Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Mr Deputy Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Sittings of the House

Sittings of the House

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): Following discussions at the Business Committee yesterday, I seek leave for the House to rise at 5 p.m. on Thursday, 1 April 2010.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is none.

Questions for Oral Answer

Questions to Ministers

Mining in Conservation Areas—Prime Minister’s Statements

1. METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement “Notwithstanding the public consultation process, it is my expectation that the Government will act on at least some of these recommendations and make significant changes to Schedule 4.”?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister) on behalf of the Prime Minister: Yes. The Prime Minister expects that at the end of the process, which will include public consultation, some areas of Crown land will be removed from schedule 4 and some areas may be added.

Metiria Turei: Which mining consultation date does the Prime Minister stand by: Gerry Brownlee’s October 2009 date, their December 2009 date, their February 2010 date, or their March 2010 date?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I guess I know which one I’d bet on.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I agree with the honourable Minister that probably the date ahead of us is the most likely one. The discussion document will be released shortly, and there will be plenty of opportunity to comment on it.

Metiria Turei: Is the Prime Minister saying he has no idea when his Government intends to release the public consultation document so that the public can know for sure which areas in schedule 4 he intends to be mined?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I can confirm that the consultation will not begin in November 2009 and it will not begin in February 2010. It will begin shortly, when the public discussion document is released.

Metiria Turei: Which figure does the Prime Minister think is the most correct: his Government’s assertion that there is $140 billion of mineral wealth in New Zealand, the figure of $85 billion from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, the World Bank’s figure of $14 billion, or Statistics New Zealand’s $6.5 billion of mineral wealth in New Zealand?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: There is clearly a range of estimates about what that wealth should be. The Government has made clear its intention to go and look to see whether we can get a better idea about that.

Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was very specific: which of those figures does he think is the most correct? He failed even to attempt to address that question.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: No. The Minister has given an indication of a spread of possibilities, and he has answered the question.

Metiria Turei: Has the Government been misleading the public, then, on the value of mineral wealth in schedule 4 lands, given that the Minister cannot even affirm a particular figure?

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry; I could not hear the member. I ask the member to repeat the question. Members will please keep the noise level down, so that we can hear the question.

Metiria Turei: Has his Government been misleading the public about the value of mineral wealth in schedule 4 lands, given that the Minister cannot affirm a single figure?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The answer to that, of course, is no. There is a range of estimates, and the Government will issue a discussion document where the opportunities for looking at schedule 4 will be publicly discussed. I understand that the member herself visited Oceana Gold a while ago, and I think she would agree that considerable wealth has come from that particular mine.

Metiria Turei: Is it not incompetent of the Government even to consider moving Great Barrier Island out of schedule 4 for mining, when the Auckland district plan prevents, absolutely, any mining on the Hauraki Gulf islands, including Great Barrier Island?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government is not, of course, at the moment prejudging the public consultation process by getting into those kinds of detailed discussions. A document will be released shortly, and the member will have every opportunity to comment on it.

Rahui Katene: What consultation has been undertaken already with iwi about Crown land, including some land administered by the Department of Conservation that has been returned to iwi and that might be under consideration in terms of the changes to schedule 4?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: There is extensive consultation with iwi about all kinds of Crown land, and in more recent times there has been significant discussion with them about the use of conservation land. I cannot answer the question directly on an overlap between land returned to iwi and land that may be in schedule 4. But I say again the consultation document will provide all the information that any iwi will need if it wants to raise issues.

Metiria Turei: Is it not correct that his Government’s schedule 4 mining policy is in complete disarray, because the Government does not know its dollars, does not know its dates, and does not know its law, and the public hate it?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: No—the answer is no. In the context of the Government’s overall economic programme, which is designed to lift incomes and create new jobs, the Prime Minister signalled in his speech to Parliament at the beginning of the year that the Government would explore speculative opportunities around, for instance, the aquaculture industry, the better use of water storage in Canterbury, and expanding the mineral estate. The Government is setting out to do that. There will be a consultation document, with plenty of opportunity to discuss it. But the Government is quite firm in its desire to improve New Zealand’s economic prospects and to use the tools available to it to do that, rather than to sit around letting incomes drop, as the previous Government did, and hoping that everyone who is smart will get on a plane and go to Australia.

Auckland, Local Government Reform—Council-controlled Organisations

2. Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his reported statement on the proposed council-controlled organisations for the new Auckland super-city “we like the structure …”; if so, why?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister) on behalf of the Prime Minister: Yes; because the changes to the Auckland super-city will improve the coordination and delivery of services to ratepayers, and accountability. I am a bit surprised that the member seems surprised about the council-controlled organisations. Auckland city has had 40 council-controlled organisations, and these council-controlled organisations are being set up with a structure similar to that of those that were in place during the whole time that that member was in Government.

Hon Phil Goff: Why does the Prime Minister support a structure that Aucklanders from right across the political spectrum have condemned as removing democratic control and accountability from agencies that will be spending 75 percent of the Auckland Council’s—and the ratepayers’—money?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Many of those who have expressed an opinion have run councils with council-controlled organisations. All those 40 council-controlled organisations have been overseen by existing Auckland councils. They had an opportunity to present their views to the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee, which is fine-tuning the third Auckland governance bill. We await its report.

Hon Phil Goff: Why has he allowed the introduction of legislation setting up the Auckland Transport Agency, when all four key Government departments involved advised him in a Cabinet paper that they were against it because it would mean a lack of proper accountability to the Auckland Council and to the ratepayers of Auckland, whose money it will be spending?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member may know that the changes in Auckland will take, currently, I think, nine transport organisations and turn them into one. He will be familiar with the operations of the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, which exists under the current structure, with appointed directors, its own statement of intent, and full public accountability. The member must explain why 40 council-controlled organisations were right in the past and a smaller number of them now are wrong.

Hon Phil Goff: I seek leave to table a Cabinet committee paper that sets out that the four Government agencies that are involved in this process, which include Treasury, the Department of Internal Affairs, the Ministry for the Environment, and the Ministry of Economic Development, all oppose the model that this Government has imposed on Auckland.

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

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

Hon Phil Goff: Why are the agencies being called council-controlled organisations, when the Auckland Transport Agency, for example, is not explicitly required in legislation to act in accordance with the requirements of its shareholder, the Auckland Council, when the council has no power to appoint its chair or its deputy chair, and when the council is not empowered to change the structure or to disestablish it—is that not an oxymoron?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I say to that member that if he was worried about the structure of council-controlled organisations, he had 9 long years in Government to fix it, and he never did.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is a very clear point of order. Precedents have been set, even in recent days, by Mr Speaker about Ministers starting replies to reasonable questions in a way that attacks the Opposition and does not address the question.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you for that. It is a fair comment. I ask the Deputy Prime Minister to come back to the question, and not to bring those sorts of innuendos into the answers.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The current structure of the new council-controlled organisations is very similar to that of the 40 council-controlled organisations that were in place during the term of the last Government. Of course, we have the opportunity to fine-tune the structure through the third Auckland governance bill, which is going through the select committee, but, in essence, these entities are controlled totally by the councils.

Hon Phil Goff: Why are the so-called council-controlled organisations able to hold their meetings in private, thus removing transparency and accountability to the ratepayers of Auckland, whom they are meant to be serving? Why are they not required to set out publicly what is in their agenda, or to publish their minutes?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Those requirements are exactly the same as the requirements that apply to the current 40 council-controlled organisations in Auckland, and to the council-controlled organisations that are operated by councils all around the country. I am a bit puzzled that the Opposition has now found out how council-controlled organisations work. Labour did not seem at all concerned about that when it used its influence when in Government to put Labour people on council-controlled organisations to get what it wanted.

Hon Phil Goff: What is the Prime Minister’s response to the chair of Local Government New Zealand, Mayor Lawrence Yule, when he said, firstly, that there is a groundswell of opposition across Auckland to his Government’s legislation; secondly, that democracy is “fundamentally threatened”—I am using his words—by the changes; and, thirdly, that with control of three-quarters of Auckland’s assets being handed over to a few non-elected directors, Auckland ratepayers are deprived of accountability and transparency?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think that where we agree is that the previous structure of 40 council-controlled organisations, with almost all of Auckland’s assets in the hands of a fragmented structure across eight councils, did not work very well. Even Auckland wants it changed. This measure is part of the process of change. In every case the council is free to appoint or dismiss any member of those council-controlled organisations, as has been the case for the last 15 or 20 years with council-controlled organisations all around the country.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Again, this is a relatively simple point of order. The question started with, and was all about, what the Prime Minister’s response is to Mr Yule. Mr Yule was not mentioned in the answer, and there was no response to the three points that had been made by Mr Yule.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I consider there was, but I must remind Ministers that when they are replying on behalf of someone else they must say they are replying on behalf of the Prime Minister, for example, instead of going directly to the answer.

Hon Phil Goff: I seek the leave of the House to table a letter dated 12 March 2010 to mayors right across New Zealand from Lawrence Yule, the President of Local Government New Zealand, setting out all of the fundamental criticisms that I outlined in the question, and that the Deputy Prime Minister did not answer.

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

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

Hon Phil Goff: Will he respond to the growing mood in Auckland, as articulated by its community leaders of all political shades and by newspapers in Auckland, that Rodney Hide is not fit to guide these reforms of Auckland local governance, and will he act on their lack of confidence in Rodney Hide as Minister of Local Government by dismissing him; if not, why not?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: No, absolutely not. The Minister of Local Government has overseen one of the largest and most complex changes in public policy in New Zealand. The thrust of those changes is broadly supported in Auckland and is widely supported throughout the rest of the country. I challenge that member to show me any other such large change that has gone as smoothly as this one.

Budget 2010—Effect on Economic Performance

3. AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: How will the 2010 Budget improve New Zealand’s economic performance?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): The Budget in 2010 will be another step towards turning round the bad performance of this economy under the appalling management of the previous Government. We need to move from a Government based on consuming too much and borrowing too much to an economy that is driven by investment, savings, and exports; and of course the Budget will continue to bring fiscal discipline to the significant waste of taxpayers’ money that occurred under the last administration.

Amy Adams: What factors have been holding back growth that the Budget needs to address?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The imbalances that built up in this economy over the last decade are really quite extraordinary. For instance, in the 5 years to September 2009 the output of our food, beverage, and tobacco manufacturing sectors fell by 15 percent in real terms. Exports of services declined by 18 percent. In the same period, Government spending grew by 12 percent, and this is clearly unsustainable.

Amy Adams: What have been the consequences for growth of those imbalances?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: These deep-set problems have meant that New Zealand’s economy started to wind down well before the global financial crisis. In fact, in the 3 years to September 2008, GDP grew by less than 1 percent per year. Because the population grew, per capita growth was negative between 2005 and 2008, at a time when the rest of the world was booming. That means that when the rest of the world was going ahead, New Zealand’s income per person actually dropped, and of course that is unsustainable.

Amy Adams: How will stronger growth help families?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: We know that many families are paying the penalty for the mismanagement of this economy over the last 5 years, because they have lost their jobs and will have to work hard to find another one. Had the economy grown at the average rate of recent years, the average household would today be about $5,000 a year after tax better off. That is why growth matters to New Zealanders, because it provides new jobs and higher incomes.

“Three Strikes” Legislation—Minister’s Meetings with Department ofCorrections Staff

4. Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) to the Minister of Corrections: How many meetings or briefings has she attended with corrections department officials in regard to the amended “three strikes” policy since it was announced?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Corrections): Eight.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Was her Associate Minister of Corrections, Dr Pita Sharples, in attendance at any of those meetings; if not, why not, and if so, how many?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: No, because Minister Sharples has his own meetings with the Department of Corrections. I trust the Associate Minister to have his own meetings. In addition to that, Minister Sharples and I meet either every week or every fortnight, depending on our schedules.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Why has she deliberately failed to consult with Dr Sharples as Associate Minister of Corrections or as co-leader of the Māori Party on this major policy issue, even though that is a direct breach of the confidence and supply agreement between the National Party and the Māori Party?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Perhaps the member did not hear my answer. Dr Sharples meets with the Department of Corrections every week, unless he changes the date, and he meets with me either every week or every fortnight, depending on our schedules.

David Garrett: Is the Minister aware that since last November four more people have been killed by persons who would have been in jail—and thus unable to kill—had the “three strikes” legislation been in place at the time of the victims’ deaths?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I would not be at all surprised if that were true. Unfortunately, there is a small but extremely difficult group of recidivist violent offenders who will benefit greatly from the “three strikes” law.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Considering that official advice on the amended “three strikes” legislation states that it will disproportionately affect Māori, does it concern her that her Associate Minister of Corrections, who has delegated responsibility for addressing Māori overrepresentation in the criminal justice system, responded to an Official Information Act request on 9 February 2010 by saying the following: “I can confirm that as the Associate Minister of Corrections I received no information prior to or following the announcement of the ‘three strikes’ policy by the National and ACT parties on 19 January 2010.”?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Dr Sharples has his own meetings with the Department of Corrections. I do not oversee them, because I trust him as the Associate Minister. In addition to that, I take offence at a comment that says that Māori need to be overrepresented when actually—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: It’s in your own policy papers.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: It is not. It is not in my one; it relates to criminals. Yes, criminals will be overrepresented.

Rahui Katene: What response has she made to Treasury advice warning against net-widening, cautioning that mandatory sentencing policies tend to expand over time, and signalling uncertainty about how the “three strikes” legislation would be used?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Treasury gives a lot of very good advice. I think that is just one of the pieces of advice that the Government has taken into account. The matter is before the Law and Order Committee, and, no doubt, the committee will come back with some recommendations.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Does she consider it problematic for the Associate Minister of Corrections to be “appalled” by the policy that the Department of Corrections is the co-lead agency on, and to describe the policy as “irrational and extreme”, as he did in a media release of 20 January 2010?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: No, I am not at all appalled by Dr Sharples’ comments. I know that they are honestly held. However, I say to that member that the Department of Corrections is not the co-lead agency, and, as a member of the select committee dealing with the bill, he should know it. In fact, the lead agency is the New Zealand Police.

Melissa Lee: What is the Government doing to rehabilitate offenders who have been sent to prison for serious offences, as well as for those who will be sentenced under the new policy?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: It will be doing quite a lot. I have visited many prisons, and I have seen for myself the rehabilitation programmes that we have in place. They include alcohol and drug treatment units, prisoner employment training covering a wide range of industries and skills, specialist rehabilitative programmes, and units targeting particular offender groups. We are doubling the amount of drug and alcohol treatment available to prisoners under the National-led Government—something the previous Labour Government could never do.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I seek leave to table an Official Information Act response from the Hon Dr Pita Sharples dated 9 February 2010, in which he confirms that he “received no information prior to or following the announcement of the ‘three strikes’ policy by the National and ACT parties …”.

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

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

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I seek leave to table the CAB 100/2008/1 form for the amended “three strikes” policy Cabinet paper signed by Judith Collins, the Minister of Police and Minister of Corrections, stating that the proposal had not been discussed, nor was there any intention—

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

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

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is in respect of the answer to the primary question. I am not contesting the answer. In fact, I am very grateful to the Minister for answering it. She answered “Eight.” when I asked how many briefings she had. I am not contesting that answer. But I ask for—not today—a considered ruling by you—[Interruption]

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Points of order are heard in silence. The member Clayton Cosgrove has the floor. I am giving him the opportunity to state his point of order.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: My point is that on many occasions we have asked this Minister, and other Ministers, exactly the same question in written questions—how many briefings, how many visits, how many meetings, etc.—and the answer, particularly from this Minister, has been, basically, that she will not waste her time answering the question. Yet, when the same question or similar questions are put to her in the House, where there is public scrutiny, she quite rightly and properly answers them. I ask whether you could consider in writing whether we have to waste our time asking oral questions, when there should be some consistency. A Minister should answer written questions in the same fashion as he or she answers them in the House.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank the member for that. I will take advice on that matter, and I will get back to the member on it.

Roading—Waikato Expressway

5. TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West) to the Minister of Transport: What progress has been made on the Waikato Expressway road of national significance?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport): During the adjournment I was very pleased to attend the announcement in the member’s electorate of the $169 million funding package for the Te Rapa bypass. The Te Rapa section of the Waikato Expressway will provide better access to developing industrial areas in Hamilton and will reduce congestion around Te Rapa. Construction is expected to create up to 250 jobs directly, with many more downstream.

Tim Macindoe: What progress has been made on the rest of the Waikato Expressway?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: With this announcement and other announcements to come, three sections of the Waikato Expressway will be under construction by next year: Te Rapa, Rangiriri, and Ngāruawāhia. The Huntly section is currently being designed, and the Hamilton section will commence design this year. The Government remains committed to achieving its goal of completing the outstanding 79 kilometres of the Waikato Expressway within 10 years.

Sue Moroney: Is the Minister aware that today’s announcement on the Waikato Expressway simply reiterate the time frames already established under the previous Labour Government by Transit New Zealand in its forecast published back in 2007, and that today’s announcement is old news regurgitated to create the impression that he is making new progress on the Waikato Expressway?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: That is a very interesting statement to make. The interesting thing is that in the old days, of course, Transit liked to have plans, but the Government of the day would not front up with the money. In particular, the Government policy statement that the previous Government released prior to the election involved a reduction in State highway expenditure for building State highways, which we then turned round and increased so that the things could actually be built. This Government will be happy to stand on its record of construction on the Waikato Expressway, which is more than can be said for said for the previous Government over recent years.

Tim Macindoe: What recent progress has been made on other roads of national significance?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am pleased to confirm that the New Zealand Transport Agency has begun the route investigation work for the Pūhoi to Wellsford section of State Highway 1. This route has the potential to transform the Northland economy by dramatically reducing travel times between the region and our largest economic powerhouse, Auckland. In addition, it will greatly improve safety along this dangerous stretch of highway by upgrading the road surface, improving intersections, and providing a median barrier.

Sue Moroney: I seek leave to table the Transit New Zealand State highway plan and forecast published in 2007, showing the Te Rapa bypass planned as announced today by the Minister.

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

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

Māori—Voice in Government Decision-making

6. Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) to the Minister of Māori Affairs: Does he stand by his statement “Across many steps, the Māori voice is heard by the Government and is included in, and informs, decision making. The Minister believes that Māori need to be participants in decision making, not the recipients of it.”?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) on behalf of the Minister of Māori Affairs: Yes.

Hon Shane Jones: Got the “Brown” bit right, anyway. Is the fact that the Associate Minister of Corrections, who has delegated—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: That comment is not necessary. If we want some order in the House, we will reserve those things for later.

Hon Shane Jones: Is the fact that the Associate Minister of Corrections, who has delegated responsibility for addressing Māori overrepresentation in the criminal justice system, did not receive any information about the amended “three strikes” policy prior to or following its announcement, an example of Māori being participants in, or recipients of, decision making?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: As the Minister of Corrections informed the House earlier, the Minister of Maori Affairs has his own discussions with the Department of Corrections on these matters. Therefore, no flow of paper was necessary.

Hon Shane Jones: How much did the Māori voice inform the Government’s decision to shut down Te Hurihanga youth offending programme, considering that the Associate Minister of Corrections, who has responsibility for addressing Māori overrepresentation in the criminal justice system, did not receive a single paper, briefing, or report on the matter?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Unlike the Labour Party and the previous Labour Government, the National-led Government—

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I know what the member is going to say.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Do I need to say it? Shall I just say “ibid”?

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: See whether I am right. That was a straightforward question from the member, and there is no need to bring political inference into it or to make a political statement in your opening comments.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Although I accept that, and I think it is important, it is also reasonable that a Minister answering a question deals with what might be a misconception by the person asking the question. Otherwise the person asking the question can corner a Minister into answering a question according to his or her own limited knowledge.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: These are debating points, and I ask the Minister to respond in a manner that is fitting to the occasion.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: In the case that the member mentions, there was conversation with relevant iwi.

Hon Shane Jones: Does he consider that the Māori voice is being heard through his role as Associate Minister of Education with responsibility for all matters relating to kaupapa Māori education and work relating to wānanga, considering that he claimed he was not consulted on national standards or on the Government’s plans to scrap some tertiary courses and cut funding for some tertiary institutions?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: This matter has been dealt with in the House before and cleared up by the Minister of Maori Affairs. I invite the Hon Shane Jones to look back through Hansard to get the clarification he seeks today.

Hon Shane Jones: Given that these policies will have a disastrous effect on the overrepresentation of Māori in our prisons—

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do not want to be overly pedantic, but I think it is time that we started to require members to start questions with a question word, not the sort of emotive claptrap we just heard from the Hon Shane Jones.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. The member knows he must start with a question.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would like to refer you to Speaker’s rulings by Speaker the Hon Dr Smith in this Parliament, in which he has indicated that he is reverting to the practice of before the period of Mr Speaker Hunt. The word “given” has been allowed by him, as has been the practice in this House for all but about 5 years.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: It is true that Speaker Lockwood Smith has allowed some questions to begin with the word “given”, but generally it refers to something that has been said earlier, not to the sort of highly emotive, political statement that Mr Jones just made.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you for that. Questions should not contain arguments or inferences that might cause offence. I ask the member to ask the question again.

Hon Shane Jones: How can the Minister of Māori Affairs believe that he will remain effective, given the effect of these policies on the overrepresentation of Māori in our prisons—with 50 percent of our prison population being Māori males—and on student underachievement; and, given that he was not consulted by the Government on any of these policies, is this not a case of “three strikes and you’re out”?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Firstly, the door to the Cabinet room is always open to the Minister of Māori Affairs. He frequently attends Cabinet meetings on matters that are of concern to him, and that will be a matter of public record. Secondly, although those statistics for young Māori, and, indeed, Māori in prisons, are not acceptable, that has been a circumstance that existed and was exacerbated through the 9 years that that member supported a Government in this country that did nothing. When it comes to Māori educational attainment, of course the Minister wants to see education at a higher level of attainment by Māori, and he believes that his arrangements with the National-led Government will produce that result.

Hon Shane Jones: I seek leave to table an Official Information Act response from Dr Pita Sharples confirming that he did not receive or produce any information as the Associate Minister of Corrections in relation to Te Hurihanga youth-offending programme.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is this a letter from Dr Sharples?

Hon Shane Jones: Yes.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: To whom? Is this in the public domain?

Hon Shane Jones: It is an Official Information Act request.

Hon Judith Collins: Can I just clarify a matter raised by that member. The Department of Corrections does not have responsibility for youth justice, so I just wonder whether—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, we are getting into arguments here that are not necessary. Because this document was released under the Official Information Act, leave can be sought for that. Leave can be sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection.

Youth—Number Receiving Benefits

7. CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What reports has she received on the numbers of young people receiving benefits?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment): There are many reports. The recession has hit our young people the hardest. They make up around a third of those on the unemployment benefit. However, last month we saw a 6 percent fall in unemployment benefit numbers, with over half of those being young people. This is a small but significant step in the right direction.

Chester Borrows: Where are young people getting into work?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: At this time of the year young people are benefiting from seasonal work opportunities. However, this year young people are picking up longer-term work in some of the hardest-hit areas. For example, in Auckland over 500 young people got into work—over double the number at this time last year. The number is over 200 in Wellington, over 160 in Canterbury, and over 180 in the southern region. In respect of Northland, which is an interesting case, just 17 young people found work in February last year; last month 77 did.

Jacinda Ardern: How many young people have moved off benefits in the last month because they have returned to education, and if the Minister does not have an exact figure, is it more or fewer people than in previous years?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Of the young people who moved off the unemployment benefit—that is, not the unemployment benefit student hardship—20 percent went into study and 80 percent moved into work.

Hon Sir Roger Douglas: Can the Minister advise whether she will be supporting my Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill, which would enable young Māori, who are currently suffering almost 40 percent unemployment, to earn, say, $400 a week rather than to receive $160 a week from taxpayers in welfare; or has the Minister joined the unions in arguing for existing members over young workers?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: No, we will not be supporting the bill, as we are not convinced it would reduce youth unemployment, plus it would be a distraction from the really important work of improving productivity and growing the economy in order to create long-term jobs, which will keep young people in New Zealand.

Mining in Conservation Areas—Release of Expanded Review

8. Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) to the Minister of Conservation: When will she release the expanded review concerning mining in the conservation estate repeatedly referred to by the Prime Minister in his post-Cabinet conference of 15 March 2010 and reported by the media?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) on behalf of the Minister of Conservation: Soon.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This might be one for your further consideration. I know that it is general practice for any Minister to be able to answer on behalf of any other Minister, but, generally, it has been the practice of Governments that where there is a conflict between portfolios, the Minister for one of the conflicting portfolios does not act for the Minister for the other conflicting portfolio. I ask you to consider that matter for a later report.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. I will consider it, but at this stage the Government has the prerogative to determine who answers questions. I take the point on board.

Hon David Parker: Is the Minister of Conservation reluctant to clarify the expanded terms of reference, which were repeatedly referred to by the Prime Minister on Monday, because they do not exist?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: A joint paper from the Minister of Conservation and the Minister of Energy and Resources will be released publicly. When Cabinet has finished its work on the paper, it will be put into the public domain for comment. Until that time I make no comment.

Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was about the expanded terms of reference, which no Minister seems to be willing to comment upon. I thought it would be appropriate to ask the Minister to actually answer the question that I had asked.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Minister is speaking—[Interruption] I am speaking. The Minister is speaking on behalf of another Minister and possibly does not have all that information. You asked a broad statement, and I am comfortable with his response.

Hon David Parker: Is the real reason the Minister of Conservation cannot release the discussion document or the mythical revised terms of reference that the discussion document on opening up national parks in the Coromandel to mining was thought too hot to handle, and the Prime Minister wants to do further polling before taking his decision?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: That question, if it was a question, was loaded with all sorts of supposition and innuendo, fell well short of Standing Order 372, and should have been knocked out. All I will tell the member is that a public discussion document is coming, and when it comes he will be one of the first to know about it.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. If a member believes that a question should have been knocked out because it was out of order, that member either takes a point of order at the time or leaves it; to do otherwise is a reflection on you, because it is your job to rule out questions.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. I accepted the question. The political innuendo that the member brought in was responded to in a way that I think was appropriate.

Hon David Parker: How can New Zealanders have confidence that the Minister of Conservation will appropriately protect national parks and other schedule 4 areas, when it is clear that the principles behind the review are being made up on the fly?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: That member has got it completely wrong. Questions loaded with that sort of supposition will not be treated seriously by anyone, let alone by this Minister.

Hon David Parker: Why, then, will the Minister not answer my simple question as to when the revised terms of reference, referred to repeatedly by the Prime Minister on Monday, will be released?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: That question was answered. It was answered by the Deputy Prime Minister on behalf of the Prime Minister, it was answered earlier this afternoon on behalf of the Minister of Conservation, and I answer it again: soon.

Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We have the same problem. In response to questions about the terms of reference from the Greens and me today and yesterday, the Minister chooses to reply in respect of the discussion document. They are two different documents. He knows that and he should answer the question that was asked.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Minister indicated that there have been a number of similar responses to this—

Hon David Parker: None of which answered it.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member may not agree with what the Minister said. The question was about the release of the document, and the Minister twice answered “soon”. The Minister has responded with that time frame.

Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The question I have is about the use of the word “soon”. The question was on notice; it was not a supplementary question. The use of the word “soon” is not, I think, an acceptable answer—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member—

Dr Russel Norman: —in the light of the fact that the question was on notice.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sit down; I am standing. It may not be acceptable from the member’s point of view, but “soon” reflects a time frame of shortly, or whenever that may happen. The Minister, remember, is answering the question on behalf of someone else, and I have accepted that answer.

Hon George Hawkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. When you were talking, National backbenchers were yelling out “Sit down!”. I find that unworthy of them and not good parliamentary practice.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank the member. Members know that when points of order are being raised, they are heard in silence.

Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Could you assist me? Could you help me with the definition of the word “soon”? Is it a week, or is it a month?

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: No. I am not entering into the debate. The Minister made a statement, I have accepted that statement, and that is the end of the matter.

Truancy—Survey

9. LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister of Education: What were the findings of the survey Attendance in New Zealand Schools in 2009, and what is the Government’s response?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education): The 2009 truancy survey results show that just over 30,000 students are truant from State and State-integrated schools on any given day. This Government has doubled the funding available to support schools to reduce truancy.

Louise Upston: How did the results of this survey differ from those of the last truancy survey?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: The last survey was taken in 2006, and it showed that up to 30,000 children—that is, 4.1 percent—of the 750,000 primary and high school pupils nationwide skipped school in the survey week. The 2009 figures show almost identical figures. These figures show that Labour did absolutely nothing to address this very serious issue. It even tried to hide the extent of the problem from New Zealand by cancelling the 2008 truancy survey. This Government is committed to reducing truancy and keeping our students engaged at school.

Education, National Standards—Alternatives

10. Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) to the Minister of Education: What alternatives to the national standards approach, if any, did she consider before their introduction?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education): We did consider the approach from the previous Labour Government, which saw our literacy and numeracy achievements stagnate, and almost one in five students leave school without the skills they needed to succeed. We rejected that do-nothing approach in favour of national standards, which are overwhelmingly backed by parents around the country.

Hon Trevor Mallard: What reports has she received on the progress made by students under the previous Government’s literacy strategy?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: The primary question was extremely broad. I do not have those results with me; I had no way of knowing that they would be required. But I am happy, if the member wishes to put that in a written question, to answer it.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Can she remember, from the briefings she has received, what the student gains in reading and writing were, under the literacy strategy of the previous Government?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: My answer to that is that I am happy to answer such a detailed question in written form. I can remember the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, which showed that our readers had not progressed in the last 10 years. That coincides with the previous Labour Government’s management of education.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Can she remember receiving a briefing that indicated that students’ gains in reading and writing under the previous Government’s literacy strategy were twice those that could be expected without the intervention, and that schools had accelerated the rate of progress for the majority of at-risk students by four times the expected rate?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: No, I did not read the Labour Party manifesto. But I do remember that it is very clear that almost one in five students—

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question, right at the beginning, was whether the Minister could remember a briefing. The Labour Party manifesto is not a briefing, so I ask you to ask the Minister to at least start off by answering the question.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Minister said that she had not read Labour Party policy. She said that. If the member would like to ask the question again for clarification, I would be happy to accept that.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Can she remember reading a briefing to her about the previous Government’s literacy strategy, which indicated that students’ gains in reading and writing were twice what could be expected without the intervention, and that schools had accelerated the rate of progress for the majority of at-risk students by four times the expected rate?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: What I can remember is receiving many briefings outlining that nearly one in five New Zealand students is leaving school unable to read, write, or do maths at anywhere near the levels they need to in order to succeed.

Nikki Kaye: What funding has the Government made available to support national standards?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: The Government has provided $36 million of additional funding to support students and schools to meet the national standards. We will be announcing how we can make best use of that funding in the coming months. That funding is additional money that has been appropriated in Budget 2009. I have heard ludicrous suggestions from the education spokesperson for the Opposition that we should actually scrap that funding.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Did she read and understand the briefing to her as an incoming Minister that indicated that the previous Government’s literacy strategy resulted in student gains in reading and writing that were twice what could be expected without the intervention, and that schools accelerated the rate of progress for the majority of at-risk students by four times the expected rate? If she did read and understand that, why has she not invested more in that area, which has proven results, rather than the $62 million put into her national standards?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: There was such a lot in that question. But, actually, New Zealand rejected that, not just me. New Zealand elected a Government that promised to introduce national standards so that every single child could read, write, and do maths when they left school. That is what the country voted for. No matter what the briefings say, no matter what the Opposition may say now, almost one in five children failed. They failed under the previous Government.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That was a very straightforward question about whether the Minister had considered her briefing as an incoming Minister before she made that decision. She did not address that question.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I believe that she did. She said that she had had many briefings, and then she went on to explain why the new Government has a different position to what the previous Government had even though there had been briefings.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I seek leave to table the document that outlines the gains made under the previous strategy, which is the briefing to incoming Minister that the Minister appears not to have read and understood.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose, is there any objection? There is objection.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: That document is already in the public domain. I released it.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: We have just ruled on that, so the matter is finished.

Screen Production Industry—Government Support

11. HEKIA PARATA (National) to the Minister for Economic Development: What support has this Government given to the development of a vibrant screen production industry in New Zealand?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Economic Development): The Government provides support to the screen production industry through the incentive of the Large Budget Screen Production Grant. The most notable film support this year was for the biggest-ever grossing movie, Avatar. The production spent over $300 million in New Zealand. After a robust audit process, it received a grant of around $45 million for the qualifying expenditure. This incentive keeps our industry competitive with other countries, and maintains a highly skilled and a highly technologically capable industry on our shores. I congratulate Weta Digital in Wellington on winning the Oscar for best visual effects for the movie. That is another win for a leading high-technology firm in New Zealand.

Hekia Parata: What are the benefits for the wider economy from screen productions?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers study on the economic impact of the film and television industry in 2009 found that the film and television industry contributed $2.5 billion to the New Zealand economy and contributes additional financial benefits to the country by enhancing international awareness of the New Zealand brand. Major benefits also accrue to our wider service economy through associated activities, like the provision of accommodation and hospitality. Screen production has continued to deliver strong economic support through the recession. I have come to know a lot more about this industry, and I think we are doing very well with the support we are giving it.

Aorangi School—Transition of Students to Other Primary Schools

12. Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) to the Minister of Education: Is she satisfied with the transition of the former students of Aorangi primary school to other primary schools; if so, why?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education): Yes; the Ministry of Education and local primary schools worked extremely hard to transition the students. The work was a credit to, in particular, the principals of the primary schools. I am advised that their very hard work means that the transition of the Aorangi School students has gone smoothly. In fact, I received an email a couple of weeks ago from one of the principals, who told me himself that the 50 students that he had from Aorangi School had all settled positively. He had received supportive emails, comments, and letters from families, all pleased with the way that these children had been welcomed at the school and complimenting the Ministry of Education staff, in particular those at the Christchurch office.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: When will Burnside Primary School be provided with a dedicated classroom for bilingual education, in light of the revelation today that it has had to resort to the use of the stage in the school hall in order to provide bilingual lessons?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Bilingual education is available, I am advised, at both Burnside Primary School and Cobham Intermediate School. There is a process happening at the moment—in fact, there is a meeting with whānau tonight—to discuss the establishment of a bilingual unit. There is a set process—and I advised on that at the end of last year—committed to establishing the unit. That is happening apart from the provision of bilingual education that is happening as we speak at Burnside Primary School and at Cobham Intermediate School.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Why did the Minister choose to shut Aorangi School before the transitional arrangements for all the students had been made, especially in light of the statement of the Burnside Primary School principal that not having a separate classroom was placing stress on them all, and that was why he felt there had not been enough time allowed?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: It was always very clear that the closure of Aorangi School was completely separate from establishing a bilingual unit for that part of Christchurch. I undertook to Ngāi Tahu in particular, who wanted input into the establishment of that unit, that there would be widespread consultation. In fact, Burnside Primary School has property space for 320 students, and it currently has a roll of 288. How a principal chooses to use school property is entirely his or her decision.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Does the Minister agree with that principal’s statement that “Our tamariki deserve better in terms of what we have been able to deliver so far, in terms of teaching te reo.”, and will she apologise to this school, the teachers, the tamariki, and their whānau for not allowing sufficient time and resources for this transition to occur?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: There was never a bilingual unit other than for primary children at Aorangi School, the same as there was at Burnside Primary School. We had an extension for 1 year for year 7 Aorangi School students, and I granted that at the beginning of last year. But I made it very clear during the closure of Aorangi School that there would need to be, and there would be, a consultation process in order to set up a bilingual unit that may or may not be put into Burnside Primary School and Cobham Intermediate School. That is why we consult. I know that this is an unusual concept for the Opposition, but we actually consult in order to get people’s points of view and we do not reach a decision before we take part in consultation.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: I seek the leave of the House to table two documents. The first is from Burnside Primary School. It is a message sent home to parents, dated 23 February 2010, that raises concerns about ending up in the situation of not having the proper provision of bilingual education.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is none.

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

Hon Lianne Dalziel: The second document that I seek leave to table is another message sent home to parents last week. Unfortunately it is undated, so I cannot identify its content by date. It is the message that says tamariki deserve better than the school has been able to deliver so far, in terms of teaching te reo.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is none.

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

Question No. 4 to Minister

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri): In light of the Minister of Corrections’ denial that Māori will be disproportionately affected by the “three strikes” policy, I seek leave to table a Cabinet paper under the name and signature of the Minister of Police and Minister of Corrections that says the policy “is likely to have a disproportionate effect upon Māori.”

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

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

Debate on Budget Policy Statement

Debate on Budget Policy Statement

CRAIG FOSS (Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee): I move, That the House take note of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement 2010 and Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update 2009. First of all I would like thank the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee for their hard work and for their contributions to putting this report together, and also for their contribution to the high workload that the committee gets through. I would also like to mention and acknowledge the officials who assist us, and sometimes make us look a bit better than perhaps we are.

The Budget Policy Statement confirms that the Government’s focus for 2010 will be about getting the economy growing again and ensuring that this growth is higher and more sustainable than we have seen in recent years, particularly in the period 2005 to 2008, which I will come back to. As noted in the report from the Finance and Expenditure Committee, the Prime Minister’s statement to Parliament outlined and set the framework for some significant changes and developments in economic and social policies that will be seen in Budget 2010. But let us just stand back for a minute and note what we need to achieve. It is not only what this Government wants to achieve, but what New Zealand must achieve, what it has to achieve, if we are to deliver on some of the expectations we should all have of a modern economy. Our focus is on lifting the long-term growth potential of the New Zealand economy, without compromising short-term objectives and those desirables that we, as a modern society, choose to have to look after those who cannot look after themselves. We will put responsibility, accountability, and transparency back into our economy and into our structure.

We face a very challenging fiscal position. Yes, it is true that 10 years of deficits are no longer in front of us, but we still now have 6 to 7 years of deficits right in front of us, with a very tenuous international environment indeed. This drives and demands that we show discipline in our accounts, and we will have to do some realignment and perhaps make some of the hard decisions that were sorely lacking by the previous administration in the last few years.

We do have choices, though, even some in this House may say to do nothing, or even go backwards. But if we go backwards, if we do nothing, we will keep getting what we have. Thousands upon thousands of our future taxpayers, our families, our friends, our whānau are leaving this country for a brighter economic future. We have to address that, and we have to change. Let us get more ambitious for New Zealand. Let us set our sights higher and create a country that we can be even more proud of, where the hard-working Kiwis so often referred to by speakers in this House can get ahead and get rewarded for their hard work, and perhaps we can attract our children back home.

How do we do that? How can we do that? We must create jobs, we must raise incomes, we must improve living standards, and we must provide better public services to our most vulnerable. I do not think many members in the House would disagree with that, but perhaps some will disagree with how we will get there. We have to change our economy. Most members in this House acknowledge that we have a consumption-led economy—borrow and hope, borrow against the increase in the value of the house, borrow and consume—but that is not the way to develop a country and that is not the way to move up the OECD ladder. That is not the way to keep our children in New Zealand after completing their tertiary education.

We have to build up our financial assets in this country. We have to, at least, make a level playing field in those investment decisions between bricks and mortar and equities or financial decisions, which have been lacking over recent years. I note that many of the imbalances in this economy began in 1999, when the previous administration massively incentivised people to build up trust structures and company structures, effectively encouraging a rorting of the tax base, which is totally unacceptable to me and totally unacceptable to our future taxpayers and our children.

What will be in the Budget? We will be concentrating on six key drivers: first, investing in productive infrastructure; second, removing red tape and improving regulation; third, supporting business innovation and trade; fourth, improving education and skills; fifth, lifting productivity and improving services in the public sector; and, sixth, strengthening the tax system. We will also put disciplines on the Crown account, which is something that has not been seen for many, many years. We intend to stay within a $1.1 billion operating allowance year upon year. That is quite a change, but it is forced upon us by the state of the financial accounts because it was $2.8 billion in the previous administration. It had $2.8 billion of extra spending. That is now translating to an extra $3 billion - odd a year that currently has to be borrowed to fulfil some of the programmes the previous administration put in place.

In the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s report to the House, when the committee talks about those six key drivers, I am fascinated and amazed to note that Opposition and Green Party members do not believe in those six key drivers to a good economy and that they strongly feel that evidence to link the Government’s six policy pillars and its growth targets is unclear and tentative at best. That means that members opposite do not believe that productive infrastructure, the removal of red tape, supporting business innovation, improving education, lifting productivity, and strengthening our tax system and making it fair contribute to a better economy. I look forward to speakers from the Opposition trying to justify that statement in that report.

We combined the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s report with a review of the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update. I think that most members acknowledge that the risks to our economy and the global economy remain, but, yes, things are quite a bit better than they were in the deep dark times of the global financial crisis earlier on. However, they are tentative at the least. One thing I noted yesterday and I will repeat today is the fact that although the forecast accounts are looking a bit better, it does not mean they are fixed; they are just looking a bit better. That demands that we keep the discipline on our spending caps, have a focus on raising productivity, and bring fairness and equity back into the tax system. If we do not, all those forecast curves will start to go the wrong way again, New Zealand’s credit rating will be downgraded, our currency will fall through the floor, and our expectations of a modern economy will not be delivered, full stop.

I note in the accounts that unemployment has hit a 10-year high of 7.3 percent. That is terrible. Many families have suffered for that. The only bright side is that that high is a lot lower than what was forecast earlier on, as recently as the middle of last year. We must note that to get to this point and to even keep the lights on to pay for superannuation, education, health, law and order, and the insulation package, we as a country are still borrowing $240 million a week—$240 million. That is entirely why we need to concentrate on those six pillars and bring some fairness and ongoing growth back to our economy.

I would like to quickly touch on what the Opposition has offered up as solutions, as its alternative Budget. Over Christmas the Leader of the Opposition announced that he would cap 16 public servants’ salaries. The Government’s Budget is something like $65 billion and the Leader of the Opposition had about 8 weeks to come up with an answer to our issues. The Opposition’s other solution is to borrow about $7 billion because of what its spending promises that it announces day after day now amount to. We are borrowing $240 million a week right now, and that is another $7 billion per annum. If we listen to what Opposition members are saying in some of their blog alerts, we hear that they want to increase taxes. I guess old habits die hard. I remember the first thing the then new Labour Government did in 1999 in regard to tax was to increase it from 33c to 39c in the dollar, and that has created so many of the problems we now have.

Labour’s other solution is a bus tour around the country, telling everybody that GST should not be increased from 12.5 percent to 15 percent. Well, that is half the story if GST is to be increased. Labour constantly does not address this—and I would love those speakers to comment on this. When the Labour Government increased GST from 10 percent to 12.5 percent, what compensation did it provide to hard-working New Zealand taxpayers? What compensation did it provide to superannuitants, or those on some kind of assistance, at that time? The answer is absolutely none. Solutions will be coming in this Budget. It is about fairness, equity, ongoing growth, and sustainability for our country. I look forward to the Budget on 20 May 2010.

Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition): Mr Foss strayed into areas he should not have—the Government’s amazingly expensive promises. We passed the emissions trading scheme bill last year, with its $110 billion to subsidise polluters to continue to pollute. In Labour’s wildest dreams, it has not promised anywhere near the amount of money misspent by this National Government in that ill-conceived scheme. Mr Foss talks about the records of Governments. I stand here proudly supporting the record of a Labour Government that saw unemployment at its lowest level in 27 years. I ask Mr Foss what is it that he does not understand about 350,000 extra jobs created by the previous Labour Government. What is it that he does not understand about the fact that the previous Labour Government saw upgrading to the highest level in two decades by the credit rating agencies? What is it that he does not understand about the previous Labour Government reducing our public debt in net terms to zero? The National Government should be very grateful for the economic management and fiscal responsibility of the previous Labour Government.

I want to talk today about Mr Steven Joyce and his mishandling of, and embarrassing flip-flop on, the SuperGold Card last week, because that was the clearest and most recent example yet of a Government without a plan, without any guiding principles, and prepared to move away from the agenda that it put before the electorate in 2008. Members will remember that when National was in Opposition it promised that the SuperGold Card was sacrosanct and it would not be touched. Then last week we heard a remarkable statement by Steven Joyce who said that the officials would consider how off-peak travel should be defined. That meant they were going to cut the hours in which pensioners who used the SuperGold Card could travel. He said that they would look at the eligibility of certain services like the Waiheke Island ferry and the train service between Wellington and the Wairarapa. By saying “some changes will need to be made because it is currently on track to exceed the available budget” Steven Joyce stated in the clearest possible terms that he was proposing to cut the SuperGold Card. Yet 24 hours and a phone call from behind a bush later, what do we find from the Minister? He said: “We have made it clear all along that the Government is totally committed to the SuperGold Card, including the transport concession as it stands”. That quote was the absolute contradiction of what Steven Joyce told the country 24 hours earlier. It reminds me of a saying by Groucho Marx, who said: “Those are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.” It was remarkable.

The Government promised not to touch the SuperGold Card, Mr Joyce put his neck on the block and said that he was going to do it, then 24 hours later he was running with his tail between his legs in exactly the opposite direction. The remarkable thing about Steven Joyce is that he said it was a misunderstanding caused by his political opponents who were scaremongering. Has the man no shame? Has he no pride? He was following the actions of his leader, John Key, who just a day or two ago, likewise accused the media of hysteria. Mr Key said that the media were being hysterical because they floated a proposal that 7,000 hectares of pristine environmental land on the Coromandel Peninsula, on Great Barrier Island, and on Paparoa National Park were going to be opened up for mining. The media were being hysterical. Well, there was one way he could have dealt with that hysteria: he could have told the truth. Was that a proposal by the Government or not? Mr Key declined to answer that particular question.

The truth of the matter is that the process of Government by this administration has been an absolute shambles. It has been dishonest, and it has been decision making without proper consideration before it made proposals, and without transparency. We have also seen that also in the super-city reforms where this National Government hides behind Rodney Hide to do its dirty work, and will not take responsibility for policies condemned by the Chamber of Commerce in Auckland, condemned by the National Party candidate for the Auckland mayoralty, John Banks, condemned by the New Zealand Herald, the Herald on Sunday, and suburban newspapers, and condemned by almost every community group and individual that has commented on them. I ask National to stop hiding behind Mr Hide, bring him to order, and give democracy, transparency, and accountability back to Auckland.

If we talk about dishonesty, surely the biggest dishonesty has been over GST. I remember the words from John Key before the election very well. They were something like this: “The National Party will not be increasing GST.” After the election, suddenly we find that National is increasing GST. The National Government has broken its word and it has broken its promise. Throughout the major cities of this country, and around the major provincial towns and the small rural communities, I and my colleagues got very consistent feedback from every electorate represented by National members on the other side of the House. What did they tell us? They told us that they did not vote for an increase in GST. John Key promised that he would not increase GST. My advice to John Key is to take a leaf out of Steven Joyce’s book: he should forget the pride, forget the shame, admit that he is wrong, admit that he is breaking his word, admit that he is going back on the sincere promise made to the electorate, and dump the GST increase. In every community in this country the people of New Zealand told us that they were against it. They said it was just a tax switch, and the Government was going to give on one hand and take back with the other. Then they reflected on it and asked whether Bill English had not said that this process would be tax neutral. If it is going to be tax neutral, then I ask National to explain this: $1.5 billion is being proposed to go to the top 7 percent of income earners in New Zealand. If people do not earn over $70,000 they can forget about their situation being improved by these tax changes proposed in the Budget—that is the truth of it.

The only people who will benefit from these tax changes are the wealthiest—all of the members of this House included. Ministers like Mr Williamson will get another $140 a week clear. Regarding John Key—I am not talking about his wider personal wealth but about his prime ministerial salary—the tax changes are worth $310 a week. Paul Reynolds, the chief executive of Telecom, will get on his basic salary—not his bonus, because I do not think that he will get a bonus this year—another $1,300 a week. But for the ordinary citizens in my electorate, the middle-income folk and the low-income folk, the best that the National Government can promise them is that they will be no worse off. Well, the truth is that they do not even believe that miserable promise. They do not believe that.

The issue I will finish on, 1 year out from the Job Summit, is employment. You know, there were three big ideas in that Job Summit. It was the Job Summit that John Key told us would not be a talkfest, but was. The big ideas included a $2 billion bank loan, which fell over before it got off the ground. There was the 9-day working fortnight. It was going to be worth 6,000 jobs. What have we got? A couple of hundred. There were 25,000 jobs overall, but 6,000 jobs were saved.

AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): I am rising to take a call on the Budget Policy Statement. I mention its title because I think that the Leader of the Opposition, who spoke before me, missed the whole point. I think that everyone forgot to tell Mr Goff that there is no general debate today. This is not a general debate, and, anyway, I ask where the Opposition’s spokesman on finance is. Where is Mr Cunliffe? Why is the Opposition’s finance spokesman not taking the call? It is interesting that Mr Cunliffe is not here to take the call on the Budget Policy Statement when he leads the Labour position on that. No, instead we have Mr Goff.

The reason we had Mr Goff is because when he travels around the country on his “happy bus”, nobody comes to listen to him. So he saved that speech up, he comes here, and he has the cheek to talk about the chamber of commerce. When he rocked up to the chamber of commerce in Napier, five people turned up and three of those five were from the Labour caucus. Of the five people who bothered to listen to the Labour leader, three of them were from his own caucus. So what does he do? He trousers the speech that he could not use on the bus, he comes to Parliament, and he tells the whips to put the call around and get him a full house because someone has to listen to his speech. Do members know why he gets so passionate when he gives these speeches? It is because every single time he stands up, it is a leadership bid. Every single time that Mr Goff gets to his feet, he has to convince his troops that he is still fit to lead them. No one is listening on the streets and no one is listening in here, but at least in here he can get the whips to make sure that he has a full house. Because of his insecurities, we have had 10 minutes of what should have been a debate on the Budget Policy Statement wasted on pandering to Mr Goff’s insecurities and his sense of failure over his bus trip, which no one noticed or cared about and certainly did not help him in the polls.

I will take it back to the Budget Policy Statement, because I think it is shameful that the Labour leader completely failed to deal with it. The economy is the single biggest issue this country is dealing with. It was the single biggest issue facing us when we came into power and it is one of the key reasons why New Zealanders chose a National-led Government to get them through the worst global recession that any of us will see. When we took office, New Zealand wanted one thing from us above anything else: a significant lift in economic performance. That is why people put their faith in John Key, that is why they put their faith in Bill English, and that is why the National-led Government is taking this country through the current issues. Economic growth is the only thing that can deliver New Zealanders the sort of permanent increase in their living standards that everyone is calling for. If we want to talk about going around and talking to people, every single member of this party knows that the one thing that New Zealanders want is a lift in their standard of living. The difference is we know that the way to deliver that to them is through a lift in economic performance. We have to get this country growing.

The Budget Policy Statement does two things. It looks back over where we have been and it looks ahead to what this Government will do to continue the path of recovery. We are through the worst of the economic recession, but that should not be mistaken by anyone for thinking that from here on in it is smooth sailing. Everybody knows that there will still be bumps in the road. My colleague Mr Foss made the point that, certainly, for every New Zealander who loses his or her job, it is one New Zealander too many. But we have to reflect on the fact that when we look at what all the numbers were predicting when this Government came into office, the turn-round has been remarkable. The Labour Opposition was trumpeting from the streets that there would be 10 percent or more unemployment—10 percent or more. In fact, unemployment has been limited to just a little over 7 percent, and it is gratifying for us all to see those numbers coming off significantly.

Chris Tremain: And thanks to the employers.

AMY ADAMS: Mr Tremain is absolutely right; we have to thank employers for coming on board and doing their part.

I thank the Minister for Social Development and Employment, Paula Bennett, for her excellent work through schemes like Community Max and Job Ops and for extending the Limited Service Volunteers scheme. Those are all real steps that will create jobs. I thank the Prime Minister for the 9-day working fortnight initiative, which has been so valuable in saving New Zealanders’ jobs.

The best thing we can do to create sustainable jobs is to get our economy back in balance. We heard the Minister of Finance mention today during question time that if New Zealand had kept pace with world growth during the period when Labour was in Government, right now New Zealand families would, on average, be $5,000 a year better off after tax. That is the legacy of the previous Labour Government. It took an average of $5,000 a year after tax from every New Zealand family by squandering the opportunities that it had while it was in office. Those were some of the best economic times this country has seen, but did we see our real economy growing? No, we saw our productive economy—the part of our economy that is real and creates real wealth and real jobs, not Government spending; it is the export economy and the engine room of New Zealand—in recession for 5 years under Labour while the world was growing.

In the time that we have been in Government, we have taken significant steps to change that. We are focused on things that will create a higher standard of living, real jobs, and higher incomes so that we do not see our young people heading off to Australia. Just this week I was called up by a constituent who said: “Amy, I am sorry to tell you, but we cannot keep doing this any more. I think your Government is on the right track, but it will take so long to recover from Labour’s mess that I think the only future for us is not in New Zealand.”

Moana Mackey: He did not say that.

AMY ADAMS: That is exactly what he said, I tell Ms Mackey. If the member were to listen to constituents, she would know that that is exactly what the people of New Zealand are saying.

We in this Government are prepared to take the necessary steps to get the economy growing. We have signalled that we want to have a world-class tax system that encourages production, entrepreneurialism, innovation, and enterprise, not one that encourages consumption and the debt-fuelled boom that we have seen for too long. We have to focus on reducing the regulatory burden on businesses and getting away from some of the nonsense red tape. I think that all of the Ministers in this Government have done an excellent job of getting that under way. Minister Williamson, who is sitting in front of me now, has made some significant steps towards reducing red tape in the building industry, and I know that that is the sort of thing that will allow our construction sector and housing sector to get under way without those sorts of regulatory burdens. We are supporting business and innovation. We have seen an excellent paper released from Minister Mapp recently around the changes we need to make to our Crown research industry. It will make a significant difference and it has been warmly welcomed.

We are focused on lifting productivity in the public sector. One thing that this Government has talked about consistently, and is doing consistently, is getting more money out of bureaucracy and out of the back room and into the front lines. We are seeing jobs in the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education refocused so that the actual outputs for consumers—for the real people of New Zealand—increase. That is why we now have more elective surgery than we have ever had before and that is why we will lift educational outputs across this country as we focus on what really matters.

I want to focus on the fact that even since the 2009 Fiscal Strategy Report, the indicators have improved markedly due to the actions of this Government. In the 2009 Fiscal Strategy Report, gross sovereign debt was forecast to be at 45 percent of GDP in 2012-13; now the forecast is for 38.8 percent of GDP. The operating deficit was forecast to be 3.3 percent of GDP over this year; it is now forecast to drop to 2.6 percent. With regard to total Crown expenses, one of the things that we have consistently been strong on is the need to rein in Government spending so that the real economy grows. I am very pleased to say that in the 2009 Fiscal Strategy Report, total Crown expenses were forecast to be 48 percent of GDP in 2012-13; that forecast has now dropped to 44.5 percent in 2013-14.

Those are real, measurable outcomes of the solid economic performance of this National Government. That is why New Zealand elected us. That is how we will get the sort of change in economic growth that this country needs to lead to a much stronger, much more sustainable, and much more balanced New Zealand for us all to enjoy. Thank you.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): “The Government has a technique for brushing aside issues that it would rather not confront”. That was the editorial in today’s New Zealand Herald. It also said that this Government is jumping on the bandwagon to be popular and to get votes with a haphazard approach and little analysis to back up its decision. The New Zealand Herald was talking about the Government’s decision to give $300,000 to the All Whites soccer campaign, even though New Zealand Football will receive $10 million from its governing body, FIFA. The editorial was headed “$300,000 to ride the bandwagon”, and it concluded that the Government’s contribution was essentially meaningless but that it gives Mr Key the chance to hand over the cheque. That editorial shows that even the New Zealand Herald is starting to see through this Government.

Paul Quinn: What about Trevor’s stadium? No one wanted it.

Hon ANNETTE KING: The Government is all sizzle—and we are listening to some of it over there now—and absolutely no sausage.

Wherever we go now, people are saying that John Key is the Prime Minister who just smiles and waves. It does not matter what the issue is, he just smiles, waves, and has another photograph taken. While New Zealanders are having to cough up $300,000 for a pretty picture of John Key handing over a cheque to an organisation that does not need it, old, frail, and disabled New Zealanders are having their small amount of home support cut. It is not house cleaning, as Tony Ryall is telling New Zealanders. Those support workers might be cleaning old people’s toilets because they cannot see to clean it themselves, but they are also buying food for those old people to be able to eat. That little bit of assistance is being cut by this Government, even though it can give $300,000 to an organisation that did not ask for it and does not need it. That is the Government’s priority.

Tony Ryall is now the “Minister of Silly Talk”, because he says “No, no, no, it is not a cut in service. It is a change of service.” Obviously, he has been educated in the school of doublespeak, because in anyone’s language if one day we have a service and the next day we do not have a service, then that is a cut. I ask Mr Ryall to say the word “cut”, because that is exactly what he is doing to the most vulnerable people in New Zealand. Old, frail, and disabled New Zealanders are having their home support cut.

Prior to the election, National not only made all the promises that the Leader of the Opposition outlined today but also made a promise not to cut health services. National candidates made a big stand on that platform before the last election. They said that nothing would be changing and that there would be no cuts. Where did the National Government start those cuts? It started with the people who it thinks will complain the least. It is no wonder that Grey Power and all the organisations that support older New Zealanders are increasingly alarmed at the attacks on their members. They are asking why this Government hates old people. It is no wonder they are putting out statements like the one that states that this National Government is shaping up more and more like the days of Jenny Shipley. I particularly enjoyed this quote from Grey Power: “If this is the way the National Party treats those low income people then they are looking very much like a one term Government.”

This is a Government that is making decisions for the few and not the many. Why else would it announce an increase in GST?

Paul Quinn: Even Hutt South is going to go in the next election.

Hon ANNETTE KING: There is not one member in this House who does not know that an increase in GST will mean higher prices. Even Paul Quinn knows that an increase in GST will mean higher prices not just on his second flat-screen television but also on ordinary New Zealanders’ bread, butter, and milk, as well as their power, rates, accident compensation, and doctors’ visits. The many will be paying the most because they already spend most of their incomes on daily living. Seventy per cent of New Zealanders earn $40,000 or below. I tell the Government to remember that figure. A 20 percent increase on the tax those people—our old people, single people who are on low incomes, beneficiaries, and middle income earners—pay for the basics will hit them very hard.

No one believes John Key when he says that most people will not be worse off, but why should they believe him? Before the election, he told New Zealanders that there would be no increase in GST. He also said after the election that there would be no increase in GST. He duped New Zealanders. The nice Mr Key said there would not be an increase in taxes. He said he would decrease them. Well, consider this: what do we call increasing GST from 12.5 percent—

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am really sorry to do this to my colleague, but if no one in the Government will defend Mr Key when he is being called a liar, I just want to ask whether the rules have changed in the House and people are now allowed to be called liars. I note that no Government member is disputing the fact, but I think it might be an abuse of the parliamentary process for my colleague to call him a liar so often.

Chris Tremain: The issue we have on this side of the House is that, like the New Zealand public, no one on this side is listening to the deputy Leader of the Opposition’s speech, so that is probably the problem.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): If the member specifically made that accusation, I did not hear it. I thought the member was skirting quite close to what was acceptable. It is probably better that she moves a bit away from that.

Hon ANNETTE KING: I used the word “duped” and I do not think that has been ruled out in this House. As for Mr Tremain saying that no one is listening, I say he should go on believing that, because the people in his electorate who earn $40,000 and less will be looking very closely at whether they should waste another vote on that member, who does not think an increase in GST will hurt them at all and that they will be all right after the tax cut. What do we call an increase? I ask Mr Tremain to answer this: what do we call an increase in GST from 12.5 percent to 15 percent? Is that an increase in tax? Mr Tremain’s leader said: “No increases in taxes.”, but that is an increase.

I think we should call the Prime Minister the “Minister of Broken Promises.” Nobody believes the Prime Minister, as was shown in a very recent Westpac consumer confidence survey. That survey showed that almost 60 percent of New Zealanders feel they will be either worse off or no better off after the tax cuts and the increase in GST. That is what New Zealanders think about what this Government is promising. If middle-income New Zealanders think the tax cut will make them better off, they will be very, very disillusioned after the Budget this year.

A colleague of mine was talking to a dairy worker in provincial New Zealand—

Paul Quinn: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The speaker referred to a survey by Westpac. I have the Labour Party press release in front of me and it says—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): That is a debatable point. It is not a point of order.

Hon ANNETTE KING: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It was also not a point of order because it was aimed at breaking up my speech, and I think you ought to rule on that.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): Let us just talk about points of order that break up speeches. I think members on both sides of the House are guilty of that, and I would not like to try to decide at this point as to where the most blame for that should go. I think we should leave that alone. It is also out of order to comment on a point of order on which I have ruled.

Hon ANNETTE KING: It is a shame that Paul Quinn does not take a call in this debate, instead of shifting from his seat in the back of the House and being big and brave. He should have the cameras on him.

A dairy worker living in provincial New Zealand and working in Hāwera shared with a colleague of mine last week his costs and his outgoings. After 16 months of a National Government, he is going backwards. His gross income is $69,549. The basic outgoings for him and his family are greater than his income. That will not help him to stay in New Zealand; in fact, it will drive him offshore. But wait a minute: was the National Party not going to close the gap with Australia? It was not an aspiration; it was a promise. It is so easy to do it when one is in Opposition—“We’ll just close the gap with Australia. We’ll just say it in Opposition, and, hey presto, there will be milk and honey, the sun will shine longer, and that wage gap with Australia and New Zealand will close.” Let me tell this House that the wage gap is growing. It will be bigger in 2010 than it was in 2009, but, more than that, the Grant Thornton International survey, which National used as its Bible when it was in Opposition, said that the big difference between the New Zealand economy and the Australian economy is that Australians are hiring people and New Zealanders will be part of a brain drain to Australia. So much for the promise that National would close the gap.

I have to say that although National members are praising themselves and patting themselves on the back about how great the reforms have been, not one of those reforms had anything to do with anything the Government did; it was due to the fact that a Labour Government left them with a very good set of books, and that is why this country has done better than a lot of other countries around the world.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green): I start today by acknowledging the passing of Bevan Tīpene-Matua, who was a leader within the Green movement and within Māoridom. He will be sadly missed but well remembered.

Today we are talking about the Budget Policy Statement. The Green Party would like to address the six pillars that the Government has put forward within the Budget Policy Statement, but before we do that, it is important to understand the context within which we approach the Government’s Budget. For us, the objective of economic policy is to achieve prosperity for New Zealanders, while at the same time cutting our use of natural resources and cutting our pollution. We need prosperity while restoring and protecting the integrity of ecosystems, and that is the definition of sustainability.

The Government has put forward six pillars, the first of which is investment in infrastructure, which actually means roads. The Government is saying that it wants to spend about $20 billion on motorways over the next 10 years and that it wants to borrow the money in order to do it. This is Steven Joyce’s think big project. It is a project that takes no account of the two giant issues that are currently facing the world. Those two giant issues are climate change and the end of cheap oil. This project is in total denial about the two greatest realities facing the global economy. Roads mean more greenhouse gas pollution, more oil dependency, more obesity, and more air pollution. The Auckland state of the environment report was released yesterday. It showed that there was a 9 percent increase in kilometres travelled by car in the years 2004 to 2008. That is an extra billion kilometres. Health costs have been $547 million a year as a result of that road usage.

The problem we have is that the oil import costs on New Zealand are dramatic. The last time the oil price peaked, in 2008, it had a massive impact on New Zealand’s balance of payments figures because it had a big impact on our trade balance. If we do not reduce our dependency on oil, then we will face exactly the same problem as oil prices go up again. We will find ourselves having to work harder and harder in order to pay for the oil that we import. Last time virtually the entire exports of the tourism industry were required to pay for our oil imports, so a strategy that makes us more dependent on oil imports by investing in motorways is a pretty stupid strategy.

Last year the executive director of the International Energy Agency, the international body we all pay to predict future oil prices, stated: “I can’t rule out the possibility of an oil supply constraint in 2013 and 2014.” In December 2009 the International Energy Agency, which employs the international experts whom this Parliament pays in order to predict the future prices of oil, stated in its oil market report that there are two demand scenarios in front of us. One is an oil demand growth of 1.4 percent for 2009-2014, which would give us an oil crunch in 2014. The agency also stated that semi-recessionary growth, which would be growth of only 0.5 percent globally per annum, would postpone the oil crunch to some time after 2015. The International Energy Agency is very clear that we are facing an oil price shock.

The chief executive of the Total oil company recently stated that the oil price would rise to more than $145 per barrel on the concern that supplies may fall short as early as 2014. The spokesperson for the chief executive officer of Total stated: “We are running the risk of another oil crisis when demand outstrips supply around 2014 or 2015. There won’t be enough oil and gas by the middle of the next decade.”

Although oil is getting more expensive and all the experts we pay to give us advice on it are telling us that the price of oil will increase dramatically over the course of the next decade, we are borrowing money to invest in infrastructure that will make us more dependent on oil. Although the price of emitting greenhouse gasses will only increase as price is factored into the international market in greenhouse emissions, we are building infrastructure that increases our greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, we are borrowing money to build the infrastructure that will result in increased greenhouse gas emissions. Although congestion is a major cost for our urban centres, we are building the infrastructure that induces greater road use and moves the congestion to another point in the road system. Only an investment in buses, trains, ferries, cycling, and walking can solve the transport problem, as everyone who has ever done any study in transport knows, but instead we are borrowing $20 billion over the next decade in order to invest in the one thing that we know does not work, which is brand new motorway projects. National has a think big motorway building project, as had Labour before it, and it will end in tears like the last Think Big project did.

The second pillar that National has talked about is regulatory reform, which means leaky houses. The last time the ACT Party types did a job on cutting red tape in New Zealand, they came up with a thing called the Building Act 1991, which was laissez-faire legislation saying that one could build whatever load of rubbish one liked. The cost for fixing up the leaky houses that resulted from the last attempt to cut red tape in New Zealand, which we are currently facing, is somewhere between $11 billion and $22 billion, depending on whom we read. In terms of GDP, that is a cost comparable to the devastating earthquake in Chile.

Somewhere over 10 percent of our GDP will have to be spent on fixing up what happened the last time we let ACT Party types decide what regulations should govern the Building Act in New Zealand. It was tremendously expensive. The ACT Party types got rid of the rules that stated that a builder needed to know how to build a house that would keep out the rain. They said that was the nanny State and that they would get rid of that rule. That was in 1991, under the previous National Government, and the policy was developed under the Labour Government that came before it. The ACT Party types got rid of the rules stating that the external cladding had to keep the rain out, because they said that a rule like that was clearly an example of the nanny State—it is a nanny State rule that says our houses have to keep the rain out!

The ACT Party types got rid of the rule stating that the framing needed to have a bit of boron treatment, because they said that was a nanny State rule. Some of those in the National Party who promote the idea that it was the greenies who promoted that move need to know that it was decided by the New Zealand Standards Council, where the timber industry had a majority vote over the researchers who opposed the change. In fact, it was a result of the deregulation coming through the New Zealand Standards Council, on which the timber industry had a majority. They got rid of the rules stating that buildings have to keep the rain out, because they thought that it was nanny State.

Tens of thousands of New Zealand households are today having to wear the pain as a result of the last time a National Government deregulated the building industry. So when the ACT Party types put up their ideology around regulatory reform, I ask members to remember that it could again cost us $22 billion, with thousands of families living with the heartache, pain, debt, and illness that results. That is all due to the Rogernomes in National and in Labour before that.

Let us look at another pillar that is being proposed here: tax reform. In tax reform the Government is proposing to cut the taxes paid by the top earners and to pay for that tax cut by having an increase in GST, which will fall on those who have the least money. The fiscal difficulties that were created by Labour’s round of tax cuts just before it left office and by Labour’s failure to deal with the housing bubble are real; there is no question about that. But what the Government is proposing to do about them will not fix them.

We actually need thoroughgoing tax reforms—such as a capital gains tax that excludes the family home, which would make a difference because it would be highly progressive, it would fall more on the wealthy than on the poor, it would broaden the tax base, and it would drive investment away from the housing boom. That would be an important and significant tax reform we could make, not to mention putting serious prices on carbon and on water, which would drive the economy to be more efficient in its production of carbon and in its use of water.

We need to move our economy in a sustainable direction. We need to reduce our use of resources and production of pollution, and unfortunately this Budget Policy Statement fails to do that. The only good thing about it is that it is not Don Brash’s policy statement, so dog-eat-dog is not its central thesis, but it does not have a lot of vision.

The world is changing and that is the reality we face. It is constrained in resources and it needs to cut its pollution. That creates fantastic opportunities for new businesses in New Zealand to make a prosperous living out of New Zealand living up to its reputation for being green and for being smart. Once again, I encourage the Government to start to steal our ideas, rather than to steal the inheritance of future generations.

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS (ACT): Unfortunately, I believe that the Budget Policy Statement once again demonstrates the Government’s major deficit, and that is the deficit of imagination. The Government clearly lacks the guts to do what is right to turn round the New Zealand economy from where it is today. The Government has decided, in terms of this policy statement, to once again take the soft option—to hell with New Zealand so long as the Government survives. Once again, it has decided to borrow and hope.

The Budget Policy Statement summary states: “The key issues and themes are summarised below. The Government told us its primary focus for Budget 2010 will be on lifting and sustaining economic growth.” But I want to predict that the Government will, in fact, fail. It will do substantially better than did Labour and the Greens, but essentially it is not doing enough to ensure that real growth occurs in this economy.

If we ever wanted a wake-up call, then I suggest that we got it yesterday with the announcement of the latest productivity figures. They showed us that we are going backwards. Improving our living standards and catching up with Australia is a promise but not a reality. The fact is that productivity is critical. A decrease in productivity, as we have had over the last 12 months, means that we are now getting less output for the same amount of input. In other words, we are getting less for what we are putting in. Between 2006 and 2009 under the Government of Labour and the Greens, New Zealand experienced negative labour productivity, and that is the first time that that has happened in 20 years. Overall, GDP decreased by 2.2 percent without—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Why, Roger?

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS: It was because of the member’s party’s mad policies, actually—that is why. Without higher productivity per week there can be no higher wages. And that is the point: the only way we will have real increases in wages is by way of real increases in productivity. The fact is very simple. The fact is very simple, I say to members, and I want New Zealanders to ponder it: if New Zealand, between 2000 and 2009, had had the same labour productivity that we had between 1984 and 2000, then wages in this country would be more than $100 over and above what they are now. The average weekly wage today is $538. If we had had the same productivity in the last 9 years as in the 15 or 16 years before that, wages today would be $107 higher and New Zealanders would be earning $645 a week and not $538. That is what a Labour and Green Government did to the people of New Zealand; they increased Government spending by more than 50 percent, and the result of that was a rapid decline in labour productivity. I might add that capital productivity and multifactor productivity also declined. But if members put that aside, they will see that Labour’s legacy is wages lowered by 107 bucks a week because of the madness that the member for Hutt South and his colleagues introduced.

Before I come back to the main proposition—that is, lifting and sustaining economic growth—I will touch on one or two other points that have been raised in the Budget Policy Statement. There is a lot of talk in the statement about fiscal policy and tax, and the fact that we might adjust the tax system to our advantage. I want to make the point that the impact on the New Zealand economy is not so much from the design of the tax system. Sure, we can design the system better, but if the Government and local government are spending 45 percent of GDP, then we have a problem. It does not matter how we design the tax system, we have a problem. When we think about the burden of tax, the quantity of Government expenditure that determines its cost—that is, about 85 percent—we can see that we might be able to improve the system by designing it a little better, but that accounts for and improves things only at the margins. What we need to do, I believe, is to look at Government expenditure and accept that until we reduce that expenditure and get it back to where it was 6 years ago, at 29 percent of GDP, we are going to have a lot of trouble.

I do not personally support the increase in GST; I think it is unnecessary. I believe that if we take the compensation—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Will you vote against it?

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS: I ask the honourable member to listen. GST brings in about $2.2 billion, but with paying compensation to superannuitants and to those on benefits, etc., as the Government intends to do, the net increase in revenue will be about $1 billion to $1.2 billion. That represents less than 2 percent of Government expenditure. We can have the tax cuts if we are prepared to reduce Government expenditure by less than 2 percent, and I suggest that—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Will the member vote against it?

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS: I certainly will not be supporting the GST increase. On the other hand, it may well be that I will be voting for it, I say to Mr Mallard, because that is part of the supply agreement that we have.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Oh, you used to be a man of principle.

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS: Well, it is quite easy. I can justify that, I tell Mr Mallard. I might not like the fact that National will increase GST by 2.5 percent, but if the option is to go back to the mad policy that you introduced over the years from 2000 to 2009, it is a no-brainer as to what I am going to do.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Retire.

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS: Oh—well, you should have retired a long time ago.

Dr Kennedy Graham: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In the last 30 seconds our colleague has suggested that you should retire and that you had maintained mad policies.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, I heard that. I come back to the point that no member can bring the Speaker into the debate. Every time the member says “you” or “your” he is referring to the Speaker—and I do not intend to retire just yet.

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS: I come back to the main proposition, which is about trying to lift and sustain economic growth. There are really seven principles to follow if we are to achieve that. I think, really, that the Government has only two of those under control, and they are the issue of monetary policy and the policies relating to free trade. But if we really want to give a boost to this economy, then private enterprise has to play a much bigger part than it is playing at the moment. We simply cannot have 40 percent of GDP being spent by the Government.

I actually agreed with the leader of the Green Party in terms of what he said about infrastructure. If infrastructure improves New Zealand’s growth, then that is well and good. But there is also the situation where the Government is making investment decisions for political and not economic reasons. I personally think that a perfect example of that is Transmission Gully, the benefit-cost ratio of which is below one—that is, Treasury has estimated that it will cost far more than it will deliver in benefits—yet the Government is going ahead with it. If we continue to make political decisions in this country rather than rational decisions, we cannot expect the country to go forward. The fact is that we need to introduce more competition, particularly into the State monopolies of health, education, and welfare. We will move forward only when we have low taxes and minimal regulation.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki): Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tātou katoa. The Māori Party welcomes the opportunity to focus on solutions that will lead to economic recovery and improved economic performance. This debate is pretty timely, as we reflect on the residual effects of the worst of the recession and concentrate on six key areas that the Government proposes to promote in order to prompt growth in the economy. The No. 1 area that is being promoted is an investment in productive infrastructure, which includes an ultra-fast broadband network, new roads and transport initiatives, school buildings, and over $300 million to be spent on one prison—$300 million on one prison. I want to focus on that for just a short time.

In order to convey a sense of the value that a new prison will add to our economy, I tell members that it just so happened that last week I was up at Spring Hill Corrections Facility at Te Kauwhata, at the prison itself. If we base our assumption on the fact that the average sentence cost per inmate is approximately $52,000, rising to $71,000 for a maximum-security prisoner, and if we take into account current projections that by 2016 our inmate population is projected to hit 10,700, we are certainly talking about a multimillion-dollar investment in what some may say is based on the industry of misery. A better description is probably “negative spending”. Why do we have to continue to pour money down the gurgler in such a negative way? The House has been saturated with pieces of legislation that add to the investment in the prison infrastructure, including the use of container cells to meet the excessive volume of prisoner numbers that is planned for.

Yet when I looked around me at Spring Hill I saw that it was not an investment that I for one feel very proud of, in terms of leading our nation forward. This is an industry in which Māori are grossly overrepresented, an industry in which the average length of sentence imposed has increased, and an industry that is characterised by a high rate of re-imprisonment, particularly for Māori. The Māori Party believes that we should change this paradigm. We surely have to question an economic framework in which we measure our wealth through the growth of criminal activity. The $71,000 that it takes to keep an inmate in maximum security for a year exceeds the average teacher’s salary by $20,000. If we were to add up the amount spent on courts, probation officers, police, and the judiciary, then one really has to question the economic value to the nation of the true costs of crime.

That leads me logically to another of the six key areas that are proposed as a foundation for economic growth, and that is the area of lifting skills. During the adjournment recently I also chose to visit two schools: Lytton High School in Gisborne, and Wairoa College in the Ikaroa-Rāwhiti electorate, at Wairoa, obviously. During my visit to these schools I got a firsthand view of the Kōtahitanga programme in action, and I was really, really impressed. I found all the teachers involved in the programme to be absolutely committed to the change process we so urgently require in our schools.

I go back to the issue of criminal activity and criminal justice, I remember what we were told when Judge Becroft reported to the Education and Science Committee back in 2007. He told us that almost all the young people seen in the Youth Court are not actively engaged in education. He spoke of them drifting, having been excluded or exempted from school. They awaited placement in another school, in alternative education, in a training course, or in employment—anything. He also advised us that since the early 1990s young Māori have made up almost half of both police apprehensions and youth justice cases. He concluded that getting young people back into education was the king-hit that we should be looking at in the youth justice area.

I come back to the Kōtahitanga programme. At one of the schools a teacher had been involved in the programme for just 4 weeks. One of the breakthrough comments that came out of a discussion with that teacher was that the Kōtahitanga programme allowed a cohort of teachers to teach the same class together. It allowed them to sit together and talk about the students they taught. This is not rocket science, but there was an amazing sense of similarity across the discussion about the students that those teachers taught. Together they shared strategies about how they could make schooling a more meaningful experience for those young students, working through ideas that could lead to changing the way that they each responded to those individuals, and, in doing so, they were working in a way that would support aspirations and ambitions rather than focus on discipline and control. The programme provided them with the opportunity to talk and change the paradigm. Another approach was as simple as the basic respect accorded in the way that teachers greeted their students. They said “Kia ora.”; it was as simple as that. That was all about changing the paradigm.

Another part of the Budget Policy Statement focus on lifting skills was the national standards. As a former teacher myself, I know that introducing national standards by themselves is the type of life-scale change we need in order to improve the education experience of what is commonly known as the 20 percent who underperform or underachieve. It will be a gauge for us to be able to address the longstanding issues that have impacted on poor rates of numeracy and literacy or have led to consistent patterns in the truancy, suspension, and exclusion statistics. We have to do more here. Maybe Te Kōtahitanga could be rolled out nationwide.

Another key area in the Budget Policy Statement is the commitment to improve services in the public sector. This is certainly an interesting time to respond to this objective, when today’s breaking news is that nearly 1,500 jobs have been cut from the Public Service in the past year. The Māori Party’s policy position has been that we want to see more community services and less Government bureaucracy for the outcome of whānau restoration.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do not mind a few comments being interjected about the speech, but a lot of the discussion is not about the speech itself; it is actually coming from across the House. I would appreciate it if that could be dealt with. Thank you very much.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is a fair comment. Interjections should be rare and reasonable, and should not be interchanges that have nothing to do with what is being said.

TE URUROA FLAVELL: As I said, the Māori Party policy position has been that we want to see more community services and less Government bureaucracy for the outcome of whānau restoration, so we welcome another of the six key areas of economic growth, which is to remove red tape and improve regulation.

Many of the Māori providers whom we have spoken to, or who have spoken to us, about our Whānau Ora approach have raised their concerns about the practices of the Government by which the compliance and transaction costs that emerge from multiple contracts with multiple funders have serious disadvantages for providers, and often restrict their capability to be more responsive to whānau. I have heard reports from some providers that they are reporting to, or completing auditing and monitoring accounts for, the Government every third day. There are other stories of providers being hamstrung by the compliance costs of different reporting schedules and the administrative overload of meeting contract outputs.

We in the Māori Party want to see far greater investment in what counts—that is, in outcomes. We do not want to know how many posters were pinned on the wall, or how many phone calls were made and pamphlets distributed. We want to be able to measure the true wealth that can be achieved through improvements in whānau capacity to undertake the functions necessary for healthy living and to contribute to the collective well-being of the whānau.

Whānau Ora, we would suggest, will also fall into the framework of another one of the Budget policy pillars—that is, the supporting of business innovation and trade. My colleague Tariana Turia has spoken frequently of Whānau Ora as being the most transformative concept that we could ever invest in. It is about investing in aspirations, in innovation, and in initiatives of whānau to become more self-managing and to take responsibility for their own social, economic, and cultural development. Although developing whānau capacity will be the primary outcome, I believe that we should also expect to see considerable improvements in the business of the Government as part of the success of this policy. Instead of being trapped by output-based, tick-box contracts, we would hope to see better, smarter services that will focus on real results for whānau.

Finally, we come to the last pillar of the six policy planks in Budget 2010—that is, the concept of strengthening tax. This, too, is a key area that I took on the road in the last couple of weeks, in order to gauge the view of people on the proposed changes. While I was hearing first-hand the fears of people about the projected rise in GST, several reports that have come out recently from the Christian Council of Social Services suggest that our most vulnerable citizens are feeling the impact of the recession despite what the Budget Policy Statement tells us when it says the worst of the recession has passed. There is more to be done.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): We are talking about the Budget Policy Statement in the debate today, but I feel that this debate has been sad because it has been hijacked by the two Opposition parties. They have used it as an attempt to blatantly attack the Government rather than as an opportunity to debate the real issues and the substance that the Government, a very constructive Government, has been trying to provide over the last year or so. You know, it is really sad when we look at the operating environment of the Labour Party and see what it has devolved into.

Labour is using fear tactics to prey on the most vulnerable in our society and talk about what those people will potentially lose in this world, rather than being constructive, delivering solutions, and working in this Parliament for the common good of New Zealanders. I feel very sad when we see today that the Labour and Green members have taken this debate to a stage where they have taken it away from the people of New Zealand and used it for petty politics when in fact we are debating something that is very much more important—the Budget Policy Statement.

The Budget Policy Statement gives the Government’s focus for getting a sustainable economy that will grow and go forward. One thing we need to look at is the policy behind that debate. It has not been enunciated much in this Parliament but I think it will be talked about more and more as we go through the next year and look at the Budget and what comes out of it. What I am talking about is the fact that I think there needs to be an attitude shift on the part of New Zealanders. There needs to be a change in approach, so that New Zealanders understand that we do have a role to play in the world economy, and that we can deliver that successful future.

A perception change is needed out there. New Zealanders need to know—and they need to have the vision from their Government—that there is a way in which we can earn our way in this world, achieve our goals, and, therefore, deliver the services and the society we all seek. That is what I think this Budget will show. The Budget Policy Statement is a setting out of some of the parameters, but over the next year we will see a change in the attitude of New Zealanders when they see that there is a way forward and that the way forward is being promoted positively by the Government of the day.

New Zealanders need to see that they need to value education. They need to see that there is a future in working hard. New Zealanders need to see that there is a future in investing in industry, in taking risks, and in getting success out of our research, science, and development. Those are the things that National has indicated that it wants to see come through in its Budget. It wants to see a country that is delivering a new vision of economic growth—economic growth that is based around achievement and success, higher wages, and a society that provides opportunities for all.

That contrasts with the Budgets we have seen from the previous Labour Government over the last 9 years. They were all about buying votes and looking at the day—at “this point in time”—and not actually about delivering a constructive future. But I think that delivering a constructive future is what National will be seen as being successful in doing, along with its political partners in the coalition, and the public will understand that. They are ready for that change in direction, and they are supporting it. That is why we see such great support for the Government and Prime Minister, whereas the members of the Opposition lack any traction.

Members of the Opposition do not have any understanding of what the public want, and they do not seem to be able to hit any issues. They are looking at an old way of dealing with what the public want. They are looking at an old direction of just spending the money that comes in, rather than seeing a new direction where people want to build a future. New Zealanders want to see some aspirations and some goals. They want to see that there is a brighter future ahead of them. That is what National and its coalition partners are delivering, and I am very proud to be a part of that. National is setting up a new direction and a change in attitude that have been long overdue. Really, that is the only answer in order for New Zealand to get where it needs to get to in this world.

We cannot live in the situation we have lived in in the past, where we have just taken money and redirected it. We need to set up a desire and a passion for New Zealanders to get education, to work hard, and to achieve success. Those are the vital ingredients for keeping New Zealanders in this country and delivering the standard of living we need. It comes back to a lot of policy over many areas. Now there is the infrastructure to set up that environment, so that New Zealanders can take advantage of a world economy where we are very well placed, in this region, to be very successful. There is a need for national standards so that we have that education base and so that people do not fall between the cracks and then have to be picked up by the Government at a later date. We do not want to see people get to that situation; we want to give them the hunger and the desire to make the most of themselves, so that they want to get an education and learn.

Let us compare those aims with the aims of members of the Opposition. They want to dumb down the population. Opposition members want to keep people down so that they can use their fear tactics about what people could potentially be and aspire to. That is the Labour mantra, and the Green Party is supporting it. It is very disappointing when we see what Labour has done to our country and its people in the past, when it could have achieved so much more for our country. That is the heart of what this debate is all about—it is about providing that directional and aspirational point of difference. We look forward to seeing that aspiration come forward, and we look forward to New Zealanders being constructively successful in the future and building a stronger country.

New Zealand has done pretty well in the last year when we consider the economic environment we encountered. Our country was in recession. The world was in recession. Under Labour there was falling economic growth, rising unemployment, high inflation, and a rising current account deficit. There were deteriorating fiscal deficits and there was rising Crown debt. All those things happened under the previous Labour Government. It set us up with a situation that was very difficult.

When we talk to people on street they tell us that we came in at the hardest time but we still delivered for our people. They tell us that Labour left us a basket case. That is what the people out there say—that is what they say. National has delivered when Labour gave us nothing. That is the history of National Governments picking up the can after Labour Governments. The public understand that, and they support us because they know we have gone through the tough times and delivered a brighter future for New Zealanders.

Over on that side of the House we see the Labour Party. We see Shane Jones trying to take over the leadership, along with David Cunliffe and David Parker—all three of them. Which one will be the leader of the Labour Party in a year’s time? That is the question. The three bright hopes of the Labour Party are sitting there together. Trevor is not in it now. Those are the three faces—that should be the picture on the news. Which one will be the next leader of the Labour Party? They are all smiling. Each, in his heart of hearts, wants the job. They are all the right age, they are all looking for it, but none of them will get there. None of them will ever become the leader of the Labour Party and be successful. They will never do it—because we have leadership in New Zealand right now.

We now have the leadership and the direction that have been missing for nearly a decade. During that time New Zealanders felt that they were missing something, and now they have found it. They have found that direction, they have found that leadership, and they have found a Government that looks after them and provides a future. That future will be announced in the coming Budget. It is an important Budget because it delivers the essential elements of that future.

I am looking at those three members. They are smiling again, are they not? They do not know which one of them will be the leader, do they? We could have bet on them, if we really wanted to, to see who will be the leader out of those three. They are just waiting. They are waiting and waiting until after the next election, because they know that they have got no chance.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): We can always tell when a Government is in trouble by the way its members handle themselves in the House. A clear giveaway is when the member speaking cannot face the Opposition, and turns and looks at his or her own backbenchers. Mr Bennett spent the whole 10 minutes staring at Mr Quinn. I do not know whether he is particularly fond of him, whether he does not like Mr Henare, or what it is. But I tell members that Mr Bennett should spend more time facing the camera and less time ogling Mr Quinn, and then he would be in better shape.

But that member has good reason to worry, because when we go around the country we are hearing two very clear messages. From the business sector we are hearing this message: why can this Government not make a decision, just one decision, and stick to it? There is “Handbrake Joyce” back in the Chamber, the member who made a handbrake turn on the SuperGold card. “Auntie”, they call him in the blogosphere—“Auntie Joyce.” I have an Auntie Joyce, and she is offended by that nickname. She was far more decisive than that Minister—far more decisive. The business community is asking why the Government cannot make a decision.

What ordinary New Zealanders are saying around New Zealand—and, Madam Speaker, you certainly have improved in looks in the last couple of minutes—is: “My God! Why don’t they stop making the decisions that they’ve been making? If GST is the answer, what was the question? We don’t want this GST rise; we didn’t vote for it. They didn’t tell us they were going to do it; they told us the exact opposite.” The Prime Minister said that no Government with half a brain would raise GST. No Government with half a brain—I do not know what that says about the current Government.

The problem with this Government is serious. It is very, very serious. There is no plan for growth. Sir Roger Douglas is back in the Chamber. Sir Roger Douglas had a plan that many of us did not agree with, but at least he had a plan. That is the difference between this Government and other Governments.

Hard-working Kiwis have struggled through the recession. On our recent bus tour of the country we met with many families who are having trouble; the member, Sam Lotu-Iiga, may smirk, but there are real people out there with real challenges. They have real trouble feeding their children from week to week. People who earn below the average wage and who are facing a rise in GST are saying they cannot cope; they are genuinely afraid. It is all very well for Government members like Mr Bennett to smirk away when there are real Kiwis suffering. Whatever this Government does, when Labour comes back people can be assured that we will have a tax package that is fair to all New Zealanders. Under National, the people at the bottom know they will get it in the neck. The people in the middle will be lucky to break even. The people at the top, the very few, will get a big wad of cash that they do not need. I repeat: they will get cash that they do not need and that they did not even vote for.

So why is this Government doing it? If GST is the answer, what is the question? It is not a plan for growth. It does not address the structural imbalances in the economy, the runaway property—

Hon Steven Joyce: Yes, it does.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: “Oh yes, it does.”, says the “Handbrake”. Minister Joyce thinks GST is a structural policy. He thinks he can stop a property bubble with GST. Well we have news for Mr Joyce: it is the wrong tool for the wrong job, and it will have the wrong effect for his party on the polls.

There is no plan for growth. This Government was elected with a mandate for change. Mr Key said it would be a step change. He said that we were going to take a bold step forward into a brighter future, that we were going to catch up with Australia—but what happened? The 2025 Taskforce was dead before the ink was dry on the paper. Sir Roger has not forgiven the Government for that. The Government has abandoned even the term step change, because it cannot do even bit-by-bit change. The Government cannot change anything, because it cannot take a decision.

Why is that? Handbrakes are around every time there is a focus group. Let us take mining, for example. I personally think that mining national parks is a very stupid idea, because we will lose more from our brand image and our tourism revenue than we will get in digging up a bit more coal in the Coromandel. But if Government members were to make that stupid decision, we would expect them at least to have the courage of their convictions and make it. But, oh no, another week’s focus groups told them what we already knew: this was political suicide. So we can imagine the Cabinet meeting: “Handbrake” came to the fore, “Handbrake” said: “You can’t do that; I’ve seen the focus group numbers.”, and Mr Key withered. He withered in the headlight of public opinion. Once again, this Government looks like a possum on the road waiting to be road kill. It will not be long until the next election, when we can examine the entrails of the failed experiment of the great National Government. The Government that was never—

Paul Quinn: Lift yourself above the clichés; give us something new.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Mr Quinn wants a doctoral thesis in the House. I will be happy to match Mr Quinn, thesis for thesis, but I will give him first try. But I will not hold my breath, because I am sure that Mr Bennett was not looking lovingly at him for theoretical policy advice.

There is no plan for growth. National’s tax package is unfair, and nobody voted for a rise in GST.

Paul Quinn: The members that you talk about, of society—that is how they want it.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Interjections are supposed to be rare, reasonable, and witty, and that was none of the three—neither rare, nor reasonable, and certainly not funny.

Why are Government members trying to distract New Zealanders from the truth, from the real story? It is because there is no game plan and there is no policy. It is like buying a used car, and getting home and lifting the bonnet to find there is no engine in it. That is what New Zealanders are increasingly saying about this National Government. There is no plan, there is no there, there.

National has a leader who would rather preserve his own personal popularity than do what is right for New Zealand. He smiles and waves, watches the focus groups, but does not make a decision. That was great for National in 2009, in a long honeymoon. It might work for a few months in 2010, but it will not work in 2011 because when a party is in Government for 3 years it is supposed to govern, not spend the whole time complaining about the world economy and the previous Government. The New Zealand public expects leadership. They have not had leadership from John Key. They have not had leadership from this National Government. They have had sound bites, they have had focus groups, they have had a 9-day fortnight—which was cancelled—and they have had a cycle track to nowhere, which was the best idea of a job summit.

There is no plan, there is no future, and that is why New Zealanders are talking about leaving this country. That is why young New Zealanders are looking at their parents and saying “I don’t know if I can get a job in New Zealand that will fulfil me.”

Hon Steven Joyce: That’s absolutely outrageous.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: “Handbrake” says that that is absolutely outrageous. He says that it is outrageous that New Zealanders are losing hope. One of the reasons why they are losing hope is that they cannot get broadband, I say to the Minister for Communications and Information Technology. Nearly 2 years ago the Broadband Investment Fund was ready to run, and Maurice Williamson promised roll-out within a year. Fifteen months in, that Minister has yet to make a decision. There is not yet a bankable project in the hopper, and not 1 millimetre of broadband fibre has been laid under his $1.5 billion hole—not 1 millimetre. The information and communications technology sector is asking why John Key is loading up that Minister with portfolios when he cannot do even the basics in the one portfolio he started with. He cannot do the basics in the one portfolio he started with. Where is our faster, cheaper broadband? It is not here. That is one of the reasons why young New Zealanders are going overseas. They are going overseas because they have lost hope in the so-called brighter future that they were promised in the step change they were promised. They have lost hope. That is what we have heard as we have been going around the country.

If the Government thinks that the answer to its problems is to raise GST, where has that Government been? Ordinary New Zealanders do not like that idea, and they can tell the difference between a tax rise and a plan for growth. There is no plan for growth. There is no step change. There is no brighter future.

PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): I rise to talk on the Budget Policy Statement. Unlike the last speaker, who accused my colleague of staring at his other colleague, I say it is surely better than staring at oneself for most of the time, as that member did. The “Prince of Ponsonby” claims he travels up and down the country, listening to the people. The “Prince of Ponsonby” is used to sipping a latte in a Ponsonby cafe on a Saturday morning. But I digress.

I come back to the Budget Policy Statement before us, which the last speaker did not refer to once. The first page of the executive summary in the Budget Policy Statement says that New Zealand is on the road to recovery—and it is, under this Government. The previous Government put through a number of policies that have almost destroyed our economy. The Budget Policy Statement confirms that the Government’s focus in this year 2010 is on getting the economy growing again. Its focus is on getting the economy growing again, and ensuring that growth is higher and more sustainable in the years to come. It supports the statement made by the Prime Minister in this very Chamber on 9 February. He set out the framework for a significant programme of economic and social policies that this Government will roll out in the coming years.

There has been a lot of comment about what the Budget on 20 May will hold. I must admit that I myself do not know the contents of the Budget, but certainly the debate that has occurred in this Chamber around tax and around productivity is healthy. It is about what this Government wants to achieve. What does it want to achieve? The Government’s focus is on the long-term growth potential of this country, New Zealand. It is about increasing our savings rates. It is about increasing exports—and I will come to the question of exports. It is also about investment in productive resources.

Along the way, we will come into a few speed bumps. One of the things I have heard out in the electorate and in Maungakiekie, where a number of small to medium sized businesses are located, is that there are some very grave fears around unemployment. There are grave fears around the exchange rate, for example. It is the high exchange rate that precludes our productive sector from getting ahead. One of the other things that is clear from this Budget Policy Statement is the debt levels. The debt levels and the fiscal position of our economy are quite grave, and we face another 6 years of deficits—6 years of borrowing $240 million a week. That is something we have to bear in mind. I know that my colleague the Hon Sir Roger Douglas referred to those debt levels, and referred to some of the measures that he would like to see taken to beat back some of the debt that we have incurred over time.

But to put it into context, some of the speakers opposite have referred to what they gave us as a Government in terms of the economy. Let me talk about a few of the things they gave us. They gave us falling economic growth of 0.2 percent in 2008-09. They gave us rising unemployment. They gave us high inflation of 3.4 percent of CPI growth in 2008-09. They gave us a rising current account deficit of 9 percent of GDP. The “member for Ponsonby” knows that. He knows that annual productivity growth—

Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am reluctant to interrupt the member’s speech, but there is a practice in the House of referring to members either by their name or by the electorate they represent. The member has twice now referred to a member of Parliament by an electorate that does not exist.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: All members must refer to a person by his or her full name, or by Mr, Mrs, Ms, and not use abbreviations. We do not use the practice here in our Parliament of referring to an electorate. Some Parliaments do, but the New Zealand Parliament does not. I ask the member to continue.

PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA: Mr Robertson knows that the annual productivity growth in this country over the last 9 years has been 1.1 percent per annum. The Hon Sir Roger Douglas said that had the productivity levels been the same as under the previous Government, we would have had over $100 more per week per worker. That is quite clear. The real tragedy here is—

Hon Tau Henare: Labour.

PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA: I say to Mr Henare that the real tragedy here is that the tradable sector of our economy has been in recession for 5 years. Government spending has gone up by 50 percent over the last 5 years, but the tradable sector—the sector that exports and the industries that import—has declined by 10 percent over the last 5 years. That is a tragedy. We can ask why it is a tragedy. It is a tragedy because while that sector declines and diminishes, the standard of living we are able to have in this country will also decline. It is a tragedy because if we do not grow the pie that is “New Zealand Incorporated”, the numbers—

Hon David Cunliffe: What is the member doing for exporters?

PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA: The amount and quality of social services that that member would like to see roll out diminishes over time. It is a tragedy because while the tradable sector declines and diminishes, jobs and opportunities for those out there looking for them also decline.

As a country we have a clear choice here. We either carry on down the same path of the previous Government, of increased Government spending and a lack of fiscal restraint, or we can set our sights higher and create a country where hard-working Kiwis are able to get ahead, raise their families, and look forward to a comfortable retirement. Our end game is quite clear. It is about high, long-term growth. The Prime Minister was quite clear about how we go about that. In his statement on 9 February he said that it is about six things. It is about investing in productive infrastructure, removing red tape and improving regulation, supporting business innovation and trade, improving our education and skills, lifting productivity, and strengthening the tax system.

Let us quickly look into those six things. Regarding productive infrastructure, I am glad that the Minister of Transport is here, because we now have a Minister who is about taking action. He and I visited the construction site on Māngere Bridge on Onehunga harbour 2 weeks ago. He announced that this project, which is well overdue for our community in Maungakiekie, is now 6 months ahead of schedule—6 months. That is the type of action that certainly my constituents demand of this Government.

He is also rolling out broadband, and we have had announcements on a number of roads of national significance across this country. When we look at supporting trade and business innovation, we see Mr Groser, who has negotiated a number of free-trade agreements that will benefit this country, reduce the barriers to trade and increase the access to the markets of those firms that I discussed earlier—the exportable, tradable sector. That is the sector we are trying to assist.

Our Government is also about improving education and skills. Last week I was with the Hon Anne Tolley, talking to our parents and our teachers about how national standards will lift the education of our children. The parents loved it. They welcomed the fact that the Minister was out there, listening and talking to the electorate. It was a good exchange between the Minister and parents. May I say a final thing before I wind this up. It is about the tax system.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The level of interjection is too high, because there is this cross-play. They should be rare and reasonable. Interjections are fine but when I cannot hear the speaker, that is unacceptable.

PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA: I am sorry; I will have to speak up. We heard the Leader of the Opposition slam the proposed tax changes that have not been finalised. Yet here we have a man who leads the Labour Party who was part of a Government that raised GST and did not compensate those same middle-class and lower-income families that he now supposedly defends.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): We are here today, in March 2010, approximately halfway through the term of the National Government. In a month or two the Minister of Finance will be delivering the second of his three Budgets, so it is time for us in this Parliament to look at how the National Government is performing. I think we should look at a couple of questions. At the time of this Budget fiscal update, we should look at how the Government is doing, whether it is achieving what National said to electors it would achieve, whether it is keeping or breaking its promises, and how the future is looking.

I suppose the first point to be made when we are looking at the Budget Policy Statement is that we should have some focus on the performance of the Minister of Finance. One thing I would say at the start is that he is a very backward-looking Minister of Finance. He spends his whole time, even now, coming up to his second Budget, looking back and inventing criticisms of the previous Government rather than advancing the interests of our country. We heard it again today. He was out there again with the Crosby/Textor speech, saying that the previous Labour-led Government had 9 years of economic mismanagement. It falls upon me, as it did with prior speakers, to show just how ridiculous that assertion is. We reduced Government debt very significantly. Gross debt went down from 38 percent of GDP to under 20 percent of GDP. It was 17.7 percent at the time of the election. We reduced net debt down to virtually nothing. Unemployment was amongst the lowest in the world at 3.4 percent. Growth in New Zealand during that period was higher on average than it was in the United States, the whole of Europe, Japan, or the United Kingdom. Indeed, during the period of our Government, it was virtually identical to growth in Australia during the same period. It was a very strong economic performance.

Perhaps the Minister of Finance has been so backward looking because it is true—I think this is a matter of public record and I do not take pleasure in saying this—that he has been more than beset with his own irregularities and problems in terms of claims for household accommodation for his personal budget, and he has taken his eye off his more important responsibilities as Minister of Finance. Clearly, he has had a horror year.

I ask members what the Government is doing in terms of achieving what National promised New Zealanders it would achieve. Its first promise was a step change in the New Zealand economy. The Government promised to close the income gap with Australia and to rebalance the economy towards the tradable sector. What meaningful steps or changes has it made towards those goals? Sadly, the answer is none. I accept that infrastructure is important. Members on this side of the House clearly accept that. Indeed, it was the Labour Government that markedly increased spending on infrastructure, and started to improve our roading and our public transport infrastructure.

Hon David Cunliffe: Broadband.

Hon DAVID PARKER: It was Labour that made progress towards broadband, which has stalled since this Government came in, and made the necessary investments, through State-owned enterprises and other private sector electricity companies, in electricity generation and transmission. There has been no step change there since the election.

Let us turn to the next big lever that can be pulled. The Government called for a review of the taxation system. That was a wise thing to do, but it was unwise to get the review and then effectively trash its contents. It was a ruse, because in the end the Minister of Finance has done what National Governments always do. In the end, stripped to the basics, it is increasing the tax burden of low and middle income groups and decreasing the tax paid more than proportionately by those who already earn the most. That is what National always does, that is what National has done this year, and that is what New Zealanders know it is doing. New Zealanders know that that is breaking the promise made during the election that National would not increase GST. Perhaps as important—I will not say “more important” because there is nothing worse than a broken promise—it does not go anywhere towards rebalancing the New Zealand economy.

Members on this side agree with the Minister on Finance that New Zealand’s economy has been and remains imbalanced. We invest too much in property and we do not invest enough in the productive sector. The tax levers should have been pulled to help rebalance the economy, but they have not been. The leadership shown by the Government in this area is wrong. It is bad for two reasons. One is that National’s economic ideology is so simplistic. Essentially, it is unsophisticated. National says that we should tax high-income people less and low and middle income people more. That is National’s ideology. Its ideology relates to taxation rather than to management of the economy. So the Government is failing to achieve a step change in New Zealand.

The gap with Australia, rather than closing, is widening in every area except one, and that is unemployment. It should be of no pleasure to the Government that in the one area where New Zealand is narrowing with Australia it is going in the wrong direction, even though it inherited a lower unemployment rate than was the case in Australia. New Zealand’s unemployment rate is growing, while Australia’s has been dropping.

Hon David Cunliffe: Did we catch up?

Hon DAVID PARKER: We have caught up on unemployment by getting a worse unemployment record, and in every other way we are doing worse.

There is another area of important policy where the Government sits on its hands, and that relates to monetary policy. Last year Labour said that it no longer agreed with the current monetary policy settings and that the consensus had broken down. At the time both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance said that Labour was wrong, that it was all perfect, and that New Zealand had the best monetary policy in the world. What has happened in the last month? The International Monetary Fund has produced a report stating that Labour was right and National was wrong on this issue. The report highlights the difficulties caused to the tradable sector, to the real economy, from the consequences of New Zealand’s existing monetary policy. It points out the damage that it has done through imbalance and the risks that it creates to the financial sector, and also notes the difficulties that are faced by our tradable sector. Our exporters face a volatile exchange rate. Still the National Government sits on its hands and does nothing.

If we look at how the Government is doing, the answer is not well. How is the future looking? The future is looking increasingly dire for New Zealand. The latest Treasury and Reserve Bank forecasts show our current account deficit will increase in the next couple of years, to more than double its present rate. That means that if, as predicted, it goes back to 7.2 percent of GDP, every year New Zealand is losing its sovereignty. Every year more of our main enterprises are owned by overseas interests. Every year New Zealand, as a country, is getting poorer not by a small amount but by a predicted 7.2 percent of GDP per annum. Far from rebalancing the economy so as to encourage exports, savings, and investment, the imbalances are on the rise.

The National Government is leading New Zealand towards a repeat of the worst excesses in consumption and property-related investment. It has not done anything meaningful to change the policy settings. New Zealand will have a future of poor savings. The Government has undermined KiwiSaver; it has done nothing to fix it. We have inadequate savings, and we have monetary policy settings that mean New Zealand enterprises are paying higher interest rates than their competitors overseas. They suffer the double detriment of a volatile exchange rate and interest rates that are higher than the rates paid by the businesses competing to buy those same assets in New Zealand. The competitiveness of New Zealand businesses decreases as we see the hollowing out of the New Zealand economy, and the gap between New Zealand and Australia getting worse. Indeed, we see more and more of New Zealand being owned by Australia and by other companies from other jurisdictions, including China. New Zealanders are getting poorer and the gap between Australia and New Zealand is growing, which is the exact opposite to what was promised. We are coming up to the second Budget, and the Government is not achieving what it told the New Zealand electors it would achieve.

AARON GILMORE (National): Today is St Patrick’s Day. No one has mentioned that, so I would like to pass on a blessing that was passed down to my family: “May your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow, and may trouble avoid you wherever you go.” That is probably a good adage for the Labour Party today.

Phil Goff was the first Opposition speaker today, but he did not talk about the economy or about the Budget Policy Statement, and he would not let David Cunliffe speak first on the Budget Policy Statement. What does that tell members? Annette King was worried about tax cuts, migration, and wage gaps. Russel Norman talked about peak oil, again. Sir Roger Douglas talked about the need for 29 percent Government spending to GDP, and I will get to all of this in a minute. David Cunliffe was so frustrated with Steven Joyce all he could do was call him names. He fixated on Steven Joyce’s hand on the brake. David Parker spoke about how he believed this Government has done nothing and current account deficits have skyrocketed. All I can say is that dreams are free.

This Government outlined through the Prime Minister’s statement and the Budget Policy Statement six key pillars for the future of our country. National will reduce red tape, improve infrastructure, change tax, bring in some innovation and improve trade, improve the skills in our country, and achieve some public sector productivity. What are we even doing so far to get there? Let us talk about a few of these things. National set up a whole bunch of task forces, but I must give some credit to Labour for the first one. Labour set up the Capital Market Development Taskforce during its time in Government. Good on Labour! It was a good piece of work to initiate, but National finished it. The task force has pointed out a bunch of changes to our capital markets.

Hon Trevor Mallard: You did nothing.

AARON GILMORE: Well, we will see. What else came out? National set up the Tax Working Group. The Tax Working Group came out with many changes to suggest our tax system is broken—76 percent of our tax is paid by 10 percent of New Zealanders, and that cannot continue. What will happen? Good young people will jump on planes and go overseas. That is what happened under the previous Labour Government when it was in power. Thousands of young people left this country and did not come home. What has happened in the last 6 to 12 months? Twenty-two thousand more people have come home from overseas. They believe in a National-led Government and in John Key as Prime Minister. That is the signal that shows the changes that people believe in.

We have seen reform and changes, as announced as part of the Budget Policy Statement, put into action in a large number of other areas. There are major changes to the management of the Crown balance sheet, accident compensation, KiwiRail, and student loans, which were all an absolute mess and needed some changes. We have outlined a series of areas for change, to bring those things back under control. In relation to KiwiRail, essentially we paid $1 billion for a trainset. The only one who was happy about that was a gentleman in Australia, who made headlines about it. We are trying hard to fix those things and to fix accident compensation. We inherited billions of dollars worth of problems around that.

Last week we had the pleasure of hearing some further announcements of changes to science and innovation, particularly in the Crown research institute sector. We need to increase and lengthen the contracts that exist, and give Crown research institutes a bit more flexibility in some arrangements. I think that is a wonderful thing. Last week the Prime Minister announced that the world-leading players in our science sector would receive over $1 million from the Government. I have spent a bit of time with those people, and talked particularly about the development of superconductors.

Hon Trevor Mallard: You taught them most of what they know!

AARON GILMORE: Not exactly, but in Mr Mallard’s electorate this has been a wonderful development for the good people of Industrial Research Ltd, and I thank them for that. We have announced some major changes to the electricity sector to stop the 87 percent price rise that occurred in the last 9 years under a Labour Government.

What is the problem with Labour? Its members are suffering from what I believe my good colleague Tony Ryall called “relevance deprivation syndrome”. They do not want to talk about the Budget. They do not want to talk about the future of New Zealand. They want to nitpick about little details and argue amongst themselves. The three triplets were sitting here, but I notice they have all gone. The three triplets of Labour Party doom were all sitting there, worrying about the leadership ambitions of the Labour Party and worrying about nitpicking issues of bus trips and naughty kids. Yesterday a leading Labour backbench member criticised the behaviour of children on planes. That is all those members can talk about—children on planes. They are not worrying about real family issues. They are not worrying about the important things that matter to New Zealanders. That is why when members go out and talk to the people—not go on a bus trip with five mates—they will hear members say they care about what matters in people’s homes and to individuals. They care about the economy, they care about their future, and they care about their families.

We heard that Labour members are worried about jobs, and things like that. I will give members an example of what occurred recently in Christchurch. Under Labour, aquaculture was stuck in a rut. There was 9 years of doing nothing at all; nothing was going to get approved. In recent months approval has been given for an offshore mussel farm—the first ever in New Zealand’s history—in Pegasus Bay. That farm will create 200 jobs and $60 million a year worth of exports to New Zealand. Labour sat there for 9 years because it did not want to do anything. This development will create 200 more jobs that those members did not care about because they did not want to do anything. That is another example of what Labour did.

National has announced some big changes in welfare reform as part of the Budget Policy Statement, and I will touch on one in particular. We have this great policy called Community Max. Some wonderful things and projects have happened in my part of town, but Labour members were running around and criticising Community Max as a waste of time and a wasted effort. Well, I would love to see whether the member for Rimutaka, Chris Hipkins, actually thinks that. I quote from this article, where he said that anything that gives people a second chance at education is a wonderful investment. He went to a camp last week on Community Max to learn about people’s achievements and he said what a wonderful thing that was. That was from a member of the party that has been running around criticising our policy openly in this House, but at home in his community, he thinks that Community Max is a wonderful thing because it works. It works, and we have seen Mr Hipkins turn round and prove it.

The Government is worried about jobs and unemployment, but the key thing is getting the private sector to invest and create jobs. They are good companies like Holcim Cement, based in Christchurch. It is looking at spending over $550 million on a new cement plant down in Ōāmaru, in my colleague Jacqui Dean’s electorate. Under the previous Labour Government, that company would not have done that. It was going to shut up shop and leave the country. Well, I can tell members that I spent some days with people from Holcim Cement during the adjournment. I am pleased to say that they are very keen to invest in New Zealand under a National Government, because they like our six pillars. They like the fact that we are happy to invest in infrastructure. They like the fact that we will reform the tax system and bring in some more innovation. They like the fact that we are happy to invest in public sector productivity. They love the fact that we will invest in national standards that will bring in a more skilled workforce for our country. Those are the things that really matter to mum and dad out there in the community. They are not worried about nitpicking about where kids sit on a plane or about who will be the next leader of the Labour Party. I will touch on another aspect that I think—

Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s a great Facebook group.

AARON GILMORE: I will leave my long-suffering colleagues over there in Labour alone. The Green member Russel Norman said that he was worried about oil. Well, I am pleased to say that in the last few years, oil has become one of the leading exports in New Zealand. I think that is a wonderful thing. Long may the oil price continue while we continue to pump out 50,000 to 60,000 barrels a day from the new oilfields. In our party, we believe that one of the great things to get our economy growing is selling the stuff that comes from underground to our good friends in China and India who are very happy to buy it, because over there—

Grant Robertson: Things under the ground in the national parks?

AARON GILMORE: We see the Opposition members run around and hear them talk about mining in national parks. Well, it was that party in Government that approved one of the most successful operations in Pike River Coal on the West Coast of the South Island. There is a word to describe that, but I will not talk about what it is.

Our wealth of natural resources has the ability to create a massive number of jobs. I know particularly that in the oil sector alone we have the ability to triple our exports and create thousands of jobs, up and down the country, both in the South Island and in the North Island. Right now companies are drilling for oil up and down our coasts, and it is a wonderful situation.

I will sum up by talking about what we have heard about this Budget Policy Statement being another plank and a wonderful step in creating a brighter future for New Zealand, led by our wonderful Prime Minister, John Key. It is so good that the public of New Zealand has endorsed it through giving us our continued high poll ratings and by their lack of support for Labour. Those members over there cannot even get to see more people on their bus tour than the number of their own MPs whom they have wandering around the country. Long may that situation continue, because I look forward to spending many years on this side of the House, hearing members on the other side of the House whinge and moan. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the House take note of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement 2010 and Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update 2009.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4; Māori Party 5; United Future 1.

Noes 53

New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Progressive 1.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill

First Reading

NICKY WAGNER (National): I move, That the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be considered by the Government Administration Committee.

Christchurch is considered the most English of New Zealand cities, with the river Avon flowing through its town, its Anglican cathedral, and its neo-Gothic buildings, including those of Christ’s College. It is not surprising, because the city and the whole Canterbury province began life as a Church of England colony, as envisioned by Edward Gibbon Wakefield and John Robert Godley.

Christ’s College was part of that vision, and it began in 1850 as a school for early settlers. Although it was directly modelled on the philosophies of the English public school, it was on a much smaller scale, being run out of two rooms in the immigration barracks at Lyttelton. It provided a classical education, including Greek and Latin, modern languages, mathematics, English, history, and geography. The students, mostly boys, were also expected to conduct scientific experiments, to draw, and to sing. The school was named Christ’s College by J E Fitzgerald, Canterbury’s first superintendent, after his old college at Cambridge.

In 1855 the Church Property Trustees founded Christ’s College as a separate educational institution, and it moved to its present site at the foot of the cultural precinct in Christchurch, with 35 pupils and a staff of three. Certain land endowments were handed over to it, mostly town lands. In the same year Parliament passed the Christ’s College Ordinance, which incorporates the deed of foundation incorporating Christ’s College, Canterbury as a body corporate having perpetual succession. Over the last 155 years, Christ’s College has been subject to further legislation to address various issues that have arisen and difficulties that the college has faced regarding the administration of its property and funds.

The Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill, which I bring forward today, amends the 1910 Christ’s College (Canterbury) Act to authorise the governing body of the college to apply property in certain circumstances to the benefit of the college, even though the property is not applied for the original purpose for which it was given or vested in the college. Over the years the college has received numerous bequests from various donors. The terms of some of them require that the annual income generated by their funds be applied to a specific purpose—for example, the provision of prizes for certain subjects or sports, or the provision of scholarships to pupils who meet certain criteria. Accordingly, the college holds these funds on trust to be applied for those specific purposes. Although the 1910 Act gives the governing body wide powers, section 5 of the Act makes it clear that nothing in this Act is to be construed to give the power to use “any moneys or property for purposes other than were intended by any conveyance, transfer, grant, gift, deposition, or declaration of trust setting out the purposes for which any property was given to or vested in the College.”—that is, the college must apply the funds to the purpose specified by the donor. This reflects the common law duty of trustees to comply with the terms of any trust. But let me make it clear: the college wishes to, and, as a trustee, must, ensure that to the fullest extent possible the objects of the trust continue to be met. However, the stated objects of a number of trusts have, over the years, become largely redundant. Also, some of the trusts receive income that is either in excess of, or insufficient for, their needs.

The college is not alone in trying to manage this issue. The Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill has recently been passed in this House, and it dealt with the same problem, as did the Anglican Church Trusts Act in 1981, the Presbyterian Church Property Amendment Act in 1996, and the Roman Catholic Bishops Empowering Act of 1997. As a registered charity, the college could apply for approval of a scheme under the Charitable Trusts Act 1957, but as was recognised by the House in passing the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill, that is lengthy, expensive, and impractical, given the number of trusts that have to be varied.

The Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill does not confer power to use properties for purposes other than those that were intended. The board is aware that where it is possible to carry out the donor’s intention, those intentions must continue to be honoured. However, in certain circumstances, when it is not possible to use the income for a stated purpose, the governing body may use it in other ways to benefit the college. Those circumstances are when the original purposes have become wholly or in part redundant, uncertain as to their application, impractical to implement, or the property generates income that is inadequate or in excess of the amount necessary for those purposes. There are many examples of the purposes of bequests becoming redundant, such as funding for sons of soldiers who have suffered or fallen during the First or Second World Wars, and funding for students from Christchurch orphanages that no longer exist. There are also prizes for sporting events that do not happen any longer and for subjects that are no longer taught. And nowadays the funding streams do not always work effectively. There are scholarships that are too small in dollar terms to be useful, and funds that grow so quickly that they cannot be dispersed under the original rules. If the funds cannot be used for the stated purposes, they just accumulate in the school’s accounts, and despite the intentions of the donors, they can do nothing to benefit either the school or the students.

This change in legislation is necessary for the effective use of bequests from past donors to the college. The Attorney-General has concluded that the bill is consistent with rights and freedoms affirmed by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. I seek support for this bill so that it can be sent to the Government Administration Committee to be considered, and so that donated funds and property can continue to be used appropriately for the benefit of the college and its students.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): The Labour Opposition will support the referral of the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill to the Government Administration Committee, but will not necessarily support it any further, unless some amendments are made to it.

There are three areas that I want to discuss. The first is the very broad nature of new subsection (4), inserted by clause 5, which is the circumstances clause and, effectively, the operative clause of the bill. In my opinion the rights to overturn the wishes of donors are much more than are necessary, and there are not the protections that the select committee decided were appropriate in the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill that came before the House not very long ago. I say to the people who drafted the bill that I think it is poor drafting for them not to take into account the view of the House on what was seen to be the excessively liberal nature of the provisions of that earlier bill. I am concerned about that, and there has been an attempt to take a degree of liberty with the House, beyond that which was shown by way of the amendment of the Methodist Church legislation in the fairly recent past. I think a better approach would have been to take account of that; then things would probably have gone more smoothly.

The second point I make is one of politeness. Although, with a local bill, there is a requirement that bills come through the local member, there is not such a requirement for private bills. But I think most members of the House are aware of the fact that the normal approach is to invite the local member of Parliament to bring the legislation to the House. I say to the governing authorities of Christ’s College that the fact that they have chosen not to do that has been noted in the House. One would expect people who see themselves as important in the way of historical precedence to follow that history, unless there was a good reason not to. I understand that no invitation was given to the local member to introduce this bill, and that lack of politeness has been noted by this side of the House. I would expect that at some stage the authorities responsible for the bill would like to explain that to the House.

The major point I will make—and I will be interested in the views of the Minister of Education when she speaks on this bill—is that it appears that, as with legislation on other independent schools, there is no reference in this bill to the question of the day in education, and that is the issue of national standards.

Jo Goodhew: Oh, pardon?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well, national standards, I am told, will run through to National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2. I understand that Christ’s College, notwithstanding the habits of some other people, offers National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2, but we see within this bill no reference whatsoever to national standards or to the willingness of Christ’s College to take on board what is seen as a far-reaching and important approach to improving the standards of education. I want to know why that has not been included in the bill. Do the proprietors of Christ’s College think that national standards are so poor and so useless that their school would go backwards if they had national standards? Because that is the view of a lot of schools. A lot of decile 10 schools and a lot of very wealthy schools are concerned about the diversion of their teachers to the testing regime that is being implemented by the Minister, and about the fact that their standards will drop as a result of a removal of focus from teaching and learning. When the member who is promoting the bill speaks in reply, I want to know whether she has been involved in that sort of discussion with the proprietors of Christ’s College.

I want to know what proposals the school has to do with the excess money it has obtained, as is made clear in new subsection 4(c). I am very surprised that we have had no quantification under new subsection 4(b) or 4(c), or, for that matter, 4(a). And I wonder whether the member in charge of the bill has been briefed as to the quantities that are involved. Seeing that the Government is so keen on national standards—and I will talk to my colleagues on the relevant select committee—it might well be that, as part of the legislation, it is appropriate to set up a fund to finance the implementation of national standards at Christ’s College. It would be good to see whether that is a priority for the proprietors of Christ’s College. Of course, the standards go through to year 10. Christ’s College, I understand, has students in years 9 and 10. I am not sure whether it has years 7 and 8. I ask the member in charge of the bill whether it has years 7 and 8.

Nicky Wagner: 9 and 10.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: It starts at year 9. So for those years—years 9 and 10—the national standards apply to that school.

Jacqui Dean: You should’ve asked your own member.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: No, the member in charge of the bill is meant to be on top of the issues. She is the one who has been briefed by Christ’s College on the bill—quite improperly. I must say that Nicky Wagner’s answer to the question today showed a higher standard of understanding of the area of national standards that she was being asked about than Anne Tolley did earlier in the day. But I must say that that is not necessarily a high test, and it does not mean that she is coming anywhere near the ministerial standard. She has not received an Achieved yet, but she is showing potential and she is showing improvement in a way that is not necessarily shared by her front-bench colleague the Minister of Education.

But I will ask the Minister of Education, when she contributes to this debate, to explain why it is not important for students at Christ’s College to meet national standards. Why have they been exempt from the assessment regime? Why do parents at Christ’s College not get a report based on national standards in the way that those from surrounding schools do? Why is there an opt-out arrangement for them? Are they considered to be too good for national standards? Is it because they are too rich and so national standards do not apply? What is the reason? I am sure that the member who is in charge of the bill, Nicky Wagner, will explain when she speaks at the end of the debate, but I am also sure that it is a matter that is appropriate for the select committee to consider. I am surprised that the bill is going to the Government Administration Committee. It is fair to say—

Grant Robertson: It’s an outrage.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well, it does not know much about education. It has a very good chairperson, but then, the Education and Science Committee has a good chairperson as well, Allan Peachey, who is full and frank on education matters. He should be the Minister of Education. I am sure that between Allan and me, we could have got this bill sorted out. We will vote for the bill but there is no guarantee of our ongoing support for it.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I suspect that the proprietors of Christ’s College are watching the debate this afternoon from their staffroom, as indeed are, possibly, the senior students of Christ’s College. If that is the case, I send them the greetings of Parliament and particularly those of the member in charge of the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill, Nicky Wagner, who gave a very good opening speech when she introduced it. I guess those proprietors, staff, and pupils of Christ’s College will be utterly bemused by the quality of the previous contribution to this debate, where the politics of jealousy and the politics of sour grapes were on display for all to see. I think that this bill deserves better than that in this Parliament, and we on this side of the House intend to deliver better than that.

The bill is being sent to the Government Administration Committee. That is an excellent select committee, which will give due consideration to the matters raised by both Nicky Wagner and the Opposition member Trevor Mallard, who made a poor contribution to this debate. In particular, I turn to new section 5(4)(a) of the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Act, to be inserted by clause 5, which specifies the circumstances in which property may be applied for other purposes under new section 5(3). I will go through those circumstances. The circumstances are, firstly, that “the purposes for which the property was given or vested have become (wholly or in part) redundant, uncertain as to application, or impractical to implement; …”. When this bill goes to the Government Administration Committee, members of the committee will be very interested in what is meant by that. I refer back to the speech of my excellent colleague, Nicky Wagner. She notes some examples of purposes of bequests that have become redundant, such as funding for sons of soldiers who had suffered or fallen during the First World War and Second World War. It is worth remembering that the school has a very proud history of sons of the school going off and fighting in those wars. I suspect that there are not any sons of those soldiers who are currently, or who ever will be, at the school, so therefore the purpose of that bequest has become well and truly redundant.

Hon Trevor Mallard: But what about a minor amendment to make it “other wars”. We don’t need to have a general catch-all like this.

JACQUI DEAN: The member opposite is asking about a minor amendment, thus showing that he has not even bothered to read the general policy statement in the explanatory note of the bill, which points out that any proposed amendments can be taken by the trustees to the High Court for approval. However, given the nature of the number of trusts with which this school operates, the trustees would be forced to approach the High Court on multiple occasions. That is simply costly—$50,000 is the cost. My colleagues would rather see that money spent on educating the boys at Christ’s College. So I am sorry that the member opposite has shown such a poor grasp of this bill, but I can assure members that the Government Administration Committee will be asking what the provisions of new section 5(4) of the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Act will apply to in particular.

I have given one example, which relates to funding for sons of soldiers. There are also other circumstances that have been noted by my excellent colleague Nicky Wagner, who is the promoter of this bill—and rightly so—relating to students from Christchurch orphanages that no longer exist. If the orphanage does not exist any longer, the bequest then becomes unusable. What is the point of having funds accumulating in the coffers of Christ’s College without there being any use for them?

I look forward, as the deputy chairperson of the Government Administration Committee, to having a good discussion and a good examination of this bill, and I am confident that, notwithstanding the politics of envy, jealousy, and sour grapes displayed by members opposite, we will return this bill to the House with due consideration. Thank you.

BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central): I am pleased to rise and support the first reading of the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill. As my colleague Trevor Mallard has indicated, the Labour Opposition is quite prepared to see this bill go to the Government Administration Committee, but we have some questions about the detail. Christ’s College is a venerable institution in Christchurch. It has a proud 160-year history. It has had a number of distinguished pupils—including, I think, former member of this House Dr Michael Cullen—amongst the alumni of that school.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I think he mentioned it in his maiden speech.

BRENDON BURNS: I think he did. He got a very good education at Christ’s College courtesy of others in the community, as I recall.

Christ’s College sits on the edge of Hagley Park in our city of Christchurch, within my electorate of Christchurch Central. The world has moved on since Dr Cullen was a pupil, and the school is left with a number of trusts that have purposes no longer fit for current pupils, hence this amending legislation. I was very pleased to visit Christ’s College last year with Phil Goff, and I noted that the school had in place perhaps the best broadband and information and communication technology infrastructure in the country, which is a feat that I am sure every other school in New Zealand would like to emulate—and one day soon, maybe. The point is that trusts have been established for purposes that are no longer appropriate. I should imagine that things like Greek and Latin might be supported by some of these trusts, and with all due deference to my excellent parliamentary executive assistant, I say that Greek is not the highest priority order today in New Zealand.

This bill has parallels with another bill that I was very pleased to see pass through the House. That bill was for another institution headquartered in my electorate of Christchurch Central, the Methodist Church of New Zealand. Last year we passed the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill, which had a similar issue in that a number of trusts had been left by legacy and bequest that were no longer appropriate—in that instance it was around the issue of orphanages, which that church no longer runs. So instead of having to go to the High Court for an amendment on each of those numerous trusts, an all-purpose bill was introduced in my name. This bill has the same approach. It will be authorising the governing body of the college to apply for changes to trusts and to use those trusts for more appropriate and fitting purposes, while staying in keeping with the original intention of the donor or bequeather of the moneys.

There are some concerns around exactly how those trusts will be wound up and how those funds will be passed across. Those concerns were at the core of some considerable discussion and debate in the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill. In that instance we passed amendments; I recall that the member opposite from Selwyn was quite instrumental in insisting that there should be considerable vetting and change in relation to making amendments to trust deeds. Obviously a very, very important principle is at stake: when somebody has defined a particular purpose for a trust, to amend it is not something that one would traverse lightly. In the case of the Methodist Church, firstly, all changes needed to be referred to the Attorney-General, and, secondly, where changes were being proposed trustees were to be consulted. That is the sort of change we might be looking at in the select committee process to be absolutely assured that, while we are providing for increased flexibility for Christ’s College, the original purpose and intent is indeed maintained by the changes being introduced.

I pick up on the comments that my colleague Trevor Mallard made around national standards. He is correct: Christ’s College is exempt, as a non-State school, from the introduction of national standards. That is a curiosity. Does it mean that the school does not believe that it needs to meet national standards, or does it mean, as I think may be the case, it believes that it is already well above those standards? Whatever it is, the exemption raised a question about why other schools cannot have exemptions; why we do not go down the line of looking at a trial, as the New Zealand Educational Institute and other good organisations are suggesting; and why the Government is so adamant that it will introduce these standards across the board except in private schools and in kura kaupapa Māori. It begs the question as to why they should get exemptions.

Nonetheless, with reference to this bill, the Labour Opposition is very prepared to support its being referred to select committee for some fine-tuning.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to comment on the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill, but I will start by acknowledging a loss to this country—and, indeed, to Christchurch as well as to the rest of the country—with the passing yesterday of Bevan Tīpene-Matua of Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu, Rangitāne, and Raukawa. Bevan was a Green Party member, but also a passionate educator who worked for many years in Christchurch before he went back to his home in Porangahau. He was also the first Māori research fellow at the Crop and Food Research agency with a special interest in intellectual property, plant variety rights, and tikanga Māori. Bevan’s death is a huge loss to education, to his hapū and whānau, and to the country as a whole. Our hearts go out today to the whānau at Porangahau. It is a loss for the Green Party and it is, indeed, a loss for us all, especially for his whānau and his tamariki.

However, returning to the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill, I rise to speak on it because we are actually voting against the bill, based on our view that it is not well drafted and lacks sufficient checks and balances when it seeks to change the trust deed. In the past we have supported private legislation to expedite the handling of trusts held by the Anglican, Presbyterian, Catholic, and Methodist Churches, and in all of the previous cases we supported that legislation through the House. The tests contained with that legislation closely resemble those found within Part III of the Charitable Trusts Act 1957, except that any change does not require High Court approval and is therefore considerably cheaper to implement. Those tests are sufficient. However, unlike previous legislation, this bill does not contain significant checks and balances when changes to trust deeds are made. For example, sections 10 to 13 of the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Act 2009 provide significant public accountability measures, including, in section 12, oversight by the Attorney-General. This bill has no similar protective checks or balances.

It is unfortunate that the school needs to move legislation through the House, which is itself an expensive process, merely to better expedite the use of property entrusted to it. Christ’s College has a highly specific mandate when compared with the mainstream churches, but the powers entrusted to the board must nevertheless be balanced by good process. Is this legislation in the best interests of the school’s beneficiaries? Yes, mostly it is. But this is bad law, and we will have had little opportunity to improve it because we have no one on the select committee.

We are also concerned that the Government gave $35 million to private schools, at a time when there have been cuts right across the board to the public education system. Even worse is the national standards debacle link with private schools. Private schools such as Christ’s College have resources that many public schools can only dream about. The risk of league tables from national standards may help the private sector schools, because they may look good to some parents who can afford to abandon struggling public schools. However, this reduces the community to individuals buying education if they can afford it, rather than maintaining and building social equity through a strengthened public system. The Green Party firmly opposes any undermining of the public school system in favour of the private system. The entrenchment of educational inequity and the measuring of schools against a rigid educational standard will not address this problem.

Another question we have with regard to this bill is a deeper question about the benefits to mana whenua. How many impoverished tamariki from local hapū benefit from this school being sited within their rohe? Given that there are major questions around the Kemp purchase in Te Wai Pounamu, we can never assume that all land sales to the Crown, and then to the churches for private schools—as in this college’s case—can be described as being without the slightest taint of inequity. And have mana whenua been consulted on this bill?

So, although Christ’s College and some other private schools may benefit from issues such as league tables, we are not concerned about protecting their business. We are committed to protecting vulnerable children for whom education is a struggle, and to supporting schools that do their best with very little. I will never forget, when I was a lecturer in many schools, visiting a wealthy private school where the students were provided with wetsuits as a matter of course in order to do kayak training in heated swimming pools, and it had a library DVD screen that took up a whole, beautiful wall, whereas last year I visited some students at a public high school near Wellington where the students asked me whether some schools actually had a swimming pool. The gap is already big enough, in terms of resources, between public schools and the wonderfully resourced private schools that I have referred to. We do not need to increase that gap.

Although we are not supporting this bill, we are taking this opportunity to say we challenge the private school system in terms of the benefits and privileges it confers on those who have access to it. We demand that the Government puts its energy into and emphasis on maintaining and strengthening the public school system. We have raised legal and technical points that may be addressed at the select committee, although we will not be there to raise those concerns. But at a deeper level we want to stand for a public education system—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): The member’s time has expired.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker, kia ora tātau katoa. Ko tāku i te tuatahi, he whaiwhai haere i te kōrero a tēnei nā mō tērā kua riro ki tua o te pae. Ko Bevan Tīpene-Matua tērā, ā, he uri o ngā waka o ngā iwi e kōrerohia ake nei; a Ngāti Kahungunu, ko Ngāi Tahu, ko Rangitāne, Ngāti Raukawa. He tangata ngākaunui ki te āhuatanga o te mātauranga o te tangata i noho tahi ia i roto o Te Wai Pounamu, i Ōtautahi tonu. Nō reira, e aroha atu ana ki a ia mō tōna whānau e rongo nei i te āhuatanga o mokemoke, o pani. No reira ko ia tērā.

Kāti, ka hoki mai ki te pūtake o tēnei o ngā pire kia whakatakotohia ki mua i te aroaro o te Whare Pāremata mō tōna pānuitanga tuatahi. Ko tāku, ko te kī atu ki te Whare Pāremata kei te tautoko ake te Pāti Māori ki tēnei āhuatanga i tōna tuatahitanga. Pēnei i te kura i haere nei māua ko te Shane Jones mātou ko Hone Harawira, he kura ē hia kē nei ngā tau e noho nei i te mata o te whenua. I a au e rongo ana i te kōrero a te mema nei a Nicky Wagner, āhua ōrite me kī te kaupapa o te kura ki tā te Kura o Tīpene, i te wā i a ia e ora ana, ko te whakapono ka mutu, ko te mātauranga, otirā ngā āhuatanga o te mātauranga. Nō reira, kai te waia, kai te mōhio tonu au ki te āhuatanga o ēnei momo kura.

Engari, tērā pea ko te nuinga o te Whare Pāremata ka mutu o te motu, ka pōhēhē nei kāre he paku wāhanga o te Ao Māori i roto i tēnei momo kura, engari he whakaaro hē tēnā. I a au e rangahau ana i ngā kōrero mō tēnei o ngā pire, i puta te kōrero, ē, kua puta mai tētahi mema o te Whare Pāremata i tērā kura tonu. Nā, ko te nuinga pea, kāre i te tino mōhio ko tētahi o ngā mema Pāremata mō te, me kī, mō te takiwā o te tūru Māori ki te Rāwhiti, ko Jack Ormond tērā, ā, ko ia tērā i haere ki te kura o Christ’s College. Ko ia tērā i haere ki tāwāhi ki te pakanga tuatahi o te ao, i roto i te, me kī, a Tūmatauenga. Ka mutu, i haere ki roto o Rātana, ā, ka mutu, ka hara mai ia ki roto i te Whare Pāremata nei i te tau 1946. Ka noho mai ki konei mō ngā tau e rua tekau. I muri mai, ā, ko ia tētahi he tangata toa mō te whutupōro. Ka haere ia ki tāwāhi, ki Wīwī, ki Ingarangi i muri mai o te pakanga tuatahi o te ao, i raro i te marumaru o Aotearoa. Me kī, i noho ia hei mema o te tīma o Aotearoa i te tau 1923.

Nō reira, arā noa atu ngā hītori o tēnei kura, he kura me kī matua, he kura tuakana o te motu. He kura motuhake nei i Aotearoa roa nei, ā, ka mutu, i pūta mai ki taku mōhio, tekau tau pea i muri mai o te hainatanga mai o te Tiriti o Waitangi. Pēnei tāku e kōrero nei, ko ētahi ka pōhēhē kāre kau he paku mea o te Ao Māori i roto i tērā kura engari, i puta te kōrero kua whakaaetia, kua whakamanahia tā rātau tono, kia tuku me kī, i ngā tikanga Māori, arā, Māori performance ki te taumata tuatoru i raro i te āhuatanga o te New Zealand Qualifications Authority. Nō reira, tērā pea he kōrero ohorere tērā ki a tātau katoa.

Me kī, ko te pūtake o tēnei pire, he whakatikatika i te āhuatanga o te pire Christ’s College (Canterbury) Act 1910 me kī, kia whakawātea mai ngā uauatanga mō te whakahaere i ngā whenua, i ngā rawa kua tukuna ki roto i ngā ringaringa o te kura. Ka mutu, ko te pūtake o tēnei pire, me kī, he tuku i te mana whakahaere ki te poari ki te tuku kaupapa kē, kia kaua rātou e herea e ngā tikanga o tērā pire matua.

Nō reira, ehara i te mea he nui ngā kōrero mō tēnei pire, hoi anō, ko tā mātau ko te whai i wā mātau whāinga matua i roto i te kōrero, “He aha te mea nui”, arā, tā mātau kaupapa kōrero, arā, ko te tautoko i ngā hapori ki te whakahaere i ngā rawa kai roto i ō rātou ringaringa. He āhua rite tēnei āhuatanga ki tērā pire o ngā wātene Māori, nā te roanga o te wā, ā, kua rerekē te ao, kua rerekē ngā whakahaere, kua rerekē me kī ngā whakaaro o tēnei wā ki tērā i te wā me kī, i puta tētahi kaupapa i mua noa atu i ngā tau ē hia kē nei kua hipa. Nō reira, āhua pēnei tonu tēnei pire. Ehara i te mea he nui ngā āwangawanga, kei te kī atu te Pāti Māori tukuna ki tōna pānuitanga tuatahi ka mutu, waiho ake mā te komiti whāiti e whakatikatika ngā kōrero a te Minita, ā, ka hoki mai ki te Whare.

[Greetings to you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and to us all. The first thing for me is to follow on from the previous speaker, who paid a tribute to that person who has passed beyond the veil, namely Bevan Tīpene-Matua, a descendant of the canoes of the aforementioned tribes, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tahu, Rangitāne, and Ngāti Raukawa. He was a person committed to the education of people, and lived in communities throughout the South Island, particularly Christchurch. So my sympathy goes out to him, and his family, left lonely and bereft. That, then, is Bevan Tīpene.

So I return to the focus of this bill that has come before the House of Parliament for its first reading. The Māori Party supports the bill emphatically at this stage of the process. The college is very much like the one that we and the Hon Shane Jones and Hone Harawira attended. It is an institution that has been around for quite a long time. As I listened to the address by the member Nicky Wagner, the college’s philosophy appeared to be very much like that of St Stephen’s College, when that school existed. Religion and education, and all aspects of it, were paramount. Therefore, I am familiar with and aware of the circumstances relating to these kinds of schools.

Most of Parliament, and indeed the country, may mistakenly consider that there is not a shred of Māori association in this kind of school, but that is not true. As I researched material for this bill, it came to light that a member of Parliament had attended that college. Many may not be aware that he held the seat of Eastern Māori. That was Jack Ormond, who went to Christ’s College. He went overseas to the First World War with the Māori Battalion. He joined the Rātana movement and came to Parliament in 1946. He remained here as a member of Parliament for 20 years. He was a former champion rugby player. He toured France and England after the First World War as a New Zealand representative.

So this college has a long history. It is the oldest independent school in the country. To my knowledge, it was founded just 10 years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. As I stated earlier, some have mistakenly thought that there is not a shred to do with Māoridom in that college, but it should be noted that it has an accreditation to level 3 in Māori performance. Now, that might startle us all.

The focus of this bill is to amend the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Act 1910 and remove any difficulty in administering property invested in the college. Basically it provides the governing body with the power to apply property vested in the college for some other purpose for the benefit of the college and not be tied by any agreement in that primary Act.

It is not as though I have a great deal to say about this bill, but suffice to say that it is consistent with the main aim in our policy, “He aha te mea nui”, in that we support communities by trusting in their own locally developed solutions. This is similar in context to the legislation for Māori wardens, where changes occur over the passage of time in the fabric of society, the world, and present thinking. Therefore, legislation governing functions is now redundant. This bill is like that. Because there are not many concerns, we, the Māori Party, endorse this bill through its first reading. Any amendments by the Minister should be considered by the select committee and then reported back to the House.]

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour): Te mea tuatahi māku, e tautoko ana i ngā mihi ki tērā o ngā mate kua ’hakahuatia e te Rōpū Kākāriki mō tērā o ngā tohunga o te ao mātauranga. Nā reira, tautoko ana i ngā whakaaro mō taua rangatira.

[The first thing for me to do is to endorse the tributes made by the Green Party about one of the experts in the field of education who has passed away. So I support the sentiments expressed about that noble person.]

Labour supports the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill’s referral to the Government Administration Committee. As stated in the explanatory note, the bill amends the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Act 1910 to “remove difficulties in administering property vested in the College where the intended purpose or purposes for which the property was given to or vested in the College have, by the passage of time, become redundant, uncertain as to application, impractical to implement, or the property generates income that is inadequate or in excess of the amount necessary for those purposes.” In other words, it is tidying up little parcels of land so that the college has the flexibility to do what it wants with that land in terms of supporting the education for the boys of the college.

However, this is not the only flexibility that Christ’s College will receive under this Government. Like all private schools, Christ’s College has the flexibility to either implement national standards or not implement national standards as it deems fit. It is a flexibility that is not granted to State schools in the country, and we have to ask why it is that State schools are not granted the flexibility to implement or not implement national standards. I would like to know how many private schools in New Zealand will implement national standards. I would say that the answer is zero or a number very close to zero. That is because private schools know that there is no evidence and no research to back national standards. In fact, every time we ask the Government to provide the body of research and evidence that supports the implementation of national standards, we get no answer. I suggest that the National Government either front up with that body of research and evidence or be quiet about it. Unless schools can see that there is a body of research and evidence to back up the implementation of national standards, the policy will not win any favour.

I was surprised to hear Louise Upston in the House last night talking about a decile 1 kura kaupapa Māori school in her area. She said the kids there are very, very successful and they are doing really well. Then she kicked an own goal by saying that the school is not implementing national standards yet. I was blown away that she would be so naive as to stand up and talk about a school that is highly successful, is full of Māoris, and is decile 1, even though the school is not yet implementing national standards because it does not have to for 12 months. That tells me that national standards are not actually necessary because schools are doing really well without them. I wonder whether Louise Upston will stand up and apologise to that school if, when it has national standards are imposed on it, its achievement goes down. Will she apologise to that kura kaupapa Māori in her electorate for forcing this one-size-fits-all approach—national standards—on it?

There is no principal or teacher in New Zealand who is opposed to high standards or opposed to giving parents the information that they—

Te Ururoa Flavell: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. E toru pea ngā kaikōrero i te ahiahi nei kua kōrero mō tēnei mea te national standards. Kei konei au e noho ana me te whakaaro ake, he aha te paku tikanga o te national standards ki te pire e kōrerohia ake nei? He kōrero whenua, he kōrero rawa? Kei hea te wāhanga o te national standards i roto i tēnei o ngā kaupapa? Ko tāku, i whakaaetia atu kia tū ērā, kia kōrero engari ko tēnei te mea tuatoru, ko taua kaupapa anō rā. Kō tāku e kī nei, ē, kua rongo i ngā kōrero, me hoki mai ki te pūtake o te pire. Aroha mai.

[Mr. Assistant Speaker, there have been perhaps three speakers this afternoon who have spoken about national standards. I am sitting here wondering what relevance national standards have to the bill being addressed here. Is it referring to land or resource? What part do national standards have in the matters being debated? For me particularly, I allowed to other two speakers to have the call, but with this, the third one, it is the same thing again. I have listened to the tenor of the address; the member must come back to the point of the bill. My apologies to the member.]

Hon Trevor Mallard: I apologise to the member for not being able to respond in te reo to the point of order. The point that members on this side of the House have been making—and it has been accepted by the House—is that this legislation could have included national standards for this but has chosen not to do so. It is something that could have been included in the bill if the promoter of the bill decided that it was an appropriate thing to do. The view on this side of the House is that if national standards are so good, then they would have been included.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): We will not relitigate that. By their nature, first reading speeches are a little more general than just a bill’s purpose. But in a case like this—and I think that the Hon Trevor Mallard has made the point—there are some differences between a private school and a public school, and I accepted the debate in that capacity. However, the current speaker, Mr Davis, has got himself into a general attack on national standards. If he wishes to continue to speak about national standards, he should draw his comments to the bill in some capacity. There was a more general debate earlier in the afternoon and those sorts of points could have been made then. The member should draw some kind of comparison or desist from a general attack on national standards. The point is well made.

KELVIN DAVIS: Christ’s College, I am sure, is a school that sets high standards, and I think that we should not be afraid to debate on every front the fact that we are searching for excellence in schooling.

This bill talks about parcels of land. I am sure those parcels of land would be used to enhance the education that is provided at Christ’s College.

Hon George Hawkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is there a Minister in the House?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): Yes, there is.

KELVIN DAVIS: This bill is about high standards.

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

KELVIN DAVIS: The purpose of this bill, as stated in the explanatory note, is “to amend the principal Act to authorise the governing body of Christ’s College to apply property, in certain circumstances, to the benefit of the College even though the property is not applied for the purpose for which the property was given to, or vested in, the College.” Basically, that means that little pockets of land were given for a reason, but that reason is no longer practical. Fair enough; the college is saying “That was then; this is now.” It thinks that it can use the land in another way in order to raise achievement. The Labour Party has no issue with that. The issue I have, though, is with the Māori Party’s standing up and chastising me for not sticking to talking about those little parcels of land—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): The member cannot refer to a point of order that has been dealt with.

KELVIN DAVIS: OK; fair enough. However, I want to say that when Te Ururoa Flavell stood up, he spoke a lot about old boys. He spoke about the school that he, Hone Harawira, and Shane Jones went to—a school that no longer exists. He spoke about someone who went off to war.

JOHN BOSCAWEN (ACT): This bill, the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill, as Kelvin Davis so eloquently explained, is to amend the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Act 1910, to remove difficulties in administering property vested in the college where the intended purposes have now been made redundant. I listened to Te Ururoa Flavell’s speech very carefully, and he spoke very proudly of his time at St Stephen’s College, and that of Shane Jones and Hone Harawira.

Kelvin Davis: Stick to the bill.

JOHN BOSCAWEN: I will get to the bill, and I will get to it faster than did Te Ururoa Flavell. But I can also speak very proudly of my school, because it actually has some relevance to this issue. In my maiden speech I made the mistake of saying I joined David Lange as the second MP from Otahuhu College in this Parliament. It was pointed out to me subsequently that I was wrong; Warren Freer preceded David Lange, and now there are three MPs who went to Otahuhu College: Warren Freer, David Lange, and me.

The reason I say that that has some relevance is that my father, the late Owen Boscawen, was a principal of Otahuhu College, and following the 1981 school reunion a sum of money was left over. With that sum of money, he established the Otahuhu College Foundation. That foundation was set up to administer the scholarships and bequests given to Otahuhu College. Some 30 years after he established that trust, I today sit as a trustee on that foundation, and I can appreciate the problems that Christ’s College has. Some of the money that was bequeathed to Otahuhu College goes back to the 1940s and 1950s—sums of £100 and £200 that were designed to provide scholarships ad infinitum. Of course, the challenges for the trustees of Otahuhu College Foundation are exactly the same sort of challenges that the trustees of Christ’s College have—that is, that circumstances change, inflation does it work, and money that is bequeathed, certainly in pounds, shillings, and pence, over time is devalued. So I think there is clearly a need for this bill.

I was not intending to take a long call, but I would like to comment on the speech made by Kelvin Davis. He asked why private schools should be granted the flexibility as to whether they implement national standards. That was the question: why should private schools have that flexibility as to whether they should have to implement national standards? I think that Kelvin Davis asked a very good question. I would like to ask the House what I think is a more important question: why can ordinary New Zealand pupils not have the flexibility to decide what school they go to? Why can they not have that flexibility to choose between a State school and a private school? My party, the ACT Party, recently led an inter-party working group on school choice, and it was a recommendation of the Māori Party, the ACT Party, and the National Party members on that working party that the bottom 20 percent of students should in actual fact have that choice. The flexibility should not be only for those at private schools, but the unanimous recommendation was that all students—certainly, the bottom 20 percent—should have that choice.

The ACT Party will be supporting the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill. From my own personal experience as a trustee of a school foundation, a school trust, I understand the need for flexibility, and this party will be supporting the bill. Thank you.

AARON GILMORE (National): It is a pleasure to support the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill, brought to this House by my wonderful colleague Nicky Wagner. People have spoken lots about the various issues around this bill, and one of the things we should think about is that this school has a very long and proud history. I was not a student of Christ’s College, but some wonderful members of this House were, including Sir Arthur Guinness, a former Speaker of this House back in the early 1900s, and, of course, Dr Michael Cullen. The other key people I remember vividly who went to Christ’s College were Robbie Deans and his brother, from Christchurch.

My experience of Christ’s College is that I have actually visited one of its bits of land. The college has bits of land all over the place in Canterbury, which many runholders and farmers have given to the school in many ways. It owns some ski land with a ski lodge; in various forms it owns bits of land all around the city of Christchurch.

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

AARON GILMORE: I find the laughing hysterics from the people across the House just hilarious.

One of the interesting things is that this bill is very similar to the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill, and to other bills that have been before this House previously about tidying up. The Māori Trustee Amendment Bill was another example, in that little bits of assets with multiple owners, or with complicated trustee arrangements, needed to be tidied up. This bill allows that tidying-up to happen.

The Christ’s College board had the option to resolve its problems via amendments through the High Court, and earlier today Mr Mallard asked why the board did not just go ahead and do that. Well, it would cost about $50,000 per action to take those actions through to the High Court to get those various trusts or bits of property changed, and that would eat up very quickly the capital and assets that exist in these small bits of assets across the board. Despite the best aims and wishes of the original donors, I believe that this bill will not harm the initial intent for the sums of money we are talking about, and the amounts they bequeath will actually still go to a good cause, in terms of the students of that fine institution.

Unlike Mr Boscawen, I went to a school called Shirley Boys High School, and I was the first member, ever, of my school to be elected to this fine House. I am very proud to be the first ever member of my school to be before this House. I have many proud memories of encountering Christ’s College students during my time at school.

Hone Harawira: Did you bash them?

AARON GILMORE: Oh, exactly! The interesting thing about this bill is that some concerns have been raised by the Opposition, although I note that most of those members do support it, and those concerns can be resolved very easily, I believe, in the select committee. We had a similar issue with the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill. A number of concerns and issues at the first reading were resolved through the select committee process, and my colleague from Selwyn, the very capable Amy Adams, did a very good job on that particular bill by amending some of its clauses to make it work in a much better and more sensible fashion. I have the utmost confidence in the Government Administration Committee to be able to do that; that committee is chaired, of course, by David Parker.

I think that a lot of work will be done on this bill. It is a very simple bill, but members opposite have pointed out some particular problems and issues. This bill is simply about the transfer of property. It is not about some treatise on national standards issues; it is nothing to do with that. This school is a very fine school, and a very fine institution, and the bill will allow it to do what it really wants to do in terms of its assets. I believe that the concerns that have been raised will be easily resolved. Dr Cullen, as a former pupil of the school, may have been a beneficiary of one of these existing scholarships. He may have been the child of a Second World War veteran; I do not know. I know that he received a scholarship to Christ’s College, and he made a very fine point about that in his valedictory speech when he left this House. Some of the funds that exist are used for scholarships for the children of World War I, World War II, and Boer War veterans.

I reiterate the importance of this bill to the school, and the wonderful work that the member from Christchurch Nicky Wagner has done to bring this bill to the House. Accordingly, I look forward to its progressing through the House.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East): It is always a pleasure to follow on from Aaron Gilmore. It is quite interesting that he has referred to the transfer of property, because a young friend of mine contacted me on my Facebook page a couple of days ago. He said he was talking to Aaron Gilmore at an event here in Wellington recently, and Aaron Gilmore had told him that I had sold my property and was moving out of the electorate. That is really bizarre. So it is very strange to stand in the House and have a debate about the transfer of property, when in fact that is the sort of nonsense that that person has succumbed to in his desperate attempts to win a position as an electorate member of Parliament. But of course he cannot manage to get to the point where he is standing in Christchurch East.

It is my honour and privilege to have been the union organiser for Christ’s College’s boarding house. Everyone is looking for a personal connection to Christ’s College, and that is my connection. I used to be the Canterbury Hotel and Hospital Workers Union organiser. I helped to organise the boarding school workers—

Hon Steve Chadwick: The kitchen workers.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL: Yes, the kitchen workers and those who cleaned the dorms. I helped them to organise a campaign that saw their wages and conditions of employment improve dramatically in the mid-1980s. I am very proud of the time that I spent representing those workers at Christ’s College. I always had a very good working relationship with all of the schools that operated under the boarding schools award. They were, I think, quite genuinely supportive of improving the wages and conditions of employment for a group workers, largely women, who had seen themselves as being in a situation where increasing the minimum wage was the only mechanism by which they would improve their pay and conditions.

I have visited Christ’s College on many, many occasions. I was there again last year in my role as the Opposition spokesperson on justice, to talk to young people about the changes that were being proposed in terms of the Law Commission report on the sale of liquor. I took the discussion document along with me. I gave a briefing to the students, and we had a very, very lively debate on the issue of the sale of liquor. This school is actively engaged. I come from Christchurch and have found that my old school that I went to is now a drug and alcohol rehab centre. This makes things a little difficult, because the first question someone who comes from Christchurch is asked is which school he or she went to, and in those circumstances I am left with the embarrassment of having to confess that the Catholic girls’ school that I went to is now, probably appropriately, a drug and alcohol rehab centre.

The point that I want to make is that there is a divide in Christchurch. The Catholic schools produce the lawyers for the Catholic law firms; the private Anglican schools produce them for others. It has always been that way. Of course, that has changed a lot since the early years, and we have seen much less emphasis on where one went to school. But there is no question that the old school tie is important in Christchurch. I think that there are three members of Parliament here at this time who are old boys of the school where all my brothers went, which was St Bede’s College. Of course, in terms of the old school tie, as far as St Bede’s College goes, the House has Gerry Brownlee, Peter Dunne, Clayton Cosgrove, and Damien O’Connor. Four members attended that school.

Hon Ruth Dyson: David Carter.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL: And David Carter. So there are five old boys from St Bede’s College in the House, and Christ’s College has really has missed out on that benefit. But there is no question that the old school tie is still alive and well.

We are happy to support anything that we can do to assist Christ’s College with regard to any difficulties that it has in administering its properties. I think that a select committee will have a bit of work to do to make sure that the technical detail of the bill is right. I know that several of my colleagues have mentioned how lucky the private sector—the independent schools—is in not having national standards imposed on it by the National Government. But that is OK; on this occasion the issue is about whether the administration of the property vested in the college is such that it is able to meet the originally intended purpose. That is why we will support this bill being referred to a select committee. We look forward to working on it.

NICKY WAGNER (National): I want just to recap. As we have heard, Christ’s College is one of the oldest schools in New Zealand. It was established to provide education for the sons of settlers of the Church of England colony of Christchurch. In 1855 Parliament passed the Christ’s College ordinance, which incorporates the deed of foundation, incorporating Christ’s College Canterbury as a body corporate having perpetual succession.

The Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill that we have been debating today will amend the 1910 Act to authorise the governing body of the college to apply property, in certain circumstances, to the benefit of the college, even though that is not the original purpose of the bequest. I will go through those circumstances: if the original purpose has become wholly or in part redundant, if it is uncertain as to application, if it is impractical to implement, or if the property generates income that is inadequate to or in excess of the amount necessary for those purposes. We heard from John Boscawen how difficult such circumstances are for boards of governors to deal with.

Let me make it clear: the board wishes to ensure that the objectives of the trust continue to be met unless they are impossible. We have heard tonight that many bequests can no longer be used effectively for their original purposes. The interesting and most common example given by the college is a bequest by an old boy to make sure that left-handed guns were available for cadets in training. Obviously the old boy was a left hander who had trouble with the right-handed guns at cadets, and he wanted to make sure that no other boy had to put up with that. Nowadays, of course, there is no cadet training at college. Other examples include the 1919 gift—so the gifts go back right to the establishment of Christ’s College; Maria Somes was the first benefactor of the college—to provide bursaries for the sons of soldiers. I noted that the bursaries were for the sons of those who had fallen or suffered as part of the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces in World War I or World War II, or for the sons of the members of various forces of the British Empire who had served in the Great War.

We have talked about orphans, and about Christchurch orphanages that no longer exist. We have talked about sports events that do not happen anymore, and subjects, like Latin, that are no longer taught. It has become virtually impossible to meet the criteria of many of these funds. In the trusts where there is too little or too much money stipulated, the board would like to have the power to adjust those figures so that purposeful scholarships, as close as possible to the original, may be awarded.

Under present legislation, where it is not possible to use bequests the money continues to just accumulate in the college’s accounts without being spent. This does nothing to benefit the college or the students, despite the donors’ intention. Several speakers tonight have sought additional safeguards in the management of these requests, but I remind them that under the 1910 Act that we are seeking to amend, Parliament gave the board wide powers in relation to the administration of those funds—far more significant college funds and assets than those we are asking for the power to administer, tonight. In that debate in 1910 the Hon Mr Jones said he hoped that “the gentlemen entrusted with the charge of these endowments would realise the responsibility that rested on them.”

One hundred years on we can see that Parliament’s trust has been well rewarded. The gentlemen of the board have governed prudently and well, and the college has prospered. Today, a century later, I ask for similar support from this Parliament. This time I believe that there is even more reason to trust the governing body, which will have a far lesser responsibility. In 2010 the warden of the school is the Bishop of Christchurch, the Rt Rev Victoria Matthews, and the chairperson of the board is Mrs Mary Ross. I believe that they and the other lady members of the governing body can, with the gentlemen of the board, be absolutely entrusted with the managing of the school’s funds successfully for the next 100 years.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Government Administration Committee.

Bills

Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon LUAMANUVAO WINNIE LABAN (Labour—Mana): I move, That the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be referred to the Health Committee for consideration.

Kia ora, talofa lava, and warm Pacific greetings. It is my great pleasure to bring this bill to the attention of the House. The purpose of this bill is to strengthen and clarify the current legislation. In the 17 years since the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act of 1992 was passed, the understanding, treatment, and care of mental health patients have developed and improved. However, the law has stood still. This bill will address what is seen by many in the field as a gap in the current legislation. The gap relates to the role of families. The 1992 Act made limited provision for the involvement of families. This bill extends and strengthens the role of families of patients experiencing mental illness.

Dr Peter McGeorge, a psychiatrist and chair of the Mental Health Commission, summed up the issues this bill addresses when he wrote a booklet entitled The legal framework for family inclusion in child, adolescent and youth mental health and addiction services. He wrote: “Everyone knows that families are important. However understanding their importance in the recovery of family members who have experienced mental illness is only relatively recent.”

Dr McGeorge went on to say that the Mental Health Commission is concerned to see that families are included in the mental health assessment and treatment processes of family members. This is because the commission knows not only that families can be of enormous assistance but that families suffer along with their loved ones. Dr McGeorge’s views are echoed by other mental health service providers, support and consumer groups, and families who have loved ones in mental health care.

During my preparation of this legislation I read and consulted widely. I met with Dr Peter McGeorge and other psychiatrists, Dr Jan Pryor, the Chief Families Commissioner; staff and legal advisers of the Office of the Health and Disability Commissioner; Florence Leota, chief executive officer of Supporting Families in Mental Illness New Zealand; Tāone O’Regan, manager, and members of Atareira—formerly the Schizophrenia Fellowship—which provides mental health support for families and whānau; and many others working in the mental health field. I have also listened to many consumers and many families who have had family members in mental health care. There is wide approval from those people for this bill.

Let me now outline the specifics of the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill. The bill amends section 7A of the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992. Section 7A of the Act provides for family or whānau involvement with individuals who have been dealt with under the Act. Currently the practitioner, usually a psychiatrist or a responsible clinician, must consult the whānau or family of the proposed patient or patients unless it is not reasonably practicable or it is not, after consultation with the patient, deemed to be in the best interests of the patient. The practitioner must also apply any guidelines or standards set down by the Director-General of Health.

This bill adds two further subsections to section 7A. The first new subsection, subsection (6), seeks to clarify the entitlements of the family or whānau once the practitioner has decided to consult them. These entitlements include information about the particular illness in question; information about the likely effects of treatment; inclusion in the planning, implementation, and review of care; consultation about discharge; and the right to seek a second opinion.

The second new subsection, subsection (7), provides for inclusion of the family of whānau to a certain degree whether or not the practitioner has made the decision to include the family. This provision means that the family or whānau is entitled to have general information about mental illness and the ability to provide relevant information about the family member’s history, and it reinforces what other parts of the Act have already stipulated, including cultural, religious, or ethnic factors, and individuals’ beliefs about the role of family or whānau.

The point of these changes, first and foremost, is to clarify the rights and responsibilities of families and whānau in relation to their family member being cared for under the Act. The legal advice received from the Ministry of Justice, courtesy of the Attorney-General, the Hon Chris Finlayson, on this bill was to ensure that it was consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. It concluded that the bill appears to be consistent with the rights and freedoms affirmed by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We also received correspondence from Marie Shroff, the Privacy Commissioner, who supports the overall goal of this bill.

Under the amended legislation families and whānau have specific rights, such as the right to information about the care and treatment of their loved one, about the specific form of mental illness the person is suffering from, and about mental illness in general. With better access to information, families and whānau will be better informed about mental illness in general and therefore better able to give support that in many cases will offer opportunities for recovery.

Families and whānau will also have the right to be involved in all stages of the care of their loved ones, including when that care should end. Importantly, they also have the right to seek a second opinion. The hope of this bill and these measures is that they will lead to a more informed and empowered family unit that will possess the tools to be more involved in the care of their loved one and more resilient in the face of mental illness.

The ultimate goal is not just to assist in the recovery of the mental health patient but also in the potentially beneficial side effect of creating more resilient and caring families. Greater involvement by family and whānau in the care of a mental health patient creates a win-win situation for all, including the professionals involved. Treatments that include a greater involvement of the patient’s family have been shown to produce superior and stable outcomes, and have significantly reduced symptoms and related problems, including family problems.

There is good evidence showing that when a family is involved in assessment and treatment, the outcomes are improved for the family member. Family inclusion presents a far more holistic approach to mental health recovery. Far from being focused solely on the individual in the context of care, this approach recognises that the needs of the individual experiencing mental illness must be met within the context of the family or whānau. It focuses on the families’ opportunities and abilities for change. Although the focus on the individual rights of a patient is important, the value of individuals reconnecting with others and their families in particular is still underemphasised and undervalued. The therapeutic value of this needs to be strengthened in the ordinary routines of clinical practice.

The Mental Health Commission commissioned a literature review on child and adolescent mental health and family inclusive practices in 2007. The review found that including families aids the therapeutic approach by including an insider’s perspective on care. It creates a better understanding of the problem, agreement on treatment components, and, with fewer internalising and externalising behaviours, it improves clinical outcomes and reduces symptoms. These views received strong support when workshopped around the country by the Mental Health Commission.

The need for a change towards more family-inclusive practices in the care of mental health patients has been known for some time. In Te Kōkiri: The Mental Health and Addiction Action Plan 2006-2015, a Ministry of Health publication, two of the specific actions identified related to this area. The plan makes the call to implement initiatives that recognise the importance of family and whānau. It also calls for initiatives that respond to the needs of family and whānau, such as assessment and referral to appropriate supports and services, education on the recovery process, and the hearing of family views about the responsiveness of services.

On a personal note, prior to entering Parliament I worked as a family therapist and counsellor for over 20 years, and I served from 1993 to 1996 on the board of the Mental Health Foundation. It was my professional experience that the involvement of family in the treatment of cases where there was mental illness, family violence, sexual abuse, and other difficult and complex issues led to better outcomes than where individual treatment options were undertaken without any family involvement. It was John Donne who wrote: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;”.

I say in conclusion that it is my hope that this bill will go a long way to addressing the need for greater family inclusion in the caring for and recovery of mental health patients by fixing a gap in the current legislation. I commend this bill to the House.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on what I consider is a very, very important member’s bill, the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill. I also thank the Hon Luamanuvao Winnie Laban for introducing this bill, and I acknowledge the extensive work and effort she has put into it. I say from the depths of my heart that I admire enormously the contribution that Winnie Laban has made to this Parliament, her sincerity, her intelligence, and the vast experience she has in this field through a long history of practising as a family counsellor.

Although I absolutely agree with the sentiment behind this amendment bill, and the Government fully supports the underlying principle of it—to strengthen family and whānau involvement and provide support when a family member is assessed or treated—we will not be supporting the bill, because we believe that the current legislation is actually quite sufficient. I will go into detail about why that is, and I hope members will listen. Firstly, I have personally thought a lot about this bill and have done my best to consult widely and discuss it with others, including a current mental health commissioner. Secondly, we consider that the existing Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992, and in particular section 130, as amended by the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Act 1999, provide the appropriate framework and fulfil the requirements of this bill.

The amendment Act of 1999 was one of the first that I was personally involved in when I came into Parliament. I know that a huge amount of work was put into that, and in my view it was one of the very worthwhile pieces of work that the Labour Government did, ably assisted by Her Majesty’s most loyal Opposition at the time. Section 7A of the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act, which was inserted in 2000 by the 1999 amendment Act, provides that the medical practitioner or responsible clinician “must consult the family or whānau of the proposed patient or patient.” unless “consultation—is not reasonably practicable; or is not in the best interest of the proposed patient or patient.” I must say that a huge amount of effort has been put into the work related to what is not reasonably practicable or in the best interest of the patient. Secondly, the practitioner “must consult with the patient or proposed patient” with regard to the best interests issue. Paramount and fundamental to that legislation are the concerns, well-being, and safety of the patient. Inherently, there has to be a balance between best clinical practice, patients’ and relatives’ rights, and ultimate patient well-being.

It is fundamental to point out that section 130 of the 1992 Act allows the Director-General to promulgate standards from time to time. They include “Guidelines for the purposes of this Act; and standards of care and treatment of patients.” The guidelines and standards have had a huge amount of consultation and work, and that should not be underestimated. The problems I see with this current amendment is that, if anything, on balance it is not necessary, and it could erode patients’ rights where they have already been extremely well protected. Closely aligned to the original Act is the Health Information Privacy Code 1994 and the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights. Both have had enormous consultation and have been worked up over a period of time.

When the amendment that inserted section 7A was put into place, submitters included the Privacy Commissioner, the family law section of the New Zealand Law Society, the Principal Family Court Judge, the Mental Health Foundation, the Mental Health Commission, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, and many, many others. Further to that, the Health and disability services (general) Standards and various core standards that give effect to the general standards were promulgated by the Director-General of Health as recently as 2008. Those revised standards were the culmination of extensive collaboration with many groups—consumers, providers, Government and non-government agencies, and the ministry—that took place over a 3-year period. They were extremely well-thought-out. In my view, these existing standards satisfactorily accommodate the amendments that occur in this current bill. There already is an existing right to a second opinion that is clearly expressed in the Act as amended in 2000. I sincerely believe that the current legislative framework is appropriate, and that the bill does not add anything practical to what is already in law.

What is fundamentally important, however, is the way in which the current law is put into practice. Again, in my view, that depends on the proactive vigilance of clinicians to practise up to the standards and guidelines that are already there. Clinical reality requires that each patient, their family, and their whānau are treated according to their unique circumstances, and it is impossible to accommodate that entirely by further legislation. Sometimes emergency situations will not allow a second opinion before a patient’s life is put into danger. Clearly, sometimes it is totally appropriate that family and whānau are not directly involved—for example, in cases of incest or violent abuse within a family that is repeated, and where direct harm could occur to the patient.

I once again sincerely thank the Hon Luamanuvao Winnie Laban for introducing this bill, but I, personally, sincerely believe that the current legislation provides very well-thought-out and balanced protections, and it would be inappropriate to introduce these further amendments. If anything, what really is needed is constant revision of the best-practice guidelines between the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, families, whānau, consumers, and the Mental Health Commission. In my view, that would be the most useful approach.

Hon JIM ANDERTON (Leader—Progressive): The announcement to the House that the National Party will not be supporting the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill is a continuation of a well-worn record that is high on rhetoric but abysmally low on practical action. If the member who just spoke, Paul Hutchison, is trying to convince himself or anyone else that the relationship between families and the mental health system is hunky-dory and everyone is happy with it, then he is living on a different planet than most of us who have to deal with mental—

Hon Member: He never said that, for a start.

Hon JIM ANDERTON: That is exactly what he said. If the member does not understand his own rhetoric, then he is trying to fool himself.

Here and around the world mental health illnesses are a growing public health issue. It has been estimated that by 2020 depression will be the leading illness and cause of disease burden in developed countries like ours. Mental illness has traditionally been hidden. People were embarrassed to talk about it, but it is everywhere in our community and virtually every New Zealand family will be touched by some form of mental illness at some point in their lives. It is never just the ill person, of course, who directly suffers; it is also the family—mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandmothers, and grandfathers. None can escape being affected. The lives of those who love and care for someone with mental illness are often dramatically changed, yet they do not always have access to sufficient information and support to understand what is happening and how they can get through difficult times. If the member who spoke previously does not understand that, he does not understand anything about what is happening in the real world. It is no wonder that families can feel isolated and desperate.

Today, the stigma around mental illness is less damaging than it used to be. This is in large part thanks to heroes like former rugby player John Kirwan, who had the courage to front a very public campaign about depression. The previous Labour-Progressive Government put nearly $7 million into that campaign and it has made an enormous difference to the way men in particular report to agencies for assistance. It has helped destigmatise mental health by being far more open about the issues involved.

We launched our new mental health and suicide prevention strategies, and part of that meant putting a strong emphasis on building a more responsive primary health care sector. Often a general practitioner is the first line of assessment and treatment when people turn up, often with their families, to the surgery in need of help. The evidence showed that good primary health care had the potential to have the largest impact on reducing mental illness. Studies also showed that the more families are involved with the treatment of their loved ones, the more rapid and the more long term the recovery is likely to be. The more the loved ones are involved, the more rapid the recovery.

Getting people well as quickly as possible is important to everyone. The cost of mental illness is felt throughout all of our communities. People suffering from depression have worse general health and take more time off work, and their work is restricted when they are present. They make the most or more use of health services and experience poorer health-related quality of life. If we want people to stand the best chance of getting better we have to help the families of those who suffer from mental health problems as much as possible.

That is exactly what this bill attempts to do. It is not just because we are a caring society that we should do this, but also because society benefits when people get better quicker and stay well. Despite the relative openness about mental illness today, when someone one loves becomes ill, it is still devastating and often confusing for family members. Families often do not know how to help. They often blame themselves, and they can feel lost and isolated. That means that it is time for this bill, and I wish the author of it well as it continues its progress through the House.

Hon HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT): I rise to speak on the first reading of the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill. The ACT caucus spent a lot of time thinking about and considering this bill. We commend the Hon Winnie Laban for this initiative. It is entirely appropriate that we have this debate in this very serious manner. I know that members in the House do take this issue extraordinarily seriously.

We have traversed the wide range of issues within our caucus, from the privacy concerns right through to the right of family members to have access to information. The ACT Party will be splitting its vote on this bill, and Sir Roger Douglas will speak later in support of it. The other four ACT members will be opposing the bill, and I will come to the reasons for that in a moment.

The debate is not about the stigma of mental illness. The debate is about the involvement of family in the treatment of their loved ones. Dr Paul Hutchison very carefully and thoughtfully outlined the law as it currently stands, and I support the comments that he made. Clinicians do their very best, under very difficult circumstances in many cases. Despite the figures and the research that both the Hon Winnie Laban and the previous speaker Jim Anderton spoke of, not all families function well, sadly, and not all are supportive of their loved ones who have a mental illness. Sadly, sometimes there does not seem to be very much love in the equation. We have to think very carefully about how to have a safe situation for all patients when they suffer from a mental illness and are not responsible for their actions.

After having worked for a short time in the area of psychiatry and after talking to a number of clinicians who are involved today, I say that sadly this bill has the potential to have unintended consequences that I do not think any member in this House would be happy with. For people who are suffering from a mental illness and who are in an abusive situation, whether it is violence, sexual abuse, or a number of other abusive situations, their family situation is not ideal and the requirement for a clinician to consult family members is not always appropriate.

The law as it stands, as Dr Paul Hutchison outlined, allows for consultation with families, and involvement where appropriate, and the decision is allowed to be made by the clinician, himself or herself. It is very important to remember that they are the experts in this case. If in deciding to consult the family, we are then very rigid and prescriptive about what must follow, in some instances clinicians might sadly decide that it is all too hard and not consult the family, when in fact it might well be the best course of action. For MPs who are not faced with the consequences and the troubles that many people face on this daily basis, that would be totally inappropriate. We also discussed the Privacy Act at length in our caucus. This Act is often used inappropriately, it is often used misleadingly, and it is often used as a tool sometimes to prevent information from being passed on. Although that is the case, it would be inappropriate for us to cast that situation and impose a change in the law in the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act as it stands at the moment. The issue there would be that we should deal with the Privacy Act and the implications it might have on certain situations, this one being amongst them.

In summary, the ACT Party will be voting four in opposition to this bill, and one in favour. The four members who will be opposing it feel that in practical terms nothing is likely to change with this legislation. Nobody is precluded from consulting families at the moment—good clinicians already do so. Sadly we fear that the unintended consequences that may result from the bill may see clinicians less likely to consult families, rather than more. Thank you.

KEVIN HAGUE (Green): Talofa lava to my friend and colleague the Hon Luamanuvao Winnie Laban. I congratulate her on bringing the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill to Parliament.

The Green Party will support this bill going to the Health Committee. We are a party that bases all of our policies on a charter. One of the principles of that charter is ecological wisdom. When we think of ecology we think, of course, about the natural environment and the connections between all of the species and the elements of the natural world. But the idea of ecology and ecological wisdom transcends that. It says, effectively, that everything is connected to everything else. That is the truth, whether we are talking about the relationships between people and their environment, or different aspects of a person’s health.

In the health sector in New Zealand for quite some considerable time we have worked to a holistic model of health. It is perhaps best encapsulated by Professor Mason Durie with his whare tapawhā model. It talks about four interrelated dimensions of health: tinana, hinengaro, wairua, and whānau. Effectively, the model is saying each of those dimensions of a person’s health is intimately related to each of the others, and no person can be healthy without all of them being in harmony. That means that a person’s family or whānau relationships impact on their mental health and their emotional health, hinengaro. But it also works the other way, in that a person’s mental health or emotional health impacts on the relations that they have with their family or whānau. This bill addresses that point directly. I am pleased that even those members in the House who have so far indicated that they will be voting against the bill—I am saddened to hear that, and I will talk about it in a moment—understand and appreciate the importance of that connection.

I refer briefly to a couple of the core documents. First of all is the second New Zealand mental health plan, Te Tāhuhu, which sets out some of the objectives of the plan in relation to family and whānau: “The importance of family and whanau is recognised in the development of an outcome statement for whanau and friends who support people with, and who are affected by mental illness”. There is “Increased recognition that service users live in whanau and communities and that mental illness and addiction impacts on whanau” and there is the “Inclusion of family/whanau in treatment”. Those are some of the objectives of our mental health services plan. Two goals amongst the five of the Mental Health Commission are to “reduce stigma and discrimination involving people and their families experiencing mental illnesses and/or addictions”, and to “help families to support members who have experience of mental illness and/or addictions in ways that promote their recovery and sustain family life”. All through the documents setting out our plan for mental health, we acknowledge the role of families and whānau and we look to support it. Most important, Platform, which is a coalition of non-governmental organisations in mental health, talks about mental health and addiction problems also affecting families and whānau, who must be considered part of any journey to recovery.

There is widespread recognition of the importance of family and whānau, both in creating a person’s mental health and also in the recovery from mental illness. So why are we here debating this bill if Dr Paul Hutchison is correct and the existing law already sets out a platform for that to occur? The reason we are here today debating this bill is that it is not occurring. Any member of this House who has had any dealings with mental health services will be familiar with countless examples where a person’s recovery from mental illness would have been assisted by the involvement of their family and whānau, but that has not occurred, for spurious reasons. Dr Hutchison has been present on the select committee when we have heard that very evidence. Sure, the concerns raised by Dr Hutchison and Heather Roy are appropriate to be debated, but the appropriate place to do that is in the select committee, and that is why this bill should go forward.

HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Hoi nō e mihi ana au ki te kaikōrero kātahi anō kua mutu mai i te Rōpū Kākāriki, e kōrerohia i ngā kōrero mō te tangata, tōna wairua, tōna hinengaro, tōna tinana, me tōna whānau. Nō reira, tēnā koe e te rangatira e mutu nei i tēnā kōrero.

[Greetings to you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I want to acknowledge the speaker from the Green Party who has just concluded, for the references he made in his speech to a person’s spirituality, mentality, body, and family. So I acknowledge him for that comment.]

Last week, at a hui on Māori mental health up in Whangarei, Te Rau Hinengaro: The New Zealand Mental Health Survey was released. It found that one in three Māori suffer from mental disorders during his or her lifetime, with anxiety, mood, and substance disorders being the main ones. To nobody’s great surprise, those mental disorders are more common for Māori, and particularly for Māori on low incomes and living in poor neighbourhoods. Again, to no one’s great surprise, only half of those Māori with a serious disorder get the treatment that non-Māori get.

We know from our own family histories that poor information and a lack of involvement from whānau lead to breakdowns in relationships and situations of distress, and that can led to devastating results—for example, our young Māori aged 15 to 24 are twice as likely to die by suicide than non-Māori. That is why the Māori Party will be supporting the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill. It will allow people to have access to information about the treatment that one of their whānau may be getting, to be involved in the decision making about the treatment, to be fully involved in the planning of care, to be informed about the possible side effects of treatment, and to be consulted about discharge plans. We know that whānau support during treatment leads to better outcomes for tangata whaiora and better outcomes for the whānau, and we sincerely hope that this bill will properly recognise the importance and significance of whānau support to the person, his or her family, and the wider community.

This bill is about best practice, and it is about taking collective responsibility for the health and well-being of our own. This bill is about whānau ora, and for that reason we are proud to stand alongside the Hon Luamanuvao Winnie Laban in supporting this bill. Kia ora tātou.

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS (ACT): I rise to support the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill being referred to a select committee. I do so not because I necessarily support all the detail of the bill; rather, I support the right of the patient—or, in this case, the right of the close relative—to know, except in the most exceptional circumstances. This, I believe, is a fundamental right and it needs to be widely debated. I think that it needs to be debated not just within the mental health area but within the total health system.

The fact is that important information is persistently withheld and concealed in the New Zealand medical market place. Why is this? The answer is simple. In the medical market place, people soon discover that it is in their own self-interest to withhold information. Why is this? It is because they do not view patients as the principal buyers of health care. Their principal customers are hospitals, physicians, Governments, and third-party institutions such as insurance companies, so they tend to serve them rather than serve the patients.

There is another reason why patients frequently do not have access to information on the quality of providers. Medical associations, physicians, hospitals, and Governments have made it difficult for patients to get information about quality. Avoiding quality comparisons has become almost a matter of professional ethics, as we saw at Wanganui Hospital. Doctors are reluctant to openly criticise the judgment of their colleagues, yet the price an individual pays for a wrong choice is much, much higher in respect of medical services. That information, including mental health information, is the key to avoiding these circumstances. We have to look only at this article in the Listener to understand the cost of these sorts of errors.

The most important conclusion that flows from the fact that the medical market place is complex is the necessity to create an institutional environment in which experts find it in their own self-interest to give all of us accurate information and good advice. Information, and how we provide it, is vital. The hope that some of these issues—as they relate not only, I would hope, to mental health but also to the wider health area—can be debated is the reason that I support this bill’s referral to a select committee.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): This is a rare occasion, and I do not know who will feel more uncomfortable, Sir Roger or me, because I agree with him, but only on this specific issue of the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill. I genuinely acknowledge the ACT Party for taking this issue seriously, to the point of splitting a party vote. I just wish that National had taken this bill seriously. This should be one of the issues that are above petty political point-scoring. In fact, Jenny Shipley and Helen Clark were absolute leaders in this area in saying that mental health issues in general, people with mental health challenges, and their families should not be the subjects of point-scoring or media-baiting in Parliament or outside the House. They led a change of attitude in parliamentarians towards people with mental illness. I do not very often pay tribute to Jenny Shipley either, but on this issue she certainly deserves it. I wish National members had done that tonight.

I must say that I found the absolutely patronising tribute from the chair of the Health Committee, Dr Paul Hutchison, totally inappropriate. For someone of Winnie Laban’s standing in this House and in the community to have that sort of absolutely patronising tribute addressed to her during the first reading of this bill was entirely inappropriate. I have been waiting for the Minister who is responsible for mental health issues, Dr Jonathan Coleman, to take a call. I was at a function last year, not long after he was appointed to his ministerial position, and he had heard from Supporting Families in Mental Illness that the existing legislation as written and intended was great, but as delivered was not meeting the needs of families. He heard the plea that the Supporting Families in Mental Illness code of family rights should be put into law. Jonathan Coleman told that gathering that he would back it. Well, here it is. That is what Winnie Laban’s bill is. It is the—[Interruption]

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Jonathan Coleman just called me a liar, and I ask you to ask him to withdraw and apologise.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): I certainly did not hear that. Did the member in fact say that?

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Yes I did, and I will not withdraw and apologise. I have packed my stuff and I am off.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): The member will leave the Chamber.

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman withdrew from the Chamber.

Hon RUTH DYSON: At that function family members of Supporting Families in Mental Illness told Jonathan Coleman and the assembled supporters—and I was personally there—that the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act was great in theory, but in reality it was not working. Family members were frustrated at the process of supporting their family member to get the best health outcome. That is what this Parliament should want most, is it not?

Regardless of whether it is a mental illness or a physical illness, I ask why any member of this House would not want the best outcome. This bill does that. It puts in place a requirement for district health boards to deliver in the way the legislation as written in 1992 intended. That was National Party legislation, and it was supported by both the major parties that are still in this House. This amendment strengthens it. It will mean that families who are distraught with frustration and want to do their best in supporting their family member will be supported by the law.

This bill makes sense. It has been overwhelmingly and, in fact, unanimously supported throughout the very wide process of consultation that my colleague Winnie Laban has undertaken. Some members’ bills do not receive that level of attention. I have been in awe of the way that Winnie Laban has meticulously gone to consumers and their families, to providers of mental health services, to clinicians, to advocates, and to people across the whole spectrum in the mental health sector and explained to everyone the principle, the point, and the purpose of this bill. The bill will achieve better outcomes in our health sector, as a result of its implementation. Why the Government would want to block that, and not even let it go to a select committee, beggars belief, frankly. Government members should hang their heads in shame. If we were not in Parliament I would be able to say that those members’ making patronising, prat-ish, plonker-ish comments in this House about the admiration of Winnie Laban, and supporting people with mental illness, is hypocritical. This bill deserves support, as do the families of people with mental illness.

MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Despite that attack on the integrity of members on this side of the House, I will start this call the way I intended, and that is to commend the member Winnie Laban for bringing the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill to the House, even though I do not support its passage. I think it reflects the member’s concern about the importance of communication with whānau as an important component of the therapeutic relationship for those who are mentally ill.

Frankly, I think it is an insult to this House for the member Ms Dyson to suggest that simply because the members of this party do not support the bill that that somehow undermines the importance of that relationship. I am sure that concern was precipitated by, or heightened by, the submissions that the Health Committee heard in 2009 on a petition that called for a number of things to happen in mental health. The petition was tabled by a woman whose son had committed suicide, and who was supported by her general practitioner, whose son had also tragically committed suicide. I know the Health Committee was greatly moved by their submissions and listened very carefully to the experts in this area, particularly in respect of communication. We heard from the Privacy Commissioner, the Mental Health Commission, and the Health and Disability Commissioner, among others.

Mr Hague asserts that the reason this bill is necessary is that although members here assert that the existing legislation provides for whānau involvement, the clinicians are not doing so sufficiently to satisfy the expectations and the wishes of the family. I guess there is some basis for that position, based on what we heard in the select committee in relation to this submission. The Mental Health Commission stated in its submission that more often than not, where the lack of communication has been causing families distress it is usually the interpretation of the Privacy Act by the professionals that is the problem. That was backed up by the Privacy Commissioner and the Health and Disability Commissioner, who indicated that our mental health professionals had much greater power to include families and whānau than they were doing.

Let us have a look at the bill as it is worded, because everybody on the other side of the House believes that it would somehow strengthen the family’s right to access to information and communication. Well, it will not. New section (6) in clause 5 goes to the essence of this bill. It states: “Where a practitioner has decided to consult the family or whānau of a proposed patient … the family or whānau is entitled to—” certain things, and it goes on to list those things. However, the prerequisite factor is that the practitioner has to first decide that that is appropriate. Now that is exactly what we have in the existing legislation, so this is a noble but flawed attempt to make changes to involve family. It simply will not change the status quo.

Now I will move to whether it is appropriate to change the status quo. We all have a vested interest in our families. I am sure many members of this House have experienced the stress and trauma of a loved one who has suffered mental illness, and they would not wish that on anybody, but the fact is that there are many dysfunctional situations where it is not appropriate for family or whānau to be involved, and that is because that is the wish of the patient. What this bill would do—even putting aside my criticism about the flawed aspect of it—is to completely undermine the autonomy and the rights of the patient to decide who and how they are involved in their care. For that reason I think there are some serious problems with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in this area. I certainly cannot agree with Sir Roger Douglas. The member described that as a reason for supporting the bill. Actually, it is an equal reason for opposing it, because the bill undermines the rights of the individuals. I applaud the member for her concern about the involvement of family and whānau, which, despite Ms Dyson’s tirade, I think we all support. There is nothing patronising about that. But I cannot support this bill in its current form.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): I also am pleased to take a call in support of the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill, and I acknowledge my friend and colleague the Hon Luamanuvao Winnie Laban for her excellent work in gaining support for this bill, for checking it out with lots of important and informed people outside the House, and for talking to us as colleagues and then bringing the bill to the House in this way. I say to Winnie that that is an excellent model for doing this work, and I thank her for that.

There are several reasons why I strongly support this bill, and I urge those who have already made up their minds to think just a little bit more, because many of the problems that Government members are raising are precisely what select committees are for. There is no pretence that this bill has it absolutely right—no bill ever has. A bill’s passage through a select committee, with the help of officials and other submitters, strengthens it before it is brought back to the House, so that is where the bill should go. The fundamental problem that has been identified by this bill remains. Why is it that the people in the know have supported the Hon Winnie Laban in bringing the bill as far as this? They are saying that there is a problem and that it ought to be resolved. This is a wonderful process for doing this, and I urge members to think through this a little bit more and send the bill to the select committee.

There are several reasons why I support this bill. One is that it puts the interests of families right at the centre, and it says more to them in some of the clauses, in terms of the rights that the bill introduces, about getting involved and really engaging in the needs of families and whānau where mental health is concerned. We know from any amount of work that is being done with families that that collective is the most powerful force there is to enable all its members to do well and to be the best that they can be. Consequently, the same applies when mental health issues arise for family members. The best information often comes from family members, and in any case they are required to support this.

So this bill sets about strengthening the ability of families to have information, to participate, and to be the best that they can be. It is inconsistent that we still have some parts of our legislation—and the primary Act that this bill refers to does so as well—that frustrate some families in terms of participating. It certainly puts a lot of power and authority in the hands of the practitioners—the psychiatrists and psychologists. That ought to be balanced out as well; they do not always have it right, as I shall demonstrate. The power that is in the hands of the practitioners ought to be balanced by some of the rights that families have to ask questions, to receive information, and to be there for their family members who require mental health treatment.

This is also a time when a family and family members are most vulnerable. This is when mental health issues emerge, and this is when one needs families more than ever before. What this bill does is find quite a nice balance on a number of levels, in terms of the expertise of psychiatrists, and the needs of family members and of others. It is for those reasons that it ought to be supported.

Perhaps the most powerful evidence that I can find for supporting what this bill is trying to do is what the 2007 report of the Confidential Forum for Former In-Patients of Psychiatric Hospitals reported, and some members may recall that this forum was chaired by the present Governor-General. Many family members presented at those private forums, and it is what they said that was most important. These are the risks that even now we need to prevent, and clearly a select committee should look at this bill again from that perspective. I will quote from what family members told the confidential forum. Members will recall that this is about what their family members who had been in psychiatric hospitals had—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker): I regret to advise the member that his time has expired.

Hon LUAMANUVAO WINNIE LABAN (Labour—Mana): I thank members for their expressions of support for the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill. First, I would like to respond to the comments of Dr Paul Hutchison, Michael Woodhouse, and Heather Roy about involving abusive families with their loved ones, and the unintended consequences of that—for example, breach of privacy. Let me quote directly from the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act. Section 7A(2) of that Act states: “A practitioner must consult the family or whanau of the proposed patient or patient. This subsection is subject to subsection (3).” Subsection (3) states: “Subsection (2) does not apply if the practitioner has reasonable grounds for deciding that consultation—(a) is not reasonably practicable; or (b) is not in the best interests of the proposed patient or patient.” This bill does not change the existing legislation whereby a psychiatrist is not required to consult the family or whānau. It is the responsible clinician or psychiatrist who ultimately decides whether family intervention is appropriate.

I also mention that this bill is about strengthening and clarifying family inclusion. The Attorney-General gave his legal opinion, which was that the bill does not contravene the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The Privacy Commissioner supports the goal of this bill to equip families with the tools that they need in order to look after their loved ones.

I express deep appreciation to the deputy chairperson of the Health Committee, the Hon Ruth Dyson, for her wise counsel and support. I thank the Hon Tariana Turia and Hone Harawira for the support of the Māori Party for this bill. I thank Kevin Hague from the Greens in terms of tinana, hinengaro, and wairua. I say thank you very much to Sir Roger Douglas. I really appreciate his willingness to meet with me and to challenge me, and I appreciate his commitment to family inclusion and, more important, to there being access to information in the health sector across the board. I acknowledge all the organisations, including Atareira and Supporting Families in Mental Illness, and all the beautiful families who are caring for loved ones with mental illness and watching this debate on television around the country. It is their stories and experiences that have motivated this bill, our bill.

In conclusion, I say this is simple legislation with an important purpose, which is to strengthen and clarify the current legislation. The 1992 Act made limited provision for the involvement of families. This bill clarifies, extends, and strengthens the role of the families of patients who are experiencing mental illness, by amending section 7A of the Act. The point of these changes is, first and foremost, to clarify the rights and responsibilities of the family and whānau in relation to their family member who is being cared for under the Act. I would really appreciate the support of the House for this bill to go to the select committee. It is a democratic process. It will enable input from families, consumers, providers, and psychiatrists. It is my hope that this bill will go a long way towards addressing the need for greater family inclusion—forget about the rhetoric—in the caring for and recovery of mental health patients, our loved ones, by fixing a gap in the current legislation. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 60

New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; ACT New Zealand 1 (Douglas); Māori Party 5; Progressive 1; United Future 1.

Noes 62

New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4 (Boscawen, Garrett, Hide, Roy H).

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I move, That the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be considered by the Local Government and Environment Committee. This bill has been required for some time, and it is very unfortunate for a number of farm owners who have for generations been tenants on their own property that this bill was not passed some time ago. I will refer to the situation in Canterbury in more detail later on.

I will first of all get to the purpose of the bill. In the Resource Management Act there is a term called a “requiring authority”. This bill raises the threshold that an organisation has to reach before it becomes a requiring authority. A requiring authority is able to have access to, and use of, private land for the purpose of its project. Many years ago, this was the case when our electricity company—we had only one in those days—needed to put pylons and cables through a particular area. That area might have involved private land, and that company was able to access the land and put its pylons and cabling on it because the provision of electricity was seen as a public good. I do not have any difficulty with that provision at all; obviously specific negotiations are required.

However, in the time since this original provision, which allows this access to, and use of, private land, was introduced, new types of organisations have arisen, but the Resource Management Act has not been changed in order to ensure that the term “requiring authority” meets that public interest test. In my view it no longer meets that test. So my bill substitutes the term “appropriate” in the Resource Management Act—where the requiring authority is undertaking “appropriate” work in order to get this compulsorily acquired access to and use of land—with “necessary”. It raises the threshold in that manner. It then adds a further requirement before an organisation can become a requiring authority by saying that the project it is undertaking must be in the public interest. So the project will not just have to be appropriate; it will have to be necessary. It will also have to be in the public interest.

In my view, this legislative amendment, which is quite a small amendment to section 167 of the Resource Management Act, would have the overwhelming support of the public, many of whom did not know that private organisations, at the moment, under the law have the ability to get access to and use of private land. This situation was drawn to my attention when the Central Plains Water scheme was proposed. In 2005 the then Minister for the Environment received a request to consider granting Central Plains Water the status of requiring authority, and the advice from the officials and the legal advice obtained was that there was no alternative but to grant Central Plains Water the status of requiring authority. That meant it was able to go on to the private land around the project area and say that it wanted to use the land in the future as part of its water take and storage, and then to transfer it on to the irrigation scheme. The people in the Malvern Hills area were gobsmacked: suddenly they were told that their private land was not going to be their land any more, and that a new organisation, Central Plains Water, was going to be able to use part of their land.

Some of the families in this area have literally been there for generations. The area is more than just where they live, it is more than their home; it is a huge part of their history, and they want it to be a huge part of their future. There was a lot of legal debate about the Central Plains Water proposal. I am leaving that debate aside because it is only indirectly relevant to this bill. But for members of the farming community in the Malvern Hills area it meant that they were not able to use that bit of land, because they were never quite sure for how long it was going to remain theirs. When was Central Plains Water going to move on to their land and use it for its own project? This caused huge distress to the families involved. They set up an organisation called the Malvern Hills Protection Society in order to fight through the legal system the scheme proposed by Central Plains Water. If this legislation is changed in the way that I am proposing tonight, then a huge part of their concern about what was happening to their private property will be overcome.

I pay tribute to the people who are involved in the Malvern Hills Protection Society. This whole chain of events has been very distressing and very stressful for them, and the issue is not over yet. Unfortunately, I am not proposing that this bill be retrospective; I do not think that is appropriate, particularly given the amount of litigation that is involved in the Central Plains Water issue at the moment. This bill is just to ensure that a private organisation, or an organisation that was proposing a project that the Minister considered was not necessary and was not in the public interest, would not be granted this right to have compulsory access to, and use of, private land. I understand the Hon Dr Nick Smith has already given this issue some consideration. I was not able to hear directly from him over the last little while about his support, but I urge his consideration of support for this bill to go to the select committee process, because if it is rejected it gives other organisations a complete green light to go ahead and do to other farmers or other private landowners exactly what Central Plains Water has done to the farmers in the Malvern Hills area.

This bill addresses the issues that were brought to my attention, and to the attention of the public of New Zealand, because of the Central Plains Water issue and the intrusion into the private property of the farmers in the Malvern Hills area. It addresses that issue by increasing the threshold for approval as a requiring authority. If the law is changed in the way I am proposing, then the Hon Dr Nick Smith, should he receive the same proposal that was put to the then Minister in 2005, would have the legal ability to decline that proposal. He would be able to use new considerations and new tools in order to protect the validity of the private landownership. The Minister for the Environment would be required to be satisfied that the applicant seeking approval as a requiring authority actually needed to be a requiring authority. The applicant must not just want the status; it must need the status. The project would have to be a necessary project and it would have to be in the public interest.

In my view this is a very serious issue. The right to access and use private land should not be given to a private organisation for a for-profit project; it should only be given in the instance of a public interest project—the ones that I outlined at the beginning of my contribution tonight. If there is a public interest project, and if the Minister considers that it is necessary for the organisation proposing to undertake the project to be a requiring authority, then the Minister can just say yes and the organisation keeps that right. But where the project is not in the public interest, and where it is not necessary, then the Minister will have the legal tools available to him or her to decline the application to be a requiring authority.

This is quite a simple change; in my view it is in the best interests of what New Zealanders have traditionally regarded as their right as private landowners. I urge the consideration and support of the House.

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National—West Coast - Tasman): I listened to the previous speaker, the Hon Ruth Dyson, with interest because the approval of requiring authorities is a subject that has occupied an amount of time and discussion, particularly during consideration of the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill, which passed through the Local Government and Environment Committee. I was heavily involved along with all the other members of the committee in the implementation of that legislation. The first phase reforms were considered carefully, and we worked hard to get them right. Now, thanks to those changes, we have reduced a previously bureaucratic maze into something far more manageable that, instead of impeding progress, will allow progress to take place. That, I would suggest, was always the intention of the original Resource Management Act.

I have two concerns about the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill. One is that it is being done as an amendment and in isolation to other changes. Straight away, one of the concerns I have is that it could eventually be a step backwards rather than forwards. I am sure that the intention of the bill’s proposer is that it be a step forwards, so let me explain. Under the Resource Management Act requiring authorities are given the ability to have areas of land designated for network utilities or large public works. A requiring authority can be a Minister of the Crown, a local or regional authority, or a network utility operator approved by the Minister for the Environment. Currently, to become a requiring authority a test of appropriateness is applied to applicants. An applicant may wish to carry out a project, work, or a network utility operation. The work that the applicant wishes to carry out is covered by this test.

My understanding is that one of the two main purposes of the Hon Ruth Dyson’s bill is to change the requirement for a project to be “necessary” rather than “appropriate”. Clearly, this could create a major roadblock for many projects. For a project to meet the requirements of a necessity test the network utility operators would have to demonstrate that the project is the only viable option. Therein lies a problem, because that is not always the case. Even if an option may be considered the best option, it may not be the only viable option. So this requirement would affect many regionally and nationally significant infrastructure projects. These are some of the discussions we had when we looked at this initially. This Government wants to progress projects, not introduce legislation that, in effect, will hold them up. This bill could easily increase red tape for no demonstrable gain. It would, in fact, have negative consequences and would fail to achieve the laudable objective that, no doubt, inspired the member.

Let us now look at the second test. Currently, this test is applied in relation to whether the applicant is likely to carry out the responsibilities of a requiring authority, including financial responsibilities, satisfactorily. This test also asks whether the applicant will have proper regard to the interests of those affected and to the interests of the environment. The second major purpose of the Hon Ruth Dyson’s amendment bill is to require that, as set out in clause 5(2)(aa), “the project, work, or network utility operation be in the public interest;”. None of what I am saying is intended to take away the reality that this is a difficult situation for any major works operation to deal with. But I would suggest that, again, the business of things having to be in the public interest seems excessive. From my analysis, the current situation covers the necessary requirements. Adding another criterion of the project, work, or network utility operation having a “public interest” will rapidly be problematic. How does one define what the public interest is at any particular point in time and how long will it stay in exactly that position? It is another example of wanting to centralise things unnecessarily.

It is not, I contend, the Government’s job to determine public interest, and it is something that will be difficult to measure definitively. It could be a field day for litigants. Essentially, if we go down the path of forcing projects to be necessary rather than appropriate, combined with a requirement that they be in the public interest—the subjectivity of which would be a nightmare to achieve consensus on—then the number of projects would be radically reduced. We would be impeding progress and increasing extra, unnecessary criteria, which would increase the time delays we are trying to eliminate in reforms that this Government is undertaking. We will potentially miss out on the benefits a project may provide locally, and those are jobs, services, and the potential for economic growth.

It must also be noted that in the second phase of the Resource Management Act reforms to be instigated this year—and, again, this is not to lessen the intention of the proposer—work will be done on the designation provisions of the Resource Management Act. This is not just a matter of sour grapes and saying amendments are being done anyway, but, given that work is already being done in conjunction with tandem changes to the Act, there is no reason to contemplate such an amendment at this stage and to make an amendment in isolation. Indeed, I think that if we were to do that, we would risk unintended consequences occurring, and that is something the Resource Management Act can certainly do without at the moment.

In conclusion, I see no reason whatsoever to introduce this legislation at the moment. Therefore, I find it hard to support the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill, and the Government will not be doing so. The changes are strict, and, let alone being without the commensurate benefits for such strictness, they will have a negative effect, in my view, on local economies. They will prevent the best viable options for projects that do not fit within the narrow criterion of being necessary from going ahead, and the bill is simply not good legislation. Thank you.

Hon SHANE JONES (Labour): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to support this member’s bill, the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill. As background I remind members of this House that this particular provision—that is, a designation—is actually etched in the history of Māori land. In 1975 the former Ministry of Works decided to designate the coastal land around the northern peninsula and dedicate it to a public esplanade purpose, overriding the existing property rights of the Māori landowners. Funnily enough, although it will be unknown to members on the other side of the House, that led to the existence of the Ngāti Wai Retention Committee, which then fed into the 1975 Matakite march. So those members who are sneering at this bill should not for a moment think that they can easily ride roughly over property rights.

This evening we are seeing, from a supposedly pro-property right party, a level of distain and a level of neglect. Those members do not care about the existence of the property rights enjoyed at the moment by owners. They are willing to oppose this legislation, even though all it does is to act as a check on the powers of the State to be handed out to a variety of organisations. Let me say that a host of those organisations are no longer New Zealand - owned entities. I point to Telecom, for example. Underlying the foolish opposition that speakers on the Government side of the House are serving up this evening is a negation of property rights, a willingness to see that organisations that are not accountable to New Zealanders have this privileged status offered to them in a very loose and potentially dangerous fashion.

My senior colleague has isolated an example in the South Island where very, very simple but concerned New Zealanders looked to the law to have their property rights upheld. This is an opportunity for the Government to strengthen the process, so that when that privileged status is allocated in the future to any other entity, it has to go through a higher test.

What the previous speaker, Chris Auchinvole, did not say was that Dr Nick Smith’s reforms of 2009 attempted to look at this issue, but the Government found that it was steamrollered by Transit, by Telecom, by utility companies, and by a host of other interests that are no longer owned by, are totally accountable to, or owe any kind of obligation to New Zealanders. The Government was steamrollered.

A number of us sought to moderate the appetite of the State in handing out that privileged status, because when that status is handed out, ordinary landowners are unable to go about their legal business unless those shadowy organisations are prepared to indulge those existing landowners in carrying out their activities. That is a matter of fact—that is a matter of fact. For those reasons, this legislation, modest though it may be, serves a prodigious public purpose. It upholds the primacy of landowner property rights, which is something that that party over there is prepared to usher in and usher out when it suits its short-term political imperatives. That is why this legislation ought to be supported.

This legislation ought to be upheld because it is not fair for privileged organisations to wander away with this high level of status, which is not available to a host of other organisations that go through the statutory process. When organisations acquire that privileged status, they are able to use excessively the power of the State to squash the rights of current landowners. Shame on members on that side of the House!

LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): That was a rather dramatic rendition of this bill, the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill, that has been put forward by the Hon Ruth Dyson, so I would like to bring a bit of sanity to this debate.

I wish to remind the previous speaker, the Hon Shane Jones, that he was one of the hard-working members of the Local Government and Environment Committee that was able to successfully pass the first round of reforms to the Resource Management Act last year. He is correct; his memory does serve him well in the fact that quite some work was done on designations and the topic was discussed at length. But I think his memory fails him somewhat in terms of where we got to.

We recognise that there are still some challenges in the area of requiring authorities, which will be addressed in the second phase of Resource Management Act reform. We need to make sure that we are able to more efficiently facilitate infrastructure development without compromising environmental outcomes. That is part of what we will be doing in the second phase of work on the Resource Management Act, and that member, Mr Jones, is fully aware of that. He is fully aware of the great work that was done in phase one, and of the fact that it is so important that we cannot deal with one single piece of it in isolation. We need to look at it holistically. In terms of the phase one reform we have undertaken already, we recognise that we do not want to rush the piece of work on requiring authorities. I ask Mr Jones whether he remembers that. We wanted to make sure that we were able to take the issue further and look at it in phase two, which the Local Government and Environment Committee looks forward to doing.

We will not be supporting this member’s bill, but I acknowledge Ruth Dyson for bringing one piece of reform to our attention this evening. I reiterate that improving planning for infrastructure is a key focus of the National Government, and that the Government’s programme that we have outlined for economic recovery is dependent on an ambitious programme for infrastructure investment. That, of course, covers roads—which we have heard about—public transport, broadband, electricity grid upgrades, new renewable generation, and water infrastructure. The Opposition might not realise that some of those things are critical to growing our economy, but at the same time we need to make sure that we do those things in the correct manner.

If I look locally, I see that it is projects like these significant infrastructure projects that have kept the Taupō economy afloat during these hard times, and we can look at whether it has been electricity generators for Mighty River Power, or Contact Energy’s geothermal developments. The East Taupō arterial road and Taupō bypass are also significant projects that we want to keep going. We want to encourage more development into our local economy, because that brings jobs into the Taupō area. It is really important that we get the balance right; that is why a significant amount of work has been done in the first phase of the Resource Management Act reform. We will be looking at this issue of requiring authorities in phase two. That is only a matter of months away; it is not a long time, which is unlike what we saw in the 9 long years of the Labour Government. If this had been such a priority, perhaps that Government would have fixed it back then. But I move on.

In terms of projects to meet the requirements of a necessity test, for example, network utility operators would have to demonstrate that the project was the only viable option. That is not always the case, even if it were considered the best option. So that is why I am sorry but I cannot support the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): Tēnā koutou katoa. I am pleased to stand for the Greens this evening in support of the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill. A relatively small change is being proposed to what is a very substantial piece of legislation. Nevertheless, it effects a very useful and positive change to the Act as it stands.

It is interesting that the words “appropriate” and “necessary” are once again at the heart of a discussion about provisions within the Resource Management Act, because those who know the history of the legislation will know that the debate was had as long ago as 1990, when the Act was still in its draft form. Clearly, the notion of appropriateness is a very relative term; it is to do with something that might be suitable or proper within a context of a particular situation. Clearly, the word “necessary” indicates something that needs to be done, must be done, and, indeed, is prerequisite.

In 1990 the select committee on the Resource Management Bill considered evidence and reported to Parliament. Submitters had expressed concern that some of the terminology used in the old Town and Country Planning Act was being abandoned in the new legislation. Indeed, the submitters suggested that the committee agree that existing wording should still be used where it was compatible with the policy interest of the legislation. To quote from the select committee at the time: “In some cases the committee recommends returning to existing wording, ‘coastal management’ being one example.” It went on to say that “the committee thought it important to return to the term ‘unnecessary subdivision use and development’ in place of ‘inappropriate subdivision use and development’…”. The question of how different our development patterns might have been—and the outcomes we witness day by day—had the bar been set at “necessary” rather than “appropriate” is now only of academic interest. Nevertheless, it highlights that the bar was perhaps set too low, and that necessity is indeed an appropriate and proper level. This bill provides an opportunity to tighten up on at least one aspect of resource management, in an area where there is now an opportunity to effect some positive change and some improvement.

We note that the technical advisory group’s report to the Minister for the Environment in February 2009 recommended that requiring authorities no longer make decisions on their own designations, but that the relevant council recommendation be the decision on any proposal. The technical advisory group noted that giving authorities power to make decisions on their own behalf may have had some theoretical justification when the authorities were Crown agencies, but given that so many authorities now are increasingly likely to be private entities, that justification is very hard to uphold. The Greens would have been very happy to support that notion and we hope that it comes back later, perhaps in the context of the phase 2 reform.

More specifically in respect of this bill, there are at least two very clear and vivid examples of why reference to “public interest” ought to be inserted into the bill in this context. The first example has been referenced by the proposer of the bill, Ms Dyson, who noted the successful application of Central Plains Water Ltd to become a requiring authority in order to facilitate the taking of water from the Waimakariri and Rākaia Rivers and storage of that water for later use in intensive dairying. It is inconceivable that that application would meet any reasonable test of being in the public interest. To the contrary, the proposed scheme, which is still bogged in litigation—and long may it be—was intended to facilitate the development of intensive dairying in a dry area. Although that might provide some useful or positive economic spin-off, the social, environmental, and economic cost would far outweigh such benefit.

The second example of a very poorly judged approval must be that of Riverstone Holdings, who, remarkably, were given requiring authority status to construct a monorail through conservation land as part of a tourist link from Queenstown to Te Ānau. That venture cannot possibly be in the public interest; it is a purely commercial proposition, and scarcely a railway—which would be appropriate. Clearly, it would not meet a public interest review.

Those examples illustrate why this bill is timely. It is well conceived. It deserves and will enjoy the support of the Greens. Kia ora.

HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau): The Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill raises a few issues for us as the Māori Party. One issue, of course, is the compulsory acquisition of private land, which is an issue made hugely important to Māori and to the Māori Party by the previous Labour Government passing legislation to get its hands on great swathes of the foreshore and seabed, because it could not get it through the court system. That legislation was described by a Government review committee as the single biggest land nationalisation statute enacted in New Zealand history.

According to various sources, there are about 12,500 foreshore and seabed parcels in private ownership, and about 30 percent of land adjacent to the foreshore is privately owned, as well. There are about 2,000 kilometres held by Māori interests and about 4,000 kilometres in non-Māori hands. During the review of the Foreshore and Seabed Act, one of the three commissioners, Kai Tahu educator Hana O’Regan, said that the issue of private land was a mess, often leading to people being misinformed of their rights. She said recently that “There is a huge dearth of knowledge and a high level of ignorance in coastal communities over what their rights are. We found huge tracts of land that were inaccessible because they are in private land ownership, and it wasn’t Māori ownership.” Hopefully, this bill will be the opportunity to finally investigate why non-Māori private land has historically bypassed the legal scrutiny and examination always visited upon lands held by Māori.

Another area that we question is the definition of the words “necessary”, “appropriate”, and “in the public interest” when referring to projects. For example, is it right to call the Transmission Gully project “necessary” or even “appropriate”, when there are other options and deep questions are yet to be answered?

By the same token, should we define the term “in the public interest” along the same lines as the expectations outlined under the Public Works Act? If we do, then we need to note the numerous claims to the Waitangi Tribunal resulting from the historic use of public works legislation to dispossess Māori of their land. One such case is Whāingaroa in Raglan. It was taken from the Māori owners during the Second World War for use as an airfield—which was never built—and then handed off to Pākehā afterwards for a golf course. Takaparawhau, or Bastion Point, was taken under various guises, such as defence purposes, and was not given back. Watson Park in Gisborne was taken from Rongowhakaata for the purposes of a cemetery, and was not used for that purpose. Closer to home, lands at Paraparaumu were taken from the original owners under the Public Works Act for the purposes of an airfield at the outbreak of war, but were never returned when the war ended.

My colleague Te Ururoa “Mike Tyson” Flavell has put forward the Public Works (Offer Back of and Compensation for Acquired Land) Amendment Bill, which would require the original owners—Māori or Pākehā—to be given the right of first refusal to purchase land taken but no longer needed for public works.

We will be watching the progress of the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill to ensure that the interest of the public includes the interest of mana whenua, the people of the land taken. We have questions about this bill, but we will support its first reading to enable the issues to be raised and the questions to be asked and, hopefully, answered. Kia ora tātou.

BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central): I am very pleased to speak on this bill, the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill, in the name of my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson. I was interested to listen to the language from the MP for West Coast - Tasman, Mr Auchinvole, who said that this bill could increase red tape, and that it could impede progress. But I think that in fact the Government wants to cut some red tape on new water projects in Canterbury. The Prime Minister defined in his statement to Parliament last month that he wants to see real progress on water allocation in Canterbury, so it is little wonder that Mr Auchinvole is defining that this bill may deflect things that are in the public interest, and is suggesting that that might be excessive.

I suggest that what we might well see from this Government, in alignment with the sentiments expressed in voicing opposition to this bill, is a move to breach not just the fundamental property rights that my colleague Shane Jones referred to—which we would expect to be a fundamental principle of the right, and which we are also, I think, expecting to see very shortly from Cabinet as early as next Monday, with announcements on the future allocation and management of water in Canterbury—but also the breach of another fundamental principle, the fundamental principle of taxation without representation. I think that the Government is prepared and poised to remove the democratically elected organisation Environment Canterbury from the management of Canterbury water and instead install a commissioner, perhaps in the form of Jenny Shipley, the former National Prime Minister.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You’ve been attacking them for months.

BRENDON BURNS: The Minister is welcome to comment on this, and to confirm whether the speculation, which he has not yet denied, is correct. What a segue we have got there—what a segue we have. There is the former Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Wyatt Creech, a member of the Open Country Dairy board, which has breeched environmental law on a number of occasions. He is followed, perhaps, by his Prime Minister Jenny Shipley, the commissioner for Environmental Canterbury. Jenny Shipley is of course a very good friend of Ruth Richardson, who happens to be on the board of Synlait in Dunsandel, another dairy company, and who is the ideological soulmate of Don Brash, who in turn is on the board of Oceania Dairy Group down in Waimate. So we can see why this Government has a view of not wanting to see an amendment to the Resource Management Act that suggests that matters should be designated in the public interest, or that sees a requirement that work should be authorised only if it is necessary.

Therefore, that is why we are hearing that language from the Government tonight. It is little wonder that the people of Canterbury are beginning to ask questions about what is actually at stake in terms of the management of Canterbury’s water; they will hear the signals from the Government tonight that this bill is presenting. The signals are that Cabinet will decide on Monday. We have had signals from the Prime Minister that he wants to see the rapid allocation of water. He wants to get some very quick economic runs on the board.

I heard the MP for Taupō talking about environmental balance. Well, in my experience environmental balance always comes second to economic growth, especially when this Government is involved. We have already seen that the environmental balance in Canterbury has been put to one side, because there is no capacity any longer to swim in the waterways and streams of Canterbury. Who will accelerate the process for the allocation of water? We have had an acknowledgment that there have been problems around the allocation of water. Why would we want to accelerate more allocation without fundamental changes to environmental protections being put in place first? We cannot have it both ways. We cannot have blue-green; what we will get is blue-brown. That is what will happen across the waterways of Canterbury if legislation like this continues to proceed. Environmental balance has always come second.

Public interest has come second. This bill is an attempt to signal that public interest should come first. Public interest should come first.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You said the legislation shouldn’t proceed. Make your mind up.

BRENDON BURNS: I do believe that this legislation should proceed. I think this Government needs to come back to some basic precepts. It should say that public interest should come before the interests of those who have property. But it should protect property rights, and this bill acknowledges that in the case of Central Plains Water, the rights of property holders were put second to the interests of a particular and small group of trustees, all of whom came on board for that project. The Government should also be acknowledging a fundamental principle that one expects from parties of the right: when we are going to have taxation, it should come with representation.

NICKY WAGNER (National): The National Government promised to review the Resource Management Act as part of National’s pre-election promises in 2008. National promised to review it because we were aware that after 18 years since the Resource Management Act had become law, there was growing criticism about the slow and costly plan preparation and consenting processes.

Our reform was designed to maintain environmental protection, but to improve decision making and reduce costs and delays. Slow, overly bureaucratic processes do absolutely nothing for the environment. The people were very clear. They wanted and needed a better and more efficient system. Within 100 days of taking office, the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill was introduced into Parliament by the Minister for the Environment, the Hon Dr Nick Smith.

That bill was phase one of a comprehensive reform of the Act. It covered areas such as the removal of frivolous, vexatious, and anti-competitive objections; improving planned development and planned change processes; improving resource-consented processing, which has been needed and was neglected over the last 9 years by Labour; improving workability and compliance; and improving national instruments, which were also neglected under the Labour Government. The bill also created an Environmental Protection Authority. All this is relevant to the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill, which we are debating tonight, because during work on the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill the whole issue of designations and requiring authorities was considered, and the members of the Local Government and Environment Committee, as has been mentioned tonight by Shane Jones, looked long and hard at these issues. The issues are complex and involve several different Acts of Parliament and a series of tests to determine who can become a requiring authority and what projects can be covered by this legislation. However, we do agree with the Hon Ruth Dyson that changes need to be made in this area. Therefore, the area of the Resource Management Act we are looking at—sections 166 to 186 in Part 8, including section 167, which the Hon Ruth Dyson has selected to amend, entitled “Designations and heritage orders”—will be reviewed in phase two of the major reform.

The work to make these changes is well under way. The changes will be comprehensive and will be integrated into the larger reform of the Resource Management Act. This bill, which deals with only one section out of a total of 433 sections and 10 schedules, is a pointless exercise. I understand the principles that the Hon Ruth Dyson is keen to promote, and it may be that they will be included in the final reform. But it would be foolish to send this bill to a select committee when a technical advisory group and the Ministry for the Environment are already working on the issue, and a more holistic reform is already under way.

The member will, of course, be able to have input into the second phase of the resource management reform legislation, and can be involved in the passage of that bill through the House. I invite her to join us on the Local Government and Environment Committee during the passage of the bill. Therefore, National does not support the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill, because it is unnecessary. Thank you.

DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I am very pleased to rise and support the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Bill, introduced by the Hon Ruth Dyson, being referred to the select committee. As the member pointed out in her introduction, the bill raises the threshold for an acquiring authority to be able to acquire and, in a sense, violate or take over others’ property rights. Originally very few organisations in existence were able to do this. What we are seeing now is a multiplying of those organisations, and today a number of private organisations can successfully take away the property rights of landowners. Ruth Dyson gave an example in Canterbury where a group of farmers effectively found themselves needing to defend their property rights from entities that they did not even realise were able to take away their land.

I think the New Zealand public would be surprised to know of the number of organisations that can successfully take away people’s property rights today. This is a very simple bill that aims to protect those property rights that are a core and central part of our own rights as New Zealanders. If those farmers were watching this broadcast on television tonight, they would be surprised to see that the party that they thought would be defending their interests is not supporting this bill that would enable their property rights to be protected; and that the ACT Party, which makes so much of property rights and the defensibility of property rights, is also willing not to support this bill, but is willing to enable those entities out there to take their property more or less at will.

This bill omits the word “appropriate”, as Ruth Dyson said, and substitutes for it the word “necessary”. It states that the approval of the applicant as a requiring authority—therefore, being able to take another’s land or property rights—is “necessary” for the purposes of carrying out the project, not simply “appropriate”. That is a very simple change of law, but nevertheless a very important one. The second part of the criteria is that “the project, work, or network utility operation is in the public interest;”. As my colleague Brendon Burns said, it is in the wider interest, not in the narrow interest of those who would simply like to take somebody’s property rights.

This legislation tightens up an anomaly in the Resource Management Act that needs to be tightened. It is very simple, it should be referred to the select committee, and it could be passed very simply. People such as those we have talked about in the central plains could have their property rights adequately protected.

How does the bill address the issues in front of us? It increases the threshold for the approval of a requiring authority. A requiring authority could not simply slide in and take property, as it can at the moment. It strengthens the Ministry for the Environment and it will be required to be satisfied that the applicant seeking approval as a requiring authority actually needs to be a requiring authority. Again, it is a simple but very fundamental clause. It will no longer be appropriate for the applicant simply to be a requiring authority; the applicant for requiring authority status will need to have that out of necessity. The applicant has to need the ability to issue the notices of requirement for the designations to carry out its work. In short, this is good legislation that deserves to be passed through to select committee to be discussed, and to be passed into law to protect the property rights of those people who would otherwise lack that protection. Thank you.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): The Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill speaks volumes about the difference between the Opposition and the Government in approaching the Resource Management Act. All this bill does is change three words. How many members of this House really believe that the complex issues about improving the Resource Management Act, an Act that comes to over 600 pages, can be solved by changing three words? It is quite a commentary of where Labour was for its 9 years in Government. Despite all the problems with the Resource Management Act, during its 9 years it did so little that the three words Ruth Dyson wants to change in this bill really sum up Labour’s pathetic contribution to the challenges facing this nation on the effective management of our natural resources and the effective delivery of infrastructure.

The part I found most galling in this debate was hearing Labour’s spokesperson on water issues deride the deterioration of water quality in Canterbury. I ask the member opposite, Brendon Burns, to tell me one single thing that that Labour Ministers did in their 9 long years in Government that made a difference to water management and quality.

Even more extraordinary is the very specific issue that is dealt with in this bill: the requiring authority status that was given to Central Plains Water. I ask members what Labour said in Government when Central Plains Water acquired that power granted by David Benson-Pope. I would be happy to show members opposite the correspondence. Firstly, the Labour Government’s view at that time was that the Act was fine, that it worked well, and that requiring authority status for Central Plains Water was entirely appropriate. Nowhere did Labour ever initiate any review of these provisions that it is now crying foul about.

It is the view of this Government that we should have a fresh look at the requiring authority designations and the way in which they work under the Resource Management Act. That is why this Government established, as part of the second phase of our Resource Management Act reforms, an expert advisory group not just to look at three words, for goodness’ sake, but to take a comprehensive look at the way those mechanisms work. I have no confidence that changing these three words, which is nothing more than a political branding statement and not any practical solution to these issues, will answer those substantive questions.

The last point I would like to make is this: if there was anything that developed during the course of Labour’s 9 years, it was a crisis around infrastructure. It does not matter if it was roading infrastructure, water infrastructure, or electricity infrastructure—which is the problem of my colleague Gerry Brownlee—in every one of those areas, including telecommunications and the problems with broadband, the previous Government failed. Members opposite need to understand that if they are going to change these legal tests, they need to think through what that means for getting broadband for New Zealanders in every corner of the country, including rural communities. Have members opposite thought about what these provisions mean for keeping the lights on in New Zealand? Have members opposite thought about what this bill means in terms of providing the transmission network that we need for our system? I did not hear a single word from members opposite about those issues.

Members on this side of the House say that this is not a job that can be done with three cheap words. It needs a comprehensive approach, and that is what this Government is taking. The members opposite had 9 years, but they did nothing. Members on this side of the House want to do the job properly. That is why we have a technical advisory group working in the infrastructure area. It is providing comprehensive advice, and that is the correct way to deal with these complex issues.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I begin by thanking the members who have contributed so far in this debate on the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill. I express my regret that from my rough calculations it does not look like this bill will have the numbers to get to a select committee, where I am sure it would have enjoyed the pleasure of further debate.

I say to the National members who contributed to the debate, particularly the ones from Canterbury, that people who have been involved in the Central Plains Water scheme’s intrusion on to private land will be very disappointed that Nicky Wagner, being fully aware of the consequences the Central Plains Water scheme has on private land in the Malvern Hills area, chose not to support the local farming community. That community is outraged that their private land is no longer theirs because the law does not allow the Minister for the Environment to do anything other than agree to the scheme. The Hon Dr Nick Smith should know better because he has had exactly the same advice. If the Central Plains Water scheme was given to Dr Smith to give requiring authority status, he would have no option but to approve it, as the Minister in 2005 had no option but to approve it. That should be changed. We should not have the private land rights of individuals intruded on for anything other than a project that is necessary and in the public interest. In my view, that is a simple change that National should be grown-up enough to allow to go to a select committee.

The bill acknowledges that the current law does not give the Minister for the Environment the range of tools that he or she should have. Therefore, in the event that a project application comes before them, the bill provides that the Minister, when he or she is asked to give requiring authority status to an organisation for a project, would be able to say no if it was not in the public interest for that project to have access and use of private land. I do not know many New Zealanders who would say anything other than that is fair. That is what this very small change would do. It would be fair to people like the farmers from Malvern Hills, who for generations have lived on that piece of land. They consider it theirs, it is part of their history, but it will not be part of their future, because the law allows organisations to use part of the farmers’ land for their projects. In this case, farmers lose part of their land if the project goes ahead.

My sole point in proposing this legislation was to give the Minister for the Environment another tool so it would increase the threshold that an organisation would have to reach before the Minister would give it approval as a requiring authority. First of all, the Minster would have to be satisfied that granting an organisation requiring-authority status was necessary, and that it was not just convenient and useful for that organisation. A higher standard would be required. It would have to be necessary. It would no longer have to just be appropriate for the applicant to be a requiring authority—that is all that the law allows at the moment—it would have to be necessary. The Minister would require the application to be necessary. That is another important increase in the threshold. The Minister for the Environment would also have to be satisfied that there was public interest for the project, so it is something that the organisation needs to have requiring authority status for—necessary, rather than just appropriate, and also needed.

The concerns that have been generated around many parts of the country over the last couple of decades, but particularly around the Malvern Hills area and the Central Plains Water scheme, would be removed. Ordinary New Zealanders who have worked hard to buy land or who have inherited it from their parents and grandparents would be once again given the security of knowing that that land is genuinely theirs. It is as it says in the title, but it would be theirs in reality.

I urge National members to reconsider before the vote is taken on this bill. I acknowledge and thank the other parties that have given this bill consideration and have agreed for it to go to a select committee.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 59

New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Māori Party 5; Progressive 1; United Future 1.

Noes 62

New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 4.

Motion not agreed to.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 59, Noes 63.

Bills

Electoral (Disqualification of Convicted Prisoners) Amendment Bill

First Reading

PAUL QUINN (National): I move, That the Electoral (Disqualification of Convicted Prisoners) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that this bill be considered by the Law and Order Committee. The bill comes before the House because a large number of ordinary folk have asked me to introduce it. They have discussed this matter with me and believe that that should be the case. I have to say that since the bill has become public knowledge, the level of support for it has been overwhelming. I think that speaks volumes about the mood of the community in getting behind this bill. I acknowledge that there has been some muffled criticisms, but most of them have come from prisoner aid - type organisations. I am sure, should I be fortunate enough to see this bill go to the select committee, that those organisations will have the opportunity to make their presentations then.

At this stage it is quite useful to canvass the history of where we are today with regard to this particular bill. Historically, the idea of voting was considered a privilege, but through the 20th century we moved to the situation where voting became a right. Until 1975 the law was that any person detained in a penal institution pursuant to a conviction was disqualified from voting. In 1975 that law was changed, and for a period of 2 years, the law enabled some prisoners to vote. But in 1977 that law was repealed, and we went back to the old situation where prisoners could not vote.

I think it is important to pause for a moment and reflect on the concept of imprisonment and what it is about. Imprisonment was looked on as a temporary exclusion of a person from the community and from the rights associated with membership within that community. I think the nub of this discussion is that very thought. The 1986 report of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System proffered a different view, with the somewhat simplified statement that “contemporary penal theory is generally opposed to the view that imprisonment entails a general suspension of the rights of citizenship.” That view was based on the 1981 Report of the Penal Policy Review Committee, which noted that the fundamental principle relating to a prisoner’s rights “must be that a prisoner retains the ordinary rights of a citizen, insofar as they are consistent with his loss of liberty and the requirements necessary for his proper containment and management in the institution.”

In my view, the royal commission demolished its own academic notion by then wanting to demonstrate the point by saying that a prisoner is entitled to be married. What it did not say, of course, is that when a prisoner goes into prison he loses his conjugal rights. The truth is that almost all of our laws impose a restriction to a greater or lesser extent on our freedoms. A classic restriction here is the right of freedom of association. We have a law that can convict people for unlawful assembly, which is defined as “an assembly of 3 or more persons who, with intent to carry out any common purpose, assemble in such a manner, or so conduct themselves when assembled, as to cause persons in the neighbourhood of the assembly to fear, on reasonable grounds, …”. The fact of the matter is that one person’s fear is another person’s pleasure, but society has made a conscious decision to say that we believe there should be some restrictions around freedom of association.

There are many other examples where we restrict people’s rights. In fact, we require people to license dogs. Here we have another restriction on people’s freedom. Fortunately the royal commission acknowledged that offending at some stage reaches such a serious nature that the community has a right to object. It then said that it believed there was a line where, if people crossed it, they should lose their vote. It then asked what would be a reasonable period. Do members know what the royal commission said? It said that when people go overseas for more than 3 years, they lose their right to vote—that is a good benchmark. That is the reason that the benchmark is 3 years. Someone who has exercised their right and privilege to go overseas for more than 3 years loses their right to vote, so they used that as the benchmark for a prisoner’s right to vote. I say that it is an absolute nonsense to compare someone has exercised their freedom of choice to someone who has committed a crime against the community. Sadly, in my view it reflects the lack of understanding of grassroots feeling about the academic notions of people who make those decisions.

I should canvass briefly the view of the Solicitor-General, who discussed this issue in respect of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. He supported the same position as the royal commission.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.