Tuesday, 8 March 2011

Tuesday, 8 March 2011

Tuesday, 8 March 2011

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Speaker’s Statements

Hone Harawira—Change of Parliamentary Membership

Mr SPEAKER: Under Standing Order 35(1)(c) I have been advised by the Māori Party that its parliamentary membership has changed, and that Hone Harawira is no longer a member of the Māori Party for parliamentary purposes. Accordingly, under Standing Order 34(4), Hone Harawira is, from 23 February 2011, regarded as an Independent member for parliamentary purposes. The allocations of speaking slots and oral questions will be adjusted. The allocations of funding to the Māori Party and to Hone Harawira will also be adjusted.

Ministerial Statements

Earthquake—Christchurch

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I intend to make a ministerial statement under Standing Order 347 in relation to the Canterbury earthquake that took place on 22 February 2011. Before I do so, I seek leave for the six party leaders, or their representatives, and five other members to comment following my statement, and for those speeches to be up to 5 minutes each.

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

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: On this day 2 weeks ago the great city of Christchurch was ripped apart by a devastating earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale. So far it has been confirmed that 166 loved ones have lost their lives, and we are told that the final death toll could be more than 200. To lose so many people at once, including many foreign nationals, is hard to fathom. It is a tragedy that one cannot put into words. Everyone who was in Christchurch on that dreadful day witnessed a horrific scene. It was a frightening event that has left many suffering in anxiety and anguish, and without the services and infrastructure that we usually take for granted in New Zealand. Many thousands of people have lost their treasured possessions, homes, businesses, places of work, and livelihoods. Early indications show that up to 10,000 houses will need to be demolished, and over 100,000 more could be damaged.

The extent of this damage and huge loss of life has left people all over New Zealand and the world grieving. Christchurch is a city that has been changed forever, and the community is in shock. To all Cantabrians who have been affected, I express the deepest sympathies of the New Zealand Government. Though we cannot imagine the deep sorrow and grief of all those who have lost loved ones, we can send you the promise of our ongoing support. We are thinking of you, we are standing alongside you, and we are committed to rebuilding your lives and your city. We acknowledge the huge emotional stress that has been placed on families by this earthquake, especially after enduring the September earthquake and months of aftershocks. In the challenging times ahead, you have the full support of this Government, of this Parliament, and of all New Zealanders. I particularly acknowledge members of this House from Canterbury; our thoughts are with you and your families.

I acknowledge the outstanding generosity and support of people all over New Zealand and the world in response to this earthquake. I thank our many international contributors. We have accepted and received help from Australia, China, Israel, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, and we have had generous offers from many more.

I pay tribute to the many hundreds of people who have been involved in the rescue and recovery operation, and I pay tribute to the bravery, heroism, and generosity of individuals. Everywhere I go in Christchurch, I hear stories of miraculous rescues that took place, of people opening up their homes to complete strangers, and of people going out of their way to help fellow Cantabrians. I would like to thank all central and local government staff who have worked incredibly hard to restore public services, provide health care, open schools, run welfare centres, provide financial assistance, and more. I pass on a special thankyou to all of those who have made donations to the Government’s official Christchurch Earthquake Appeal, and to other appeals such as those of the Red Cross and Salvation Army. That money will go towards supporting Canterbury’s people and rebuilding Canterbury’s communities.

Finally, I acknowledge the Mayor of Christchurch, Bob Parker, for his leadership, and I thank all members and parties in this House for their support.

Yesterday I announced that on Friday, 18 March there will be a national memorial service at Hagley Park in Christchurch. The service will give all New Zealanders the chance to reflect on the terrible loss of life that occurred on 22 February, and to stand shoulder to shoulder with Cantabrians. Rebuilding Christchurch is a key priority for the Government this year. We will provide the necessary resources to make this happen over the coming weeks, months, and years. It will be a long and complex task, which we will need to work through step by step. One thing is certain: Christchurch, we will rebuild you; you will once again be the successful, vibrant, and beautiful city that you were just over 2 weeks ago.

Although we must never forget those who have been lost, we must focus on the indomitable spirit of Canterbury, on the future. On my visits to Christchurch over the past 2 weeks, I have witnessed that spirit, and I have great confidence in that spirit. With the help of many people all over the country and the world, we will rebuild this great city. We owe it to the people we have lost to keep our minds on the brighter future that we are all striving for.

The thoughts of the New Zealand Government are with the people of Canterbury at this dark time. Let us remember the loved ones we have lost, let us be grateful for the lives we continue to lead, and let us turn our hearts and minds to the huge challenges ahead of us. Kia kaha.

Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition): First of all, I would like to acknowledge the family and friends of the perhaps up to 200 people who lost their lives in the earthquake on 22 February. They are real people. We have seen their faces. They are young, and they are old. All of them have been taken prematurely from those who knew and loved them, and we mourn collectively here today their loss. Many who died were young international students; young students who had come here to this country as our guests. We pass on our condolences and our sadness to their families across the world for their loss.

To all the people of Christchurch, in the House today we acknowledge the trauma, and the loss, and the hardship that you have suffered. All of us, I think, in the House today collectively give our assurance to the people of Christchurch that they will not face the cost of recovery alone; the cost will be borne by all of us as New Zealanders.

Over the 7 days that I spent on the ground in Christchurch, I saw the devastation that has occurred right across the city. But, in particular, I want to acknowledge the hardship still faced today by thousands in the eastern suburbs, who, 2 weeks after the earthquake, are still deprived of power, of water, and of basic toilet facilities. They live in broken homes. As I went around those homes, too often I saw elderly people, I saw children, who had been traumatised by this, the second earthquake, and the constant aftershocks. I am amazed at the resilience of people and the frequent response that I got when I offered my sympathy and concern. They said: “Don’t worry about me. There are others much worse off than me. Think of those who have lost their family members, those who have been injured.”

I have been amazed, too, at the readiness of people in Canterbury and people right across New Zealand to reach out and help others in need. We have seen out of this tragedy enormous community spirit. I pay tribute to that, but for those living in Christchurch and still suffering that deprivation, I understand the pressure and the stress that they are living under and that there is an end to everyone’s patience.

To the people whom I have witnessed tirelessly working to provide the services and to try to make life better for others, I say they have my huge admiration. To the emergency services, utility services, groups like the Sallies, the Red Cross, and St John, thank you. You do a really good job. To the volunteers whom Clayton Cosgrove and I worked with in Rangiora, shipping food across to people in the eastern suburbs, thanks for your generosity. And to the volunteers and community groups that I worked with, helping to deliver those services, thank you again. You were amazing—the people who are working out of the New Brighton police station, the people working in the community hall across the way round the clock to help others in their need. To the Student Volunteer Army and the Farmy Army thank you for your amazing efforts, as well. I spent a day in Shirley working with the Student Volunteer Army of a thousand students, led incredibly by Sam Johnson. Thank you, Sam, for your efforts. They are out there doing the work on the ground. People who looked as though they might never have known one end of a shovel from the other were out there doing their thing, because they knew that others needed their help.

I turn to my fellow Labour MPs, and to Jim Anderton. Two of my fellow Labour MPs have lost their homes. They are living without power and without water, and one of them is in a tent in the back section. I pay tribute to them and to my National colleagues for the assistance that they are giving in their communities.

I have seen my share of tragedy down in Christchurch, but I have also seen enormous courage, commitment to others, and an amazing spirit amongst Cantabrians, which gives me confidence that Christchurch will rebuild and will re-establish itself. Finally, I reaffirm my and Labour’s support to Cantabrians and wish them well in the massive rebuilding and recovery task that lies before them and us.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I start off by acknowledging the community and volunteer sector in Christchurch/Ōtautahi. Their response and their commitment to their communities indicate why this sector is so important here in Aotearoa: there are thousands of people giving up their time and their energy at a time of great stress for them and their families to go out to help others, simply because they can and because others need their help. Many, many organisations are working with communities in Christchurch/Ōtautahi. When I was there I worked with Comfort for Christchurch—many young people organising welfare and food drops. The University of Canterbury Student Volunteer Army, which the Hon Phil Goff has mentioned, is doing amazing work there. I acknowledge all of those different groups of people there represented by the political parties here. I know that the Māori Party has teams of people out there, the Green Party has teams of people out there, and Labour and National, I do not doubt, also have teams of people—their people, their members—out there doing work for free for their community because they know that it is important and necessary. This is the community spirit, the community and voluntary sector, which we know and should respect for their efforts on our behalf and our communities’ behalf.

I acknowledge also those who are working out of Rehua Marae, and the coordination and support role that people there are undertaking for their people, the kaimahi who are working out of there: the Māori wardens, the health workers, the counselling services that are provided, and Ngāi Tahu and their outreach that is provided there. I have been with those people as they have walked through the dusty streets of Wainoni and Aranui, knocking on people’s doors, and talking to those who are too frightened to come out of their homes to seek help, and to those who just do not know what help they can get, because they do not have the communications technology that many of us take for granted. Those are the people who need help the most, and people from Rehua Marae, in particular, are working with those communities. I acknowledge them, particularly David Ormsby from Te Puni Kōkiri, and Maire Kopa, who is coordinating from Rehua Marae.

As the horror of Christchurch’s earthquake continues to unfold, there are plans for rebuilding the city and the livelihoods of those who live there. We believe that the Government has a unique opportunity to build a national, a community, and a political consensus on the rebuilding of Christchurch. There are three elements to that consensus: its funding, its design, and its community participation. We understand that the task at hand is very difficult and very serious, and on behalf of the Green Party I offer our constructive support in Parliament to find a fair, sustainable, and inclusive response to the challenges ahead for our community in Christchurch. We support a fair and equitable approach to paying for the rebuild, and that means sharing the costs across those who can most afford to pay. With the combined cost of the Christchurch earthquakes yet to be finalised, we believe that the cost beyond what insurance will cover has to be borne fairly across our country. As members of this House may already know, we have already offered our support for a temporary levy on those who can best afford an additional tax on their income, to help support that rebuild.

The rebuilding of Christchurch can be done in a way that reflects best practice in sustainable city design, and meets the needs of communities who live there. We believe that it is important that expertise is made available to the Government, and that the Government takes up the opportunity to consider the advice and work with those who have such expertise.

The impact of this earthquake is massive and heartbreaking. I have worked in the city and seen the impact of the earthquake on families and their children. Therefore, it is critical that there is an inclusive approach to reflecting the values of the people who live there and are affected by this tragedy, and that they are represented in the decisions that are being made. That is crucial if there is to be a cross-party approach, but also if there is to be an approach that works for the communities who are affected. So we urge the Government to consider very seriously how it will involve the communities of Christchurch in the decisions that are being made.

Finally, the Green Party extends our most heartfelt condolences to all of those people across the country who have lost friends, colleagues, and loved ones in this tragedy. He mihi aroha ki a koutou katoa.

Hon RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT): In Christchurch we have seen nature at its very worst, and we have seen people at their very, very best. The earth on which we stand and rely has opened up and thrown everything it has at the people of Christchurch, shaking their places of work to destruction, destroying their homes, and taking away loved ones. Amongst that horror and amongst that rubble we have seen the human spirit in people, strong and supportive for themselves, for their neighbours, for their community, and for their country. We have seen that spirit reaching out to complete strangers.

It is now 2 weeks since the earthquake, and there is destruction and despair the likes of which we have never seen. We in this House today stand together with the nation to mourn the deaths of all those whom we have lost in this tragic event, and to send our Parliament’s thoughts and prayers to those whose loved ones are still missing. To those whom we have lost: know that you will for ever remain in our thoughts and in our hearts, and that you will never ever be forgotten.

On 18 March in Christchurch’s North Hagley Park the people of Canterbury and New Zealand will have the opportunity to come together to reflect on the terrible loss suffered as a result of the quake, and to celebrate and remember the lives of those who have passed. But as Prime Minister John Key has said, the service will be a beginning, not an end.

On behalf of the ACT Party I join all the other parties in our Parliament in thanking all those who have assisted in the rescue and recovery efforts: Kiwis who may have been a member of one of the many rescue teams out in Christchurch, people from distant lands who have come to help, members of the student army, Christchurch residents who helped neighbours in need, and the many Kiwis who have donated money to one of the many charities set up to help our Cantabrians get back on their feet. Every bit of this help—and, more important, the thought behind it—no matter how small, is important, and for this we thank them. Our hearts beat proud of this great country.

Looking to the future, we know that Christchurch will rise again. Christchurch will be rebuilt and its heart will beat stronger than ever before. Out of tragedy there always comes hope, and we are seeing New Zealanders at their very best. As we dig deep for the sake of our loved ones—those who have passed and those who live—for the sake of our community, and for the sake of our country we are reminded once again, more than ever, that it is people who matter. Thank you.

Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnei au e tautoko ana i ngā kōrero kua kōrerohia e aku hoa mema o te Whare Pāremata nei i tēnei rangi. Nā rēira māku e mihi atu ki ngā iwi, ki ngā rōpū, ki ngā tāngata katoa e kaha ana ki te tautoko, ki te āwhina i a rātau i tēnei parekura i Ōtautahi. Katoa mai ahakoa he mema Kāwanatanga, ā rātau kaimahi, ngā mema kaunihera me ngā kaimahi, ngā āpiha, ngā rōpū katoa, ngā rōpū tauira wānanga, ngā tāngata whaipāmu, ngā hōia, ngā wātene, ngā tākuta, ngā nēhi, ngā tāngata katoa i tae atu ki reira, e whakawātea ana kia tae atu ki reira ki te tautoko, ki te āwhina i ngā tāngata i tēnei wā pōuri mō rātau i Ōtautahi.

Nā reira, e tika ana kia tukua te mihi ki a rātou katoa; me ngā whānau, ngā rōpū o Aotearoa nei whānui i tuku pūtea, i tuku tautoko, i whāngai i ngā mea kua puta mai i Ōtautahi ki ngā marae, ki ngā tāone. Ahakoa ko wai rātau kua huakina ā rātau kūaha kia manaakihia ēnei tāngata e pīrangi i tēnei wā ki te haere ake mai i Ōtautahi ki tētahi atu wāhi. Nā reira, e tika ana kia mihi atu ki a rātau katoa e mahi ana i reira.

Kai te tangi tonu ki a rātau ngā tini aituā, rātau kua mate ana i tērā parekura. E kore e mutu ngā kōrero, ngā tangi, ngā roimata, ngā hūpē mō rātau. Nā reira, koutou ngā mate, haere, okioki pai mai i te mōhio kai te tangi te motu ki a koutou i tēnei wā. Nā reira, haere, haere atu rā. Ngā whānau pani anei rā mātau, ka tangi mai koutou, ka tangi atu mātau katoa. Anei rā mātau e tautoko ana i a koutou i tēnei wā pōuri. I tēnei tāima, ka mōhio koutou ki te koi o tēnei mea te mate. Nā reira, tēnei mātau e mihi atu, e tautoko ana i a koutou i tēnei wā.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker. I endorse the sentiments expressed by my fellow members of this House today. So I acknowledge the tribes, the organisations, and all the people who worked hard to support and assist them in this disaster in Christchurch—all of them, be they members of the Government and their staff, members of the council and workers, officials, all organisations, university student groups, farmers, army personnel, wardens, doctors, nurses, all those who got there and those who made themselves available to get there to support and help the people in this hour of gloom in Christchurch.

It is apt that they are all recognised, including families and organisations from throughout New Zealand who contributed in terms of funding, who gave support, who fed the ones who appeared in Christchurch at marae and towns. Regardless of who they were, their doors were opened up to help those people who wanted to leave Christchurch at this time for other places. So it is fitting to acknowledge them all working there.

We continue to mourn the vast number who perished in that disaster. Stories, laments, and the shedding of tears and of mucus for them will never cease. So to you, the dead, depart and rest well there, in the knowledge that the nation mourns for you at this moment. Go, farewell. To the bereaved families, here we are, as you mourn before us, we all mourn for you in this time of darkness. At this time you are experiencing the sharp pain of death. We acknowledge and support you in this moment of time.]

We mourn with the families of Ōtautahi and throughout New Zealand who have lost loved ones in this tragedy in Christchurch/Ōtautahi. We particularly farewell their loved ones and we leave the message with those families that as they mourn and are orphaned, so is New Zealand. We share our tears and our mucus with them at this time, which is a sad time for them.

I congratulate everybody involved down there and everybody involved outside of Ōtautahi: all those armies we talk about—the students, the farmers, and the real army—the policemen, the officials, the non-governmental organisations, the workers, and everybody who is down there working. We are so proud of them. I acknowledge also that the cities and the towns have received people. They have opened up their doors, their schools, and the like to take in people, hopefully for a short-term break, but for whatever they desire, whether it is long term or short term. To the millions of New Zealanders who are fund-raising, who are hosting people, and who are crying with them, we just thank them for their support. They are showing the special character of New Zealand at this time.

I acknowledge the overseas rescue teams. We will not forget those people, who have come over here immediately and brought their teams to help us in our time of crisis. I also acknowledge local organisations like the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and the police. All those organisations of ours have given a mammoth effort down there.

I am pleased, as the Minister of Māori Affairs, to report that on day 2 Māori gathered at Rehua Marae and set up a hub from which they could distribute services, organise information, and so on. That was at a time when they knew not the extent of the damage, the liquefaction, and so on. Now all the marae of Ōtautahi are available. They are centres for help, and for overnight stays in some cases. They are the hub of Māori activity.

I am very pleased with the tribes of New Zealand who are fund-raising: a radiothon raised $65,000, and fishing has raised $100,000. People are coming to the party because they know that this is a whole of New Zealand effort. I convened three or four iwi hui. The iwi were so glad to be able to contribute in several ways. Doctors and nurses have been sent down there to work. It is a great effort on behalf of New Zealand.

I congratulate Ngāi Tahu. I believe they have come to the party really strong. We have committed a lot of our Te Puni Kōkiri resources and leaders of the organisation down there. They are working hand in hand. They have set up a hub together so that they can work together. That has to be a good thing for Christchurch whānui. I acknowledge the wardens, many of whom have damaged homes and are quite poor. They chug along in their cars—I am not sure about their registration, but they get there—and they do some liquefaction movement or something like that. That is a great thing.

I say this finally: despite the thousands of tonnes of liquefaction, the physical destruction of the central business district, the 10,000 homes that have to be destroyed, the 100,000 homes that need repair, and despite no power, no water, and no wharepaku—no toilets—for many, and no communication for others, the thing that is strong in my mind is the psychological effect this earthquake has had on many of our relations and friends in Christchurch. They still feel the need to sleep under the table; they do not go upstairs. Others sleep fully dressed with their shoes on, and so on. That is the effect of this tragedy. I know, though, that with the support, the care, and the love that all New Zealanders will share with the people of Ōtautahi we will move on beyond that and build a new, strong city. Tēnā koe.

Hon JIM ANDERTON (Leader—Progressive): I think if many members of this House had gone through 5,000 aftershocks, they might be sleeping under the table, too, as a matter of fact.

I have no major concern about a day of remembrance for the victims of the Canterbury earthquake, but I have to say we will have a long time—decades—to remember and commemorate this disaster and the victims it has so brutally taken. The scars will be there for many, many years, for all to see. My immediate concern—and, of course, that of many others—is with the living, and with finding, naming, releasing, and farewelling the dead. A public holiday will not give us in Canterbury time off from the catastrophic conditions in Christchurch and their ramifications. Some areas of our city still do not have toilets, water, power, or adequate means of support for those who have survived the quake. In spite of the best efforts of thousands of professional and volunteer workers, to whom all in this House have paid tribute—and I join them in it—people in many areas still cannot cook or wash, schools are damaged or destroyed, houses are wrecked, and workplaces and jobs have been completely eliminated. Winter is coming, and heating will be a real challenge for the city. Already, in the mornings the temperature drops to 3, 4, or 5 degrees.

If New Zealanders want to help, I suggest that instead of having a national holiday, everyone who is a wage earner consider donating a day’s pay. A rough calculation I did on the way up to Wellington last night shows that if the 2.2 million wage earners in New Zealand gave an after-tax contribution of the average day’s pay, it would mean something like $700 million or 800 million going to the rebuilding and welfare of Christchurch. That contribution would actually do more to assist Canterbury at the present time than a national day of commemoration or anything else would.

Christchurch will need a constructive contribution from all New Zealanders. Financial contributions are one way of doing it. On my doorstep on Saturday morning several very large cartons of safety equipment arrived from a safety company in Auckland to help those who are cleaning up the silt and mess that the streets of Christchurch are almost universally coated in. The safety equipment was extraordinarily well appreciated by the teams of volunteers who were out on the street all weekend, and have been for nearly 2 weeks now. It was a tangible reminder that people are putting practical initiatives into action to help. I want to assure them and the whole of New Zealand that gestures like that are greatly appreciated in Christchurch and do more to raise the hopes and spirits of the people of Christchurch than any national day off could possible achieve.

The resilience, the spirit, of Cantabrians is legendary—and I say that as an ex-Aucklander, which I do not speak too loudly about in Canterbury these days. It is legendary and it is real. Comment has been made in the House about it. It is a most extraordinary experience to be in a community where people respond by thinking of just about everyone else except themselves. It is a tribute to the spirit of the people of Canterbury that they will prevail, but they will need, even in spite of themselves, the rest of New Zealand by their side. I hope the expressions in this House today and the feelings of New Zealanders around the country will last for the many long years ahead when times will really be tough for many people in my city.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): When we gathered in the House 2 weeks ago, just over an hour after the earthquake in Christchurch, none of us could have comprehended the scale of the destruction that was unfolding, the loss of human life, the injury, and the awesome sadness and general shock that would quickly permeate that great city. We had heard, at that time, rumours that perhaps the cathedral spire had collapsed and that other buildings were in a state of disarray, but we too in this House were suffering the same initial shock that very quickly grabbed the entire city and, indeed, the entire country.

We have watched, in subsequent days, as the tragedy has unfolded before our very eyes. We have seen the people rescued from the collapsed buildings. CTV and Pyne Gould are now part of the national lexicon. We have grieved with the families from New Zealand and overseas. We have admired the indomitable spirit of the people of Canterbury, the ever-present face of Bob Parker, the rescue workers from around the world, and the grim determination to carry on. And in the midst of it all we have seen moments of rare attempts to restore normality: the quickness with which things as basic as rubbish services were resumed; the fact that the daily newspaper was produced on the following day. They are all small signs, in their way, of an absolute determination on the part of the people of that great city to pick up the threads of their daily lives as quickly as possible.

Apart from the physical rebuilding of Christchurch, which must occur and must protect the spirit and the history of that city, the far greater rebuilding will be the rebuilding of the confidence of the people of Christchurch so that Canterbury can now play, once more, a strong national role in the life of our country. We have heard all the statistics about the loss of employment. We have heard about the losses to our overall level of economic production. They are real; they need to be worked on. But the priority at the moment is obviously the rebuilding of the city and the restoration of normalcy to the lives of its residents.

Others have mentioned—and I concur with their view—the immense heart and spirit shown by so many New Zealanders and international relief workers in helping the people of Canterbury in their darkest hour. Various suggestions have been made of the things that the rest of us can do to assist. Mr Anderton made the suggestion of donating a day’s pay. That is a good one. I will give one more: if people who are likely to get a tax refund on their charitable donations this year were to direct that refund to the earthquake appeal, $154 million would be raised. These are practical steps that people can take to assist in the massive reconstruction of Christchurch.

As we go about this task, which will be ongoing probably for a generation, it is important that all of us pause, take stock, and reflect upon the human impact of this disaster. I think of my nephews, who are young men growing up in that city. Many will think of other members of their family and the future they face. The challenge for all of us is to be part of a reconstruction process that not only sees the physical locality of Christchurch restored but the spirit and confidence of its people restored, and the contribution they make to the national way of life of our country restored. We need each other. The last few weeks have demonstrated how we work well collectively with each other. That challenge is only just beginning.

Hon KATE WILKINSON (Minister of Conservation): Like many here, I was in Wellington when word came through: another earthquake had hit my city. I knew immediately it was bad, as the first photo that came through was of my cathedral. A sense of dread enveloped me; I thought surely not again. It was only minutes before my fears were confirmed and I heard that buildings in the central business district, where I used to work, had collapsed, and that we would not escape without loss of life this time.

Not being there made it worse. Up here I was stranded, helpless, and afraid for everyone I knew, yet I had it easy. The fear I experienced came from not knowing whether my friends and family were safe. Some of those concerns took days to be allayed, some still have not, and in some cases the news was bad. That is what Christchurch people are living through day by day. I cannot imagine the fear of those who were trapped alive or of those lost, and the enduring sadness their families are burdened with.

I have been as proud as I have ever been of being a Cantabrian, and seeing the mass of volunteers who turned out to do the hard yards. The Farmy Army and the Student Volunteer Army have been magnificent. Residents from everywhere have worked tirelessly taking on every task they can. Amazing community initiatives sprang up, like the Rangiora Express. We cannot underestimate how amazing that contribution is. All are making a difference and I too cannot thank them enough.

The community spirit and the resilience of Canterbury is outstanding. Our people and our community have been out there selflessly helping others when their own homes have been damaged and their own loved ones hurt. Our workers have done what had to be done. My own Department of Conservation staff have been out there in force. Again, some of their homes were in tatters. We had 80 staff involved in the earthquake response, assisting the Fire Service, providing specialist search and rescue equipment, providing four-wheel drive vehicles to help transport Red Cross workers around the city, and even running the air operations controlling helicopter traffic at Hagley Park. The police, army, Red Cross, search and rescue personnel, nurses, doctors, and even the media all were there, despite the devastation in their own situations. I think that is absolutely fantastic. The way that Canterbury as a region, New Zealand as a nation, and our international friends have all rallied to help Canterbury is truly humbling. We just wanted to hug those Aussie cops on the street corners, and others, and thank them.

This earthquake has changed Christchurch and our region for ever. We will recover, we will rebuild, and we will grow closer as a community, but to do so we must first confront and conquer the biggest challenge Canterbury has ever faced. It will require each and every one of us and it will take several years. A lot of decisions need to be made over the coming weeks, the coming months, and, indeed, the coming years about the best way to take my region—our region—forward. Take it forward we must, and we need the nation along with us. We mourn, we thank, we pay tribute, but we will recover together. It is tough, but we will get there in time.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri): Nature has tested the people of Canterbury. It has literally shaken us to our core, and the tragedies that have occurred are a knife in the heart of every Cantabrian and every Kiwi as a whole. But it has not broken us. We as Cantabrians thought that we had dodged the bullet the first time, but, as others have said, our community has lost friends, family members, loved ones, and mates. Many of us have seen things that we did not think we would see in our country. We have seen men and women in the eastern suburbs in the days after the quake walking through a combination of silt and sewage to get out of their homes and to some safety, not having a bottle of water to wash it off. Others are like a woman in Cowles Stadium, who said she had no home; she had lost everything.

There have been, of course, the heroes. I recall at around 1 a.m. of day two going to the Hagley welfare centre and meeting a rather robust and tall St John Ambulance officer. I asked him how he was, as he directed his troops, and he said that most of his family were OK but he was worried about his dad. The officer would have been 60, so his dad would have been 85-odd. His father had gone into the city that day and the officer was not sure where he was. The manager of the Burnside welfare centre, when asked how he was, said his family was OK but he had lost his best mate—a mate with a family whose home was in Lyttelton. After the quake, the friend drove to the Lyttelton tunnel. He could not get through it, so he thought he would get to Lyttelton the old-fashioned way. He parked his car, walked along the Bridle Path, and was killed by a rogue boulder. He never made it home. Other heroes are like the chap called Senior Sergeant Roy Appley, who, together with Jayne Rattray and volunteers from Rangiora, fed the eastern suburbs by air and by land for over a week and a half.

I make a plea to the Government that those heroes need to be listened to. Those men and women and agencies on the ground need to be listened to in the coming days by the key decision makers who are deploying resources to where they are needed or should go. People like Roy Appley and others can tell us better than any memo, as they stand on a street corner, where the Portaloos should go, where the hot meals are needed, and where the love and comfort are required.

So what do people want in our province of Canterbury? They want their dignity back, they want their lives back, but they also want cool-headed, considered plans to be put in place for the recovery. They do not want knee-jerk reactions. They do not want speculative musings that, if they are reported incorrectly, can fill people with fear and confusion. They want a recovery plan that is not bureaucratic but inclusive; one that can be swiftly implemented but is inclusive of their community. And they want to be listened to.

I conclude by reading the lyrics a mate of mine’s son sent me. They are from a song he wrote in his back bedroom a week before the quake. The song was originally to mark the death of his father, but he rededicated it to the victims of the earthquake. As he put it, it illustrates the pain and devastation of the folks in Canterbury. It is called “Streets of Heaven”.

Not sure I can make it through the night

As my eyelids are cut from all the crying.

As the rain starts to fall,

I slump against the wall.

It’s like someone took a knife to my life.

It feels so cold without you now.

Can I walk with you on the streets of Heaven,

Just like we used to do so long ago?

Can I walk with you on the streets of Heaven,

Just for a while, just to be with you again

On the streets of Heaven?

There is a dust cloud that hangs over Canterbury, and it is a dust cloud that is filled and mixed with tears. It is hard to say this, or for those folks who are living through this disaster even to perceive it, but I say that Cantabrians will once again walk the streets of their great city and their great province, hand in hand with their families and hand in hand with the spirits of the loved ones they have lost, in a rebuilt and better city that reflects their strength, their generosity of spirit, and their sheer humanity. That, I believe, is the hope that all of us must cling to.

NICKY WAGNER (National): After 4 September and by Christmas time, Christchurch people felt they had had enough of earthquakes. But then we had the damaging Boxing Day quake, and on 22 February was the big one. It was shockingly violent. It did enormous damage, especially in central Christchurch, the eastern suburbs, Lyttelton, and the Port Hills. It is estimated that it may have done ten times more damage than the 4 September earthquake. But the big difference this time was that the city was at work, and that as many more buildings were destroyed, many people lost their lives. Christchurch—and New Zealand—is a small community. We all know each other; we are all connected. Everyone knows family members, friends, and workmates who are not coming home after this quake, and that is the real difference. We all share the pain of those who have lost people whom they love; we all grieve together.

But Cantabrians are resilient. We believe in can-do, and we will bounce back. We will rebuild our city; we will make it a better, more beautiful, and safer place in which to live. For the last 2 weeks we have been looking after each other and gently picking up the pieces of our shattered city and our shattered lives—family by family, street by street, and community by community. The emergency services have worked tirelessly: civil defence, the police, the fire brigade, urban search and rescue, St John, and the army have all banded together, firstly, to rescue people from those buildings—and they did; there have been amazing stories of survival from some of our buildings—then, more lately, in the recovery phase. Teams have come from all over New Zealand and the world, and we cannot thank them enough.

The technical people in our city have been called upon to produce the miracles of power, water, and drainage, from broken cables and munted pipes and drains. In hours and days they have done the work of weeks, months, and even years. Never again will I take for granted running water, electricity, or a working toilet. In our neighbourhood we debate whether it is better to have water or power, or power or water—not that we really get a choice—but we all agree that the most important thing, and the most difficult to get, is a Portaloo. We can forget that “diamonds are a girl’s best friend”; in Christchurch a girl’s best friend is a Portaloo.

I have lived in Christchurch all my life, but since 22 February it has been totally transformed. People have died. Homes, businesses, and many of our treasured heritage buildings have been destroyed. There is rubble everywhere, but there are also people who care everywhere. So many wonderful volunteers have been working in our streets that when we are out and about we have to ask people whether they are locals or helpers. The Student Volunteer Army, the Farmy Army, and contractors have shovelled up over 250,000 tonnes of silt. The Red Cross and the Salvation Army are out there doorknocking and checking on people, and churches and community groups have delivered thousands of food parcels and hundreds of thousands of hot meals and snacks. The Government helpline has dealt with over 100,000 calls. Civil defence and Red Cross grants are being paid out, and over $50 million has been paid out through the Earthquake Employment Support Package.

Christchurch is picking up the pieces. We are looking forward—we are looking forward to getting back to work and to school, and to rebuilding our city. Christchurch may be bent and broken right now, but we will rebuild, and we will create an even better, more beautiful, and safer city, with a future.

Hon RICK BARKER (Labour): I will start with the words of a mother who lost a son at Pike River. She said to me that the people of Christchurch had it much worse than they did. She said that while they waited for their loved ones they could go home where things were normal, but the people of Christchurch could not. They had to wait and go home to broken homes. They had it much worse, she said. I think those few words underscore the enormous compassion and feeling that people in this country have for the people of Christchurch. They see the devastation around them.

The people of Christchurch also, in my experience, have enormous resilience. I have spent quite a number of days down there. I attended a meeting in Aranui where one man stood up and said: “I think I speak for everyone here. Yes, we are doing it tough—things are tough—but we are OK; we are holding together. All we need is a few more things to help us make it through the day.” He was talking about the fact that at that stage they had had no power, water, or sewerage for about 7 or 8 days. Many of them, 14 days on, still have no power, no water, and no sewerage. They do not criticise the companies that are trying to provide those services, because they can see the enormous effort that is being put in. But I ask each member to think how they could go home, 14 days on, and not switch on a light switch, not get the jug to boil in the morning, and have to cook like they are in a camp. These people are doing it—they are doing it tough, but they are doing it—and they are coping remarkably well.

They have enormous admiration, as I do, for all the civil defence workers and the emergency workers. They have watched people reconstruct the roads in incredible time. Pages Road was relaid in 2 days; they rebuilt everything. They have watched those people work incredibly hard. They have watched all those people come in from out of town to help them. They have spoken about the airlift in from Rangiora. I went around the corner to see some people from Hamilton cooking breakfast. People have come from Flaxmere with a barbecue to help cook, and people have been supplying food of all sorts. I went to Brighton, and the Hare Krishnas were offering an alternative to the sausages, white bread, and tomato sauce with vegan and vegetarian foods. Everybody is there.

I think this speaks very clearly of the great compassion New Zealanders have, and of their sympathy and support for the people of Christchurch. They want to help. They want to do everything that they can. It has often been said that New Zealand is not a country, but a large village. When one looks at what has gone on in Christchurch, one can see that demonstrated. Everybody in this country feels what has gone on in a part of their village and they want to help—they want to help in any way they can. It is up to this Parliament and the leadership team to give them the means, the tools, and the direction so that they can provide help. There is an enormous wellspring of goodwill, a deep compassion from people throughout New Zealand, and they want to contribute.

I currently live in Hastings. I was not there when the earthquake struck that area, but I have looked around Napier and Hastings, and I offer these words of reflection: whatever happens in the near future in Christchurch, people need to realise that what has happened will shape that city for the next 80 or 100 years. We need to think deeply on these things, and be very careful about how we plan, because it will shape that city for a long, long time.

Having said that, we cannot afford to dally. I underscore the point made by the Hon Jim Anderton. The mornings have been cold in Christchurch. When the first big quake struck, people knew that summer was coming, and that they had time. But time has gone, and more devastation has come to the city. Many people who had their houses broken and destroyed in the first earthquake still have seen no action. Winter is coming, and people are nervous. Tiles are off their roofs, walls are out, things are broken, and they are living in shells, or camping in shells. They are apprehensive. They are apprehensive about how long it will take until they get something permanent.

The last comment I will make about the people is that I went the other morning to try to find a paper. It takes a long time to get around Christchurch to find a paper in the morning. Not a lot is open; the shops are broken. When I went to a BP station, I asked the woman there whether she was OK. She said she was OK but tired. She told me to look at the man next to me, as he was really tired. She said I had to appreciate that everybody in the city is very tired. Those who have jobs are working incredible hours; they are working more hours than they can really cope with. Those who do not have jobs are incredibly stressed, and they can’t sleep either. People in Christchurch are really tired and really fractious. I want to say that we need to put on our thinking caps and ask how we can support the people of Christchurch.

The last comment comes from my Aunt Anna, who said that, as she went around in Hawke’s Bay, everybody was taking about Christchurch. She said it had been a great leveller. She said it has levelled the city, but it has levelled everybody else too. She said that everyone that she had spoken to was looking at them and theirs, and their circumstances, and saying how lucky they were. That luckiness—that they were not affected—drives them to want to help the people of Christchurch. There is a deep wellspring of goodwill for Christchurch in this country, and we need to give them the opportunity to help.

AARON GILMORE (National): Christchurch will never be the same again. Christchurch is where I was born, it is where I grew up, and it is where seven generations of my family have done the same. My mum and dad’s house, my brother’s house, the houses of two of my uncles and aunts, and the houses of six of my cousins are all ruined. The movie theatre I went to first as a kid is now in rubble, the shop where I played my first space invaders game no longer exists, and the place by the corner dairy where as a child I used to eat my first ice creams no longer exists. The high school that I went to—Shirley Boys High School, of which I am its first MP in this House—is in ruins. Christchurch will never be the same again.

But as someone living in the eastern suburbs of Christchurch, who grew up there, I say that this earthquake gives us a massive opportunity. It gives us the opportunity to hope that we will make the city better and stronger. You see, to me there are many things that will never be the same again. My 5-year-old daughter has a fear of going upstairs in any building she goes into. She has a fear of using a toilet; she is not sure whether it will come back up and bite her, as she says. She has a fear of going to school, simply because the ground opened up at her school in front of her. To me those things will take longer to fix.

For me one of the wonderful things has been the generosity of the people of New Zealand. People have come from all over. I spent days with farmers digging out the rubble of everything from Aranui to Burwood to Parklands. My own home dodged the bullet and is fine, but if I go two blocks further south, it looks like downtown Baghdad about 10 years ago. I would like to thank my senior whip, Chris Tremain, for his time and effort. He spent a number of days with me to help me dig out my suburb and to help with my people. I would like to thank the farmers of New Zealand. I have asked for 20 farmers on any day to help rebuild a community, and it has happened.

Ordinary people have stepped up to do extraordinary things. I saw an information technology expert walking around streets with a ladder. He had fixed 70 roofs for free, but he said: “That’s what you do in times like this.” I saw an Indian immigrant who had been in New Zealand 18 months. He spent the time fixing the wheelbarrows of the Student Volunteer Army, because that is just one of the things that one does.

Our city is strange, but I think it could be better. Many may not know the motto on the coat of arms of my city. One part of it is “Spe fortis”, which means that Christchurch is strong in hope and bold in her claim upon the future. Our city forebears who wrote that a long time ago would never have envisaged that the city would be in ruins, but they would have envisaged a city in the future that could be rebuilt and be a model for the world. For me that is what I see. I will endeavour to stay and work in Christchurch until the last brick is laid, the last road is paved, and the last pipe is in the ground. It is my home and always will be.

Some people have sent their love, some have sent their hands to the people of Christchurch, but right now most of all we need money. The city is a mess and I encourage everyone not to talk but to come and help, to raise money in their own communities, and to contribute to the rebuilding of our schools, our homes, and our wider communities. We are a tough resilient people, but we need other people’s help. Thank you.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I take this moment to thank all of the members of Parliament who have made a contribution this afternoon and all those who, I know, would want to make a contribution to show solidarity with the people of Christchurch. The nature of politics is such that I have absolutely no doubt that in the weeks and months and years ahead there will be disagreement in this House over various aspects of the rebuilding of Christchurch. That is the reality and nature of politics. But it is also true that we all sit and stand here today unified in our desire to see Christchurch rebuilt as a stronger, modern city, where people can go about their lives and enjoy one of the finest and greatest parts of not only New Zealand but the world to live in. It will be a long process as we put together Christchurch, but it is our second-largest city, the home to 400,000 people, a significant part of our economic base, and a place where all New Zealanders have some attachment or memories. It is important that we get that job done properly, quickly, and with the best interests of Cantabrians in mind.

Earthquake, Christchurch—Extension of State of National Emergency

Hon JOHN CARTER (Minister of Civil Defence): I wish to make a ministerial statement under Standing Order 347 in relation to the extension of the state of national emergency over Christchurch City.

On 23 February I declared a state of national emergency for Christchurch City under section 66 of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002. This was as a result of the magnitude 6.3 earthquake that had struck Christchurch on 22 February and the continuing aftershocks. It was the first time in New Zealand’s history that a state of national emergency had been declared as a result of a civil defence emergency event. That declaration meant that, under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act, the Director of Civil Defence Emergency Management could “control the exercise and performance of functions, duties and powers of Civil Defence Emergency Management Groups and Group Controllers.” It ensured the maximum possible coordination and cooperation between central and local resources and international assistance.

Under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act “A state of emergency expires with the commencement of the seventh day after the date on which it was declared,” unless it is further extended or terminated earlier. I considered it necessary to keep the state of national emergency in place, due to the ongoing coordination and resources required to respond to this disaster. I therefore extended the duration of the state of national emergency on 1 March 2011, and further extended it on 7 March 2011, under section 71 of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act. The extensions have demonstrated the Government’s ongoing commitment to helping people in Canterbury to respond to this event. I will continue monitoring the situation, and will make further extensions as required.

I would like to pay tribute to the international urban search and rescue parties, which included teams from Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and China. Those international teams have worked tirelessly, alongside New Zealand teams. I also acknowledge the disaster victim identification assistance we received from Australia, Thailand, Japan, Israel, the United Kingdom, Singapore, China, and Korea. Offers of other various types of assistance have also been received from many other countries around the world.

Our thoughts are with the people in Canterbury who have suffered from the disaster, particularly those who have lost loved ones.

Points of Order

Chamber, Lobbies, and Galleries—Audio System

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It has been brought to our attention by people from outside the House that there appears to be a problem with the microphones and the sound in the House. I think many of us heard some pretty bad interference noises earlier. I ask whether your staff are looking into the problem, and I seek some level of assurance that the problems are now fixed. I note that we are not now hearing the interference that we heard earlier in the day.

Mr SPEAKER: The matter has been addressed, I understand.

Questions for Oral Answer

Questions to Ministers

Earthquake, Christchurch—Adequacy of Actions and Areas of Concern

1. Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Is he satisfied that actions to address the Christchurch earthquake are an adequate response; if not, what are his areas of concern?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Generally yes, but due to the severe damage in the eastern suburbs, some households may well be without power, water, and sewerage for some time yet. However, I want to assure people that everything that can be done is being done in terms of restoring central infrastructure.

Hon Phil Goff: Does the Prime Minister agree with his national Director of Civil Defence Emergency Management, John Hamilton, who said “We grossly underappreciated the scale of damage in the suburban areas.”, and does he believe that the pace of addressing the problems, particularly in the eastern suburbs, is now at a satisfactory level?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I have not seen John Hamilton’s comments, but I will accept the member’s word that that is what he said. In terms of the latter point, yes, everything that can be done is being done. New Zealanders will appreciate that, as the worst affected of the people in the eastern suburbs have said to me or to my colleagues, the reality is that in that early period, when we were all desperately trying to find people alive in the search and rescue effort, that was of paramount importance. I think all of us would accept that relative to the significant inconvenience those residents have had to go through, looking for people who might have been alive was the top priority. Of course, now our full effort is turning towards restoration of residents’ services.

Hon Phil Goff: Did the Prime Minister consult his Director of Civil Defence Emergency Management, Mr Hamilton, before making the statement that some neighbourhoods in Christchurch would not be rebuilt, and what advice did Mr Hamilton or any other official give him on the propriety of making that statement?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No, and none.

Hon Phil Goff: Given the reaction of people on the ground to the Prime Minister’s statement, what process does he have in mind to consult the communities affected, and will such a process be implemented quickly, given the huge uncertainty that has been created by his statement?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: We have to acknowledge the anxiety of those people who have damaged homes that may not be able to be rebuilt. I think everyone understands and appreciates that. The process is that currently geotechnical advice is being sought. When we have that geotechnical advice we will be in a position to understand whether that land can be remediated. If it can be remediated, I suggest that it will be, depending on the costs of doing so. But, obviously, we need to get that advice first, and we are working as aggressively and as quickly as we can.

Hon Phil Goff: Given the concern that is being expressed in those communities because people do not know which community will now be written off and which homes not rebuilt, when can he provide some certainty to those communities about what will be happening to them?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: As soon as we have that geotechnical advice.

Hon Phil Goff: Given the massive job that will exist in rebuilding 10,000 houses that are due for demolition and a central business district two-thirds of which may require rebuilding, what special plans has he got to upskill people in Christchurch so that we do not have unemployment alongside a major skills shortage in the construction trades in the months to come?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: It is hard to look for a silver lining in a tragedy of the extent of the one we have witnessed in Christchurch, but if there is one, it is that there will be enormous economic stimulus in Christchurch over the course of the next few years—in fact, over quite a number of years. That will lead to opportunities for people from Christchurch. In terms of the skills capability, my understanding is that all the insurance companies are aligned to a major building company, and there is quite a pool of people in the construction sector from around New Zealand, and, potentially, from around the world, that can help in that process. Again, when we are in a position to start that work, I am sure we will try to soak up as much of that skill as possible.

Hon Phil Goff: In light of the controversy that occurred over the comments of the Minister for Earthquake Recovery about heritage buildings not having any place in the future of Christchurch, can the Prime Minister give an assurance that emergency regulations will not be used to implement arbitrary decisions that have not first been consulted with stakeholders, with the chance for all of the community to express their views?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Firstly, that is not what the Minister said. Of course, one of the dangers in these situations is that people interpret from whatever perspective they want to take the comments that someone might make, and, like Chinese whispers, they end up being in a completely different place from where they started. But the point I would make is that, in terms of the demolition of buildings in the city, there is clear process if it is happening under the civil defence emergency powers. If the buildings are heritage buildings, then the requirements are more stringent, and they have to go through that process.

Earthquake, Christchurch—Economic Impact

2. AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received on the economic impact of the earthquake in Christchurch on 22 February 2011?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): First of all, it is important to acknowledge the impact on the communities and families of Christchurch ahead of the impact on the economy. But there is no doubt that the earthquake will have significant impact on the Canterbury economy and some impact on the wider New Zealand economy. In its latest monthly economic indicators, issued over the weekend, Treasury estimates that national GDP growth will be about 1.5 percent lower in 2011, solely as a result of the earthquake. It also notes that the rebuilding and reconstruction effort will bring a sizable boost to the economy in 2012, so although in the shorter term, for instance, there are fewer prospects of a drop in unemployment, by 2012 those prospects will be considerably better.

Amy Adams: What is Treasury’s early assessment of the costs of the earthquake?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Treasury has assessed two different aspects of the costs. The first is the total financial cost of the damage of this earthquake. At the moment, those numbers are reasonably vague, between $10 billion and $15 billion, which is two to three times the estimated cost of the September earthquake. Secondly, Treasury has estimated the impact on the wider economy. This estimate takes into account the fact that the economy was growing more slowly before the earthquake occurred, and will then be affected by the earthquake. Treasury estimates that that could mean a reduction of about $5 billion in tax revenue for the Government over the next 4 years.

Hon David Cunliffe: Can he confirm that Treasury’s February monthly economic indicators states at page 4: “Over the 2011 to 2015 March years, nominal GDP is expected to be a cumulative $15 billion lower than in the Half Year Update … This is mostly related to the weaker outlook we were seeing prior to the February earthquake,”?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes, I can confirm that. The forecasts of growth, either those by Treasury, when they are published finally in the Budget, or those by the Reserve Bank, which will be publishing forecasts this week, are likely to reflect the fact that most of the reduction in the growth outlook was occurring before the earthquake. The earthquake has certainly had a negative impact on it.

Amy Adams: What is the potential impact of the earthquake costs on the Government’s finances?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government’s finances will be affected in two ways. Firstly, it will face its own direct costs of the earthquake. The costs of the earthquake are shared between private insurers, the Government, private individuals, and businesses. The Government’s share is likely to be around the $3 billion to $5 billion mark. It will also be affected by a drop in revenue, some of which was going to occur even without the earthquake. It means the Government will have to keep a pretty close eye on its priorities. It will probably take on some additional debt, and then look to see how we can absorb those costs over the next 3 or 4 years.

Amy Adams: How will the Government approach its policy response to the Christchurch earthquake?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Although the earthquake is a significant setback for the Government’s books and a significant hit on the economy, it is something we can handle. The Government will be taking a pretty considered and balanced approach. We are willing to take on more debt in the short term; there is not much choice about that. The costs are being incurred now, and the debt for this financial year will be higher than was expected. Over the next 4 or 5 years we have a total Government spend of about $350 billion, and within that we should be able to accommodate a cost of $9 billion or $10 billion, just by thinking about it a bit harder. The earthquake certainly is not significant enough to knock New Zealand off course, with an economy that is gradually rebalancing towards savings, investment, and exports.

Earthquake, Christchurch—Government Support for People Affected

3. Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery: Is he satisfied with the level of support being offered to the people of Christchurch in the wake of the earthquake on 22 February 2011?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Associate Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery) on behalf of the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery: The answer to the member’s question is generally yes, but there is always room for improvement.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: When will the people of Christchurch, and especially of Christchurch East, have reasonable access to temporary toilet facilities?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: The Minister has been advised that as of today a number of Portaloos and chemical toilets are being moved into the area. More are on order, and more are coming from overseas. If the member, or any other Christchurch member, has a specific case where there is a very, very serious shortage, I understand all of them have been provided with a direct phone line to the national controller. We would really appreciate a call. I give an assurance that when we have some stocks, we will get them to the places that are most in need.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: What thought has been given to mobilising army shower facilities in the worst-hit parts of Christchurch, to complement the Englefield mobile shower unit being supplied by the private sector, as recommended to him last week?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: I think it is fair to say every one of the suggestions that have been put to us, or put to the people who will make the decisions about what facilities are utilised, is given serious consideration. The suggestions are prioritised and then they are acted upon. As I said before, as we speak a number of facilities are pouring into those areas where I think there has been a shortage of facilities up until now.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Has the Minister explored the feasibility of utilising mobile army catering facilities in areas where power and water are yet to be restored and hot food is extremely limited, as recommended to him last week?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: I have not personally explored that, but I do know that those options have all been considered carefully. Where there is merit to them and where they will not interfere with other decisions that are being taken, they are being moved on straight away.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: What consideration has been given to the provision of transportation for those who are unable to access welfare facilities through lack of transportation themselves, as was recommended last week?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Again, I understand that free buses have been provided for moving people around and helping them to get to and from shops, welfare centres, and so on. Again, if any of the members from Christchurch know of specific cases where that is not being of assistance to people or where people cannot make use of it, I say please let us know, and we will try to provide individually tailored responses.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: What measures have been put in place to ensure that business owners have the opportunity to salvage stock and records so as to restart their businesses as soon as possible?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: That is a very, very high priority for us. As we start to lift the cordons and move further and further into the area of the central business district, every business owner is being given the opportunity as quickly as can feasibly be done to access all of their equipment and their records, so that they can then resume normal business, located in other locations.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: What functions does the Government intend to take away from the Christchurch City Council as the rebuild of the city commences?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: I have no knowledge of any functions yet planned to be taken away from the Christchurch City Council.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: What assurances has he sought and received from the Minister of Education to address concerns from schools that their funding might be affected if their rolls fluctuate as a result of taking on students from earthquake-damaged schools, and what assurances has he sought and received from the same Minister that schools will not be adversely affected by taking on students from earthquake-damaged schools, despite the funding announcement today?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: I received a briefing from the Minister of Education just this morning, in which she indicated that all schools around the rest of New Zealand that are taking those children will be funded accordingly, that they will not be impacted by what their enrolment zone might or might not have excluded, and that the schools in Christchurch that those kids have come from and that are not functioning will still retain their funding, as well.

Earthquake, Christchurch—Government Support for Businesses and Employees

4. NICKY WAGNER (National) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What is the Government doing to support Canterbury businesses and employees through the earthquake recovery?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment): We have put in place a range of support for Canterbury businesses and employees. A response implemented within 6 days of the earthquake includes a 6-week financial assistance package to support workers through the earthquake support subsidy, and individuals through the job-loss cover payment. To date we have assisted over 41,000 individuals and we have paid out assistance of more than $53 million to those Canterbury businesses and their employees.

Nicky Wagner: Who is eligible for this financial assistance?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: In comparison with the earthquake in September we actually broadened the criteria of the subsidy and increased the weekly amount. That acknowledges the scale and how big this earthquake was. We have included large employers. We have included those who are sole traders and contractors. We have also in circumstances included those who have had a significant loss of trade—for example, taxi drivers and the like—which makes it quite different. People are applying more online than they are by phone, which is freeing up a lot of that activity locally, as well.

Jacinda Ardern: Is it her intention to extend the Government’s earthquake employment support package; if so, how long for, and when is a formal announcement on this likely to be made?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Decisions on that have not yet been made.

Earthquake, Christchurch—Ministry of Social Development’s Response

5. Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: Is she confident that the Ministry of Social Development has responded adequately to the Christchurch earthquake?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment): Yes. I think it has responded more than adequately, and I am intensely proud of the work that the Ministry of Social Development staff have done. As well as those numbers I gave in answer to the previous question, the list is very long. Staff have fielded more than 94,000 inbound calls, and they have proactively contacted more than 23,200 elderly and vulnerable people. In terms of outbound calls, they have sent text messages to more than 18,000 students about their payments, they opened all weekend for the last two weekends to process payments and provide assistance, and they have set up recovery assistance centres. Eight mobile vans have been out to those areas. They have staffed the welfare centres. They have made more than 54,000 civil defence payments. It has been quite remarkable.

Hon Annette King: In light of that answer, what has the Ministry of Social Development done for older, vulnerable superannuitants who do not have telephones or transport, in terms of contacting them?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: It has been working alongside non-governmental organisations like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, which have been out door-knocking. It is also part of—sorry, I cannot remember the name of the operation; the one that is going door to door, in consultation with the Christchurch City Council. It is working alongside it, too.

Hon Annette King: What provision has been made to ensure that people who have lost their homes and are now renting properties at inflated prices are able to quickly access the accommodation supplement if their insurance company is not meeting the cost, and has the level of supplement been lifted to take account of the spike in rents?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: In answer to the last part of that question, no, the accommodation supplement has not been increased, but there is an accommodation side to the civil defence payments. It is actually quite generous, and that is what we have clicked in at the moment. From memory, about $1 million has been spent throughout New Zealand, but mainly in Christchurch. That is the payment we are using at the moment to cover those accommodation costs on a weekly basis.

Hon Annette King: Will Government decisions on the Welfare Working Group report be applied to the people in Christchurch on any of the benefits; if so, when?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: The Welfare Working Group’s report is still being considered, and will be considered for some time. I can let the member know that the Future Focus stuff that we introduced last year to do with work testing—those on the unemployment benefit having to come in after 12 months and reapply for it, and those on the domestic purposes benefit being work tested when their youngest child is 6—has been halted for 6 months. That went through Cabinet this week.

Earthquake, Christchurch—Temporary Levy on Income

6. METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) to the Minister of Finance: Has he considered raising a temporary levy on income to help fund the rebuilding of Christchurch; if so, how much could it raise?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): As I have said publicly, the Government is keen to get much better information as time goes on about what costs are likely to be incurred in the rebuilding of Christchurch. Many of those costs will be one-off costs and therefore more appropriately funded by higher debt in the short term. It is also likely that earthquake levies applying to all residential housing in Christchurch are likely to rise significantly as the costs of Earthquake Commission insurance rise. At this early stage, we believe that those two sources of funds are the most appropriate way to pay for whatever outgoings the Government has for the reconstruction of Christchurch.

Metiria Turei: Does he agree that a fair and balanced economic response would be one that raises a little more revenue from those who can afford it, adds a little more debt to be shared over the medium term, and reprioritises infrastructure spending to where it is most needed at the moment?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is important that we achieve a fair and balanced response. One of the reasons the Government is reluctant to impose a new levy is simply that when the economy is relatively flat and the whole country would benefit from stronger economic growth, we do not want to put in place a levy that is likely to slow down that process. If there are other ways we can fund the rebuilding of Christchurch that do not directly affect the prospects of stronger economic recovery, we would prefer to use those methods.

Metiria Turei: Does he agree with Fran O’Sullivan, who argues that by setting a levy at a high threshold, the additional tax is unlikely to affect economic growth, because high-income earners are currently using their wealth to retire debt as opposed to consume?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: No, I do not necessarily agree with Fran O’Sullivan, on quite a range of issues. What the Government is doing will ensure that we go through a process where Earthquake Commission levies are likely to go up, which is an appropriate measure and will affect every homeowner in New Zealand. We will be looking at the priorities for Government spending over the next 3 or 4 years—something like $300 billion of spending. We believe that those will be better ways of dealing with the increased debt that inevitably will go with Government funding of the rebuilding of Christchurch.

Metiria Turei: Why does the Minister today accept that growing Government debt is better than raising revenue to pay for the earthquake damage, when before the election he used the size of Government debt to justify the sale of State assets?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: This Government has always been reluctant to unnecessarily increase Government debt. However, we are not completely rigid about it. The fact is that we need to incur significant costs to support the people of Canterbury, even in terms as basic as giving them cash in their pockets over the last couple of weeks so they can live. We are committed to rebuilding Christchurch. Those are our top priorities, and if we have to incur some extra debt to achieve them, then we are willing to do so. But over the next 3 or 4 years we need to reduce our debt levels, because we are a country that is still vulnerable with high levels of debt. We do not want to increase that vulnerability.

Metiria Turei: If he does not agree with Fran O’Sullivan, does he agree with Bernard Hickey, who says that the fastest, fairest, and safest way for New Zealand to save as a nation—given the Minister’s concern about savings—and to use those savings to rebuild infrastructure is to impose an earthquake levy on those who can afford it, and that that is the most effective way to do it?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: No, for similar reasons to why I disagree with Fran O’Sullivan, who makes the same proposition.

Metiria Turei: Does the Minister agree that an earthquake levy is more transparent than Government spending cuts, and that it takes the politics out of paying for the rebuilding of Christchurch?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think we can certainly achieve transparency around the rebuilding of Christchurch to show what public money is being spent and where it comes from. That should not be difficult, at all.

Metiria Turei: Who does the Minister think should fairly bear the cost of this disaster: those who can afford to and who have said publicly and openly that they want to, or those who are receiving Government support like Working for Families?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: That will depend to some extent on the decisions we make, but, by and large, one can expect the Government to stick to the method it has used through the recession, when Government spending has been tight. We will continue to protect the vulnerable, to maintain front-line services, and to continue with long-term investment in infrastructure so that we can have a stronger, growing economy. In the longer run, a stronger, growing economy will help the rebuilding of Christchurch and the reinvigoration of the rest of the country more than any particular spending or taxing measure will.

Earthquake, Christchurch—Assistance for Tertiary Institutions and Students

7. AARON GILMORE (National) to the Minister for Tertiary Education: What work has been done to help the families of tertiary students and tertiary institutions affected by the 22 February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Tertiary Education): Ministry of Education officials have been meeting daily with the families of those tragically affected by the earthquake, particularly those from King’s Education, which, as most members will now be aware, was located in the CTV building. I have personally met with most of the international students’ families and the directors of King’s Education to offer my and the Government’s sympathies and support to the families of both students and staff. Officials are working hard to coordinate support from other Government agencies, insurance providers, and foreign embassies to obtain certainty for the affected families as soon as possible.

Aaron Gilmore: What is the Government doing to assist tertiary students in institutions that can no longer provide tuition as they expected to do?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Firstly, I note that it is the intention of Canterbury University, Lincoln University, and Otago University to begin to restart classes in Christchurch next week on 14 March, and they will progressively increase their provision from that date. Tertiary officials are currently working with the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, as well as other institutes of technology and private training establishments in the city, on options including relocating within the city and temporarily housing courses at other institutions. Many tertiary providers have obtained alternative space, and some continue to seek alternative space for their students, either with other institutions in Christchurch or, in some cases, further afield, like Auckland and even Adelaide. I am very pleased about how the public and private providers are working together to address the space issues. I have also relaxed enrolment caps in institutions outside of Christchurch to allow them to take on some students directly affected by the earthquake, if that is required.

Earthquake, Christchurch—Insurance Cover

8. Hon JIM ANDERTON (Leader—Progressive) to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery: Will he ensure that Christchurch homeowners and businesses are able to access insurance cover from existing policies or new cover they require since the 22 February 2011 earthquake?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Associate Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery) on behalf of the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery: We have had, and will continue to have, discussions with the insurance industry. The ability to get future cover will in no small part depend on good-quality information regarding the land condition and future performance of that land. Work has already begun to collect and collate that information. The insurance industry has, for the most part, done a good job since 4 September, and we expect that good work to continue.

Hon Jim Anderton: Has the Minister seen or heard any reports about businesses that had business interruption insurance claims denied after the first earthquake, of 4 September last year, because they could “open the door of their businesses”, even though customers could not climb over the tonnes of rubble to get inside to do any business?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: The advice I have had is that if the member is aware of any specific case of an insurance company failing to honour the terms and conditions of the policy, he, or the person involved, should take it straight to the Insurance and Savings Ombudsman. If the insurance company is in breach of its responsibilities, it will soon be put right.

Hon Jim Anderton: Has the Minister seen or heard any reports of home buyers who signed contracts before the earthquake of 22 February being unable to get insurance coverage for their new home after the earthquake; if so, what is to happen to them?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: I am advised that after any great disaster like the one Christchurch has experienced there is a period in which insurance companies will not provide cover while they try to reassess what the risks are and try to re-establish, on an actuarial basis, what sorts of premiums would be required to cover them. In every case that we have seen elsewhere in the world, including after the 4 September quake, that insurance coverage came back into the market quite quickly after things had settled down.

Hon Jim Anderton: Given that answer and the fact that many of these people do not have insurance, even though they have a contract for their new house, will he be prepared to convene a meeting in the next week or so between insurance company representatives and Christchurch MPs to discuss issues of concern in relation to both business interruption policy payments and new insurance contracts for housing and other domestic insurance?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: I would certainly give the matter some consideration, but I want to be sure that other factors that are being taken into account right now and other actions that are being taken will not be disrupted by such a move.

Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill—Public Access and Negotiated Settlements

9. Hon JOHN BOSCAWEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) to the Attorney-General: Has he asked the Māori Party to agree to amendments to the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill that would make it explicitly clear that customary title holders would not be able to charge individuals for accessing a beach, and require any negotiated settlements to be referred back to Parliament for validation; if so, what response did he receive?

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General): No, because that is not what the proposed amendments address. There will indeed be a Supplementary Order Paper. It contains a proposed requirement that any negotiated agreement to recognise customary marine title be given effect to through legislation by Parliament—not by Order in Council, as contained in the bill. There will also be a proposed amendment to clause 27 to provide that any individual has rights without charge for access to the common marine coastal area for the purposes set out in paragraphs (a) to (c) of subclause (1). The bill does not change any of the current arrangements for access to beaches.

Hon John Boscawen: On what date did he seek the Māori Party’s support for the Supplementary Order Paper and on what date did he get it?

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I have had numerous discussions with my colleagues in the Māori Party. I have no ministerial responsibility for how the Māori Party votes in Parliament. However, in terms of the confidence and supply agreement with the Māori Party, I have a ministerial responsibility for consulting with it.

Hon John Boscawen: If he has indeed received the support of the Māori Party for the amendments that he has outlined this afternoon, why will he not immediately table in Parliament the Supplementary Order Paper, rumoured to run into hundreds of pages, when we are due to debate the Committee stage of this bill in less than 48 hours; alternatively, why does he continue to hold this House and the public of New Zealand in absolute contempt?

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Well, I am certainly not holding the public of New Zealand in absolute contempt. The Supplementary Order Paper will be available, probably first thing tomorrow morning.

Hon John Boscawen: I seek leave to table a report from John Roberts Laurie on the meeting conducted by the Attorney-General last Thursday in Three Kings, in which he reports that over 90 percent of the attendees opposed the Government’s plans on the takutai moana legislation.

Mr SPEAKER: Is this a letter?

Hon John Boscawen: It is an email.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table this email from a certain person. Is there any objection? There is no objection.

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

Hon John Boscawen: I seek leave to table an email to the Prime Minister, Mr Key, and members of his Cabinet from Richard Montgomery, in which he expresses his opposition to the takutai moana legislation and indicates that unless there is widespread public support, the Prime Minister—

Mr SPEAKER: I am not sure we are going to go through a process, every time someone sends the Prime Minister an email, of wasting the time of this House in seeking leave to table it. I am not prepared to entertain that notion.

Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill—Passage

10. Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) to the Attorney-General: Does the Government intend to proceed this week with its legislation to replace the existing Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004?

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General): The bill is set down on the Order Paper to have its second reading later today. If the member wants to know how the bill will proceed, I suggest he speak to the Leader of the House, who has responsibility for House business.

Hon David Parker: Why is the National-led Government, together with its coalition partner the Māori Party, proceeding with its controversial and flawed foreshore and seabed legislation at the very time the Government has been asking the Opposition to cooperate and put politics aside following the earthquake, in the wider interests of our country?

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: The question is fundamentally flawed because the bill is not flawed. It provides an enduring solution to a problem that has vexed New Zealand for many years, particularly over questions of access to justice.

Hon David Parker: How can that be, given that last year the Prime Minister, John Key, told New Zealand that he would stick with the status quo and not proceed with the new bill if it did not have broad support and would not settle the issue, when it is patently clear it will not do that?

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I disagree that it is patently clear that the legislation will not solve this vexed problem. I suggest that when one does a count of those for or against a bill, one does more than rely on the statements of those who have the biggest mouths.

Hon David Parker: Is not the real reason the Government is still proceeding with its exceedingly political foreshore and seabed bill the same reason that Government members pushed the bill through the select committee without proper consideration—that is, the Government is trying to push through its deal with the Māori Party now in the hope that it will be forgotten by the time of the election?

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: No.

Hon David Parker: How can the Government realistically expect the Opposition to act in a bipartisan way with the Government when National is acting so politically on so many fronts while pretending that it is not?

Mr SPEAKER: The Attorney-General does not have any particular responsibility for how the Government might be relating to the Opposition. The Minister is the Attorney-General and is responsible for matters to do with his portfolio. I do not want to deprive the member of the chance to ask his question. I invite him to reword it.

Hon David Parker: Does the Attorney-General accept that the political way in which the Government is pushing through the foreshore and seabed legislation will undermine calls by the Government for the Opposition to act in a bipartisan manner following the quake?

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: No.

Earthquake, Christchurch—Situation in Eastern Suburbs

11. RAHUI KATENE (Māori Party—Te Tai Tonga) to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery: Did he agree with his spokesman’s response to the situation for residents in Christchurch East following the earthquake of 22 February 2011 that “It is apparent, given the scale out there, that there just wasn’t sufficient hardware out there, loos and the like”, and what urgent actions have been taken to give priority to communities in the eastern suburbs?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Associate Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery) on behalf of the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery: Yes; and the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management agreed there needed to be a refocus on the eastern suburbs. I am advised that several thousand chemical toilets have been delivered to homes in the eastern suburbs, and a further 5,000 are due to arrive in Christchurch today from China. Portaloos are also currently being redeployed from other suburbs where they are no longer needed to the eastern suburbs. Life is difficult for many in Christchurch, and we are all doing all we can to make these tough times a little easier.

Rahui Katene: What confidence can he have that additional resources are being provided to ensure that residents in Christchurch East have their basic human needs met, including the provision of water, food, generators, sanitation facilities, and support, and specific support for disabled and elderly people?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Eight recovery assistance centres are now open, including six in the eastern suburbs. These centres are basically one-stop shops where people can sort out emergency payments and housing issues and get counselling. Also, phone calls were made to more than 23,000 elderly people in Christchurch in the days after the quake to see whether they needed any specific assistance, and 350 rest home residents and more than 250 disability care residents have been moved to other facilities around New Zealand in order to take pressure off damaged facilities in Canterbury.

Rahui Katene: What additional resources are being provided to residents in the eastern suburbs to overcome issues arising from the length of their deprivation of support?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: I am advised that more than $8 million has been distributed through 50,670 civil defence emergency payments to cover things like food, clothing, and housing for the residents of Christchurch. To date, 60 percent of these payments have gone to residents in the eastern suburbs.

Earthquake, Christchurch—State of National Emergency

12. COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura) to the Minister of Civil Defence: Why was a state of national emergency declared on 23 February 2011?

Hon JOHN CARTER (Minister of Civil Defence): The significant impact of the 6.3 earthquake in Christchurch on 22 February required this level of response. The declaration of a state of national emergency ensures the maximum possible coordination and cooperation between central and local resources and international assistance. It also demonstrates the Government’s ongoing commitment to help people in Canterbury to respond to this disaster. I am very proud of the civil defence response.

Colin King: Why has the national state of emergency been extended?

Hon JOHN CARTER: This natural disaster has severely stretched the ability of Canterbury to respond and recover. It is therefore appropriate for there to be a national response. The ongoing impact of the earthquake on 22 February and the continuing aftershocks is of such an extent that a combined effort across the nation will be required for some time.

Colin King: How long is the national state of emergency expected to continue?

Hon JOHN CARTER: Just as long as it takes to ensure the safety and security of the people of Christchurch.

Charles Chauvel: Why does the Government need to maintain a national state of emergency under Part 4 of the civil defence legislation at the same time as it is preparing to make a number of new orders under the very wide powers available to it under the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act?

Hon JOHN CARTER: Because at the moment we are still in the response stage of the civil defence emergency. What the member is talking about is the recovery stage, which we will address as we move on into this issue. We need to continue through the response until we are ready to approach and address the recovery issues.

Charles Chauvel: Is it not the case that the Canterbury emergency legislation and, possibly, the declaration of a regional state of emergency under section 68 of the civil defence legislation would actually give the Government all the powers that it needs in order to deal with the current emergency, and should he not now bring the national state of emergency to a prompt end in favour of allowing the local civil defence authorities to consider declaring a regional state of emergency, with the Government relying on the powers that it has under the recovery legislation?

Hon JOHN CARTER: That may be the member’s view; it is not mine.

Bills

Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill

Second Reading

Hon TARIANA TURIA (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector) on behalf of the Attorney-General: I move, That the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill be now read a second time. I am proud to lead the debate on this important bill—a bill that will remove for ever the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act from the statutes of our land. The call to repeal the 2004 Act has been heard many times in this House, including on the forecourt outside, which witnessed the largest Māori protest since the Māori Land March in 1975. Te Ope Mana a Tai articulated that call, and I repeat their words for the record: “the Foreshore and Seabed Act will never be viewed by iwi/hapū as anything other than an instrument of confiscation”.

The 2004 Act extinguished existing Māori customary title. It then went further and removed access to the courts for Māori to seek recognition of customary title, in one swift turn of the pen denying one group of New Zealanders the opportunity for due process to occur. That Act conferred ownership of the foreshore and seabed on the Crown. In its totality the 2004 Act—

Mr SPEAKER: I apologise to the honourable Minister. I ask members, please—members have indicated that this bill is of great concern and interest to them. This is the commencement of the second reading of perhaps one of the most important bills to be debated in this House this year. Members are standing around talking, and it is not good enough. I ask them to extend some courtesy. If they wish to have conversations, I ask them to please go to the lobbies. Thank you.

Hon TARIANA TURIA: In its totality, the 2004 Act became synonymous with a Government that was unacceptably interventionist, acting with undue haste to override the judicial process.

In one of the most damning reports ever written by the Waitangi Tribunal, the tribunal concluded that the Crown had seriously breached the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. It did this by failing to respect tino rangatiratanga and the good-faith obligations of partnership, denying active protection to Māori, and expropriating Māori property through actively assuming ownership without either consent or compensation.

This context has been well rehearsed over successive years at marae, in university lectures, across the kitchen table, and in this debating chamber. There has been a lengthy and frequently painful debate since 2003, when the Court of Appeal first agreed that Ngāti Apa could have customary title investigated by the courts. Yet, through the rage and dismay, there have been many milestones along the way. On 10 June 2004 we established the Māori Party, with one of our key goals being to repeal the Act. On 12 October 2006 I introduced our very first Māori Party member’s bill, the Foreshore and Seabed Act (Repeal) Bill. After the general election in November 2008 the Māori Party signed a relationship agreement with National, with one of the most critical targets being to review the 2004 Act. And almost 2 years ago to the day—on 4 March 2009—the Government announced a ministerial review to be chaired by Justice Taihākūrei Edward Durie, with Hana O’Regan and Richard Boast. Many, many thousands of New Zealanders have taken part over the last 8 years in an intensive and exhaustive consultation process that has led us to the pathway that we embark upon today.

What are the hallmark features of the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill? Inevitably, the essential legacy of this bill will be in repealing the discriminatory Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004. But in repealing that Act the new legislation also takes a step forward by creating what a former tribunal lawyer has called a real incentive for w’ānau, hapū, or iwi who claim rights to seek those rights before the courts. Tom Bennion, the editor of the Māori Law Review, has described the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill as “an ambitious reworking of the issue to provide some real rights to Māori”, rather than the careful and cautious adjustment of interest that a cynic might have expected. There is no better description of the potential of this bill than that in the preamble: “This Act takes account of the intrinsic, inherited rights of whānau, hapū, and iwi, derived in accordance with tikanga and based on their connection with the foreshore and seabed. It translates those inherited rights into legal rights and interests that are inalienable, enduring, and able to be exercised so as to sustain all the people of New Zealand and the coastal marine environment for future generations:”.

Tikanga Māori will play an essential role in determining such titles. The Māori Party has been very clear that we expect tikanga Māori to be observed and upheld at every stage of the process in the implementation of this legislation. A number of rights will come with the recognition of customary marine title, such as the right to permit or veto applications under the Resource Management Act, or applications relating to conservation activity; the ability to protect wāhi tapu within a customary marine title area; rights in relation to marine mammal - watching permits and New Zealand coastal policy statements; the ownership of new-found taonga tūturu; and the ownership of non-Crown minerals—that is, minerals except for gold, silver, uranium, and petroleum.

There is also a very interesting provision tucked away in clause 105, “Burden of proof”, which states explicitly: “It is presumed, in the absence of proof to the contrary, that a customary interest has not been extinguished.” In other words, it will be up to the Crown to prove that any interest has been extinguished, rather than the onus for proof being placed on w’ānau, hapū, and iwi.

Is this legislation a panacea for all ills? I think not. We have vigorously fought the case against too high a threshold being applied to the tests for customary marine titles, which was a concern that w’ānau, hapū, and iwi have consistently raised with us. We appreciate also the concern of those Māori who seek a new Treaty-based, “longer conversation” to safeguard the mana of hapū and iwi. That was a resounding theme of the 72 submissions received by the Māori Affairs Committee from marae, hapū, iwi, Māori landowners, organisations, and collectives. It is a theme that we have certainly heard and that we will continue to give voice to in every sphere of political activity that we are engaged in.

Some statements have been made in public about the overwhelming opposition to the bill demonstrated in the select committee process. I think that comment should be balanced by the fact that fewer than 2 percent of the 5,700 submissions received were in fact from Māori. The great majority of submitters came from lobby groups such as the Coastal Coalition. There is no question that this issue has given life to some powerful advocates who have drawn on considerable resources to sell their message.

Our challenge was always to ensure we looked forward while, at the same time, getting rid of the legislation that created such division between New Zealanders. So we have listened carefully to the guidance of kaumātua, who have recommended a series of smaller, discrete cases to be taken to the courts to establish comparative precedent. We have attended hui across the motu to supplement the information received by the select committee, and we know that there has been a rigorous schedule of meetings throughout electorates. All this input has been vital. I particularly acknowledge the dedicated commitment and vision of the Iwi Leaders Forum in making every effort possible to carve out a better future for our mokopuna.

Finally, we mihi to Chris Finlayson, the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, who has willingly taken on what at times has seemed to be an impossible exercise. The fact that he has persevered despite all will be forever acknowledged and known. This is our bill, a bill that National has been prepared to back. We will not resile from the promise that we gave to our people to keep our word: to repeal the 2004 Act, to restore access to the courts, and in every step of the journey to have the courage and the commitment to ensure that this legislation recognises and provides for the enduring mana-based relationship of w’ānau, hapū, and iwi to their takutai moana. Tēna tātou katoa.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Before speaking to the reasons why Labour believes the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill ought not to proceed, I record that Labour intends to allow one of our speaking slots to be used by Hone Harawira. I emphasise this not because we agree with Hone Harawira’s views on the foreshore and seabed. We most plainly do not. I outlined some of my criticisms of Hone Harawira’s views on the foreshore and seabed in the first reading of the bill, and I do not propose to restate those. Hone Harawira is a member of Parliament. He clearly has a strong interest in this issue, and though it might be inconvenient for the Māori Party and National to hear from him, we think this Parliament and this country should hear from him—not because we agree with him but because, apart from anything else, it absolutely emphasises the fact that this bill does not settle this vexed issue. This bill does not settle this vexed issue.

Hon Steve Chadwick: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am sorry to break in on my colleague, but members on this side of the House when urged by the Speaker to give due consideration to Minister Tariana did just that. I would like that approach to be accorded to our speaker in return.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): I will manage the situation.

Hon DAVID PARKER: I will not recount the history of the existing Act. But I agree that this Parliament should restore the right of iwi and hapū to make claims to the court to recognise customary interests that were extinguished by the Act, including customary marine titles. We do not resile from that position, but there are a number of reasons why this bill does not achieve its stated purpose, and why it should not proceed in its form. If the bill achieved its purpose and did it properly then we would not be here opposing it, but it does not.

All that is needed now is simple legislation that protects in a statutory way public rights of access. There is agreement on all sides of the House—the Māori Party, Labour, National, and others—that that is now appropriate. The legislation should make it clear in statute that customary title interests cannot be onsold—that they are inalienable—and that does not seem to be an issue now. Then we can put all other issues back to the court.

This Parliament cannot agree in a way that settles it—to the satisfaction of the various interests that appeared before the Māori Affairs Committee, and to the satisfaction of the varied interests at large in society—on the threshold test to determine whether customary title exists. There is considerable disagreement from different parties about the appropriate threshold test. The Hon Tariana Turia said that in her own speech today, and I acknowledge that she said that. There are differing views; this Parliament has had two cracks at it, and we have not settled it. It is time to acknowledge that this is one of those issues that Parliament should not try to codify; it should be put back to the courts.

We are not scared of that in Labour. Indeed, we tried to explore that issue through the select committee process and I tried to explore it in my own dealings with the Attorney-General as to what legal advice the Crown had received about the effect of the change to the threshold test. Prior to the bill being introduced, and after the bill was introduced, I asked the Attorney-General to release the legal advice to Labour that the Crown had undoubtedly received about the change to the threshold test. He said he would consider it. It is within his discretion to release that advice, and he is quite within his rights not to release that advice. I do not say that he is not within his rights to withhold that Crown legal advice. But in the absence of us having access to that Crown legal advice, it was all the more important that the select committee got its own legal advice. Again, throughout the select committee, Labour members sought that advice from the Government, because there is no sense in paying for a second lot of legal advice if it is already around. In the end, the Government, through the Attorney-General’s advice to officials, refused to release that legal advice, so the select committee said that we needed other legal advice—we needed legal advice from a legal expert so that we could advise Parliament of the effect of the change to the threshold test. But we were blocked by some members of the select committee from being able to offer that advice. The previous foreshore and seabed committee had had good, detailed advice from Professor Paul McHugh, and this Parliament benefited from transparent advice about the effect of the threshold test.

But that is one of a number of procedural abuses that we suffered at the select committee. Not only did we have that but a 500-page departmental report came to us by email on a Friday afternoon. No one reads a 500-page report properly on a computer.

Paul Quinn: I did.

Hon DAVID PARKER: No, the member did not. He read the start of it. The member did not read the whole report. It was patently clear that neither he nor anyone else—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): I am sorry to interrupt the member. We had a plea earlier from this side of the House to have a bit of decorum, because I understand that the speakers are not working very well. This is a debate where there is some passion. There is no problem with interjections as long as they are rare and reasonable, but let us not have a yelling barrage.

Hon DAVID PARKER: It is clear that no one had the time to read that report properly. On the Monday, the hard copy was circulated to members—on the Monday. Most members were like me and got it on the Tuesday morning, which was the same day that the committee was to conduct—at least in a pretend way—consideration of that 500-page report. After less than 2 hours of consideration of the 500-page report, the committee forced through the deliberation. That was quite improper. I put a motion that we go through the report on a page-by-page basis, which is the normal process, but that motion was blocked by Government members, supported by the Māori Party, as was my motion on notice that we get legal advice about the effect of the changes to the threshold test, and as was my motion on notice that we at least provide the House with a new version of the bill that showed the changes being proposed by the Government. But that, too, was blocked by the Government. Why? Because in the end this is an act of politics. It is an unpopular act of politics amongst many National supporters, which is why National wants to ram this legislation through Parliament as quickly as it can in the hope the legislation is forgotten before the election. If anyone has a doubt of that, they have only to reflect on the fact that the Government is doing this in the shadow of the earthquake, when it has been asking the Opposition to put aside politics in the wider interest of a settled nation.

Hon Member: What’s the rush?

Hon DAVID PARKER: What is the rush? What is the first thing the Government is doing now that we have resumed after the earthquake? It is progressing this foreshore and seabed legislation.

One of the other problems is that this bill allows agreements between Māori and Ministers. The Attorney-General has said that he will change that, though, and that some form of supervision by Parliament will be required. But I suggest to the House that that is a poor substitute. We are dealing here with the proper and fulsome—but no more than fulsome—recognition of Māori customary interests. The idea that Parliament will do that as assiduously, having regard to all of the different private and public interests at large, is, in my opinion, wrong. It is much better if that is done through the courts, whose officials are the normal people to whom we go to protect our property rights, who will see that proper recognition of rights, and who will guard against the improper erosion of other people’s rights as a result of inappropriate recognition of rights that do not exist.

The original legislation was flawed. Although it was possible to take a claim to the court for what is now being called a customary title—what was then called a territorial customary right—it was not possible for the courts to give a remedy. People were reliant on the grace and favour of a future Government to get a remedy, and that was wrong. Labour has conceded that that was wrong, which is why we have said that the existing legislation needs to be changed. But this substituted legislation is wrong too. This substitute goes the other way and says there can be agreements, which are tantamount in my view to Treaty-type agreements, when what is at large here is recognition of an existing property right that ought to be properly and fully recognised, but no more than fully recognised.

There are some other glaring mistakes in the bill. The effect of this bill—and we heard from Māori submitters as well as from non-Māori—is to undermine the full and final nature of the settlements in respect of commercial aquaculture. Under that settlement, Māori rightly receive 20 percent of the marine areas allocated for aquaculture, and they have the right to apply for more—for additional space over and above the 20 percent allocation. There is no problem with that; that was the agreed settlement. Indeed, that settled the underlying injustice that was the cause of the Ngāti Apa dispute in the first place. But this bill goes further and allows holders of customary marine title to use their right of veto, in addition to those two rights I have talked about, to effectively give them an improved negotiating position to get even more than their entitlement under the commercial aquaculture settlement.

There are other problems. A severe criticism of the bill is that we are setting up an alternative planning regime. The Law Society and the Planning Institute both noticed that we are requiring regional councils to give effect to these plans. There are a lot of other problems with this bill; it will not settle them. At the first reading we called for the Māori Party to accept this as a full and final settlement. But it has not done that, and we oppose the bill.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General): As is always the case with the member David Parker, that speech was a very useful contribution. It seems that this is the first time we have heard from a Labour member in this place an acknowledgment that the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act is discriminatory because it unilaterally extinguished the uninvestigated customary property rights of Māori, and, more important, in the early 21st century denied a significant section of the population the right of access to the courts. So that was a very important admission on the part of that honourable member. It seems to me that one issue of principle—and I am looking forward to the debate in the Committee of the whole House, because the member has raised some very important issues—is whether we should codify or simply send the matter back to the courts and enable the courts to work it out. I think that is a very important question, and it is a very fair question; I thank the member for raising it.

My preference is to go along with the submission of Dr Michael Cullen, on behalf of Labour, to the review panel that Mrs Turia mentioned, which was set up in March 2009. I quote, for the member’s benefit, exactly what Dr Cullen said: “statutory codification of the common law tests should be retained subject to the panel making any suggestions for changes. To wait upon protracted legal arguments developing a New Zealand jurisprudence in this respect would defeat the purpose of what many are seeking: both certainty and equity.” And in a fair and objective manner, I have taken the comments made by the Court of Appeal in the Ngāti Apa decision, looked at international developments—as I was urged to do by the UN special rapporteur, James Anaya, who put that in his report—particularly in reference to Canada, and come up with tests that I believe create an enduring situation in this area. I use as an example something Dr Cullen also mentioned: “provision should be made for recognition of customary transfer for some period after 1840.”, and that is exactly what we have picked up in order to recognise, for example, the situation with Ngāti Porou ki Hauraki.

Then the second major issue of principle that the honourable member David Parker has raised—and we can go into this in some detail in the Committee stage—concerns the issue of agreements. A Supplementary Order Paper that I will introduce will directly address the concern that many people have, in good faith, raised about agreements. It has been expressed sometimes somewhat pejoratively as “shoddy deals done with Māori and Ministers”. But I refer the honourable member to the Order Paper for today, and particularly to item 46, which deals with the Ngā Rohe Moana o Ngāti Hapū o Ngāti Porou Bill. For the benefit of Mr Horomia, I say that bill gives effect to an agreement that was entered into between representatives of Mr Horomia’s iwi and Dr Cullen in late 2008, and in a spirit of great generosity that iwi has agreed that it could languish, as it were, at the bottom of the Order Paper until this review is completed. These are important matters of principle, and I am certainly looking forward to debating these matters with the member, David Parker, for whom I have great respect, in the course of the Committee stage.

Today we are taking another step towards repealing the 2004 Act and replacing it with a non-discriminatory regime that recognises and protects the rights of all New Zealanders in the area between the high-water mark at mean high water spring tides, and to the extent of the territorial sea. I say to Mr Boscawen that his question this afternoon was fundamentally flawed. He should not confuse the marine and coastal area with beaches, as he always seems to do, because they are two different things. This space will be known as the New Zealand common marine and coastal area. The bill acknowledges that it is an area in which all New Zealanders have interests. As the previous Government acknowledged—and I acknowledge that it was right to do so—there are private interests around the coastline. There are 12,500 private titles. There is general land owned by Pākehā, there is general land owned by Māori, and there is Māori customary land. We will not interfere with those rights because, contrary to what the Greens would suggest, two wrongs do not make a right and one has to respect those private property interests.

This bill recognises the importance to New Zealanders of the common marine and coastal area, and no one can enter on it for the purposes set out in clause 27 and then charge for it—charging is not on. The interests of Māori are recognised in three ways. The bill recognises the longstanding connection of all iwi, hapū, and whānau to a specific part of the marine and coastal area, and that part of the bill builds on what the previous Labour Government did in 2000 when it passed the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Act. This bill builds on the concept of mana tuku iho. That was done, particularly, to try to incorporate some of the concerns of Mr Harawira, who told a newspaper reporter that he had not read the bill.

The bill allows iwi, hapū, and whānau to take part in statutory conservation processes within the area, including the establishment of marine reserves and conservation areas and the management of stranded whales. What it does, effectively, is to formalise existing practice, because the Department of Conservation has normally been very good at dealing with the right people on these issues. Secondly, customary rights exercised since 1840 in accordance with tikanga Māori can be formally recognised, and the future exercise of those rights can be protected. Finally, as Mrs Turia said, there will be the right to go to court to seek to establish customary title.

The bill is the result of extensive consultation. That consultation started on the day that I became Attorney-General. The debate within Māoridom has gone on for much longer than that, as Mrs Turia said. Essentially, it has gone on since 2003. It started because of what happened at the top of the South Island, where, if there had been a different approach, the issue would never have even gone to court, and I acknowledge that. I refer to the progress of the reform—and Mrs Turia has set it out very carefully—from the time of setting up the review panel under Justice Durie and his team, and then the extensive consultations with a wide variety of interests, from local government to recreational, commercial, and customary interests, to try to see whether we could obtain a good result.

The bill was introduced in September 2010. It had 6 months of hearings in the Māori Affairs Committee. I note with interest that the Foreshore and Seabed Bill had 3 months before the select committee. The report on that bill came back to the House on 4 November, 2004. The second reading, the Committee stage, and the third reading were on one sitting day: 16 November 2004. So no one can say that we have been doing what the previous Government did.

Hon David Parker: At least they considered the submissions.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: The submissions have been taken into account. I say to the honourable member—because he raises an important point—that bona fide, decent submissions were carefully considered and incorporated by me.

I want to read into Hansard several excerpts of material I have received, which are representative of the views expressed by some people. I have been told that Māori should feel lucky not to have been wiped off the planet. One correspondent told me that because Māori want the right to go to court, they are covetous, and in breach of the Ten Commandments. The letter that best sums up much of the unfortunate tone of some of the correspondents—and some of the submissions—is this response: “Nowhere else in the world is a small section of the population encouraged to have ideas of ownership and possession above their station.” No member of this House would endorse that kind of garbage. It is totally inappropriate, and I will not entertain that kind of submission. That is why I say to the honourable Mr Parker that it is a very dangerous proposition to determine the quality of submissions by the bulk of them. We have looked very carefully at the select committee—

Hon David Parker: Two hours.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Well, as has been said, he had ample opportunity. The report was available on the Friday. The Supplementary Order Paper will address a number of issues and should alleviate people’s concerns.

I thank my colleagues in the Māori Party for taking part in this longer conversation since November 2008. This is a good-faith endeavour to create an enduring solution, and it is very interesting that when one hears from the lead speaker for the Labour Party, one realises what the issues are. Basically, it boils down to the issue of agreements and to the issue of codification versus non-codification. I am in Dr Cullen’s camp: certainty and equity require codification. Let us have that principle debated in the Committee of the whole House, and then we can move on.

Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā tātau. Nā te mea i roto i ahau te whakaaro atu mai i te wā e tipu atu au i te taha o taku nanny, mōhio atu au te mahi kakī whero pērā i te mahi o te tangata rā nā te mea, e haere tahi atu tātau i te takutai moana ki te ruku pūpū, ki te tiki kina, ki te hī kōura, ngā mahi pērā tonu. E mōhio atu tātau mai i te poipoiā ngā pakeke ki a tātau, kaua koe e haere ki reira e kai ana i te kai i roto i te wai. Kaua koe e haere ki reira e ngatia te kai, haere atu ki te tiki tētahi pēke mō tō whānau anake. Nā te mea kite atu au, kei te ngati hoki ngā tāngata o Aotearoa, ngā Māori, ngā tāngata Hāmoa me ngā Pākehā. E ngatia hoki. Kei te ngarongaro haere ngā hua o Tangaroa. E rapurapu atu ngā Māori mō tērā kai kei te ngarongaro atu.

Nā te mea i rongo atu i te wero o wētāhi e tuhi atu ki te Komiti Māori, i a rātau ngā kakī whero e wero atu mō te e take e pā ana ki te pai mō tātau ngā Māori, me wētahi o tātau e haere pērā tonu i te hakahaka haere mō tō rātau whakaaro, kāre e pīrangi e oti atu te pire nei. E rongo atu i te kōrero o te tangata nei a Hōnore Chris Finlayson. E pai ana tērā, e whakaae atu tērā engari, nā te mea i roto i a koe, tae kaha atu mō te oti mō tēnei take anake, nā te mea, e mōhio atu tātau e kī atu wētahi, nōku te takutai moana. Wētahi o te Kāwanatanga, pērā anō tō tātou kōrero i ngā tau ā muri rā engari nā tātau ngāi Māori, kotahi anō te tangata e manaaki, e tū kaha atu mō te takutai moana, ko Tangaroa. Nō reira, e mihi kau ana ki a Tangaroa. E mihi kau ana ki ngā take e pā ana ki te pire nei. Kia ora tātau.

[Greetings to us. I was just pondering about the time when I was growing up as a youngster with my nanny, and how I had already become aware of what rednecks like that member over there are on about, because we all used to go to the foreshore to dive for molluscs, collect sea eggs, dive for crayfish, and all that. The elders were constantly at us, saying “Don’t you go in the sea and eat the catch in there. Don’t you go there and exhaust the supply of seafood; just get enough in the bag for the family.” But I see how everybody in New Zealand—Māori, Samoan, and Pākehā included—has plundered stocks. Tangaroa’s resources are disappearing. Māoridom is trying to resolve this.

But I heard the challenge by some who wrote to the Māori Affairs Committee that they, the rednecks, took issue with the matter relating to the benefits for us, the Māori people, and how some of us carry on about how we do not want this bill passed. I heard what the member the Hon Christopher Finlayson said. That is fine; I agree with it, but only for this matter. We know that some have stated that the foreshore really belongs to them. Some in the Government share that view, just as we did years ago. To us, the Māori people, there is only one person who is able to take care of the foreshore and sustain it, and that is Tangaroa. So I acknowledge Tangaroa and matters relating to this bill. Greetings to us.]

I go back to the delivery of the 500-page bill on Waitangi weekend, when most Māoris were doing everything relevant to Māori. If one were a cynic, one would wonder why it came out that weekend. Then, on the first sitting day of Parliament in 2011, the bill got shot through in 2 hours. There are a host of reasons for that. That there was a denial in relation to getting legal advice is something that is quite brand new in terms of this House and its practice. Everybody has talked about 2004, and I must note, before I forget, that I was interested in one of the key points in relation to what Minister Finlayson said about the test. He aligned it, and said it was akin, to the examples in Canada. I do understand about customary property in Canada. A whole lot of it is out on the icebergs and out in the tundra, and I am interested to see how he correlates those tests with whatever he is copying from Canada.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Don’t diminish this debate with rubbish.

Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA: I do not intend to diminish this debate with rubbish, because I have some respect for Minister Finlayson. I sat on the hill with him on Saturday, I think it was, and that was great. However, I will not stand for the other rubbish about rushing through this bill, dishing it out on Waitangi weekend, and then blaming everything on 2004. Let me tell members this. We could have done better, we went too fast—

Hon Member: Talk to Ngāti Porou. They want it through as fast as possible.

Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA: That is right; we went too fast, in my mind, but there was a fascinating response to that by National. This country was plastered with “Iwi/Kiwi” billboards. It was plastered with “Barbecues on the beach only by Māoris”, and all of that rubbish. I say to members that yes, we could have done better in 2004, but what we did do was learn from it. We learnt from it.

Before National took command of the Government benches it promised to repeal the legislation and was quite definitive about the framework and how it would look. This bill has ended up nowhere near that—nowhere at all. It has not ended up like that—

Paul Quinn: So why was the Electoral Finance Act rammed through?

Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA: —and Mr Quinn knows that. Labour will be opposing this bill, and I hope during that period of time the Māoris over there will understand the same issues that we understand.

Paul Quinn: Of course, Ngāti Porou have got a deal, haven’t they?

Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA: Certainly they have had a deal, and some iwi, hapū, and whānau have lived by the takutai moana for generations. As I said, I was a tamariki, a youngster, who went with my nan and my family to the takutai moana. The kai in the takutai moana was plentiful.

I sit here and wonder and ponder about the debate around ownership. Māoridom in lore understands that there is only one person who guides and owns the takutai moana, and that is Tangaroa. Nobody mentions that here. We have skewed off centre on to tenure that is not necessarily, and especially in this bill, going to advance or be of benefit to Māoridom. I am pleased to hear the Minister say that the private titles will not be touched. That is something to start off with; there are a whole lot of those private titles.

We have always maintained that we are willing to work responsibly to achieve an enduring solution to the foreshore and seabed issue. We have always maintained that, but we were short-changed in the sense of what finally came out in the legislation and in the unprecedented rushing to get it up and through within 2 hours. Everybody said that it was Tau Henare. That is what the Government said. It was not Tau. I know Tau pretty well. He was pushed and shoved to rush it through. He was under instruction to make sure of that. We have been willing to consider alternatives to the current Act, including its repeal. We have not stoked race-based fears, which seem to have come in too fast, and there were too many from both ends of the spectrum.

We are dismayed that the Government has now adopted a process that has blocked any legal advice on the effect of the changes to the threshold test for establishment of a customary marine title. That is outrageous.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Crocodile tears! What did Auntie Helen do in 2004?

Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA: That was 2004; we are talking about now. We are not denying that. We are not denying that, but when the Minister came in there was a promise that he would make it better. Ignoring the 5,000 submissions is unprecedented in this House. I found it very interesting that the Minister said that it was not the bulk or the content of the submissions that should count. That is how we get voted into this place—by the majority. That is why we as Māori, as a minority, understand what happens when the majority run ragged around us.

I assure members that what Minister Turia said was very, very interesting. I recognise Minister Turia and John Tamihere for their part in the 2004 bill right up to the last minute. We woke up one morning and she was gone.

This bill should have been postponed because of the Canterbury earthquake. It should have been strung out. There are a lot more important things going on that are putting Māori at risk right now in this country. The cost of living has skyrocketed through the roof. What do the Māori Party and the Government care about that? As for jobs under National, this is the highest unemployment rate for Māori since the Second World War. What is the Government going to do about this? This is the highest Māori unemployment rate since the Second World War.

Paul Quinn: Stick to the bill!

Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA: I am sticking to the bill, but I am trying to say why it should be important, in the sense of what we should be talking through in this House. This member kept the unemployment rate down at 6 percent; that is what this member did. This member made sure that food prices were down. This member made sure that there were 14 settlements lined up and made it very easy for the current Minister when he got in to finish off. That is what this member did. This member made sure about that. This member made sure that Māori Television started and that the second channel started so that we could watch it, so that all members of this House could be on it, and so that all members of this House could be seen by the public.

This bill is a disgrace. It was rushed through unnecessarily. It is being rushed through now unnecessarily when we should be looking for and creating a better space. It is important that we get the best solution that makes it better for everyone. The red-necked people sending in submissions need to be chastised and those who are into extreme benefits for one class of people need to be not recognised. Thank you.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): This is one of the more surreal debates, if not the most surreal debate, I have heard in my just about 9 years in this Parliament. The arguments made by one side are now being made by the other, over an issue that would in other circumstances be quite amusing, but actually is not, because, although there is a great deal of shouting going on here, at the end of the day it is Māori who will be the ones who pay for this utter disgrace and this fallacy that is being repeated just a few short years after the first iteration.

The Green Party has fought this legislation in all its various forms in the last 8 years and we will continue to fight it, because the Green Party will never put its name to a confiscation of Māori land. We will never put our name to that. It is with enormous distress that I stand here listening to colleagues who stood with me in 2004 to say the same thing, and who now agree to put their name to exactly the same confiscation of Māori land. Members should not get me wrong; I am talking here about Tariana Turia in particular, and the Māori Party, which was born out of the opposition to the confiscation that this bill undertakes. It is not an argument to simply say the legislation is good because it replaces old discrimination, old confiscation, if all it does is replace it with exactly the same thing. That is what is happening with this legislation. It is a repeal and replace, with effectively the same bill that Labour put up, mixed with the Ngāti Porou negotiations that occurred a few years later. Anybody who looks at it can see that that is the case. No amount of intellectual “pretzelism” from Māori MPs in this place will change that fact.

Just as last time the Green Party held the Labour Māori MPs to account, today I need to hold Tariana Turia and the Māori Party MPs to account for their complicity in the confiscation of Māori land. Let me set out for the record what the Green Party position is, and has been since 2003, when the Court of Appeal first made its decision. In our view, collective customary title is to be upheld, and is not to be extinguished by legislation. Public access to all parts of the foreshore, whether held in customary title or in private, freehold title should be—and can be—protected. In our view we can protect the transfer to freehold title of customary land by a simple amendment to Te Ture Whenua Maori Act and that will ensure that no customary title in the foreshore and seabed land could ever then be onsold.

It is a fairly straightforward position. It is one I put to Michael Cullen, as did Jeannette Fitzsimons, in 2003 and 2004. It was rejected by Labour then, but it is accepted by Labour now. I heard David Parker setting out precisely that solution to that issue in this bill. I am pleased that Labour has changed its position, but this should never have had to happen in the first place. The solution was obvious then, and it is obvious now. A confiscation of Māori land is not necessary to resolve this issue.

In a second reading debate it is traditional for MPs to talk about the select committee process, and I will talk about that briefly, and draw some parallels. The select committee process was also simply a Groundhog Day—a repeat of what had happened last time, but with different characters playing the same parts. It distressed me a great deal to see that the Māori Party representative on the Māori Affairs Committee played exactly the same role that Māori Labour MPs did the first time around. One of the ways it was most obvious was when Māori came to the select committee and talked about their issues, their concerns, and their opposition to the legislation—just as they did last time, and just as they did to the panel. Te Ururoa Flavell would then ask them whether they had read the bill. If they had not read the bill all the way through, he would deny their ability to understand the impact of the legislation on them, their whānau, and their land. He denigrated their tikanga, their right to put forward their view on what this legislation would do to them, their whānau, and their customary rights—their tikanga Māori.

That is exactly what Michael Cullen did when we toured around in 2003, talking about the previous legislation. Michael Cullen told Māori that they did not like the bill because they did not understand it, and we heard that through the select committee process in 2004, as well. What did we hear from the Māori Party representative on the select committee this time? We heard the same thing: “I’m sorry, Māori people, but you do not like it because you do not understand it. If you just understood it better, you’d be OK.” That denies entirely the Māori experience of what confiscation looks like and what it means. Māori people have watched the confiscation of their land for generations, and they have fought it for generation after generation. They have fought it everywhere: on the land itself, in protests, in the courts, and in Parliament, decade after decade. Māori know a confiscation when they see one, and they saw it in this legislation. That is what they told us. But the Māori Party told those submitters they were wrong, just as Michael Cullen and Labour did last time.

Labour now complains about the process. It complains that we did not get the chance to discuss or make changes to the bill after receiving the 500-page report on the bill, and Labour is right about that. We did not get a chance to discuss it. We had 2 hours.

Paul Quinn: You weren’t even there that day.

METIRIA TUREI: Some will say that they read it word for word, and we can believe them if we like. Some will say that, but I sat there and watched National and the Māori Party agree that we would not look at the report, and, not only that, that we would also not consider it. [Interruption]

Hon Nanaia Mahuta: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): I think I can anticipate what it is. The member will desist from being quite so boisterous.

Paul Quinn: Speaking to the point of order—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): I have ruled. The member is being too boisterous. I have ruled. You are too boisterous.

METIRIA TUREI: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and I thank my colleague. I sat there and watched as the Māori Party and National members agreed that they would not discuss this legislation. I watched them do that, because I was there at the time. Not only was that the case but the Māori Party and National members decided that not one change would be made to the bill. What that means is that for every single Māori person, every single whānau, hapū, and iwi who came to that select committee, not a single word they said made any difference to National or the Māori Party about what this bill would do. It was a waste of their time. They need not have bothered coming. The whole idea of the process being one in which Māori could have a say was rubbished because the Māori Party and National denied them the right to have any changes made in this legislation.

That is exactly what Labour did in 2004; in 2004 no amendments were made to the legislation in the select committee either. At the end of the day, I agree with David Parker that this legislation on the confiscation of Māori land is about a political decision on where votes will come from. For some reason the Māori Party has decided that its political future lies with those who agree with confiscation of Māori land. The Green Party does not, and we will never support confiscations such as are provided for in this bill. We refuse to put our name to this travesty, and we ask, as we have before, that the Māori Party refuse to put its name to a confiscation of Māori land.

Hon JOHN BOSCAWEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to speak on the second reading of the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill, and I rise on behalf of New Zealanders throughout the country who oppose this bill, just as one of my predecessors, former ACT deputy leader Ken Shirley, rose in this House in 2004 to oppose the Foreshore and Seabed Bill, which was being rammed through by the Labour Government. ACT opposed that legislation because it was a travesty. It was a law that removed from iwi their fundamental right to have their day in court, left Māori feeling like second-class citizens, and led us to a path of fury, frustration, and division.

ACT’s stance on the foreshore and seabed has always been consistent. In 2004 ACT argued that claims to customary title over the area of the foreshore and seabed should be left to the courts to decide. Today I reiterate that stance. ACT believes that the courts should decide this issue. I reiterate the stance of the ACT Party by saying that we support the repeal of the 2004 Act, and oppose the passage of the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill. Although National and Labour members claim that the bill restores the right of iwi to have their day in court when claiming customary title over an area of foreshore and seabed, the fact is that it does not.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Codification or no codification?

Hon JOHN BOSCAWEN: At this stage I acknowledge Mr Finlayson, who has just referred to codification. I will come back to codification very shortly. I acknowledge Mr Finlayson’s acknowledgment of the speech and contribution by David Parker, because it seems that Mr Finlayson, alone in this House, is prepared to acknowledge the contribution of an opposite number.

When the Prime Minister delivered his statement on the first sitting day of Parliament this year, we heard responses from the party leaders. Tariana Turia got up and said that she almost felt ashamed to be a Minister in the Government and to be supporting the Government, given the level of unemployment among young Māori. Earlier this afternoon, when I listened to David Parker, whom Mr Finlayson generously acknowledged, I felt the same shame that Tariana Turia referred to on the first sitting day of this year. I felt the shame of listening to the interjections and contributions of Tau Henare, Paul Quinn, and, more recently, Simon Bridges. Although the leader of the Green Party does not want to record and acknowledge those contributions so that they are written into the record of Hansard, I am prepared to record them.

This is an issue about two things. It is an issue about tests over customary title, and about the benefits that come from those tests. In essence, we have two views. One view states that the tests for granting customary title and all that comes from it are far too loose, and that far greater areas of customary marine title will be awarded as a consequence of the loose tests laid down in this bill. The contrary position is the one espoused by people like a number of Māori Party supporters who came and opposed this bill and a number of iwi who said that the tests are far too tough. In fact, Ngāi Tahu came to the select committee hearing in Christchurch and presented a map of the South Island with the 200-mile economic zone marked on it and said, essentially, that everything within that 200-mile zone was theirs.

Tariana Turia referred earlier this afternoon to the contribution of the Coastal Coalition. I acknowledge the work that the Coastal Coalition has done, and in particular the work of Hugh Barr and Muriel Newman. The position of the Coastal Coalition is not the ACT position. Unlike the Coastal Coalition, the ACT Party firmly believes that iwi should have their right to go to court. They should be able to bring a claim for customary title.

I felt ashamed when I saw some of the material put out by National on this bill.

Hon Tau Henare: Give up your warrant; go on. Give up your warrant.

Hon JOHN BOSCAWEN: I am looking at an extract from the Beehive website, which is headed “Setting the Record Straight”, and states: “You may have heard opponents of the Marine and Coastal Area Bill making inaccurate”—

Hon Tau Henare: No you wouldn’t, would you, because you like the cars.

Hon JOHN BOSCAWEN: Let me interrupt my speech and acknowledge Tau Henare. I say to Mr Henare that I felt ashamed at the way he treated the New Zealanders who appeared before that select committee.

Hon Tau Henare Is that right?

Hon JOHN BOSCAWEN: Yes, it is. I felt ashamed, and I feel ashamed, that I am supporting a Government that plays the ACT members off against the Māori Party members. I felt ashamed to see the way some New Zealanders who appeared before that select committee were treated. Yes, there may have been members who had eccentric views, and there may have been members who had racist views, but the role of a select committee is to listen to what the public of New Zealand have to say and to treat them with respect. People who make a submission on law do it out of the goodness of their heart and what they believe within them.

Let us look at the Government’s website and an extract headed “Setting the Record Straight”. It states: “You may have heard opponents of the Marine and Coastal Area Bill making inaccurate claims about the legislation. We want to set the record straight:”. The Beehive website goes on to summarise a few of the key issues. As Mr Finlayson said, it is about codification; it is about the tests. The website states that the opponents claim that “The bar has been lowered on the qualifying criteria so anyone can apply.” It further states: “The criteria to apply for customary title is extensive. The most rigorous test is proving uninterrupted and exclusive use and occupation of an area of the common marine and coastal area, from 1840 to the present day. Many areas of New Zealand are not eligible because of this requirement.” That is interesting, because that is a very tough test. I note that the Prime Minister, in reply to comments by Jim Matson, who is a long-time National Party supporter, in the Sunday Star-Times 2 weeks ago, made the same comment. Although the article appears under the name of John Key, I suspect it was written for him by the office of Mr Finlayson. It states: “The test for customary title requires continuous exclusive use and occupation of an area since 1840, and as you can imagine, this is not an easy test to meet.”

Well, no, it is not an easy test to meet, but it is not actually the test. The test is not requiring continuous exclusive use and occupation of an area since 1840. No sooner had the Attorney-General finished his first reading speech back in September, he said that he intended to lodge a Supplementary Order Paper to change the bill that he was presenting. He said: “We’re not going to have a test that requires you to show exclusive use. We’re going to allow people who have used it, we’re going to allow people who have boated through the area, we’re going to allow people to fish through an area, and the mere fact that they have done that does not preclude an iwi or hapū coming along, making a claim, and saying that they have had continuous and exclusive use.”

The Government has tried to reassure New Zealanders, it has tried to put New Zealanders at ease, and it has tried to say that there is not an issue—the Government is popular; back the Government. The ramifications of this will come back to make New Zealanders rue it for many, many years to come.

Another key issue here is that the Prime Minister says that, put simply, the bill is a new approach to the ownership of the common marine and coastal area. It guarantees free public access to New Zealanders. It also protects fishing rights. If someone is using the marine and coastal area for something at the moment, then the bill guarantees that person will be able to continue to do so. It guarantees it. We are told we are allowed to access an area, but we have no guarantee of use and occupation.

We are told there will be some 385 changes to the bill. Has the Government had the courtesy of discussing with the people of New Zealand what those changes are? No, it has not. We have heard this afternoon that a Supplementary Order Paper will be lodged in the House tomorrow, and we will be debating it on Thursday.

The ACT Party is bitterly opposed to this bill. It will deny rights to some who have them, and give rights to others who do not have them. It will take from some, and give to others. The ACT Party strongly opposes this bill, and we will fight it to the bitter end. I hope that the other speakers in this House are given greater courtesy than Mr Parker had shown to him this afternoon. Thank you.

Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Māori Party): I have listened to various interpretations of what is happening around the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill. I want to speak about the bill, and about the Māori Party’s activity in getting support for it.

I stand today, driven by the support of the wider Māori Party, to speak on the second reading of the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill. Two months after submissions closed on the bill, Te Karere carried out a poll of 1,002 Māori voters from the Māori and general rolls, who were interviewed during the month of January. There was only one percentage point difference between those who thought the Māori Party should support the bill and those who thought the Māori Party should not support it. But by far the greatest result was a massive 37.2 percent of voters who did not know whether to support it. This points out to me the insignificant role, in terms of the life of New Zealand and day-to-day needs and issues, that this bill plays in their lives.

Minister Turia and I attended a number of iwi leaders’ hui. At one hui we attended in Wellington, 70 tribal and hapū representatives were present. In the discussion on this bill, some opposed it and some supported it, and they gave their reasons for doing so. But at the end of our discussions the entire group expressed their support for the Māori Party’s stand in repealing the 2004 Act as we had promised. Once again, on Waitangi weekend—just last month—a similar hui was held and a similar number of leaders were there. Once again, they voted their thanks and their support for the Māori Party’s activity around this bill. So any talk of 95 percent of Māori opposing this bill is not only fabrication, it is mischievous.

The Māori Party cannot afford to walk away. We could not face our future giving away the best opportunity we have to make a difference. We knew that neither of the larger parties on its own, red or blue, would touch this legislation with a bargepole if it was not to achieve progress this term. Yet not one Māori has come to me and said: “Please, do what you can to entrench the 2004 foreshore and seabed bill for the rest of time.” In fact, my electorate, Tāmaki Makaurau, told me forcefully in the media yesterday to “hurry up and repeal the Foreshore and Seabed Act”, and that was after a number of hui that I had held this month, but also earlier hui.

Of the close to 4,000 submissions received on the 2004 Act, 94 percent opposed it. Five years later, in the 2009 ministerial review of that Act, the bitter opposition to the 2004 Act was still profoundly evident. The first recommendation of the ministerial review to the Government was as follows: “First of all, the 2004 Act should be repealed. That Act is built on such shaky foundations that it should be repealed rather than amended. It is necessary to start again. It also gave Māori such umbrage that many of them will not buy into an alternative statutory regime unless the old Act is seen to be repealed.”

And so what have we the Māori Party done? Very simply, started again. We have started again by restoring the ability for customary title to be recognised. This bill explicitly recognises the enduring mana-based relationship of whānau, hapū, and iwi to the marine and coastal area of their rohe. The automatic award of mana tuku iho demonstrates that. Māori do not have to prove anything in order to achieve that recognition; it is theirs by right as tangata whenua. But what is important is that this bill starts again by establishing the fundamental and, indeed, pivotal importance of tikanga in determining title. The 2004 Act did not incorporate tikanga in its tests. This bill, the takutai moana bill, encompasses tikanga as a key element in the test for customary title, and allows for differences in tikanga from group to group.

The tests, of course, have been a major concern for whānau, hapū, and iwi and a key point of negotiation for us in the duration of this bill. We have argued for recognition of different ways that Māori have continued to exercise kaitiakitanga over foreshore and seabed areas. We acknowledge, too, the very real need to ensure that raupatu claimants are not excluded through the requirement to satisfy the court or Crown officials that raupatu did not cause a substantial interruption to their exclusive use and occupation of the takutai moana.

We welcome the initiative taken by hapū of Ngāti Ranginui iwi, who provided the wording that would exempt iwi and hapū from having to do that, and would give raupatu iwi the certainty they seek that raupatu will not be deemed a substantial interruption when they make claims for title. And we acknowledge the very significant contribution made by Ngāi Tahu to this aspect of the debate. Mark Solomon spoke passionately to the Māori Affairs Committee about Ngāi Tahu being disqualified from the bill by reason of their generosity. He was speaking about the practice of manaakitanga—of hospitality, of sharing—which was demonstrated in their sharing the bounty of the sea and the bounty of the foreshore. We believe that consideration of manaakitanga is vital to a successful understanding of the framework around this bill, and we are pleased that through our intervention it now forms part of the preamble to the bill.

I think it is important to note that a historical breach of the Treaty does not automatically break the chain of continuity necessary to prove exclusive use and occupation. It is possible that customary title could exist in an area where breaches of the Treaty have occurred. It all depends on the facts and circumstances of each case.

Everyone in this House knows that this bill is not the perfect bill; it will not please everyone. But it provides recognition and protection of customary rights, and that is why Ngāti Apa took a case to the Māori Land Court all those years ago—to have those rights recognised. It has not happened overnight. Many thousands of submissions, of hui, of legal papers, of frameworks, of polls and surveys have been undertaken since 2003, when the Court of Appeal agreed that Ngāti Apa could have customary title investigated by the courts. This bill restores the ability of Māori to seek customary property rights in the High Court. Customary interests extinguished by the 2004 Act are restored. And as Minister Turia said earlier, this bill places the burden of proof on the Crown to prove that extinguishment of customary title had occurred.

I concur with the thinking of our leaders who have encouraged hapū and iwi to start preparing for the negotiations process and to establish a precedent. We have worked hard to ensure that there is funding in place to be made available to iwi in a manner similar to how claimant funding is provided for the Treaty settlement negotiations process.

We do, of course, recognise that the bill does not settle all the issues, but it does keep them alive. There was a very strong message from the submissions made by whānau, hapū, and iwi that we must apply every effort to ensure the momentum is maintained in creating a new, Treaty-based, longer conversation to recognise and give effect to the mana of hapū and iwi. The Māori Party pledges our support and our ongoing commitment to that call, a call we will take up with passion in the constitutional review, and, indeed, a call that will continue to motivate us in every policy outcome we seek. And if there is one key challenge that we must adhere to in every successive stage of this bill, and every bill before the House, it will be the message of the 2004 hīkoi.

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister): I am pleased to take this opportunity to support those who have worked so hard to bring the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill to this point of the legislative process. They are my colleagues the Hon Chris Finlayson, Pita Sharples, and Tariana Turia, and the Māori Affairs Committee, which has heard so many strong views so often over such a long period of time. I think it has done a very good job in that respect.

There is no doubt that strong views may well continue to be expressed on this legislation. But, in a sense, it is just another step that this Parliament and Governments in New Zealand over the last 20 or 30 years have taken, following a long process of balancing and incorporating different views of history, justice, and property rights into the legislative and constitutional structure of New Zealand, and each time those steps have been taken similar anxieties have been expressed. They are anxieties that are understandable and, on occasions, including this process, they have led to an improved balance of rights and recognition. I can think of two examples where similar anxieties have been expressed—by both Māori and others—one was around the fisheries settlement. My electorate has about 3,000 miles of coastline, so the fisheries settlement mattered. Many of the anxieties that were expressed at that time have not come to pass.

Another step taken by Parliament and Government in New Zealand was when the first large-scale Treaty settlements occurred in the mid 1990s. Again, those decisions were surrounded by a good deal of anxiety. But I say that in each of those cases progress was made. It was made because people had a sense of fairness about the way the dealings were done, and those dealings led to certainty. There is no doubt that when people have certainty about their rights, particularly their property rights, it enables them to take a forward-looking view based on enterprise and progress, rather than a backward-looking view based on injustice or uncertainty. It allows them to get on with making a positive use of those rights, as a liberal capitalist economy allows them to do. This has certainly been the case in the follow-on from the settlement of fishing claims and the follow-on from Treaty settlements where those who have settled, almost without exception, have found it to be a positive experience. In the case of fishing rights, it has allowed the development of one of the better fishing management systems in the world and the development of a strong base of wealth and expertise around this certainty—not just certainty for Māori, but certainty for everyone else who has an interest in fishing in New Zealand.

That is the context in which I think we should see the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill. It is based on three important principles. The first principle is that the courts should be open to all citizens. The second principle is that all property rights should be respected, and this includes common law rights—that is, rights established by use and custom. The third principle is that we should maintain public access to beaches.

It may be that some people are not aware that common law rights exist, but they have existed for hundreds of years in British-type systems, and they exist now. Existing property rights have to be respected. I suspect that a lot of this debate has boiled down, as I think David Parker said, to a debate over whether to codify the tests for customary and other rights. The Government, along with the Māori Party, has made a decision to codify the tests. The reasons relate to the points I made earlier. Firstly, codifying the tests properly makes this debate one that is conducted by Parliament rather than by just the courts alone. Secondly, codifying the tests will give us more certainty, which enables people to feel that these issues are settled in their sense of fairness and justice, but also more certainty in the sense of the economic use of the property rights. Experience in other jurisdictions has shown that where the courts are left to determine common law rights held by indigenous peoples it is a lengthy, complex, and inconclusive process—

Hon Christopher Finlayson: And expensive.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: —and very expensive, whereby the lawyers win more than anyone else. Maybe in Canada or Australia they can afford to do that where these rights are pretty peripheral to the mainstream economic activity, but in New Zealand we need as much certainty as we can get. It is best to get on and do it.

We should accept that there are strong views on the bill. Both National and the Māori Party have worked hard to incorporate what might reasonably deal with the anxieties that have been expressed on both sides of the argument. The fact that Māori believe they will get nothing and the Coastal Coalition believes that Māori will get everything tells us that we are probably about right. In our pragmatic approach to these constitutional-type issues in New Zealand, that is not a bad measure of success. It is clearly not the case that this legislation—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Everyone thinks you’re wrong.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Everyone thinks you are wrong. I could not have put it better myself. It amounts to the same thing.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I’ve been in that position often.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Mr Mallard has achieved a bit in his time, too. If everyone thinks we are wrong, we are about in the middle. It is probably the next most pragmatic step we can take.

I particularly acknowledge today the way in which the Māori Party has dealt with this issue. It is always difficult for a small party in Government. If it was not this issue that put pressure on both the Māori Party and the ACT Party, it would have been other issues. They have articulated strong views. We have heard those views from both the ACT Party and the Māori Party. We have the choice as a Parliament to just drop the issue because it is too difficult, and hope that in the future it will be solved or that someone else will solve it. That would be quite an unacceptable outcome. It is the proper role of smaller parties to take strong positions, as long as they respect the need for the Government and Parliament to take a position that can actually be implemented, because those are not the same thing. In both cases here, the smaller parties—certainly the ones the Government has dealt with—respect the role of the Government in coming to a conclusion to a debate that would otherwise go on endlessly and, in my view, destructively. That is why the Government is taking a step, and particularly wants to acknowledge the Māori Party with the pressures that have come to bear on it in making the very difficult but right decision to back progress, rather than to have continued argument. That always takes a certain amount of courage, and finding that courage is admirable. It is much harder for a smaller party to do that, so I acknowledge today the Māori Party’s effort.

The bill will be subject to vigorous debate—we expect that. We know there are strong views about the bill, but it is important for New Zealand to take pragmatic decisions in order to move forward and build the basis for the kind of economic and social progress that comes when old injustices are settled, recent injustices are dealt with—as the legislation we are repealing created—and we can look ahead. There may be further arguments about this issue in the future.

HONE HARAWIRA (Independent—Te Tai Tokerau): Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā nō tātou katoa e te Whare. I begin my first formal speech in Parliament as Te Reo Motuhake o Te Tai Tokerau by extending my gratitude, firstly, to my immediate whānau, my wider whānau, and all the people of the north for their continued and unwavering support over the years. I also extend my gratitude to the tino rangatiratanga movement for always reminding me of the importance of refusing to back down on matters of principle; to all those who have contacted me over the past few weeks offering their support for the principles I stand by and for my commitment to justice and equality for Māori, wherever they may be; and, finally, to Labour and my whanaunga Shane Jones for allowing me the opportunity to speak on the second reading of the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill.

I note how right David Parker was in recognising the clear differences between me and Labour over the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act—differences that still exist in the positions we take today on this new bill to confiscate Māori rights. I have said it before and I will say it again here: whether or not I am a member of the Māori Party and whether or not I am a member of Parliament does not change the fact that when Māori rights are under threat, somebody needs to speak up and challenge that threat. If the Māori Party will not speak up—indeed, if the Māori Party chooses to be party to that threat to Māori rights—then be assured that I will not shirk from speaking up and challenging that threat.

When the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations says that “Māori will have to show that they held exclusive use and occupation of the area since 1840, without substantial interruption, and that the area in question was held in accordance with tikanga”, he is saying that the National - Māori Party Government intends to use exactly the same test in 2011 that 50,000 Māori marched against in 2004. When the Prime Minister says that customary title will not be easier to achieve but it is not the Government’s job to make the tests easier, then he is spitting in the eye of the Māori Party for backing a deal that is likely to break its back at the next election. When the Māori Party actually says in its video “If we were negotiating on what is fair, just, and moral, then we would have a very different outcome.”, please let it be known to all who care to take notice that I am glad that I am no longer a member of a caucus that has finally realised that the price of its coalition with National is its support for a bill that is unfair, unjust, and immoral.

When the Māori Party says that that is the choice facing Māori people and that it will be guided by them, then I have to ask which people they are talking about. Is it the iwi leadership whom the Māori Party went out of its way to promote during this process and who refused to support the bill and subsequently refused to attend the first reading of this racist piece of legislation, even though the Māori Party begged them to come and show their support, and who are again conspicuous by their absence at this second reading because they simply do not accept that this bill will achieve anything for Māori? Or is it the people behind the thousands of emails, phone calls, texts, Facebook messages, and tautoko that I have been getting from Māori wherever I go in Aotearoa, who support the same principles that I do and say they will walk away from the Māori Party if it supports this racist legislation? When the Māori Party says that saying that 95 percent of Māori are opposed to the bill is wrong and mischievous, then I have to ask what about the 72 submissions that the Māori Affairs Committee received from marae, hapū, iwi, and Māori landowners’ organisations and collectives. Of those 72 submissions, only one—only one out of 72—supported the bill. Twenty submissions said it should be put aside or withdrawn, 33 said it was not much different from the 2004 Act, 34 said the bill needed significant amendment, and 37 either did not support it or outright opposed it.

If I can, please let me quote from some of those submissions, because it is important to remind the Māori Party of the issue that got us into Parliament in the first place. “The facade of saying no one owns the foreshore and seabed equates to ongoing extinguishment of our ownership rights and interests.”; “The bill is so flawed it should be withdrawn.”; “The country has not learnt from past injustices and continues to see extinguishment of Māori rights as a legitimate problem-solving process.”; “The bill knowingly breaches Crown obligations under the Treaty.”; “No real enduring resolution can occur as long as one Treaty partner continues to dictate to the other the nature and extent of their rights, and the process by which those rights are recognised and upheld, or not.” And the final quote: “Māori should not support an equally unjust law.”

When the leadership of the Māori Party moved to force me out so that they could say that the Māori Party unanimously supports this racist legislation, did they seriously think that the 50,000 who marched against the confiscation of their rights in 2004 will accept the ongoing confiscation of those rights in 2011? Do they seriously think that all those who joined the Māori Party will stay, if the party sells out its people on the very issue that gave birth to the party, and that those same people are likely to vote for the Māori Party, which supports the ongoing confiscation of those rights? This I know: all four Māori Party MPs who voted for this racist legislation did so without going back to ask their constituents what they thought about it. All four Māori Party MPs who voted for this racist legislation have publicly expressed grave doubts about the bill itself. All four Māori Party MPs who voted for this racist legislation have been told, in no uncertain terms, by their constituents that they do not support it. All four Māori Party MPs who voted for this racist legislation have been called upon by iwi in their electorates to withdraw their support for this bill.

The analysis of the submissions makes it quite clear why Māori do not support this bill. It fails to properly recognise and provide for the mana of hapū and iwi. It continues the original confiscation by vesting in the common space. It sets the use and occupation test too high. It limits the content of customary marine title. It introduces a costly adversarial and complicated court process. It remains discriminatory to Māori. It continues to breach Te Tiriti o Waitangi, tikanga Māori, common law principles, and international human rights standards, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

This bill is deserving of nothing more than contempt and dismissal for it preys on the desperation of the Māori Party to be seen to be doing something about the issue from which it was born, while highlighting the determination of the National Party to ensure that Māori will actually get nothing from that same piece of legislation.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Third-rate slogans.

HONE HARAWIRA: With all my heart and all my soul—and all quotes too, I say to Mr Finlayson, his included—I urge the Māori Party, indeed, I beg the Māori Party, first, to recognise the fact that it has been sold down the river by its National Party coalition partners on this bill; second, to accept the reality that it occupies a cold and lonely place in the hearts and minds of its people for supporting this bill; and, third, to do the honourable thing by its people by withdrawing its support for this bill. Without the support of the Māori Party caucus this bill will die the death it truly deserves.

Tū te Ao Māori, tū te rangatiratanga, tū motuhake; tēnā tātou katoa.

[Long live Māoridom, sovereignty, and independence; greetings to us all.]

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): When the High Court ruled in mid-2003 on the Ngāti Apa case, it set off a chain of events that has vexed successive Governments ever since. I recall back in 2003 a very strong public mood emerging that said very clearly that the foreshore and seabed belonged to every New Zealander, and that it was part of our inalienable birthright. I led a public march in Nelson to that effect at the time, and I said then—and some have tried to throw this quote back at me—that if we legislated for differential rights for differing groups of the New Zealand population we were starting down the path to separatism and anarchy. I hold to that view today.

It is interesting that the previous Government, in its response to the court’s decision at that time, in good faith started the development of legislation that would recognise the foreshore and seabed as public domain held for all New Zealanders. United Future worked closely with Dr Michael Cullen and Prime Minister Clark to develop that legislation in the 2003-04 period. Somewhere along the way, to quote Harold Macmillan, Labour ran into “a little local difficulty” and effectively lost its numbers, which meant that the combination of the United Future members of Parliament and the Labour members of Parliament were no longer a majority in this House.

In March 2004, having put before both its own caucus and our caucus a bill that vested the foreshore and seabed into public domain, Labour suddenly found, for reasons that were internal to it, that it needed to bring on board some others to get the numbers. Those others were in the form of New Zealand First. The white knight from Tauranga, as he then was, came charging over the horizon. Do members remember the advertisements in the newspapers featuring Winston Peters standing coyly on the beaches having saved them? The price of his intervention was to remove any reference to public domain from the legislation, and United Future pulled our support at that point. That intervention of New Zealand First set in place the tension that has been there ever since, which this bill today finally repeals.

The concept of Crown ownership was an assertion of something that was never there before. It created the possibility of the Crown as landlord. The Crown could privatise the foreshore and seabed. The Crown could limit access. The Crown could sell it. The concept of public domain, which saw every one of us having an equal, unalienable, and indivisible right of ownership, mitigated against that happening. But thanks to New Zealand First we ended up at the end of 2004 with legislation that asserted, for the first time ever, explicit, specific, and sole Crown ownership of the foreshore and seabed. That gave birth to the Māori Party and set in place an issue that has festered ever since.

When that legislation was passed, many claims were made similar to those being made now—that is, any form of settlement or recognition of customary title would see people excluded from the beaches, and the traditional access that we all assumed we enjoyed done away with. It is a bit like Chicken Licken, in that the sky has not fallen in subsequently. We have learnt to live collaboratively, constructively, and positively alongside each other. New Zealanders still go to the beach in throngs every summer, and their rights have not been impeded. The festering sore was the issue of Crown ownership.

When the matter came back on to the agenda in 2009, the Attorney-General, the Māori Party, and others started to look at options for resolving that issue that would not diminish those rights that had hitherto been enjoyed by all New Zealanders. That is where the modern version, if you like, of public domain—shared space—comes into play. The Minister recognises the point that Helen Clark recognised way back in 2003, which Michael Cullen recognised then and would have loved to have legislated for. That old English notion of the commons is still relevant today and still provides the solution to this issue in an enduring and permanent way and relieves a lot of the tension that has been associated with it.

I listened to the Deputy Prime Minister and he made a point that I think is interesting in terms of the opposition to this bill. There has been a lot of it. I have received hundreds, if not thousands, of emails. Many are well meant; most are, dare I say it, misinformed; some are downright malicious; and others, particularly those emanating from the Coastal Coalition, are simple, racist lies. The issue here is that New Zealanders want some settlement and some finality to this issue. By reasserting the concept of shared space, we are giving the certainty and determination that we all thought was there in 2003—it would have been there in 2004 were it not for Mr Peters once again saving the nation. What a legacy that man has to look back on. New Zealand over the last 15 to 20 years has spent most of its time fixing up messes that he has been party to creating, and this is another one of those.

I say to New Zealanders that the traditional view we have always had about every one of us having that right of access is secured in this bill. The traditional view we have always had about the ease with which we can achieve those rights of access—that ability to go to the beach, in colloquial terms—is secured in this bill, because those provisions are not substantially different from what is in the current legislation. What has been removed is a concept that was inserted very late in 2004 and has subsequently been the cause of most of the division associated with this legislation. The foreshore and seabed belongs to all of us. This bill finally puts that in place.

When one reviews the scope of the last 7 or 8 years, we see in retrospect that it might have been easier simply to let the courts resolve this matter way back in 2003, but there was no great confidence at the time in their ability to do so in a way that was fair to the interests of all New Zealanders. There was no great confidence that that would achieve a fair and reasonable outcome.

Metiria Turei: Ha, ha!

Hon PETER DUNNE: The member opposite laughs. She was probably still at school at that time. But the reality is that the interests of New Zealanders were protected by the Government seeking to act. The problem was that external intervention caused a situation where its legislation was derailed.

This bill today effectively picks up from where we all thought we were in 2004, puts in place a durable solution, and ensures that all of the views that the disparate interests have had are heard. Incidentally, I find it very interesting that the coalition of the opposition stretches from those who say that the foreshore and seabed should be exclusively the preserve of Māori right through to those who say that this is simply handing everything over to Māori. This is a coalition of extremes. Middle ground New Zealand opinion simply wants to be able to get on with life in the way it always thought it could. This bill and the concept of shared space achieve that goal. That is why I am supporting it.

Hon SHANE JONES (Labour): Kia ora anō tātou. I te tuatahi e te Kaihautū o te Whare, tēnā koe i tēnei pō i a tātou e whakawhitiwhiti, e whiriwhiri nei i ngā toenga o tēnei pire me te mōhio, arā, noa atu te āritarita, te pōuri, ngā whakaaro e puhia ana e te hau i waenga tonu i a tātou, arā, mātou ngā mema Māori i runga i ō mātou marae. Ēngari, kua tae mai te pire ki te aroaro o tēnei Whare. Hei konei, ka whakaturengia, ka whakaritea hei ngaungau, hei takahi, hei aha rānei mā ngā uri whakatupu. Koia tāku e whēke nei kia tū ki te whakahē i tēnei pire. Nā reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou, kia ora tātou katoa.

[Greetings to us once again. Greetings to you, Mr Deputy Speaker of the House in the first instance this evening, as we exchange views and debate the remaining parts of this bill, knowing full well that there are still so many other irascible, gloomy thoughts being cast about by the wind immediately amongst ourselves, the Māori members, and then on to our marae. Nevertheless, the bill has now arrived before this House, and will eventually be passed into law for future generations to chew over, criticise, or whatever—hence the reason I rise to oppose this bill. Greetings to you collectively, to us, and to everyone.]

An earlier version of this bill led to Tariana Turia turning her back on the people who provided her with the opportunity to establish a parliamentary career. When she took that fateful step, Labour provided Tariana Turia with an opportunity to speak in the debate related to the first version of the takutai moana legislative foray. She did not extend that courtesy, and she did not extend that constitutional nicety, to a member of her own party recently departed, and therein lies the untold story about this bill. It has led to the fracturing and the demise of what was in many respects a powerful concept—that Māori tribes and other backers could have their own party in Parliament. Speaking for myself, I say that it is not my preferred political trajectory, but I have to acknowledge that a number of our people are in the House and they came on the back of Tariana Turia’s removal of herself from Labour and her standing against our legislation.

It is bizarre that this legislation is akin to some sort of poroporoaki—farewell speech—for a significant number of members of the Māori Party. In an indiscriminate way, they have followed their rhetoric and fallen into the trap of surrendering to the Attorney-General, whose skill at manipulating legislative language has no peer. They have, unfortunately, signed their own death warrant by moving too close to National.

Hone Harawira made a number of very thoughtful remarks. He basically said that this is the kaupapa—this is the life force—that enabled the Māori Party to come into being and, as a consequence of its literally defecating on that life force, it is about to depart in the ballot boxes. That is what Hone Harawira has said. That is fantastic, given that Hone Harawira has said he will not be attacking the Māori Party and will not indulge in any personal unparliamentary treatment of the Māori Party. Unfortunately, those members’ vision, their goals, are now inversely related to the day-to-day interests of their voters, and that verdict will be delivered upon later in the year.

Let us come back to the bill. Quite a treacherous decision has been made under the dust, under the misery, of Ōtautahi—the calamity otherwise known as the visitation of Rūaumoko, the earthquake—by the Government. This decision was largely driven by the senior members of National. Cuckolded our Māori Party friends were. National is sneaking this legislation through against a wide chorus of disdain, disappointment, and anger.

I agree with the Attorney-General on one small point in relation to the bill, in relation to a number of the submissions and to the viral campaign—an organised campaign by Mr Peter Dunne, who is, fortunately, soon to disappear along with the low-tide mark, as this legislation gets further and further into trouble. Mr Dunne is a man associated with the Coastal Coalition group, and that group has disgraced its underlying purpose. It pretends that it protects the interests of all New Zealanders, but that group has no place in this debate, because they have been so extreme that they have actually ended up empowering Bill English. In addition to that, they have been so extreme that they have turned off many parliamentarians.

Our disagreement with this bill is not because of our desire to ally ourselves with Muriel Newman or similar miscreants, such as the ACT Party, wanting to spread discord against our Māori people. We do not agree with this bill because it does not settle the issue. We do not agree with the process; we do not like it because of the very surreptitious manner with which this bill, in a week of misery, is being rammed through Parliament. Secondly, we do not want to see legislation that causes these grievances to fester on and on. We were willing to work with a whole variety of political interests in the spectrum. Unfortunately, the opportunity to do so was dashed. There was very little opportunity.

We share a number of the concerns that have been talked about in the House, but this legislation is not the remedy to this particular problem. This constitutional process reflects an undermining of people’s ability to participate, and of people’s ability to have confidence that what small influence they can bring to the constitutional process will be dealt with in a legitimate and caring fashion.

Tau Henare and the Māori Affairs Committee actually delivered a very poor result in terms of how they engaged with the submitters. I know that Tau Henare has a new reputation as a bit of a headbanger. I think personal political reputations ought to be eclipsed by the integrity of the process and the legitimacy of the constitutional role that this House has. I hope Tau Henare bears that in mind in the future, although I fear his future may be pitifully short. However, that is another matter.

There is another resident near Te Atatū: the co-leader of the Māori Party. Dr Pita Sharples has to be acknowledged as the Renaissance man of Te Ao Māori. He has walked many of the huarahi, or pathways, leading to the flowering of Māori identity and how we see it. But this is a very, very retrograde and egregious error with which he is now to be permanently associated. His people, unfortunately, will remember it because the concerns they have are no longer about the high-tide mark, the mauri stone, and the pōhutukawa tree. They are actually to do with the day-to-day woes of the cost of living and the more mundane burdens that Māori families have to bear. It is very unfortunate that he has lost his way on this rather romantic flight, his believing that this legislation represents an improvement on the Helen Clark and Michael Cullen version. It does not.

Dr Cullen wisely made a contribution, and it corrected an error that Labour made. I have said this on numerous occasions: Labour ought not to have denied the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court. That was a very, very bleak day, although I could go on to blame other people not in the House, but, unlike Peter Dunne, I will not do that. Peter Dunne is a man capable of acting like an inhabitant of the takutai moana low tide - high tide mark. A crab can move sideways whilst giving the impression of going forwards. In a jellyfish one never, ever knows where the backbone is. That is why this bill will not settle the issue.

This bill will lead to a fatal fracturing of the Māori Party. This bill leads to a fresh opportunity for Hone Harawira; whether that is good for Māori only time will tell. Hopefully, they will exercise some judgment that has a very red tinge to it come 26 November, or whatever the day of the election is. This bill has cost a great deal of support for National. We do not think it is a solution, and we will not be voting for it.

Hon TAU HENARE (National): Mr Deputy Speaker, nei te mihi aroha ki ngā mōrehu o te rū whenua ki Ōtautahi me ō rātou nawe, āwangawanga, mamae.

[I make a sorrow-filled acknowledgment of the survivors of the Christchurch earthquake, and their concerns, distress, and pain.]

I want to turn my eyes to the passing some weeks back of a lady I held in great regard, Professor Judith Binney. I wanted to take the first opportunity I had to mihi ki a ia me tōna mahi i roto i a Ngāi Tūhoe.

[acknowledge her and her work within the Tūhoe people]

I thank Tariana Turia for sticking to her guns, and for disagreeing with her party by going out on a limb for one particular kaupapa. I have a whole lot of notes here, and a whole lot of speeches to make that will not fit into the measly little 10 minutes we get for a speech.

When we ask ourselves whether this legislation should go through, should we not ask the party or the person who actually laid it on the line, who gave up her seat for that particular kaupapa—the repeal of the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act? Would we not ask ourselves on our travels where the 50,000 people are who congregated outside these halls back in the day against the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act? Where is the apology? Not one of the Labour members has got up and apologised on behalf of the Labour caucus for what it did to Māori.

Labour members have had the temerity to get up in the House and talk as if from some sort of sanctimonious, pixie-dust position, saying they want to engage in a political process. The fact is they are not the Government any more. The fact is we are the majority. That is how things work. Why are they so opposed to that when they are the minority? But they use those tactics when they are in the majority.

I start by reading something from the report by the special rapporteur to the United Nations. It states: “The new Marine and Coastal Area Bill that is currently being considered within Parliament represents a notable effort to reverse some of the principal areas of concern of the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act.” Where else should we start? There was a complaint about our nation that went to the United Nations. The special rapporteur came out here and wrote a report, and nowhere in the report does it say that there is anything wrong with this bill. What it sets out to do is exactly why the Māori Party came to fruition: it was for the repeal of that nasty legislation.

I turn first to my colleague, my whanaunga—taku tuakana—Hone Harawira, who says it is a racist bill. If he says it often enough he will start to believe it, he and his five or six friends. There is nothing racist about this bill. Do members know why? Because it actually returns a human right—a civil right—to a group of people. But that right was taken away from a people because of who they were—because of some fear that judges might say they agreed with those people. The 2004 legislation was based around a fear of what might or might not have happened, and Labour members were responsible for that.

I turn now to my mate, Mr Deputy Speaker’s mate, everybody’s mate: Winston Peters. He was a consummate leader at garnering racial tension, but I tell the House that he has nothing on John Boscawen and the members of ACT. They have not only lied but lied through their teeth over this issue. They have gone around the country and they have asserted that the Māori Affairs Committee is a racist committee, a committee that should not hear submissions on a piece of legislation about Māori—or Pākehā, actually, or Europeans, or anybody else. They assert that we committee members are not good enough to hear submissions. So I say to that member over there, who creates racial tension out in our communities, that it is time that extremists on both sides of the argument went away. It is time they took a slow boat to China, or to wherever else they wanted to go, because 90 percent of us in this country, black and white, want to get on with our lives, and want to get on with each other. That is what this issue is all about; that is what this foreshore and seabed, Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill is all about.

Parekura Horomia said that this bill was nothing more than a disgrace. Well, people need to look in the mirror—or two mirrors, depending on who they are. Metiria Turei got up in this House and said that this bill was about the confiscation of Māori land. I do not know what sort of planet that lady is on, but I can tell members that it is not Earth. This legislation is about nothing more than returning a people’s right to take an issue to court and to ask the judge whether they own something. It is as simple as that—as simple as that. There are other things that this bill does. It guarantees access to the beach, access to the foreshore and seabed, access to the coastal and marine area—access to the takutai moana.

You know, John Boscawen gets up in this House and rabbits on about the Coastal Coalition. I have been inundated with emails from the so-called Coastal Coalition. It is nothing more than the membership list of ACT. That is all it is. We in National are not afraid of making progressive legislation with a very, very progressive party—the Māori Party. I have to tell my whanaunga Shane Jones, and his mate Hone Harawira, that the days of smart alec slogans on behalf of our people are gone. This Government is about moving forward together, not some smart-ass—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Hon TAU HENARE: —sorry, smart alec—[Interruption] Oh, goodness me! For goodness’ sake, the member comes from Rotorua. Smart alec slogans will not win Mr Jones, or Phil Goff, the Treasury benches in a few months’ time. What will win the Treasury benches is hard work, and having the nose to the grindstone as we go about repairing the damage of 9 years of that Labour Government.

I say thank you to Paul Quinn, who was the only member to read 500 pages in 4 days. It beggars what Mr Parker said—that he did not have enough time. Mr Parker said that he did not have enough time; well, Mr Quinn did, and we have had the benefits of his reading capabilities.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 62

New Zealand National 57; Māori Party 4; United Future 1.

Noes 56

New Zealand Labour 42; Green Party 8; ACT New Zealand 5; Progressive 1.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Legal Services Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Preliminary provisions

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour): I begin my contribution by using the first opportunity I have had since the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Justice, announced he would stand down at the next election to congratulate him in the House on his achievements in the justice portfolio, and to wish him well for the future. I am sure his future will be a rosy one, and I think I speak for other members on this side of the Chamber when I say that his departure will diminish the House. We will miss him, I tell the Minister.

Hon Simon Power: Thank you, Charles. I was going to say I am here for another 8 months yet—

CHARLES CHAUVEL: Notwithstanding those sentiments, as the Minister has pointed out, the absence I presage will not actually occur for a little while yet, and we have plenty of time to debate the matters in the Minister’s portfolio.

I understand that this debate concerns just Part 1. I will say one or two words in respect of the Legal Services Bill, and, in particular, the preliminary provisions that are proposed to be dealt with by the legislation. The legislation, as members of the Committee will know, is broadly supported by the Opposition. It is accepted that there ought to be some changes to the legal aid regime, and that the legal aid system ought to be updated. The Opposition thinks the legislation has been improved by the report back from the Justice and Electoral Committee, and the Opposition continues to support the provisions of the legislation on a broad basis. It is quite clear that, as I said, some reforms were required, and we see from the report back that those reforms will be somewhat improved.

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

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I understand we are on Part 1 of the Legal Services Bill, which of course includes the preliminary provisions. The preliminary provisions include the interpretation clause, which includes the definitions of the various proceedings to which the bill applies.

The purpose of the bill as explained to the Justice and Electoral Committee is to rationalise the provision of legal aid, particularly in respect of criminal legal aid, where some problematic patterns of behaviour have developed, according to the report by Dame Margaret Bazley. It was also clear from submissions to the select committee that some of the problems that were perceived in respect of criminal legal aid did not apply to family services. So one of the issues that I would not mind the Minister of Justice providing clarification on is whether the definitions of “criminal proceedings” and “civil proceedings” in clause 4 make it absolutely clear that some of the more rigorous provisions that will apply to criminal proceedings will not apply to family proceedings.

I understood from officials that, in response to submissions from family lawyers, they recognise that there does need to be a choice on the part of family proceedings litigants as to their counsel, whereas in respect of the criminal arena barristers and solicitors will be appointed under the legal aid rosters. I understand from the advice that was given to the select committee that the reasoning behind that is that in respect of criminal proceedings there has been a capture, if you like, of large parts of the market by a small number of barristers—who may not even be the best barristers—and that that has been at considerable cost to the Crown. There have been accusations that some of those lawyers have at times been conducting their proceedings in a way that has been expensive for the Crown and has resulted in some unexpectedly high incomes for some of those solicitors. None the less, the same is not true in respect of family law, where there is acceptance that a rostered basis, or people having a legal aid lawyer allocated to them rather than their choosing their own lawyer, is not appropriate.

I say to the Minister that I suppose one of the reasons why I am interested in this issue is that it seems to me that there is something in that. In respect of family proceedings one can have a protracted custody dispute, and it would be wise to have the same lawyer appearing in all parts of that protracted dispute, which may go on for a couple of years. That is particularly so where children are affected. There is counsel for the child, and often counsel for the child is also paid for by the Crown. I would be interested to know whether appointment of counsel for the child in respect of family proceedings will persist, or whether that will be rostered, as well. It is not clear to me from the interpretation clause, clause 4, whether that is correct. I look forward to the Minister telling me the answer to that query.

Another query I have is that I am not sure what is happening in respect of “proposed patient”, within the meaning given to that term in section 2 of the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act, where it is proposed that people are made subject to compulsory treatment or compulsory assessment. They can actually lose their liberty for a period because of that. If that sort of thing occurs, then, as I understand it, sometimes the Crown pays for a lawyer to represent the interests of the person who is subject to a mental incapacity. I am interested to know how that lawyer is chosen. Is that lawyer chosen on a roster basis like the one we have for criminal matters, or is there some other way in which that person chooses a lawyer? Does their family choose a lawyer, does the judge choose a lawyer, is the doctor involved in choosing a lawyer, or is it a case of just going down a list? If the last lawyer chosen was “Parker”, do they go to “Power”, the next in alphabetical order, if the mentally incapacitated person is unlucky enough—

Hon Simon Power: Oh!

Hon DAVID PARKER: —to reach the “Pa’s”, not the “Po’s”! Perhaps that is an issue the Minister in the chair could address. I am sure he knows the answers to those technical questions.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): I call Simon—

SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): Bridges.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Bridges; sorry.

SIMON BRIDGES: Thank you, Mr Chair, I have been brought down to size.

Hon Member: You need to get your profile up.

SIMON BRIDGES: I do. I need to do more breakfast television or something.

I will start in the same vein that Charles Chauvel did, by acknowledging Simon Power, who is currently the Minister in the chair, in this, my first speech since the announcement of his decision not to stand at the next election. Stuart Nash was in the House, and still is in the House, and he was telling me a little while ago that I was one of the more regular speakers in Parliament. He had some research done and found that that was the case. The reason I mention this is that I reflected on why that would be the case, and it is simply for this reason: I am on the Justice and Electoral Committee. I think I am right in saying that our committee has considered about 40 percent of the legislation that has gone through this House in the last couple of years. That is obviously a real testament to the Minister of Justice and his work output. I also add that if we go through those laws, the quality of them and the common sense of them, which is not always something to be—

Grant Robertson: Is this a job interview?

SIMON BRIDGES: No, it is a serious contribution, I hope, about a Minister who has done in 2 years the work of many more years than two.

I want to talk about clause 3, “Purpose of Act”—funnily enough, a lot members do not want to talk about it—because it seems to me that clause 3 is quite significant. It states: “The purpose of this Act is to promote access to justice …”, and, of course, that is fundamental. I think that having access to justice is something that everyone in this Chamber would agree on. I will not talk about the bill debated earlier today in this House and some of the arguments there about access to justice, but it is fundamental. Clause 3 goes on to state that the bill does that “by establishing a system that—(a) provides legal services to people of insufficient means;”.

I have already talked about how fundamental that is for a legal aid system. The reason is perhaps quite obvious, but it is worth remarking on. In a lot of family cases where legal aid is provided, it is the State that is bringing the case and it is absolutely right that if people can pay for it, they do so. But in criminal cases, if people cannot, if they do not have the means, and if, as is of course the case in criminal cases, they may well lose their liberty, the State does have a mechanism by which it can pay for, and provide people with, legal services. I think it is important that the purpose clause states that the State is providing legal services for people with insufficient means. The converse of that is that we do not want to provide legal services to people who have the means to pay for legal aid or lawyers.

Clause 3 goes on to state that we are establishing a system that “(b) delivers those services in the most effective and efficient manner.” As I understand it, we have not seen those words or anything quite like them in a legal services bill—or in many, if any, justice bills—in the past. I touched on this in the second reading debate.

Grant Robertson: Quote yourself.

SIMON BRIDGES: Maybe I will. I cannot quote myself word for word, but I said then that some people say that it should be justice at any cost. They say that we should be spending billions and billions more, and sometimes in court cases we get the feeling that that is the way things have been run. Some people believe that if another witness can tangentially touch on something that he or she may have seen or heard and it draws the case out for another day, then that is fine, but there needs to be some proportionality.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Just following on from the issue that Simon Bridges raised, I agree with Mr Bridges in respect of it. Indeed, I wonder whether the preliminary provision in clause 3, which presently states: “The purpose of this Act is to promote access to justice by establishing a system that—(a) provides legal services to people of insufficient means;” might better read “provides appropriate legal services to people of insufficient means:”. I agree with Simon Bridges that we need to take care that we do not cross a line so that legal aid funding is provided to people on low incomes for things that they would not fund for themselves were they on high incomes. It is one of the tensions we have in legal aid. If legal aid is available at low or no cost to low-income people who have no realistic prospect of paying back what is, in theory, meant to be a loan, it is effectively a grant to them for ever and there is little financial incentive on them to appropriately modify or control their own expenditure on legal fees, because in the end they do not pay the bill. I think that there are a couple of areas yet to be properly controlled through the legal aid system, and I would like to hear the view of the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Power, as to how this purpose, together with the relevant parts of the bill, achieves proper control of criminal appeals and multi-defendant drug trials.

I will deal with the first one in respect of criminal appeals. There used to be a system in New Zealand where criminal appeals, particularly to the Court of Appeal, were controlled by the judges themselves. A Privy Council decision said that that was inappropriate—that the judge ought not to be the gatekeeper as well as the judge on the substantive merits of the appeal. I can understand why the Privy Council found that, and it seemed a wise decision. But as a consequence, the only effective stop on everyone who wanted to exercise a right of appeal in a criminal matter being paid for by the State was thrown out, and we have not had a replacement gatekeeper. I absolutely believe that we should be enabling people to have fair access to legal representation in respect of their first appearance. However, I am not convinced that everyone who wants to appeal, if they can do so more frequently as a legally aided appellant in a criminal appeal, should be funded by the State, effectively at the cost of other taxpayers. There needs to be some mechanism in the system to stop what is effectively a proliferation of criminal appeals that would not happen if these people were pecunious—that is, if they had the money and were themselves paying—because they would be more likely not to pursue an unmeritorious appeal. That is one issue. I think we should have the word “appropriate” in that clause, because this is money that we are short of, and I am not sure that this bill quite gets that right.

The second point is in respect of multi-defendant trials. Multi-defendant trials can arise where there are complex drug crimes. There are a number of defendants and often their interests are just about identical, but we can bet that if they are on legal aid they will all have a separate lawyer. If they were not on legal aid and were paying their own defence, they seem, remarkably, to be able to agree that they should cooperate and share the expense of a lawyer. Instead of having five lawyers all being paid by the State, they somehow manage to cooperate and agree between them that it would be much more sensible that they have only one. That aspect of criminal legal aid overexpenditure needs to be controlled as well. Not only does it cause a waste of costs to the State in respect of the defence legal aid costs, it actually elongates the trial. Five lawyers would be jumping up to cross-examine the same witness, all showing how good they are at their job. It elongates the period of time for the trial, so that the trials run a lot longer, and they are a lot more complex for the judge to manage. It takes a lot more time when it comes to the prosecution, it takes a lot more time when it comes to the police and the other witnesses that have to appear, and the whole thing becomes more complex and more expensive.

The quality of justice cannot be divorced from its accessibility, but that does not run for just the accused or the defendant. It also runs for the overall cost of the process as to whether Governments can afford to run decent judicial systems, and we see this even more so in respect of civil proceedings. In respect of civil proceedings I suggest that it is important that the Attorney-General, who has conduct of civil proceedings rules, exerts controls, because in a constitutional sense they are the Attorney-General’s rules.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I enter this debate with some trepidation as a non-lawyer following on from Mr Parker and Mr Bridges, who both obviously have extensive legal backgrounds. But I guess I can bring a slightly different perspective.

I too will carry on from Simon Bridges’ audition to be the Minister of Justice, which we heard just before, by picking up on the purpose of the legislation in Part 1 of the Legal Services Bill. Clause 3 tells us: “The purpose of this Act is to promote access to justice by establishing a system that—(a) provides legal services to people of insufficient means;”. My colleague Mr Parker has just suggested that the word “appropriate” may need to appear in there. As he has noted, not everybody making use of the legal aid system would be doing those things were they using their own means.

I take a slightly different view, not so much about whether that word should be in there but about why we have legal aid. I noted when reading through some of the material from Dame Margaret Bazley’s report that the legal aid system is perceived by many people to be second-rate. I think that that presents the balancing argument to the one that Mr Parker just gave, in that we need to strengthen a system of which the users, by definition, are often at a financial disadvantage or are perhaps socially excluded in some way. We need a system that they have confidence in to provide them with justice. If there is a perception by many people that this system is second-rate in some way, we need to strengthen the system.

I believe that that is what this legislation does. However, it is important to note that the provision of legal services to people of insufficient means is very much part of a social contract, the social fabric of how we ensure that there is access to justice. By all means—and this bill does this—we need tests for people who are receiving legal aid; we need to be sure that they are genuinely of insufficient means, and also that legal aid is the appropriate form of protection and advocacy for them. I note in that regard the idea in Dame Margaret Bazley’s report—and, indeed, Mr Power’s response to it—of extending the public defence services. Obviously it is a good example of how we are looking at more appropriate means of providing advocacy and support to people, because it will not always come through the legal aid system.

I also just note—again, as someone who is not from the legal profession—that when the original report came out, there was some feeling that it represented a system rotten to its core, and that somehow the legal aid system was in fact a drain on taxpayers, it was not providing a good service, and it was full of rip-off agents. It is important to note, in speaking on Part 1 of the bill, that that is clearly not the case. Most legal aid lawyers are providing a good service for their clients. Perhaps the perception from some of the clients is that they are not getting that service, but most legal aid lawyers are not ripping off the system. Sure, there have been some, and it is important to highlight that issue. But the integrity of this part of our justice system needs to be upheld.

Obviously legislation such as this is making steps towards upholding that integrity, but I would not want the public of New Zealand to be left with the impression, following on from the inquiry and the Government’s response to it, that the system is rotten to the core. We had some interchange in this Chamber last year between Lianne Dalziel and Simon Power around those lawyers in South Auckland, for instance, and whether they had been given a fair go in this process. It is important that we note tonight on the record that a large number of legal aid lawyers are doing excellent work. We hope that those who are not will be identified through some of the systems that are being put in place under this bill so they can be weeded out if they are not performing in the way that we would like them to be.

When we look at Part 1 and the purpose clause within it, it is important to note that the notion that people of insufficient means should be supported is an important one. A rise in the cost of living is going on in New Zealand at the moment, where people are facing bills that they simply cannot afford just for the basics of power, food, and petrol. If those people were put in a position of needing legal support, and if this kind of legal aid system was not around, that would be injurious to justice and to the kind of society that I think most members of this Committee would want to live in. It is a plain fact that a large legal bill on top of the kinds of bills that people are facing in their everyday lives today would be a disincentive to people seeking justice. That would be wrong, just as we said earlier on the question of the cost of taking people for medical attention that it would be wrong. If that cost was a disincentive, that would be wrong as well.

Hon SIMON POWER (Minister of Justice): I am a bit reluctant to interrupt the flow of quality contributions coming from my left, but at this point—

Hon David Parker: There’s no risk of that.

Hon SIMON POWER: That is right: there is no risk of that. I will make a couple of introductory remarks, but I will not take a large number of calls during this Committee stage, because the Legal Services Bill and the process associated with it has been debated widely, both publicly and within this Chamber, and during the select committee process.

I will respond to a couple of points that have been made by members of the Opposition. First, the most important component of the purpose of this bill is to confirm and to guarantee access to justice for those who cannot afford to fund their own legal counsel, at a time, particularly in the criminal area, where it is absolutely critical that good quality representation is made available to them.

Secondly, it is important to note that although Dame Margaret Bazley’s report referred to some lawyers who were perhaps below par, criticisms were also made—and subsequently followed through by the Government—in respect of the performance of the Legal Services Agency, so it was a two-way street in that sense. Frankly, once professional services are billed and have performed to a reasonable standard, those practitioners are entitled to have their fees paid in a timely and efficient manner. We have seen some big changes on the Legal Services Agency side, as well as the changes that are going through under this bill in respect of good-quality representation.

Mr Parker touched upon one or two issues relating to the potential for some further reform in these areas. He tellingly zoned in on one or two areas that the Government could look at further. I reassure my colleague on the Opposition benches that that work is well under way, and that this will not be the last piece of work Parliament deals with in the legal aid area in my time. It is an interesting debate, which we will continue.

Affordability for the State, which means affordability for the New Zealand taxpayer, is an important part of that continuing equation. Mr Parker raised issues about, for example, multiple defendants and multiple legal aid lawyers, and the like. Many of those issues, and the question of the efficiency with which the court system deals with them—because all of those defendants are entitled to have their matters heard in a timely way; that is an important component of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in this sense—are largely being dealt with under the criminal procedure simplification and modernisation legislation.

When those changes are put alongside the changes to the legal aid system contained within this legislation, smart members of the Committee will begin to see a bit of a plan emerging—that is, incentives across the justice system are being changed, tweaked, and, shall we say, retargeted to ensure that those most in need are getting those services. However, it means that the Government will continue to look closely at the broader affordability of the legal aid system. I have said publicly that on the current track of baseline expenditure to vote legal aid, if I can describe it as bluntly as that, compared with the growth that is expected in this area off the back of current settings—that is to say, settings that are not altered by the passage of this legislation—over the next 5-year period we are looking at a gap between those two lines of about $405 million. That gap has to be addressed.

Some of the issues that Mr Parker raised were at the margins of this bill. None the less, some that were raised will be the focus of further consideration by the Government in coming months. In fact, I am hoping to make an announcement in that regard shortly.

We will see continuing tweaking of the incentives in the legal aid system to try to muster taxpayers’ money in a way that focuses solely on the good of those who cannot afford representation through legal services of their own. Currently the system is clearly not incentivised adequately to avoid the slowing of processes, the bogging down of matters, and the multiple representations of issues, which have to be paid for, and dealt with, by way of other processes in the court system.

The previous Government, through the Hon Rick Barker, who was then the Minister for Courts, had enough foresight to persuade the then Opposition spokesperson on justice and corrections to support the removal of depositions. I might dwell on that matter, in relation to the purposes of the legal aid system, for just one second. At that time I was approached by a reasonably significant group—I am not sure what the collective noun is for a group of lawyers, but they were a very senior group—of criminal lawyers who told me that if I proceeded with my fountain pen on the parchment and we did away with depositions, we would cause major problems for the system. That is why, as the former Minister may recall, we agreed, firstly, on a review, and, secondly, to retain in the legislation an application to the judge to hear oral submissions in the event that matters were complex and worthy of such of an application.

It turns out that since the removal of depositions, those applications for oral evidence to be heard have occurred in 3 percent of matters brought before the courts. So people who said previously that if changes were made to the legal aid system, the justice system, and the way that we drove the system to ensure timely and quality representation, we would undermine the fabric of the pistols at dawn mentality—which, effectively, is the adversarial system that we have adopted—were not right. This Parliament must have the courage to drive through changes to make sure that we test those notions in a vigorous way, and this piece of work is only a small part of a broader reform that I hope will do that.

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I would have enjoyed hearing a little more from the Minister of Justice on his plans for our justice system generally, as I am pleased to hear that he is a Minister who has a vision for where he believes the justice system needs to go, and has identified all the tensions that exist within the justice portfolio.

I come at the Legal Services Bill from the perspective of not being a lawyer, but I am intrigued that we are having a wider debate about what causes pressure points in our court system, and about the impact of our adversarial system generally. I am sure the Minister will also recognise, given that he was the individual behind the Drivers of Crime work, that at the very coalface the first intervention point to peel back the pressure on our court system is to stem the flow of cases coming through our justice system.

There are many ways we can do that, but I think we only need to look, as a starting point, at where a lot of our young people tend to enter our justice system to see what the precursors to crime are. They have been identified both by the Opposition and by the Government. But it seems that the tricky part is to actively invest in those areas when the demands of the public are often in the much shorter-term area of heavy retributive justice, imprisonment, and so on. That is where the tension, in the end, tends to be.

The Legal Services Bill touches on a different element of the justice system, but in an interesting way. We are talking about incentives and disincentives in our system, but particular legislation has been passed by this Government that will put additional pressure points on our legal aid system, and I will come to those. But, first, I acknowledge that the Minister raised the point that this is a two-way issue. We are talking about not just the quality of our legal aid lawyers, but also the relationship that they, in turn, have had in the past with the Legal Services Agency and will have going forward with the Secretary for Justice and the Legal Services Commissioner, and I acknowledge that too. However, it strikes me that we are now at a point where those relationships must be rebuilt.

This bill represents an opportunity to move forward, for both the Legal Services Agency and lawyers operating in this field. The Bar, in particular, has called for the opportunity to meet with the Legal Services Agency. I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether the Bar, particularly in South Auckland, has had that opportunity. The last time the Legal Services Agency met with us at the select committee that had not occurred. I think, in terms of moving forward, that would be at least a very good symbolic act.

I will pick up on the purpose of the bill, under Part 1, given that is what we are discussing in the Committee stage. I note that there are two things that stand out for me. The purpose of the bill is to promote access to justice. That is not a passive purpose. The promotion of access to justice implies that this has always been underpinned by two very important principles—that a successful justice system must have an element of accessibility, and it also must demonstrate to members of the public, whether or not they are using the system at any given time, that they can have faith in the system that exists in New Zealand. That is where I think that really important word “promotion” sits. The second element is that the system should deliver those services in the most effective and efficient manner.

The efficiency question is interesting. Although the Minister has talked about the $400 million funding gap that we will have to bridge, I do not think he has acknowledged the perverse impact that some bills, such as the “three strikes” legislation, may have—

Grant Robertson: He wouldn’t know anything about that.

JACINDA ARDERN: I know that he is not the Minister responsible for the “three strikes” legislation and he may choose not to defend it. But because the principles of collective responsibility apply to Cabinet I am sure he would not mind addressing the Committee on whether he believes that legislation will change the incentives within our justice system. It is one thing to talk about procedural matters and depositions; it is another to talk about the overall impact that those—

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I want to bring to your attention the recurring static sounds. We heard them earlier this afternoon, and they went quiet for a while. But they might be more than static. They could be electrostatic, and I would hate to see colleagues from the other side of the Chamber being electrocuted unnecessarily. I just wonder whether something could be done about it.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): I thank the member for that. I have noticed that there was a bit of static in the microphones, and some work has been done on the microphones during the dinner break. I am pleased that the member is not thinking about having people electrocuted—we are past that.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): It is probably a bit like being in the Libyan Parliament at the moment! It sounds like small-arms fire above us! I want to raise two issues. First of all, I want to respond to something Minister Power said about the spiralling costs of legal services and legal aid. I suggest that if there is one area where it is very easy to save costs, it would be to do away with the silly “three strikes” legislation. If someone is at risk of getting a “three strikes” penalty recorded against them and being locked away for ever, that person has a greater incentive to defend the charge so that there is no future risk of eternal imprisonment at Her Majesty’s pleasure in one of New Zealand’s prisons. If we are really serious about wanting to stop wasting money in the legal system, we should do away with the “three strikes” legislation.

I turn to another issue, which is that of community legal services. The definition in clause 4(1)(b), under the heading “community legal services”, refers to law reform and advocacy work. The first community law centre in New Zealand was the Grey Lynn Neighbourhood Law Office, which was formed in the 1970s. The second one was the Dunedin Community Law Centre, which was a different model and proved to be the model for the rest of the community law centres.

Paul Quinn: It was yours.

Hon DAVID PARKER: I thank Mr Quinn. Yes, I was one of those who were involved in the formation of that centre. I was not the leader, but was on the committee of people who put that community law centre together in 1979. Indeed, I worked in it as a volunteer, off and on, for a couple of decades after that, but I no longer do so.

The prime reason that community legal aid centres exist is to provide legal services to people who cannot afford or normally do not access legal services. Generally, the problems that turn up at community law centres are relatively minor, but none the less they are important to the people who are facing a legal problem and do not know how to negotiate their way through the system.

Generally, law students, and people employed by the law centres—and, and in both of those cases, they are generally under the supervision of lawyers who are volunteering their time, quite generously—provide legal services to help people over those small problems. The problem might be a fencing dispute, or someone coming in to ask whether they need to see a lawyer in order to dissolve their marriage, and they need to be pointed in the right direction. It might be something about dogs, or a small criminal penalty, or someone who thinks they have been unfairly charged with a traffic offence.

All of those things are very good, but there is an area where I think it is important that we do not let law centres stray too far, and that relates to law reform and advocacy work. Law reform and advocacy work is appropriate, but not when it crosses the line to be a political polemic. These precious funds that are being used in law centres ought to be focused primarily on the provision of legal services for the people who need to understand their way through the law, not to change the law and not to advocate for political causes. I do not mind there being some part of that, because in reality we should be advocating for changes in the law that come up through law centres if they have something to do with, say, some minor criminal procedure. They might have experience in that, and they want to submit on a bill that is coming before Parliament, and there is absolutely no problem with that. But beyond that, I do think that we ought to limit funding.

I know that the definition of community legal services talks of services that a community law centre provides under contract between the centre and the Secretary for Justice, so I am asking for confirmation from the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Justice, that in the contract there are appropriate controls on non-legal advice services—that is, advocacy services, which can on occasion go too far in the promotion of political causes. I have seen that occur, and I think one of the reasons why I oppose it is that if it becomes too prevalent, I think it puts at risk the strength of the claim for appropriate levels of funding for community law centres to do what is their absolute core function and what is necessary in society.

A lot of the sorts of problems I have mentioned are very important to the individual. Low-income people are not powerful people in society, they are often not able to pay a legal fee, and they would not be eligible for legal aid because the nature of the problem would not meet the legal aid thresholds. Lawyers are not interested in providing the services, because the people cannot afford to pay, so in the absence of a community law centre there is an unmet legal need. That is why community law centres exist. So let us make sure that law centres focus on meeting that unmet legal need, rather than on crossing the line into advocacy work for political causes. Although it is rare, I have seen it occur on occasions.

DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I am not a lawyer either, but I feel compelled to say a few words.

Hon Tau Henare: That’s why you’re a nice guy.

DAVID SHEARER: I say thank you to Tau; that is very kind of him. I want to say a few words on the Legal Services Bill because, as a number of people have said, giving everybody access to the same quality of legal services and legal aid cuts to the heart of what makes us a fair and just society. That is what the purpose clause in Part 1 says. Clause 3(a) states: “provides legal services to people of insufficient means;”. That means everybody gets the same type of justice. It means that people who do not have the right sort of money can still get first-class legal representation.

One of the key points here is not only that the current system, according to the Bazley report, is less cost-effective, and not only that it is being rorted to some degree—and I do not want to overstate that; it was a controversy that came up over the weeks when the Bazley report came out—but also that it is important to provide people with confidence that they are receiving the same sort and quality of legal representation that they would receive if they had a lot of money and could track down the best lawyer.

Coming back to the Bazley report, it is worth mentioning in the context of why the bill is going through the House a couple of the things she brought up, which cut to Part 2 and the delivery of those services in the most effective and efficient manner. The Minister of Justice mentioned that the hole, or the gap, in our ability to pay for our system as it stands at the moment is about $400 million. The bill will do something, I believe, to tighten that gap. It tests some of the old rules, the old laws, the old ways that the legal profession works in terms of how it is enabled and continues to work. It enables us to get the best quality and the best standards for the money we put up.

Among the things the Bazley report focused on were complaints to the Law Society of dishonest behaviour. As I said before, that issue has been talked about. Many lawyers felt aggrieved that they were being tarred by the actions of a few. The report seemed to suggest that lawyers and defendants were colluding to make sure that cases lasted as long as possible. By mutual arrangement they were able to ensure that the lawyers obtained the largest amount of fees possible for the case they were defending.

The reason the Labour Party is supporting this bill is to make sure that, one, the people of New Zealand are confident that, whether or not they have sufficient means, whether or not they have money, they are able to get the best legal defence, a legal defence that is as good as what anybody else can get—that element of fairness cuts to the heart of this bill—and, two, that taxpayers are also confident that the people who provide representation do so in an effective and efficient manner that enables taxpayers and society more generally to know that defendants are getting fair representation.

I have a couple of questions. Can we be sure that smaller centres will get the high-quality legal representation that people in those areas deserve, and that people in Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin, or Napier might get?

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): I move, That the question be now put.

Part 1 agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): I have been informed that a loose cable in the server upstairs is causing the static that members have experienced today. Technical staff have tried to fix it, and have made some progress, but if they do more now they might make it worse. People listening to the broadcast are unaware of the problem; the broadcast going out is clear. The technical people will fix it tomorrow morning and all will be well.

Grant Robertson: Will we be electrocuted?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Members will not be electrocuted.

Grant Robertson: Unnecessarily.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Unnecessarily, anyway.

Part 2 Legal aid

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): I will begin, following the fashion of Simon Bridges and Charles Chauvel, by acknowledging Minister Simon Power, since his announcement that he will not seek re-election. I think everyone on both sides of the Committee would agree that he is a Minister who is well respected. Even in my former trade he was a politician who was well respected, too. I wish him all the best.

In terms of his last contribution, I will touch on the affordability of providing what we are trying to achieve with the bill. We are looking at around a $405 million shortfall to give this bill teeth. Labour, while giving broad support to this bill, will be watching that very closely. Without that resource to back up what is in this bill, we will not be able to achieve it.

I think the most important part of Part 2 is clause 9(1), which basically streamlines the granting of legal aid when grants are not, or are unlikely to be, under the amount set by regulations. That will basically allow people who do not have the means to seek legal aid to be granted legal aid, which, of course, achieves the purpose of the bill.

I am the member for Mana, which is home to the Porirua District Court. It is a court where, I am proud to say, all parties try to work towards a strong, collaborative relationship and work for the community. Therefore, this bill will be acutely felt by those who work there every day, like the Whitireia Community Law Centre, and family lawyers like Peter Foster, who is based out in Raumati.

Hon Tau Henare: Good on you that you found out where it was!

KRIS FAAFOI: Ha, ha! In terms of the purpose of this bill, which is to provide legal services to people of insufficient funds, clause 9(1) in Part 2 of this bill is absolutely fundamental. For those people in my electorate who do not necessarily have sufficient means to seek legal help, whom I am very worried about, this clause will be very important, because it is one less hoop to jump through. But, as I said before when I was addressing the issue of affordability, if we do not have the resource to give to them then this bill will have no teeth. Creating fewer hoops for those people, whom I am concerned about, is very important because they are facing increasing costs.

Grant Robertson mentioned that for the people we are talking about, unfortunately, the fact that they have insufficient means is half the reason they are turning up to court. They are facing increased power prices, increased food bills, and increased petrol prices, and the cost of living is going up. So those people are finding themselves before the courts. Whether it is because of ratbag lenders, their own banks that are calling in debts, or collection agencies, some of those people are turning up to court because they have insufficient funds and insufficient means. When they get to court they will need the assistance of this legislation to make sure that they can be represented in an adequate way before a court.

As I said, clause 9(1) will take the pressure off people with insufficient means. Therefore, it achieves the bill’s purpose, which is to promote access to justice by establishing a system that provides legal services to people of insufficient means. For me, as the member for Mana, most of the people who are turning up to the Porirua District Court have insufficient means, unfortunately, so this bill is very important to them. That is why I said during the election campaign, which I was victorious in, that I would fight for them. That is why I am addressing this part of the bill to make sure that those people who are struggling to make ends meet, whose struggle is not being made any easier by this National Government, have adequate access to justice.

As David Parker pointed out before, as we address the issue of affordability one way to make sure we can make up that shortfall of about $405 million, in order to achieve the goal of this bill, is to look at one of the fish-hooks that comes about in this legislation due to the “three strikes” policy. Those who are accused of a serious crime will have no other option than to plead not guilty. Then we face the situation where we have long and protracted cases sucking on very valuable resources, which we need to make sure are going to the people who need them.

Clause 9(1) in Part 2 is the fundamental part of this bill in terms of achieving its goal. I will support any move to make sure that we can get enough resource and funding to achieve the purpose of the bill, which is to provide legal services to people of insufficient means. Unfortunately, they are coming in and out of the Porirua District Court every day.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I will follow on from my colleague Kris Faafoi. It is quite clear that Part 2 goes into significant detail on the procedure for the granting of legal aid, and on the cases to which it can be granted. Most of what is in Part 2 is of a relatively technical and non-controversial nature, but I will refer to several points. In some sense I think that a number of people perhaps do not understand that the legal aid system concerns both the potential withdrawal of legal aid and the repayment of legal aid. As my colleague David Parker said before, legal aid is generally, although not always, effectively granted as a loan. The repayment of that loan and the procedures about how that might happen are outlined in Part 2 of this bill.

In particular, there is the ability for the commissioner to withdraw legal aid from an aided person, and I think it is important that people are aware that that capacity exists. I am looking at Part 2, clause 29(a), which states that the commissioner may withdraw legal aid if “(i) the Commissioner is satisfied that the aided person has sufficient means to enable the person to obtain legal assistance and representation;”. That goes to the concerns that my colleague David Parker raised earlier about whether everybody was getting legal aid, and whether it was appropriate. As I said when I made my contribution, I slightly differ from my colleague because I think the default position we should be in is one where everybody has equitable access to justice. As Kris Faafoi just said, there are people who are struggling to make ends meet and who are having difficulty with the rising costs of living, increases in GST, and all those sorts of things. They need to know that there is a basis for them to have access to justice.

But there has to be a limit to that. I think we all respect that with the sums of money that have been discussed already—like the $400 million hole in the funding of legal aid—we obviously recognise that there are some limits to it. Clause 29 actually goes into that issue and specifically notes that the commissioner can withdraw legal aid if it is believed that the person receiving it has sufficient means to pay for assistance and representation. The commissioner can also withdraw legal aid if it is considered that “(ii) … the interests of justice no longer require that legal aid be given to the person;”. That is a weighty task, and it is important that it is undertaken sympathetically. One person’s belief about whether justice is still required can be quite different from another’s. So those are important elements within the bill.

Sometimes people believe that legal aid is a bottomless pit to which people can simply go, on and on, as Kris Faafoi said, taking and sucking money from the taxpayer pool. In reality, in Part 2 of this bill we have a mechanism by which legal aid can be managed and controlled. I believe in fact that that provides integrity to the system. It balances my earlier contribution when I said I believed that people of insufficient means need to know they have access to justice. The balance in this clause is that if in any way those people are perhaps not legitimate in that desire or requirement, then there is a mechanism to deal with that. Clause 30 does the same thing in terms of civil matters.

I turn now to the question of community law centres. We on this side of the Chamber are particularly pleased to note that the bill starts to give some certainty about the survival and funding of community law centres. I acknowledge here Minister Power’s contribution earlier about setting the bill in the context of a wider package. There is the notion that community law centres, an expanded Public Defence Service, and the way in which we are making changes to legal aid in Part 2 will all play a part in that wider package. I think it is important that we understand that that is the breadth of the package. We on this side of the Chamber are great supporters of the Public Defence Service, which was brought in under the previous Labour Government, and we are pleased to hear that it will be expanded.

Jacinda Ardern: Why not in Palmerston North?

GRANT ROBERTSON: My colleague Jacinda Ardern asks why it will not be brought in in Palmerston North. There are a number of places that it could be expanded to.

Hon Simon Power: All in good time.

GRANT ROBERTSON: So that is where the Minister is going! It is important that we find this whole package coming together.

On the subject of community law centres, I think every MP, particularly an electorate MP, knows of the value of community law centres. Those of us who get a lot of cases involving issues like immigration in particular, but also more bread and butter issues about people’s tenancy rights and family and custody disputes, know the value of community law centres. We know that as MPs we can refer people to a community law centre and they can get the response they need, which is so crucial.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): I will start my contribution by acknowledging the Hon Simon Power, who has worked very hard as the Minister of Justice and kept members of the Justice and Electoral Committee busy.

The National Government is committed to providing legal assistance to people who have insufficient means to pay for it. The bill principally reforms the legal aid system. Dame Margaret Bazley’s review of the legal aid system in 2009 identified inadequate processes and serious delivery issues that threaten the future viability of the system. The clear message was that it was time for fundamental changes. These changes will provide an effective legal aid system that supports the wider justice sector. The legal aid system helps to uphold the principles of, and access to, justice and equality before the law and natural justice that help to build and maintain public confidence in the legal system. The bill includes a number of measures to improve the competence of the legal aid system. The Legal Aid Review Panel will also come under review. It allows many New Zealanders to access justice, enables them to defend themselves, and upholds their basic rights. It is the cornerstone of our justice system.

Part 2 deals with who is entitled to legal aid and who is not entitled to it. For example, we do not want to encourage those people who are unlawfully in this country and who abuse the system. The commissioner may not grant legal aid to anyone who is involved in any immigration case under the Immigration Act 2009, if the person is unlawfully in New Zealand under the terms of the Act.

To date, the legal aid system is facing real challenges, in terms of both increasing expenditure and the quality of legal services funded through legal aid. The bill shows that Simon Power, Minister of Justice, has acted speedily to address the issues identified by Dame Margaret’s report. We are confident that this package of changes will help build more confidence in the public that the legal aid system will provide a quality service for those who need it, while giving taxpayers value for money.

STUART NASH (Labour): We are debating Part 2 of the Legal Services Bill. I want to talk about clauses 6, 7, and 8, and I will go on to talk about schedule 1 if I may, because I think some of these things need to be clarified for the benefit of a lot of people. Before I start on that, I will say that Simon Bridges commented that about 40 percent of the bills going through the Committee are from the Justice and Electoral Committee. I find it quite surprising that the Minister of Justice has decided to resign. I wonder whether the reason is that he feels he is the only one in Cabinet who is doing any work. He is sick of it, and he realises that there are better options out there. The Minister of Justice is sick of carrying the National Government. He seems to be the only one with a plan; no one else on the Government side of the Chamber has a plan.

I will come back to the bill. Part 2 deals with when legal aid may be granted. I am not a lawyer, but I am aware that there are two types of cases: criminal matters and civil matters. Clause 6 deals with criminal matters. A lot of the arguments we read in the press or hear in the pub or Cosmopolitan Club are from New Zealanders who are saying “Goodness me! That guy has just been done and he is appealing under legal aid. That is just not right.” But if we look at Subpart 1 and we understand the rule of justice, we see it is a fundamental tenet of our legal system that everyone has the right to a fair trial. The point I want to make is that clause 6 sets out the proceedings for which legal aid may be granted in criminal matters. It actually lists them: “criminal proceedings in a District Court, a Youth Court, the High Court, the Court of Appeal, or the Supreme Court:”. What you have here is that—not you, Mr Chair; I know you will never need legal aid—any New Zealander who faces a criminal matter in any court has the right to have legal representation. That point underpins our whole democracy, no matter how unfair that may be.

Clause 7 talks about the proceedings for which legal aid may be granted in civil matters. People may be surprised to learn that subclause (1)(e) provides that legal aid may be granted if the commissioner considers that the case is one that requires legal representation. The requirement for that representation may be in the Māori Land Court, the Māori Appellate Court, the Employment Court, the Employment Relations Authority, or any other administrative tribunal or judicial authority.

Hon David Parker: What about the Privileges Committee?

STUART NASH: Possibly it could be in the Privileges Committee. Mr Parker brings up a good point; I think that legal aid has been used in this area.

I turn to clause 8 and the points Mr Robertson was making about when aid can be granted. It can be granted in criminal matters when the applicant is a natural person, and that assumes that a body corporate or a company cannot apply for legal aid. It applies only to a natural person. Subclause (2) states: “When considering whether the interests of justice require that the applicant be granted legal aid, the Commissioner—(a) must have regard to” a number of matters. Subclause (3) states: “When determining whether an applicant has sufficient means to enable him or her to obtain legal assistance, the Commissioner must … have regard to the applicant’s income and disposable capital as set out in Schedule 1.” The definition of “capital” in schedule 1 states: “capital, in relation to an applicant for legal aid, means that person’s total assets after deducting—(a) the amount of any debts secured against those assets; and (b) the amount of the actual debts of the person, other than those that are secured.” Clause 2 of schedule 1 also has a definition of “income”.

This is quite an important argument. Members may recall a very recent case where a rather wealthy gentleman who had been a director of a finance company applied for legal aid. There was a huge hue and cry, because people thought that a very wealthy man who had substantial assets was applying for legal aid. The perception is that those who apply for legal aid actually have nothing and cannot afford a lawyer. That man’s legal counsel must have looked at the definitions in the legislation, applied the test, and assumed that this incredibly wealthy man, who still lived in a big house on Remuera Road in Remuera and drove a Porsche, did not have sufficient capital and did not have a home.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I want to also address the concern we have for the rising cost of legal services, which the Minister addressed in respect of Part 1. As we heard from the previous speaker, Stuart Nash, Part 2 sets out the mechanisms to gauge when legal aid should or should not be granted.

In the Minister’s contribution on Part 1 he said that there is an expectation that costs in the legal aid system are going to increase. There are two drivers of that. If more people are getting legal aid for mainly criminal matters, which is one of the big—

Hon Simon Power: No.

Hon DAVID PARKER: No more people are getting it? It has flatlined, has it?

Hon Simon Power: I wouldn’t say flatlined, but it’s not the biggest area.

Hon DAVID PARKER: It is still going up. It is not going up quite as fast as the rate of crime, but it is still going up a little bit. I am sure that part of it is just the increase in some sorts of crime, particularly serious violent crime, which is on the increase and will flow through to legal aid costs. That situation is obviously of concern. The underlying way to deal with it is not through legal aid legislation but through better interventions earlier in life so as to reduce the rate of offending.

Civil legal aid is another area of concern to the Opposition, because it is plain that the cost of living is rising for most New Zealanders—not just petrol prices. I admit that petrol prices are largely beyond the control of the Government—

Grant Robertson: Except for the GST.

Hon DAVID PARKER: —except for the GST increase, that is right—but in respect of most other cost increases, National does have to accept some responsibility after 2 years in Government and two Budgets.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Can I put a point to the member? If they had done their public transport the way that they should have—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): We are on Part 2 of the Legal Services Bill.

Hon DAVID PARKER: The point I will come back to is that if these costs are not being met by the legal aid system, it is yet another area where costs will be transferred to New Zealanders from the State. The cost of living pressures on New Zealanders will be getting worse as a consequence of more of the total amount that is required to be spent on legal services in New Zealand being met by New Zealanders and less by the Government.

I am not, as members will have heard from earlier contributions, saying that all legal services ought to be funded by the Crown. I am not saying that, at all, but the cost of living pressures that are being borne by people, from increased electricity prices through to legal services, are something that we on this side of the Committee are concerned about.

When it comes to clauses 10 and 11, which set out when legal aid may be granted in civil matters, I would be interested to learn from the Minister whether the income thresholds will be lifted to reflect the fact that the cost of living is rising ahead of wage growth through inflationary increases.

We want to make sure that New Zealanders are in a position to effectively resolve their disputes through civil methods. One of the reasons we have courts is to stop people using uncivil methods to settle their disputes. If people do not have access to court processes, they are more likely to resort to fisticuffs or employing stand-over tactics to resolve their disputes. The importance of civil proceedings in maintaining civil society is not to be underestimated. For civil proceedings to be a real avenue for people to resolve their disputes, people have to be able to access justice, as Grant Robertson said in an earlier speech.

We are interested in the fact that wages are not rising as fast as inflation—that is, people are facing an increase in the cost of living that is not reflected by their average earnings. People who are unlucky enough to be made unemployed through redundancy—following the earthquake for a small proportion of people in Christchurch, for whom we feel very sorry, but also elsewhere in the country before the earthquake and no doubt after the earthquake from other causes—need to be able to rely upon legal aid properly covering their costs, otherwise they will not be able to access justice. Without access to justice they will suffer injustice, which is something that this Parliament ought to be concerned about. In respect of Part 2, I invite the Minister to address—

KEVIN HAGUE (Green): I begin by joining others in acknowledging the particular contribution that has been made by the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Power, to this Parliament and to previous Parliaments. It is a worthwhile contribution, always.

I had not intended to take a call on this bill, but having had a good look at Part 2 it suggests a contribution I can make. I am a person who has some significant experience of the criminal law, although I have always chosen to defend myself rather than to avail myself of legal aid. I am pretty proud of my record of acquittals, I have to say, on criminal charges, which probably exceed that of most legal aid lawyers. I want to pick up on this theme that several speakers have mentioned this evening of a universal right to access to justice. That seems to me to be pretty fundamental. What has drawn my attention is clause 8(1)(c)(ii), which provides limitations on that right to access justice. I guess we need to be pretty confident, if we are going to impose some limitations, that those are reasonably justified limitations. The Minister has talked in this debate about his intention to put incentives in place in this overall reform programme in the justice arena. I am concerned that clause 8(2) lists a series of grounds that the commissioner is required to take into account when applying clause 8(1)(c)(ii). Bearing in mind the incentives that the Minister is putting in place in the bill, it effectively invites the commissioner to use those grounds to deny legal aid.

What I am concerned about is that some of those grounds seem to be not relevant to determining what the interests of justice might be. I will not address all of them, but if I could perhaps just draw attention to clause 8(2)(a)(i), regarding whether the applicant has any previous convictions. The commissioner is invited to take that into account in determining whether the interests of justice are served by granting legal aid in relation to some new offence. It seems to me that previous convictions cannot be relevant to whether the interests of justice are served by a person who is accused having access to legal aid—access to justice—in a given case. It seems to me that this has probably arisen because clause 8(1)(c)(ii) relates to the situation where an offence is punishable by less than 6 months’ imprisonment, and that is probably considered to be a relatively minor offence where the consequences are not so severe in the case of a conviction. However, the consequences of a conviction that carries less than 6 months’ imprisonment may in fact still be extremely severe for the person who is facing that charge. I invite the Minister to perhaps comment on how previous convictions might possibly be relevant to determining what the interests of justice are in the case of a person charged with some new offence. That is all I really had to say on this part.

STUART NASH (Labour): I would like to talk about clause 8(3). This is in relation to when legal aid may be granted in criminal matters. It states: “When determining whether an applicant has sufficient means to enable him or her to obtain legal assistance,” we basically have to go to schedule 1. I have a couple of questions and one of them is to do with clause 4(4) of schedule 1. It states: “Where an application for legal aid for a civil matter is made by a minor aged 16 years or over, the Commissioner may treat the resources of the following persons as the resources of the applicant: (a) any person who, under any agreement or court order, is liable wholly or partially to maintain the applicant; or (b) any parent, foster parent, or step-parent with whom the applicant is living.”

I wonder whether—let me give a hypothetical example—if a university student commits an offence and goes before the courts, the parents’ income means that the student is not eligible for legal aid. I know that students do silly things sometimes. The last thing they want is their parents to know what they have done, but this may fall under this clause. We can look at the definitions in schedule 1 as to when one can and cannot have legal aid. I will go to clause 2, “Meaning of income”. It states: “(1) In relation to an applicant for legal aid, ‘income’—(a) means the person’s total gross income during the 12 months immediately before the application for legal aid,”. I am not too sure where the income level sits, but if we understand that 75 percent of New Zealanders earn under the average wage, I am assuming that probably about 75 percent of New Zealanders are eligible for legal aid because they would probably come underneath that total gross income test.

But if we go again to clause 2(1)(c) of schedule 1, it includes a benefit. If a person is on any sort of benefit, then that is included in the income test, except where the person is receiving an orphans benefit, an unsupported child’s benefit, a child disability allowance, an emergency benefit payment, or an accommodation supplement. Again, for example, I am wondering whether, if those dreadful people we have seen in Christchurch who were looting, etc. are on an emergency benefit, they will still be eligible for legal aid if they are earning above the income threshold that is set here. Those are just a couple of anomalies I would not mind having answered. Also, if one receives a special benefit or a disability allowance, that is not counted in one’s income for that year when determining whether one is eligible for legal aid.

Again under schedule 1, clause 3 talks about the meaning of disposable capital. It states: “(1) In relation to an applicant for legal aid, ‘disposable capital’ means that person’s total assets after deducting the amount of any debts secured against those assets and after deducting,—” the interest that a person has in a home, equity, and that sort of carry on. Again, I am assuming this is the test that the former company director of the failed finance company used when that person’s lawyer put forward an application for legal aid that was turned down. I suspect that if it had not been turned down there would have been such a hue and cry that there may have been revolts in the street, so that was not a bad outcome.

But another interesting thing is that in clause 4 of schedule 1, the resources of a spouse or partner—or parents of a minor, which I have talked about—are also counted in determining whether a person is eligible for legal aid. I quote: “(1) Any resources of a person’s spouse or partner must be treated as that person’s resources unless—(a) the person is living apart from his or her spouse or partner; or (b) the person and his or her spouse or partner have contrary interests in the matter …” . With regard to “spouse or partner”, I am assuming again that when we talk about a partner, we are talking about a legal definition of “partner” as in the matrimonial property Act or something, so I assume that the partners have to have been together for more than 2 years. It would be dreadful, for example, if someone had hitched up and moved in together, and then, 2 months later, after being together for 3 months, this person was up before the courts and could not get legal aid because it was determined that his or her partner earned above the income threshold. I am quite curious about the test of who a partner is. We all know what a spouse is, because that assumes marriage, but I am just a little bit unaware where the test for a partner would kick in.

PAUL QUINN (National): I move, That the question be now put.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): First of all, I will place on the record of the House—and I am sure there will also be an opportunity to do so later—my admiration for the work of the Minister of Justice across his portfolios and as a member of Parliament. I have said publicly that he is a good, honest, straightforward person to work with and someone who keeps his word when he gives it. He is sometimes slightly reluctant and will not agree to do things that we would like him to agree to do as far as both the House and his policies are concerned, but he is a person of absolute integrity and is someone who will be missed from the House. I think it is important that that is made clear.

As I have said in the past, I have seen people come and go across the House over a number of years. The below-average ones are numerous and this member is one who makes up for a lot of them. I think it is slightly sad that so soon after the Minister’s announcement he is caught in the chair, and the person who is responsible for the fact that he is caught in the chair at the moment is sitting not more than 2 metres away from him. I think it is important that there is an understanding of how the processes of the House should work.

It is good to have someone in the chair who understands that and who, I am sure, if he was responsible for some other legislation, would not have got into the pickle that is resulting in the intensive discussion of a bill that, I think it is fair to say, we used to agree with. But now that my colleague Charles Chauvel has had a good look at this part, in particular, he is beginning to have some pretty serious doubts about it. As far as the general principle of the bill goes, I think all of us know that there are some things to be done in the legal aid area, and the bill is an attempt. I think there are a number of interesting points.

I am not sure whether the Māori Party has been properly apprised of clause 5 of schedule 1. This clause effectively states that someone’s interests in Māori land have to be taken into account in working out whether that person can afford to pay for lawyers. Well, that might be the equality of everyone before the law. But we know that the very way Māori land becomes Māori land under the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993 is that it cannot be disposed of as other land can be. I think there is a fair point in there that the rent from the land, the income from that land, should properly be considered as an individual’s income. But I think that, in considering disposable capital, we should not be suggesting that Māori can dispose of Māori land. I ask Tariana Turia whether she supports the fact that Māori should have to dispose of their interests in Māori land.

Paul Quinn: It doesn’t say that.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: That is exactly what the clause states. “The disposable capital of the applicant includes Māori land and any interests in Māori land unless—(a) the application is made in respect of proceedings in the Waitangi Tribunal; or”—

Paul Quinn: Disposable capital does not mean that you have to dispose of it.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: But that is the very point, because if one cannot dispose of it, it should not be included in the definition of disposable capital. Yet the bill does include it in its definition of disposable capital.

If Paul Quinn cannot read that provision, he should get someone to read it to him—he should get someone to read it to him. If he, the leading Māori in that party, the leading Māori on justice issues in that party, and the only Māori to get a justice bill through Parliament, cannot understand that this bill requires Māori to sell their land when they cannot sell their land, then that is particularly sad. I wonder what Tau Henare thinks about this issue. Has Paul Quinn discussed the issue with his colleague Tau Henare?

It is clear that Tariana Turia does not care about Māori land being sold down the river under this clause in a way that one would expect from the Attorney-General but not from the Minister of Justice. It is also worth going back to some of the other matters. The member Tariana Turia is looking and laughing. She thinks it is funny that Māori land should be taken.

Hon Tariana Turia: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I think it is inappropriate for that member to lie in the Chamber. I was not smiling or laughing. The comments he made were inappropriate.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I hear the member. The last 5 minutes have been quite robust, and what a member says is not a reflection on that member, I am sure. I would like the debate to continue in that vein.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am dealing with the first point. I think the point of order that the honourable member has brought up is not substantiated. Members can make comments. If the member feels that she is aggrieved by what he has said then that is a different matter, but I did not take that out of the comments that were said.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The member said I was lying in the Chamber. That accusation requires a withdrawal and an apology. That has always required a withdrawal and an apology. I have taken offence.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am on my feet. I am dealing with the point the member brought up. I have said it is a clean slate; we are starting again. I heard what the member said. I did not agree with what that member said. We are starting from scratch.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I move that the Speaker be recalled to get a ruling on that matter. The reason is that it is always required when a member is accused of lying in the Chamber that it be withdrawn and apologised for.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Speaker’s ruling 42/5 states that a member cannot say that another member is lying, and I appreciate that. Speaker’s ruling 42/5 states: “A particular mode of expression that has been ruled out of order consistently has been the use of the word ‘lie’. Many other expressions can be used to say that a member is stating something that is incorrect—and that is material for debate, which goes on in the Chamber every sitting day.” This is the situation: the member complained that the honourable member said that he was lying. If that is the case then I ask the member Tariana Turia to apologise for that comment.

Hon Tariana Turia: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No; I have actually asked whether the member said that that member was lying, if so, I ask the member to withdraw that comment. That is what I am asking.

Hon Tariana Turia: I withdraw the comment. I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I am highly offended by the comments that that member also made that were completely untrue, and I want him to apologise to me.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): There is another Speaker’s ruling 44/4, which I shall refer to. It states: “It is not the Speaker’s duty to intervene if objection is not taken to the language used by one member towards another, unless the Speaker considers it is such language as requires the Chair’s immediate intervention.” This is the situation: the member has withdrawn her comment. She took exception to it—

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: But I said she was smiling and laughing. One cannot take exception to that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The member has taken exception. Let us start from scratch, shall we? Under Speaker’s ruling 44/5 I ask the member to withdraw the comment.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. We have had the back and forth on that issue. The member was smiling. The member was laughing during my speech. I drew attention to that fact—

Hon Tariana Turia: No, I wasn’t.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: It is a matter of fact. The member might not have been laughing or smiling at me, but she was laughing and smiling.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): It is not a matter of personal reflection whether someone was smiling or laughing, or whatever. This is getting out of hand. Let us leave it at that.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I will repeat the comments that I made. I find it appalling that the Māori Party is supporting legislation whereby the asset of Māori land, which is non-disposable, is taken into account when making a decision about the assets of Māori who are charged before the court, as if that land was disposable. As I said earlier, I think it is fair enough that the rent, the income, Māori get from Māori land should count as far as their income is concerned, but to pretend that that land can be disposed of in those circumstances is wrong. I think it is shocking that Tariana Turia is sitting there while this legislation is going through. It has been pointed out to her, but she is not on her feet defending the principle of the inalienability of Māori land. We thought that that was the case. Most New Zealanders think it is the case. We think that under the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993 it should be the case. So why is it that during the debate on this legislation the member is sitting there and letting those assets be taken into account, as if they were alienable, even though they are not?

Paul Quinn: It does not.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: That is exactly what it does. As I said to that member before, he should get someone to read the bill to him. He could get Mr Finlayson to explain it to him. We know he is not the sharpest pencil in the box, but if he takes his time and works through it slowly, even Simon Bridges, I think, within an hour or two could get him to understand. Within an hour or two Simon Bridges could explain it to him.

I will go back to the question of trusts and money held in trusts. I seek an assurance from the Minister in the chair, the Attorney-General, that money held in trust funds is taken into account when considering schedule 1 of this bill, within the meaning of disposable capital. If someone has a sole interest in a trust or has a sole beneficial interest in a trust, I want an assurance that that trust is taken into account when the Crown is working out whether it is disposable capital.

There is a well-publicised case in the court currently, which I am sure the Attorney-General is well familiar with. I am not asking him to go into the details of that case, but the principles are pretty well established. There is no doubt in the case that the individuals have large trust funds. They have a large amount of money tied up within trusts, but they are still making applications for legal aid on the basis that they do not have that money. That is wrong; it is a rort. A lot of New Zealanders pay good taxes, and they should not pay for those multimillionaires who have their money cut away within trust systems. New Zealand taxpayers should not pay for those people to get legal aid when there is a pile of Kiwis who are not getting the legal aid they should be getting, and when the criteria are far too tough.

It might even be that some of us, if we knew that this area was being cleaned up and tidied, would support, and be happy enough to see, a flattening off in the legal aid budget. But, again, I say that some changes being made in this bill are useful.

I also ask the question about the 6 months’ imprisonment. There is some sort of assumption in the bill about going to prison for a crime that merits less than 6 months imprisonment—or, in fact, about not going to prison. There is a judgment made about the likelihood of imprisonment, which is quite a hard one to make. There are cases where at the beginning of the case it seemed unlikely that even if defendants are charged with an offence that earns under 6 months’ imprisonment—and this is very, very substantial; this part is the core of the bill and I think that a number of us want to make at least four contributions—and are likely to lose their liberty through not being properly represented, even though the charges are such—

JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa): I move, That the question be now put.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a call on Part 2 of the Legal Services Bill. The points that I will raise relate primarily to coverage under the legal aid system, particularly with regard to clause 7 in Part 2, which relates to proceedings for which legal aid may be granted in the case of civil matters. One of the issues that I will raise with regard to this bill, and with regard to what I believe is a growing inequity in the system, is that ACC cases are not covered by the legal aid system, according to the clauses in this bill, up to the point at which they reach the District Court.

We are seeing within the accident compensation system a dramatic increase in the number of ACC cases being declined and, therefore, a dramatic increase in the number of cases going to a disputes review. When people have had their accident compensation claim rejected and their cases go to an ACC disputes review, the amount of legal assistance available is limited to something like $700 or $800. It is probably significantly less than what they would get if they were entitled to legal aid for that particular process. Through the ACC disputes process we are seeing that the Accident Compensation Corporation certainly has access to a lot of highly paid, high-quality legal assistance, but those who are seeking review, and seeking some redress if they believe they have been treated unfairly, do not have that same access to legal support.

My question is that if the accident compensation system is to become a much more litigious system, which seems to be happening under the tenure of this National Government, then why should somebody taking a review proceedings through the ACC system not be able to obtain legal counsel and legal assistance? This is a very real issue. For example, the number of surgery claims for accident compensation that were rejected doubled from 2008 to 2009. In other words, under the National Government, the number of people who have applied for elective surgery through ACC and who have been turned down has doubled. What has that resulted in? It has resulted in the number of reviews—in other words, the number of people who have been saying that because their case has been rejected by ACC, they want it reviewed by going to ACC’s Dispute Resolution Service—almost doubling during the tenure of the National Government, as well. The number of decisions being overturned through that process has increased by about 400. We are seeing that ACC’s more instant reaction, quite often, is to decline a case on the basis that someone can then take a review.

Basically, the corporation is pushing people down a much more legal route in order to get their accident compensation entitlements. In relation to this bill and the coverage of the legal aid system, if the Government is to take a much stricter approach towards ACC claimants, it raises the question of why those claimants should not be able to get quality information and quality advice on their entitlements. Everybody pays into the accident compensation scheme; everybody gives up something in order to be covered by accident compensation. What do they give up? They give up their ability to sue in the case of accidents. They cannot sue in the case of accidents. But we are seeing that the corporation is basically clamping down and is not giving people the things they are entitled to under the scheme. If people are not getting what they are entitled to, then I ask why they should not be able to get legal advice to make sure their entitlements are being upheld. They are paying for it, and they are giving up their right under the common law to sue, in order to be part of the ACC scheme. With the increasing number of complaints about the corporation and the increasing number of reviews, there is a legitimate question to be asked about whether legal aid should be extended to those people.

I will move on next to talk about proceedings before the Tenancy Tribunal, which are covered under this Legal Services Bill; I think that that is incredibly important. One of the issues we are seeing with State housing under the tenure of the National Government is that it is basically moving away from being a housing provider of last resort to one where the Government will use the legal processes available to it in order to evict tenants. In my electorate we have an example at the moment where the Housing New Zealand Corporation is using a 90-day eviction notice to remove some people from the neighbourhood of Pōmare because it cannot actually make a case before the Tenancy Tribunal to remove them. The Government is basically using the 90-day notice period, which cannot be appealed through the Tenancy Tribunal, to evict people. That is a small example of where we are seeing the Housing New Zealand Corporation using many more legal proceedings against its tenants. Therefore, I think it is really important that those tenants have full access to the Tenancy Tribunal’s services. I do not believe that the Housing New Zealand Corporation is upholding its part of the bargain with regard to providing quality tenancies for State house tenants. For example, it is not living up to its maintenance criteria as it should do, and tenants should therefore be able to take relevant action where they need to do so.

Those are the points I had with regard to coverage. I will also pick up the points raised earlier with regard to the financial criteria that are used to determine whether somebody is eligible for legal aid, and the asset tests that they are subjected to. The principle behind this should be that in order for a certain asset to be considered under the financial test, the person has to have reasonable access to that resource. The principle is that the State should not be providing legal assistance to somebody who has the financial means to provide it for themselves. If that is the principle, then I fail to see why Māori land, which is shared and cannot be disposed of, can possibly come within that financial test. It is not as though the person who will potentially be declined legal aid will turn round and say that he or she needs money for a lawyer and will, therefore, hock it off. That person simply could not do it. Therefore, to allow for the situation where someone could be denied legal aid because of some interest in Māori land that he or she cannot sell and cannot dispose of simply means that person will be declined legal aid when otherwise he or she would get it. That is an unjust outcome, and it is blatantly unfair.

I am looking forward to the contributions from the Māori Party—from Tariana Turia, the co-leader of the Māori Party, who has been conferring, I think, with the Associate Minister of Māori Affairs about this matter for the last 10 minutes or so. I am assuming that they are working out what they will do about it, and that in a few moments one of them will stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it, because it is blatantly unfair. I think that if Māori Party members claim to be the representatives of Māori interests in this Parliament—and I do not believe they are—then this is something they should have a view on. I look forward—

John Hayes: So who is—Hone? Metiria Turei?

CHRIS HIPKINS: Hone Harawira might well come to the Chamber later on and have a go on it. I would quite like to hear what he has to say on that matter, and I think he may well take a call on that. I would like to hear what Simon Bridges has to say on that matter. I would like to hear what Paul Quinn has to say on that matter, so rather—

Hon Trevor Mallard: No, don’t go that far.

CHRIS HIPKINS: I would even go that far. I would quite like to hear whether Paul Quinn has a view on whether Māori land should be taken into account when somebody is being denied access to legal aid.

Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s part of the definition of disposable assets.

CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes, it is part of the definition of “disposable capital”. I think Paul Quinn should have a view on that.

Paul Quinn: It has to be disposable to be disposable.

CHRIS HIPKINS: That is exactly the point. I note for the benefit of people who are listening at home or watching on TV that Paul Quinn says that it has to be disposable to be disposable. That is what he has been yelling at us, yet the bill does not actually cover that. The bill as it is being passed means that it will be considered. I think that Simon Bridges should have a chat to Paul Quinn to stop him making a bit of a fool of himself, and read the bill slowly to him. Perhaps then he might—

Paul Quinn: You’re the fool.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am not the fool in this. The member cannot use the word “you”.

CHRIS HIPKINS: Thank you very much, Mr Chair. By and large, clause 2 tidies up access to legal aid. I think that is really important, particularly in the current context, when people are out there battling away and struggling to find money for the basics. I think it is important that when they find themselves involved in any kind of legal proceeding, they should have financial assistance to do so. If they cannot afford to pay the power bill and to put food on the table for their families—which increasing numbers of people are finding under the National Government—then they certainly will not find the money to fund a legal proceeding. Making sure that we have a legal aid system that provides for those people is very important. This bill tidies up the legal aid system and addresses many of those concerns.

CHRIS TREMAIN (Senior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I will go back to clause 8, and there is a particular part of clause 8 that I want to refer to in order to help out Mr Quinn, which is clause 8(3): “When determining whether an applicant has sufficient means to enable him or her to obtain legal assistance, the Commissioner must, except as provided under section 9(1), have regard to the applicant’s income and disposable capital as set out in Schedule 1.” Mr Nash did an excellent job earlier on of working through some of the issues within schedule 1—for instance, the resources of a spouse or partner.

Clause 5 of schedule 1 is about resources relating to Māori land. The clause describes an applicant as a person applying for legal aid and how resources relating to Māori land will be brought into account: “The income of the applicant includes any rent derived from Māori land or interests in Māori land.” As Mr Mallard pointed out earlier on, it is perhaps fair enough to look at rent derived from Māori land as being part of income derived and as something legitimate to be tested against to determine whether one has sufficient means or meets the insufficient means test.

Hon Trevor Mallard: But if it’s put in a trust, then it doesn’t count. If it’s Māori land then it does.

GRANT ROBERTSON: That is right. Then we go on to clause 5(3)—this is the point—which states: “The disposable capital of the applicant includes Māori land and any interests in Māori land unless the application is made in respect of proceedings in the Waitangi Tribunal;”. That is the point. Now Mr Quinn tells us that that disposable capital is not disposable. Why then is the capital being described in the schedule as disposable capital if it is not disposable capital? That problem has been raised by members on this side of the Committee. Mr Quinn has gone very quiet now, but the fact of the matter is that clause 5 of schedule 1 actually needs some explanation. Otherwise, we are left with the situation of capital that Mr Quinn has told us is not disposable being considered disposable. That is part of schedule 1. I just wanted to help Mr Quinn with that explanation so he understands the issue being raised by members on this side of the Committee.

But I will go back—and it is the nature of these kinds of discussions—to something Kevin Hague said. He raised with us earlier the question of what, under clause 8(2), will be considered by the commissioner when he or she is obliged to consider whether the interests of justice merit someone getting legal aid. Kevin Hague raised some very interesting points as he worked though clause 8(2) around some of the issues that are supposedly part of the question of whether justice requires a person to receive legal aid.

In my earlier contributions I mentioned that there was obviously a balance within legal aid. The most important principle is that people with insufficient means have access to justice, and I discussed that issue in my first contribution. But there is a balance as to how we define that access and how we make sure that it involves a manageable amount of resources for the taxpayer and that legal aid is given to those who genuinely need it—and I talked about the test around withdrawal. But I think the question Mr Hague raised is very significant. For instance, what is the relationship of “whether the applicant has any previous conviction;”—clause 8(2)(a)(i)—to whether the interests of justice are being served? That is a very legitimate question. In most cases—in jury trials, for instance—juries are not made aware of previous convictions, so why are we now using previous convictions as a determinant of whether a person receives legal aid?

Those are important questions, and it would have been good to hear from the Minister about how these provisions have come about. They may well have come over from previous legislation. I am not necessarily arguing that these provisions have been introduced brand new by this Government, but they do raise the important question of the balance of access to justice for those with insufficient means with the ability of the taxpayer to be able to provide the resources that are needed. Obviously, there do need to be tests, but the tests under clause 8(2) require a bit more analysis and a bit more explanation, because they start to provide limits.

In relation to the issue of balance, not only do we have in this bill the ability for legal aid to be withdrawn—which I mentioned in an earlier contribution—but we have the counterfactual to that, which is that there are now provisions, namely clause 51(7), that allow applicants to apply to the Legal Services Commissioner for review of a decision. An important part of the process is review of decisions and making sure that we have that balance.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General): I wonder whether I could help Mr Robertson, who has just resumed his seat. He made a contribution that was not complicated by any merit. Let us read clause 5 of schedule 1. The member carefully went through clause 5, and he noted paragraph (a) of subclause (3), but he omitted to refer to paragraph (b) of subclause (3), which states: “in the circumstances of the case, the Commissioner considers that it would be inequitable to include all or part of the land or interest.” The point is, I note for Mr Robertson’s benefit, that the provision is of long standing. It was in the Legal Services Act 1991. It was also in the 2000 reform, when he was running around after Helen on the ninth floor.

Grant Robertson: I was in New York.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Oh, the member was in New York then; sorry. The fact of the matter is—

Chris Tremain: He gets around.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: He does get around, I must say; I am proud of that. But the provision was contained in the Legal Services Act 2000, so, as I said, the member made an unmeritorious point. The safeguards are there to ensure that no injustice is done to Māori.

PAUL QUINN (National): I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The question is—

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. My point of order goes to the simple question of the ordering of calls. You have had a call from the Government, and always the normal thing is then to look to the Opposition.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I did indicate before that I would take one more call. When I asked the member behind you, Grant Robertson, to take a call I said I would take one more call, and then the Minister said he would like to respond to some of the questions. A member has now moved the closure motion, and I intend to put—

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The precedents on this are absolutely clear. If there is a debate from the Minister, there has always been, on every single occasion that I have been here, the opportunity to respond. Calls alternate across the Chamber.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I hear what the member says. It is a matter for the discretion of the Chair. I have chosen to accept the closure. I indicated when the previous member spoke that I would be taking one more call, which was Grant Robertson’s. The Minister then responded to some of the questions that had been asked, and I have accepted the closure motion moved by Paul Quinn.

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour): In respect of that ruling, I wonder whether it would be appropriate for the Committee to seek further assistance. I move, That the Speaker be recalled to rule on the allocation of calls and the acceptance of a closure motion. As my colleague Mr Mallard has said, it is the usual practice of the Committee, when the Minister in the chair has taken a call, to invite responses.

Motion agreed to.

House resumed.

Speaker Recalled

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Mr Speaker, you have been recalled by the Labour Opposition on the basis that I prematurely accepted a closure motion when the previous speaker before accepting the closure motion was the Minister in the chair. I had indicated prior to the Minister speaking that I would take one more call, which had gone to a Labour member. This debate has gone on for 1 hour and 15 minutes, and there have been 12 Opposition calls and one Government call. I believe that accepting the closure motion is the prerogative of the Chair and I acted accordingly, having first indicated that I would take one more call, which was given to Labour at the time. Then the Minister responded to some of the questions that previous Opposition speakers had brought up. I believe that accepting the closure motion was within the Chair’s discretion, and I acted accordingly.

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour): I thank the Chairman for his very fair summary of the matters relating to the motion that led to your recall, Mr Speaker. The reason for seeking a definitive ruling from the Speaker on this matter was as a result of the circumstances of the debate, when, as the Chairman has said, he indicated that there would be one call remaining. But after that call the Minister in the chair chose to take a further call in reply, and it was clear from the matters that were raised in the Minister’s reply that new matters were raised, in respect of which members on this side of the Chamber wished to deal by way of further reply. The Chair failed, in my submission, to give the Opposition the entitlement to take a call in response to the new matters raised by the Minister, and indeed there was not even a reference by the Chair to the Opposition attempts to seek a call. There was simply a nod to the Government member who sought the closure motion. So in my submission it would be certainly consistent with precedent and normal good practice, on behalf of the Committee of the whole House, if, in the circumstances that I have described, a right of reply were acknowledged to the matters raised in the Minister’s address.

CHRIS TREMAIN (Senior Whip—National): Members on the other side of the House have failed to raise any particular Standing Order or Speaker’s ruling to refer to as a precedent for what, in my opinion, is an unnecessary recalling of the Speaker. I believe that the Chair at the time had indicated quite clearly how he would proceed with the process, and then proceeded to use his discretion, which he quite rightly has in this process. I ask that you rule on this matter, Mr Speaker.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): There are a couple of matters. Without wanting to be too critical of the Chair today I make as a first submission the fact of a Chairman saying he is prejudiced about a further contribution from a Labour member—as he did, before that member gave that contribution—because the Chair is required to consider a closure on its merits and based on the contribution that had come from the previous speaker. To indicate that effectively no matter what is said, the Chair will hear only one more contribution, in my submission, is not appropriate, because the relevance of what is said by the member, and the matters that are brought up by the member who is to speak, are matters that should be considered. In indicating that only one more contribution would be taken, the Chair might have thought that he was being generous in giving Labour another call but I think it indicates a prejudging of a matter that was not yet before members.

The point I would like to make is that although there is no doubt that the Chair can call anyone he wants when he is in the Chair—when we are not in a set-piece, ordered debate where the order from the Business Committee has been set—it has been a very longstanding practice that in the Committee of the whole House, where members are calling from alternate sides of the Chamber, the practice is to alternate calls. I can accept that the Chairman has the right not to do that; he can call anyone he likes. But the custom and practice of the Committee has been to alternate calls, and certainly I do not think that in the time I have been in the House I have ever seen a movement, while four or five Opposition members have been going for the call, going straight from a Minister in the chair—who made a controversial comment and one that a number of members opposite thought contained an error—to someone who was a designated hitter, if you like, as far as the closure motion was concerned.

So there are a couple of matters for consideration. I restate them from my perspective: the first is whether in fact there should be an indication of prejudice on the part of the Chairman about the number of further calls, which means, effectively, that he is not prepared to take into account what has been said by members; and, secondly, whether the normal custom and practice of the Committee of alternating calls should be breached in this particular way.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker): It is unusual, I know, but as a number of comments have been made about the Chair I wonder whether the Chair himself would like to make any further comments.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I do not believe that by indicating to the Opposition that I would accept one more call was prejudicing what might be said at a later date. As I indicated earlier, there were 12 calls by Opposition members and one Government call. The debate had gone for well over an hour. I believe that I acted with discretion, that to seek a closure motion following the Minister was right and proper, and that I acted accordingly.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): The thing I am now getting really anxious about is the indication from the Chairman that he sought a closure motion. The Chairman should never seek—[Interruption] I am sorry; I think that is what the Chairman said. What did the Chairman say?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker): We are not having a debate.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I do not want to debate, but that is what I thought the Chairman said—that he had sought a closure motion. That, of course, would be very wrong.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I did not seek a closure motion. Government members moved closure motions on many occasions, and I did not accept them. Mr Quinn moved a closure motion. I looked at Mr Quinn, and I accepted his closure motion. That was when the honourable member first raised a point of order, and subsequently there was a motion by Charles Chauvel to recall the Speaker. I did not seek a closure motion. It is not my role to seek a closure motion.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I apologise to the Chairperson. I thought he said something that he obviously did not say. I apologise, because I think I reflected on his integrity, and that would be wrong. I hope the Chairperson knows that we think he is a person of the utmost integrity.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker): Thank you. I hoped that was what the member was thinking, because I certainly did not hear the Chairperson say he had sought a closure motion. That was not what I heard him say. I am pleased that we have clarified that.

I start by saying it is entirely usual for the debate to flow backwards and forwards, and for calls to be taken from one side and the other. That is a longstanding practice. However, having said that, I say the rules are very clear. The question of who gets the next call is at the sole discretion of the Chairperson—no one else. It is not a matter on which any correspondence can be entered into. It is at the Chairperson’s sole discretion, and that must always remain the case. The second point is that if members go through the Standing Orders and the Speakers’ rulings, they will see that overwhelmingly previous Speakers have ruled that the Chairperson is the sole judge on whether a motion of closure ought to be put to the Committee.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I am not arguing about that.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker): Well, I just want to make sure that that is at the Chairperson’s sole discretion. No Speaker has overruled a Chairperson on that issue, and this Speaker is not doing so. I make it clear that that is the Chairperson’s decision. It has also been the case that the Chairperson is the person who listens to the ebb and flow of the debate, and is the person best placed to see whether the Committee is of a mind to accept a closure motion. A closure is not the Chairperson’s decision; it is the Committee’s decision. We all know that although those may be the rules, the reality is usually somewhat different. If a closure motion is not accepted, we know the consequences that flow from that as well, so it is unlikely that a Government will vote against its own closure motion. I accept that. I say to members that as far as the Speaker is concerned, the decision to put a closure motion to the Committee is the Chairperson’s, and the Chairperson’s alone, and I accept the judgment of the Chairperson in this particular case.

In Committee

Debate resumed.

Part 2 Legal aid (continued)

A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.

Ayes 67

New Zealand National 57; ACT New Zealand 5; Māori Party 4; United Future 1.

Noes 51

New Zealand Labour 42; Green Party 9.

Motion agreed to.

Part 2 agreed to.

Part 3 Administration of legal services system

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour): I wonder whether we could hear from the Minister in the chair, the Attorney-General, the Hon Chris Finlayson, on a number of matters that are of particular interest to the Opposition. As I said in my initial comments before the dinner break, to date the Opposition has chosen to offer support for the Legal Services Bill, but obviously that continued support is subject to its being satisfied about the concerns that it wishes to raise.

The first matter that I would be very interested to hear the Minister speak on is the issue of how it is intended that the Legal Services Commissioner, a role that is to be created under clause 70, is to function. That person is to be an existing employee of the Ministry of Justice, or is to be appointed as an employee of the ministry on taking office as the commissioner. The first issue is, what is the guarantee, if any, that the commissioner will not simply be a cipher for the Secretary for Justice—subject to, in particular, budgetary constraints—and will ensure that the overall aims and objectives of the legislation are met? Why should the Committee assume, given the wording of the legislation, that there is any desire on the part of the Government to see the commissioner, in particular, take care that the objects of the legislation are met? What safeguards does the Minister think are built into the legislation to ensure that the commissioner really does have regard to the purposes and the functions set out for the commissioner, particularly under clause 71?

I anticipate that if the Minister does choose to take a call and reply to the issues I am raising, he may point to clause 71(2), which describes the duty to act independently in respect of the functions set out in clause 71(1). But is that really enough of a safeguard, given the breadth of the transfer of powers that is proposed? Of course, what is happening here is that an independent body, which is at the moment a Crown entity at arm’s length from the Crown, is being taken into the Crown itself. Presumably one of the reasons for taking those powers closer to the Crown is an economic one, and I think it would be helpful if the Committee were to hear from the Minister on whether he feels that there are sufficient safeguards as to the exercise of those powers, and particularly whether they will not simply be able to be exercised at the direction or the discretion of the person who is in charge of the Ministry of Justice.

The second point relates to the ability of the commissioner to delegate powers, functions, or duties, which is set out in clause 72. Although there is a power of delegation for the commissioner, there is no guarantee that once any delegated powers are exercised they will be exercised in an independent way. Even if the guarantee of independence conferred by clause 71(2) is pointed to by the Minister, there is still the ability to delegate powers under clause 72. There is no requirement that the delegate of the commissioner should act independently. I think those are significant matters that we need to hear about from the Minister.

The next issue that the Opposition has a particular concern about relates to Subpart 2. This is the quality assurance provision in the legislation. At the moment there are a couple of important quality assurance provisions in the existing legislation. There is a public advisory committee, which, when we debate Part 4, we will see is disestablished by clause 118. There is also a review panel, which is to be disestablished by clause 128. What is proposed in place of these two means of assuring that legally aided persons receive reasonable quality, in terms of the legal services that they consume, is the regime to be set up by clauses 74 to 83. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister on what deliberations have occurred inside Cabinet when comparing the existing quality assurance provisions and assurance of public input into the system with the proposed provisions. Has there been such an exercise? Can the Committee take any guarantee from the provisions contained in the bill as to whether this regime is likely to be superior or inferior to the one that exists at the moment?

The other issues that it would be helpful to hear from the Minister about, in respect of this part, relate to Subpart 3, “Community law centres”. Clause 94 empowers the Secretary for Justice to enter into contracts with community law centres, so that they can provide services to communities on the terms of the arrangement entered into with the secretary, and then there are provisions concerning reporting and auditing. It is clear, and hopefully a matter of consensus across the Committee, that community law centres provide a very helpful and important service to the community. Again, it would be helpful to hear from the Minister in the chair as to how these provisions compare with the existing law, and in particular how the Government intends to ensure that the very good level of service provided by community law centres at the moment will continue under the regime set out in the legislation that is being considered by the Committee.

Finally, as far as the matters that I want to raise in this short call are concerned, I was interested in the Minister’s view on Subpart 5, and in particular on clause 108, which deals with the limitations in respect of the disclosure of information. There is a provision in clause 108(1) that every person should have the same privileges in relation to giving information, answering questions, and producing documents in respect of an application for legal aid for a civil matter as any witnesses have in court. Then there are provisions in the remainder of clause 108 that effectively derogate from that provision. It would be useful to hear from the Minister as to the levels of protection that are provided for people who go through the process of providing information. What protections are intended to apply to those people, and how do they compare with those in the current law? Is this Committee being asked to derogate from those protections, or does this legislation actually supplement them? I fear it is the former, and I think it would be helpful to hear some sort of assurance from the Minister on that point.

DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I would like to pick up on my colleague’s discussion of the review authority and the independence of the review authority, which clause 84 of the Legal Services Bill refers to. It is an important authority, in the sense that it decides on an appeal. I think it is important that we spend a little time on thinking and working through how it functions, and about the ability of the authority to deliver a competent decision that is independent both of the Minister and of the other parts of the judicial system.

Clause 84(1) establishes the review authority, and under clause 84(2) the Minister appoints one person to be the review authority. The bill, further on, states that the person is to be supported by a number of members of the Ministry of Justice. The function of the review authority is to review the decisions of the Secretary for Justice, as set out in clause 82(1). Clause 85(2) states: “The Review Authority may review a decision of the Secretary only on the application of a person in respect of whom the decision is made.” So the integrity really, depends and swings on the ability of that person to be seen both as independent and as capable and competent.

Schedule 3, to which Part 3 refers, sets out the provisions that apply to the Legal Aid Tribunal. Again, there is a question of independence and how those people may be appointed. The term of office of the tribunal is 3 years, although the bill does not give a maximum. A member of the tribunal can be reappointed—I am talking about the tribunal, not the review office. I would like to hear from the Minister about the appointment process: how that appointment process proceeds, whether we will see a maximum term of appointment, and whether in custom it is generally intended that somebody would stay on for one term of office, or perhaps for two terms. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister whether that is seen to be the case in this part of the bill.

The tribunal, again, is serviced by the Ministry of Justice. The tribunal is serviced by employees of the ministry. The liability of the tribunal is set out in clause 6 of schedule 3, which states: “The Tribunal and members, officers, or agents of the Tribunal are not under any criminal or civil liability in respect of—(a) any act done or omitted in the course of the performance or exercise, or intended performance or exercise, of any of its functions, duties, or powers under this Act; or (b) any words spoken or written at, or in connection with, any review, determination, or direction to reconsider under this Act.”

Looking at this part, I think the provisions relating to both the review authority and the tribunal are well set out. But I come back to the point raised by my colleague Charles Chauvel about the issue of independence. Obviously, the independence of this office is very much dependent on the way that the person and the tribunal are appointed and how they are able to carry out and do their job. The person who will be appointed, as I understand it, will be a lawyer of 7 years’ experience. The person will be qualified; I do not think there is any issue about that. But the continuation of service, the time for which that person will stay on the tribunal or the review authority, is an area that we would like to have some clarification on. The degree of independence, given that the person is to be appointed by the Minister, is also an issue of concern.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you for the opportunity to speak to Part 3 of the Legal Services Bill. The previous two speakers focused on the review authority, which, I understand, is contained under clause 86 of the bill. I want to change the focus of the Committee to clause 79 of the bill, which establishes a safeguard for those who are applying for legal services under the bill, but first I will have to refer back to Part 1 of the bill to talk about its spirit.

The purpose of the bill, as set out in clause 3, is “to promote access to justice by establishing a system that—(a) provides legal services to people of insufficient means; and (b) delivers those services in the most effective and efficient manner.” I think members on both sides of the Chamber want to ensure that that happens. But I think we need to make sure that we do not get into a situation where the legal services offered under this bill become second rate, whether that be because of the quality of those who represent the applicants or the amount of resources that are afforded to that representation. The Hon Simon Power was in the Chamber earlier during the debate, and he mentioned that there was a shortfall of about $405 million for legal aid services over the next 5 years. That, of course, is a major concern to members on this side of the Committee, because, as I said, we do not want there to be a perception of a second-rate service when it comes to the legal aid that is offered under the bill.

We are offering broad support to the bill, but clause 79 allows the secretary to establish a performance review committee, and “The function of the committee is to assess and advise the Secretary of any matter referred to the committee by the Secretary relating to the performance of a provider.” The committee has a primary function of making sure that the applicants—those who seek legal aid—get the services that they are after. In my dealings as the MP for Mana I have seen that those who seek legal aid services—and remember we are talking about people with insufficient means to get legal services on their own, through no fault of their own—may be ignorant of the law and the processes around seeking legal aid. We need to make sure that the quality and processes that are in place when they seek legal aid are top-notch.

Going back to the performance review committee, as I said, some of the people who seek legal advice and legal aid have insufficient means. It is a very important safeguard for those people to have the ability to go to a review committee and have 3 months in which to ensure that they are heard. They can gather the information that is required over that 3-month period in order to make sure that their application or the review of their case is heard. In terms of the performance of the lawyers who offer legal aid, under the bill anyone who provides legal advice must be approved by the secretary. That is not to say that anything that lawyers offer in terms of legal aid will be adequate. So it is great that there is a safeguard mechanism within the legislation to make sure that those people who do not feel they have received adequate resources or quality legal advice from those who offered legal advice to them can go somewhere to make sure that their concerns are heard.

SU’A WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): Mr Chairman—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The question is that Part 3 stand part.

SU’A WILLIAM SIO: Mr Chairman—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The member must go for the call straight away.

SU’A WILLIAM SIO: I was so busy trying to prepare my speech that I did not hear the bell ring. I appreciate very much the opportunity to speak on Part 3 of the Legal Services Bill. Before I begin, because we have come back after the adjournment I want to acknowledge—as others have acknowledged—that the country is in mourning as a result of the disaster in Christchurch. Under these circumstances it is somewhat difficult to simply get into the mode of attacking members on the other side of the Chamber. It is quite difficult to get into the mood of making significant contributions as the Opposition when we know that families in Christchurch are mourning their loved ones and the loss of their homes. So I apologise for my rather slow movement to take a call on the bill.

Nevertheless, I will make reference in Part 3, firstly, to clause 77, which states that “The Secretary may give a person approval to provide 1 or more legal aid services or specified legal services if the Secretary is satisfied that the person meets the criteria prescribed in regulations.” I recognise the basis for the bill, but to me, in so far as the wider community is concerned, this is not necessarily a priority. There are people out there who are suffering and struggling to make ends meet. It seems to me that this Government has its priority the wrong side out. Nevertheless, when we talk about acknowledging the facts that legal aid services are important and many, many people—

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.55 p.m.