sacrifice New Zealand lives to protect that Government. This week’s decision that it was legal for a man to starve his wife to death if she denied him conjugal rights is not the sort of values I believe that we should sacrifice New Zealand lives for. Nor do I believe in the sharia law that says that a person can be executed for changing his or her religion. We have to ask questions about whether it is appropriate to send our troops to support a “narco-State”. On 60 Minutes last night we saw Australian troops walking through hectares of opium crops without being able to touch them. Afghanistan is a country that provides 93 percent of the opium around the world in this current day. I do not find it easy to want to sacrifice New Zealand lives for a State that suffers from endemic corruption. Some members—and I think the Minister of Foreign Affairs is one—have argued in the House that those are secondary considerations to stopping Al-Qaeda re-establishing in Afghanistan. But the truth is that it is currently operating across the border in Pakistan and nobody is suggesting that we involve ourselves in that country.

The United States - led intervention has been in Afghanistan for 7 years, yet the defeat of the Taliban forces looks further away than ever before. The Taliban now controls one-third of the country, notwithstanding the 90,000 United States and allied forces that are involved in the conflict in that country. Last month 75 United States and NATO troops died in Afghanistan; it was the deadliest month since 2001. More than 1,000 Afghan civilians died, which was 24 percent above the same figures for the previous year. The hard fact is that when a person, an innocent civilian, dies in a village, villagers do not ask whether the Taliban were embedded in that village, and, therefore, that was why the allied forces responded. They simply know that their loved one was killed by a foreigner, and we lose the battle for hearts and minds. The contrast is in Bamian itself, where we have won the battle for hearts and minds. We have helped establish stability and security, we have provided the basis for development, and we can work alongside an administration led by Governor Habiba Sarabi, who is both honest and competent. We can see the difference we are making, and there is less risk to our troops in making that difference. That was an effective deployment.

I cannot understand why we would swap commitment to something that was working well at a lower risk to New Zealand lives for something that is absolutely unproven as to its effectiveness and has a much higher risk to New Zealand lives. I understand that the Americans and others have asked for it, but this is a decision that we make on our values and according to our analysis and judgment. For the reasons I have set out, from 2005 the previous Labour Government decided not to recommit the SAS to Afghanistan; we do not support that action now.

HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. There is an old saying that if the people who make the decision to go to war were the same people who had to actually go to war, there would be a hell of a lot fewer wars. But it seems that that is still not the case. Politicians make the decisions, but clearly it is other people, the soldiers, who die for those decisions.

Afghanistan is not our war, and the SAS should not be going. We should not be in Afghanistan with forces that are dedicated to nothing other than attacking people. We support provincial reconstruction absolutely, but that is not what the SAS is being sent to Afghanistan for. Like most Kiwis, I admire the professionalism, commitment, and skill that the SAS has shown in its recent deployments overseas. Like most Māori, I cannot help but be proud of the achievements of our SAS, because so many of them are Māori. But if I could ask a simple question, it would be what on earth we Māori people are doing flying across to the other side of the world to fight and kill people who are doing nothing else but defending their own homeland.

We all know why the Americans want the SAS back. In the SAS’s last three deployments it has shown that in its specialist role as a deep penetration patrol troop it is probably the best in the world. American troops generally do 1-day patrols, but our guys are out for up to a month, and they penetrate hundreds of kilometres into the countryside.

Who are we are trying to kid here? People have been invading and trying to conquer Afghanistan for hundreds of years, and in the end they have all given up. History tells us that neither Soviet-style Government nor Western-style democracy will take hold in Afghanistan, and history has shown us that even massive, huge, occupying forces are eventually ground down and forced to leave. The USSR could not do it; now the USA is in there, and it will not be able to conquer Afghanistan, either. We know that because Barack Obama is already talking about pulling back into the cities rather than trying to hold the countryside. There are simply not enough troops to hold it all.

We know, too, that America’s strategy for victory is not based on winning hearts and minds; it is based on overwhelming and indiscriminate firepower. The Americans apologise when they get it wrong, they pay compensation, but then they move on to the next village with the same attitude. The higher the number of innocent civilians killed, the greater the resistance to the coalition forces. I ask myself whether we want to be part of that.

On top of that, the Taliban themselves are, quite simply, dedicated and ferocious fighters. Why would they not be? They have something to fight for: their families and their homeland. The world is now fully aware of how badly the Americans treat their so-called prisoners. The world knows well the stories of the torture of innocent civilians and of the untold killings of innocent civilians by American and other coalition forces. We know clearly the response from the Middle East to those who come into its homelands to rape its resources, kill its people, and take over its lands. We have seen it in New York, we have seen it in London, we have seen it in Bali, and we nearly saw it in Sydney.

So again I ask whether we really want to be part of that. Yes, we can play a role, and we are playing a role in provincial reconstruction in Afghanistan. New Zealand forces are gaining kudos from coalition and Afghan commentators for their skills, commitment, and ability to help communities to rebuild. But the answer to ending the war in Afghanistan is simple. The answer is for the USA and all other coalition forces to get out of Afghanistan, and sooner rather than later. Western firepower will not outlast the rage of the people of Afghanistan who want all outsiders out. The people of Afghanistan will win. The United States already knows it to be true. Only the Afghan people can ultimately determine what sort of Government, if any, they want to have, and we have no right to try to impose a system of Government on them that they have clearly shown they do not want.

In the lead-up to the SAS decision, John Key said that whatever decision we make, it has to be made here in New Zealand with what is perceived to be in the best interests of New Zealand. They are whom I answer to: the New Zealand public. They are the people entitled to that answer—nobody else. The Māori Party has to question whether interfering in external disputes outside of our own territory is in the best interests of any New Zealander.

The Government has announced that it will send more than 200 SAS soldiers to Afghanistan, and we know that many of those soldiers will be Māori. We also know that the SAS will not be deployed in a peacekeeping role. The SAS is “the premier combat unit of the New Zealand Defence Force”. The SAS will join other special forces that have been described as hunter-killer units.

The Māori Party holds true to our previous statements that denounce the glorification of war. We do not support our soldiers overseas fighting and killing civilians or aiding others to do so, so why should we send our own to their aid? The military role that our Government has had in Afghanistan in the recent past has been covert in nature, and we suggest that it is not about what is best for the people of Afghanistan. Our overseas aid money is being used by the military to wage war on innocent people. We care about the welfare of the innocent victims of war, so we support the announcement of more civil aid as an approach to supporting people.

This weekend the United States acting ambassador said there was tremendous international respect for New Zealand’s efforts in Afghanistan. New Zealand Defence Force personnel in Afghanistan do an excellent job in running a provincial reconstruction team, which is used as a model for others. NATO routinely invites others to look at what New Zealand is doing and to try to imitate that elsewhere. About 140 of our Defence Force members have been operating the provincial reconstruction team in Bamian province since 2003. Given that situation, it defies belief that our Prime Minister would recommend that the provincial reconstruction team be wound down. The provincial reconstruction team is about making a practical difference in infrastructure.

In terms of our international responsibility, every nation should examine its role in this so-called war on terror. We need to correct that phrase because it is no longer a war on terror; it is a war of terror. We would have preferred that the Minister of Defence consulted tangata whenua on overseas deployments to fight this so-called terrorism. What one calls terrorism depends on who one is and where one stands. In my office I have a poster that has a photo of four Apaches—Geronimo, Yanozha, Chappo, and Fun. They are in the desert and are armed with muskets and rifles. The caption states: “Homeland security: fighting terrorism since 1492”. The photo makes it absolutely clear who they are and where they stand. They are no ordinary US citizens; they are tangata whenua, and they have considered themselves to be fighting a war of terror against them ever since the British moved in and started taking over their homeland. When our SAS troops confront the enemy in Afghanistan, it is unclear to me who is maintaining homeland security and who exactly is fighting terrorism.

We do ourselves a grave injustice by being seen to be complicit in the war of terror against the people of Afghanistan. If we can help through provincial reconstruction then we will support that, but we will not support the sending of New Zealand’s premier combat unit—the SAS—back into Afghanistan. Its role is defined very much by the American military presence and military direction. Tēnā koe. Kia ora tātou katoa.

Hon JIM ANDERTON (Leader—Progressive): The Progressive Party was established only after a policy disagreement over intervention in Afghanistan in any circumstances, so we have some fairly passionate views about this issue. Today we believe we must continue to support stability in Afghanistan, but the days when we should have combat troops there are over.

In 2002 the Progressive Party supported New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan, because the situation there at the time represented a clear and present threat to the civilised world. Al-Qaeda had just committed a terrorist atrocity in the United States. I was Acting Prime Minister on the day that it happened. One of those killed in the attacks on the United States was a New Zealand citizen. I sent a message as Acting Prime Minister to the United States President saying that New Zealand saw the attack as an attack not only on the United States but on all civilised society. I promised that New Zealand would stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States in resisting terrorist attacks, and we have kept that promise.

The al-Qaeda threat was, in fact, a global threat. The Taliban responded to those attacks by giving al-Qaeda shelter. In football stadiums—where, ironically, election rallies are being held this week—the Taliban was carrying out mass executions. Men, women, and children were being executed for the perverted political ends of the then Government of Afghanistan. That no longer happens. The Afghanistan of today is not the Afghanistan of 7 years ago. It is not perfect—in fact, it is far from perfect—but it is different. The world could not have stood by and ignored what was being done. We were right in that view, and we have made a difference, even though it might be incremental and even though it is clearly not the kind of democratic perfection that one would like.

The United Nations Secretary-General at the time said: “The only way to win against terrorism is to organise a common international action. The main point is that the fight be led within the framework of the United Nations on the basis of the two Security Council resolutions and the General Assembly resolutions.” The United Nations agreement was crucial in forming my view, and the view of others in the then Alliance, that we should be part of that intervention.

International law makes it clear that the only grounds for military intervention are self-defence or United Nations sanction. So United Nations authority for the Afghanistan intervention was vital to ensure that it complied with international law. Once that was decided, our involvement was to send provincial reconstruction teams. We also sent the SAS. Its work was not, and is never, soft. Willy Apiata’s Victoria Cross is proof of that. We cannot send children to school or sick people to hospital, and we cannot develop economies and end poverty, when terrorists are doing their best to kill and to threaten entire communities.

So I supported SAS involvement in Afghanistan to help reconstruction, at that time—my present party exists because of it. But it was never an open-ended commitment. What we cannot support is involvement that tries to take sides in the feudal infighting in Afghanistan today. There are layers of sides in Afghanistan, and we cannot—nor should we try to—pick one over the other. We can help the country, however, to clear itself of al-Qaeda. We must have United Nations authority to do so, and we must have a firm base in international law. So we cannot just walk away from Afghanistan, in my view. That would give not only Afghanistan but northern Pakistan to the Taliban and to other ideological extremists.

Pakistan is, of course, a nuclear State. I do not particularly like that situation, but it happens to be a fact. It is teetering dangerously. The consequences of a nuclear State like Pakistan becoming even more unstable are too dangerous to tolerate. The whole world has a strong interest in making sure that that does not happen. The best contribution we can make, in our view, is to support stability in Afghanistan. How best can we do that? We should certainly offer to be of help and assistance, but I do not support doing so through the continued combat role of the SAS in Afghanistan. We have been pulling and have pulled our weight in Afghanistan; we have spent over $180 million on military assistance and aid there. That is one of the biggest commitments outside of international war theatres that we have ever made as a nation. So we cannot be accused of not taking the issues and events there seriously—we have.

This is not a debate about whether we should assist Afghanistan; it is about what kind of assistance we offer. Our contribution today has to be towards rebuilding and helping to strengthen the Afghan communities, the Afghan economy, and, of course, the Afghan National Army. Following the elections later this week the future of security in Afghanistan will be the responsibility of that army in particular. It is our view that SAS engagement is no longer the appropriate vehicle for that purpose. As I have said, we believe we should continue to engage in Afghanistan, and we should continue to offer assistance, but the role of the SAS, in our view, is now not appropriate any longer. New Zealand should continue with its provincial reconstruction team engagement, which has been extraordinarily successful and has played a very important role in the rehabilitation of the region in which it operates. That is the course we recommend to the House and to the Government.

Hon Dr WAYNE MAPP (Minister of Defence): I seek leave to speak for 10 minutes.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker): Leave is sought; is there any objection? There being none, it is so agreed.

Hon Dr WAYNE MAPP: It is now 8 years since the New Zealand Defence Force was first deployed to Afghanistan. During that time, its personnel have provided civil reconstruction and security, and has directly engaged al-Qaeda and its Taliban supporters. In all of those roles, they have brought great credit to the professionalism of the New Zealand Defence Force and, indeed, to New Zealand. Many, including Corporal Willy Apiata VC, have been highly decorated for their bravery and their leadership. Their contributions have been highly valued and they are so today.

It is appropriate that New Zealanders ask what we intend to achieve in the future. Today’s debate, the discussion in the media, and the letters and emails are centred on that question. Most people, including members of the Green Party, accept that we have a role to play in Afghanistan; the question, in essence, is what kind of role that should be. We need to recall the principal reason why we first went to Afghanistan: it was September 11, al-Qaeda had its base in Afghanistan, and the Taliban Government of Afghanistan was unwilling to eject al-Qaeda and ensure it was brought to international justice. It was intolerable that a Government should provide a safe haven to terrorists who had perpetrated the worst terrorist incident in history. It is worth recalling that New Zealanders have died in each of the al-Qaeda directed and inspired incidents, including September 11, and those in London, Bali, and, most recently, Jakarta. We have a duty to our fellow New Zealanders to deal directly with the sources of terrorism.

The Taliban Government was defeated in 2002 by an international coalition that included New Zealand. There was specific United Nations Security Council authorisation for that action—resolutions 1368 and 1373. There is a continuing annual Security Council resolution to support the NATO - International Security Assistance Force to which New Zealand currently contributes. The challenge is to produce a sufficiently stable Afghanistan so that it does not once again become a haven for terrorists. That was the case in 2003 and 2004 when the SAS was deployed, and it is the case today. During the 2008 presidential campaign in the United States, Barack Obama understood the importance of focusing on Afghanistan and that there had been neglect in the rebuilding of Afghanistan.

In February this year at the NATO - International Security Assistance Force Defence Ministers conference in Cracow, I put New Zealand’s case that we needed a more sophisticated approach to Afghanistan, and that the goal of the NATO - International Security Assistance Force mission should be specifically to deal with the risks of terrorism, to build the institutions of civil governance, and to enable the reconciliation of political factions within Afghanistan, including the moderate elements of the Taliban. Reference was also made by me and others to a more discriminating use of defence forces to minimise the risk to the Afghani population. Those views were widely shared, particularly amongst the European NATO - International Security Assistance Force partners and by Australia.

In April this year the NATO - International Security Assistance Force partners set out a new strategy that adopted many of those concerns. It involves an increased commitment of defence forces to build renewed security within the country. The reason for that is to prevent the country from reverting to Taliban control and providing a safe haven for terrorists, particularly al-Qaeda. Of course that involves the strengthening of the Afghani Government and of the Afghani security forces. I note that the Afghani Government itself has a role to play in being more inclusive, and that was referred to by Mr Locke. It must find an effective way to reconcile all of the peoples of Afghanistan, including the moderate parts of the Taliban. The NATO - International Security Assistance Force partners—and they include New Zealand—are taking a dual approach. The approach involves building the security of Afghanistan, and the civil reconstruction of the country. That is not just the physical infrastructure such as the building of schools, health clinics, roading, and electrical distribution; it also involves improving civil governance such as the training of the police force, the judiciary, and the civil service. As has been noted by my colleague Mr McCully, it also means the full observance of humanitarian law by the Afghani Government and, as has been noted today, that has been agreed to just recently by written documentation by the Afghani Government that it will respect a commitment to international humanitarian norms.

In the longer term, those things will be key to a stable Afghanistan, a country that will not threaten or, perhaps more particularly, allow its territory to be used by others who would threaten wider international peace. That is the specific interest that New Zealand has. New Zealand’s current deployments in both the provincial reconstruction team and the deployment of the New Zealand SAS meet those needs. New Zealand’s engagement in Afghanistan requires a contribution to both security and civil reconstruction. The current surge is intended to change the security situation. Clearly, it is risky to members of the SAS, but it is also risky to the provincial reconstruction team and has been for many, many months. That was the case before the surge, and it reinforced the recognition last year that the situation in Afghanistan had to be turned round. I recognise that New Zealanders will need to see an improvement over the next 12 months or so. That is the expectation of all the peoples in the NATO - International Security Assistance Force countries—all 42 countries—and, of course, of the people of Afghanistan.

If Afghanistan fell into the hands of radical Taliban, it would become an uncontested home for al-Qaeda. That is an intolerable risk. We need to know what the stakes are here. New Zealanders have been killed in terrorist attacks. We are protecting ourselves by dealing with terrorism in the very place where it has its source, and Afghanistan is that place. By our presence there and by our commitments announced last week, we will protect ourselves and our values.

Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North): I seek leave to give a speech lasting 10 minutes.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker): Leave is sort for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is none.

Hon PETE HODGSON: When the Government announced on 10 August that the SAS would be deployed in Afghanistan and that the provincial reconstruction team in Bamian would be gradually wound down, it did not give reasons for either decision. The Government has not sought to justify either decision, and it has declined to proactively set time aside in Parliament for a public debate.

We in Labour believe that both decisions are wrong, and we are certain that the process is wrong. We might have come to a different, more supportive, more understanding view if we had been given access to advice the Government presumably has, or we might not have. We might, even on receipt of advice, have come to the same position we are in now: that both decisions are wrong. But we have not been given access to any of that advice, and we would have been denied the opportunity to debate the issue in Parliament had it not been for the decision of Mr Speaker to allow an urgent debate.

In the course of the debate the Hon Murray McCully, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, was the lead Government speaker, and he made his contribution to give us a glimpse into his Government’s thinking. He told us about the totality of our engagement in Afghanistan, particularly the remarkable efforts of our forces in Bamian through the provincial reconstruction team. He continued to read from what I noticed was a prepared speech that I think was derived from the bowels of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In essence, he spoke of the need to contribute to the military response in Afghanistan, so that non-military efforts, such as those of the provincial reconstruction team, might flourish. The essence of his contribution was that we need to step up our military contribution in order to make room for the non-military activity we already have going on there.

He spoke very highly of the provincial reconstruction team, and he reminded the House that many other people—New Zealanders and many others—also speak very highly of the provincial reconstruction team in Bamian. We strongly endorse the Minister’s remarks and his sentiments, and we wish those who are serving in Afghanistan today every best wish and our warm appreciation of their efforts and of the efforts of those who have gone before them.

Minister McCully then went on to say that in taking the decision to send the SAS to Afghanistan the highest consideration for his Government—the consideration that ranked above all others—was what is in the best interests of New Zealand and New Zealanders. At that point he invoked the threat of international terrorism, reminded us that one of our citizens has been killed—nowhere near Afghanistan, I say parenthetically—in a terrorist bomb blast recently, and reminded us that New Zealanders stay in hotels all around the world and are therefore vulnerable to the possible actions of terrorists. Well, there, right there, is the error of logic—right at that point.

Afghanistan is no longer the single seat of global terrorism it once was. Al-Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, and it was from there that the events of 2001 emerged. That is why, in the 4 years following 11 September 2001, New Zealand deployed the SAS into Afghanistan three times, and for extended periods of time, after a parliamentary debate. As it happened, one of the SAS’s number was awarded a Victoria Cross. But nearly 4 years ago we in the Labour Government decided that the SAS should not return to Afghanistan, because the circumstances had changed. The Minister of Defence, who at that time was the Hon Phil Goff, and others led a debate in Cabinet. Cabinet changed our nation’s emphasis in Afghanistan because Afghanistan had changed. Al-Qaeda was no longer holed up in Tora Bora or wherever. Today al-Qaeda is to be found everywhere, including Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and elsewhere.

The idea of provincial reconstruction teams had gathered a lot of momentum. It had taken root, and we put our hand up for such a role. Afghanistan is still substantially a tribal land. We said we could work in one such tribal area with one group of people. It has gone well. On that we are all agreed. So why should we wind down the provincial reconstruction team, where we are making a difference, where we are helping with the training of the Afghan National Police and the Afghan National Army, where we are respected, and where our soldiers, so I understand, respect those who live there? Progress is being made, yet we are about to pull back.

Then there is the decision to send the SAS back to Afghanistan when the war on terror has dispersed all around the world, and when commentator after commentator has offered advice that the situation in Afghanistan has evolved to the point where it is now much, much more akin to a civil war. If the SAS goes, it will do well; it did last time.

Two features of this decision are unfortunate. One is the process, and the other is the issue of international pressure. The process was a joke. When the SAS went to Afghanistan last time, Prime Minister Clark came to this House and led a debate on the decision. When in 1999 our forces went to Timor-Leste, Prime Minister Shipley came to this House and led a debate on the decision. When in early 1991—for those of us who can remember that far back—our forces went into Kuwait and the southern part of Iraq, Prime Minister Bolger called a special meeting, as I recall, in late January—

Hon Trevor Mallard: He called Parliament back.

Hon PETE HODGSON: He called Parliament back at the end of the Christmas period and led a debate in this House on that decision. But when New Zealand’s policy changed on 10 August, and the decision was made to send the SAS back to Afghanistan after 4 years of policy to the contrary, Prime Minister Key came nowhere near this House and will not partake in this debate.

The issue of international pressure is harder to explore. On this side of the House we simply do not know what pressure the Government has come under. We have heard Murray McCully say that it was the Government’s decision and its decision alone, but history, regrettably, does not support that assertion.

John Key, today’s Prime Minister, said in 2003: “New Zealand should support its allies first and the United Nations second. Any relationship with the US or Britain has to take precedence over the United Nations.” According to the Rodney Times in 2003, John Key “would be prepared to commit any support requested by the United States for a war against Iraq, including SAS and combat troops.” Then in this House in 2003 John Key said: “I look down the list and I see Australia; yes, the roos are there. So is Britain. So is the United States. Our traditional allies are in this agreement. Where is our name? Missing! It is “MIA” … This country will pay for that—members need not worry about that. There will be no US free-trade arrangement with New Zealand.” Well, let me make the point that no Kiwi blood gets spilt in the name of a free-trade agreement. Our foreign policy is independent and has been forged thus over decades and across Governments. But that is what John Key said in 2003.

I wonder what would have been the case had he been the Prime Minister when the decision on whether to go into Iraq was taken by New Zealand. After all, our three best friends went there but we did not. However, in defence of Mr Key I can say that by March of this year it appeared that he might have changed his mind. Mr Key said on 31 March that from New Zealand’s point of view we already have a big contribution to our provincial reconstruction team in Bamian. He said we have over 150 people there, so we do not have a lot of extra resources, and on a per capita basis we are doing more than a lot of NATO countries. That is precisely the Labour position. So why, then, were both decisions overturned 8 days ago?

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Estimates Debate

In Committee

Debate resumed from 6 August on the Appropriation (2009/10 Estimates) Bill.

Vote Climate Change (continued)

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Climate Change Issues): The Government has a major challenge on its hands in respect of climate change policy. There are a number of points I wish to make in the approving of the estimates. The first concerns the importance of accurate information. One of the concerns I have had, both in Opposition and upon coming into Government, was that there have been widely varying estimates on New Zealand’s Kyoto balance—in fact, variations of over $1 billion. So a major investment has been made by the Government in the land-use and carbon-analysis system, to try to use the latest satellite technology so that we can get some reliable figures around where New Zealand’s carbon balance sits. I am pleased to inform the House that last month we received the first of that satellite data, and that has given us far greater confidence about our estimates of New Zealand’s forest area. That shows that New Zealand will be broadly in balance in the Kyoto period.

Members will be aware that we are progressing towards important negotiations later in the year in Copenhagen, in which New Zealand is determined to play a constructive role in securing a post-2012 agreement to succeed Kyoto, and that last week we announced a target of a 10 to 20 percent reduction in emissions below 1990 levels. There has been some debate about whether that is the right place for New Zealand to position itself. I would note that it is a more ambitious target than has been set by the United States, by Canada, and by Japan. It is very similar to the target proposed by our near neighbour Australia. The real thing for New Zealand to understand is that because our emissions are 24 percent above 1990 levels, a reduction target by 2020 of between 10 and 20 percent will actually be enormously challenging and, as the papers released from Treasury today note, incredibly ambitious. New Zealand is actually committing to contribute a greater portion of its GDP to this challenge of climate change than what many other countries are contributing.

A very important priority in these estimates is finalising and trying to build as broad a consensus as is possible around an emissions trading scheme. My ambition would be for us to be able to go to Copenhagen with emissions trading scheme legislation in New Zealand settled.

There has been some debate about the events in Australia last week. In the Senate, the current Labor Government had its carbon pollution reduction scheme voted down. My view is that that is just one of the humps and bumps that will occur around this difficult and challenging issue. It does not change the desire of the New Zealand Government to work closely with Australia. I note that the Liberal Party in Australia and its leader, Malcolm Turnbull, are on record as supporting an emissions trading scheme for Australia. I am confident they will get there. I am equally confident that the right thing for New Zealand to do is to align its own emissions trading scheme as closely as is possible with Australia’s, given the huge level of trade, inter-people contact, and the like between New Zealand and Australia.

The last point I will make concerns the huge number of initiatives that the Government has got going across the board to try to improve our environmental performance and to address those increases in New Zealand’s emissions. Just last week Parliament passed legislation to provide an incentive for full electric cars. We announced in the Budget the $48 million commitment for supporting biofuels, and a price incentive for the development of that new technology. The Minister of Energy and Resources, Gerry Brownlee, has committed $323 million to the home insulation and clean heating initiative. There are important initiatives by the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Forestry, David Carter, for incentivising new forest planting. There is a very broad package that provides for a common-sense and balanced approach to this challenging area of work.

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour): It is interesting to have the opportunity to follow the Minister for Climate Change Issues, and to take a call. It is a useful opportunity to make a few points in reply to what the Committee has just heard. The Minister, I think, ought to be much more careful about trumpeting the new Government’s environmental credentials than he has been, because the record reflects that in fact there is nothing to crow about. Since November 2008 we have seen a number of retrograde steps be taken as far as the environment is concerned, particularly in climate change policy.

We have seen, by an administrative announcement only—no legislation in the House; no respect for the dignity of Parliament—the emissions trading scheme be put on hold, at the cost of significant investment in new planting in the forestry sector, as well as potential leadership in the carbon registry business. That scheme was ready to go, yet this Government, for the sake of a political deal with the ACT Party, said it would not put legislation through the House to suspend it, as it had said it would, but would just act as though it was suspended and stop the officials from undertaking the allocation plans that they should have been undertaking. Of course, all of that led us to the situation last month where we had to assist the Government to get some legislation through the House in order to save people from being in blatant breach of the law.

Then we have the restored significant tax breaks for offshore minerals exploration, these at a time when that industry is doing very well, thank you, and where, without a price of carbon yet being levied by the consumers of those minerals exports in developing countries, we are actually cooperating in the fairly irresponsible action of sending fossil fuels to those nations prior to the time at which they will bear the price of carbon and an obligation to price those emissions. There is nothing environmentally friendly about enhancing our ability to do that.

Then there is the repeal of the moratorium on the future construction of baseload thermal electricity generation plants. The Minister in the chair smiles, but I do not think that is terribly funny, because it jeopardises the ability to put in place the New Zealand Energy Strategy target of getting our electricity generation by 2025 to 90 percent renewables on baseload. Achieving that target is very important for getting the emissions down, yet the Government takes it out of the law and says it is kind of committed to the New Zealand Energy Strategy. Gerry Brownlee made a speech back in February in which he promised to give the Government’s exact position on that strategy, and we are still waiting for it.

Then there was the phase-out of the old, inefficient light bulbs. The cries of “Nanny State!” ring fairly ironic now. Given the legislation that we have seen presaged in the House on issues like the use of hand-held cellphones, it seems that what is sauce for the goose is not necessarily sauce for the gander.

Then there is the Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee, which the Minister refers to regularly, and which I have the pleasure of sitting on. It has relitigated all these issues after last year’s hearing of them, and no doubt we will relitigate them again when we get amending legislation through the House on the emissions trading scheme at some point. It is an interesting committee to sit on; let us hope it does not prove to be a total waste of time.

Then we have had the replacement of Labour’s very carefully targeted home insulation package with a completely untargeted one, and with all the nightmares that we knew would emerge from that. There are 4-week waiting lists in order to get a quote from a provider. That will not help families terribly much this winter; I fear we will see more of that.

Then there is every possible excuse for coming up with a weak carbon pollution target. The first excuse, as I recall it, was that we had better wait until we got the most recent forestry data. Then suddenly the Minister decided it was absolutely vital to rush through a public consultation round, yet it was quite obvious from the statements that were being made by Ministers that the Government had made up its mind on the target prior to that consultation. I think that those who participated in that round felt that very keenly.

The Government has scrapped the Fast Forward Fund and the research and development targets—the list goes on. This Government does not have a proud record on the environment or on climate change.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Environment agreed to.

Vote Corrections

SANDRA GOUDIE (Chairperson of the Law and Order Committee): How refreshing it is to be part of a Government committed to real change and showing real leadership at all levels! In speaking to the estimates for Vote Corrections I pay tribute to the excellent work done by the Minister of Corrections, the Hon Judith Collins. In conjunction with the Department of Corrections, the Minister has done in 6 months what the previous Government could not do in 9 long years. I also want to say what a great job my colleagues on the Law and Order Committee are doing, supported by ACT, in spite of the many challenges they face.

So what is the good news? Well, there is plenty of good news, and the Minister is doing such a great job it is hard to know where to start. I mention in particular probation funding, which has increased to improve community safety. The Government is injecting an extra $255.9 million into the probation service to address issues raised in the critical report by the Auditor-General. As the Minister has said on numerous occasions, the safety of the public should be the No. 1 priority when offenders are released on parole. This Government inherited a probation system under extreme stress. The previous Government increased the number and complexity of community-based sentences without providing enough resources or training of probation staff. The extra funding shows that this Government is serious about fixing the probation system and improving the safety of the public. The total extra funding includes $205 million of operating spending over the next 4 years, and $50.9 million in capital spending in the next 2 years.

The Auditor-General said in February that the Community Probation and Psychological Services had 10 percent fewer probation officers than it needed, due to increasing numbers of offenders on community sentences. Budget operating funding of $133.8 million over 4 years will enable the Community Probation and Psychological Services to recruit an extra 134 probation officers, 26 front-line managers, and 20 psychologists, which will ensure it can effectively manage almost 100,000 sentences and orders a year. That is a magnificent step forward; these are fantastic initiatives by the Minister. This is just a part of the many initiatives that the Minister of Corrections, the Hon Judith Collins, is undertaking, and it has been a fantastic start to this Government’s control of corrections and making sure that the job is done, and done well.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri): I lost count of how many times Sandra Goudie used the word “fantastic” in her speech. The Minister of Corrections has made a very interesting start in the corrections portfolio, and, given that this is her first Budget as Minister of Corrections, she has made much of the fact—as all National Ministers have, of course—that she walked into, in her case, an explosion in terms of prisoner numbers. Well, let me just remind the Minister, because she is very good at the rhetoric and very good at stomping her feet and acting tough, that the rhetoric often does not match the facts.

Judith Collins said she was going to sort out the Department of Corrections from the top—the chief executive—down. Heads were going to roll all over the place. But no one has been sacked, no one has been held accountable, and in theory no one is responsible.

We remember the slogan that the National Party campaigned on: “Tough on crime”. Apparently when we were in Government we did not lock enough people up. National said prisons were all hotels with flat-screen TVs. I think I have been into 10 prisons now, and I have not been able to sight one of those flat-screen TVs. Then we had the myth about underfloor heating, and all those things. It was as if we were going to walk into a Hilton hotel.

The Minister also fails to recall her own election promises around parole. The estimates were that those promises would double the bulging prison population, but she walked in, read the briefing to incoming Minister, and—in theory—the scales fell from her eyes and this was all news to her. Judith Collins knew what she was getting into. She was reminded of that, in fact, in 2007 by David Carruthers, who gave figures to that effect.

The Minister said she was going to sort out the hierarchy in the Department of Corrections. People were going to be made accountable; heads were to roll. No one has gone, no one is accountable, and now it is all an operational matter, unless she wants to take the credit for something—for instance, for the drug-testing figures, most of which happened under the previous Government.

But let us get past that issue. Let us look at the big issues. One of the big issues, of course, is private prisons. The Minister came before the Law and Order Committee, which asked her to please tell it what the costs would be of the private prisons. I noted her answer this afternoon, because we will be checking those reports. Her department has provided information on a number of occasions, and it has provided figures that show that mark-to-mark in the case of the Auckland Central Remand Prison—the only example in New Zealand of a private versus public contest, if you will, to run a prison—the public system was cheaper, if the cost is all that one is interested in. Corrections officers came before the select committee and told us about some of the nefarious activity that had occurred in the private prison, because those officers have worked under the private and the public system. But, again, we have no real information on costs. I note with great interest that this Minister refuses to put the whole issue of private versus public prison management out to an independent agency, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, or whoever else—somebody who does not have an axe to grind—so that we can get some facts around which system is more cost-effective, efficient, and effective at rehabilitation—all of those things. She will not do that.

Then we come to the other issue, which is using shipping containers as cells. This is a cracker. I remember being on the radio with the Minister, and in the space of fewer than 24 hours both she and her department produced four different figures on what the containers would cost. At the select committee she produced another set of figures. [Interruption] I do not think the chair of the select committee was present during the visit we made to Rimutaka Prison. That was a pity; we were all in mourning about that outcome. We asked the prison officials, as we viewed two very classy looking shipping containers, what the costs were. The reply from one of the officials, who will remain nameless—because I think it was a bit of a slip—was that that was the best-kept secret. The officials did not know the costs. Again there was a lack of detail around that.

Then, of course, we have the issue of double-bunking. Beven Hanlon, head of the Corrections Association of New Zealand, whom I know the Minister holds in contempt, given some of the comments she has made about him in the House, has said it is not double-bunking but overcrowding. He says it is overcrowding and it is dangerous. I note that Ms Goudie has said our No. 1 priority as a Parliament should be to keep people safe, and I think we all share that sentiment. It is a pity the Minister does not share that view with regard to prison officers. She has described a broken collarbone or humerus—or a broken bone; I am not a doctor—as “a minor injury”. When she was caught out on that, then she said any injury should be taken very seriously.

I say to the Minister that I have been around in politics, and I have observed politics. I know that greater minds than mine have been inside this place, but as an observer of politics I note the level of her rhetoric and promises, and the foot-stomping, tub-thumping, and fist-thumping routine that she carries on with. Judith Collins is possibly the most macho Minister of Corrections we have had since John Banks. If she can live up to the expectations she has raised in the community, she may well indeed be beatified by the electorate. I suspect, though, that she will not be able to do so once we pick away at the double-bunking issue—and she cannot come up with a cost for the shipping containers—and at the lack of logic around private prisons.

The worry around private prisons—and the Minister will not answer these questions—is that the Auditor-General, Parliament, the select committee, and even the genius who is the chair of our select committee, along with members of Parliament and the media, under the Official Information Act and other mechanisms provided through our constitutional framework, have the ability to seek information from Government departments. We are not talking about any department here; we are talking about the department that is charged with incarcerating our citizenry. That is, I would say, a core function, along with the police and the military. Through the mechanisms of this Parliament we have the ability to elicit information directly, and to make the Department of Corrections accountable. As the chair of the select committee has said, the Auditor-General did a damn good job of that through his report.

The problem I have with the private prisons debate is that we will now have to go through a filter. No longer will the Minister be able to get up and say an issue is an operational matter so it is not her problem, and we should go and ask the chief executive. The chief executive will now be able to say the department has a contract with a private provider. The Auditor-General does not have the power to delve into the business of a private company—

Sandra Goudie: Nor should he.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: “Nor should he,” says the chair of the select committee. That is very interesting. Nor can a private company be questioned under the Official Information Act, or pulled before a select committee. All of those mechanisms have to be gone through by the Department of Corrections. I ask the Minister whether she seriously thinks that the Department of Corrections will be able to win a tender. Yes, it is possible, but it is highly unlikely if the Government goes out for tender with a private provider. The department will not be able to pull the wages of prison staff—and nor should it—down to the floor, reducing those wages and thereby somehow becoming competitive with a private provider. Of course, private providers do not have to disclose wage rates or terms and conditions of employment, and instead can just say how much they will run a prison for.

We know, for instance, the debacle that some of the private prisons have had in Western Australia. The Minister has flaunted the fact that we could charge private prisons 50,000 bucks if there is an escape. As we know, Western Australia does a wash-up at the end of each month. There is a wash-up in the expenses, and the private prisons claw that money back. It is the worst-kept secret in Western Australia.

I am concerned about some of these issues. This is not about ideology, to be honest; it is more about accountability. It is about what happens if something goes wrong and a prison officer is acting nefariously. Prison officers have said that private providers ask them to resign rather than dealing with them if that happens. The issue is about what happens if a prison officer has been hurt, and if there has been neglect around the attention to, and care and protection of, that prison officer, or, likewise, of a prisoner. Will the Parliament, the democratic folk in here, the institutions that we have, and the media, through the Official Information Act, be able to elicit the same level of information and accountability from a private provider that we can, in fairness, obtain directly from a Government department? That is a major obstacle and a major concern. We are not talking about an outfit that just produces widgets. We are talking about a core function of the State, which is the incarceration of our citizenry. We would not look, I presume, to privatise our police force or our armed forces. This function is a core part of what a Government and the Crown do. It is what they do.

I say to the Minister that she ought to consider the level of her rhetoric. She smiles in her own smug way and says everything is rosy, and if she can meet the expectations she has set for herself she may well be beatified by the electorate, as she seeks to be. But she has raised the hype very substantially. This is the woman who says she will sort everything out, and who came before a select committee and said “Look at these terrible jail cells! Isn’t this awful?”. This is the same woman who said, before the election, that jail cells were too good for the prisoners. Do members remember that? Before the election she said we were not locking enough offenders up; now she says it is terrible that we have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Well, I agree with the Minister on that point, but she did not say that before the election. She said—and the Government still does—we were not tough enough, we were not locking enough criminals up, and prison was a sort of holiday camp or Hilton hotel. I invite the Minister to reflect on her rhetoric.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Corrections): It gives me great pleasure to rise and speak to the estimates for Vote Corrections. The Department of Corrections has had a remarkable turn-round this year. It is with great pleasure that I say that it is partly because we have given the department good direction, and also because we have listened to the department and to the Auditor-General when a plea was made to properly fund the department.

A total of $385.4 million has been allocated to enable the Department of Corrections to cope with a rising prison population over the next 4 years. I was absolutely appalled to find out that the previous Government had received a request from the department in September last year for particularly urgent funding in relation to the Community Probation and Psychological Services, and that the request did not even elicit a reply from the then Minister of Corrections, the Hon Phil Goff. I was also appalled to find that, in fact, the department had previously put forward estimates as to the rising prison population, and that they had not been accepted by the previous Minister, Phil Goff—obviously because it showed that we needed to have more prison beds. That is the emergency situation that we are now facing in the corrections system.

A key component of the funding is $145.8 million in capital funding over the next 2 years to increase double-bunking at the new facilities of Northland Region Corrections Facility, Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility, Spring Hill Corrections Facility, Otago Region Corrections Facility, and the new prison under construction at Mount Eden. We are putting double-bunking into these new prisons because they have a huge amount of infrastructure, and these are the same ones, as at Spring Hill, that cost $343,000 a bed when built under the previous administration.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: How much are the containers going to cost?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: The member who has just resumed his seat asks how much the containers will cost. If he listened when we told him, he would know it is $53,000 to $63,000 per bed.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Why can’t your officials tell us?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: The officials have said that, Mr Cosgrove.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: No they haven’t.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: They actually have. Some $24 million in capital funding over the next 2 years has been allocated to enable the department to progress work on a range of options to increase capacity in the upper North Island. That includes the possibility of building a new prison at Wiri, which I announced recently. It also includes increasing the capacity of some existing sites.

Much has been made of double-bunking. Well, earlier this year, the Corrections Association of New Zealand came to see me and it offered to put in place a plan for double-bunking. I thought that was a great thing for it to do. I accepted that offer, and I am still waiting for the details. I see that recently the association has made it very plain that the safety issues it raised have been dealt with. The Department of Corrections is very much committed to doing that. Unfortunately, it has to do it because it was not left with enough beds. A further $218.6 million in operating funding over 4 years provides the department with funding for the day-to-day management of a higher number of prisoners. That funding will be used to employ extra staff and to provide programmes and services to prisoners. Most of the funds will be used to employ more front-line prison staff so that prisoner to staff ratios remain unchanged.

In terms of rehabilitation, this Government has moved to give substance to its election promise to address the drug and alcohol problems facing so many of our prisoners. We are doubling the number of drug and alcohol places available to prisoners, up from the measly 500, under the last 9 years of the previous Labour Government, to 1,000—and we would like to do more. Just a few weeks ago at the Arohata Women’s Prison drug treatment unit, I launched the Department of Correction’s 2009-14 drug and alcohol strategy. Included in the strategy is the opening of three new prison-based drug and alcohol units, doubling the number of prisoners able to receive intensive treatment. A total of $3.9 million has been allocated for capital expenditure, and $7.2 million has been allocated to meet the operating costs of three new units over the next 4 years.

Equally important is the issue raised by Ms Goudie in relation to Community Probation and Psychological Services. To enable those services to effectively and efficiently manage increasing volumes of offenders with community sentences such as home detention, community detention, supervision, and court order programmes, $255.9 million of this year’s Budget has been set aside. Those funds will help to make that happen. Adequate staffing is critical if Community Probation and Psychological Services is to deliver its services to the desired standard. Thank you for the opportunity to speak, Mr Chair. It is with pleasure that I do so.

Hon SHANE JONES (Labour): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. The Minister of Corrections came into this portfolio, having created gales of rhetoric before the election. She despicably attacked the neutrality of the civil service as her first act of foolishness, and then had to back down when the caretakers of civil service neutrality found that she, firstly, was wrong; secondly, did not have the necessary information; and thirdly, gave the public a dangerous impression of how the hard-working, industrious staff of the prison service—starting from the top—were doing their jobs. In order to distract attention, she has now launched a missile saying that society will get better outcomes, in particular Te Ao Māori, from the privatisation of prisons. The true test of whether the privatisation strategy will win is not in whether dollars and cents will be saved, but in how many young men and women will, as an experience of serving time in a private prison, go back better equipped and better skilled to resume a more industrious role in society. Not once have we heard anything from the Minister, other than florid language, loose bits of dollars and cents—well, an absence of sense—as to what she is doing with prisons such as those where I come from: the hīnaki, the whare herehere, where we come from.

Funds are being stripped from Ngāwhā prison. The Minister should be securing the support of New Zealanders for the idea that this experiment will reduce the level of recidivism and cause prisoners to experience prison in such a way that they will be better equipped for society. That approach never once features in this very bleak and mean-spirited approach the current Minister has to prison management and the fortunes or otherwise of the prison population. It is an issue of particular importance to us Māori members of Parliament, given the disproportionately large number of our young people who end up in jail.

It has been a measure of considerable concern that our friends from the Māori Party are busy talking to the iwi, unwisely advising them to stand at the front of the queue, somehow either to build or run the prisons. I am waiting for the Minister to say publicly somewhere that the proponents of private prisons in the Māori world are basing that thesis on the perpetuation of Māori crime, and that, somehow, by creating a private prison, the Government will stop Māori offending, or, more important, it will give them a better experience. Shame on those misguided souls, following the empty rhetoric of the current Minister, who believe that Māori families will get a better deal out of topping and tailing, double-bunking, or the privatisation of our prison system!

It not only speaks to the barrenness of the minds that have conceived such a foolish, wretched idea; it also shows that there is no money or substance to back up the Minister’s rhetoric. Somehow, New Zealand will be used as a social laboratory again—that word is spelt with a “b”, not a “v”, although one’s emotions suggest that it is spelt with a “v”. No, it will be used in a very brutal way to try out this half-baked idea that has not worked in the United States of America. Consequently, Schwarzenegger was required by the courts in California to release multiple numbers of prisoners from that prison system, and that is what we will see when we have not only private prisons but also topping and tailing and containers. There is no way that containers represent the best option for a key function that these prisons have to serve. These young men and women not only are incarcerated—and I say “men” with a great deal of stress—but also will come back into society. We should not for a moment think that by shoving prisoners into containers, where they must top and tail, cheek by jowl, we will have them come back into society better prepared. That is why this Minister is unfit for this position.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Police

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri): I touch on the Budget, of course, because we are in the estimates debate. I see that the legacy of the Minister of Corrections, Judith Collins, who is also the Minister of Police, flowing from the Budget, will be to institute, in her own words, a $21 million cut in police resources. It is interesting if we look at, I think, page 16 of the transcript of the meeting of the Law and Order Committee that examined the estimates for Vote Police. The Minister had initiated those cuts. No chief executive will come to the Minister and tell her that he or she wishes to cut the budget unless the Minister tells him or her that he or she wants, in her words, “savings”. The savings are cuts. I asked the Minister whether she would take responsibility herself for any degradation of service, given that she had required $21 million in cuts in a recession, when crime is likely to head north, as it generally does in a recession. She said that Mr Broad could answer the question and that it was an operational issue. Then I put it to her that, in theory, if she had given $21 million in extra funding to the police, she would crow about that fact—and she is fond of doing that. I am sure she would not consider it an operational matter, and she would crow, as she does extensively, about how wonderfully that money had been applied, and about any increase in service. But, oh no, if it is a cut of $21 million, then that is an operational matter!

This is a Minister who also trumpets the fact that she has delivered out of the Budget a whole 43 new police vehicles. That is not a bad thing, I would have thought. Any new vehicle for our police is a good thing. Then, a couple of days later, we worked out that she requires, as part of the $21 million worth of cuts, police to take 443-plus vehicles out of the police force. She envisages that they will not be front-line vehicles. She said that they could be vans. Well, I was at a police station recently, and I stood in the car park with a particular officer and I asked him to tell me which vehicles in the car park were not front-line. He looked at me and said: “Clayton, take your pick. They’re all front-line.” Even the car that is used by the police officer the day after the burglary, to gain the evidence and to follow up on leads, and the community police officer’s car that patrols around the mall are front-line. Does the Minister expect that we will see a return to the 1990s, when the police had to wait an hour to get a car to respond to a call? That is what happened in the 1990s. In the Law and Order Committee I asked the Minister of Police whether, given the historical precedent of what happened in the 1990s, she thought that there would be a risk. Commissioner Broad responded: “It does create additional risk. That is surely evident.” That is this Minister’s legacy thus far.

The other thing that this Minister is fond of crowing about is that she has put 600 extra police on the streets. That is what her political promise was. We unpicked that in the select committee. We asked her whether that was in addition to the 1,250 police who were budgeted for, funded, and were being recruited by the previous Government. Her answer was: “Well, ah, no.” She then prattled on to say that there will be 600 new police, but we now know that 380 of those were funded by the previous Government out of the Budget. That is a broken promise.

I say to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Judith Collins, that her rhetoric on this matter is misleading, possibly even more so than in respect of the previous vote, Vote Corrections. She is cutting $21 million out of the police budget and does not have the fortitude to take responsibility for it. She is saying to the commissioner: “I am requiring the cut, but if it all turns to custard and there is a degradation of service from our police, it is your problem, not mine.” She is saying that this Government is supporting the police so much that, on the one hand, it is giving them 43 cars, and, on the other hand, as part of a $21 million cut in funding—which she calls savings—it is getting rid of 343 cars. By the way, the promise that the Government will put in 600 police officers in addition to what Labour put in is now a complete and utter phoney, a complete and utter hoax, and it is in black and white that the Minister has admitted it. She finally admitted, after months in office, that, oh no, she bodged the figures, and that 380 of those 600 police were actually funded for and implemented by the previous Government.

I say to the Minister that she can smirk as she did in front of the select committee, she can crow as she does in this Parliament, and she can raise expectations—and, my word, they are raised, because crime was going to be non-existent under this Minister—but if we go and talk to the police around this country we see that they are scratching their heads to identify non - front-line vehicles. Maybe the Minister’s self-drive vehicle could be classed as being a non - front-line vehicle.

DAVID GARRETT (ACT): The Government will provide in this year’s Budget $10 million over the next 3 years for the police to roll out Taser stun guns at a cost of approximately $1,000 each. An initial $5.3 million of that $10 million will provide the police throughout the country with 720 Tasers. What a wonderful piece of expenditure it is. I say that without a trace of facetiousness, and I say it for this reason. We need only go back a couple of months to see two tragic cases where the use of a Taser would have made a difference. In one case, a Taser, had been available, would have saved a life. In the other case, a life was very close to being lost. About a month ago an actor—I believe his name was Mr Mokaraka—was involved in an incident. The circumstances are a bit unclear. There has been a suggestion that he was attempting suicide by cop. In any event, he came out waving a meat cleaver. Luckily for him, the police officer on the scene at the time was an ordinary police officer, who shot him with a pistol, and Mr Mokaraka is alive today because the armed offenders squad had not been deployed. Sadly, the reality is that those gentlemen are trained to fire two shots to the large part of the body, and one does not survive that. So Mr Mokaraka is very, very lucky.

If we go back a year or so ago, we know of another sad case, in Christchurch. A fellow, who was apparently mentally disturbed, appeared in the dusk or evening, armed with a hammer, and was shot and killed. That case highlights exactly why the Taser is a humane weapon and is a wonderful advance for the police in this country. I say that, again, for two reasons. Firstly, had the officer been armed with a Taser, that man would almost certainly have been alive today. Secondly, members will recall that there was a considerable dispute as to just what the circumstances of that case were. Lawyers in the Chamber will know that eyewitnesses are frequently unreliable. There were conflicting eyewitness accounts of whether the man was advancing or was static, or exactly what he was doing at the time he was shot.

I have seen the Tasers to be provided to the police both here and overseas. They are equipped with a video camera and audio. As soon as the device is turned on, on comes the video and audio. Had the officer in Christchurch been equipped with that weapon, two things would have happened. Firstly, that poor man would be alive, and, secondly, there would be no dispute as to the circumstances that led to him being shot. Instead, he is dead.

We can go back a few more years, to the Wallace case in Waitara, which is still, sadly, going on. We can think of the anguish that has been caused for the family, the police, and the policeman, and we can think of the cost, all of which would have been avoided if Constable Abbott had had a Taser made available to him that night, instead of having to make a snap decision to use a pistol.

This is a wonderful move, and the Government is to be commended for it. It will result, certainly, in fewer people being killed or seriously injured. It will probably result in fewer complaints to the Independent Police Conduct Authority, because, as I know from my experience as a lawyer, where there is video evidence of what someone has done or has not done, it becomes very much harder to dispute it.

The ACT Party fully supports this move. We would like to see, if possible, the programme accelerated and every front-line policeman having the option of the humane use of a Taser, rather than having a firearm, which is usually fatal and is sometimes, purely by the grace of God, not fatal. I have seen the Taser in action in Arizona, during a visit I made a couple of years ago. I was told that frequently simply turning the Taser on is effective. I recall that members of a select committee became agitated or anxious when the laser sight came upon them, even though the weapon had no cartridge in it. It was no threat at all, but every member was aware of it. I have been told that the experience overseas is that when that light hits the chest, the situation is defused.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police): Thank you for the opportunity to speak in the estimates debate in relation to the New Zealand Police. Five main operating funding decisions for Vote Police were announced in Budget 2009. There is nearly $23 million to fund 600 additional police staff by December 2011. Over the course of 4 years we will provide $182.5 million to fulfil this commitment. I am sorry that the Opposition is so mean-spirited about this. The Budget also includes $17 million of capital for property and $3 million for cars and computers.

As Mr Garrett has just said, we are funding a Taser roll-out to our front-line police staff throughout the country. It is with great pleasure that I can say that, and I endorse many of the words that Mr Garrett has said about it. Tasers can save lives, and we have already seen this occur in New Zealand. Some incidents have been publicised in terms of the media having been there, and certainly the media were at a recent incident in Hamilton. But the police have advised me of other incidents that are subject to court proceedings and are not in the public domain at this stage. However, I can tell the Committee that Tasers, when used properly and in the right circumstances, save lives.

Nearly $5 million will be put towards reducing the waiting time in Auckland courts. We think that is extremely important, because justice delayed is absolutely justice denied. Far too many of our victims are re-victimised by the length of time involved in having their proceedings go through the courts.

There is $570,000 towards the Fresh Start programme for young offenders, and that is in conjunction with the Ministry of Social Development.

The operating expenses ledger also includes $14 million offered by police in line by line savings. The commissioner has assured me that these savings will come from the better use of available resources, so the impact on service delivery will be minimal. No fewer kilometres are expected to be travelled by the New Zealand Police’s cars. I accept the commissioner’s word on that, because unlike Mr Cosgrove, who has previously spoken, I believe the commissioner when he assures me accordingly.

We are funding a couple of other non-departmental expenses. The first is the provision for interception capability on telecommunications networks. We are also contributing to the UN drug control programme. I say, too, that the funding that we are putting into the digital radio for the police will be a lifesaver as well, for police and also for victims. Digital radio has already been shown in the Wellington region, where it has been rolled out, to have stopped criminals in their tracks. At the moment, strangely enough, anybody can trot along to an electronics shop and buy a police scanner for a couple of hundred dollars, but fortunately, with this new radio system, those scanners will not work. That is something that will give a great deal of protection to the police and also to the public.

In conclusion, I want to take just one moment to thank the Law and Order Committee for its work, and in particular to thank its chair, Mrs Sandra Goudie, who ran a very good select committee despite all sorts of behaviour from some people. I also want to thank the police for the fantastic job that they do for the New Zealand public. There is just one final comment. I would like to offer my congratulations, as Minister of Police, to Deputy Commissioner of Police Lyn Provost. It has been a pleasure to work with Mrs Provost, and I think she will be a great asset to the office of the Auditor-General.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Serious Fraud agreed to.

Vote Veterans’ Affairs—Defence Force agreed to.

Vote Veterans’ Affairs—Social Development agreed to.

Vote Education

ALLAN PEACHEY (Chairperson of the Education and Science Committee): The focus of the education estimates is to get the maximum value from the taxpayers’ investment in education. The appropriation sought for Vote Education in Budget 2009 is $10.8 billion, which is a significant increase on the appropriation sought for the previous year. The Budget concentrates on areas of education that will make the most difference, and lying behind the Budget is a single-minded purpose, which is to raise student achievement. For example, participation in high-quality early childhood education provides children with foundation skills for them to succeed at school. We all know that alphabetic awareness is critical to children learning to read and to write. The more of our children who arrive in our schools with that awareness, the greater their chances will be of making it—not just in school but in life. There is $69.7 million for improving access to early childhood education by expanding the 20 free hours policy and by removing the 6-hour daily limit. There is $69.7 million for that.

Behind the Budget is an understanding that good literacy and numeracy skills are essential for success. The Government wants every child to reach national standards in literacy and in numeracy, and to get the help he or she needs when that child is having difficulties. It is for that reason that the Government wants parents to receive clear, easily understood information about how their children are progressing towards achieving the national standards. This will enable parents to become more involved and more informed about their children’s learning. The sums of money devoted to this are considerable. There is $523.3 million in operating and capital funding over 4 years to give this country a modern, 21st century school footprint. There is $523.3 million for that. There is additional front-line funding for raising achievement in our schools. There is $80.1 million in additional funding for day-to-day school operations. There is $36 million to support the crusade for literacy and for numeracy. There is $16 million to fight truancy, and $34 million to improve schools’ access to high-speed broadband. These are very significant sums.

One of the measures that gives me the greatest personal satisfaction is the additional funding to improve the education of children with special needs. There is a 16 percent increase in Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Scheme funding—an additional $51 million. This is the first time in 10 years that there has been an increase in special-needs funding of this proportion. As a result, an additional 1,100 students will be entitled to Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Scheme funding—an additional 1,100. I invite the next Labour speaker to take a minute to explain why, over 10 years, the Labour Government, which is now out of office, did nothing. It did nothing for our special-needs children. Those members should get up and tell us why.

Of course, one of the features of Vote Education is that the Government has had to provide for several significant cost pressures that were not covered by the previous Government. How often do we hear this? This Government is having to cover the cost pressures created by the previous Government, but not provided for. For example, there is $169.1 million in 2009-10 to pay the increases in teachers’ salaries. There is $70 million over 4 years to cover salary increases for school caretakers, cleaners, and ground staff. There is $127 million to inflation-adjust funding for tertiary institutions in 2010. These are significant amounts.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Tēnā koutou katoa. The Education and Science Committee discussed the appropriations with the education Minister a few weeks ago. During that discussion I asked the Minister some questions about national standards. I was trying to find out what need the Government was trying to address. The question I asked was whether the Education Review Office had reported that schools lacked the tools for assessment, or whether it was that schools were not consistently applying those tools. The Minister gave me some confusing answers, telling me that there were assessment tools already and not all schools used them, and that we did need national standards. I have been talking to teachers and parents, and listening to principals’ comments about this issue. Many of them are wondering what problem we are trying to fix, although everyone agrees that plain English reporting to parents is a pretty good idea. But what are we trying to measure through these standards that we do not have a way of finding out already? How well a child is progressing or how close to the top of the league table his or her school is—we pressed the Minister as to whether these were hurdles or progress indicators, and she said they were both.

The Green Party finds it quite strange. If we ask teachers now, they can tell us now who is doing well in their classes and who needs extra help. They already have the assessment tools to do that. As the Canadian teachers union says, they know what the cows weigh; they are more interested in feeding the cows. That particularly rural image is not necessarily appropriate for our children, but I get what it is saying. Let us get on with pouring our creative energy into helping our children explore the world and their connection to it. We do not need more publicly available measuring between the young and diverse learners. We need smaller classes and better professional development in public schools and kura kaupapa.

National standards could be a huge waste of money. However, they pale in comparison with the Budget priority, which gave $35 million to private schools. I asked the Minister why she cut some important educational programmes for public schools and community education and gave that funding to private schools. I asked her that because the Green Party is very concerned that the measure of a safe and successful society is reducing the gap between the privileged and the poor, not increasing it. Many of us have been to visit some very nice private schools, and we have seen beautiful data projectors, well-stocked libraries, and heated swimming pools where students in wetsuits learn to kayak. We have seen the small classes and the wonderful array of qualified staff offering many options to students. Let us not pretend that public schools do not also attract wonderful teachers, but they do get ground down by large classes and tired resources.

A teacher colleague of mine told me that some weeks more than six young people will come with a note from home and a look of shame, and tell her that the reason that they have no shoes is that their family cannot afford to buy them. This happens in the Minister of Education’s home city of Gisborne. Meanwhile, $35 million is going to private schools to enhance the privileged. If one reads the “Bunnythorpe address”, which was recently delivered by Heather Roy of the ACT Party, one will see that this is the world as it should be. Parental choice and privatisation is the ideal way for education to develop in this country! I find it extremely scary and sad that there is an agreement between National and ACT on education, which is pushing a privatisation agenda. We need that $35 million elsewhere to create more equity, not less. We want that $35 million back. We want to spend it on education for sustainability, Enviroschools, adult and community education, te reo Māori, and literacy. We need an equitable public education system for all our children to flourish. We need a bigger gap between the rich and poor, the privileged and educated, and the vulnerable, in public schools like a hole in our hearts. Kia ora.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. There has been a little bit of interchange across the Chamber between the senior Government whip and myself as to whether the primary Minister and the officials will be available. The estimates debate is the time when there is to be a detailed examination of the Minister. Obviously I am treading around the conventions, as far as absence is concerned, in talking about the availability of the Minister to make a speech.

We have three members here who want to speak. I want to speak mainly on the details of school closures and the decisions that the Minister has recently made, and on special education, which is the responsibility of Heather Roy. We have one member who wants to talk on early childhood education and the details in that area, and we have a third member who wants to talk on Māori education. I accept that one of the Associate Ministers is available. I am sure that the Ministry of Education officials are running across the road to get here, although they have not made it yet, in order to back him up. I wonder whether it is possible, because of the detailed questions, to carry on with one of the other estimates and to come back to this one at the point when the Minister and the officials are available. Even, frankly, if Dr Sharples was available to handle Mr Davis’ questions, I think that would also be acceptable.

I remind you, Mr Chairperson, of what this phase of the Budget is. It is the detailed approach to the estimates whereby we want to ask some very specific questions that relate to individual schools, in my case. Although I have lot of respect for Dr Mapp, I am sure that without ministry support he will not have the answers available in order to respond within the time frame of this debate.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I thank the member for that. I draw the member’s attention to Speaker’s ruling 121/2, which clearly says that the Government can decide who the Minister in the chair is at that stage. The Government is exercising that right. I remind members that this is a time-limited debate, so points of order need to be very succinct. If points of order are taken up it reduces the time of the debate for other members to have their say. If the member wishes he could seek leave, for the reason that he has identified, to delay this vote until other members are here. It does not mean to say, however, that the Minister will change, but if there are other members who wish to take the call when you seek leave, we will put that to the Committee.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I seek leave for this debate to be held on the next sitting day on which the estimates are to be considered.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): We must be more specific, Mr Mallard. We are talking about Vote Education.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I seek leave for Vote Education to be considered on the next sitting day that the estimates are to be considered, if that is the Government’s convenience. Clearly, the Government could come back to it next week, if it wanted to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The Clerk informs me that the wording should be to postpone the debate. It could be that this debate finishes today, as opposed to another day. Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection. We are on Vote Education.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): It is unbelievable that a Minister of Education, earning a ministerial salary, does not have the backbone to come to the Chamber to defend her estimates and her cuts. Why can we not have a Minister—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The member knows that he cannot refer to a member who is not here. The member can debate the issues, but he cannot refer to the absence of a member, or in this case a Minister.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I want to know why Anne Tolley is not in that chair now. Why can Anne Tolley not sit in the ministerial chair and defend her votes? Anne Tolley is not prepared to come here to defend the cuts in education that she has made. She is a person who makes cuts in special education and then runs away from them like a chicken. She makes cuts in education and she runs away like a chicken—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The member cannot talk about someone as being chicken. Although the member can refer to members not being in the chair and being responsible for the vote, he cannot refer to a member who is absent. The member knows that; I have already ruled on that. Also, he cannot refer to a member as being chicken.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: We see Anne Tolley running away like a chicken. We see Anne Tolley not prepared to sit in that chair and tell the Committee that she has already signed off the closure of Aorangi School. Despite the rumours now being spread all over Christchurch, she is not prepared to front up to that community; she is not prepared to do that.

If she had decided to go to Aorangi School instead of defending these estimates, I would praise her for her courage. But we have a Minister who is not prepared to do either of those things. She is not prepared to defend the estimates in this Chamber, and she is not prepared to go to the community of Aorangi School, which is John Key’s old school, and say that she has decided to close it.

When a member is a Minister and receives ministerial pay, that member has to accept a little bit of pain. We want Anne Tolley to front up, to sit in that chair, and to take some of the pain for the cuts that she has made. We want her to tell us why she has folded on standards. Why has she pushed out, to beyond the next election, the implementation of the much-vaunted standards approach? She has done that probably because it is wrong.

Why can she not sit in the chair, and then stand up and tell us the cuts were wrong? Why can she not stand up and tell us that she has changed her mind? Why can she not stand up and say that she did not understand the effect of the cuts to adult and community education, like the Prime Minister has done? He was big enough to say he had not understood the effect of those cuts. It was good the Prime Minister had the courage to stand up and say: “I didn’t understand what I was doing when I approved those cuts in the Budget.” Why can Anne Tolley not stand up in the Chamber now and say that either she understood or she did not understand the effect of them?

Hon Steve Chadwick: What’s more important?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Is anything more important for a Minister than a debate in the Chamber on one’s own estimates? I want to know from the chief Government whip why he is protecting the Minister of Education. Why is he scheduling the Committee in such a way that Anne Tolley is not sitting in the chair, when she should be?

Hon Steve Chadwick: He’s hopeless!

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I do not think he is hopeless. I think he has done it absolutely deliberately. I think he is shielding Anne Tolley.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): That is a personal reflection and the member cannot do that. Although we can have robustness in the debate, a member cannot make personal reflections, or say someone lacks courage, or someone is protecting somebody else. I ask the member to continue.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Can you point me to the precedent that states one cannot say a member is being protected? There has been a long history in the Chamber of people indicating that people are being protected from debate. I do not know whether Sir Roger Douglas is listening but I am sure I will get some assistance from him in this respect. People have said that people have been protected from debate in this Chamber, certainly all the time I have been a member and probably since at least 1969, when Sir Roger first came here.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I have heard enough. I have ruled. If the member is questioning the motives of another member by saying that a member is trying to protect someone, then that is out of order. I ask the member to continue, as his time is running out.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I am not questioning any motives, at all.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, I ask the member to continue.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The whip is doing a good job in protecting Anne Tolley. He is doing a very good job as a National Government whip because he is making sure that the weakest Minister on the front bench of that Government is not sitting in the chair and defending the estimates in the way any Minister who has courage and deserves the job would do.

COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura): I start by getting us back on to Vote Education. This Government is putting $11.5 billion into education in this Budget—a 2.7 percent increase. With regard to Vote Education Review Office the Government is putting in $30 million—a 4.9 percent increase. That is a significant increase.

The highest priority in the 21st century, with regard to human rights, is access to a first-class education. That is a very, very important point. In fact, a person needs to have achieved level 2 of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement in order to complete a trade, because that is the level one needs just to be able to complete the literacy side of it. Education truly is portable; it goes where we go and it goes where we take it. That is very positive. It is a ladder out of disadvantage, and it is the single identifying feature between those who have and those who do not have.

This Government, to its credit, has put more dollars into education than any other Government before it, and in the most challenging economic times in 70 years. This Government has utilised every available dollar to do that and it is using those dollars to get the most significant benefits in educational outcomes. This Government is focused on educational outcomes, and such a focus is to be commended.

I want to spend a few moments addressing a couple of the differences that have been expressed by Opposition members about the Government’s view of how those dollars are to be spent. One of those issues is around adult and community education. This Government values adult and community education. We are investing $124 million into adult and community education over the next 4 years. That is significant. The question that I pose to members opposite is: what part of the $50 million would they take out of special education to fund adult and community education? What part of the $36 million for increased focus on literacy and numeracy would they do away with, in order to focus on adult and community education? What part of the tens of millions of dollars would they take away from skills training and support for youth and the unemployed, in order to fund adult and community education? Those members opposite would want the money spent on adult and community education. This Government is saying it thinks otherwise.

Another point I would like to deal with, and one that I think is appropriate, is the $35 million allocated to private schools. On a year-to-year basis that is $10 million per year and when put into the context of the 30,000 children in private schools, that figure equates to the State being saved $152 million a year. That is significant. Those members opposite would say that we should let those schools fail. This Government says otherwise. The Government has proven itself to be a good manager of the New Zealand educational system. The Opposition has proven itself not to be.

I want to deal with a couple of issues that the previous Government shrank away from. The first is truancy. This Government is investing $16 million into an initiative to address truancy over the next 4 years. That equates to $12,000 per school, but when Labour was in power up to 30,000 children at any one time were not attending school. This initiative is significant. The second initiative is for voluntary bonding with regard to staff in education. This initiative is very, very important, visionary, and hugely significant. We intend to invest $19 million into retaining staff in areas that are difficult to staff. This Government is managing the education system very well.

SUE MORONEY (Labour): When the economy is in recession I think a Government’s priorities become incredibly important, and this Government’s priorities are out there to be seen. Vote Education is the vote that had the largest cuts. It was the biggest loser under this Government’s Budget. That tells us a lot about where this Government’s priorities are and where they are not. But even within Vote Education one can see the priorities that this Government has out there for New Zealanders to see. Not many of the Government’s speakers have chosen to say that even in the time of economic recession they felt it was important and a spending priority to increase funding to private schools by $35 million. It is almost like the evil whose name they do not want to speak!

The previous speaker, Colin King, asked the Opposition where it would fund the $13 million that was cut from adult education. That was an extremely short-sighted cut. It has meant that all the night classes have closed down in schools like Fraser High School in Hamilton, and in all the other schools that have had to cut their night classes, and hundreds and thousands of New Zealanders have had that learning opportunity taken away from them.

The Government has cut $13 million from adult and community education. I tell Mr King that the $13 million should be taken out of the $35 million extra for private schools. That is where that funding should come from, and it should be going to the people who are looking at second-chance education—the masses, not the elite, in this country. That is where this Government has its priorities absolutely upside down, and those figures demonstrate it very well.

Why do I talk about education having the largest cuts in this Budget? It is because the single largest cut, I believe, came out of early childhood education. An amount of $275 million was carved out of early childhood education, which this Government would have us believe is an area it is prioritising. The Government is prioritising early childhood education so highly that the sector suffered the largest single cut, and that largest single cut was to reduce a plan that was there for staff—for teacher-child ratios to be improved so that the quality of early childhood education could be improved in this country. That Government, and that Minister, the Minister of Education, decided to can that plan and in the process, in one decision, carved $275 million out of early childhood education.

The Minister would have us believe that early childhood education is a top priority and that increasing participation would be the priority in early childhood education. Well then, she is failing by her own goal; she is failing miserably. When she came to the select committee’s estimates hearing I asked her what her plan was to increase participation in this sector. She said it was the funding—as her colleague before has just argued, as well—to extend the 20 free hours to Playcentre, to te kōhanga reo, and to children aged 5 and over. When I asked her whether that would add more children to the early childhood education experience than there are now, she said no. So that money is not adding one additional child to the system; it is paying for children who already access early childhood education and it is extending the 20 free hours to those children. It is doing that but it is not extending; it is not adding one more child into the early childhood education sector.

What are the Minister’s plans? A few weeks ago she announced a plan, which had actually been brought forward by Labour, that will add an additional 400 places. Well, I have news for the Minister. The Ministry of Education tells us that we have to add 19,000 new early childhood places to our current system by 2011 just to stand still in terms of participation rates—not the measly 400 that the Minister was parading in the House 2 weeks ago, but 19,000. There is no plan. The Minister has no plan to add those 19,000 positions. But it is even worse than that because Labour had in place a plan to go forward, which would have already delivered by now nine new early childhood education services on school grounds in South Auckland where the participation rates for early childhood education desperately need to be improved. What has the new Minister done with that? She has cut the services down to three; it was nine, it is now three.

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour): I rise to agree with my colleague Sue Moroney on the fact that this is all about priorities—priorities in education. If we agree that the main priority of education is to raise achievement, then I say that this Budget misses that opportunity in a number of ways. If we are to raise achievement, then the priority needs to be the quality of the teachers in front of the kids. If we strip everything away, all of the social issues, the one single thing that raises achievement more than anything else is the quality of interaction between the teacher and the student. That is the most important thing.

So it disturbs me to see that in terms of support and resources for teachers, $5 million has been taken away in this Budget. In terms of curriculum support, which enables teachers to understand the curriculum and be able to deliver it properly, $7 million has gone. For the provision of advisory services—the people who travel around, go into schools, and support teachers to improve their craft and their skills—$3 million has gone. That is $15 million in total, yet when we listened to what Colin King said, we heard that $16 million has gone into boosting the truancy fund. On the surface that seems admirable, yet if we were to invest in teachers and in their ability to engage with kids and to excite them about schools and learning, then we would not need huge funds for truancy. If school is the best adventure in town, if pupils are engaged and interested in what they are learning, then they do not want to truant. I think it is a bottom-of-the-cliff situation to put a heap of money into truancy and to take money away from improving support for teachers. It is about priorities.

One of the priorities for those of us who are on the left of the political spectrum, compared with those on the right, is that we believe in cradle-to-the-grave education. We believe in opportunities. From the time our kids are born they can go through early childhood education, through the compulsory sector, and through into tertiary education, if they so desire. Unfortunately, there is a group of people who, for whatever reason, may not engage or succeed in education and who leave the system having underachieved, or they might have been out of the workforce for a little while and want to have the opportunity to get back into adult education. Unfortunately, their opportunity to do so has been severely jeopardised by the fact that there have been cuts to the adult community education budget.

Adult community education also offers social priorities. I will touch on one of the social opportunities—it is also a health opportunity—that adult community education offers in Kaitāia. There is a course for those people who want to do massage. Four people wanted to take up this massage course, which is probably a course that the Minister of Education would term a hobby course. However, one of those people who took up the opportunity for the massage course, who paid $50 and went off on a Saturday to do the course, is the father of a tetraplegic boy who is confined to a wheelchair. This father used the massage course to massage the limbs of his son, who is confined to a wheelchair, and that has taken a measure of the burden off the health system.

Another person who did the massage course is a woman whose elderly husband suffers from chronic arthritis. She massages his joints. Again, that alleviates his pain, and it also takes a measure of the burden off the health system. The final two people who participated in that massage course—this hobby course—are both practising nurses, who used the massage techniques and strategies to supplement their ability in their work as nurses.

It is really important that we do not forget that aside from the fiscal savings that those on the right are looking for, there are also the social and the health savings that those of us on the left are concerned about, because we are concerned about people. For those on the right, it comes down to profits.

We are also concerned about unemployment. My understanding is that the 0.6 percent of the tertiary education fund that has been cut for adult community education will mean that 4,000 tutors will probably lose their jobs, at a time when 1,000 people a week are already losing their jobs because of the recession. We should be looking for opportunities for people to retain their jobs. Unfortunately, this 0.6 percent cut in adult community education will impact on 4,000 jobs. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Education Review Office agreed to.

Votes Arts, Culture and Heritage agreed to.

Vote Attorney-General agreed to.

Vote Parliamentary Counsel agreed to.

Vote Treaty Negotiations agreed to.

Vote Agriculture and Forestry

Hon DAVID CARTER (Minister of Agriculture): I must express a bit of surprise and disappointment that the Opposition asked for Vote Agriculture and Forestry to be debated today, but that no one from the Opposition seeks to make a call. I will make a couple of comments, because this is an extremely important vote and there is a huge amount of work going on.

The first comment I will make is around the economic recession and the fact that no sector of the economy is immune from its effects. I think the House needs to be well aware of the pressures on the dairy sector, which has been hit quite hard by recent adjustments in the pay-out price. If we look at the Fonterra payout of $7.90 a year ago, which is now readjusted to a predicted payout of $4.55, we can see that that obviously makes quite a difference to an important sector of our economy. The situation is a lot brighter in the sheep industry, in that after years and years of very low sheepmeat prices, we now see a real example of the resilience of our sheep-farming sector. The price has probably nearly doubled over the last few years. But, again, I give a note of warning to the Committee that many farmers, particularly those in the Hawke’s Bay region, have been struck by 3 years of drought. They have had 3 years of drought, so they have actually destocked; in some cases they are down to half the previous stock levels. The prices for lamb production now may well have doubled, but with half the number of ewes that those farmers had previously, they are still facing a fairly dramatic time.

My Vote Agriculture and Forestry involves doing a lot of work, because there are a lot of challenging issues before us. One issue that is very much a focus of mine, and a focus of this National Government, is an intention to do something around the provision of water infrastructure in order to allow more irrigation.

Hon Parekura Horomia: What about the pollen coming on to all the houses—

Hon DAVID CARTER: I have spent quite a lot of time, I tell Mr Horomia, travelling around New Zealand. I am aware of water infrastructure issues in Hawke’s Bay, Wairarapa, Marlborough, Nelson, Canterbury, South Canterbury, and Otago, and with some contribution from the Government, some attention and support from the Government, I think we can make progress in providing water storage and solve something that in many cases, if we take Canterbury as an example, probably should have been solved 100 years ago.

We recognise the importance of science and innovation in the sector covered by Vote Agriculture and Forestry, and I refer to the recent announcement in the Budget of the Primary Growth Partnership, which involves a significant investment by central government of $190 million over the next 4 years, capping out at $70 million a year on a dollar for dollar basis. When we consider that the industry is making a dollar for dollar commitment, we realise that means there will be $140 million a year available. Why that is so important—

Moana Mackey: If that doesn’t go the way of the tax cuts.

Hon DAVID CARTER: —and Moana Mackey needs to realise this—is that with the challenges facing the sector from climate change, we need to find solutions, particularly when we consider the profile of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. It is absolutely critical that as a nation we put the money forward and find some solutions, so that we can develop an emissions trading scheme that will be balanced around our environmental responsibility as well as economic matters.

With regard to climate change, again there is a huge amount of work to be done. I acknowledge that a review of the original climate change legislation, that of the previous Labour Government, is going through a select committee process in the Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee. Hopefully the committee’s report on that legislation is going to come out. But this Government is determined to develop an emissions trading scheme that will balance the environment and the economy.

Hon Steve Chadwick: Tell us about live sheep exports.

Hon DAVID CARTER: I am only too happy to do so, although I tell her that if she wanted to debate Vote Biosecurity, which is what animal welfare comes under, she should have put that down for debate. But I am still quite happy to make some comments, particularly in light of the programme the other night. The images shown on that programme are unsatisfactory to all New Zealanders, and I as the Minister would not be happy to see live exports going out unless we were absolutely assured as to both the transportation conditions of those sheep and, probably more important, the treatment those livestock will receive upon their arrival. I think that although we might satisfy a very small number of New Zealand sheep farmers by allowing such a trade, it would be at the risk of jeopardising the whole of New Zealand’s meat export reputation. I as the Minister certainly do not intend to do that, I tell Mrs Chadwick.

I congratulate my department, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, on the work that is being done. There is a huge amount of work to be done, and there are some very, very challenging issues to address. But as I am sure most people in the Committee, certainly those on the National side of the Chamber, realise, this economy is totally dependent on the livelihood of New Zealand’s primary producers, and if that sector is doing well, then the whole of the economy will perform.

SUE KEDGLEY (Green): I was pleased to hear the Minister discussing the issue of live exports of sheep for slaughter, and pleased to hear his comments on the programme the other night. He implied that he would not approve live sheep exports under his watch. But I suggest to the Minister that what New Zealanders would really like to hear from him is an unequivocal assurance that there will be no live sheep exports for slaughter, under the National Government. He has made a generalisation, but New Zealanders want an absolute assurance that this brutal live trade in the export of sheep for slaughter will not proceed under this Government. We would be very grateful if the Minister could clarify that.

I do not think that anyone who saw the television programme the other night would ask questions as to why New Zealand should not be sending live sheep exports for slaughter in Saudi Arabia. The conditions are absolutely horrendous on the ships. The sheep are jammed into those ships—we saw the pictures of the ships—and then, once they arrive in Saudi Arabia, there is no animal welfare legislation there or any way of guaranteeing that the sheep sent for slaughter will not receive the horrendous treatment that was shown on the screen the other night.

The other question we need to ask is why on earth we would even consider sending our sheep all the way on that horrendous journey simply to be slaughtered at the other end. We have a very satisfactory trade in halal sheep—

Hon David Carter: I agree.

SUE KEDGLEY: —I am delighted to hear the Minister agree—so why would we have to send them over there to be slaughtered?

One of the things that emerged from the television programme was that in Australia live sheep exports have resulted in the closure of abattoirs and the loss of jobs, so why would we even want to contemplate that happening in New Zealand? A few months ago in this House the Minister was defending, or appeared to be defending, the trade. I obtained, under the Official Information Act, a whole raft of papers and memoranda going backwards and forwards that made it clear that the Government was seriously investigating this trade. In fact, it was giving the green light to the Saudi Arabians and Mr Assaf. I have all of the documentation under the Official Information Act. But I think that the Minister and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry were perhaps hoping that the trade could resume under the radar, quietly, with none of us being alerted. Well, the Green Party, I am delighted to say, exposed the fact that there were negotiations about the resumption of trade, and that the Government was engaged in quite detailed negotiations. I am delighted that that was exposed in this Parliament by the Green Party. There was, of course, an uproar of public opinion once the public realised that the trade was a possibility, and I believe that the Minister has backed down as a result of that. But I am delighted, whatever his motives, that he has backed down, and that this trade will not resume.

I challenge the Minister now, as well as to make an unequivocal commitment to New Zealand on the live sheep exports, to also use his powers under the Animal Welfare Act to get rid of the cages used to house sows in, and to phase them out over a number of years. There will be some consultation on that later this year, but the Minister knows that under the Act he, and he alone—sadly, not this Parliament but just the Minister of Agriculture—has the power to require any code to be reviewed or to make changes. He has been given that power under the Act. So I would like him to assure New Zealanders that he will use those powers, and that he will not pretend they do not exist. Sure, under the Act he has to consult with the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, but that is all he has to do.

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

Hon DAVID CARTER (Minister of Agriculture): I certainly want to respond to the contribution Sue Kedgley made prior to the dinner break, because it was a contribution that was full of inaccuracies. There was hardly a word of truth in the whole contribution. Firstly, she spoke about the live sheep export issue. She accused this Government of working under the radar to reopen that trade. She knows full well that the discussions were initiated in 2003 by the then Labour Government, which she was prepared to support over 9 long years, and those discussions have been ongoing at a very slow pace. But for her to suggest that we were negotiating under the radar is completely untrue.

The second issue she raised was an accusation that we were about to launch the trade. The only reason that that particular accusation came to light was that she released a press release saying that in June this year we would be resuming trade. As anybody who is abreast of this issue will know, June 2009 has passed and the trade has not been initiated, so I suggest to Sue Kedgley that she maintain some accuracy around this issue instead of trying to wind up many hundreds of New Zealanders who share a genuine concern for animal welfare, as indeed I do.

The issue she then referred to was the pork industry’s continued use of sow crates. Again, she suggested that I am not making enough progress to wind up this issue. Again, I remind her that she, supporting the Labour Government, had 9 long years to do something, and accomplished nothing in that time. I have made considerable progress in that I have given very stern and strong messages to the pork industry, which has accepted the need to reform its industry and is working to do so.

Sue Kedgley claims that I have the ability to make changes to the animal welfare code, and that is quite incorrect. I have gone through that quietly with her on one occasion, and also in the House, trying to explain to her how the law works. Section 76 of the Animal Welfare Act is quite specific. I can make minor amendments to a code, but she seems to think that something as major as this would slip through without being recognised as substantially more than a minor amendment. In fact, it would then incur the wrath of the industry, not unfairly, I might point out, and result in judicial review.

I care deeply about animal welfare, but I will not see the Greens continue to use the issue simply for political gain on their part, and come down to the House and proffer half-truths and inaccuracies. The people of New Zealand deserve to know the truth. I am quite prepared to give it to them, but I expect Sue Kedgley to do the same.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Biosecurity agreed to.

Vote Foreign Affairs and Trade

KEITH LOCKE (Green): This afternoon in Parliament I think we had a very good debate on the question of Afghanistan and whether the SAS should be recommitted there. I note that the conclusion was that four parties were against the SAS going and one was for. I think that reflects the great concern in the population. It would have been good, as Labour speakers said, if the debate had happened before the commitment of SAS troops rather than afterwards.

One point from that debate I would like to take up is the question of terrorism. Dr Wayne Mapp, in his contribution as the Minister of Defence, said—and he has used the expression before—that if we do not commit troops and fight the Taliban, Afghanistan will end up being a “haven for terrorists” again. In a later point he said that it would be an uncontested home for al-Qaeda. I think it betrays reality; as Phil Goff said, if Osama bin Laden is anywhere, he is probably in Pakistan. All kinds of journalists have been running around Afghanistan, talking to players in Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the Government, and all sorts of factions, and no one I know of has come across al-Qaeda in the past year or two. If anything, there is just a very small core. But it serves the purpose of people who want to support this type of intervention in Afghanistan or elsewhere to portray some giant conspiracy: Osama bin Laden sitting in his cave in Afghanistan, and all the tentacles going out and bombs going off in cities around the world, duplicating the communist conspiracy of the past, which was used to justify all sorts of other interventions, including in Viet Nam.

The reality is that these terrorist groups generally—including the ones that bombed in London, and Jakarta most recently—have their own particular rationale. We very strongly disagree with, object to, oppose, and criticise the way they are killing civilians in trying to get to their political goals, but if we want to understand what terrorism is about we have to actually look at it in each situation and look at the arguments that each terrorist group comes up with to get some support behind it.

When we look at the London bombings and the people engaged in that, we see clearly that there are two basic motivations, as they explained it. They felt alienated in Britain. They felt that Muslims there, including Muslim youth like themselves, were being mistreated. Also, they objected to what was happening in Iraq with the British invasion of Iraq. There are different configurations of explanations for the support going to terrorist groups around the world. Osama bin Laden, I think, had three planks when he got going. First was opposition to US troops in Saudi Arabia, second was what was happening in Palestine, and third was the Western military pressure on Iraq and the sanctions against Iraq. He got support around that.

So if we want to get rid of the evil of terrorism, we have to actually look at the causes and try to deal with them. In fact, if we look at a range of cases, we see that foreign intervention, particularly foreign military intervention, is exactly what gives these terrorist groups their fuel, not as some giant interlinked conspiracy, but in each country they exist in. So it is from that point of view that I believe it is an error to send the SAS troops to Afghanistan and engage in a military solution rather than a solution involving dialogue, reconstruction, and the things that our provincial reconstruction team is doing. Peaceful solutions are increasingly being advocated around the world.

If one thinks that a military solution is right, and that putting in a lot of foreign troops, bombing places, having sweeps across the Afghan countryside, upsetting everyone, killing civilians, and everything else, will get rid of terrorism, one is dreaming. In fact, it goes completely the opposite way. There have been articles in the Dominion Post, the New Zealand Herald, and all kinds of papers, and when we read the stories of why people in Afghanistan go towards the Taliban, we see that the kids there feel alienated and have nowhere to turn. So they turn to the Taliban, to madrasas, and Islamic fundamentalism, just as in our society the young kids in South Auckland or Porirua who turn towards the criminal gangs are the kids who are at a loose end, are in poverty, and do not see a future.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Official Development Assistance agreed to.

Vote Sport and Recreation agreed to.

Vote Conservation

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): Pest control is a core function of the Department of Conservation, and it is an absolute necessity for the protection of New Zealand’s incredible biodiversity. This is especially so in our forests for the protection of vulnerable birds, endangered insects, and fragile plant species. In the 2009-10 Budget this National Government cut pest control funding to the Department of Conservation by $82,000. This cut is highly irresponsible. Pest control has more than just biodiversity benefits. Indeed, it is a key component of New Zealand’s response to climate change and to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Green Party has called on the Government to set a responsible target for the meeting in Copenhagen, which, as we know, the Government has failed miserably to do. In order to demonstrate the practicality of a responsible 30 to 40 percent target, the Green Party has released a plan called Getting There, which shows exactly how the Government can reduce emissions both drastically and cheaply. In order to meet a responsible target of between 30 and 40 percent, New Zealand will need to take responsibility for 48 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. That will require both actual cuts in our emissions and the purchase of some credits.

How will pest control help New Zealand to meet this responsible target? Pest control on just 219,000 hectares of juvenile forest will capture 8.75 million tonnes of emissions. That is, pest control alone will capture 17 percent of the emissions that New Zealand needs to save to meet a responsible target of 30 to 40 percent. How does this work? Over 200,000 hectares of easily identifiable public conservation estate land is juvenile forest and shrubland. Pests are the reason why those areas never grow into mature forests, which are an important carbon sink. Eliminating pests from juvenile forests will enable those forests to mature and store carbon. Pest control focused on these juvenile forests will return the fastest result. That is, the benefit of much of this carbon storage will occur in time to meet New Zealand’s 2020 target.

How much will this pest control cost? It is easiest to describe the cost in terms of cost per tonne of carbon. A pest control programme over 219,000 hectares of juvenile forest will cost between $5 and $10 per tonne. This will save the taxpayer money. At today’s prices, the cost of purchasing carbon credits is around $25 per tonne. By 2020 the cost may well be as high as $100 per tonne. If we act now, it will cost us $5; if we delay, it will cost us $100. If we do this pest control now, we will save money and emissions, and meet our obligations as a credible and responsible international citizen. Extra jobs would also be created by this pest control programme. The biodiversity of our native birds and forests would flourish, benefiting our tourism industry. In a recession, every job and every dollar count. In a climate crisis, action now will save us money.

The Green Party is a specialist in practical solutions that deal with both the climate crisis and the recession, and that is what the Green New Deal is all about. Investment in pest control—as set out in our plan, Getting There—will easily achieve this. Biodiversity of our forests will be enhanced, native bird and tree species will be saved, jobs will be created through pest control and through our burgeoning tourism industry, precious and scarce public money will be saved through taking early action, and carbon emissions will be cut.

This National Government has no plan, and is using bogeymen to frighten the public away from acting as a responsible international citizen and protecting New Zealand’s fragile biodiversity. Only the Green Party has the plan to get us through the twin crises of climate change and recession.

Hon TIM GROSER (Minister of Conservation): I make just a few comments on the issues that the member Metiria Turei has raised. First of all, I will put the so-called cuts into some perspective. The so-called cuts—the savings that we have asked for, some $13.5 million each year over a period of 4 years—are to be compared with a total spend of the best part of $1.6 billion. No matter how one makes the comparison, if one takes the narrowest comparison of spend, as a Government we will still be spending $57 million more in Vote Conservation than was spent as recently as 2007-08. The idea that there are great swingeing cuts simply does not stand up to any serious scrutiny.

I have said before and I will repeat now that such is the scale of the problem facing our country in terms of our responsibilities in biodiversity that as a country we could probably spend three or four times the amount we do—I do not know what figure—and there would still be biodiversity jobs that could be done to the benefit of New Zealanders. We are in a general situation where we are trying to fight our way through a recession. We believe we have taken a responsible fiscal position. The very modest savings at the Department of Conservation—I have a great deal of respect for the men and women who work there—are extremely moderate, and will provide the basis for maintaining the position with regard to its core functions. At the end of the day, the argumentation that the member has used is correct: the pest, weed, and fire control is part of the sequestration equation.

I just say to the member that one of the frustrations I have, among many frustrations with the current Kyoto Protocol accounting framework, is that we are not properly incentivised under the rules to deal adequately with the 6.8 million hectares of mature forest; I appreciate that the member was talking about young forest, for the most part. I am actively looking at our options on that issue, as a small net increase in sequestration over the magnificent resource that we have in our indigenous historical forests would be an absolutely enormous potential sequestration. Unfortunately, we are not clear as to what the net picture is in terms of loss and gains, but I assure the member that I am actively considering this in the context of wearing my other hat, as Associate Minister for Climate Change Issues (International Negotiations).

But I very much take the point the member has made with regard to pest control being part of the climate change picture. As a matter of principle, we as a Government give the department, the director-general, and his senior staff a target to meet. We do not interfere politically with the specific decisions that the director-general and his senior staff make in respect of weed and pest control.

Just to indicate how this is played out, I say that I went through the figures, and I think they are quite interesting. These are the figures that the department has supplied to me as the Minister as to how it will meet its targets. I will, first of all, read out some figures expressed in terms of hectares, and then I will make a comment or two about value. The figures are for 2008-09, and draw a comparison with the year to come, 2009-10. With regard to weed control, we will increase the number of hectares this coming year from 481,000 to 531,000. So the department will actually increase the total volume of hectares of weed control under this so-called budget cut regime. The amount of money will go fractionally down in respect of weed control, from $22 million to $21 million.

With regard to possums, we will increase the number of hectares where we will try to reduce possum numbers, or try to eliminate possums, if at all possible. The total number of hectares that will be processed next year is going up—I repeat, going up—from 244,000 to 310,000. In deer control, it is the same picture. We will increase the number of hectares where deer control will be in operation. The precise figure is 339,000 going up to 360,000. There will be a reduction in goat control in terms of hectare coverage, by a considerable margin, for the simple reason—

Hon David Carter: The job’s done.

Hon TIM GROSER: —that the job has been done in certain areas of New Zealand.

Hon David Carter: What a good Minister.

Hon TIM GROSER: Actually, it is quite wrong to say “What a good Minister.”, I say to Mr Carter, because those are the decisions of the director-general and his senior staff. A good Minister does not make those decisions of an operational nature, so I suppose in that sense I could perhaps agree with Mr Carter.

This is a very well run department. We have outstanding senior staff. I have the great privilege of working with them on a daily basis. They have made some very serious and sensible decisions, and I think we should all be proud of the job that they are doing. As always, when we dig down into the detail, we find that life goes on.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Crown Research Institutes agreed to.

Vote Defence agreed to.

Vote Defence Force agreed to.

Vote Research, Science and Technology agreed to.

Vote Communications

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): The Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Steven Joyce, does not strike me as a ditherer, but I am starting to change my mind. The National Government was elected more than 9 months ago, and an essential component of National’s campaign strategy was its $1.5 billion commitment to roll out ultra-fast broadband to 75 percent of New Zealand homes within 10 years. That was National’s big-ticket item, its big campaign pledge. The first thing the new Government did was to axe the existing broadband programme introduced by the previous Labour Government, which was called the Broadband Investment Fund and had dozens of regional projects poised to roll out, and had widespread support in the industry.

In 2008 the previous Labour Government committed to spend $500 million in broadband investments over 5 years. The targets were high-speed, open access urban fibre networks, improved rural connectivity, and improved international links. But the new Government axed it, and there was a vacuum in the industry. It took this Government until the end of March to release its investment proposal for consultation, the Broadband Investment Initiative. Since then there has been nothing. The submissions closing date at the end of June came and went, and what did the Minister do? He said he needed more time to think about it. After 2 more months he is still thinking about it. We are now approaching the end of August and there is no indication of how and when this Government will start rolling out broadband to 75 percent of the population.

Carmel Sepuloni: Or if they will.

CLARE CURRAN: Or whether it will. But there are some things that we do know. We already know that this Government cannot deliver broadband into people’s homes, despite saying that it could. Maybe it can deliver broadband to their streets. It will cost hundreds of dollars per household, maybe even thousands, to connect from their streets to their houses, and the Government does not seem to have an answer on how that will be achieved. What will be the incentive for households to pay that price, or for companies to bear the cost so they can sign people up to their products? It is also very unlikely the Government will be able to deliver to 75 percent of the population through a $1.5 billion investment, especially within 10 years, given that it has wasted nearly a year working out what direction to take.

Another thing we know is that a quarter of New Zealand’s population living in rural areas is not included in the Government’s ultra-fast broadband scheme, creating what is essentially a digital divide between urban and rural communities. The Government has not announced any plans for a separate rural broadband strategy. National has set aside $48 million for rural broadband, but that has been described as what it is, a “drop in the bucket”. In relative terms with urban areas it should be $500 million.

The previous Labour Government, on the other hand, had a comprehensive rural broadband strategy that it had planned to build upon—a commitment of $75 million for rural projects aimed at extending the reach of people living in remoter areas of New Zealand. It was about providing new and improved broadband connections to communities, businesses, and users in the health, education, and wider Government sectors in rural areas.

Another thing we know is that there has been a lot of uncertainty and concern in the communications sector about National not announcing its plan. Every stakeholder I talk to cannot understand why it is taking so long for this Government to make up its mind, which leads one to speculate why. Is there an internal disagreement within the National Cabinet and caucus as to which direction to take? Is there some sort of heavy pressure being applied to go in one direction and not the other, not for reasons of good policy but for other reasons? Or is the Minister a ditherer?

Let us look at the choices. As the Minister has acknowledged, the choice appears to lie between a Telecom-led unitary roll-out, and a growing coalition of electricity lines companies and independent fibre operators called the Regional Fibre Group. The regional approach is much closer to the direction that was taken by the previous Labour Government, using the vast networks and experience of lines companies to build regional networks that have a common set of standards. The Telecom-led model would, on paper, take fibre further than the Government originally proposed, but questions remain over Telecom’s incentive to duplicate its existing copper network, plus a unitary model raises issues of stifling competition in the sector. We have to ask ourselves what could be holding these things up. Is it a choice between deals done between mates, or is it something that makes good sense? Or perhaps the Minister is grappling with how to make the new level of bureaucracy, the Crown Fibre Investment Company, work, and how to get a return on the Government investment at a time of recession.

On another matter, there is no doubt that a $1.5 billion investment in our broadband infrastructure is substantial. If it ends up being a $3 billion investment, with a one-for-one contribution by the private sector, then well and good, but that is a lot of broadband fibre to lay out, and it does not get laid out by itself. It requires a skilled workforce to lay it. A problem is occurring right now under the Minister’s nose, which he seems oblivious to. Right now the country’s biggest telecommunications company, Telecom, is embroiled in an escalating drama with its own workforce of 900 service technicians and engineers in Northland and Auckland, unionised and non-unionised, who are fighting attempts to turn them into independent contractors.

Essentially, these employees will lose the protection provided to them as employees. They will be forced to buy their own equipment and transport vehicles, pay for their own holiday and sick leave entitlements, and accept all the other financial obligations associated with their own employment, and that could cost them 50 to 66 percent of their income. Turned into independent contractors who do not make a fortune, they will be at the mercy of the parent contractor, and their remuneration will be based on how many jobs they can get through, rather than the quality of the work that they do.

These are real and genuine concerns, and they will have a devastating effect on Telecom’s skilled workforce at a time when it is needed most. I have now received hundreds of contacts from employees in this industry who do not want to sign up as independent contractors, but say they have no choice. They say they will not be able to make a living as a result, and they feel forced to leave the industry. What sort of signal is that sending?

I also hear from industry sources that it has been handled extremely poorly, and that questions are being asked about what the Government will do about it. I will have a lot more to say on this issue in the coming days.

Paul Quinn: We can’t wait!

CLARE CURRAN: Good! I want to highlight one of the things that really concerns me. I thought that the Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Steven Joyce, was actually quite bright. But he does not seem to understand that in order to deliver an important infrastructure policy, particularly one in the communications and technology industry, we need a skilled workforce. When asked in this House 2 weeks ago about his commitment to a skilled workforce, Mr Joyce was able to talk only about the importance of digital literacy across our population—that means more people with computers than skills to use them.

Labour is absolutely committed to this, but a skilled workforce is a lot more than that. When asked whether this Government is committed to establishing an industry training organisation in the information and communications technology industry, or whether it is committed to use information and communications technology training in the Modern Apprenticeships scheme, both of which were Labour policies, the Minister replied no to both. Instead, he has shown a cold indifference to a skilled information and technology workforce, at a time when the Government needs a highly skilled workforce to deliver its $1.5 billion ultra-fast broadband to the streets of New Zealand.

I tell the Minister that he ignores at his peril the development of this important industry. Every industry player knows there is already a skills shortage in this industry—I have heard the figure of 2,000 skilled workers quoted from a number of sources. Every industry player knows there is a real disconnect occurring, as this industry continues to develop between having an adequate pathway between schools and training institutions, and ensuring enough New Zealand schoolchildren know about and are encouraged to move into the information and communications technology industry as a career path. I refer specifically to New Zealand schoolchildren, because in the last few years we have had to fill the gaps with skilled workers from outside New Zealand. The previous Labour Government knew that; it had policy in place to address it, and this Government does not seem to have a clue. It is clueless and dithering, and that seems to be the key message from this speech. I believe this industry and these issues deserve better than that.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Communications and Information Technology): Perhaps I could quote my good friend Paul Quinn, whom I do not often quote, to be fair, but I should quote him more often. I think he summed it up when he said that there is a difference between 9 years and 9 months. I think he summed it up rather well.

Clare Curran, the member opposite who has just resumed her seat, may not recall this, but when the then National Opposition announced its broadband policy, it said that it wanted to take the first year to finalise the plan because, amongst other things, it is such a huge sum of money. It is $1.5 billion to invest in ultra-fast broadband. As the member points out, if it is matched by private sector contributions, which is certainly the Government’s aim, we will be talking about a $3 billion investment. I imagine that if we do not take the time to get it right, then the criticism will be that we rushed it. It is one of those situations where the Opposition will not be happy, as it will be too early, too late, not enough, or too much. That is, I suppose, the lot of being in Opposition.

The Government remains very strongly committed to its pre-election promise. To be clear, we received 104 submissions on the proposal, which was very encouraging. The submissions made a number of comments and added things to the proposal. That analysis has now been completed. Cabinet will address the final version of the plan shortly. It will address some of the key issues that have been raised in the submissions, including the definition of the relevant coverage areas for the network, the ability for local fibre companies to provide second-layer services as well as dark fibre, and the need to provide regulatory certainty to the industry. It will address the issue of demand side or take-up risk, and the need to retain flexibility over the funding model that the Crown Fibre Investment Co. will implement. These are all crunchy issues that Cabinet is about to address.

The other really important part is the rural broadband side and, related to that, the telecommunications service obligation, or TSO. Again, there is a range of issues. The first and, I think, most important one is ensuring that rural schools have access to world-class broadband services. We cannot afford to have the digital divide between urban and rural education providers. The Government is very conscious of that, and knows that it is very important. Once we have addressed the issue of rural education, then we must maximise what one might call the spillover benefits to surrounding communities. Initially, we allocated $48 million in the Budget this year, and that will be supplemented from other revenue sources. Alongside that, telecommunications service obligation arrangements are being reviewed in conjunction with these rural broadband issues.

I stress that any question of relaxing the requirement for free local calls is not on the table. Also off the table are changes that would impact on the ownership of Telecom shares.

These are the biggest issues, but they are not the only issues. There is a number of other very important corollary issues in the portfolio, one of them being, of course, international connectivity. I note that the member opposite did not mention it, but it is a very important area in the broadband space. It is good to see that there are a couple of potentially viable commercial options for improving international broadband connectivity for New Zealand. That is exciting. The Government is prepared to play its part through the organisations it is involved with in the space to help facilitate activity there.

Another area is that of complementary measures. If we can get complementary measures that reduce the cost of fibre roll-out, then that is of benefit to all players in the industry. We are doing a lot of work in that area, looking at the access to ducts and poles, looking at access to land on which infrastructure is located, and, of course, looking at the constraints imposed by our good friend the Resource Management Act.

There are issues around mobile services, which is an important part of both the telephone and broadband space. Members will be aware of the investigations into mobile termination services. The Commerce Commission’s final report is due to me in December of this year. Of course, there is the issue of national roaming, which remains in the hands of the Commerce Commission. It is good to see increasing competition in the mobile space, with a third player coming into the market. It is also good to see the further investment and deployment of third generation services by both Telecom and Vodafone. It is a vibrant and exciting market and we are pleased to see it develop further. We will be making more comments on international roaming.

There are a whole lot of other areas, such as the readiness for digital literacy in the education and health sectors. We will address all those areas in the coming 12 months.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Transport

DAVID BENNETT (Chairperson of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee): It is a great pleasure to rise to talk about the estimates debate in respect of Vote Transport. When we look at Vote Transport, I think we need to give great praise to the Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce. He has delivered the leadership that has been lacking in the transport sector for a long time. Within the short period of 9 months he has achieved more than the previous Government achieved in 9 years. He has been a revolutionary Minister, who has performed a great role.

The major investment in transport in this Budget is into the roads of national significance. This investment will provide an economic spur to this economy, and it will deliver jobs and the infrastructure for us to grow and have the strong economy we need to deliver the social services that we all wish to see. Let us look at some of the roads of national significance. Firstly, there is the Waikato Expressway on State Highway 1. For 9 long years Labour tried to build that road, but the only part of the Waikato Expressway it finished was the part we started. Labour had 9 years and it could not put the Waikato Expressway up there. The good people of the Waikato have had deliverance from the Minister, and we thank him for that. The good people of Tauranga also got deliverance last week. They got the Tauranga Eastern Corridor, which will revolutionise the Tauranga coastline. We will see further development further out, past Papamoa, as we open up the link between Whakatāne and Tauranga, which is so lacking.

But today we also need to focus on something that I think many New Zealanders will want to see our Government focus on in transport—that is, making our transport systems safer. Today we saw the release of the Safer Journeys discussion document, which I encourage all members to read. It goes through many of the issues that we will face in making transport safer in the next few years. It performs the role of providing a strategy for safer transport use, which we have not had in this country. There has not been that direction, and we have been putting out the issues so that people can discuss them. These issues are important to New Zealanders, because far too many people are losing their lives on our roads.

The road safety priorities are in three categories. There is the high concern category, the medium concern category, and the areas for continuing focus and emerging issues. We can look at some of the high concern issues. The first one is the need for a reduction in alcohol-impaired and drug-impaired driving. This brings in a lot of the debate around alcohol consumption levels when we compare them with other countries, especially Australia. We can see the initiatives that the National Government passed recently around drug-impaired driving, something that Labour did not pass in its 9 years in Government.

Another area is the safety of young drivers. There are far too many accidents involving young drivers, and their rates of injury and death are too high. We can look at having safer roads and roadsides, which is part of the programme of constructing roads. That will give us safer roads to drive on. Safer speeds has an important role in the high concern category. The document also looks at the safety of motorcyclists. Those are the high concern issues that the National Government has identified, and it has put out this discussion document so that people can give us feedback and we can then address these issues. That is called listening to the people. That is called engaging with the public. It is giving them a chance to have a defined opportunity to make some constructive criticisms and to promote some ideas. That is what we need in Government. We need to engage with the people to find the best solutions.

The issues of medium concern include improving the safety of the light vehicle fleet, safer walking and cycling, improving the safety of heavy vehicles, reducing the impact of fatigue on driving, and addressing distraction while driving. We are opening up consultation on those issues in order for people to give us feedback on what they think we should be doing in those areas.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport): I thank the previous speaker, David Bennett. He is a fine select committee chair. He holds the Government to account on a regular basis. Thank goodness he does, because nobody else does. He asks fine questions of the Government.

Where is “Dazza”? Where is Darren this evening? It is his big chance to talk about transport—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order!

H V Ross Robertson: Point of order, Mr Chairman—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I have got it. The member cannot refer to the absence of a member from the Chamber, and he will desist from doing that immediately.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: My apologies, Mr Chairman. Can I just say what a fine chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee we have, and that he does hold the Government to account on an ongoing basis.

We are very busy in the transport portfolio. Transport is a very important portfolio for this Government, because it has a major role in developing the economic prosperity of New Zealand. I think it is fair to say that the Government has been working very hard over the last 9 months to make progress in the transport sector after a period of time when its progress was reasonably slow—slow-train progress.

I will highlight briefly some of the initiatives the Government is working on as part of our development of the transport space. The first one is the recently released Government policy statement on land transport funding. It is a very important document. It makes economic growth and productivity the primary objective for investment in land transport. I think that is incredibly important, and it will be more important in the coming years to have an efficient funding allocation and to invest in transport infrastructure that reflects the modal options that are realistically available to New Zealanders. I know that that attracts criticism, but it is the only sensible way to develop the transport system in these tighter economic times.

We are investing significantly more in the State highway network over the next 3 years—$1 billion - plus more than was planned by the previous Government. This will lift investment in State highways to 35 percent of the National Land Transport Fund.

We also did not proceed with regional fuel taxes. I think that is very important. It is easy to forget it. We can imagine what would be happening now if we were facing higher and higher regional fuel taxes. As a result of our decisions, we are now facing a smaller increase in national fuel taxes, which go straight back into the National Land Transport Fund. That happens on 1 October. We will see some real benefits coming out of that in terms of improvements in our land transport system.

We have recently passed the Road User Charges Amendment Bill, which will achieve a couple of very important things. It gives notice periods for road-user charge increases, to help operators recover their costs, and gives electric cars a rebate on road-user charges. That is also an important part of what the Government is doing. It is adopting and encouraging other forms of fuel as it addresses the emissions issues and environmental issues that it is facing.

Back in February we announced a half-billion-dollar stimulus package across a number of portfolios, of which about $143 million was for the State highway area. Five specific projects were advanced. I am very proud to have had the opportunity to join the people of the Coromandel as we did the sod-turning for the long-overdue Kōpū Bridge, which has such huge potential for improving the economies of both Coromandel and the Hauraki Plains. That is really the enabling benefit of these transport infrastructure projects.

The previous speaker, David Bennett, also mentioned roads of national significance, and these are very important. Last month the New Zealand Transport Agency announced the winning contractor to build the Victoria Park project, which is a hugely important project for the whole country. It happens to be in Auckland City, but it is a very important project across the whole country. About 165,000 vehicles pass through that bottleneck every day at normally very low speeds, and the potential productivity benefits are hugely positive. And the great news is that the contractor involved is saying that it will be able to complete that project in just a couple of years. It is a very exciting project that would not have happened in anything like the time it will, and possibly might not have happened at all, if the previous Government’s land transport policy statement had continued.

I would like to address the Waterview Connection, which is another road of national significance. The Transport Agency is working through a process that will enable that project to be completed at a much more economical cost to the country. The western ring route in Auckland is a hugely important project, and this Government is committed to seeing it completed.

I would also like to speak briefly about the Tauranga Eastern Link, which is a project that is hugely important in the Bay of Plenty. Two weeks ago we launched a process to look at tolling that route in order to bring it forward.

There are a whole lot of other things that we could address, but in this small period of time we cannot address them.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Courts agreed to.

Vote Pacific Island Affairs agreed to.

Vote Employment

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment): I stand to take a call on Vote Employment, and I am sure that the Opposition will take calls, as well, with it being such an important vote, and such an important issue at the moment as far as what is happening in the country is concerned. It will not surprise the Committee to know, though, that when the ministry officials and I were before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for the estimates, Opposition members did not have enough questions on employment, and we finished early. With the way that things are at the moment, our economy is strongly influenced by the performance of the labour market, and employment is obviously a key issue not just for this Government but also for the country. However, Labour members did not have enough questions, and we finished early on that day because they did not have enough questions to ask us. But that is all right.

Members might be interested to know that the first question we had was from the previous Minister, Ruth Dyson, asking me to define productivity. It will not surprise members that she did not know what productivity was, even though for 9 years members may have thought that Labour members had been concentrating on that. What happened, though, was that we had an Opposition that was so keen to be so clever, its members did not end up addressing any of the real questions that needed to be addressed.

Our economy is strongly influenced by the performance of the labour market. We are facing the biggest economic downturn since the Depression, yet we heard very few questions coming from the Opposition. We know that a well-functioning and flexible labour market is the key to improving economic performance, and it is absolutely vital that we get this stuff right. We are responsible for the labour market analysis, for that information to support our national, our regional, and our sector labour market engagements. We are keenly interested in what is happening in the overall picture. I think the vote has a good interest in where we are heading longer term—getting us through these tougher times, recognising what skills we need to move further ahead, and making sure we are upskilling the workforce where it is needed. Recently there was a good report on aged care, which is of vital importance if we are to look at how we move ahead.

I want to talk a bit about the unemployment rate and where we are at, at the moment. Members should make no mistake: we are at 6 percent at the June 2009 quarter, but we do compare favourably internationally. We are ninth out of 30 of the OECD countries.

Sue Moroney: Not any more.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Actually, we are. I know that it is hard for Labour to understand, but we are ranked ninth out of 30 OECD countries. [Interruption] By all means, if Opposition members would like to take calls on this very important Vote Employment, which is possibly one of the most important votes, then I would be very interested in hearing from them. We have seen employment losses in a number of industries—the wholesale and retail trade, agriculture, fishing and forestry, and communications services. But the losses have been partly offset by what we have seen happening in health and community services, the accommodation industry, cafes, restaurants, and property and business services, and a little, still, in the construction industry, which is of interest to some.

Our labour force participation rate remains unexpectedly high, indicating that people still want to be in work. Some have moved to part-time work, or they have reduced their hours wherever possible. There is no doubt about the fact that people want to be in work wherever possible. The labour force participation rate currently sits at 68.4 percent. It is only 0.1 percent under what it was in December 2007, which is when, we acknowledge, the recession started.

We know that we are not catching up with Australia as far as productivity is concerned. We saw 9 years of that not being of interest at all, and we have a lot of catching up to do on that. We have recently got the task force on board, and to get that there we had to start making moves towards it. For 9 years we did not see productivity as a priority in this country. There was no real acknowledgment of where the economy had to grow in the good times, but now, fortunately, this Government is picking it up and doing well through the tough times. These are tough times, I tell Opposition members, and they do not realise it. As we go around our electorates, we are certainly told that there are people out there who are struggling. They recognise, though, that they can get through this shorter term in order to see us grow throughout the longer term, and that is certainly where this Government’s focus is. Thank you.

HEKIA PARATA (National): Kia ora tātou. I am delighted to stand and make a small contribution to this estimates debate in respect of Vote Employment. I am delighted to follow on from the Minister, who has provided us with a very rich context around the labour market at a time of deep recession, which allows us to discuss some of the challenges that confront us today. She has also provided us with some very helpful statistical definition, which can guide us in our consideration of the issues that face us.

As we all know, and as this Government in particular has been prepared to be seized of, we are in a deep recession. We are also very aware of how important employment is, not only as a contribution to growth and productivity—

Sue Moroney: Talking the economy down.

HEKIA PARATA: Perhaps if the member listened, she might get the opportunity to learn a little about what this Government has taken 9 short months to contribute. National members waited 9 long years in Opposition, and we heard nothing about such a contribution from the previous Government. This Government is very seized of the importance of employment, not only in terms of its contribution to the economy but also in terms of the opportunity it gives for people to participate, to increase their skills, to add to their quality of life, and also to support their sense of well-being and identity—all of which add value to the opportunity to be employed. This is the context in which this Government faces this recession.

But we have not sat on our hands, like the members who are now in Opposition did when they were in Government. We have invested, in a number of ways. But we have not had the arrogance to assume that the issue is all about the role of the Government, again unlike the previous Government. This Government, under this Minister, has been prepared to take leadership on this issue, while understanding that there are other players involved, such as business, community organisations, and iwi. We have been prepared to partner with those in the joint enterprise of getting this country back on track, after the poor management, the mismanagement, by the previous Government, which was peopled by the members who now sit on the benches opposite.

We have understood that we need to soften the tough edges of the recession, and we have done that through providing ReStart, for which there has been an uptake of nearly 4,000 people. These are people who need to see their way clear to regaining employment. We have also provided the Job Support Scheme, which has helped firms to work through the tough times so that they can keep the staff they have, and 32 firms have signed up to that. [Interruption] You may well sneer, but 32 firms, with their collective employment—

H V Ross Robertson: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I know that our colleague on the other side is a new member, but she referred to “you”, thereby bringing you into the debate. You, as well as I, know that that is not parliamentary, and it is out of order. I ask the member to adhere to the Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The point of order is upheld. I missed that; I was engaged in some dialogue. The member will mind her pronouns.

HEKIA PARATA: Thank you for that helpful guidance.

H V Ross Robertson: That’s all right. Any time.

HEKIA PARATA: And I thank the member opposite. I am talking about substantial help, if I can now revert to talking about what this Government has invested in, in terms of stimulating the labour market, providing the opportunity for employment, and, in particular, focusing on a sector of the labour market that we are all passionate about and that this Minister, in particular, has set out to address, and that is the opportunity for young people to be engaged in the labour market.

The Government has recently announced its Youth Opportunities programme. It provides job opportunities for young people aged 16 to 24, who will have the opportunity to take up placements in workplaces and in businesses. We think we will be able to provide that opportunity to up to 4,000 young people. Those 4,000 young people belong to families, whānau, and communities, and the opportunity that this package affords them also spreads to their families, in terms of feeling better about the recession and supporting their young people to have exposure to the opportunity to work. We are creating up to 3,000 new opportunities in Community Max, which again engages with the community, rather than patronising it. We are prepared to work with communities, and to recognise that they have skills and that it is not all about the Government, which again is a distinct change in the way we operate from the way the previous Government operated. We understand that we have to work with communities, so I am pleased to support the Minister in this work in the employment area. Kia ora tātou.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment): I move, That the Committee report progress.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

Bills

Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon SIMON POWER (Minister of Justice): I move, That the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee for consideration, that the committee report finally to the House on or before 19 October 2009, and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 187 and 190(1)(b) and (c).

This bill proposes that the partial defence of provocation, which is provided in section 169 of the Crimes Act 1961, be abolished. Section 169 of the Crimes Act provides that culpable homicide that would otherwise be murder may be reduced to manslaughter if the person who caused death did so under provocation. The origins of the partial defence of provocation date back to the 16th century. The historical rationale for the partial defence was to avoid the mandatory murder penalty, which, at the time, was the death penalty. Subsequently, the punishment for murder was mandatory life imprisonment, which was abolished by section 102 of the Sentencing Act 2002. The introduction of a discretionary sentence for murder with a presumption of life imprisonment has removed the historical rationale for provocation.

The Law Commission’s 2007 report The Partial Defence of Provocation reviewed Auckland and Wellington prosecution murder files over a 5-year period and found that provocation was raised in 15 of the 81 murder cases, but was successful in only four of those cases. Two of the successful cases were so-called homosexual advance or homosexual panic cases. The Law Commission recommended abolition of the partial defence, echoing the view of various law reform bodies in this country for over three decades.

There has been considerable dissatisfaction with the operation of section 169. The courts have encountered difficulties with the requirement that the unique characteristics of the accused may be taken into account, but, oddly, he or she is to be regarded as having the power of self-control of an ordinary person. This has been given various interpretations by the courts over time. The current approach, as laid down by the Court of Appeal, allows the characteristics of the accused to be taken into account in determining how that person perceived the gravity of the provocation. However, the jury is required to determine how the ordinary person would have acted when confronted with provocation at that level of perceived gravity. As one judge stated, “Most have seen the glazed look in the jurors’ eyes.” following instructions from the bench in this regard. More fundamentally, the defence assumes that ordinary reasonable people, when confronted with severe provocation, will react with a homicidal loss of self-control, when, in fact, ordinary people do not.

This Government considers that the partial defence of provocation is fundamentally flawed, and I note that my colleagues across the House share the same view. It effectively provides a defence for lashing out in anger, not just any anger but violent homicidal rage. It rewards a lack of self-control by enabling an intentional killing to be categorised as something other than murder. When the Government is attempting to send the strong message that people must find ways other than violence to manage their anger, it is inappropriate and undesirable that anger be singled out as an overriding mitigating factor that could be seen to justify conviction for manslaughter rather than murder.

Importantly, the repeal of provocation will not preclude self-defence from being raised in appropriate cases. If a person or someone else is under attack, he or she will be able to use reasonable force to repel that threat.

I am aware of the issues raised in support of retention of the partial defence. Without outlining all the arguments for and against provocation, I want to note the advice I have received to this effect: this defence is rarely relied upon by battered victims, and is more likely to be used by perpetrators of domestic violence. It is, therefore—I am advised—more likely to work against the interests of, in particular, battered women, than in their favour. To address another objection, the mentally impaired are generally precluded from relying on provocation as it requires the accused to have the power of self-control of the ordinary person.

I am also aware that not all who submitted to the Law Commission on its report supported abolition of the partial defence. Some submitters, mainly from the defence Bar, considered that it serves a useful and necessary function, and that reform of section 169 would be preferable to repeal. Although the Government does not support that view, I encourage anyone who considers that there are good reasons for retaining the partial defence to make a submission to the Justice and Electoral Committee.

This bill does not propose that provocation is considered as an express mitigating factor at sentencing; rather, the sentencing judge will be able to use his or her discretion under section 102 of the Sentencing Act 2002 to consider whether life imprisonment would be manifestly unjust given the particular circumstances of the case. Even if the court in a particular case determines that a life sentence is justified, it will still need to take into account the existence and degree of provocation, together with all other relevant aggravating and mitigating factors in fixing the length of the minimum non-parole period to be imposed. Although it is not apparent that the Sentencing Act will require amendment as a result of the abolition of provocation, the Government welcomes any submissions to the Justice and Electoral Committee on this issue.

This partial defence enables the accused to besmirch the character of his or her victim. Needless to say, the victim cannot defend his or her legacy. Repeal of the partial defence would make factors such as the alleged sexual behaviour of the victim less relevant at the trial. The emphasis upon such factors in evidence creates a great deal of distress for the families and friends of the victim. This results in those close to the victim feeling as if the victim is on trial rather than the accused. Although it is true that matters related to provocation may be relevant at sentencing, the nature of that process is such that the issue will not be canvassed before a jury with intense and prolonged media scrutiny. Sentencing generally lasts only for an hour or so. Distress for family and friends will be greatly reduced.

I conclude by making this point very clear: this bill is not a knee-jerk reaction to recent cases. The issue of provocation has been extensively canvassed, at least over the life of the last two Governments, and it has been on my work programme for some time. I am pleased to say to the House tonight that Parliament is now in a position to do something about it. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East): I begin by congratulating the Government on the speed with which it introduced the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill, and on acting in good faith by debating the first reading at the earliest opportunity, despite my decision to withdraw the bill that Charles Chauvel and I had introduced by way of the member’s bill ballot. I have not received a single negative response to our decision to withdraw the bill, and that suggests a maturity in a debate such as this, which we can have—and should have—constructed on a non-partisan foundation. I call that a win-win situation.

I did not announce the withdrawal of our bill before I saw the Government bill, because I was concerned that the Government might have been tempted to consider alternative measures, such as degrees of murder being determined by the jury. I would have opposed that alternative. I have no objection to sentencing guidelines for judges, which was the path the previous Labour Government had chosen to go down. The bill that Charles Chauvel and I had developed was a straight repeal, as is the Government’s bill, and that is why we are fully supporting its introduction and, hopefully, its rapid progress through the House. I would not have supported recreating the problem by calling it another name.

Can I say to those who say that this measure is a knee-jerk response to two recent cases—and I fully back what the Minister of Justice has said—only one of which dominated the mainstream media, which is a matter I will come back to shortly, that this law change has been the subject of in-depth consideration across two Law Commission reports. The first report was in 2001 and the other report was in 2007. The first report focused on a range of criminal defences with particular reference to battered defendants, and recommended that this partial defence be repealed. It also recommended the repeal of the mandatory life sentence for murder. This is very important because, as the Minister has said, the rationale for the defence was to avoid the mandatory sentence for murder in cases with mitigating circumstances.

Most of the countries that retain the defence of provocation still have mandatory life sentences for murder. The previous Labour Government repealed the mandatory life sentence in 2002, thus the issue of the repeal of the defence of provocation came back to the Government. At that time officials raised concerns that were still prevalent in the community about battered women, and I am pleased that the Minister has focused on that. They also raised concerns about the potential impact on mentally ill or mentally impaired offenders. It was legitimate for the Government to refer the matter back to the Law Commission, given the extent of those concerns. The referral was made in 2004, and for 3 years this matter was subjected to detailed analysis, including an assessment, as the Minister has said, of murder cases over a 5-year period—2001 to 2005 inclusive. This research challenged many of the assumptions about the pleading of the defence and the circumstances in which it was actually pleaded. I found the report very informative, including, as the Minister has said, the fact that the defence had been successfully pleaded in only four out of 81 cases over those 5 years.

This report also asked an important question, which was what would replace the defence, if anything. As I indicated before, the Law Commission considered a range of alternatives and settled on the sentencing guidelines. The commission rejected the other options—in particular, the introduction of a generic partial defence. Just one sentence in that report convinced me why the jury should have no part in the decision. This is the quote from the report that I felt was compelling: “This has the potential to reduce homicide to a lottery; it is an invitation to jurors to dress up their prejudices as law,”. That is a very powerful statement, because, in many ways, that is precisely how the current law stands—a lottery.

So this bill was not a knee-jerk reaction, nor has the work on the repeal commenced as a result of the two cases I referred to before, and to which I now wish to turn. I too acknowledge the families of Sophie Elliott and Ronald Brown. Nothing will erase the impact of the slurs cast on their characters in the criminal trials that their families had to endure, but to both families I offer up the knowledge that their experience will galvanise the response of Parliament into what I hope will be a unanimous vote of support for repeal.

I have known about the defence of provocation for nearly 30 years. Dr Minnett killed his wife in 1980, while I was still a law student. I remember the feminist literature rewriting the word “manslaughter” to read “man’s laughter”. I recall not being able to believe that somebody could get away with murder by saying that his wife had driven him to it by challenging his sexual prowess. Leigh Minnett did not deserve to die, nor did Sophie Elliott, nor did Ronald Brown.

I want to mention Ronald Brown because his case will be the last case where the defence of provocation was successfully pleaded in New Zealand. His case sums up what is wrong with the defence. I would like to say that the only reason his case did not attract the media attention that Sophie Elliott’s murderer did was that the accused did not give evidence at the trial. Deep down I know that is not true. That is not the reason why it did not get the media attention of the other case. I hope the media reflect on that, and also reflect on the level of coverage they gave to an individual who was characterised as having a narcissistic personality disorder. It was not required in the public interest, it was disrespectful of the family of Sophie Elliott, and it was disrespectful of her memory.

Returning to Ronald Brown, the Law Commission identified that the defence of provocation is overwhelmingly used by men, and is often used in situations where they say that their sexuality was threatened when their partner left them for another man, or, as in Ronald Brown’s case, they say that they were propositioned by another man. My objection is that the evidence as to what allegedly incited this homicidal loss of self-control is entirely in the hands of the person who has silenced for ever the only other witness to the events. My other objection is that a jury is asked to determine whether the provocation was “sufficient to deprive a person having the power of self-control of an ordinary person, but otherwise having the characteristics of the offender, of the power of self-control;”.

In one section of the report, reference is made to substantial literature that documents the way that the defence has acted as a shield for men to react with murderous violence to threats to their sexual identity. The following point is made: “an acceptance that such reactions are those of the ordinary person (as the provocation defence explicitly does when it succeeds) implies that it is natural and excusable to feel revolted and violently outraged by the gay men and the former partners who have done no more than exercise their freedom of choice and expression.” The Law Commission states that the defence puts a premium on anger, and not merely anger but homicidally violent anger.

We have a campaign in this country with the catchphrase “It’s not OK.”, and this defence of provocation is as not OK as the violence it excuses. The existence of the partial defence has been described as a blot on the criminal law, and it is time that it is removed. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon NATHAN GUY (Associate Minister of Justice): The Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill is very important and is before the House tonight for its first reading. First of all, I congratulate the Minister of Justice, the Hon Simon Power, on bringing this bill into the House—indeed, very swiftly. I know that the bill was on his work programme and I know that this issue has been around for a while now. I see that the Law Commission first recommended the repeal of this law in 2001 and it was the subject of a stand-alone report in 2007. So it is great to see that this new Government and, indeed, the Minister of Justice are getting on with a very robust work programme.

The defence of provocation is included in section 169 of the Crimes Act and states that a verdict of murder may be reduced to manslaughter if the offender can show that the crime was committed under provocation. Recent examples have illustrated the significant issues raised by this defence. Extensive consideration by the Law Commission and other bodies, as I have just mentioned, has emphasised the need for the defence to be abolished.

The trial process, including sentencing, is often deeply traumatic for the families and friends of the victim. The distress caused to those close to the victim will be greatly reduced if any defence argument as to provocation-type issues is confined to sentencing. This is because the ability to adduce evidence is far less at sentencing. Provocation issues will not be canvassed before a jury, and sentencing generally lasts only for an hour or so.

The other important point is, we believe, that the risk that juries will acquit altogether when confronted with an intentional but provoked killing is very low. They will still sometimes convict of manslaughter if an alternative defence such as a lack of intent has been run, but they are most unlikely to let an offender walk free on the grounds of sympathy alone.

The repeal of provocation, as a partial defence to murder, from the statute book is indeed the preferred option. It is not proposed that provocation is considered as an express mitigating factor at sentencing. Rather, the sentencing judge will be able to use his or her discretion under the Sentencing Act 2002 to consider whether life imprisonment would be manifestly unjust, given the particular circumstances of the case. If the sentencing judge determines that a life sentence is justified, then he or she can take into account the existence and degree of provocation together with all the other relevant factors in fixing the length of the minimum non-parole period.

The repeal of the partial defence would make factors such as the alleged sexual behaviour of the victim and the nature of the relationship with the defendant less relevant at the trial—the emphasis upon such factors in evidence is resulting in a significant amount of distress for families and friends of the victim.

This is an important bill that is heading to the Justice and Electoral Committee. I notice that it is only about six pages long but it is extremely worthy, and I know that the Justice and Electoral Committee, under the very good chairmanship of Chester Borrows, will be looking forward to hearing the many submissions it is likely to receive from the New Zealand public on a very important issue. I commend this bill to the House.

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour): In the case of the Crown and Ali, Mr Hart was killed by his nephew by marriage Amsheen Ali, who was 16 at the time of the killing. Ali and a friend Nadan had tried to persuade Mr Hart to lend them a car so that they could go out to a nightclub. Their repeated requests were met with refusal. They smoked cannabis with Mr Hart and drank a little alcohol. At one point Ali picked up a knife from the kitchen, played with it, and then put it next to him on the couch while he watched television. At the time of the killing all the other guests had left and Nadan was outside smoking. Ali claimed that Hart had made a homosexual advance towards him, hugging him, rubbing his hands on Ali’s body, and attempting to kiss him on the neck. Ali said that he was scared that Hart would rape him. Ali allegedly pushed Hart away on a number of occasions before he grabbed the knife and stabbed Hart at least five times, including once in the back, once in the chest, and once in the neck. Ali then called out for Nadan and they left Mr Hart’s house, locking it and taking with them his car keys, wallet, credit cards, and some cannabis. Ali subsequently returned to collect the knife, then they drove off, collected two other friends, and drove around Auckland for a number of hours. Ali told his friends about the killing but then said he was joking; he never mentioned the alleged advances. Ali and Nadan then left Mr Hart’s car in central Auckland, after wiping it down to remove fingerprints and taking out the CD stacker and stereo. They then disposed of Mr Hart’s possessions, including his wallet and his credit cards. Ali was arrested the next day. He admitted killing Mr Hart but said he did not mean to. On those facts he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 3 years in prison.

There are equally inappropriate uses of the defence in the casebooks in recent times. My friend and colleague Lianne Dalziel has mentioned the case of the Crown and Ambach. I will not say any more about that because I understand that sentencing is yet to occur in that case. But it is appropriate to pay tribute to Mr Brown, the victim in that case, and to note with satisfaction that if this Parliament does its job in a speedy fashion Mr Brown will be the last person in respect of whom this misguided defence succeeds. I will also not go into the facts in any detail of the well-known recent case of the Crown and Edwards, where Mr McNee was killed and where in horrific circumstances his killer escaped a conviction of murder and was eventually sentenced on the lesser offence of manslaughter. These cases demonstrate that the scope for things to go wrong when this defence is pleaded successfully is ample, and it is appropriate for this Parliament to finally take the action it is taking tonight to begin to erase the defence from the statute book.

As the Minister of Justice said, when the Crimes Act, under which we currently operate, was first passed in the 1960s, there was the death penalty in this country. In those days murder meant a death sentence—it was automatic; manslaughter had other consequences. So one can perhaps see why it would have been thought appropriate at those times to distinguish between a crime of passion, a crime in the moment, and a premeditated killing, and that is what the law did. But since we abolished the death penalty in the 1960s, and, as Lianne Dalziel observed, as even murder does not now automatically result in a life sentence, this defence simply has no further logical application on the statute book of this country.

The defence is additionally inappropriate, as Lianne Dalziel has said, because it legitimises a violent reaction, a lashing out, and that is just not appropriate in a society that is trying to minimise, and refuses to condone, violence. Worse than that, it is a defence that involves almost the ultimate insult to the victim because in general terms, as the cases show, only the voice of the killer is left at the trial—and normally not even the voice of the killer; it is the replay of the killer’s police interview, because usually the killer does not even enter the witness box. All that the jury ever hears is the killer’s account of the victim’s last moments, and inevitably the account is coloured; it is designed to paint the victim as somehow morally inappropriate, and deserving, even, of what eventually happened to him or her. Lianne Dalziel has described a recent case where the public finally realised that the application of the partial defence can have absolutely revolting consequences when a trial is played out and it is applied.

I am pleased New Zealand is joining most other comparable overseas common law jurisdictions that have already abolished the partial defence. Most of them inherited it, as we did, from Victorian English law and have seen fit to do away with it. It is timely that we should do the same. I also want to say a few words, after acknowledging the Minister’s efforts, to praise the work of the Law Commission because as now so often happens with worthy law reform projects in this Parliament, effectively the Minister is giving life to a bill that was the appendix to the 2007 Law Commission report on this matter. As the Minister noted, concerns have been publicly expressed on earlier occasions, when this sort of law reform was considered, that perhaps it might be something of a two-edged sword to abolish the partial defence as far as battered women or the mentally incapacitated might be concerned.

The Law Commission report is well worth reading for people who have those concerns, because it really does comprehensively put them to bed, and demonstrates that in fact doing away with this partial defence would make society a lot safer, including safer for women and for those of diminished capacity, rather than deprive people who might be wanting to avail themselves of the defence in those categories of the ability to do so.

The defence should have gone before now. The Law Commission reported in late 2007. There was a recommendation, I think, because of the recognition that there was ongoing or residual concern about differentiating between a crime of the moment and a premeditated killing, that there should be some differentiation, or ability to differentiate at least, on the part of the judge at sentencing. The recommendation from the Law Commission was that there should be a guideline from the nascent sentencing unit to guide judges when the facts reveal that there was something along the lines of true provocation involved in a crime. It is a matter of record now that the Sentencing Council was not set up prior to the election. It now appears that it will not be set up. That is the reason why the previous Government did not implement the Law Commission’s report prior to the last election.

But it is very good to see the Minister, Simon Power, introducing the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill today. I commend him for doing so. I commend Lianne Dalziel for having introduced a very similar measure as a member’s bill, and also for showing the generosity of spirit to withdraw that bill and allow the Government bill to proceed. Clearly, given the rules of this House, that is the appropriate thing to do if we want to see this reform enacted speedily. I hope it will be enacted speedily. I hope the select committee will hear submissions that I am sure will overwhelmingly be in favour of reform and repeal. I join other speakers in commending the bill to the House.

KEVIN HAGUE (Green): I stand tonight to honour Roy Jackson, Charles Aberhart, Ronald Anderson, Jim Curtis, Barry Hart, David McNee, and Ronald Brown. In 1960 Roy Jackson, a gay man from Auckland visiting his lover on the ship the Whangaroa at the Port of Napier, died after being assaulted by two seamen, who were charged with and acquitted of manslaughter. In this case the judge commented that their attack on Jackson was justified as the ship was their home. Charles Aberhart, a gay man from Blenheim, was kicked to death in Hagley Park in 1964 by six youths aged between 15 and 17, who were found not guilty despite evidence that they had gone to the park for “a spot of queer bashing”. They claimed that Mr Aberhart had provoked them by making a sexual advance.

The killer of Ronald Anderson in Hawke’s Bay in 1994 also used the homosexual panic defence. His killer claimed provocation from Anderson, who had put his hand on the killer’s knee causing a frenzied attack, first with a poker, then by punching, and finally striking him at least six times with an axe. He, too, was convicted only of manslaughter. In 1995 Jim Curtis was attacked and left brain damaged by Tai Tahi Masters after the two met in Napier. Masters hit Curtis using a glass decanter, again claiming homosexual panic after a sexual advance, and was acquitted of both attempted murder and assault.

My colleague Charles Chauvel has recounted some of the details of the killing of Barry Hart in 2003. He was stabbed at least five times. In 2003 David McNee was killed by at least 40 blows from Phillip Edwards, who claimed that a sex transaction had gone too far. Edwards, who had 56 previous convictions, claimed homosexual panic provocation and was consequently convicted of manslaughter and acquitted of murder. Very recently—and I am mindful of Charles Chauvel’s caution around the pending sentencing—Ronald Brown was killed by Ferdinand Ambach, who was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. Mr Brown was beaten to death with a banjo, and was found with the banjo’s neck protruding from his throat.

These are crimes that I am sure members will note are characterised by a particular savagery, which is part of a culture of hostility and gay-bashing violence. I will speak exclusively tonight about the loathsome homosexual panic version of the provocation defence, in which the experience of a man receiving a sexual advance from another is seen as something so unacceptable to a reasonable person that responding by killing carries less gravity and is somehow more justifiable.

The Law Commission, which others have referred to tonight, argues persuasively that the partial defence is fatally flawed. The commission’s research indicates that roughly half of the cases it examined where the provocation defence had been successfully used had been in this category of homosexual panic. I note that there is no equivalent heterosexual panic defence. The law is a powerful reflection on social attitudes, but it is also a shaper of attitudes. I have worked over many years on various measures to provide for equal treatment under the law on the basis of sexual orientation. There has been some success, but the Green Party’s policy is not to rest until full, equal treatment under the law is achieved.

The ongoing existence of this defence is a signal that violently taking the life of a gay man is of less consequence than taking the life of another. That is obnoxious in the extreme. It increases the actual physical danger faced by gay men, and it signals in the most graphic way possible both to gay men and to everyone else that our lives do not have the same value as the lives of others. The message sent to gay and bisexual men by the existence of this partial defence contributes substantially to a hostile and negative social environment that lowers self-esteem, and we know that contributes strongly to all sorts of negative effects in health, education, and other areas—a massive waste of human potential.

As Elisabeth McDonald has written this year in the Victoria University of Wellington Law Review: “The availability of the defence of provocation in cases of homosexual advances is therefore problematic because of its ability to excuse those who have subjected gay men to extreme violence in situations where there is no equivalent for straight men. In this way, the operation of the defence reinforces the vulnerability of gay men as ‘dangerous outlaws’. When men who kill in response to homosexual advances are not convicted of murder, ‘courts and juries [further] reinforce the notion … that gay men do not deserve the respect and protection of the criminal justice system.’ ” She goes on to say: “To the extent that a partial excuse is potentially available to men who kill as a consequence of any unwanted homosexual advance, however minor, it is difficult to explain this as anything except the condoning of homophobia. The script is that there is something seriously provocative about such an advance when made by a gay man to a straight man, when in any other context the provocation would be minimal or non-existent.”

Some will say that this law is an artefact of historic attitudes, now, thankfully, in the past. I draw members’ attention to the successful use of this defence this very year in the savage killing of Ronald Brown. This is a current issue, and it impacts right now on the way we live our lives. I choose not, however, to point the finger at past Governments that have not taken action to repeal this provision. Instead, I acknowledge the work done on the issue by Tim Barnett previously, and by Lianne Dalziel and Charles Chauvel. I give my thanks to Minister Power and to his colleagues in his caucus for taking this action now.

I am aware that there will be those who wish to argue that there are still valid reasons for retaining a provocation defence, and I know that these issues will be expressed at the select committee, including concerns that repeal will remove a legitimate defence for battered women and that the change will effectively shift the decision-making balance between judge and jury. But today, tonight, we take a stand for the intrinsic worth of all human beings and for the basic right of gay men to live and to love without discrimination.

DAVID GARRETT (ACT): I rise to speak on the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill. Before I get to my notes I would like to say that in my relatively short time here I do not think I have heard a more moving speech than that made by the previous speaker, Kevin Hague. I would like to make it absolutely clear to this House and whoever may be listening that I find it absolutely repugnant that someone—and I am vaguely familiar with the case in Christchurch some years ago that was referred to by Mr Hague—could go off for a bit of queer bashing, I think it was called, and successfully use a provocation defence.

I also find it difficult to accept the outcome of the more recent McNee case, where a sex worker who obviously knew he was going to have a sexual transaction with a man could then successfully use a provocation defence. I want to make it very clear again that that kind of savagery has no place in 21st century New Zealand. Having said all that—and I will not resile from my preamble—we are only cautiously supporting this bill at its first reading.

I was looking around the House while my colleague Kevin Hague was speaking. I do not know every member. I know many of the members who are lawyers—I am thinking of Mr Power, Mr Chauvel, Ms Dalziel, and Mr Parker. But as far as I am aware, none of us is a criminal lawyer. I certainly am not.

The question of a provocation defence is a very, very vexed question, and I believe that the bill is the epitome of a measure that should go to a select committee. It is absolutely not simple. I notice with great interest that there is universal support for the bill at its first reading from all sides of the House, and, as I have said, as was shown in the most moving way by Mr Hague.

The Hon Lianne Dalziel, as Mr Power and Mr Hague mentioned, was lucky enough to have a bill pulled from the ballot a few weeks ago. Her bill would have done much the same thing as this bill, and I notice and applaud her for graciously eschewing political point-scoring and for giving her support to this Government measure.

As much as I respect the Hon Simon Power, I fear I cannot accept that this bill and Ms Dalziel’s bill are unconnected with the recent Weatherston case. Before I speak any further let me make it very clear that I am very, very aware of the boundary between this legislature and the courts. If I thought for one moment that Justice Potter would be influenced in her sentence by what I am saying tonight then I would say no more. I understand that the convention of non-comment extends beyond verdict to sentence, and I will choose my words as carefully as I can.

I think it is unavoidable and it does not help—and I mean no disrespect to the honourable Charles Chauvel—to refer to a recent prominent case. We all know that that case is of Clayton Weatherston stabbing his girlfriend. I will confine my observations to those facts that are public knowledge. Weatherston stabbed his girlfriend 216 times in a frenzied attack, continuing long after she was dead. At his trial the defence he used was that of provocation. It has to be said, to digress just slightly, that he did not have any other defence, it seems to me, inexpert as I am in criminal law. His defence was, at least in part, that she deserved to die. That the provocation defence was even available to him upset many people.

In the past I have criticised criminal lawyers, but I would like to go on record as saying that the criticism of Ms Ablett-Kerr in this particular case is abhorrent. Criminal lawyers have to do their job. It is not a part of the law that I chose, quite deliberately. Criminal law is a vital part of our system, and she offered what seemed to me to be the only defence available. But that defence failed. Twelve ordinary people heard it. The jury saw the odious Mr Weatherston smirking in the witness box, and they rejected the defence.

One point that has escaped attention, both in this House and, sadly, to a great extent in the media, is that Weatherston could have done exactly the same thing using the defence of self-defence. It will be recalled that he claimed—and as other speakers have said correctly, no one was there to contradict him—that Ms Elliot attacked him with scissors. So he could have used the defence of self-defence and could have said the very same things.

I say again that the provocation defence did not work. Provocation is—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Although the member has said he will be very careful in what he is saying, I warn the member that the discretion to waive the sub judice rule resides with the Speaker. The rule extends to after sentencing. The member may address general aspects of the law but should not address the particulars of the case. I ask the member to be very careful in what he is saying. He can talk only about general aspects of the law, not about specifics.

DAVID GARRETT: Provocation is no more than a possible defence, as was the former possible defence under section 59 of the Crimes Act. People perhaps tend to forget that it is not the case, with provocation, self-defence, or with section 59, as it then was, to simply offer up that defence and walk. Recent cases where the provocation defence has been offered have shown that it is just that—a possible defence. In fact, a very small number of provocation defences are successful. I believe that in the last 5 years the defence of provocation was used in 15 cases of murder, and, if my notes are correct, four were successful.

A Samoan lady successfully offered the defence a few years back. I regret that the surname of the lady has slipped my mind. Her partner had flaunted his infidelity. He was a well-known fellow who went to displays in Auckland. He flaunted his lover and taunted his partner with it while she looked after 10 kids and dependent relatives at home. The lady was clearly driven beyond distraction. Her partner came home, having announced he was leaving. She asked him whether that was the case, having laid down a tomahawk in front of him. He taunted her again, and she killed him. Her defence of provocation was successful.

As I have said, it seems to me that this bill cries out for careful scrutiny at a select committee. I very much hope it will get as many submissions as we received on the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill; I think we received 1,070 submissions. I for one would be very, very happy if we received double that number on this measure. I am not always a supporter of legal academics, but I will be listening very, very carefully to anything and everything they have to say.

It is very important that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater; that we do not allow ourselves to be blinded by recent cases, and cases from the more distant past that, arguably, are even more abhorrent, such as the case in Christchurch; and that we remember that the defence works for both sexes, all sexual orientations, and all genders, and needs to be examined very closely. We are not convinced at this stage of the merits of abolishing entirely the provocation defence. We will be very interested to see what the select committee comes up with.

Just in closing I will touch on a bill that was put before an earlier Parliament, I think by a former National MP, advocating degrees of murder. As I understand the argument before the House tonight, we effectively have that provision now by virtue of sections of the Sentencing Act that have removed the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment for murder. I regard the Sentencing Act as thoroughly unsatisfactory legislation, as it automatically reduces sentences to one-third of what judges hand down.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki): Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tātau katoa e te Whare. Ko tāku i te tuatahi, i a tātau e kōrero nei, mō te āhuatanga o te hunga kua ngaro atu i te tirohanga kanohi. Pēnei te āhuatanga i runga i te marae, me poroporoaki te hunga kua ngaro atu i ngā wiki, i ngā marama, i ngā tau kua hipa. Kua areare mai ngā taringa ki te āhuatanga o ngā kōrero a tēnā, a tēnā mō te hunga kua kōhurutia. Nō reira, ka tangi te ngākau mō te āhuatanga o ngā kōrero ka mutu, hoi anō i a tātau e noho nei i roto i te Whare Pāremata i tēnei pō, waiho rātou kia moe.

Ko tā tātau he whakatikatika i te ture, kia whai i tētahi huarahi hōu, kia kore tēnei Whare Pāremata e kōrero mō ngā take, ngā raruraru kua puta i te pō nei ā ngā tau kei mua i te aroaro. Ko tā te pire nei he whakatikatika i te Crimes Act. Kei roto tonu i tērā wāhanga e mea ana he momo karo tēnei i te whakakārangirangi, te mātātoa rānei mō ngā hāra nui, mō te kōhuru tonu. I raro i te ture i tēnei wā, ka whakaitingia te whakapae ā-kōhuru ki tērā o te whakapae ā-mate tūpono mēnā ka mate tētahi i raro i te korowai o mātātoa, o akiaki rānei. Ka tau tonu tēnei āhuatanga o te kōhuru engari, ka āhua whakarāpopotohia te roa o te noho i te whare herehere. Hei tā te pūrongo o te Kōmihana ā-Ture o te tau 2007, me whakakore i tērā wāhanga o te ture e mea ana, arā, ko tēnei mea te mātātoa. Ehara i te mea he maha ngā wā kua kōkirihia taua huarahi, ehara i te mea i waimaria. O ngā kēhi kōhuru e 81 i waenganui o ngā tau 2001 ki te 2005, e 15 i whai i tēnei momo huarahi, e rima noa iho i waimaria. I whakapapa mai tēnei wāhanga o te ture, kaua i tērā rau tau engari, nō te rau tau e 17 kē i kawea mai tēnei tikanga i roto i te Criminal Code Act 1893, ā, ko tōna pūtake mēnā ko te kōhuru tōna mutu mai, “he kōhuru tonu nā runga i te mura o te ahi, he mahi ā-ngākau, he mahi ohorere”.

Kāti, ko te mate kē, kia mōhio mai tātau ko te tau 1893 te tau i whakaaetia kia pōti tonu te wahine i Aotearoa nei. Koia nei te pōrangi o tēnei momo ture. He mea nui tēnei whakatau i te mea, hei tētahi ahorangi ā-ture nei i te Whare Wānanga o Wikitōria, hei tā Elisabeth McDonald me āna rangahau, i te nuinga o ngā momo kēhi ā-mātātoa nei, koia ērā ka puta i te wā ka mea tētahi tāne i patu i tētahi kia mate, nā ngā mahi whakaiti, whakahē rānei ā tētahi ki a ia, nā tana pōhēhē rānei he ngoikore te ure, he koretake te ure, he ure tautau ēnei momo āhuatanga katoa. Nō reira, he whakaiti tonu te titiro ki ēnei momo tohe. I ngā rā o mua, mēnā he whakakairanu te mahi, he moe wahine tahi, rua, toru rānei, ā, ka patua te wahine, he “crime of passion” tērā. Arā, anō nei e tika ana kia mate te wahine. Hoi anō, i ngā tau 90 ko tā wētahi whakataunga Kōti Pīrā, kāo. Ahakoa he whakakairanu te mahi ehara tērā i te karo, i te whakautu rānei mō te mahi tīwēwē a te tangata. Nō nā tata nei kua kōkirihia tēnei momo karo ā-mātātoa nei i te kōhurutanga o te hunga moe whakaeneene ā-tāne nei ka mutu, kua puta te kōrero, arā, te “homosexual panic defence”.

Ko ētahi kua kī, ko ngā karo ā-ture ngā tikanga ā-iwi me kī, nā te mea nō tētahi iwi tētahi. I te Kōti Pīra, i puta te kōrero ko te “slow-burning anger or passion” he āhuatanga o te iwi o Hāmoa nā te whakapapa rānei, nā te ira rānei o te tangata i pērā rawa te tangata hara. Kāre mātau i te kite i te tika o tēnei momo whakaaro. He rangirua te mutunga mai. Kei roto i te Sentencing Act wāhanga 27 tētahi kōrero e tono nei ki te kōti, kia rongo i ngā kōrero ā-whānau, ā-hapori, ā-iwi tonu o te tangata hara. Mā tēnei ka kitea ko te tikanga o ēnei kōrero ā-whānau, a-hapū nei ki tōna hara ka mutu, ko ngā momo huarahi hei whakatikatika i te hē. Tērā pea, ka whai wāhi ko te tangata hara me te tangata i rongo i tōna hara kia noho tahi. Nō reira, he kōrero nui ēnei kia whai wāhi te wāhanga ā-tikanga iwi i roto i ngā whiriwhiringa. Nō reira, kei roto i te ture, arā, te Sentencing Act tētahi wāhanga e anga tonu atu ana ki ngā tikanga ā-iwi, kāre mātau i te kite i ētahi painga o te noho o tēnei mea ā-tikanga nei i roto i tēnei ture hōu.

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

[Greetings to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to us all, the House. The first thing for me to do as we debate this matter is to acknowledge those who have passed away. This is the custom on the marae, where we farewell and acknowledge those who have died in the weeks, months, and years past. Without a doubt, references by those in the debate so far about murder victims have caught the attention of those listening in. So while we lament the nature of what has been stated, let us who are seated about the Chamber this evening spare a thought for those who have passed on from sight, and allow them to rest there.

The task before us in this Chamber tonight is to amend the law, seek out a new path, and debate issues and problems for the years before us. This bill amends the Crimes Act by repealing sections that provide for the defence of provocation. In current law a person charged with murder can have the charge reduced to manslaughter if he or she caused death under provocation. It is partial defence, in that the defendant is still charged with the killing but able to avoid longer sentences. The Law Commission’s 2007 report recommended that the partial defence of provocation be abolished. However, it is not used often, and often has not been successful. Of the 81 murder cases between 2001 and 2005, 15 used the defence of provocation, of which five were successful. It is another case of a law that has its origins not just in the last century, but the 17th century, and was brought here in the Criminal Code Act 1893, which required that homicide should have been committed “in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation”.

But the trouble was, and as ironical as it may seem, 1893 was the year that women in New Zealand were allowed to vote. That is how ridiculous this type of law is. This is a crucial statement, because, according to research by Victoria University law professor Elisabeth McDonald, the majority of provocation cases are when a man argues he killed because of a perception that his sexuality or sexual pride was being threatened. Formerly, provocation was the “crime of passion”, implying that infidelity was a valid justification for a man to kill, and, as a consequence, the woman being killed. More recently, in the 1990s, some Court of Appeal judgments stated that infidelity is not enough to deprive the ordinary person of self-control. More recently, the defence of provocation has been used as a defence in the killing of gay men, leading to an outcry that this is a “homosexual panic defence”.

We are mindful that cultural factors have been described in the context of the defence of provocation. In the Court of Appeal, the description “slow-burning anger or passion” was used as being a characteristic of the Samoan people, implying that a racial or ethnic tendency towards sudden passion may well be seen as a characteristic of the offender. We cannot see the sense in this line of thinking. Confusion is the outcome. Section 27 of the Sentencing Act 2002 makes it explicit that offenders may request that the court hear views on the personal, family, community, and cultural background of the offender. That can ensure that the background may be related to the offence, and, importantly, processes are available to resolve issues relating to the offence, involving the offender and his or her family or community, and the victim or victims of the offence. These are really important provisions that allow for social considerations. Therefore, because there is already provision within the Sentencing Act, albeit provision that is tragically underused, we do not think the concerns around cultural knowledge justify retaining the defence of provocation.]

Just in closing then, and to summarise some of the points we have tried to make, I firstly congratulate the Minister of Justice on behalf of the Māori Party on putting forward this bill to address this issue. I have heard the many discussion points from other speakers tonight, and I concur with many of the sentiments.

I make it very clear that the Māori Party does not want to take away any legal mechanisms that serve to protect women and children from violence. We know that provocation has been a difficult defence for battered women to prove. The principle that has been most in question has been the requirement for the loss of control. The implication for the defence of provocation is that the response is a sudden, angry outburst rather than a slow-burning build-up. Yet how crazy is this? The defence has been used to reduce the responsibility of men who have killed their wives because their wives have reported a severe beating to police after promising under threat of violence not to do so.

We are a party that has a vision and talks a lot about whānau ora, and that aligns with whakapapa, whanaungatanga, wairua, mana, and mauri. We know that the defence of self-defence—namely, section 48 of the Crimes Act—has actually been far more effective for the specific case of battered women in domestic violence situations. Given all the factors discussed tonight by all the speakers, the Māori Party will be supporting this bill to the next stages. Clearly, some major issues need to be tidied up within the law around this aspect, and we hope that we get time to talk about not only the specific issues named by members of the House but also the bigger issues about finding a cultural angle that might be able to give some assistance to the discussions as the bill goes through the select committee process. Kia ora tātou.

CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui): It is a privilege to be able to stand and take some role in this debate on the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill. It is interesting and heartening to note that the law is able to make some changes to take account of the, I guess, “livingness” of the criminal law as it operates within our society, of changes that occur across that society, and of the ways in which the criminal law evolves. It is interesting and pleasing to see that there is conviction from all sides of the House to enter into the debate around the defence of provocation and whether the time has come for its removal.

I am one who argues that the time has come for the removal of the defence of provocation, given that there has been the removal of the mandatory imposition of a life sentence upon conviction of murder. The historical context, as has been explained, is that the defence of provocation arose during a time when capital punishment was the preferred sentence for someone convicted of murder and, more recently, when a life sentence was mandatory.

A number of statements have been made in respect of battered woman’s syndrome. It is important to note that that particular defence is not applied to provocation but, more likely, to one of self-defence, because of the slow-burn nature of battered woman’s syndrome and the acts that come out of it. It is important to note what would happen with the removal of the defence of provocation in respect of charges of manslaughter. Two charges would be laid: one of murder and one of manslaughter where, for instance, there is an indication of some heat in the response to the behaviour exhibited around the situation where homicide has prevailed. Two charges would then be put in front of juries: murder and manslaughter, which is laid in the alternative. Within the jurisprudence that seems to have evolved in cases where there are one or two stab wounds, it seems that juries prefer a conviction on a charge of manslaughter as opposed to one of murder. Some cognisance is taken of the “heat of the moment” in respect of those charges.

There has been some suggestion that no evidence would be given and that no cross-examination would be made in order to bring out evidence of provocation. I tend to think that there would be some evidence to a degree so that it could be raised at the time of sentencing. But I do not think there would be anything like the sort of labouring of the cross-examination, to bring out evidence, along the lines that we have seen over the last 20 years or so, especially in respect of the most recent and high-profile cases we have seen on our televisions.

I think it is certainly time to look at how this particular defence has played in the minds of juries. In the future I personally would like to see us take a look at the way and the circumstances in which we use juries. It is a real shame, I believe, that in many cases juries have the full theatre of court—or what is reduced to a theatre in a courtroom—played out upon them. Then there is a collective wisdom, but in some cases some would argue it is a collective prejudice against complainants as they are outlined to be by evidence given, particularly by a defendant, which is quite rare, and by those tending to be called by the defence in order to build a platform for a provocation defence.

We need to think a little bit more—and I hope we do it soon—about how in the course of jury selection and jury debate around cases, this collectivity can work upon the minds called to make decisions in the jury process. We can tend to find—and we find it not only in cases such as these but also particularly in cases of sexual offences against children—that if individual jurors were able to make a decision based solely on their thoughts and their assessment of the case, without having to enter into the quite severe debate within the jury room, then they may well come to a different view. I believe that that is definitely the case.

It seems a bit obscure to make those comments now without trying to cast aspersions on those who sit on jury panels, but I believe that this defence would never have received the sort of traction it has in the types of cases around homosexual bashing if the jury system was set up to allow people to be able to hold their views a little more privately at a time when they are making these decisions.

Finally, I say as chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee that I am pleased to be able to stand in this debate and acknowledge this bill. I look forward to the discussion and debate, and to the submissions that will come before us, and I acknowledge the fact that there seems to be some unity around the House at this time.

LYNNE PILLAY (Labour): Along with other members in the House, I am pleased to stand and speak in support of the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill. I first acknowledge the work done by my colleagues Lianne Dalziel and Charles Chauvel, who worked very hard on the recommendations. In fact, I also acknowledge the work done by the Law Commission over a considerable period of time on this really important issue. The principles of this bill were originally brought to this House not very long ago in Lianne Dalziel’s member’s bill. I think that it has been a very sensible, pragmatic approach for the Government to acknowledge how important this issue is. I can see Simon Power nodding his head in acknowledgment of that. This bill is now before the House—and certainly not before time.

I do not want to be negative, but I noted when reading the Law Commission’s report the comment that the repeal of the provocation defence would have been enhanced by the provision of a guideline. I think the recommendation at that time was for a guideline from the sentencing establishment unit. If there is one thing I am sorry about, it is the disestablishment of the Sentencing Council. I think that in these circumstances it would have added value.

However, we are not here to languish for the council; we are here to look forward. In doing so, I say this measure is very much about justice. It is really important that many organisations, and in particular I acknowledge Women’s Refuge, have been very vocal on this issue. I acknowledge the work that that organisation and other victims organisations have done in advocating for the rights of not only the victim, the person who has been the subject of a murder, but also the families and friends who have lost their loved one in such a ruthless way, and who have then had to go through another re-victimisation process in terms of sitting through the court process and hearing the provocation defence. I know that nothing will relieve the anxiety and pain associated with that, and none of us can really realise how devastating that is for families. No one can repair that.

But I know it will certainly be of some reassurance to people who have been in that situation that all parties in this House, except for the ACT Party, are at this stage supporting the referral of this bill to the select committee. I note that the ACT Party, although it gave a supportive speech, has made it very clear that it is supporting only the bill’s referral to the select committee. But I am convinced that through the submission process, through hearing submissions from the families and organisations that will have their say, those members will become absolutely convinced about the merits of this bill. The bill deals with an injustice within our justice system, and it offers the ability to correct it. We have before this House a bill that I hope will attract support from every party, although that does not happen often in justice matters. I think that would be a very good message to give to victims in this country. It would tell all perpetrators of crime that this Parliament does not believe that a provocation defence is acceptable in this day and age, and it would give the message that the re-victimisation that happens through that process is just completely unacceptable.

I stand, along with my colleagues and other members of the House, in commending this bill. I am very pleased that it is to come to the Justice and Electoral Committee. I know, because this always happens with regard to bills of this nature, that we will have many submissions and that many people will come and tell their stories. That will be very painful for them and it will be very moving for the members of the committee, but it is something that is important. It is important to our justice system, and it is important to all New Zealanders. I am very proud to commend this bill to the House.

PAUL QUINN (National): I am humbled to be invited by the whips office to make a short call on this bill, the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill. The reason I am humbled and pleased to be able to stand to make a short call on the bill is that I support it on the basis that the defence is past its use-by date.

This law has been on our statute book for a number of decades. It was based on a justice system in a society and in a period when, in particular, the mandatory life sentence for murder applied, and provocation was one of the mitigating circumstances that was taken into consideration in order to deal with that situation. At this moment in time it is appropriate that we review this statute. In so doing, while I acknowledge previous speakers—and I do not want to lessen the impact of the speeches that have gone before, or the sincerity of those speeches—I think it is important to acknowledge that the defence of provocation has been called upon in most circumstances by a man who has had his sexuality questioned by a woman. I think it is very important that we note that it is a much broader issue than—if I can frame it in this way—just gay-bashing. I think that we should not lose perspective of that fact.

I am very pleased that I will be able to participate in the conversation that will occur in the Justice and Electoral Committee, and I will be pleased to join both my colleagues on this side of the House and my friends on the other side of the House to consider this bill. Like my friend and colleague Lynne Pillay, I look forward to hearing the submissions when they are presented before us. With those few short words, I say that I will be supporting this bill’s referral to the select committee. Thank you.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General): I rise to take a brief call to congratulate my friend and colleague the Minister of Justice on moving on this very important issue so quickly. He has had a huge legislative workload this year, but he has given this issue some real priority. This is indeed a very, very serious issue, and one that has been crying out for reform for many years.

I commend the Law Commission for a very good piece of work, which was sent to the former Minister in charge of the Law Commission, the Hon Mark Burton, on 30 September 2007. The foreword by Sir Geoffrey Palmer makes for very interesting reading. He referred to the 2001 report, which had recommended repeal of the partial defence of provocation. I was very disappointed that Labour, during its term in Government, did not do anything about that. Then, in 2007, this report came out, and it expressed the views of the legal profession and of Crown solicitors. Twelve out of 16 Crown solicitors supported the repeal of the partial defence of provocation. The report said that senior members of the judiciary have, in appellate judgments, repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the defence. It referred to the concerns of women’s groups; it referred to the concerns of gay groups. As Sir Geoffrey said, the prevailing view thus appeared to be that something must be done about section 169 of the Crimes Act. But unfortunately the previous Government did not do anything about that matter after it received a very powerful report from the Law Commission.

Mr Chauvel is right. The defence should have gone before now, and the fact that it did not go should be a source of shame for the previous Labour Government. It was not because of the previous Government’s desire to have the Sentencing Council look at the issue. I think that is a feeble “after the event” rationalisation. It was because Helen Clark’s Government had different priorities. I would not want Labour Party members to think they can take any credit for this Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill. The credit for it rests solely with the Minister of Justice. They cannot take any credit whatsoever for it. They had every opportunity to act during their time in Government, but neglected the issue or refused to take any action whatsoever. Undermining freedom of expression in an election year was their priority; reforming the criminal law is ours.

Bill read a first time.

Hon SIMON POWER (Minister of Justice): I move, That the Justice and Electoral Committee consider the bill and that the committee report finally to the House on or before 19 October 2009, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during questions for oral answer), and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 187 and 190(1)(b) and (c).

Motion agreed to.

Sittings of the House

Sittings of the House

CHRIS TREMAIN (Senior Whip—National): We have made good progress this evening. I seek leave for the House to rise slightly early, as we have made such good progress.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection.

The House adjourned at 9.54 p.m.