Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Volume 677
Sitting date: 7 February 2012
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.
Prayers.
Members Sworn
Members Sworn
Charles Chauvel, Hon Annette King, and Hon Maryan Street were presented to the Speaker, made the affirmation required by law, and took their seats in the House.
Visitors
Sweden—Committee on Environment and Agriculture, Riksdag
Mr SPEAKER: I have much pleasure in informing the House that representatives of the Committee on Environment and Agriculture from the Swedish Parliament, the Riksdag, led by Deputy Chairperson Mr Bengt-Anders Johansson, are present in the gallery. I am sure members would wish that the delegation be welcomed.
Motions
Queen Elizabeth II—Diamond Jubilee
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I seek leave that this House congratulates Her Majesty the Queen on the occasion of the diamond jubilee of Her Majesty’s accession to the Throne.
Mr SPEAKER: The Prime Minister is seeking leave. Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is no objection.
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I move, That this House congratulate Her Majesty the Queen on the occasion of the diamond jubilee of Her Majesty’s accession to the throne. On 6 February 1952—60 years ago yesterday—Queen Elizabeth II ascended to the throne and became New Zealand’s monarch. She was only 25 years old—younger, in fact, than any member of our Parliament today. In her speech as she ascended to the throne she promised to follow the example of service and devotion provided by her father, King George VI. For six decades the Queen has kept that undertaking. These have been decades during which the concept of the British Empire has receded and the importance of the Commonwealth has come to the fore. The realms over which Queen Elizabeth reigns have had their times of prosperity, along with times of turbulence and challenge. And over 60 years New Zealand has orientated itself on the world map differently: less the Antipodes and all that that implies, more a modern and assertive nation with a central role in the Pacific. We have developed our own distinct sense of identity. We value the things that make us unique, that make us Kiwis. We are a nation of many different peoples sharing a common belief in peace, progress, and a fair go.
The dignity, wisdom, and assurance that the Queen brings to her role as New Zealand’s head of State supersedes maps and distances. Throughout the changes of the past 60 years her status as our Sovereign has given many of us a sense of stability and confidence. Her role is a link with systems of constitutional government that have histories much longer than our own, and with traditions that move and inspire us.
In my time as Prime Minister, I have been fortunate enough to meet Her Majesty on a number of occasions, and I can say to members of this House, and, indeed, to New Zealanders, that she has a great care, concern, and passion for, and intimate knowledge and love of, this country, and, in my view, has done a wonderful job as the monarch of New Zealand. I know that in this Parliament there are a range of views on the future of the monarchy in New Zealand. I respect those views are sincerely held, while at the same time maintaining my own belief as both Prime Minister of New Zealand and as a citizen of this realm that the monarchy continues to be both relevant and meaningful. Sixty years of service, and counting—let us warmly congratulate the Queen of New Zealand.
DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition): On behalf of the Labour Party, I join with the Prime Minister and other members of this House in paying tribute to, and thanking, Queen Elizabeth II, who marks the 60th anniversary of her ascension to the throne. New Zealand stands alongside many other Commonwealth countries in congratulating Her Majesty on this, her diamond jubilee. I also welcomed the Prime Minister’s announcement earlier that New Zealand will host the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall later on, in November this year, and I know that will be welcomed by many New Zealanders.
I understand that Queen Victoria was the only other queen to have reigned as long as Queen Elizabeth II, so it is appropriate that Parliament marks this occasion. Her reign is perhaps best described by the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, who said that “in a churning and changing world” she is “an anchor for our age.” Her reign has been one of an unwavering commitment and dedication to service. It is a commitment that has spanned the service of 14 New Zealand Prime Ministers and 12 British Prime Ministers, and, as the Prime Minister just remarked, it is sobering that the weight of responsibility of the monarchy fell on her at the age of only 25. Perhaps most famously for New Zealand is our link to that coronation 60 years ago, when Sir Edmund Hillary conquered Everest and said that that feat was, in fact, a coronation gift. No one can doubt her dedication to Commonwealth countries. In our darkest hours she has stood by us. Her words of support, for example, in Canterbury were very well received, and her grandson’s visiting and saying the words “kia kaha” to Cantabrians perhaps best acknowledged the stoic resolve of Cantabrians at that particular time. She is the first monarch, in fact, to have ever visited New Zealand, and she has visited 10 times in her 60-year reign.
I had the privilege of meeting Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace some 15 or 16 years ago, and it is an honour I will not forget. I have enormous respect for her work and her service.
We acknowledge, of course, that over the last 60 years much has changed in New Zealand, and there will inevitably be some discussion about our future constitutional arrangements. But that is a debate for another day. Today is a day to mark her reign of service, commitment, and dedication, and on behalf of the Labour Party I congratulate Her Majesty.
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): The Green Party pays tribute to our head of State, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth of New Zealand. As the second - longest serving Sovereign, the Queen has played a most significant and important role in the world through an extraordinary 66 years of tumultuous world history. She has honoured the institution of the monarchy through the natural dignity of her person and the grace with which she has discharged her duties. She has honoured this country in the genuine interest she has displayed in our history, our culture, our sporting prowess, our military sacrifices, our changing demographic character, and our hopes and aspirations for the future.
When the Queen was crowned in 1952, Sir Edmund Hillary was yet to conquer Mount Everest. Back home, half of New Zealand homes did not have a fridge, and one in five did not have a flushing toilet. No home had television. The idea of standing on the moon remained in the realm of heroic planning, if not science fiction. So times have changed considerably since our Queen ascended the throne as a young woman. We celebrate her 60th anniversary with a respectful message of gratitude and personal affection shared by all New Zealanders.
No discussion about the New Zealand monarchy occurs today without attention being naturally given to the nature of the institution of the head of State. We remain in a small minority of nations that share the same head of State with others. There are many who advocate a transition sooner or later to a republican institution—one based here in our own soil. There are others who are comfortable with the status quo and wish it to continue. Her Majesty will not be unaware of the somewhat desultory debate in the country along these lines. The Green Party does not have a formal position on this matter, and now is not the time to explore it. But equally it is inappropriate, even as we pay tribute to our respected monarch, not to acknowledge the future challenge we face as a nation on this matter. Let us send a message from this Parliament of Aotearoa New Zealand to Her Majesty thanking her for her gracious service and wishing her a long and fruitful life ahead.
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): New Zealand First wishes to be associated with the previous sentiments and to say that we agree with them in their entirety. New Zealand is one of only nine countries with an unbroken line of democracy these last 150 years, and the Queen being our head of State may be one of the significant reasons why we have that proud claim, which so few countries can boast as we do. Hence we send her our heartfelt congratulations.
HONE HARAWIRA (Leader—Mana): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Huri rauna tēnā tātou katoa. E tautoko ana i ngā mihi atu ki te Kuini. I te mea hoki ka huri au ki te reo Pākehā, kia mōhio tūturu ai tātou, he aha pū ngā whakaaro kai roto i taku ngākau.
[Greetings to you, Mr Speaker, and to us throughout. I endorse the accolades to the Queen and immediately turn to English so that we understand fully what the thoughts within me are.]
On behalf of the Mana movement I congratulate the Queen on achieving this historic milestone, and I urge this Government to invite her to reaffirm her commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a guide to how this Government might act in all matters pertaining to the indigenous people of Aotearoa and the lands and resources that it holds on behalf of all New Zealanders. Tēnā tātou katoa.
Hon JOHN BANKS (ACT—Epsom): The ACT Party is glad to be associated with this motion. This weekend marked the 172nd anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Rather than a day of national celebration, it has continued to be a time of angst and controversy. We continue to be lost in a mire of conflicted identity. The last time I attended Waitangi was in 1990, the year the Queen suffered an offensive affront to her dignity as our head of State when she was assaulted on the Treaty grounds. I vowed that day that I would not return until the behaviour improved. Two decades later the behaviour of many of those remains the same. It is my hope that 6 February can become a day when all of us can peacefully celebrate the greatness of our country and can recognise the important role that both the Crown and Māori have played in the development of our nation.
The sixth of February also marks the 60th anniversary of the Queen’s ascension to the throne. Today offers an opportunity for this Parliament to celebrate the Queen and everything her reign has meant to the country over the past six decades. Her commitment to the Commonwealth and the sense of duty with which she has carried out her role is to be applauded. Her reign has brought a common thread of stability and unity to our young country, and as a nation we should not be in any great haste to change such an important link to our past. The Queen has kept her solemn coronation oath to govern the people of New Zealand according to our laws and customs. Fourteen New Zealand Prime Ministers have served her, and she has always fulfilled her duty without becoming embroiled in the politics of the day. She embodies the principle that constitutional monarchy is power constrained and upholds democratic government in New Zealand through the notion that policy is determined, finally, in this House.
Today this Parliament—this country—gives praise and thanks, congratulations, and warmest best wishes to Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of New Zealand, on her 60th year on the throne. Long may she live in good health, happiness, and contentment.
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): On behalf of United Future I want to join with others who have spoken in tribute to Her Majesty the Queen on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of her ascension to the throne.
It is sobering to realise that when that event occurred very few members of this House were actually alive, Winston Churchill was the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Harry Truman resided in the White House, and Stalin was still carrying on his murderous ways in Russia. Sidney Holland was our own Prime Minister. So much has changed, when one reflects upon those people and the character of their times, and yet the one thing that Queen Elizabeth has been able to provide through those intervening 60 years to the present has been a sense of continuity, a huge measure of dignity, and, in many senses, that portrayal of common sense and common wisdom that has held her own country together in times of great crisis, and, I think, has been a beacon of hope for many around the world. It never ceases to amaze me that republics like the United States, for instance, give the Queen perhaps the warmest welcome of all when she visits there, and I think that says a lot about her and her character.
As a republican, I acknowledge this is not the occasion to delve into that debate in any sense; this is the occasion to mark 60 years of service, commitment, and dedication to her people by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and to wish her and her family well as they celebrate this occasion and look forward to the future.
Motion agreed to.
Questions for Oral Answer
Questions to Ministers
Economy—Government Priorities and Challenges
1. SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) to the Minister of Finance: What are the Government’s priorities for the economy in its second term?
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): The Government intends to get back to surplus and manage the Government’s finances very well. We intend to continue to develop a more competitive economy, because we have to earn a living in the next 10 years, rather than borrow it as we did in the last 10 years. The Government intends to rebuild Christchurch, and our final top priority is to improve public services across the board so New Zealanders get better service for the same or fewer resources.
Simon Bridges: What challenges does New Zealand’s economy face?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: The fundamental challenge is the same now as it was 2 or 3 years ago, which is to rebalance this economy from excessive resources in the non-tradable sector to the tradable sector. Much of the growth of the last 10 years was built on borrowed money going into an uncompetitive domestic economy. In the next 10 years we have to earn our living by investing in a competitive export sector.
Simon Bridges: How does the Government intend to tackle the economic challenges?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: In the same considered and balanced way as it did in its first term of office. But I think New Zealanders share with the Government the determination to make real progress over the next few years so that we can have more jobs and higher incomes.
Hon David Parker: Did the briefing he received as incoming Minister from his chief economic advisers in Treasury project that under his Government’s economic settings, New Zealand’s net international liabilities would increase by nearly 10 percent of GDP over the next 5 years—an increase of approximately $25 billion?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: That may have been their projection; I would have to go and check. We, of course, want to continue with the significant improvement in recent years in our net international liabilities. I am somewhat more optimistic than Treasury because I think New Zealanders have learnt the lesson that more borrowing and excessive borrowing are not the way for them to get better incomes, and if they refrain from excessive borrowing and get into higher savings, the prospects of that projection coming to pass are less.
Simon Bridges: What signs of progress has he seen in the economy?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: Just to give a couple of signs, the economy has grown for nine of the last 10 quarters, and the forecasts for growth in this economy are stronger than in the US, Europe, and quite a number of other developed countries. Secondly, some of the more detailed changes the Government is making are bearing fruit. For instance, on 1 April there will be a $600 million reduction in ACC levies because the Government in the last 3 years applied itself to turning ACC round. That is an example of what can be achieved with public services.
Economy—Prime Minister’s Statements and Relationship with Māori Party
2. DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement “National will deliver a strong, stable government—and build a stronger economy with less debt and more jobs”?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.
David Shearer: Does he take seriously the question of whether the Māori Party will continue to be bound to his Government for confidence and supply; and if so, is he confident that they will?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes, I am confident they will.
David Shearer: Has he discussed with Māori Party co-leader Tariana Turia her comments in relation to section 9 of the State-Owned Enterprises Act that she is “not one prone to idle threats”; and if so, what was the result of that discussion?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No, not specifically in relation to that comment, but I think what the co-leader of the Māori Party was saying is that they take that issue seriously. The Government is going through a 2-week consultation process, and I am very confident we will come out with an elegant solution at the end of it.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: In the negotiations for the formation of the Government, did the Māori Party raise that issue in those discussions—yes or no?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No.
David Shearer: Does he stand by his statement of this morning that “they are bound with us for confidence and supply, which is effectively the Budget, and the mixed-ownership stuff doesn’t flow through the Budget”?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes, I do, insomuch that they are not bound by the mixed-ownership model legislation, which will fall outside of the Budget.
David Shearer: Did he read the Government’s Budget papers, which show that the next 5 years’ capital budgets rely on the sale of public assets?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes, and that is probably one of the reasons why we have 59 MPs and the Labour Party has very few. And that is because New Zealanders want less debt, more productive assets, and an economy that is going to function, not a load more debt, as Phil Goff was promising and, I have no doubt, David Shearer is, as well.
David Shearer: How will he make a Treaty clause apply just to the Crown’s share of the State-owned enterprises, when the actions of the privatised State-owned enterprises will affect both the Crown and private shareholders alike?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The Treaty is a compact between the Crown and Māori, and what the Government will be aiming to do is to spell out that very clearly in the section that will then apply to the mixed-ownership model.
David Shearer: Does he accept that his determination to push ahead with asset sales is creating instability in his Government?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Not in the slightest. I accept what it will do is deliver a country that has less debt than it would under Labour, a Government that will deliver for New Zealanders something to invest in other than failed finance companies—which were overseen by the previous Labour Government—entities that will deliver well. I say to that member the same thing I used to say to Phil Goff: “If you don’t like the mixed-ownership model, put up your policy to buy back the bit of Air New Zealand we don’t own.”
Rt Hon Winston Peters: I ask the Prime Minister, if the Māori Party campaigned against asset sales, and if United Future was committed to ensuring that water was regarded as a strategic asset, then where does he get his majority from to make the assertions he is making around the country of having public support?
Mr SPEAKER: Before I call the right honourable Prime Minister, obviously he is not responsible for what either the Māori Party or ACT campaigned on. But the latter part of the question can be answered.
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: As part of the confidence and supply agreements put together between National, ACT, and United Future, we secured support for the mixed-ownership legislation. That is 61; that is a majority.
State-owned Energy Companies, Sales—Ownership of Shares
3. Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) to the Minister for State Owned Enterprises: What steps, if any, has he taken to ensure that should the Government sell 49 percent of Mighty River Power, Meridian, Genesis and Solid Energy, “New Zealand investors will be at the front of the queue for shareholding, and that there will be widespread and substantial New Zealand share ownership”?
Hon TONY RYALL (Minister for State Owned Enterprises): Ministers have made this requirement of widespread New Zealand investment a fundamental part of every step of the process to date. Both the scoping studies and Crown advisers have confirmed that there is sufficient domestic demand to meet the Government’s objectives. As part of any share float the Government has the ability to determine what type of investors are allocated shares, and we will use this ability to ensure widespread and substantial New Zealand shareholding. These proposed share floats are important to ensure public debt remains under control, and we certainly do not want to reach the level of debt as in some countries such as Britain, where they are having to lay off 700,000 public servants.
Dr Russel Norman: How will he ensure that New Zealanders are at the front of the queue when New Zealand’s trade and investment agreements state that New Zealand investors cannot be given preference over foreign investors?
Hon TONY RYALL: The Government is quite clear that those agreements do not override the Government’s ability in respect of the allocation policy to make those decisions.
Dr Russel Norman: What advice has he received regarding the ability of the Government to give preference to New Zealand investors, and advice that the agreements we have do not prevent him doing that?
Hon TONY RYALL: We have received advice that those agreements do not prevent the Government from ensuring widespread and substantial New Zealand ownership of the mixed-ownership model companies.
Hon Clayton Cosgrove: What is he going to put in place, if anything, to stop buyers of shares from onselling those shares to overseas interests?
Hon TONY RYALL: I think what is quite clear is if you look at the mixed-ownership model as it applies at the Port of Tauranga, which is a mixed-ownership model type approach, we have actually got New Zealanders buying out foreigners. I think the fact that we have good quality investments will give New Zealanders that opportunity—
Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That was a specific question. It simply asked—
Mr SPEAKER: I hear the member. To save time, the honourable member may repeat his question.
Hon Clayton Cosgrove: What actions, if any, is he going to put in place that would stop buyers of shares in these State-owned enterprises from onselling those shares to overseas interests? What specific actions will he take, if any, to stop that happening?
Hon TONY RYALL: The Government is not proposing that it would take any action that would stop ordinary people having a right to decide to whomever they sell their shares. The problem is that the party opposite does not think working people are good enough to own shares, and on this side of the House, we think they are.
Dr Russel Norman: Will the Minister release the advice he has received, as stated in his earlier answer, that the Government has no restrictions on giving preference to New Zealand buyers of shares in these companies?
Hon TONY RYALL: The member is entitled to make an Official Information Act request for that information, and I am sure we will consider it in due course.
Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I was not asking whether I could make an Official Information Act request; I was asking whether the Minister would release the advice.
Mr SPEAKER: I think, in fairness to the honourable member, the Minister made it clear that without such a request he probably would not, but with such a request it would be looked at. I think that is a reasonable answer to the question asked.
Dr Russel Norman: I seek leave to table an Official Information Act request from Professor Jane Kelsey seeking that advice, which was declined by the Minister in full.
Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is no objection.
Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.
Hone Harawira: Kia ora to the Minister. What is the Government’s position regarding the united call from Mana, the New Zealand Māori Council, iwi leaders, Māori organisations, and Māori people all around the country for the Treaty of Waitangi clause to be retained in legislation being drafted for the sale of our power companies, or does the Government feel that it has a greater obligation to remove the clause to make it easier for foreign investors to buy those companies?
Hon TONY RYALL: Kia ora to the member. The Government’s view is that we are about to enter quite a lengthy consultation process with iwi around the country in respect of how those rights and interests can best be protected in the legislation.
Hone Harawira: Kia ora anō e te Minita. What reports has the Government received about the Māori Party being willing to stay with the Government even if it pushes ahead with its plans to remove the Treaty of Waitangi clause from legislation as long as the clause can be rewritten to sound very important even if it is completely meaningless?
Hon TONY RYALL: As Minister for State Owned Enterprises, I have not asked for any specific reports on that matter.
Dr Russel Norman: In the advice that the Minister has received regarding the implications of New Zealand’s trade agreements for the ability of the Government to give preference to New Zealand investors, did officials raise any concerns about the Government’s ability to do that?
Hon TONY RYALL: As I recall, no.
Dr Russel Norman: How are New Zealanders to know what is actually the case here—the ability of the Government to give preference to New Zealand buyers of these shares or not—when the Government refuses to release the advice and keeps it secret?
Hon TONY RYALL: I think New Zealanders can take assurance of the fact that the Government has made it very clear that it is our intention to maintain strong and widespread New Zealand interest in these companies, and we would not have made that commitment unless we were able to do so. And I have got to say there are a lot of New Zealanders who are very interested in what is to come.
National Certificate of Educational Achievement—2011 Results
4. NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) to the Minister of Education: What reports has she received on the 2011 NCEA results?
Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā tātou. I have received a report with some early results from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. These results show that there has been improvement across the board. Some highlights include the overall result for National Certificate of Education Achievement (NCEA) level 2 for year 12, which has risen from 76 percent in 2008 to 81.5 percent in 2011; NCEA level 2 for year 12 Māori has risen from 63.1 percent in 2008 to 72.7 percent in 2011; and NCEA level 2 for year 12 Pasifika has risen from 54.4 percent in 2008 to 63.2 percent in 2011. I am also advised that early indications are that Christchurch students improved their achievement rates. This is a great result in the face of a very difficult year, and I am sure that the whole of Parliament joins in offering congratulations to all students who achieved in 2011.
Nikki Kaye: How will she continue to focus on lifting NCEA achievement rates?
Hon HEKIA PARATA: I will have an unrelenting focus on the learner at the centre and on raising achievement. We cannot truly be a world-class system while we have groups—that the member opposite has occasionally opined to be interested in—who are consistently underserved every year. We need to make a number of changes across the board to lift achievement. These include raising participation in, and the quality of, early childhood education—[Interruption]; I am glad you are so overjoyed at that—building the capability of teachers so we have higher-quality interactions in every classroom, in every school, across this country; better information about performance; and greater accountability at all levels of the system.
Whānau Ora, Minister—Confidence
5. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he have confidence in all his Ministers?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Would the Prime Minister have confidence in the Minister for Whānau Ora if he found out that the Minister is promoting public funding being diverted from those in genuine need to those who most certainly are not?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I have complete confidence in the Minister for Whānau Ora. I think the project is in its infancy, but it will seek to help many families for which the system is currently not working.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does the Prime Minister think it appropriate that a person who owns a chain of successful businesses in the Wellington area should have his family reunion paid for by the “Whānau Integration, Innovation and Engagement Fund”, and what could that possibly be about?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not have any details in relation to that. If the member wants to put it down to the relevant Minister, which is the Minister for Whānau Ora, he is welcome to do so.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does he, or does he not, read the various reports from Ministers whom he is meant to be the overseeing Minister of, such as the Whānau Ora: Transforming our futures paper, which itemises the very example of a business person picking up this money for a family reunion, when there are so many Māori in need around this country?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I read as many of the papers as I can, but as I said to the member, if he has a detailed question, he can put it down to the Minister in question.
Ship Grounding, [Rena]—Cost of Environmental Clean-up
6. GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister for the Environment: What is the estimated total cost for the clean up after the grounding of the Rena?
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): There is still significant uncertainty about the total costs and will remain so until the salvage and clean-up operation is complete. A crude estimate of the total costs has been provided to me by officials, of $130 million, of which the bulk is for the salvage of fuel cargo and the ship itself. Though the bulk of those costs are being met directly by the ship’s owner, $28 million has been spent by Government agencies to date. It is our intention to fully recover those costs from the ship’s owner and its insurers.
Grant Robertson: Will the Government be charging the ship’s owner, Costamare Inc., under the Resource Management Act?
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The question about prosecution of individuals under the Resource Management Act is very clearly not made under that statute by the Minister. It is one for the regulatory authorities. In this case the Bay of Plenty Regional Council would be the decision maker as to a prosecution against Costamare, the owners of the Rena.
Grant Robertson: Does the Minister believe that the Bay of Plenty Regional Council should take such a prosecution?
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Just as it would be inappropriate for the Minister of Police to indicate whether a person should be prosecuted or not, the statute sets down very clearly that I as Minister for the Environment should not be encouraging or discouraging a proper, independent decision by Environment Bay of Plenty as to whether they should or should not take a prosecution.
Grant Robertson: In light of that answer, does he stand by his statement: “The Government is of a view we need to throw the full force of the law at those responsible, not only for the deaths of over 1,400 birds but also pollution to tens of kilometres of beaches”; if so, how does he reconcile that statement with his answer?
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: It is the Government’s view that there should be the full force of the law to hold those responsible. The member will be aware that the captain and the navigation officer of the Rena are before the courts as a consequence of the decision of Maritime New Zealand to prosecute them, and that is a matter that is appropriately before the courts.
Grant Robertson: How does he reconcile those statements with his statements to the New Zealand Herald on 2 November 2011: “In fact, it would be remiss given that it is New Zealand’s worst maritime environmental disaster if there was not a prosecution under the RMA.”; how does he reconcile that statement with what he has just told the House?
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: It is a decision for Environment Bay of Plenty whether they wish to prosecute under that Act. The Government has made plain that we hold the owners of the Rena responsible for the environmental damage that has occurred with the worst environmental disaster in New Zealand’s history. That is why the Government, both through the negotiations over the issue of pollution costs, the Resource Management Act, and the maritime transport laws does intend to use the full force of the law to hold those responsible for that disaster.
Child Poverty, Abuse, and Neglect—Green Paper for Vulnerable Children
PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): My question is to the Minister for Social Development, the re-elected member for Waitakere. What progress has been—
Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I realise this is a relatively new member, but I think, in 3 years, he should have learned how to ask a question.
Mr SPEAKER: The members now see what happens if they depart from the Standing Orders in asking questions. They should just ask their question.
7. PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) to the Minister for Social Development: What progress has been made on the Government’s Green Paper for vulnerable children?
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development): Over the last few weeks we have been talking to thousands of New Zealanders about the issues that the green paper raises: how we value, nurture, and protect our children. So far there have been over 120 community meetings and over 3,000 submissions made.
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: How can New Zealanders participate in the green paper consultation and make a submission?
Hon PAULA BENNETT: It is not too late; there are just 21 days left. Submissions are due by 28 February. To get a copy of the green paper and tell the Government whether you are prepared to, for example, give up some of your own privacy, allow information to be shared on your family, make it mandatory to report suspected abuse, or give priority service and access to health and education services for those with children—all so we can better protect those children who need it; submissions can be as short as a sentence or as long as a thesis—and for more details saysomething.org.nz is the website.
Overseas Investment Rules—Confidence in Ministers Involved in Crafar Farms Sale
8. Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) to the Prime Minister: Does he have confidence in the decisions of all of his Ministers who were involved in the process for the sale of the Crafar farms?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes. I am confident that the two Ministers involved—the Minister for Land Information and the Associate Minister of Finance—exercised their duties fairly and impartially under the Overseas Investment Act 2005.
Hon David Parker: Was it within the discretion of the Minister for Land Information to decline the approval of the Crafar farms sale—
Hon Dr Nick Smith: You approved every one that went before you.
Hon David Parker: —under the Overseas Investment Act? No, I did not.
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The advice that I have seen is that the Ministers have to give due regard to sections 16 and 18 of the Act. If they are confident that sections 16 and 18 of the Act have been appropriately met, then they do need to accept the application. That was the view of both the Overseas Investment Office and the two Ministers.
Hon David Parker: Did the Prime Minister say in 2010 that his Government’s changes to overseas ownership regulations “increased ministerial flexibility to consider a wider range of issues when assessing overseas investment in sensitive land”; if so, why did the Ministers not exercise that flexibility and decline the overseas sale of the Crafar farms?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes, that is absolutely correct; that is what I said in 2010. There was a wider range of issues, but, in fact, the bid met the conditions and criteria set out in the Overseas Investment Act. The truth of it is the Act did need tightening up and the number of regulations needed expanding, because when David Parker was the Minister for Land Information, between 2006 and 2008 he actually approved the sale of 410,000 hectares of farmland. That is four times the total amount of land approved for sale under the last 3 years—
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Hon David Parker: Does the Prime Minister see a difference between an applicant like James Cameron moving here, living indefinitely here with his family, working here, and paying taxes, and the largest-ever sale of the multiple Crafar dairy farms to a foreign-based company, with future profits going overseas; or does he agree with Mr Williamson that opposition to the Crafar farms sales is bordering more on racism?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I believe that both of the bids met the law as it was written by Labour in 2005. In 2005 Labour did not have a condition that you have to live here. Labour did not campaign on that condition in 2011. Interestingly enough, David Shearer did not know his position on the day that this came out last week, because he had two positions in one day.
Hon David Parker: Does the Prime Minister think it is a good outcome for New Zealand that the previously New Zealand - owned Crafar farms—until now operated by private enterprise—will now be overseas-owned and farmed by a Government company?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Firstly, those farms were in a very bad state of repair. I would have thought that, as somebody who has argued about environmental issues, David Parker actually would want those farms to be more environmentally sustainable. The second thing is that I suppose the way I would sum this up would be to make the following statement. Then we have New Zealand First, which is opposed to any purchase by any foreigner of any asset, investment—
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You and I both know that he cannot do that. He should be told to desist and get back to doing what he should be doing: answering the question.
Hon Gerry Brownlee: In answering a question, any Minister can, surely, refer to a learned piece of advice for the House.
Mr SPEAKER: I think the point that the Rt Hon Winston Peters makes is fair enough. The question was asked by a member of the Labour Party, and to bring another political party into an answer is not the wisest thing to do. It is going to lead to disorder. We saw it lead to disorder. The honourable member got to his feet at the same time that I did, because I could see what was going to happen. I think it is unwise to do that. I would ask the right honourable Prime Minister to please not bring another political party, which has not been involved in the questioning, into the answer.
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Let me continue in this way, then. In 2005, when the law was established by Labour, in a third reading speech in this House, Clayton Cosgrove said of it: “As the Minister pointed out, that is totally illogical.”—the ability to stop a foreigner from having any investments in New Zealand. He went on to say “The last one out switches the lights off if we call a halt to any international investment in land in this country.” You see, in Government Labour members say one thing, and on the populist track in Opposition they say a completely different thing.
Dairy Industry Reform—Proposals
9. SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) to the Minister for Primary Industries: What is the purpose of the Government’s recently announced proposed changes to the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act 2001?
Hon DAVID CARTER (Minister for Primary Industries): The proposals currently being consulted on aim to further support growth and innovation in our No. 1 export industry—the dairy industry. Ten years on, the original legislation that enabled Fonterra to be formed requires updating. The changes address key concerns regarding access to raw milk from Fonterra by competitors, and Fonterra’s ability to move to trading amongst farmers if it decides to do so.
Shane Ardern: Are the Government’s proposals final policy?
Hon DAVID CARTER: No, they are not. This is a consultation process. I invite all those interested in this matter to make a submission by 24 February 2012. Final policy will then be determined on the basis of those submissions.
Hon Damien O’Connor: Does the Minister agree with the Prime Minister that “it would be great to have Fonterra as a listed company,” and is this why he has included in the proposed dairy industry restructuring legislation the trading of shares in Fonterra, New Zealand’s largest and fully owned cooperative company, against the wishes of a growing number of dairy farmers in this country?
Hon DAVID CARTER: Trading amongst farmers will not occur if Fonterra is forced to lose its cooperative status, and that is made very obvious to its shareholders at every shareholder meeting. That is being attended to at the moment by the likes of the chairman, Sir Henry van der Heyden.
Hon Damien O’Connor: I seek leave to table in the House today the latest Farming Weekly from Federated Farmers—
Mr SPEAKER: It is distributed to most—
Hon Members: No.
Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. I think the Speaker was displaying his rural roots here. Is there any objection? There is objection.
Syria, Internal Conflict—Government Response
10. Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: What has the Government publicly said in response to the attack by Syrian forces on its own citizens in Homs, and how does it see the crisis there being resolved?
Hon MURRAY McCULLY (Minister of Foreign Affairs): The Government has condemned the attacks by Syrian forces on Syrian citizens. Dealing with the current situation, I have this morning issued a statement on behalf of the New Zealand Government condemning yesterday’s bombardment of Syrian citizens in Homs, resulting in a reported death toll of 50. As the member may know, Syria does not have an ambassador resident in New Zealand, but I have asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to request that the Syrian chargé based in Canberra attends the ministry to hear our concerns directly. Over recent weeks we have taken opportunities to encourage and commend Arab League representatives for the initiatives taken by that organisation. We remain deeply disappointed that the United Nations Security Council members have been unable to agree the form of a suitable resolution, and have urged that they try harder to find agreement in light of the escalating violence.
Dr Kennedy Graham: Although the Minister says that, by and large, his Government endorses the Arab League’s work, will it endorse the precise plan for a Syrian-led transition to a democratic and plural political system through political dialogue between the Syrian Government and the whole spectrum of the Syrian opposition?
Hon MURRAY McCULLY: I do not think it is helpful for us to get into the detail. I would simply say that the Government has applauded the leadership shown by the Arab League, and I believe the formula that the member has just read out to the House is a sound one. What I would say is that it is imperative that the United Nations Security Council now shows some leadership and resolves the issue that separates other members of the council from Russia and China on the wording of the resolution.
Dr Kennedy Graham: Does the Minister see any parallels between the Russian-Chinese veto of the Syrian resolution and the persistent US vetoes on the Israeli-Palestine resolutions?
Hon MURRAY McCULLY: I think that range is rather wider than I would care to go in response to the original question. What I would say is that there is a disagreement between China and Russia and the other members of the Security Council over references, in effect, to regime change in the resolution. I believe that we need to encourage all members of the Security Council to work hard to find an agreeable resolution, because that sort of leadership is called for in light of the escalating violence.
Dr Kennedy Graham: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister says it ranges a little too widely, and yet he just expressed concern over one—
Mr SPEAKER: The member cannot debate the Minister’s answer. The member asked the Minister for an opinion. The Minister gave an opinion, and that is the answer to the question. The member may ask a further supplementary question, but he cannot debate the answer by way of a point of order.
Dr Kennedy Graham: Does the Minister agree that the recent experience in the Security Council shows that the time has come to reform the use of the veto under the UN charter, and will he work with other member States towards that goal?
Mr SPEAKER: My goodness! That is a long way from the primary question, but I will not deprive the Minister of the opportunity to answer.
Hon MURRAY McCULLY: I do believe that New Zealand needs to take a role in the emerging debate on Security Council reform. Late last year I took the trouble of taking a paper on this matter to Cabinet, to ensure that New Zealand was well equipped to join this debate. Over the coming weeks I think the member will see that New Zealand will become more active in promoting Security Council reform. Of course, the question of the veto that he refers to is an inherent part of that discussion.
Dr Kennedy Graham: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I ask the Minister whether he is prepared to table that Cabinet paper that he—
Mr SPEAKER: Is leave being sought to table that? Sorry—I am trying to understand. Does the member believe that the Minister is quoting from an official document?
Dr Kennedy Graham: He referred to a Cabinet paper pertaining to Security Council reform.
Mr SPEAKER: The member can be asked to table a document he is quoting from only if it is an official document he is quoting from. Just because he referred to a paper does not mean he has to table it. Can I check with the Minister? Is the Minister quoting from an official document?
Hon MURRAY McCULLY: No, I am not, but if it assists the House I am happy to indicate that the paper I referred to will be released for public discussion at the appropriate time.
Child Poverty, Abuse, and Neglect—Children and Poverty: Moving Beyond Rhetoric
11. JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) to the Minister for Social Development: Has she read the Children’s Commissioner’s newsletter Children and poverty: moving beyond rhetoric?
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development): Yes.
Jacinda Ardern: Does she agree with the statement contained in the report that “low income families have increased risks of other adverse features … such factors as: … higher rates of child abuse and neglect;” and, therefore, “appropriate policies to address these issues are through various policies aimed at reducing these inequalities.”; if so, what proposals in her Green Paper for Vulnerable Children address child poverty?
Hon PAULA BENNETT: Actually, we have a Ministerial Committee on Poverty, which my colleague has set up, which is addressing those issues. The paper goes through quite a lot of different thought-provoking opinions on poverty. I think that they are of interest, and they certainly will be taken into consideration when looking at the green paper.
Jacinda Ardern: Has a draft of the white paper on vulnerable children been prepared; if so, has she seen it?
Hon PAULA BENNETT: I have certainly seen no draft of any white paper following the green paper.
Jacinda Ardern: When will the white paper on vulnerable children be drafted and submitted to Cabinet?
Hon PAULA BENNETT: After submissions have closed, and when consideration of them has been taken on board.
Jacinda Ardern: Does she agree with the feedback raised no less than four times at one of her green paper public meetings that the response to the issue of child welfare should be developed across parties; if not, why not?
Hon PAULA BENNETT: The member and I have had correspondence around cross-party processes and what needs to be done there. The Labour members themselves said that they were not wanting to engage in the green paper process. I would see—
Hon Member: Really?
Hon PAULA BENNETT: Well, it is in your very own manifesto. So if the party would like to relook at that, then I am sure it is a first step to opening up discussions.
Jacinda Ardern: Why, when Labour is willing to put aside issues with the green paper process, will she not accept our offer to work with her on child welfare policy?
Hon PAULA BENNETT: Because I note that on page 1 of the Labour Party’s children’s policy, and I quote from it, it says: “We don’t need another lengthy green paper process: we need good policies, and we need them now.”, and that Labour does not support the green paper, so it has been quite obvious.
Jacinda Ardern: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question explicitly stated that Labour has—
Mr SPEAKER: I am on my feet. Questions cannot state things; questions have to ask things. The member asked the Minister why she was not following a certain course of action, and the Minister answered.
Jacinda Ardern: I seek leave to table the correspondence between the Minister and me offering Labour’s assistance on child welfare policy, and her response.
Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table those documents, but you have not specified the dates. It would be helpful if the House knows—is there more than one document?
Jacinda Ardern: There are two documents: the first is the letter from Labour, dated 26 January; and the second is the response from the Minister, dated 2 February.
Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table those two documents. Is there any objection? There is no objection.
Documents, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.
Border Control, SmartGate System—Lowering of Age-limit
12. CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National) to the Minister of Customs: What recent reports has he received about SmartGate?
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister of Customs): As this is the first day of a new Parliament, I cannot say “more good news”, so I will start by saying this is the first of a number of good-news announcements along the way this year for customs. SmartGate has, indeed, already made a big difference for people travelling between Australia and New Zealand. Now, with new technology, we have been able to change the age of compatibility from 18 down to 16. Previously, you had to be 18 years or over to use SmartGate kiosks. SmartGate provides faster processing for eligible travellers arriving at, or departing from, Auckland, Wellington, or Christchurch, and for those arriving at Australia’s eight international airports.
Chris Auchinvole: What benefits does lowering the age-limit on SmartGate have for New Zealand and Australian passport holders?
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Lowering the age-limit of SmartGate users will enable an estimated 120,000 additional travellers to use the kiosks every year, as families now travelling with teenagers will be able to use SmartGate and not the manual queuing process. SmartGate has already processed over 2 million travellers since it was first implemented in December 2009, and, by lowering the age-limit, more families will be able to use it. I wish that it was not that the facial structures of children under the age of 16 changed so much, because if that was not the case, we would actually be able to lower it even further than 16.
Address in Reply
Address in Reply
Debate resumed from 21 December 2011.
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery): Today marks the beginning of the new parliamentary term—
Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am aware, of course, that giving the call is a matter that is entirely at your discretion. My understanding was that in this debate to date the Government had followed Labour, that there were Government speakers at the end of the last debate, and that therefore it should not yet be a Government call.
Mr SPEAKER: Forgive me if I am wrong on this, but my understanding of the Standing Orders is that if a member moves the adjournment of the debate previously, then that member has the opportunity to have first call when the debate is resumed. It is Standing Order 131, I have just been advised. It was the Hon Gerry Brownlee who moved the adjournment of the debate, and that is why the Hon Gerry Brownlee has the right to the first call. He does not have to take it, but he has sought the call. At least, that is my advice—that it was the Hon Gerry Brownlee who did that—and that is why I gave him the first call when he sought it. But I assure the honourable member it was not any departure from alternative arrangements.
Hon Trevor Mallard: I accept that. The normal process, I understand, is that you do call it an interrupted speech.
Mr SPEAKER: My advice is that that is not the normal situation.
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Just for clarity, it was me who moved the adjournment debate. It was Mrs Tolley who spoke in the adjournment debate. That is quite a different matter. That may have been the confusion on the other side of the House.
Today marks the beginning of the second parliamentary term for the re-elected National-led Government. It is very interesting to note today that the dynamic of the House completely belies the claims that have been made by the new leader of the Labour Party about taking a completely different approach to politics under his leadership. The Government set out a strong programme, read from the throne by the Governor-General, Her Majesty’s representative, and that is a programme that is designed to ensure that New Zealand makes significant progress, measured by the better lives of New Zealanders over the years ahead.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: It was hopeless. No details—no policy.
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Although there are people in this House who for their own convenience will want to sit there, screaming out that it had no policy, it had no vision, and it had no this, they are the same people who have been consistent in their political ability to move with the times. I would expect that they might begin to exhibit some of those skills in the years ahead as the National-led Government forges ahead with its programme.
One of the contentious issues that we are facing is the question of the mixed-ownership model. I have no difficulty, and my party has no difficulty, with the sort of discussion that we are getting over section 9 of the State-Owned Enterprises Act. That is to be expected. It is quite reasonable, and it is one of those points of difference that will be discussed and will be, I think, elegantly sorted out. I know that the Minister of Finance has committed himself to a great deal of time to ensure that all New Zealanders understand fully exactly what those issues are. It will not matter how many times Mr Harawira or any of those on the left who want to suddenly march alongside him try to make a bigger case of it; it is what it is—a perfectly reasonable part of the debate.
The prime question, though, is about the decision to extract a little bit more capital out of those assets for the State to use in other things. What I find most extraordinary is that the Labour members will sit over there, crowing about the fact that they started KiwiSaver, which has seen the export of millions and millions of New Zealanders’ dollars and capital into foreign markets to buy foreign shares, but the same opportunity being given to New Zealanders to buy blue-chip stock here in New Zealand is somehow found by them to be abhorrent and unacceptable.
No one should forget that they were the group who presided over the massive losses suffered by so many New Zealanders—particularly elderly New Zealanders—as the finance sector went out of control in this country, completely unchecked by Ministers who failed to understand what those companies were up to, and repeatedly listened to their own advice on what needed to be done to stem some of the wild claims that those companies were making. Their credibility in this area is absolutely zero, and no one should be moved by the sort of silly “get out in front of a parade and wave a flag” nonsense that David Shearer appears to be leading the Labour Party towards.
It was interesting to note in his reply to the Speech from the Throne that the first 5 to 10 minutes indicated a new approach, but then straight away there was a slot back into the old loser politics that saw Labour so well dealt to in the 2011 election. I want to say to the Labour members, who repeatedly say they want to act in a more bipartisan way, to start acting that way if you want to be respected for that decision. At the moment what we are seeing essentially is a knocking at the door, a pressing at the window, a demand to be let into the room, to be part of the decision making, so that they can run outside and work out how to attack you even better.
It is not our job to be the Opposition; it is their job. And if they want to be the Opposition, then they should be. If they want to be the Government, or if they want to be part of Government decision-making, then they need to behave in a far better way than we have seen not only before the election but post it as well. I speak about some of the issues in Christchurch in that regard as well.
There is no doubt that New Zealanders have an expectation that a Government will do what it can to make their lives better. This Government is not in any way shirking from that. One of the things that is sort of fascinating is that the Labour Government—the Labour Party, I should say—is saying that if they were in Government, they could achieve all sorts of things without making any hard decisions. We, for example, have recognised that if young New Zealanders are to have the very best education system in the world, then they need to have the very best of facilities in which to be taught. That means that over the next few years facilities in schools are going to have to massively improve. It is no good just putting in the broadband, which I will speak about in a few minutes; there has to be a capacity to take full advantage of that.
We have committed in the Speech from the Throne to $1 billion from the Future Investment Fund being put into not only building new schools but modernising all schools so that they are fit to deliver 21st century education to our young people. But if you listen to the other side of the House, they believe that you just pluck that out of the sky somewhere and put it into place at absolutely no cost. If it comes to a choice between holding 100 percent of a particular asset and choosing to have greater quality schools for our young people, and therefore a greater investment in the future of this country, then I know which side of the fence I sit on.
The Government is also committed to increasing or improving the infrastructure for our transport in this country. We have said that over the next 10 years the State highway network, the local roads network, etc. need to have some $12 billion worth of investment. That is a huge amount and it will make a difference to those economies. Anyone who goes to Auckland will know that the Waterview Connection is a very smart piece of infrastructure that will massively improve traffic flows in that city. We have also got the problem of KiwiRail, and I say “the problem of KiwiRail” because it does not operate at the maximum of its potential at the present time. But the Government is committed to the KiwiRail Turnaround Plan, and that also has to be funded from somewhere.
Then there is the very, very big commitment of $5.5 billion—up to this point—for the rebuild of Christchurch. Christchurch is around about 15 to 20 percent of the New Zealand economy, with a massive potential to increase in the future. Although there will be huge stimulus that comes in from the total $20 billion that will be spent there over the next few years, there is no doubt that beyond the growth that comes from that initial rebuild input there is a need for greater levels of economic activity in that area. In that regard, there is the Government’s commitment to irrigation and to assisting people to put up those projects. Then there is our commitment to ensuring that the resource management project, taking full consideration of all environmental matters, does deliver the opportunity to build those sorts of projects to get the sort of growth that the province needs and, frankly, that this country desperately needs.
I want to just mention the consequence, I guess, of the earthquakes in Christchurch, the biggest being the way in which New Zealand prepares itself for future events of a catastrophic nature. In New Zealand, they say, you live with your risk. Some parts of the country are very earthquake-prone; others are flood-prone. Auckland has the potential for a volcanic eruption as well as being considerably exposed in the event of any tsunami. And we can sit and laugh about that, as they are doing on the other side of the House, and say: “Well, it may never happen.” or “It probably will never happen.” Well, I would hope it does not—
Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Don’t be so crass!
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well, I was not talking to you, Mr Cosgrove; you show very few emotions at any time. I was talking to Mr Mallard, who is behind you, who is finding these things somewhat amusing. What I would say is that no one can be certain in saying that we should just put these things on the long finger.
But it is going to mean change for a lot of New Zealanders. It is going to be a big cost to our economy. You cannot escape the fact that changes to the way in which an insurance market views Christchurch will filter through to the rest of the country as well. So we are going about things down there in a very considered fashion—not being knee-jerked into fast decisions, but at the same time not taking so long as to be unreasonable—in making sure that the province and the capital city of that province do have a future.
I think that the Government’s programme is comprehensive; I think it very clearly points towards the sort of growth New Zealanders would expect. New Zealanders will also be able to see in a very short time that the continuation of the National-led Government will be very much to their advantage and will make sure that their lives are better for the future.
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): There is a rumour going around, actually, that Gerry Brownlee is thinking of changing his name to Gerry Dotcom in order to get access to National’s economic plan, which I understand is in a cyber-locker somewhere, caught up in the Megaupload debacle. I say that because we have once again seen from the Prime Minister in the state of the nation speech—the so-called state of the nation speech—the absence of an economic plan.
We also saw that in his response in the Address in Reply debate. I am not sure whether the Prime Minister is a fan of Ronan Keating, the Irish singer who was in town last week, but in outlining his vision for New Zealand the Prime Minister seems to have adopted the words of one of Ronan Keating’s favourite songs: “You say it best when you say nothing at all.” That is the Prime Minister’s approach—nothing at all. There was nothing at all in the state of the nation speech, and nothing at all in the Address in Reply speech—nothing at all, that is, except for one thing: sell it off. The pathway to the PM’s heralded brighter future is paved with “For Sale” signs.
Well, the message for Mr Key is that you cannot sell your way to a brighter future. The Prime Minister is getting that message loud and clear from the 70-plus percent of New Zealanders who do not want their assets sold. He heard the message from Māori loud and clear this past weekend. From those at the flax-roots through to the iwi leaders, they do not want these assets sold.
You would have thought that for something that is the centrepiece of National’s programme for this year there might have been a little bit more thought given to the removal of the single most significant legislative clause for Māori in this area: section 9 of the State-Owned Enterprises Act. Goodness, I was in form 4 in 1986 and I knew about the Lands case and the genesis of section 9. Mr Key was at Elders Merchant Finance at the time, I think—too busy selling things, I suspect, to actually notice the significant political action. To claim, as Mr Key has done, that section 9 is symbolic and not relevant is not only a slap in the face to Māori but symptomatic of the shambles that now surrounds this asset sales process.
Mr Key is looking for an elegant solution to the problem he has created. Well, I have got an elegant solution for Mr Key: do not sell the assets. That is the elegant solution: do not sell the assets, listen to New Zealanders, and keep Kiwi assets in Kiwi hands.
But there is a very good reason why this Government is so determined to press ahead with asset sales: it is that it is all they have got. The plan to lift our economic sights comes down to selling off our future, hoping someone will dig up some wealth, and cutting public services. Now, whatever the merits of cuts to the public sector, I can say this to the Government: it will not provide the answer to the lack of a plan for the economy.
That is what the Government has in store for New Zealand: sell, cut, hope. That is the plan. That is the total of the strategy: sell, cut, hope. It is a tired, old theory and it fails to grasp one of the core opportunities that lie in front of New Zealand: the opportunity to base our future on ideas and policies that see the economy and the environment as two sides of the same coin. The notion that in order to grow our economy we must compromise our environment comes from another century. It comes from the same century as the trickle-down economics practised by the party opposite.
For Labour, we recognise that our future lies in the development of companies and people who are smart, clean, and green. David Shearer has already talked about LanzaTech in this debate. In universities, Crown research institutes, and businesses throughout this country there are people who have the ideas that will propel our economy forward. We must invest in those people, and we know that this can happen only if the economy and the environment go together, hand in hand. That is Labour’s vision, and we will continue to promote positive ideas in that space over this term.
New Zealanders’ passion for our environment is something that I believe truly unites us as a nation. The horror that greeted the grounding of the Rena and its impact on birdlife, the coastal environment, and our beaches and oceans resounded throughout New Zealand. Was it not interesting to hear Nick Smith today? Despite telling New Zealanders that he was going to throw the full force of the law at those responsible for the grounding of the Rena, it turns out that that amounts to a hope that the Bay of Plenty Regional Council might take a case. That is the full force of the law from Nick Smith. That is how much protecting the environment seems to mean to him. That is how much of a priority he wants to make it.
In the wake of some of what happened at Waitangi it could be easy to focus on issues that divide us, but I believe that the protection of our waterways and our coastlines is something that all New Zealanders—Māori and Pākehā alike—want to see made a priority, and Labour will certainly be doing this. In the environmental space that priority must be seen in the management of fresh water. The Māori Council has a right to put a claim to the Waitangi Tribunal, and we will await the court process, as is the right thing to do with that. But let us be absolutely clear: this would not be happening if the Government was not selling assets. This would not be needed if the Government was not selling assets, and the solution, which the Māori Party knows, which the Māori Council knows, and which this Government should know, is that this could all stop if the sale of those assets stops.
There was an absence from Mr Key’s state of the nation speech—and, indeed, from his contribution to this debate—of the environment, but there was also an absence of discussion on the pressing social issues of our time: inequality and child poverty. If Gerry Brownlee wants to find evidence of a bipartisan approach, I say that three times in the last term of Government Annette King wrote to the Government and said we would cooperate on child poverty. David Shearer said straight after being elected as leader that we want to be part of a parliamentary committee that deals with issues of poverty, and this year Jacinda Ardern has repeated the call. That is bipartisanship, Mr Brownlee. That is where the opportunity is in this House for us to work together and address child poverty, and it has been rejected by the National Government, not by the Labour Party.
When we look at child poverty, the one reaction we have seen from this Government was its trying to stop New Zealanders hearing about it. It is outrageous that the showing of a documentary on child poverty just before the election would generate from Mr Key’s electorate chair a complaint and an attempt to stop it. The problem with the broadcast of that documentary was that it was the only one on those sorts of issues before the election. What we need prior to an election in New Zealand is more information for the public, not less.
Public broadcasting in this country is in serious danger. We need quality public broadcasting. It is good for democracy, it is good for accountability, and it is good for public participation. This Government is starving Radio New Zealand of funds and dismantling one of the few remaining pieces of public broadcasting, in the form of TVNZ 7. It is not good enough, and it is especially not good enough for New Zealand On Air to be used in such a political way.
What that documentary on child poverty highlighted was the huge damage being done to New Zealand and the loss of the potential of those involved. It is simple stuff. If you live in a cold, draughty, damp home, you will get sick. If you do not have food in your cupboards, your kids will go to school hungry and they will not learn as well. If it costs too much to go to the doctor, you just will not go. Child poverty is a moral issue. It is, as David Shearer has said, a human rights issue for those children, and it is a shame on this Government that the Prime Minister in his state of the nation speech failed to even mention these issues.
Six billion dollars a year is lost to the New Zealand economy through child poverty, but of similar importance to our society is the loss of empathy that goes with growing inequality in our country. When the salaries of chief executive officers grow 14 percent in a year but the salaries of those on the factory floor grow by only 2 percent, we have a growing problem. As gated communities grow around us, we have a problem. We need answers that are sensible but that are also visionary. We must invest in our people.
Many New Zealanders are facing tough times, and when that happens we know that New Zealanders will come together and pitch in. We have got to use our brains and we have got to invest in people, get them into education, give people a chance to achieve their potential, and allow them to live lives that will allow them to achieve their potential. We need sensible solutions; we need positive solutions. What we do not need is sell, cut, and hope, and that is all we have seen from this National Government.
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister): At least Labour members are looking a bit thoughtful now, because after the 2008 election they all sat there thinking “Haven’t the public made a dreadful mistake? They didn’t really mean to vote us out; they put in that flaky John Key and the National Government.” They sat there puzzling about how the public could have made that mistake. In 2011 they came back after the election and they are thinking “How did the public do it again? How did they make the same mistake again?”.
You see, Labour members still do not understand that it is the public that is right, and Labour that is wrong. It is not a mistake that they lost seats and vote share in the last election; it was the deliberate intent of the New Zealand public to send one more message—because the last one had not arrived—that the nasty, stale Labour Party was irrelevant. Until they start talking about what matters to New Zealanders instead of what matters to the Labour Party, nothing is going to change. I welcome this new thoughtfulness. They are sitting there, scratching their heads, thinking “How did the public get it wrong again?”. Well, the public did not get it wrong; it got it right.
In listening to the deputy leader of the Labour Party, I can only say that I am sure his colleagues hope that he does not disappear as quickly as he did when he became the tertiary education spokesman, never to be heard from again. I am told—because I was not aware of this—that apparently he was the health spokesman. Is that not meant to be one of Labour’s strongest issues? Apparently he was the health spokesman; well, he disappeared quickly from that. Now he is the environment spokesman. I just say to Labour that the Greens do it a lot better. They do it a lot better. The way they think about the environment and the economy is more sensible and more sophisticated—well, more sophisticated but not that sensible—than what Labour will ever come up with.
With the old arrogance of the Labour Party, the deputy leader is saying there is a balance between the economy and the environment, as if that is some new idea. No one has thought of that before! Well, if he comes to my electorate to see people who would never think of voting Labour, but vote National, he will see that they are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money finding exactly that balance, and changing their farming practices trying to find that balance.
They know what Labour means when it says a balance between the environment and the economy. It means bigger government, making more rules, taking more tax, and borrowing more money. That is actually what that means, whereas what they will get from this Government is strong support for the competitive export economy. That is one of the priorities of the Government through this term of office. Our first priority is to get back to surplus—to manage the Government finances prudently to get back to surplus by 2014-15. To continue the process of rebuilding New Zealand’s international competitiveness is our second priority. The third one is to deliver better public services, and the final one is to rebuild Christchurch.
I want to refer to the need to continue rebuilding the competitive economy. I think few New Zealanders understand just how damaging the custodianship of the previous Labour Government was—to be fair, they were part of a movement across developed economies around the world—where our export sector actually shrank in the first decade of this century. Even though the world economy was growing faster than ever, our ability to earn income by selling to that world actually shrank. However, our ability to spend what we were not earning grew fantastically well. The gap, of course, was filled by borrowing. A more competitive economy has to be about the movement of resources—that is, people and capital—into the tradable sector.
We want to see in the next 5 years something we did not see in the last 10 years, and that is job growth in the export sector. Today there are hardly any more jobs in the export sector than there were 10 years ago, so very little of the job growth of the last 10 years actually occurred in the income earning side of our economy. The prospects for that are pretty good, as long as Government gets behind and pushes hard. Those prospects are good because the markets into which we are selling increasingly are growing reasonably fast and our export sector has become remarkably resilient.
In this context I want to pay a particular tribute to the manufacturing sector, which in recent years has continued to grow when, for instance, the Australian manufacturing sector has been shrinking. That is because they have worked out how to be adept, fast-moving, adaptable organisations finding their niche in a very competitive world.
The Government will be focusing on this rebalancing of the economy. The sources of growth over the next few years, I think, are reasonably clear now. Our continued high export prices are actually as high as they have been since the late 1960s, and if those prices can hold up even somewhere near where they are now, that will continue to add wealth and jobs to the New Zealand economy.
Another source of growth will be the Christchurch rebuild. There is roughly $20 billion that needs to be spent in Christchurch; only $2 billion has been spent so far. It is already having an impact on New Zealanders’ incomes. We see in the labour market figures coming out today the growth in construction wages in Christchurch of around 8 percent in the last year—more than double the average wage increase across the rest of the economy. Of course, we will have to watch out for inflationary effects of a wage blowout, but there will be thousands of new jobs and huge investment going on in Christchurch. Whatever discussions they might be having among themselves about their local council, they have shown remarkable resilience and persistence about the recovery of that city.
I want to make a few remarks about another of the Government’s objectives, and that is to deliver better public services. I think the Public Service has now understood that this is not just a passing phase of fiscal restraint; it is now permanent. It will never go back to the days it enjoyed in the first decade of this century when, because of the economic situation, it had money pouring in the door. I want to pay tribute here to the leadership of the Public Service. Across Government departments they have got to grips with the new reality, and worked with the Government through a considered process of getting ready for significant change. Some of them have already executed significant change. Almost all of them are planning significant change in the delivery of public services.
The Government will be focusing very strongly on ensuring that the service to the public is the same or better as we reduce the costs of delivering that service. But it will be a challenge. Over the next 3 or 4 years most Government departments will get no new money. So we would not want to underestimate the challenges and the discussion—vigorous discussion, I am sure—that is going to flow from the Government’s ambition to deliver better public services despite the fact that the budget is very tight.
The Prime Minister set out the objectives for the Government in his state of the nation speech. We expect to get on with that agenda in this Parliament and through Cabinet, and we also expect that the New Zealand public have had to, in a pragmatic frame of mind, go through their own process of making change in their households and their businesses because of the economic circumstances. They can look forward to reasonable and moderate growth over the next few years, the opportunity for wage increases and better incomes—many of them have not had wage increases in recent years—and a Government that is strongly supportive of their aspirations and is willing to do the hard work now necessary to fulfil those aspirations in a world where it has become a lot more difficult than it was in the last 10 years.
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato): That speech spent 50 percent of the time criticising Labour in Opposition. Unbelievable. A speech from the Minister of Finance spent 50 percent of the time on criticism of Labour in Opposition, rather than on telling New Zealanders what the Government’s plan is for the future. [Interruption] OK, so the last 50 percent was an attempt to do that, but it is unbelievable that we are attacked in Opposition and the Government is not standing up for what it believes in. That is why I am pleased to be able to support the amendment to the motion, as moved by David Shearer, to add the following words: “and the National-led Government will sell New Zealand’s assets against the will of the public; the Government has no ideas to create jobs or a clean and innovative New Zealand; that the Government is widening the gap between the very rich and the rest and therefore this House has no confidence in the National-led government.”
I am pleased to be able to speak today. As I went through the Speech from the Throne, there were three key things that the Government highlighted that would underpin its way of doing things in this term. The first was a confidence and supply agreement—a strong one—with United Future, ACT, and the Māori Party. Well, less than 2 months later we see that that confidence and supply agreement is under threat. The one opportunity the Māori Party had to hold this Government to account in question time was not utilised by the Māori Party, and we should be concerned about that. In fact, it forebodes that the Government is on shaky ground and the Māori Party is probably poised to pull the plug.
The second pillar of the Government’s agenda, or strength going forward, is that it claimed that it would operate in an effective, inclusive, and stable manner. What have we seen? There are already claims from within its ranks that the Government has not been inclusive, and that it is not creating stability, by not being upfront in its coalition arrangements with its parties. Well, either the Māori Party is not telling the truth about National or the Government is fudging the truth on the Māori Party. Which one is it?
Hon Parekura Horomia: Both.
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: It probably is both, as my colleague points out.
We should be really concerned about this. The country deserves a stable Government that is inclusive and consults with communities in a real way—not a rushed consultation of 2 weeks, 3 weeks, or maybe a month, if we are lucky, but real, genuine consultation, and not predetermined outcomes, as we have seen is the case on asset sales and the Government’s consultation with Māori, but genuine opportunities for people to give feedback. But what we see here is that the Māori Party itself, a coalition member of this arrangement, is highlighting some very real cracks in its arrangements with National.
The third pillar to the relationship of this Government going forward is to build a more competitive and internationally focused economy. But we have already seen, in less than 2 months, the Crafar farms sold offshore to the highest bidder when there were New Zealand interests on the table and many people throughout the country were hoping there would be a real opportunity for Kiwi lands to stay in Kiwi hands. That did not happen. I think the Government is really underestimating the level of sentiment that is out there in provincial New Zealand, in our communities, amongst a wide range of people who say we should be looking for ways to keep Kiwi lands in Kiwi hands.
What else have we seen? We have seen the Government steamrolling ahead with its plan to sell State-owned enterprises. Granted, it was a key election platform of National going forward at the last election. But to say that this Government has a mandate to sell State assets, I think, is clearly overrepresenting the truth. In fact, if the Government on that question alone was to put the moral mandate for the sale of State-owned enterprises to the House—and I would challenge the House and seek leave of the House to put that vote, certainly in terms of the Māori mandate to the Māori electorate MPs, to see whether the Government has any support at all to sell State-owned assets. You know, the Iwi Leaders Forum should not be a default for a parliamentary mandate of people who have been elected to represent the views of their communities on issues like this. It is just too important to fritter away New Zealand assets where there is strong public sentiment that we should be keeping them and reinvesting in them to benefit all Kiwis—all New Zealand families.
Again, this question of moral mandate is something I want to focus on a little bit, primarily because the Government will tell you again and again that the election result in itself was a mandate to sell State-owned assets. But what we have in the House, clearly, is the fact that the Greens do not support the sale of State-owned assets, New Zealand First does not support the sale of State-owned assets, the Māori Party does not support the sale of State-owned assets, and neither does Mana. And Labour campaigned on this issue as a core policy: we believed selling State assets was not a long-term investment in the future of this country. Rather, it was short-sighted and would not deliver gains.
So how is it, in a parliamentary majority like the one we see here—those 61—that the great views of all New Zealanders will be represented? We have diversity in this House. MMP clearly delivered an opportunity for all Kiwis to represent that diversity in the parliamentary make-up, and I accept the outcome. But to say that one vote in this House then shifts the moral mandate of the Government to sell State-owned assets? I would caution: “Think again.”
In 2 short weeks the Government will be undertaking a consultation round, particularly with iwi, on this issue. At Waitangi we saw evidence of the fact that there are very strong views amongst Māori and amongst iwi on this particular issue, and on removing section 9 from the State-Owned Enterprises Act. I support the opportunity for Māori to contribute to the decision and think about what is on the table, but 2 weeks for a consultation? Come on! To call that consultation, I think, is a big disingenuous. We did hear the Minister for State Owned Enterprises in question time today almost imply that that was ample time for consultation on this very important issue.
There is probably going to be a lot more water to go under this bridge before decisions can be made with some conviction that the Treaty interests of Māori and of iwi will be protected. But Labour will watch this process very carefully. We will be seeking feedback of our own on the process, as we believe, and continue to assert, that State asset sales will not deliver long-term benefits to the country or to Kiwi families. We are convinced that there is no future in selling State assets. We all own those assets, and we do not want to be tenants in our own country. If this is the brighter future that National promised, then someone had better shine some more light down the hole it is sitting in.
Labour believes that there is no greater investment in the future of this country than ensuring that all of our children get the very best from a quality public education system. The Government seems determined to push ahead with national standards, even though they were not supported by the sector. They seem determined to increase class sizes for efficiency’s sake but not for the value of the learning outcomes of our children. They want to push ahead with charter schools when the evidence overseas is inconclusive. How it will be applied to the New Zealand context will further lead to greater concern amongst the education professionals; they are saying that now.
Education is just far too important to push along with blatant ideology. What we need is a high performing education system that invests in all our children and their learning capability. When I went to listen to Sir Paul Callaghan he said that at the foundation of the New Zealand education system we must recognise that we are a unique country, and that the language, culture, and identity of all our people must underpin a strong education system. I believe that is the case—not larger class sizes, not charter schools, not national standards, and certainly not shifting more money into private schools.
An export-led economy can be guaranteed only if we have a high-skilled population where all our children can thrive, not a system where there are winners and losers. National has very few plans on this front. The high rate of underachievement of vulnerable children, of children living in poverty, and of Māori and Pacific children is something that we should all be concerned about, because if this continues in our education system, the export-led economy that National is talking about cannot be realised to the full value of every Kiwi living in this country. Far too many of them are missing out. The Government should be very accountable to those who are most in need and those who are vulnerable—not losers, as Gerry Brownlee put it, but those most in need and most vulnerable. If we can see the benefits of that in education, then we will see a great investment in the future of this country.
Hon JO GOODHEW (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector): I begin my address this afternoon by saying that I am heartened to hear some words from the other side of the House that, in fact, are words that—[Interruption] There are some common ideas here about protecting the vulnerable—that is what we did during the recession—and, in fact, about improving the ability of those who are vulnerable to actually get a good education. That is what this Government is actually doing. An export-led recovery—we heard that several times. It is just that here in this Parliament this Government is delivering it in a totally different style from the style that was under the Clark Government, where I believe that member was a Minister. So on 26 November the people of New Zealand spoke, and as in all elections the mood of the day in the months leading up to the election was reflected in the vote. The people of New Zealand voted an increased percentage for this the National Government led by John Key. You know, in elections in times gone by it was most unusual for a second-term Government to have an increased percentage of the vote—most unusual, indeed. But that, in fact, is what the people of New Zealand delivered on election day last year. I would like to spend a bit of time rehearsing why I think that happened.
As a nation we have had a pretty tough time of it. In fact, you know, the vulnerable of this nation have had the toughest time of it. Unfortunately, New Zealand actually beat the gun into recession, and that was again because of the policies of the Clark Government. So having settled into the realms of recession, with job losses occurring and youth unemployment getting higher and higher, and given the fact that the tradable sector had not actually started to shrink since the recession but had started that very early, back in 2004, I believe, way before the recession, the State sector had been allowed—no, not allowed, perhaps; nay, encouraged—to gobble through the healthy surpluses as if there was no tomorrow. But then, of course, hang on, there was no tomorrow for the Clark Government come November 2008. So we added to that toxic mix of tax and spend devastating earthquakes, and a raft of other challenges. New Zealand was facing down the barrel of many gloomy tomorrows.
But John Key, his Ministers, and MPs were up to the challenge. Really, was there a choice? They had to step up to the mark, and they did. So after years of tax and spend, this Government certainly set out, knowing that was not the way to a brighter future in New Zealand. We had the sobering responsibility of managing the economy and the country through tough times, protecting those who were the most vulnerable, and all the while there were additional vulnerable people being added to that group. That is what happens in a recession. The trust and the goodwill that the public of New Zealand conferred upon us on election day—26 November—was, in fact, a solemn challenge. Our status as a First World nation has come under threat from the policies of old, the policies of the last Government under Clark. Now, in order to further protect vulnerable New Zealanders, we have to challenge the policy settings. We have to change those policy settings to enduring and sustainable policies so, in fact, we lessen our vulnerability. Strong, continued, and stable Government is the way forward, but the stability has to be with a purpose—the purpose to grow our economy, so we all have a brighter future.
The plan is a comprehensive one, and that action plan was announced in policy prior to the election. It is not a one-liner. It is not about tax and spend; it is about a brighter future. There is a fair heap of work in there that needs to be done. But it is worth working hard for; it is worth striving for. We have four priorities, and those priorities lay down the challenges that we must achieve to have a brighter future.
The finance Minister spoke in the House today about New Zealand earning an income, not borrowing it. There has never been a truer word spoken. New Zealand families who are making ends meet at this part of the year, when it is so tough for families in the post-Christmas and getting-into-school time, are making ends meet with their finances, so they are very pleased to hear that our No. 1 priority is to responsibly manage the Government’s finances. You see, as I often reassure my constituents, it is not the Government’s money. That is the way the Clark Government treated it, but it is not the Government’s money. It is taxpayers’ money. They worked hard to earn it, and they want us to make very good use of it. Our second priority is about building a more productive and competitive economy, and that is a pathway to a brighter future. The third priority is about examining public services under this tight fiscal setting and making our public services better. Lastly, and one that resonates very much with me and with the other Canterbury MPs, is our priority to rebuild our second-largest city, Christchurch. I will say something I have said in speeches over the last year or so: you know, I just do not think the majority of New Zealanders even knew it was our second-largest city until we started describing it as that, as we identified the magnitude of the task ahead. So I am heartened that the rebuild is amongst the top four. As Canterbury MPs we respect the work that has already been done by the Government. We are very, very pleased that there is money in the bank for that rebuild.
New Zealand’s future economic stability is going to be best served by our being returned to surplus by 2014-15, but it needs a firm and steady hand on the tiller to achieve that. Well, there are lots of analogies around the place about making the boat go faster, and I would like to remind the House of the spectre of a combination of the parties opposite steering our boat, “New Zealand”. With their combined policies, I believe we were looking at a potential Costa Concordia. Being fiscally responsible is not just about balancing the Government’s books; the flow-on to the people of New Zealand will also mean it will be keeping pressure off interest rates, which is the single-biggest cost to our households. We need to reverse, as a nation, the downward spiral that the Clark Government thrust New Zealand into when the tradable sector was not growing. New Zealand was always going to be living beyond its means and its productive capacity under settings such as that. We want to see an export-focused economy, built on a solid base of innovation, selling more of what the world wants, at a competitive price. That is actually quite a big ask; that is quite a comprehensive goal to be setting.
Our economic action plan will follow through on the progress we have actually made in the last 3 years. We have prioritised better public services, and we have made some good progress already. We have found the phantom trainees in the industry training organisation sector; we have actually found them, and we know that money was going to waste. We are reforming Government purchasing of supplies such as vehicles and information technology hardware, and, you know, the first four joint procurement projects alone are expected to save around $115 million over the next 5 years. There are many more examples. The programme of action is comprehensive. Now, we are also looking at the State sector, right across it, at how it is organised. We need to streamline and improve the way it works, for New Zealand’s sake.
Lastly, I want to touch again on that fourth priority, of rebuilding Christchurch. We are getting on with the challenge. It is a monstrously big challenge. Much of the demolition has taken place, and I want to pay tribute to the former Timaru District Council chief executive, Warwick Isaacs, who is handling some of the overseeing of the demolition projects. Empty spaces create opportunities for rebuilding. There will be grief and there will be loss at what those empty spaces mean—the memories. But Christchurch deserves a Government that is purposefully going to commit to rebuilding it. The people of Canterbury deserve that. We have put in 4,500 places for construction-related training in Canterbury and around the country, and we have also put a temporary 17,000-seat stadium in there for the Cantabrians who love sport. It is a bit like saying “Is the Pope Catholic?”—of course they love sport down in Canterbury. So it is very much one of our high priorities: $5.5 billion committed to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Fund. That is this Government’s share of that money—that is, this Government’s share of rebuilding local infrastructure—and to repair Crown-owned assets.
We have a big challenge ahead of us as a Government. Those four priorities say it all. They are part of a wider economic development plan that will build a stronger economy for New Zealand. It is a big challenge, but this Government is up to it.
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): In December last year in the Speech from the Throne delivered by the Governor General, the Prime Minister did two things: he identified what he called the “driving goal” of his Government, and he laid out what he called a “comprehensive agenda” and a substantive legislative programme to accomplish that goal. I thank the Prime Minister for setting out a rational and systematic, if rather visionless, exploration of the Government’s approach to the 50th Parliament. His comments were repeated today by the Minister of Finance, and, just most recently, by Jo Goodhew. They summarise it in terms of four priorities as they see it: returning to surplus, ensuring a competitive economy, cutting the Public Service and making it efficient, and rebuilding Christchurch. As she said, and they said, that is part of a broader programme for the redemption—the economic redemption—of this country.
So let me assess the Prime Minister’s driving goal that underlies his Government’s political agenda and legislative programme, and then I shall offer, on the same basis, an alternative goal, agenda, and legislative programme of a Green Government. The Prime Minister explained that the driving goal of this Government is “to build a more competitive and internationally-focused economy with less debt, more jobs and higher incomes.” This was to be pursued, he said, within the challenging context of an ongoing global financial crisis; the euro debt crisis; recovery from a series of devastating earthquakes in Canterbury; and a difficult recovery from a major national recession.
The Prime Minister then outlined a comprehensive policy agenda: a blow-by-blow account of oft-repeated lines of around 20 items. The environment and climate change did not make the agenda until over halfway through. His comprehensive policy agenda is a rational, if rather pedestrian, plan by a practical, if rather visionless, Government. Where, for example, is this Government’s vision for a brighter future for the people—for a more inclusive and harmonious New Zealand society? Where is this Government’s vision to make New Zealand a responsible global citizen? A strong economy certainly enables financial resources with a view to returning to surplus, but it does not, on its own, buy social and environmental justice and responsibility. These must be envisioned and enacted.
So what is to be found in the political agenda and the legislative programme of the Government? As I said, we can count 20 in the Speech from the Throne. First, and presumably most important, it seeks to return into operating surplus by 2014-15. Of course, that is laudable enough, although there is huge scepticism over the prospects of this occurring. Secondly, it plans to ensure a lower cap on core Government staff. This is, of course, an ideological twitch on the part of a National Government. Brilliantly the Prime Minister says that his Government will be focused on achieving results! Now there is a statement and vision and practical determination! There is not a Government in the 155 years of responsible government in this country that has not assured the voting public that it is intent on the Public Service achieving results. It simply begs the question of how we go about doing that.
Then there is the policy for what is mellifluously known as the mixed-ownership model. What that means is selling off our State assets overseas. It means the socialisation of the losses and the privatisation of the profits, as we saw during the financial crisis the Prime Minister cited as one of the problems his Government is encountering. There are other policies on welfare, on education, on innovation for entrepreneurship, and on strengthening infrastructure through building roads of national insignificance. There are changes ahead for housing and health, the ACC, and tougher law and order policies. There is a stray reference to the so-called constitutional review.
Then the Government purports to cover foreign policy, defence, and trade. It will focus on Pacific aid and run for a seat on the UN Security Council. It will maintain a bipartisan foreign policy. It will implement the Defence Capability Plan and continue to pursue high-quality trade agreements. This Government’s chances of securing a seat on the Security Council will be enhanced if it acts as a responsible global citizen through genuine multilateralism rather than crabbing its way back to the mid - 20th century, searching for military security through being very good friends with selected powers—panting, tongue hanging out.
The Government trumpets a bipartisan foreign policy, thereby displaying its ignorance of the multiparty nature of MMP, which has been in force for nearly two decades, or it betrays a subliminal preference for first past the post. Because the foreign policy of this Government cannot be described as globally responsible it is not bipartisanly shared by the Green Party.
We need an alternative vision of how this country can develop—how it can act in the wider world. Let me describe today a Green vision for a sustainable, richer New Zealand—a New Zealand that is a responsible global citizen, that recognises the need to be integrated globally, not just in economic terms but in environmental and social terms, as well. The Green vision for a strong economy is one that is fully entwined with environmental sustainability and social responsibility. It is a vision that lives within our means, and lives up to our clear, clean, green image. The Green economic vision has an expanded and more comprehensive measure of what success is. A Green Government would draw on measures such as the genuine progress indicator, which would benefit those who must inherit this economy from us. In political terms, in New Zealand the distinction is this: National believes that economic growth has a horizon, and that that horizon can be progressively pushed back through human ingenuity, provided a decent respect is paid to the environment. Labour has bought into that belief, though not without some anxiety. The Green belief is that economic growth has a limit, and that that limit is natural, immutable, and non-negotiable, requiring humanity to live harmoniously within its parameters, and at a certain material point to develop along cultural and spiritual lines rather than through simply further economic growth. There is a natural end point to economic growth.
David Bennett: When?
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM: The member says “When?”. When there is a Green Government; you are invited to vote accordingly. There are qualitatively different world views here. There is no deeper distinction between National and Labour thought, and Green thought, than this: the Green social vision is compassionate. Economic growth is not progressed if it occurs at the expense of social equality. The Green vision recognises that research and development are integral to progress. Where the Prime Minister repeats again that his Government intends to build more roads and get ultra-fast broadband, the Green vision sees research as invaluable to realising an innovative and sustainable future that does not further our reliance on finite and harmful fossil fuels. I call on this Government to review its own Speech from the Throne, and introduce into its driving goal, its agenda, and its legislative programme at least part of the Green vision. The people may have voted this Government in—just—but the people also want the Green vision that I have described.
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Land Information): I want to spend my time in this Address in Reply debate addressing just the one issue, and that is to do with the sale of land to foreigners. I want to start by just putting a bit of my personal credentials on the table. I am a sixth-generation New Zealander. The Williamson family came here in the mid-1800s from Scotland and settled, and have been farmers along the way. So I do not think that anyone could say I am some great desirer of new foreigners taking over, because I have a family history of being from this country. My 89-year-old mother lives peacefully in Matamata, where I was brought up in a dairy-farming town, and I must say that I think probably 97 percent of the people there will disagree with the decision that I have taken recently. I think I said to her that I have now got 97 percent of New Zealanders who hate me, and she said: “Is that down from 98, beforehand?”, so who knows?
What I want to make clear in this debate is that Ministers have some discretion when there are issues of doubt, but it is very clear from the Act, and it was very clear from the advice that was given to Ministers from Crown Law that no discretion exists if the applicant meets every one of the criteria that are in the current Overseas Investment Act 2005, passed by the Labour Government, and the corresponding regulations that go with it. Ministers cannot just say: “Well, I don’t care what the law says; I’m just going to exercise discretion and say no.” I have to tell members that there is such a thing as a judicial review and you would simply lose the case. If the Minister was taken to judicial review, he or she would lose the case if they were not able to say: “Mr Judge, I declined this because…”. Now, in the case of the Natural Dairy bid to buy these Crafar farms, I am happy to say that I put my signature to the decline. It failed to meet a number of the criteria under the Act. Some members of this House have claimed: “Oh yeah, Williamson just rubber-stamps them.” I did not rubber-stamp that application. I declined it, because it did not meet the requirements.
In the case of Kim Dotcom wanting to buy the Coatesville mansion, again, it got a decline. It got a decline that was able to be substantiated based on character and, as members will have seen from what has been playing out in the media in recent days, there may have been quite a good decision taken. But in the case of Shanghai Pengxin looking to buy these farms, it met every one of the criteria that are laid down in the Act passed by the Labour Government, and it met every one of the criteria laid out in the regulations—and remember that National even added two more criteria to try to strengthen the Act and the regulations, so that we did have a little bit more say, and all of those were met as well. So my frustration first, today, is with any one of the members of this House or of the public who say: “Oh, you just should have said no.” When David Shearer and David Parker from the Labour Party said that they would have said no, my very first question to them is on what grounds they would have said no. Remember, you do not just have the final say in this; there are courts, and Governments have been found by the courts to have acted inappropriately on a number of things, and they have overturned Ministers’ decisions. Take Chris Carter and the Whitianga waterways—
Hon Kate Wilkinson: Whangamata.
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: —or the Whangamata whatever it is. The Minister got overturned by the courts, because he did not follow the proper procedure.
The next thing that I find really difficult—because I do know there are some absolutely genuine people who do not want foreigners buying land in this country. I do understand that. I do not think there are many, but I actually fully respect those individuals who truly are consistent all along the way and say: “I do not want foreign ownership of our land.” But I think they are few and far between. The first one I do not understand is from those who were born in another country and spent the vast bulk of their life in another country. Russel Norman, for example, was born in Brisbane, grew up in Australia, and was an Australian all his life until he came here to write his PhD on the Alliance, yet he is getting up in this House and saying he does not want foreigners to buy land, and he is going on Breakfast saying he does not want foreigners to buy land. I, first of all, want to question his definition of what a foreigner is, because if he says it is as long as people come here to live, what about those ones like Shania Twain, who came here, bought a huge high-country estate, and had the Prime Minister Helen Clark walking with her across it for the photo opportunity? New Zealanders celebrated that. We celebrated Shania Twain’s purchase of this beautiful, big South Island high-country estate, saying: “Wasn’t it wonderful?”. I never heard a mutter, not a murmur, not a whisper from anybody about how dreadful that was—not one, and I have checked all of the newspaper articles. I have checked all of the speeches in this House—
Chris Hipkins: All the newspapers?
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: No, I am sorry; I got the research unit to go through them, and I have found not a mutter, not a murmur, not a whisper of how evil that was.
There have been lots and lots of others to the point, and let me give you some figures. First of all, I want to give a stern warning to the news media, which used so many figures during this debate that were wrong. And I will tell you why. There is a whole range of different numbers that you can use. For example, there is gross sale to foreigners, or there is net. Now gross, in my view, does not matter, because gross is where a German sells the land to a Swiss, a Swiss sells it to a French person, and a French person sells it to an American. Those do not really matter, because they were already owned by foreigners; they were already in foreign ownership. For me, the number that I think does matter is net, because net is where the land has been transferred from the ownership of a New Zealand entity to that of a foreigner. That, I think, matters, because it makes a difference; the other one did not. You may think there is a difference between a Swiss and a German owning the same piece of land, but I do not think there really is. Here are the numbers. During Labour’s 9 years in office it approved the sale—and this is net; I will stick with net figures for the rest of this debate—of 660,000 hectares of land, net, to foreigners.
One of my favourite years was the year 2006, when Winston Peters was the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the then Government. He was the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the then Government and it approved the sale of 375,000 hectares of land to foreigners that year, and not a mutter, not a murmur, not a whisper. So I have to say there is something funny going on here. It is one of these sorts of “Mahareyisms”: “Oh, that was then but this is now. It is all right when we did it but it is all wrong now.” I have to say, the public have woken up to that sort of dual view of the world—I think I can call it that; I cannot call it the “h” word—of “When we were doing it, it was all right.”
Then the next one is the fact that if they were Canadian, Swiss, or German—or the United States is a big buyer of land here—again, there was not a mutter, not a murmur, not a whisper. Not a mutter, not a murmur, not a whisper. And I have checked again through the news media. They have been happening on a regular basis. I do two or three of these a week, and suddenly it is the Chinese. If you think it is so wrong—if you think it is so wrong—why did the Labour Party not make such a hue and cry? Why did Helen Clark walk the track with Shania Twain and look at the beautiful high-country estate that was sold to—
Hon Phil Goff: Nothing was sold, he said. No sale was stopped, he said.
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: We are actually talking about farmlands here, Mr Goff. We are talking about farmlands, and Labour did not have a problem with it. Labour did not—
Hon Phil Goff: Why doesn’t the member tell the full story?
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: I am telling the full story; I am most certainly. I will tell the full story again, for the benefit of this House. Under Labour, 660,000 hectares were approved for sale—that is, of land to foreigners—and the Crafar farms with 7,000 hectares. So let me give the figure again—I will try to do it graphically—there were 660,000 hectares under Labour, and 7,000 with the Crafar farms.
Michael Woodhouse: You’re being generous, mate.
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Well, no, I cannot get my fingers close enough to get the graphics looking good. I want to make it clear: I would much prefer that New Zealanders had bought those farms. I would much prefer it. It is everybody’s preference, I would have thought, but in the end the Government has to abide by the law of the land. And did Labour campaign at the last election on changing the Overseas Investment Act to block foreigners from buying?
Hon Phil Goff: Yes.
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: No, it did not. No, it did not.
Hon Phil Goff: Oh yes, they did.
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: No, it did not. No, it did not—not a mutter, not a murmur in their policies of blocking foreigners from buying land in New Zealand. No, it did not. No, it did not. So I want to send a clear message to everybody that we should welcome the investment that comes from foreign investors, and the growth that they can create for our economy. We should welcome it as long as they are quality investors of high character who are going to benefit this country.
MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I want to go back to a comment that Bill English made, because I think it bears repeating. It was just one of those off-the-cuff comments that he made when he was doing his little routine after my colleague Grant Robertson’s very good speech. He said that Grant Robertson had spent all his speech talking about issues that “don’t matter to New Zealanders”. Now, what did Grant Robertson spend most of his speech talking about? Child poverty—child poverty. What a telling statement from the Minister of Finance that the National Government thinks that child poverty is an issue that does not matter to New Zealanders.
Then we had the new Minister Jo Goodhew. She spent a large part of her speech talking about how National spent the last 3 years protecting the vulnerable. Well, I would like to know what Jo Goodhew’s definition of “vulnerable” is, because I cannot think of any vulnerable New Zealanders who were better off at the end of the last National Government than when National was elected in 2008. Maybe she was talking about vulnerable National Party donors, because they were certainly looked after in the last 3 years of the National Government. Maybe she was talking about all those vulnerable foreign multinational companies, because they certainly were looked after under the last 3 years of a National Government. Maybe she was talking about those poor, vulnerable Australian insurance companies that are about to benefit from the privatisation of accident compensation. National is certainly doing a good job of protecting them over the next 3 years. They also fall into the category, I suspect, of vulnerable National Party donors, but we will never know, because the National Party refuses to disclose who donates to its election campaigns.
When you look at what National did in the last 3 years, you see unaffordable tax cuts that overwhelmingly went to those who did not need them—those who needed them the least. How can the Minister Jo Goodhew stand up in this House and say that National protected the vulnerable, when to pay for those tax cuts the Government cut funding for Women’s Refuge? Mr Ardern is a very sensible member. How is cutting the funding for Women’s Refuge protecting vulnerable New Zealanders? It was all to pay for tax cuts that went to the least vulnerable New Zealanders. How are cuts to early childhood education protecting vulnerable New Zealanders? How is it good for children in this country that National has now told us it will increase class sizes? How is that protecting the most vulnerable New Zealanders? How does rising child poverty in this country fit with National’s claim that it has protected vulnerable New Zealanders?
Is it not interesting that the reaction from the National Party to a TV3 documentary on child poverty was not “Oh my God, we should do something about child poverty.”; it was “Oh my God, we should stop New Zealand On Air from funding documentaries about child poverty, and we should not let them be played in the week of an election campaign.”? God forbid that we talk about an issue like child poverty in an election campaign! It is very telling that their reaction to that documentary was not “Let’s do something about child poverty.”; it was “Let’s shut down talking about child poverty, because we know it’s worse under our watch and we know we have absolutely no plan to deal with it.”
I remember John Key’s Speech from the Throne after the 2008 election. This was when he was aspirational for New Zealand, he was going to be turbocharging the New Zealand economy, and we were going to be aggressively coming out of recession very, very soon—of course, failing to mention the fact that in large part he would have been able to do that because Labour left the books in a good state. The International Monetary Fund said that if it had not been for Labour paying off our Government debt and saving that money for a rainy day, New Zealand would not have been in the good situation that it was in to deal with the global recession. The National Party likes to say that, you know, New Zealand went into recession before the rest of the world. Yes, we did, because we had droughts—because we had droughts. That is why we went into recession early.
In fact, New Zealand was in a very good position after the 2008 election because of the resilience that Labour had built into the economy. Unfortunately, that was squandered by a Government that had no plan to deal with the major issues facing our country over its 3 years in Government. But that was the idea: John Key was going to deal to unemployment, close the gap with Australia, and bring New Zealand aggressively out of recession and back into surplus. He was going to be straight up with voters; he was not going to mince his words.
What happened? Well, he failed on every single count—every single count. He is almost like a child waiting for Santa Claus at Christmas. I suspect he woke up every morning just hoping that the free market had fixed the problems overnight and he would not have to do anything because a free market fixes everything. Well, it has not, and we have gone backwards comparatively in the world because we have had a do-nothing Government for 3 years. The only thing it has done is protect those people who support it—protect its mates and its cronies. They are the only people who were protected under the National Government over the last 3 years.
Instead of being straight up with voters, John Key now says that we have to accept that we live in a dynamic environment—we live in a dynamic environment. He is not straight up with voters any more. In terms of Australia, last year saw the highest ever net migration to Australia. Unemployment is up by 50 percent; 157,000 New Zealanders are now out of work. And for the first time in 13 years not only did we get a credit downgrade but we got a double downgrade—a double downgrade. So much for turbocharging the economy, so much for being aspirational, and so much for aggressively coming out of recession.
In last year’s Speech from the Throne, after the recent election, what I could see was that the Prime Minister had learnt the lesson of making these commitments and then actually being held to account for them. What he did in this one was not make any commitments. He did not make any commitments and did not make any kinds of promises that he could actually be held to account against. There is still no plan for the economy; that was evident in the Speech from the Throne. If you consider today, we had the very first question time since the election—the very first question time. The Government had the opportunity to ask itself lots of questions that highlight all the great policies and plans and exciting new ideas that it has because it is recharged and ready for the next 3 years. What did we have? Another question for Maurice Williamson on SmartGate. That is normally a question that we get in the third week of a sitting session, when the Government is struggling to come up with questions. The first question time of this new Parliament and already they have to bring out the Maurice Williamson SmartGate question. That tells you something.
Alfred Ngaro: It was impressive.
MOANA MACKEY: Well, he did have a new angle on it this time, which was adolescent facial features. It was a new angle. I am not saying it was not interesting. But the reality is—with all due respect to the wonderful people at the Customs Service—that there are slightly more pressing issues facing this country than whether 16-year-olds’ faces are still developing and whether we can let them use SmartGate at our international airports.
This was an opportunity for the Government to tell us what it is going to do over the course of this year and to highlight its plans. But, of course, it does not have a plan.
The reality is that the opportunities are there. The opportunities are there for the Government to do what it said it was going to do 3 years ago, but has failed to do: to aggressively bring our economy out of recession, to get people back into work, and to improve our education system—not destroy it, which is, quite frankly, where this Government’s policies are going. But again, in the Speech from the Throne, there was nothing. There was no plan, and—this time the Prime Minister has learnt—no commitments that he could actually be held accountable for at the time of the next election. He failed to meet any of the commitments he made in his last 3 years of Government, so this time we heard absolutely no commitments.
I invite members to look at the plan that Labour put forward at the last election, because our tax package would get New Zealand back to surplus at the same time as the National Party was promising without selling our assets—without selling our assets. But it requires tough choices to be made.
The Government says it has a mandate on asset sales; it actually does not. When you add up the percentage of the vote that was gained by all those parties that opposed asset sales, including those that did not make it into this Parliament because they failed to reach the 5 percent threshold, more than 50 percent of New Zealanders voted for parties that had policies opposing asset sales—opposing assets sales—so there is no mandate for it.
The Government talks about its Future Investment Fund. I had a school principal in Gisborne say to me that 21st century education is not a one-off cost. Saying that we are going to sell off our assets to put a bit of money into schools on a one-off basis just shows how little the Government understands about education, because 21st century education is an ongoing cost and you can sell those assets only once. Once they are gone, they are gone. Assets built up by generations of New Zealanders, which this Government has no mandate to sell—once they are gone, they are gone. Particularly in the case of the power companies, we will see power prices going up. People are already struggling to pay the power bill, and we will see power prices going up when those assets are privatised.
It is short-changing future generations. Future generations are asking where the National Government’s plan is to deal with the cost of an ageing population. Where was that plan in the Speech from the Throne? The fact is we cannot keep putting it off. It is all right for John Key—he will get his superannuation—but what about younger New Zealanders now, who are looking and thinking that there is no way, given the ageing population, that New Zealand superannuation at its current level is sustainable if we do not make those tough choices? There were no tough choices made about that, about child poverty, or about any of the other issues facing New Zealand. It is about time the National Party members, when they get up, actually started outlining what their plan is for New Zealand.
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. That is a very wise call. Can I congratulate you also on your reappointment to the job. This is my first opportunity to do so. Can I say that in my time in this place I think it would be fair to say there has never been a more qualified team—that is, all of the Speakers that occupy the role you do—in regard to knowledge of the Standing Orders and process in the House. I am sure you will maintain the standards that we have become accustomed to from you. Congratulations on that.
It is always a privilege to follow my fellow Commonwealth Parliamentary Association group co-chair in one of these Address in Reply debates. She touched on a range of child poverty and social issues. I was once asked what I would consider it to be if I were considered as rich. My answer to that—and to her—is that providing I have three reasonably nutritious feeds a day, have a dry bed to sleep in, am able to pay the phone and power bills and the rent, and have a car that will pass the warrant of fitness every 6 months, I would consider myself to be rich. Of course, if you look at our colleagues on the other side of the House, by comparison, that is not what they consider. Those things that I spoke of, which are basic needs, they see as the minimum or poverty. Actually, if you do not have Sky TV now, something needs to be done about it, and social welfare should stump up!
Let us have a look at the comparison under the National Government led by John Key. In the last term of Parliament, we faced more crises, I think you could say, than any Government in modern history when you look at everything that went wrong during that period. The one that is, I guess, the most understated—and certainly completely ignored by the Opposition—is that fact that we have gone through what has been termed by international commentators the biggest economic meltdown or depression since the 1930s. I think we should reflect on that. Back at home, sure, there have been some companies and some individuals that have suffered during these economic times, but overwhelmingly we are in a better position economically than most of our trading or competing nation colleagues. When you ask the question of why that is, there is only one conclusion: because of the solid, sensible, considered economic policies of the Key Government. The Key Government intends to have New Zealand back in surplus by 2014. That is no mean feat. In fact, some would say it is an unrealistic goal, but all of the forecasts at this stage suggest that that is possible.
I want to touch on something I think has been the No. 1 driver in that, and that is the outstanding achievements within our agricultural industries. It is often overlooked, I have to say—by economic commentators, political commentators, and our Opposition—just what role the agricultural sector plays in the New Zealand economy. What has happened in the agricultural sector? At a time when markets have shrunk, when discretionary spending has shrunk, and when we have faced some of the toughest economic circumstances internationally, our market exports have continued to grow, particularly in the dairy industry. I want to congratulate the Hon Tim Groser on the work that he and others have done in making that possible, in opening up markets where markets did not exist, and in doing trade deals with countries we have historically had difficulty trading with. When you look at that, you see that the Key-led Government has achieved more in the previous 3 years, and has a programme going forward to achieve more, than anything we have seen before.
New Zealand has always been a proud exporter of agricultural products. I have heard comment from the new Labour leader recently—quite recently, actually—about how we need to spread our horizons and expand into non-commodity trading. I could not agree more. I think the Leader of the Opposition has absolutely nailed it with that comment. We must do that. But what that does not mention is the fact that about 60 percent of what Fonterra exported last year did not exist 5 years ago. Those who are suffering from asthma use inhalers. To suggest that that inhaling product, if you like, or carrier for those inhalers—it is a lactose-based product developed in the New Zealand dairy industry—is a bulk commodity is simplistic and childish in the extreme. We need to look at where our opportunities exist.
If you go through the basket of products we export from that industry, you will find that we have nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, high tech protein-based capsules for pharmaceuticals—the list goes on. As I said, 60 percent of what was exported from our biggest company last year did not exist 5 years ago, and I challenge the Opposition to have a look at some of that stuff.
What are the big issues facing the Government going forward, and what does this new National Government need to address in partnership with its support parties? The first thing that we need to address is responsibly managing the Government’s finances. If you look at the growth in the public sector through the whole 9 years of the previous Government, at how sustainable that is in the current economic environment, and at what the National Government has done to achieve a higher level of service from our public sector with the same level of finance, then you would have to conclude, as would the rest of New Zealand, that that has been managed reasonably well.
Building a more competitive and productive economy does not mean throwing up a whole lot of cost of compliance and regulation, whether it be under the guise of environmental protection, or whether it be under the guise of fairness and equality in terms of who pays what tax where and in terms of depreciation. Wherever you look, the rhetoric that came out of the Opposition in the last term of Parliament, and prior to that, was to place more costs. In fact, in the last term of Parliament it was suggested that dairy farmers in New Zealand do not pay enough tax and something should be done about that. Well, I have some dairy-farming colleagues this year who are not that happy that they are paying, you know, six and seven figures in tax in some cases. I challenge others in the House or in the economy to step forward and demonstrate how they believe that dairy farmers paying a higher tax burden than they are already would be beneficial for New Zealand.
I heard the previous speaker say that giving tax cuts to the rich is not the way forward in a struggling environment. I could not agree more, if that is, in fact, what happened. But it is actually middle-class New Zealand that benefited the most from the last Government’s tax cuts, and I would have to suggest to you that there are large cross-sections of New Zealanders now who do not pay any tax at all if they have a family, given the tax rebates that they get.
Delivering and rebuilding on the Christchurch circumstance that we find ourselves in is something that no Government would ever want or could plan for. It is the No. 1 priority for this Government, and huge amounts of capital are committed to that. I do not think there is a single person in Parliament who would get up and claim that we should not be doing that. It is a question of how quickly we can do it, how we fund it, how New Zealand can benefit from that, and, going forward, once that has happened, how we can sustain the economy in the area.
Introducing irrigation to the Canterbury Plains—and across the rest of New Zealand where that is possible, where it is feasible, and where it will give an economic return—is one of the key platforms that the Key-led Government has announced as a policy going forward. This will be hugely beneficial to the New Zealand economy. It does not mean 100 percent conversion of the Canterbury Plains to dairy. What it could mean is that we diversify the land use into a range of other developments. In fact, right at the moment lamb fattening would return a higher return on investment than conversion to dairy. Markets internationally are opening up for that as well, along with everything else.
The Key-led Government has a dynamic plan going forward, has shown strong leadership up to this point, and will manage the New Zealand economy, I think, better than any other group or combination in the future. Thank you.
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): It is a great pleasure to speak in the Address in Reply debate this afternoon. I would just like to follow on from the previous speaker who made a very good point about New Zealand agriculture and the strength that New Zealand agriculture displays as the main income producer for New Zealand. Following on from that I think not only do we have to be proud of the industries that are involved there and the history of investment and hard work that has gone into making those industries so successful, but we also need to look at the attitude, I think, that those industries display. It is an attitude of hard work, resilience, backing themselves, being prepared to take risks, and also looking for challenges and meeting those challenges and accepting them. Those are common fundamental principles of any economy where there is success. If you look at the industrial growth of China, for example, you see that they have a very similar success story. They have met the challenges of producing products and have done it in a way that has exceeded their competition, and many other countries have failed to keep up with them and paid a dear price economically.
That leads on to the situation that New Zealand faced and most of the Western World faced in the last few years. There is a deep recession in Europe. New Zealand was in recession before the rest of the world, thanks to our previous Labour administration, and the US is struggling to get through the recessionary pressures that are in the world at the moment. I challenge this Parliament to look at it in terms of an East-West divide. Maybe on the Eastern side of the political equation or the world they may have actually looked at things in a more long-term and reflective manner than the West has. Maybe the East has got something that the West needs to learn, and that is that government is not about promises for one election to the next. Government is about building futures, and futures are long term. We in the West tend to think an election is a time when we can go and buy votes. You have parties going out there, promising all these things—promising to people who may be seen as vulnerable that they will change that; promising that their policies are the way to solve the problems—when maybe, just maybe, we need to take a more Eastern perspective and look at it with a long-term vision and actually look at government as a long-term driver, and look not at our individual gain per election, but at our long-term gain over time.
That, I think, is the thing that the European countries have not done. They still face countries that go from election to election and from promise to promise. Can we buy the votes of those voters to stay in power? This is something the Labour Party was very good at doing in the previous administration. But the world has moved on. The world needs stable government, the world needs government that is long term in focus, and the world needs government that has a strong economic base. Those economic fundamentals are something that we as a country may not pick up explicitly, but implicitly the people of our country know that. In their day-to-day lives they know that they can lose their job if the company they are working for does not perform. They know that the services they will get from the Government depend on the ability of the Government to earn revenue and deliver those services. The days of borrowing just to deliver services are gone. The days of a country having to earn its way are the future. That is a very strong driver that our people understand, but often our politicians do not understand, and the Labour Party did not understand it at the last election. It did not understand what people were actually going through on the street, and that is why it did not connect with the people on the street. We as a Government and as a country need to have a much longer-term vision. We need to look forward at what our country needs to deliver. I see the Green members shaking their heads—
Phil Twyford: In disbelief.
DAVID BENNETT: No, in support. They understand and they advocate that in an environmental context. It is a shame they do not do it in an economic context and also a social context. But in an economic context, which is one of the major issues that we as a country have to deal with at the moment—environmental as well, but economic as well—that requires long-term planning that invests in infrastructure, that makes the right commercial decisions so that New Zealanders can grow their economy, grow their businesses, provide those jobs, and provide the environment for us as a country to then afford to deliver the social services we all treasure and want to see enhanced. That is the challenge for this Government and for future Governments. The challenge of the past has been in terms of what we can promise for a 3-year cycle; the challenge of the future is to look forward to what we need to do to deliver a stronger economy and a country and environment going forward. The National Party is committed to long-term growth, we are committed to long-term planning, and we are committed to making sure this country takes advantage of its opportunities. That is the difference between us and the Opposition.
The Opposition, I bet, will stand in this room for the next 3 years, looking at short-term things. It will be looking at short-term issues with a short-term vision. We do not have a short-term vision; we have a vision that is the right vision in the current economic environment. It is one where we are investing in the infrastructure that this country needs. We are building the roads, we are putting the broadband in, and we are giving those assets to our people so that long term they can grow. That is very much the economic model you see in successful countries. Whereas the Chinese at the moment are building roads and building infrastructure, the Russians are building roads and building infrastructure, and the Indians are building roads and infrastructure, the European countries of Italy and Spain are talking about how they can manage their debt. They are not looking at the economic fundamentals they need to, and until the day they measure themselves and look at those long-term interests, they will not compete in the modern world and they will fall further down.
But New Zealand has the ability to compete. As Mr Ardern said, we have got an agricultural economy that is poised to be in the right place at the right time. We are beside the major economic markets that this world will have for the next generation or so. We are close to them. We have never been close to them before. We made our money in the 50s, but we made it by being far away from those economic markets. Now they are close, so we have to take advantage of that. We also have to be able to look at the transfer of skills and the ability to be part of that neighbourhood. We cannot look at ourselves in isolation. If you want to have an isolated New Zealand that does not grow and does not achieve, well then you are going to hold your people back, and we cannot afford to do that. New Zealanders need to be able to invest in things and get that technology so that they can grow and have the standard of living that they desire. And this Government will deliver that through our plan, because we will responsibly manage the Government finance, we will build a stronger economy, we will look at the delivery of public services, and also we will rebuild Christchurch so that it is an integral part of the New Zealand plan. And that is a long-term focus, which is something most Western economies do not realise and do not accept at the moment. That is what is needed for this country to grow. It is the success of us going forward, and with good leadership we will achieve that. Thank you.
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. Now I have heard everything! Now I have really heard everything! I never, ever thought I would come to this House and hear David Bennett invoking the great Eastern philosophers in support of National’s economic policy, which the rest of us have come to think of as cut, cut public services; sell, sell our assets; and hope. I never, ever thought I would hear this, but every day is a new day and that always makes it exciting to come to the House. You never know what you are going to hear from members on that side of the House.
Where is the bold rhetoric? Where is the brighter future that we heard so much about? Where is it now? Like a fake suntan that has worn off, the perennially relaxed Prime Minister is no longer wearing his permanent smile. In fact, in recent weeks he has looked decidedly tired and grumpy. And the reason is that National has run out of ideas. It is all getting a bit hard for the Prime Minister and members on that side of the House.
I looked in vain during the election campaign for National’s campaign advertisements showing Mr Key in the Westpac Stadium, talking about all the New Zealanders who are heading to Australia. Do you know why we did not see images of Mr Key in the Westpac Stadium? Why? Because there is not a stadium big enough in this country to signify the sheer volume of New Zealanders who are leaving permanently for Australia: 113,000—113,000—New Zealanders have left this country permanently to go to Australia since this Government first took office. Last year 36,900 New Zealanders made up the net migration to Australia—the highest ever recorded. Why did they leave? They left, and they are leaving, because they have lost hope in this Government. The world has changed, but National’s thinking, National’s policies and its answers, has not changed. This Government has run out of ideas. Just like the definition of a psychotic who keeps on trying the same old thing, National keeps on hoping that the results will be different.
I want to give the House a couple of examples of how National has run out of ideas—how it has run out of steam and it just keeps on trying the same old things. Last week the Ministry of Transport released its briefing to the incoming Ministers, and it made very interesting reading. What those officials in the Ministry of Transport told us—their analysis and their data made it very clear—is that the centrepiece of this Government’s transport policy for the last 3 years, the roads of significance to National, otherwise known as the RONZ, is tipped to become increasingly insignificant because the world is changing and National has not woken up to that fact. What the briefing showed us was that this Government is going to be increasingly unable to fund the commitments that it has made to build the roads of national significance. There is a divergence in the budgeted cost of these seven gold-plated motorway projects and the other four that the Government proposes to add to the list. The divergence is between the budgeted cost and the Government’s ability to fund the construction of those motorways from the normal sources of transport revenue.
The fact is that with a flat economy and rising oil prices, people are driving less. They are choosing to take public transport increasingly, and, because they are driving less, the Government’s transport revenue through road-user charges and through the petrol excise is falling proportionately to the size of the economy and the commitments that this Government has made to build the roads of national significance. So on one hand you have got a growing divergence between the Government’s commitments and its ability to pay for them, and, on the other hand, no one can afford to drive on these motorways because of the cost of petrol. It is bizarre that at the very time when New Zealanders are choosing to drive less and demand for public transport is growing, this Government has redoubled its commitment to the so-called roads of national significance. It shows no sign of wavering from its total obsession with building gold-plated motorway projects, which rob every other major category in the transport budget, including local roads, rural roads, road safety, and urban public transport. They have no qualms—the members on that side of the House—about robbing every other budget category to fund their roads of National Government significance.
Now you would think, at a time of rising oil prices, that it might be a good thing to think about the long-term resilience of our transport sector over the next 10, 20, 30 years. But what this Government is doing is precisely the opposite. By refusing to support Auckland’s plans and aspirations for a modern public transport system, by refusing to stump up with its share of the funding needed for the city rail link in Auckland, and by insisting on going ahead with the discredited Pūhoi to Wellsford “Holiday Highway”, this Government is making the country more and more dependent on imported oil, at the very time that we should be thinking about making our transport sector more resilient and having a more balanced transport policy that invests in public transport, in rail, and in coastal shipping. But the Government, sadly, does not see the logic of that; it is building roads like there is no tomorrow. Even though traffic demand, traffic volume, has been more or less static for the last 4 or 5 years, it refuses to recognise the demand for public transport, at a time when more and more people are getting buses and trains to work.
The second example that I want to give also relates to transport, and it is specifically about Auckland. It has been really instructive in the last few weeks. The New Zealand Herald has run an interesting series of stories about some of the big challenges facing our country’s biggest city. I hope members on that side of the House have read over the last couple of days what the New Zealand Herald has said about our unfair tax system and how it is driving ever-higher levels of social inequality. But one of the other really interesting articles that the New Zealand Herald has had in the last week or two highlighted last week that Auckland, our country’s largest city, will face midday traffic jams in the next 20 years—midday traffic jams—because the programme of road building that had been carried out by Labour when we were in Government, and that has been continued under this Government, simply will not, on its own, solve the problem of traffic congestion. The changes, the effect of the road-building programme over the last couple of years, are expected, according to the Ministry of Transport, to reduce congestion by only 14 percent by 2021. Congestion will be reduced by only 14 percent by 2021.
If there was ever a wake-up call that the National Government’s mantra of roads and suburban sprawl will not deliver a workable future for our country’s biggest city, this is it. But National is blind to the demands and deaf to the aspirations of Aucklanders, who want to live in a livable city. They want to be able to move around their city. National’s only recipe is to build more and more motorways and add more and more lanes to the existing motorway. It will not take on board the idea that we have to build a more balanced, integrated, intermodal transport system that actually gives people the real opportunity to leave their cars at home and free up the roads for the rest of us. Spaghetti Junction, the single-biggest motorway interchange in the southern hemisphere, completed only a few years ago, is already at full capacity in peak hour at both times of the day—and the National Government wants to build more and more motorways across the city, most of them heading into the central city. Well, you do not need to be a rocket scientist to know that that simply will not work. We have to invest heavily in public transport, to ease congestion and provide a more balanced transport system. Unfortunately, National has run out of ideas, and all it wants to do is do the same thing over and over again.
TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. Thank you for the call, and a very happy New Year to you. It is a pleasure, as always, to follow Mr Twyford, but I would have thought now that he is an electorate member for Auckland—and with his transport role in the diminished Labour Party caucus—he would be particularly aware that this Government has made a very significant investment in rail in his area. It is a very important investment. I would have thought he would welcome that, not ignore it in his contribution.
I also want to say as a Waikato member how thrilled I am, as we speak about that roading development, that the Waikato Expressway is on track. It is going to deliver more for our region—and I am sure my colleague the member for Hamilton East will agree with me—than anything else in recent times. It is the single most important thing we can do for the economic development and the social development of our region. It will get people moving, it will get businesses moving, and it will create employment. It is a great development. Yes, it is important, and that is why we as a Government have been putting so much emphasis on the roads of national significance. I look forward to Mr Twyford coming up to speed, getting to understand what it is all about, and throwing his wholehearted support behind it.
Mr Assistant Speaker, could I at the outset congratulate you on your reappointment to your position, and also Mr Speaker, the Deputy Speaker, and the other Assistant Speaker. We are well served by our presiding officers in Parliament, and I wish you well. I would also like to thank the electors of Hamilton West for the great honour that they have done me by returning me with an increased majority. I was very proud to achieve that result and I am very conscious of the honour and the responsibility that I have. I will be doing my best to justify the faith that they have again placed in me, and will be working as hard as I can for the benefit of our exciting city and our vitally important region.
On this day, as we marked in Parliament the diamond anniversary of our Sovereign, I would like to pay my respects to Her Majesty the Queen. I am personally a very strong supporter of our current constitutional arrangements. I believe that she, in her role as head of the Commonwealth, has shown a devotion to duty and a lifetime of service that are admirable and really worth acknowledging. I do thank her for that. I also pay my respects to His Excellency and Lady Mateparae as they settle into their new viceregal responsibilities. I believe that they are off to a very good start and that they will serve us well over the next 4½ years.
The Address in Reply debate, of course, focuses on what we heard from the Crown, through the Governor-General, at the opening of the Parliament. There were no surprises in it, because it is essentially a reflection of the issues that were very well canvassed in last year’s general election. What did that election result give us? It gave a Government that for one of the few times in my lifetime actually saw its share of the party vote go up and its numbers go up. It saw an Opposition that could not really work out where it stood on the issues and did not have any credible policy pay the price for that disarray and substantially go down. And it saw the return of one party, the enlargement of another, and a little bit of moving around. But essentially the most important thing is that it gave us another strong John Key - led Government and a very clear mandate to press on with the issues and the policies that the electorate unquestionably endorsed at the ballot box.
I want to welcome all new members of this House and congratulate them. It is a very significant honour; I wish you well. I know that there are very talented people who have come into the House. You come in, of course, at a time of very considerable challenges to us as a country and to the whole world. We are still in the grip of a global economic downturn that has really had a significant impact—there is no question. For instance, we need only look at the fact that in last year’s election we were defending a zero Budget. If you had told me as I was defending one of the marginal seats in the country that I would have to go into an election defending a zero Budget, I think I would have gone pretty white. Some say I have gone pretty white! Nevertheless, it was what the public understood we needed to do. So I wish the new members the very best of luck as you join us to discharge your responsibilities. I look forward to constructive contributions and I particularly look forward to hearing your maiden statements over the next few weeks.
Because of those challenges that I have just mentioned, the critical importance of having an economic plan that is appropriate and is going to achieve what we need to do is patently apparent. There are, of course, no easy answers to the position we are in. Borrow and hope is clearly not an option. We need only look at what has been happening in Europe in recent times to realise how dire the position of some previously admired economies is; we do not want to go down that path. New Zealand is doing everything it can under the John Key - led Government to get our borrowing under control and to ensure that we are back in surplus by 2014-15. Notwithstanding all those major challenges, particularly the devastation in the Canterbury region in the last 18 months or so, we remain on our path to doing that. I salute Bill English and the team working with him for that significant achievement.
When we are not borrowing, when we are back in surplus, we have choices. We can continue to invest in the things we want to, rather than simply being constrained and having to spend quite a bit of what we earn on interest repayments. We were forced into that borrowing option by the previous Government, and let us never forget that. Wasteful expenditure—incredibly wasteful expenditure—on a whole range of things meant that this Government came into office already in a recession, having to rein it in and get our spending back under control, because you cannot continue spending what you do not earn without imperilling future generations. That is what the last Labour Government did, that is why New Zealanders threw it out of office, and that is why they are saying to us: “For the sake of future generations, do what you are doing, National-led Government, because there is no alternative.”
Tax and spend is not an option. Tax and spend is not an option, because—[Interruption] I did enjoy seeing The Iron Lady, or “The Iron Maiden” or whatever it is called. What a wonderful film—a fine performance by Meryl Streep. I have to say that I think Margaret Thatcher was a pretty impressive person. She faced similar challenges. She rose to that. She rose to that challenge as well, and good on her.
Hon Maurice Williamson: Labour is an alternative—not a good one, but it is an alternative.
TIM MACINDOE: Fortunately, it is not one, Mr Williamson, that New Zealanders are showing any enthusiasm for opting for at the moment.
What did those members want to offer? More tax and spend—a failed philosophy that simply stifles investment and productivity and drives anyone of an entrepreneurial spirit who can do so offshore in search of greener pastures. That is the last thing we want. We know that some New Zealanders have gone. We are a very nomadic country; we have a very large expatriate population living offshore. That is not altogether bad, because they pick up skills, and as long as they come back eventually we benefit from that. But we must ensure that this is an attractive country with an economy that welcomes them home and that attracts them to invest here, because that is what we need for our long-term prosperity.
As a Government we are naturally very focused on the need to care for all our citizens. There are many who are struggling through the recession and there are many who need the assistance of the State, and we are committed to providing that. But we cannot do it if we do not have the economy under control.
We are, of course, committed to promoting sustainability of our environment. It is a topic that has certainly become far more popular to talk about in recent times. We are dedicated to doing it. We are very much focused on lifting educational achievement—no apologies about that. We are passionate about achieving that, and our dynamic new Minister of Education is determined to do it. I wish her well. I know that she is off to an excellent start and she is earning the respect of people in that area, and I wish them all well as they lift educational achievement for the good of our country and particularly for our young people.
Welfare reform is crucial, and as a member of the Social Services Committee in the last Parliament—we began to look at this—I am delighted that we will be working on this. If we are going to have a social security system that is responsive and is appropriate it must not trap people in long-term dependency, it must ensure that everybody who can work is working, and it must ensure that all the right incentives are there. Those incentives have been whacked off balance in recent times; we are going to get them back on track. There are some important challenges there.
I mentioned Christchurch and Canterbury a short time ago. Time moves on and the media sometimes shifts its focus, but we are conscious of the fact that Cantabrians have now faced over 10,000 aftershocks. They had those terribly big ones, devastating as they were, just before Christmas. We remain focused on doing the job. As Mr Bennett mentioned a minute ago, that is a long-term commitment and we will ensure that we do not let them down.
These are exciting times. These are going to be challenging times, and they will be difficult times for us as a Government. I am really excited, however, by the plan that we have got on offer. I know that the country has huge confidence in what we are delivering. Let us get on with it—there is no time to lose.
LOUISE UPSTON (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the debate be now adjourned.
Motion agreed to.
Bills
National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill
In Committee
Hon DAVID CARTER (Minister for Primary Industries): I seek leave for all the provisions of the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill to be taken as one question.
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection. Members, we move first to the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. The question is that Part 1 stand part.
Hon Damien O’Connor: Mr Chairman—
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): One moment, we have a—[Interruption] Just to clarify what the debate is about, as it is one question, I am sure the honourable member knows that it is one debate—
Hon Damien O’Connor: Wide ranging, Mr Chair?
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, he did not seek a wide-ranging debate; he just sought that all parts be taken as one question.
Hon Damien O’Connor: Asset sales?
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, you are testing me, Mr O’Connor. So the question is that Parts 1 to 6, schedules 1 and 2, and clauses 1 and 2 stand part.
Clauses 1 and 2, Parts 1 to 6, and schedules 1 and 2
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): Thank you, Mr Chair. I appreciate your guidance there.
I just start by going back. We have started the new Parliament. The National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill has been hanging around for some time—in fact, since 2004, when the previous Labour Government, in its wisdom, saw the need to introduce a tracing system that would not put us at the leading edge of national animal management, but would actually just bring us up to what has been occurring in a number of other countries for a number of years. We pride ourselves on being a nation of good managers of agriculture, livestock, animal welfare issues, and, of course, biosecurity.
Unfortunately, at the time when Labour introduced this legislation there was quite a vicious campaign launched by Federated Farmers against this initiative. I have to get that on record, because as a result of that it is now 2012, some 8 years on, and we are passing this bill through Parliament.
Labour supports the bill because we know it is necessary. We need to know where animals are, whom they have been sold to, and what should occur in the terrible and unlikely event of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth, for example. We now trace our animals for tuberculosis, and many of the dairy animals are traced for breeding purposes, but we do not have one comprehensive scheme. This bill will move us down that track for cattle and for deer.
Just to reiterate, the countries that currently have such a scheme in place are Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, the USA, South Korea, Japan, the EU, Argentina, and Brazil. We are right behind all our competitors, and in a world where consumers are demanding to know where their food comes from and how it was produced, and want an assurance that it can be traced in the event of some contamination or in the event of some disease—we are not there yet—the sooner we pass this through the House, the better. The National Government sat around on its hands, I would suggest. The Primary Production Committee dealt with this bill as quickly as we could, but it has been sitting around and it is important that we move on.
The select committee dealt with a number of issues in its consideration, and I am sure the chairman will speak at some stage. There were issues because of that 8-year period. Technology moves on very, very quickly. What was, in my view, a political stance by Federated Farmers to animal tracing in 2004—to object on the basis that technology was unsure and all the rest of it—was just an excuse at that point. There were, however, legitimate questions around the technology that should be used moving forward to make sure we did not impose a system on farmers, processors, and saleyards and then realise 2 or 3 years down the track that the technology was obsolete. I think the select committee did its very best in this area.
The issue comes down to low frequency versus high frequency. Both frequencies are used on the farm—less so in processing factories. Labour has supported and supports a bill that opens the door for both technologies, but we hope that there will be clear alignment of them as this moves forward, because as soon as we can tell where all the beef cattle, the dairy cattle, and the deer in this country are, then we will be better off and more secure in terms of potential biosecurity threats.
I go back to the bill. I am sure the Minister for Primary Industries will get up and answer a few queries on technical points. One of the questions that we have to ask of the new organisation is about its ability to communicate with and connect to lifestyle farmers. As I say, farmers have reluctantly taken this on board. I think they now appreciate the benefit of this. Lifestyle farmers—people with few animals—may not understand the threat that they, if they stay outside the system, may pose to our whole production systems in agriculture. I implore the officials to take on board some guidance about how to get out there and how to do some public relations. We are told that there will be a whole lot of brochures and a whole lot of marketing. We just have to make sure that that marketing is well targeted, and that it is effective in getting out to those lifestyle farmers.
Can I say, given that we have a broad-ranging debate, that there have been assets sale here as well—and I know that the Minister smirks. In fact, the Government, in its enthusiasm for asset sales, actually sold off last year a company that is likely to benefit—and good luck to them—from the implementation of National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT). Sirtrack was a subsidiary of the Crown research institute Landcare Research, and was sold to a Canadian company. It has actually developed technology that will be of huge benefit to the system when it is implemented in this country. All I say on that—because I know you are allowing a wide-ranging debate, Mr Chairman—is that if we see the stupidity of asset sales continue, then once again we will miss out on potential benefits as we move into the future.
But I come back to NAIT. I just say that the question of sheep is one that I think should be raised. The sheep farmers out there will be panicking and saying “Oh, not us! Why should we be involved?”. I am not quite sure what a ewe was worth in 2004—that is, a female sheep, not “you”, Mr Chairman, because we are not allowed to say that, of course. A ewe was probably worth maybe $30 to $40. Now they are looking at $150 to $200 for a good ewe. I think that sheep farmers might now understand the potential benefits of having their animals included in a traceability scheme so that if we have an outbreak we can move quickly, protect our export industry, and know where each and every one of the sheep are. At the moment sheep are outside the scheme, and the Minister may want to get up and explain whether he intends to move in that direction and include sheep. At the moment it is cattle and deer, and I think that is a positive step forward.
I am not going to say anything more, other than that Labour supports this bill. It has been a long time in coming, and this will be a very important step forward for the credibility, the integrity, and the value of the New Zealand agricultural production systems.
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country): Mr Chairman, can I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your reappointment as Deputy Speaker—I have not had a chance to do that until now. This National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill, as the previous speaker, the Hon Damien O’Connor, said, came to the Primary Production Committee, and we spent a considerable amount of time going through the issues in relation to the detail of this. In doing so we made some recommendations to the Minister for Primary Industries. I am pleased to say that the Minister has taken up most if not all of those recommendations.
The previous speaker touched on the need for a robust identification system, and that is absolute. We as members of the Primary Production Committee just met with a Swedish delegation of our counterparts from that country. They were fascinated by the growth of our primary industries in this country and asked us what it was that we thought may have differentiated what we do here as compared with what is happening in other parts of the world. One of the things that sets us aside when you look forward at what our opportunities might be as far as exporting our primary industry products is concerned is our quality control and the checks and balances and assurances we can give when we market product to something like 150-odd countries in the world.
One of the things that goes with that is traceability. How certain are you that the product you are selling is what you say it is, to the quality the market is requiring, and what you are suggesting you are going to market it as? That makes it absolutely essential that we have in place systems that can robustly check those measures. That comes down to something as fundamental as being able to identify the particular animal in question. It is important not only from a quality-control point of view but from a biosecurity point of view as well.
So the select committee looked at what was being proposed, listened to a wide range of submissions, and called in a number of experts, and through that process we discovered that potentially we were being left behind by emerging technology. We were not sure—and how will you ever be sure of those things—and so we asked for further advice on how we could make the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill more enabling around that. We received some, I guess, conflicting information. The Minister and his officials have been grappling with that for some time. Ultimately, we ended up in a situation where we have come up with provisions that enable future development in that area. So the bill is an enabling piece of legislation that does not lock in one or another particular piece of technology.
Some of the opposition that the previous speaker spoke of earlier in the debate on this issue was around what cost there would be to the individual producer and what potential benefit there could be to the individual producer. As our markets have emerged and developed, and prices have increased, there is more and more potential for this to be used not only for the purposes intended by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Government but by farmers themselves in the management of their farming systems. So to enable a rapid and accurate tracking of animals from birth to death is something that is fundamental for our exports. There is nothing more fundamental than providing information on the location, the movement, and the history of animals, and I think it was brought to the attention of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, under the previous Government, with the Waiheke Island foot-and-mouth hoax. There were a lot of small lifestyle blocks, as you would expect at a location like that, that were unidentified, or the animals thereon were unidentified, and a lot of time was spent trying to ascertain what was actually there and what the risks were. The real irony of that is that by the time that information was available, news reports and suchlike were reporting all sorts of things that were inaccurate. To be able to have an accurate register of these livestock is absolutely fundamental to the integrity of our biosecurity system.
This bill is intended to improve our biosecurity management. It will help manage risks around human health. These are often overlooked. With the whole debate around the use of 1080 and the eradication of possums, what are we trying to do here? We are trying to control the spread of tuberculosis. It has an effect on humans. It is an old disease. It is not something that is commonly thought of as a modern-day disease, but it could be, and the interrelationship between bovine tuberculosis and human tuberculosis is well documented. So there is a lot of opportunity in regard to that.
To improve animal productivity—that is the point, I think, that the previous speaker was touching on. There is a range of options in terms of recording the performance of individual animals within a herd or a flock that ultimately could lead to a profitable use by the farmer himself or herself of this new technology. That is something that I think is completely underexplored at the moment. It is probably more advanced in the cattle industries of dairy and beef than it is in the sheep industry, but there is an opportunity for all.
The bill also, as I said earlier, allows a higher degree of certainty around market access. When we are marketing to the world we need to be able to assure those markets that we are providing a product up to a standard. It also supports a lot of the compliance issues that Ministers face in international agreements around trading. So there is a range of opportunities there. Enabling the establishment of the National Animal Identification and Tracing governing organisation is going to be a fundamental part of the whole process going forward, and, you know, the legislation needed to be solid around that. If there is any further debate to be had I am sure it will be had in the Committee stage of this process. Data management systems, the protection of those, and the information provider involved in that have the same difficulty as any other information provider and data management. So the right regulation, etc., around that needs to be set.
Then, of course, the species of animals that are included is an evolving thing. I suspect that it will not be long before all types of animals are in there, but obviously there is some resistance from our sheep-farming colleagues as to what benefit there could be and how you can credibly have a retention rate of the devices to make it a robust system. One of the challenges, I guess, is that, you know, for some of our high-country farmers, the animals are not herded that often, or brought together in a place where these devices could be inserted. Certainly when you talk volumes, with low numbers of labour, there are challenges around the physical side of managing all that. So devices that can be applied, and that have a retention rate that is acceptable and a reliability rate that is acceptable, is a developing area as well.
I recommend the passing of this legislation. It has had a long gestation period. It has been fraught with debate, but it is good to see it getting to this point in the parliamentary process.
Hon DAVID CARTER (Minister for Primary Industries): It is a pleasure to follow the contribution from my colleague Shane Ardern, and can I take this opportunity to thank him, as chair of the Primary Production Committee, for the work he did in bringing this legislation back to the House. Can I take this opportunity to thank all the previous members of the Primary Production Committee who worked through the legislation once it was finally presented to this House.
The Hon Damien O’Connor made some valuable points about the length of time it has taken to get this legislation to this stage, to the Committee of the whole House, this evening. It was, in my opinion, something to congratulate a former Labour Government on that it started this process in 2004, not long after we had had a hoax scare of a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak on Waiheke Island. But that scare did prove to us that as a Government, regardless of which Government it was at the time, we were ill-prepared if we had to deal with a real incursion.
I want to thank the former Minister of Agriculture, Jim Anderton, for initiating a process, because it has not been without some angst out there in amongst the farming community. When the National Animal Identification and Tracing system (NAIT) was first proposed, most of the industry was accepting of the need for such a system. But there was very vocal opposition from Federated Farmers. That has taken a long time to dissipate. It is interesting to note today that as this bill passes through the Committee stage, I understand that there will be only one party voting against it. I think we can all figure out why there was such vocal opposition to the original legislation, and that probably almost ends up by pointing a finger at one particular personality within Federated Farmers. But, frankly, there is a new broom that has swept through that organisation, and Federated Farmers now willingly embraces the concept of, and recognises the need for, the National Animal Identification and Tracing system.
When the Hon Damien O’Connor listed a number of other countries that are well ahead of New Zealand in this regard, one that he did not mention, but one that really struck me when I had the opportunity of visiting that country, was Uruguay. That is a country with a very underdeveloped agricultural system. It is using a lot of New Zealand technology now, particularly in its dairying, and it has already ensured that it has a complete tracing system within the cattle herd. That, for me, was a real eye-opener as to how exposed New Zealand was, given the fact that we did not have this technology available, and that could well have been used against us.
There have been a couple of contributions, so far, talking about whether we have the latest technology, and whether the bill has been designed to incorporate future technological advances. In my mind this is a little like buying a laptop. You can put off the day to purchase a laptop for ever, because you know that next day there is likely to be a new model. So it is absolutely critical that we get on with this. Technology will develop and there will be opportunities to update it, but the legislation has been written in such a way that it will be able to incorporate any such developments in the future.
Mr O’Connor raised two other questions that I want to comment on. One was the need to make sure that NAIT, for its completeness, recognises the owners on the lifestyle farms. I recognise that as a challenge. It is something that NAIT Ltd will have to grapple with, but I do point out that we already have a TB eradication and testing programme, and already those lifestylers have the same obligations as a large, commercial beef farmer in that regard. To my knowledge the level of compliance in both commercial and lifestyle farms is really very high.
The final point I want to touch on was again raised by Mr O’Connor, around the inclusion of sheep. The legislation being passed in Parliament today is only for cattle and deer. Having said that, I have no doubt that at some time in the future, sheep as a species will be included. Frankly, it needs to be included if we are to have the full, comprehensive system necessary in the event of a major outbreak of a disease. What I think will drive the inclusion of other species, such as sheep, is actually recognition by many good commercial farmers that there are major technological advances to be had by better identifying the good performers in your herd or in your flock. In that regard, I take the opportunity to acknowledge the work that the Crown’s farming operation, Landcorp, is doing in this regard. Already, despite the legislation, its staff have involved themselves in the radio frequency ID tagging of cattle, and they have involved themselves in the radio frequency ID tagging of sheep, because they want to know about the productive traits of individuals. That gives them the ability to advance genetic gain, to get higher productivity off their flock and higher productivity off their herds. I think it is that sort of technology that is becoming increasingly available to the more progressive farmers, which, frankly, the less progressive farmers are going to have to catch up with and utilise if they want to keep up with the pace.
Can I take the opportunity to thank the Committee for its near-unanimous support for this legislation. I certainly do acknowledge that it is work that was initiated by a former Labour Government under the auspices then of the Hon Jim Sutton.
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): It is nice to follow on from the Minister for Primary Industries in such a bipartisan and harmonious way, and I am sure the previous Ministers will admire that. [Interruption] What was that?
Hon David Carter: It’s so you can get to the gym by 6 o’clock.
GRANT ROBERTSON: That is right! Do not hog the treadmill, Minister. No, it is good to hear that, and obviously also when I look at this it does have an element of compulsion about it, which I know is not something the Minister is a great fan of—the whole notion of compulsion—but clearly in this particular sector the Minister has decided that it is the time for some compulsion. There has been a voluntary take-up rate among, I think, cattle farmers of around 40 percent, but clearly that is not enough in order to provide the kind of comprehensive scheme that is envisaged by the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. It is a pleasure to be able to stand and support this bill and acknowledge the work not only of former Ministers, as the current Minister has done, but of Shane Ardern and the Primary Production Committee, who, I know, worked hard on this bill.
The Minister and Shane Ardern both talked a lot about the foot-and-mouth situation and the importance, I guess, of New Zealand being able to avoid a negative consequence through a system like this identification system. I want to speak briefly about the positive opportunities that lie in this bill for New Zealand. A little while ago, before I became a member of Parliament, I did some work for the University of Otago, and a project I worked on there with Simon Upton, the former National Minister, was called Paddock to Plate. It was the notion that if New Zealand is going to market its goods overseas and reach into new markets, we do need to be able to address, I guess, the modern concerns that are addressed by traceability—that is, do we know whether this was farmed in a sustainable way, and what do we know about the health of the herd and the immediate environment that they are in?
There is huge opportunity, I believe, provided in this bill for New Zealand to improve its export performance by being able to meet those concerns. It has been said that some of the most important people to New Zealand’s primary production industries are in fact the buyers for the big supermarket chains in the UK. If they are prepared to say “This is a product that is sustainable. This is a product that we know has been brought to us in a way that our consumers are telling us they want.”, then we will go a long way to getting over some of those somewhat fictitious concerns about food miles and so on, which when you balance that against the overall sustainability of the primary production process in New Zealand, will actually give you a much more sustainable product, even if it has had to travel a significant distance to get there. So I believe that this is actually part of a very important process.
My own view is that, actually, we need to go further. It is not just about the cattle or, in this case, the deer; it is about the land that they graze on as well. What do we know about that? How much do we know about the sustainability of that land? Again, declaring a little bit of an interest, part of the job I had involved a company that has developed some technology. The company is called Regen Ltd, and it was part of a company called Harmonic. They actually developed technology around measuring effluent and looking at soil acidity content and that kind of thing. If we are truly serious about a paddock-to-plate approach, we need to go right back and ask whether we are able to give consumers in Britain who are buying their beef from Sainsbury’s information all the way from the kind of land through to the cattle and how healthy they are, right through to how they are then farmed and produced and taken out to the shops in the UK. We have to be able to look from paddock to plate. Traceability is an important part of that and, in turn, this identification process is a significant part. But I do believe there is great opportunity here to actually look at this further. Equally, there is great opportunity for New Zealand - based companies to help develop the technology, and it is of some regret that one of the companies that is able to do that, Sirtrack, which grew out of Landcare Research, is no longer New Zealand - owned; it is owned in Canada now.
Hon Ruth Dyson: What happened to it?
GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, it is possible for Crown research institutes to sell off their subsidiary companies. It is perhaps disappointing that we were not able to retain the benefit of that in New Zealand, but, as I noted, there are other companies such as the ones I have had some association with that are developing this technology. I know there are numerous other companies that I have not named today. I think it is important that we make sure that we use this as an opportunity to support that kind of new technology. That is the kind of development that will help our economy—to be able to say we will leverage off what is great and productive about New Zealand and create new technologies that go with that. So really those are just some brief comments to indicate that along with the rest of the Labour caucus I strongly support this bill, not just because it will help us avoid the negative consequences of something like foot-and-mouth, but also because it offers great positive opportunities, in my view, for New Zealand and companies inside New Zealand.
COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura): It is a pleasure to speak during the Committee stage of the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. The bill in its title certainly gives us a lot of comfort in New Zealand, but as this bill progressed to the stage that it is at now there was a lot of disquiet. The public debate around it emanated right back from 2002, when Ian Corney, the then Federated Farmers chairman of the New Zealand Meat and Fibre Producers Council, pulled together a group. It was all very collegial early on, but as things progressed there was that normal muddying of the waters that happens in New Zealand, not only around farming, but around all sorts of things. You have only got to look at the debate around the Food Bill; it does come in for a fair bit of kicking around.
At the end of it, one has to have faith in the process, and my faith in this process was certainly strengthened with the work the contributions made by submissions and by the Primary Production Committee.
We are at a stage now where we can comfortably and with some level of certainty implement this bill into law in due course, but let us not think that it is all going to be that easy and straightforward. The responsibilities that will go upon those people when this becomes law, which they will carry upon their shoulders, are quite significant. It is probably a blessing in disguise that initially we are not including sheep. I say that with some consideration, because just implementing cattle is going to be enough for the first 3 years, in my view.
It was necessary to give this bill as it came forward a fair amount of consideration. You have got to think about it working in reverse—think about the farmer or the shepherd working in that high country situation. When you look at some of the purposes cattle are used for, you see they are not just sitting in nicely flat, green paddocks in the Waikato; they are pushing into scrub-covered hill country. There is going to have to be a lot of accuracy, responsibility, and dedication to this programme to keep its integrity. I just want to put that on record. In the winter months when you are short of grass you put your breeding cows and your calves, and that less important stock, into those areas of the farm to keep them open. There will be loss of tags, and there will need to be accountability back to this legislation so that those people administering it can have certainty that it is robust. If it is not, it is not worth the paper it is written on.
We have had the TB situation, which is right up there and has been controversial at times, but we are headed in the right direction with it.
Just to give a bit of a flavour as to where we sell our beef, I say that 230,000 tonnes of it goes into the United States. It goes in under a quota system, and it goes in as what we call manufacturing beef. It is ground up and blended with all sorts of other types of product, and we eat it in hamburgers. One sort of scratches one’s head and thinks “Well, how do we actually use the traceability model around that?”. It certainly leaves questions that have got to be asked, because that has got to be one of the commodity meats that is most used in the world. However, if we have got a very robust system back here in New Zealand and we can trace that product right back through to the producer, then the system has got integrity.
The dairy farming situation is reasonably simple. The average herd size in New Zealand is about 300 cows; bear in mind that it is the same size as for deer. But when we look at the sheep farming side of it, the economic unit for the number of sheep today would be anything up to about 3,000 to 5,000, and it really would present some very challenging situations.
The amount of meat we actually sell into Europe is 1,350 tonnes, and the majority of that came out of the expansion of the EU. So we do not actually sell a lot of meat into the European Union. We do sell ever-increasing amounts into Asia, however; Korea and Taiwan are very sophisticated markets that demand traceability and good quality food safety.
But probably the most important thing, coming back to my initial comment, is the naming of the bill. It is a tracing bill. One thing that I really see is that it bridges a lot of gaps in our biosecurity and is just so very important. I believe that it will put us right up at the front end of the food quality system, because over all our red fibre production—our meat fibres—that we sell to the world we have the platinum level of food safety. We have really got to keep on pushing forward so that we maintain that leadership role. We are a small economy and if we were to be hit severely by a food safety scare it would affect our economy considerably.
So when we look at it, why was it not introduced by the companies? I mean, that is probably an argument that my politics might have naturally driven. If it is such a good idea, why do the companies not do it? The reason why we have taken the stand we have, and why it is going to be legislated for, is that it is very inclusive. It has got to be mandated by the Crown, otherwise when you are doing nation-to-nation negotiations it would not have the level of credibility that one would expect.
It is a wonderful bill. It has had a lot of refinements. I do not believe that the time it has taken to get to this stage has been time wasted. I think myself that the acceptance of it out in the farming community is far better now. There is better education. There is a lot more work to go on with, and I look forward to the third reading and its final implementation into law. On that basis, this is very, very important legislation and this is a very important day for primary production. Thank you.
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take this brief call. Unfortunately we did not have a representative on the Primary Production Committee last time around, so I was very happy when I heard that the work had been started a long time ago, in a previous Parliament. That was really good; we would have had a representative there.
As New Zealanders we always pride ourselves on the products we produce. Our biosecurity is really, really important to us, and we want that high standard to continue, like everybody else here in this House. We did have some questions about the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. We know how important our export market is, and we want our export strategy to continue to be really successful.
We had some questions, when we had a quick look at the bill, and we are prepared to listen to all of the comments and speeches with a great deal of interest. We wondered about the additional expense to farmers, and what impact that would have on the meat that was being exported. None of these things are ever free, and someone always has to pay, and usually it comes back to the farmers. We wondered, too, about what happened when animals lost their tags. We know that that does happen, so who looks after that, and how is that actually paid for?
Our next lot of questions were about the technology, but I understand that that is included in the bill, so we will be interested to read that further, because we want to know how that technology actually operates. It must be successful; there is no way that we can have technology that is so important for our export economy if it is not going to be successful.
Lifestyle farmers are an area of concern to us. Having been one previously, I know that we bought animals the right way, and I would like to think that other lifestyle farmers would ensure that their animals, when they were sold or sent off to market, were actually meeting the requirements.
That brings us to enforcement. Any law that we pass here must be able to be enforced. We really cannot afford to have any cutbacks in the area of enforcement staff, if this law is to be successful. We want the process to be workable; otherwise, as previous speakers have said, this is a total waste of time. New Zealand has a good name around the globe; we want to continue that good name. We wonder, too, whether or not we could ask other countries that are exporting into New Zealand their meat—pork and chicken, particularly that from Asian countries—to follow the same standard that we are following.
We are prepared to listen to this particular debate. We like the sound of what we hear, and we want to ensure that New Zealand is a very successful exporter.
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The Hon—ah—Ruth Dyson.
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): It has not been that long, Mr Chairman! It was only in November that you—
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I was just taking my time.
Hon RUTH DYSON: I know, I know. Mr Chairman, can I begin by congratulating you on your re-election as an officer of this Parliament, and say that it is good to have you in the Chair. I am sure that over the coming term you will continue to be fair and reasonable and allow robust debate, whether the Minister in the chair has moved that it be wide-ranging or not, as you are regarded highly for your tolerance in ensuring that the debates go smoothly but that everyone gets a fair opportunity to contribute.
Can I also acknowledge the Minister for Primary Industries, David Carter, and say that at the end of last year we had the opportunity to contest against each other, in the Port Hills electorate this time, for the sixth time. We think we are now due to be put in the Guinness Book of Records for being the two New Zealand MPs who have stood against each other the most number of times—and both been elected, one as the electorate MP and one as a list MP. I am sure that is a record, but I would quite like to hear from anyone who can be bothered researching it, who has more interest in that bit of research than I do, because, frankly, I have not put it as a priority. If somebody else would like to do it, please contact me in my office, because I would be really keen to know.
I also want to acknowledge David Carter and say how pleased I was that he, in his turn to take a call, acknowledged the work of previous Labour Ministers. It is not always the case that members of one party acknowledge the work of other parties. I think it is important that we do that. We should try to keep the record straight. On an issue like this, which is to the benefit of the health and well-being of New Zealanders—literally, as well as in terms of our economy—I think it is important that we acknowledge that representatives of many parties have those interests at the heart of their thinking.
It is also good to be supporting this National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. I note the huge amount of work that the Primary Production Committee has done to it, including, I think, replacing the entire schedule 1A of the bill, which looks to me to be a brand new insertion by the select committee. So the third acknowledgment I want to make is of the work of the select committee. Shane Ardern is, I know, well regarded in the House for his chairing of select committees, but I also want to acknowledge all the members, particularly those who are no longer in Parliament, whether by their own choice or by the choice of our democratic process through the voting system.
The Hon Jim Anderton was a member of this select committee, along with my friend and colleague from Christchurch Central Brendon Burns, Dr Ashraf Choudhary, and the National member of Parliament Sandra Goudie. Those four were all members of the select committee that produced this amazing bit of work to go back to the House, and are no longer with us to share in the debate. I am sure that every one of them will be sitting beside their wireless this evening, hanging on every word that is being said, and ensuring that we have captured the essence of the good work they have done. I am sure they were well supported by the officials, who I know are very keen for this debate to progress.
We have heard a lot of discussion about the reasons that this bill is so important for the well-being of our international reputation, and for the well-being of our livestock, in ensuring that if there is a potential or real outbreak of any disease, we do have that robust traceability. I think the point that my colleague Grant Robertson made in his contribution is one of the more important points that we should also focus on, and that is the changing nature of consumer interest and the change in power that many consumers feel. For those who eat meat—and I am not one of those people who does—
Iain Lees-Galloway: Oh!
Hon RUTH DYSON: I am well balanced by my colleague from Palmerston North, Iain Lees-Galloway, who eats more meat than one individual needs to eat in their entire lifetime. He certainly balances up the fact that I do not share in that eating.
But people who do eat meat are more and more interested in knowing where the meat came from and the condition of the herd it was raised in, and, as we in New Zealand know—it is more important to us than perhaps those from any other country—are more and more interested in the environmental degradation that may have been caused by the farming of the animal they eventually eat. The opportunity for better marketing of our product, I think, is one of the by-products of this legislation.
Grant Robertson also mentioned the sale of Sirtrack. Sirtrack was a subsidiary under Landcare Research. It is one of the companies that would have benefited from this development. We have others in New Zealand that will benefit from the development of this legislation. But it raises for me and for Labour members of this Committee a very important concern. Even though the Crown research institutes should be able to divest themselves of a subsidiary when they are no longer able to carry that subsidiary through—or interested in doing that, or see it as a priority—to the next stage of the research that it is undertaking, the fact is that New Zealand has lost all the money that taxpayers put into Sirtrack to develop it as a subsidiary of Landcare Research. The fact that that information and potential economic benefit have now gone to Canada is something about which we should not say “Well, that’s the way it is, because the legislation allows it.” I agree with the point that the Crown research institutes should be able to move on from whatever subsidiaries they may have developed, but there has to be a better way than what happened with Sirtrack, which was a subsidiary of Landcare Research and is now totally owned by a Canadian company. We have lost the benefit, even though it was our money—New Zealanders’ money—that went into developing that expertise in the first place. So this debate is really an opportunity for Parliament as a whole to debate how we might better progress the role of subsidiaries of our Crown research institutes.
The final point that I would like to make is in relation to the opposition from Federated Farmers. I was very interested in the points that David Carter made. He said, really, that when Don Nicolson was running the show they were an ACT empire.
Hon David Carter: Never mentioned his name.
Hon RUTH DYSON: He did so, very delicately; he did not mention his name. I cannot be bothered with that sort of game. We all know whom he was talking about. When Don Nicolson was running the show at Federated Farmers they were a little ACT empire, and their opposition to this legislation came primarily because it was introduced in discussion by a Labour-led Government, and also, of course, because it had some compulsion attached to it. I am pleased that Don has moved on in his life, but I do think it causes another area of consideration and concern, and that is that an organisation that has been very well regarded as being a genuine and independent voice for the farming community—a critical part of our economy—was for a short period of time taken over by one political party and no longer represented the best interests of the farming community or of the New Zealand economy as a whole. I think that is of concern, and that sort of outing—for want of a better term—might well have been better raised at the time of Federated Farmers’ opposition to this legislation, rather than later.
This is a good bill. I want to acknowledge the Labour Ministers who introduced this debate in the first place, and to support the fact that the National Government has carried it on. The work that the select committee has done has been extraordinarily robust and very detailed. It not only had submissions from the general public—obviously, people who were interested; I think 15 or 16 organisations actually made a submission, according to the select committee’s report back—but also sought independent and expert advice. That is a very good process. It should be commended to other select committees as a way of ensuring that when we get legislation back to the House like this we can have some confidence that the best eyes and ears in the country have had their say and had their input, and that we are looking at robust legislation.
It will give us more international credibility—that is the primary point of it—but it does offer us an opportunity to say what consumers of our products in the future will be looking for, and also, most important, not only how we track the animal back to the herd, the condition, and the environment but how we as a nation make sure that what they learn when they track that product back to the source is good news. We do not want them hearing that the animal they are proposing to eat has come from a herd that destroys our environment. That is the next big challenge for this Government.
Dr CAM CALDER (National): It is a pleasure to rise and speak very briefly on this bipartisan bill, the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. Some years ago I was living in south-west France at the height of the mad cow epidemic, and it was a great pleasure to be able to go into a charcuterie and boucherie in the south-west, in the patte d’oie of Auch, and know exactly what farm the meat that I was purchasing was coming from. Was it near Jegun or Fleurance or St Lary? It was a very, very useful tool.
It is a very important tool for us as a marketer of dairy products and of meat globally. It applies at this stage only to cattle and deer, but the meat industry alone is worth something like $5 billion. This is a bill that tracks the location of animals from birth to death or live export from New Zealand, so it gives that important security to consumers, whether they be in Korea or Taiwan—where they are enjoying our grass-fed beef more and more—or anywhere else in the world. I commend this bill to the House.
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): This is a short call, I should think, just to underscore Labour’s position on the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. It is very pleasing to see a bill that was initiated by the Labour Government as long ago as 2004 finally making swifter progress through the House than it was in the last term under the National Government, because this is so fundamental to what New Zealand is all about.
Many speakers have discussed our international reputation, the more discerning markets that we are sending our products into in the 21st century, and the need, really, to catch up with the rest of the world on this issue. As the previous speaker, Dr Calder, pointed out, other countries in Europe have been doing this for some time. For a long time, internationally, it has been easy to identify the exact source of different foods, and when you think just how important food is to our economy in New Zealand and how important our reputation is when trying to get things into those markets, it is really important that we get this legislation through. So it is a pity that it has kind of stalled for a while, but good that we are finally going to be moving on.
Given that time is short and I understand that there is another member from the Green Party intending to take a call, I am happy to take my seat at this point.
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The member must call; you call out “Mr Chairman” to get my attention.
STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): Thank you, Mr Chairman. I would like to acknowledge the Primary Production Committees that over the years have worked so hard on the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. I have watched it from the side—unfortunately, I have not been able to be a member of the select committee until this point—and other members of Parliament for the Green Party have followed this. I think we may have had a slightly different position if I had been there; we may have had some further amendments.
In the spirit of consensus, we will be supporting this bill at this point, but I will suggest that because of what we see as rather Draconian powers, which are put both to the National Animal Identification and Tracing organisation and the Minister, this may come back before the House at some time if it seems to go for a walk in terms of individual farmers, and particularly the smallholders.
It is fantastic that we have something that has a high level of traceability. I have done a lot of work in the organic sector, and traceability is paramount. It is absolutely paramount for the consumer to be able to know where their food comes from. One of my previous colleagues from this House, who has now retired, pointed out to us that this is really a paddock-to-plate situation. We think of things like country-of-origin labelling, which we would look at. Here we have a bill that says “Hey, we will track every last movement of an animal in this country.”, but the consumer in New Zealand does not have any idea, in so many instances, where their food from other countries comes from.
There is a concern with the wide-ranging powers as well, because they are so discretionary. I am hoping that for farmers who do not want to use the low radio frequency identification tags because some consumers will not want products from animals that have been exposed to electromagnetic radiation—right or wrong, and I will not go down that track, but from a consumer perception point of view they may well not want it—there will be options for farmers, rather than something that may be decreed by a larger, industry-based Crown organisation.
There are huge powers given to an as yet not actually fully identified organisation. We have got a fair idea, and the papers that I have been able to see pretty well spell out the sector organisations and what their percentage of ownership relative to the Crown, or the contribution, will be—
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair.
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The Committee is resumed. Kia ora tātou, nō reira e te Whare. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. Good evening, honourable members. The House is in Committee for consideration of the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. Prior to the dinner break at 6 p.m., the honourable member Steffan Browning was speaking. The honourable member has, according to my records, 1 minute and 45 seconds remaining if he wishes to address the Committee. If so, I invite the honourable member to seek the call.
STEFFAN BROWNING: Thank you—
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): No, the member has to call. The member has to call “Mr Chairman”.
STEFFAN BROWNING: Mr Chairman.
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Steffan Browning.
STEFFAN BROWNING: Thank you. I will smooth my operation as, hopefully, this national animal identification system will be smoothed as well.
I was commenting as we broke for dinner on the huge powers that the as yet unidentified quasi - public-private organisation would have. It is good that the organisation has the sector involved with it. It is good that the Crown is involved with it, but when it comes to exercising its powers of enforcement, I think it would have been better that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry managed that aspect of it. Essentially we are putting the more likely industrial part of the farming sector to be exercising what are clearly excessive powers over individual and often small property owners. So it will be beholden on the Minister and that original organisation to be getting that right. Otherwise, as I have said, although we in the spirit of consensus will support this bill, we will be back here to remove and to reduce those powers to something that fits better with the New Zealand culture.
With that, I again congratulate the select committee, which put a lot of work into it. The powers, unfortunately, are far too many, as they are in the Food Bill. Thank you.
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 2 in the name of the Hon David Carter be agreed to.
Amendments agreed to.
Clauses 1 and 2, Parts 1 to 6, and schedules 1 and 2, as amended, agreed to.
Bill to be reported with amendment presently.
Bills
Road User Charges Bill
In Committee
Debate resumed from 5 October 2011.
Clauses 1 and 2 (continued)
DARIEN FENTON (Labour): It seems like a long time ago, but before the last Parliament rose I was reflecting on the title and commencement clauses of this bill, the Road User Charges Bill. I was observing that the title of the bill is the Road User Charges Bill 2010, and now we are in 2012. However, I mean, I think I predicted rather unkindly that the chairperson of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee from the last Parliament, Mr David Bennett, would not be back, and certainly would not be back in his role as chair, so I do want to congratulate him and say that I said that with all kindness in my heart, David Bennett, because I really thought you would be a Minister should the National Government be re-elected. So I do congratulate you on taking on the role of the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee again, and I look forward to playing my usual really helpful role, particularly when it comes to industrial relations. I think we are going to have a very interesting time.
So in debating the title of the bill and the commencement date, I wish to reiterate that Labour does have a problem with two parts of this bill. We have addressed that in the second reading and we have addressed it through the Committee stage. That is because the changes to gross vehicle weights does disadvantage many operators, and we continue to hear from them and I am sure other members have. There is real fear about the impact of increased costs on what is already a struggling sector.
The problem is that operators do not know what is ahead. They are rightly fearful because this bill does enable changes to be made and charges to be made by regulation, so they have no idea. So although the title might be relatively straightforward, in that it is called the Road User Charges Bill, it does hide some mischief that I think will be visited on many transport operators.
Worse still, the commencement clause provides for this bill to be enacted, still leaving the industry in the dark about what the actual costs are going to be or what the increase in costs is going to be, because of the provision in the bill that provides for charges to be set by regulation. We had many examples of that in the select committee, and we have, as I have said, discussed that during the second reading and during the Committee stage of this bill. And I was hoping that over the—
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Darien, for those very kind words. The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee approached this issue in a very committed and universal way in that we were genuinely looking at the issues that arose for truck drivers and other users, and we were looking for a solution that was viable but also a solution that brought the industry along with the Government in making change. I think lessons had been learnt from the last time there was a road-user charges bill, when demonstrations resulted from the industry not being part of the consultation and not feeling aligned with the Government changes. So the Minister and the Government made sure and ensured the role of the industry in the way that this bill was handled. I would like to thank members of the Opposition who were on that committee for the way that they assisted in that process, as well.
This bill, the Road User Charges Bill, has a very simple title, as you would expect, and it is commonly called “RUC”, for those non-transport believers. Essentially, it is a change in the system whereby vehicles will be accountable to pay their road-user charges by moving to one based on the maximum permissible on-road weight. The problem we had in the past is that drivers and companies often had to estimate the load. There were a number of compliance costs involved in that. It was hard to enforce and led to difficulties as people challenged what they perceived the weights to be. It was something that was a more difficult process than it needed to be. Now this process here moves it to a much simpler regime, which everybody will understand and it will be very visible to people as they engage in this industry. It is one where the actual costs, as the Opposition has said, will be determined through regulation, but that is the only way it can be done. You cannot expect this Parliament to set the costs here. That is why we have regulations, and this is a prime example of an opportunity where regulations should be used and are being used by the Minister.
Hon Shane Jones: Why?
DAVID BENNETT: Mr Jones asks why. Well, if Mr Jones is the expert in this area and can dictate those figures now to the Committee, we would like to see that, but I am sure he cannot. The regulations will enable the ministry and also some fluidity if things have to change, rather than having to change legislation every time. So, Mr Jones, there are some very good practical reasons.
Hon Shane Jones: Under urgency again.
DAVID BENNETT: It will not be done under urgency because at this time we are not sitting under urgency, Mr Jones, and you see this bill is progressing through the Committee. With it being set by regulation, that is a very important but vital and practical way of doing this.
Hon Shane Jones: When will this man be a Minister?
DAVID BENNETT: Well, Mr Jones is sitting there and asking questions like that. Mr Jones, we look forward to your input in this Committee going forward. Are you going to be involved and assist?
Hon Nathan Guy: We know what he got up to.
DAVID BENNETT: Maybe there were some regulations that were needed then, but in essence this is a good bill. It is one that is necessary for the industry. It is something that the industry has been supportive of. There is never going to be anything perfect in these things; there is always going to be a little bit of room for movement. But that is why we have regulations. These look like they will be in the best interests of everybody going forward, so that the Government gets its fair share of costs allocated to the industry for the use of the roads, but also it gives certainty and simplicity to the industry so that they can carry on their business, knowing full well what their costs will be, doing it in a manner that they understand, and being able to comply as easily as possible. Thank you.
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour): Kia ora anō tātou. Firstly, let me acknowledge the new Minister of Transport, Mr Brownlee. It is a complicated area, transport, but with the experience of his parliamentary years, the skill, and the Job-like patience he is showing to his task in Christchurch, I am sure that with the minimum amount of effort he will eclipse the deeds of Mr Joyce on this point.
We actually support this bill, but there are a number of points that unfortunately I will be unable to make as I am no longer likely to grace the committee David Bennett chairs, the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. My services have been called on by Shane Ardern in the primary produce sector. We need to get back to that sector and strip the red tape that this Government has unwisely allowed to grow, like some sort of noxious weed, through that part of the economy. But that is for another matter.
Yes, modernisation of the road-user charges system is important, but why it is important is because that is the basis of the revenue we actually rely upon for the ongoing upkeep and advancement of the infrastructure that we call our transport system. There are a couple of areas. Consultation, unwisely by the Government, has been deprecated and diminished in status in this legislation. Now really, what one of the most sophisticated transport operators in the country actually wanted—Toll New Zealand—I hope Mr Brownlee does have the opportunity to go and meet with the chief executive officer of Toll, who I have found to be a very non-partisan chap. He spreads the tickets for rugby around on a very fair and even basis. I am not entirely sure whether or not we are going to reach the threshold as to whether they have to be declared in this irksome process—which has become more and more petty—otherwise known as pecuniary interest. But that is another matter. That is another matter.
I would say that Toll transport, and I think it is a proxy for a host of other companies, is bothered by the fact that, yes, subsidiary legislation will be used—that is, regulatory-making powers—but there is no duty on the Minister to go through essentially our justiciable process of consultation with the affected parties prior to the promulgation of the regulations, and that is not unreasonable. So that was an area that we pushed quite extensively in our—I would not call them debates—discussions and differences of opinion in the select committee. But by and large the select committee, when it dealt with this bill, because it is partly technical and partly political, found a lot of common ground. We actually did find a lot of common ground. The thing to bear in mind is that there was no overwhelming evidence put before us that the current system was creaking, to the point of collapse. There was a sense from the bureaucrats that there was a case for modernisation. There was a case that as the technology improved and people could actually rely upon more efficient ways to ensure that they were being legal, we should not stand in the way of this process of actually modernising how we charge revenue, collect revenue, from the heavy haulage fleet, in particular, within the country.
Now we need to be mindful—and we call upon the Minister—in this policy, as it becomes law and as it moves through the process of subsidiary legislation, that where it is evident that either there are egregious omissions or it is actually not working how the bureaucrats thought it might work, there is a willingness and a level of courage on the part of the Minister to actually improve matters as it goes along. Far be it for me to want to spare the Minister the agony, but no one actually wants to see what Minister Annette King faced in 2008, as I recall, when she increased the costs of road-user charges. It led to something akin to a large truck strike in places like Whangarei, and other large urban areas were congested as people were enraged about the way in which the costs were changed at that particular point in time.
So let us be confident, as we move through the latter stages of this, that this bill does not represent inadvertently an additional impost on our transport fleet, because, rest assured, that will add an intolerable burden on the tradable sector. It will decrease the efficiency in terms of price and quality of service in respect of our exports, and it may also have the effect of chasing more Kiwis out of this industry as they think about going to Australia, where unfortunately they are able to earn better amounts of money, etc.
There is an additional area where we were criticised as a committee. People felt that the larger firms, with their vested interests and their ability to absorb cost through a larger, essentially, armada, or a fleet of vehicles, would actually slowly but surely marginalise the smaller firms and put them out of business. That is not good. No firm actually wants to see a system, and no citizen should want to see a system, where it becomes calcified, it becomes inefficient, and the large players have the ability to game the market. So I think it is important that the smaller firms—after all, that is the genius of competition; the smaller firms—that are a wee bit more nimble, a little bit more flexible, hold the larger ones to account. We need to bear in mind that during the process where we received lobbying, we received advocacy, and we received submissions, there was a concern that the smaller, perhaps undercapitalised, firms would not be able to make the process or the transition.
I do not think it is unreasonable that those of us who are parliamentarians on this committee, or who will be coming on to this committee, are mindful not only of the large powerful vested interests but also of the smaller firms. In particular in the areas where I hail from, where there is forestry, aquaculture, and a host of pastoral industries, not all the firms in those areas are large, nationally spread enterprises. It is important that we have a view about the importance of competition, the importance of innovation, and ensure that as this modernisation system begins to bite it does not have the perverse impact of actually reducing the ability of some firms to stay in business as a consequence of an ill-conceived and poorly executed new bout of red tape.
Far be it for me to apply red tape to Gerry Brownlee in relation to what the man has already got to deal with in Christchurch, and I am sure I speak for my colleagues on this side of the Chamber. I personally wish the man well in expediting the process to help our fellow citizens down in that part of Aotearoa, but please, I make a plea. When we implement changes of this nature, let us ensure that we hold our bureaucrats to account, and that as the process unfolds where they find examples that the policy is developing and creating anomalies and poor results, we have got the courage to change it and ensure that our transport fleet remains efficient and competitive, because that is going to have a significant impact on our ability to pay our way in expanding the tradable sector or growing our international revenue. Thank you.
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to highlight in these closing stages a group of people who will be severely disadvantaged by the passage of the Road User Charges Bill. A number of them made submissions to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and their concerns have not been alleviated, and they fear that with the passage of this legislation the provisions that shift the charging of the road-user charges from a nominated weight to a gross weight will threaten the viability of their businesses. In the case of one of the submitters, the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association, it believes that a substantial number of the 40,000-odd members who travel around this country in motor caravans are going to be paying substantially more because they typically have vehicles that have a heavy gross weight and those vehicles are very rarely, if ever, laden to their full capacity.
In its submission it points out that typically a vehicle of a mass of about 19,600 kilograms would currently be paying $121 for 1,000 kilometres and under these changes it will be up for an increase of about $330 on top of those charges—according to the submission by the Motor Caravan Association. That is an outrageous increase—270 percent. It believes there is no justification for it and this will weigh very heavily on, as I said, the 40,000-odd individuals who are members of the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association.
There were also a number of submitters, principally small-business owners, who submitted that this change would have the effect of making their businesses no longer viable, and I want to read the Committee one or two quotes from the submission by Southern Trucking Ltd, which operates four six-by-four tractors and two eight-by-four truck and trailers around the country: “If this law passes, the company that my wife and I started with one truck 7 years ago and have poured our heart and soul into will no longer be viable.”
Hon Shane Jones: Off to Aussie!
PHIL TWYFORD: Yep, that is right. Off to Aussie; off to Aussie. McLean Road Services, which specialises in transporting large loads like fibreglass swimming pools, which are up to 5 metres wide, around the country has large vehicles to do this, but they are never fully laden. Therefore, the impact of this change, which will hit it up for road-user charges calculated on the gross weight of the truck, will amount to, it believes, a huge increase. I quote from Don McLean, the proprietor: “Our margins are thin now, and if I have to pay RUCs for the GVM, it probably won’t be viable.”
Finally, Mike Hermansen says: “The method currently [proposed] would disadvantage operators carrying lighter loads and would … negate the use of multi axle units that operators have currently in their fleets, these units have been specifically built with more axles to be easier on our roads. If you [move] to gross weights these units will be disadvantaged and operators will no longer use them.”
So it is a great shame that these objections were not listened to by the majority on the select committee. The Government has ridden roughshod over the concerns that Opposition members on the committee raised throughout the process through all readings to this point. The Government has failed to take on board those concerns, and the passage of this bill will impose a terrible burden on many small businesses around this country that cannot sustain the kinds of costs that this bill will add to their bottom line. So I do not believe that the Government and the majority on the select committee have adequately considered the consequences, albeit unintended, of this change—
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Transport): I feel I need to respond to Phil Twyford’s concerns. Firstly, I will acknowledge that Labour members are supporting the Road User Charges Bill, so obviously they will be speaking from a very genuine and concerned perspective. But one of the things I would point to is Appendix 1 of the consultation document that went out for consideration by all parties who pay road-user charges. The example that the member gave us was of a 1,960, I think, kilogram vehicle, where I think the suggestion was that the road-user charge was going to go from $121-odd to something in excess of $450 by the time you add two things. That would be a rate per 1,000 kilometres, meaning that in that case someone would be paying close to 50c per kilometre. That is patently ridiculous and not something that is going to happen.
The consultation document gives the example of a vehicle of up to 4 tonnes, twice the weight of the vehicle that Mr Twyford was using as an example. Currently that vehicle would pay somewhere between $44 and $49 per 1,000 kilometres. The consultation document gives a range—remember, it is up to 4 tonnes, so there will be various gross weights below that. The new range is somewhere between $45 and $87 per 1,000. That is a long, long way from the $460-odd that the member was speaking of. The mid-point, I guess, in that range is something like about $60, which represents a gross increase of about $11 per 1,000 for people in that category. I am just working off the bands that I have put here. They are certainly not rates that are struck at this stage, but they are substantially less than the very big figures that the member gave before.
I think the issue of gross laden weight and trucks is really the problem with the mileage. If you are just charging on a mileage rate, that truck is doing some wear and tear on the road at all times that it is on the road, whether it is at its gross laden weight or not. If we are going to have efficiency in transport, something that the Green Party certainly requires of us as a point of policy, then having some road-user charges that actually encourage inefficient use is not particularly helpful. I think also that even at the upper end, I would like to say—so you might have vehicles up to 44 tonnes—the increases in the road-user charges are not likely to be anywhere near as substantial as the member spoke of. In that case, for the current ranges between $250 and $409, depending on the weight that they put on to that vehicle, under the gross system it would be around about $276. That is encouraging efficiency, as you get bigger units able to take larger loads.
I think the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has done a good job in considering all of these aspects, and I appreciate the efforts that the committee has made to get a good bill. No one likes passing bills that increase charges. This, I think, is a bill that may increase some charges, but, by and large, it will improve the efficiency of that large chunk of the transport system and also make it much fairer for those who participate in it at all levels.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Bill to be reported with amendment presently.
House resumed.
The Chairperson reported the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill with amendment and the Road User Charges Bill with amendment.
Report adopted.
Bills
Electronic Identity Verification Bill
First Reading
Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Internal Affairs): I move, That the Electronic Identity Verification Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be referred to the Government Administration Committee for consideration and that that committee report finally to this House on or before 29 June 2012. This is an important bill. It is part of the Government’s framework to put tools in place that make it easier for individuals to interact with government, and at a lower cost for those individuals and for the agencies concerned.
Specifically, the purpose of the Electronic Identity Verification Bill is to regulate and enhance the operation of the igovt identity verification service. Once it is fully operational, individuals will be able to use that service to verify their identity via the internet for interactions where it is necessary for an agency to know who it is dealing with. Those might, for example, be transactions involving the paying out of money or the exchange of personal information. Currently for those types of transactions, agencies usually require individuals to provide multiple documents as evidence of their identity, such as passports and drivers’ licences. Individuals have to bear the cost and the time burden of applying for and supplying those documents, and individuals whose identities have been wrongly used can face significant inconvenience, distress, and cost to rectify matters. There are costs for agencies to check, copy, and return those documents. In addition, the use of false, lost, or stolen identity documents can impose considerable further costs on agencies. Another bill before this House, the Identity Information Confirmation Bill, will go a long way to combat the risk of fraudsters presenting false identity documents to agencies. While that bill will help with face-to-face transactions, the current bill and the identity verification service within it provide a complementary role for the online environment.
The igovt system will provide agencies with a ready-made, secure process to support the provision of online services that would not otherwise be possible because of the potential fraud risks involved. It will allow individuals to avoid repeatedly having to provide physical documents to multiple agencies in order to use online services, should they choose to use the service. The igovt identity verification service has been operating successfully but in a limited form since the end of December 2009. Individuals have, for example, been able to use the service for the online ordering of certificates and copies of records from the Births, Deaths and Marriages registry, which requires proof of identity. In this way the identity verification service use has to date been limited to a small community of eligible individuals for a single type of transaction. It is now time to expand the service for use by all members of the public and for the widest possible range of services so that individuals, government, and businesses can all realise the benefits that internet technologies offer. The Electronic Identity Verification Bill will enable this to happen.
The bill will enable individuals to choose to verify their identity via the internet with approved agencies with appropriate controls and safeguards while also providing operational flexibility for the service to be developed over time to respond to changing technology. It is important that this significant Government service, as it is expanded, is duly authorised by legislation. The bill will ensure that the service can operate effectively and that appropriate safeguards are put in place and maintained. It is vital that the bill is progressed quickly. This will ensure the best use of the investments being made to develop the service and individual agencies’ online services that will rely on it.
Clause 4 of the bill is particularly important. It sets out the principles around which the service’s operation is based. Those principles emphasise that the use of the service is optional and that individuals have control over the personal information that the service holds. Individuals will not be required to join the service. If they do choose to do so, they can decide whether or not to use it for any particular transaction, and agencies are expected, therefore, to ensure that individuals can still access their services by presenting other forms of evidence of identity, should the individual wish to use that option. The bill does not impose any mandatory obligation on New Zealanders. Individuals can cancel their membership of the service at any time. The identity verification service provides authorised agencies only the minimum amount of information necessary to verify an individual’s identity through a record referred to in the bill as an electronic identity credential. The credential may be provided to an agency only with the individual’s consent. An individual may check the information before it is sent, correct it or update it as necessary, and monitor where the information has been sent. An individual’s identity is verified using an identifier, or code, that is unique to each authorised agency, and this prevents the unauthorised sharing of information between agencies.
The bill will allow anyone to use the service once his or her identity is verified to a high standard comparable to that used for the issuing of New Zealand passports. That may occur, for example, through checking that an individual’s identity information, which includes his or her photograph, is consistent with information held in other official records. The bill authorises information-matching programmes and other processes for that purpose. Children will be able to apply, but those under 14 will need their parents’ or guardians’ consent.
The bill also provides a number of other safeguards that will ensure the service operates securely and protects people’s privacy. Those protections are vital. If the public loses trust in the service, it will fail. The first key protection in the bill is that it provides that agencies must be authorised through regulations to use the service. Those agencies may be in the public or the private sectors. Approved agencies must adhere to the standards for the use of the system. Secondly, the bill strictly regulates access to photographs and other personal information held by the service. Thirdly, the Privacy Commissioner will be able to require reports on the general operation of the service, rather than just reactively dealing with complaints about privacy breaches that may be associated with the service. I am pleased that the Privacy Commissioner and her staff have been closely involved in the development of the service and this bill, and that this involvement will continue. Finally, the bill creates specific offences and penalties to deter abuse of the system. Courts will have the ability to ban offenders from using the service and to determine the validity of any transactions that have been undertaken using false information. Agencies will be notified if a false electronic identity credential has been used for their online services so that they may take immediate action.
This is an important bill. It will enable individuals and agencies to realise the benefits of being able to easily verify individuals’ identity information via the internet for a wide range of services. There will be appropriate safeguards in place to ensure the service continues to be secure, protects people’s privacy, and is easy to use. I commend the bill to the House.
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Can I begin my contribution on the Electronic Identity Verification Bill by congratulating you, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson, on your re-election to the esteemed position of an officer in this House. I say that I look forward to your reminders and support of us adhering to the Standing Orders, which you know more diligently, I believe, than any other officer of the House whom I have known about, and also to the engaging way that you respond to members during often quite difficult times. Your persona is appreciated, I think, by all members in the House.
I also want to commend the Hon Amy Adams for what I would imagine is her first piece of legislation, even though I also want to acknowledge her predecessor, Nathan Guy, because he actually did a lot of the work—not all of it. I think it is an important occasion when a Minister has her first bill introduced in the House. I can assure you that the select committee to which you alluded and to which you want to refer it, the Government Administration Committee, will give it rigorous attention and will ensure that it comes back to the House with every single detail considered and every concern not only looked at but also addressed, and that the entire House will have confidence in the robustness of the legislation.
Labour certainly agrees with the point of this legislation and supports its progress. No doubt there will be some issues that arise in the select committee—I do not recall any legislation that has not had that happen—but in terms of the principle, I think it is a really good bill. Basically, as the Minister outlined, it stops people needing to provide often quite frustrating amounts of identification to a variety of different agencies. We all know that to carry numerous amounts of paperwork around with you is a pain in the neck. Actually, it is quite dangerous, as well. I do not think people should be encouraged to carry their passport with them all the time. Certainly, overseas it is a habit that people are strongly advised against doing. You do not walk around the streets of some city with your passport in your pocket, but in New Zealand that is what we require of many people—to bring in your passport, or get it photocopied, and then you have to go through the added tasks of getting a justice of the peace, a lawyer, or a member of Parliament to witness that that document is a genuine copy of the original. So you have another round of paper filling to do.
This bill seeks to get rid of that requirement by having a little box that is controlled by the Department of Internal Affairs under the management of New Zealand Post, which I am very pleased to hear about, and if an individual chooses to put information in that little box, they can then—again, their choice—have that information shared with the agencies that they have authorised in order to provide the level of identification that is needed. I think it is a great idea. I do hope that it leads us on to further thinking and courage about how better the internet can be used to provide access to information, access to services, and access to voting and whatever, because so often that robust verification of identification has been the barrier.
I do not know whether it is common in other countries, but I think in New Zealand we still have a lot of anxiety about where things go when you put information on the internet. I know a large number of people who still will not buy things online because they are so nervous about putting their credit card numbers into a computer because then they vanish off the screen and they do not know where they go. Someone else might get them and the next minute they will get a huge credit card bill. Actually, it happens when you just leave your credit card on the counter by mistake, as well.
Hon Amy Adams: That’s just your children.
Hon RUTH DYSON: That is right, or you leave your wallet somewhere where your children might get access to it. I do think there is an anxiety about where information can go. I particularly noted the point that Minister Adams made during her introductory speech that if the public loses faith in this process, then the whole service will fail, and I do think that is a very important point. We have to be very careful if this bill is referred to our select committee that we listen to the concerns the public have and make sure that we can provide them with the level of confidence they require, because this is not a service that should fail. We need the confidence of the public and therefore we need the robustness of the service.
We do have the absolute clarity within the legislation—I actually think it is a very well-drafted bill—that consistently throughout the process it is the individual’s choice about what information is stored and which agencies that information can then be shared with. So that is, for me, a primary point to make known to the public. This is not information that can be gleaned from other documents or other sources and compiled on your behalf; it is only when you have authorised it yourself that you will be able to have that then shared with agencies, and then it is only agencies that, again, you have authorised. You cannot have any unauthorised exchange of information.
I heard some debate over the dinner hour about this legislation, where people thought that it actually allowed for data sharing between agencies, which would be of benefit to the particular agencies. For example, some Work and Income information may be of use to the Housing New Zealand Corporation, the Inland Revenue Department, or some debt-collecting agencies. There is information that if it was shared could be of use. And I know, from the discussion we had over the dinner hour, that some people thought that this would allow that, and that is something that I will be seeking absolute clarification of during the select committee process. My reading of the bill says that that is not possible. If that was a sort of side advantage, then I think we would have to be very upfront with the public. But the Minister is agreeing with my point; it is not enabled by this legislation, and I am very pleased to see her nodding about that point.
The other advantage in this legislation to me currently—and, again, it might be just part of the progress of the way we do things in New Zealand—is that this does not replace other ways of providing identification. So if you just do not trust the internet, or if you do not want to do it for whatever reason, you can still get your passport photocopied and validated and send the photocopy with the signature saying it is the correct copy off to whichever agency you have to provide that verification of identification to. So this is a progressive choice; it is not eliminating the current ways that we do things. I think that is a very good point, as well.
I was delighted to hear the Minister’s enthusiasm for the involvement of the Privacy Commissioner in this work. I do think it is very important that the Privacy Commissioner keeps on top of these issues. The ability to require the chief executive of the Department of Internal Affairs to report on any aspect of this service to the Privacy Commissioner should, again, give New Zealanders confidence that the information will not be misused.
I also noted that New Zealand Post was an exclusive agency for the operation of this service, which is—well, I think it is fine actually, but it does seem to go against the grain somewhat, and I wondered whether the Minister had any particular reason. Perhaps the deputy chair of the select committee to which this bill is being referred might be able to glean some words from her about whether having New Zealand Post in that position as the exclusive agency was a considered decision, whether it just happened to be that New Zealand Post was the most appropriate or up and able to do it, or whether it was because New Zealand Post has been working this system, this service, since the operational trial began in December 2009.
I certainly hope that we will be able to get some assurance that New Zealand Post will not be next on the block to be sold off, as well, because if it was, that would cause the public huge concern and would, I know, be of worry to the Minister, because then the public would lose faith if a private agency had all this information stored and perhaps was able to potentially make money out of it. We want to avoid those sorts of things, and the best way to do that, of course, is for the Government to not sell State assets.
The final point I want to make is that this has been operating since the end of 2009. I agree with the bill and with the comments in the explanatory note and also in the regulatory impact statement, which looked at the alternatives: do we need to have a legislative framework, are there alternative regulatory processes, or could we just have it operating as it has been under trial with a non-regulatory option? I want to commend the regulatory impact statement; I think it is very considered and robust, and it is the sort of quality this House needs. I agree with the verdict of the regulatory impact statement that we do need a robust regulatory framework. I look forward to the debate in the select committee, and certainly offer Labour’s support for this bill to the next stage.
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): May I begin as the previous speaker did by congratulating you, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson, on the position that you hold as returned Assistant Speaker to the House. I am sure many other members will enjoy the careful and considered way you fulfil your responsibilities, so congratulations on that.
I am particularly pleased to follow the Hon Ruth Dyson on this particular bill, the Electronic Identity Verification Bill, particularly as she spoke so positively and in such a considered way about this bill. It is not new to this particular committee, the Government Administration Committee, it is new to me because I am a new member of the committee. I think it bodes well for the passage of this bill through the select committee to hear such a positive approach being taken by both sides of the House.
I am very pleased to be taking a call on the Electronic Identity Verification Bill, which is the latest step in National’s programme of better public services. This is an excellent step forward for online Government services, and for all the reasons so far canvassed by Minister Adams and by the Hon Ruth Dyson, it augurs well for the future.
The world of technology moves very quickly, and occasionally Governments are accused of not keeping up with that changing world. That criticism cannot credibly be levelled at this Government. We are rolling out high-speed broadband to schools, homes, and businesses across the country and we have improved our cyber security. Under the new Minister, the Hon Amy Adams, our communications and information technology infrastructure will continue to grow as New Zealand begins to benefit from the transformative effect of what we have achieved thus far in this area. It is appropriate that as we are transforming New Zealand with some of the highest broadband speeds in the world we also establish online Government services that match the best in the world.
This bill establishes the Electronic Identity Verification Service. The service will be responsible for issuing individuals with an electronic identity for use across multiple Government agencies with an online presence. It does away with the need to verify one’s identity repeatedly, often with original hard-copy documents or copies of those documents, when dealing with multiple Government departments. As a practising justice of the peace in a rural area I can sympathise with the comments made by the Hon Ruth Dyson about the difficulty people have in obtaining verification of copies of passports and other things—it puts them to some considerable degree of trouble to get these things done in a rural situation.
The bill’s objectives are achieved by authorising the Electronic Identity Verification Service to create electronic identity credentials. These credentials will contain limited core identity information about an individual. The core information can include the full name, the gender, the date of birth, and the place of birth of the individual. The electronic identity credential will ensure that a Government agency with an online presence can identify individuals with a great degree of accuracy, which is necessary when dealing with sensitive Government services. This is particularly the case, for example, when dealing with those services related to identity, such as the issuing of passports.
By centralising the verification of online service users’ identities, we will not only provide a high degree of efficiency for both the users themselves and the Government agencies they deal with, but also provide a consistent level of security across agencies. This whole-of-Government approach to identify verification is in line with National’s goal of providing better public services.
The Hon Ruth Dyson did ask that I take the opportunity to canvass with the Minister why we are using New Zealand Post in particular. Basically, it is a matter of providing a contract, which New Zealand Post has contested for and has secured. It gives one measure of control, so that we do not lose measurements of efficiency by having random providers, and also it is a national organisation, and most people have access to a post office service within a reasonable distance from where they live. Basically, those were the contributing reasons for that choice.
I would like now to focus on the principles set out in this bill, in clause 4. These are the principles that must be taken into account by every participating agency. I concur with previous speakers when I say that it is very comforting to see the degree of preparation that has gone into the drafting of this bill, because it has not avoided what we could call public perception issues, which are going to be a feature of this sort of thing.
Again, I find myself agreeing with previous speakers who say that there will be public apprehension, particularly, perhaps, amongst people who are a little older and not au fait with modern technology. I think that most of us, if really pressed, would find it hard to give an absolute assurance of the net being a very secure sort of organisation. Indeed, most of our institutions would caution care when using it. But basically it is the controlling principles that will decide on the protocols that control this service, and these are the principles that must be taken into account by every participating agency. These principles provide a strong defence, in my mind, against any kind of misuse of this new important tool.
When considering an online service that involves the Government collecting personal information about individuals for use across multiple Government agencies, one’s first concern must be for the security and appropriate use of that information. Information is power. Once somebody has it, it cannot simply be taken away. So this bill has been structured from the point of view that in receiving that information there are safeguards over its use. I am pleased to see that any concern on that score is well and truly put to bed by the strong safeguards in this bill.
I will quote from clause 4, “Principles”, if I may: “(d) an individual’s consent to the supply of his or her personal information to a participating agency must be obtained before the Service can supply the information to the agency and, even if the consent is obtained, the Service may supply only the minimum amount of personal information that is necessary for the agency to act as part of a given transaction or series of transactions:”.
The safeguards in these principles are comprehensive. They clarify that at no time will an individual be forced to use this service. Nobody can be forced or coerced to apply for an electronic identity credential and nobody can be forced to use it. Importantly—and I think this is important—no Government agency can make this the only way in which to access its services.
The system is a good one. It will provide a high level of convenience to the users of Government services. However, there will of course be individuals who prefer not to make use of it, for all sorts of reasons. The principles of this bill make it absolutely clear that that decision is at their discretion and will not prevent them from accessing Government services.
In addition, individuals are entitled to check the information on them held by the Electronic Identity Verification Service and to view the usage of their electronic identity credentials. This is the level of service you can expect from most privately run online services, and it is good to see that this bill will ensure that people can expect that level of service from their Government-run services.
When dealing with online information, security of information is of the utmost importance. Safeguards in this bill are comprehensive and they seem to me to be an appropriate level of security for the information that will be held. I am sure this is an area that will be thoroughly scrutinised when it comes before the Government Administration Committee, and I too look forward to working on it there.
The Electronic Identity Verification Bill brings our online Government services into the 21st century. It does so in a way that comprehensively safeguards the security and the privacy of those who use those services, and for those reasons I fully commend this bill to the House.
DARIEN FENTON (Labour): It is a pleasure to take a call in the first reading of the Electronic Identity Verification Bill, but before I begin my contribution may I also take the opportunity to congratulate you, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson, on your election as an officer of this Parliament. I look forward to you continuing your role as a fair and effective officer of this House. We have all had great experiences with you in the role, and it is very nice to know that you are continuing in that. I would also like to congratulate the new Minister, Amy Adams, and I congratulate her on introducing her very first bill as a Minister in this Parliament. As my colleague Ruth Dyson said, it is a pretty special moment. I also acknowledge the work that has gone before, but well done, Minister.
Labour, as my colleague has said, supports this bill’s referral to the Government Administration Committee. I know that the process in the select committee will be really robust. I think that there will be a lot of interesting submissions, and, hopefully, we will be able to return a bill that everybody can continue to support in this House.
I was a member of the Government Administration Committee in my first term in Parliament, and this is not the first time that committee has dealt with issues of identity. I was on the committee when we did the changes to accessing online information about births, deaths, and marriages. I remember how controversial that was—on all sides of the argument, actually—and how distrustful people were about anybody collecting information, particularly Government departments. So I think the committee has a big job ahead of it. There is no doubt about it—issues of identity are extremely sensitive. It is understandable, because it is part of our uniqueness. It is part of who we are as human beings, and it is extremely personal to every single one of us. The history of our families and our whānau, and our personal information, is something that we all hold on to and hold dear.
It used to be the case that it was paper based, and I really do not want to part with any of that paper-based information that I still hold from my forebears, such as birth, death, and marriage certificates. Of course, our drivers’ licences are still paper based, as are our passports, although I will acknowledge the work of the former Labour Government and the Hon Rick Barker, as the Minister of Internal Affairs, and the progress we have made with our passports. In fact, I just got my new one. It is very good; it is very nice. I like the black cover and the fern. It is very beautiful, and also it is somehow reassuring to know it has that electronic tag in it so that it cannot be duplicated. Somebody cannot obtain my passport and duplicate it.
Technological developments are altering access to personal information quite radically. It has become a valuable commodity—unfortunately, often to be bought and sold, combined, sorted, profiled, mined, and sometimes abused, meaning that the opportunities for the misuse of that information have multiplied. There have been many stories about identity fraud, and the State’s role in this is that it has special responsibility for the personal information that it holds. Actually, it holds personal information about almost every New Zealand citizen in one form or another. And so what this bill will do is enable a wider sharing of that information through the Electronic Identity Verification Service, where individuals will have the option of verifying their identity online and in real time to participating agencies, including, in the future, the private sector.
Now, it seems like it is an inevitable change, as technology overtakes us, and many people will welcome the ability for an online service. It is optional and I acknowledge that, and it should stay that way, but sadly I do not think it will. If we think about the development of call centres, for example, and if we think about the services that are provided through public services, for example, we now have to spend quite a lot of time on the end of the phone going through a whole lot of different numbers, pressing buttons, and so on, and sometimes speaking to people in different countries. It is now a requirement. I read something the other day that said that the ordinary person now spends something like 14 hours a year on the end of the phone going through the various—
Chris Hipkins: That’s on hold?
DARIEN FENTON: That is on hold—
Chris Hipkins: That’s just the IRD.
DARIEN FENTON: That is just the IRD. But consider that. We are time poor as it is, and here we are now obliged to follow those processes because it does save money, it is more efficient, and so on, and there are people on the end of the phone maybe in India, maybe in other countries, maybe in the Philippines. But, you know, that is the way our lives have changed. So although we can say it is optional at the moment, my fear is that it will not stay that way. It is just the inevitability of the change that we are seeing in technology.
I do want to give a caution. I am glad there are protections in this bill, for the moment, but let us keep in mind the people who actually have no idea about how to go about doing something online. It is not necessarily because they are older; sometimes that is the reason. Some people do not even have access to a computer, and some people do not even have access to a phone. So we have got to remember this, as we go into these things, and remember that not only are many of our families time poor, but they are also technology poor. They are communications poor, so we have to bear that in mind. For those people, putting something in the envelope and walking down to the Post Office, because they probably do not have a car because they cannot afford one, is the only option that they have. It is the cost of living issue, and I just really, as I said, caution that we keep in mind that not everybody is able to move with the times, with the fast pace of technology, as this bill indicates we will be doing.
It is really important in this bill that there is provision for ensuing that there are protections against fraudulent applications and criminal activity. I think it will be easier if it is online. I think there are far more security checks in that than in being able to copy someone’s birth certificate as people used to be able to do, and probably still can, and then reinvent themselves as another person. I probably should not talk about that too much. I mean—
Hon Member: Where is David Garrett?
DARIEN FENTON: That is right. We have had an unfortunate example of that in this Parliament, and we know what distress that caused. It really did cause enormous distress to that family. It was a very sad story, actually, on all counts.
But whether we like it or not the internet, as a service delivery channel, is continuing to grow in importance. Statistics New Zealand reported that in the 12 months to the end of December 2009 around 2.68 million New Zealanders used the internet, and that number continues to increase. Now, I will own up and say I have got much more comfortable about online access to some of these things. It took me a while to trust internet banking, and I am still a bit iffy about it. I still do not really believe that it is secure; however, it is convenient. Often convenience, in the end, overtakes one’s requirement to be cautious.
I am glad about many things in this bill. I think of the “Principles”, which the previous member referred to, and also, in Part 2, the administrative provisions. Part 3, I think, will receive a great deal of attention because it is around the intersection with the Official Information Act and the Privacy Act 1993. That is a while ago, you know, but it has become a really important part of the New Zealand culture and expectations around privacy of our information and privacy around the way we are treated, and how our information is used. I think all of those things will receive a great deal of attention and scrutiny in the select committee.
The challenge in this legislation is to preserve the benefits of online transfers, including easy access for those who require it in the public interest, while minimising the risk to individuals, preserving the option—so that it is not compulsory—in the long term, and making sure that the contest between access and convenience ensures an obligation on the State to protect personal information. I suspect that this bill will have to visit all of those debates when it gets to the select committee. I look forward to hearing about it, but we are happy to support it to the select committee. Thank you.
GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. It is a pleasure to rise to take a call on the Electronic Identity Verification Bill. I would also like to share the best wishes of this House, so congratulations to you, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson; congratulations to Amy Adams, the new Minister for Communications and Information Technology; and congratulations to all members in the House who were elected at the last Parliament.
I also want to thank the officials. It has been surprising that Labour has not taken credit for this in the debate I have heard, but it did do a lot of work in the years it was in Government in getting this process with igovt, the process towards getting this legislation started. So I would like to acknowledge Labour members’ work and also the officials who have worked with them over a number of years for this bill.
It is an important and emerging issue we are discussing in this Parliament in 2012. We are quite right: we are talking about our lives, we are talking about our memory, and we are talking about our data. One has only to look at Facebook to see that that company did not get rich just by selling ads or subscriptions; it got rich because it managed data. It managed to package, compile, and share data in such a way that it is one of the wealthiest companies in the world. I think its share offer will be immensely huge.
The Greens share with the other parties their support for this legislation’s referral to the select committee. What I would like to talk about is the importance of it around easing the relationship with Government departments. I note in the regulatory impact statement there is a quote that there are over $300 million in tangible economic benefits to the nation. That is good. I would love to ask one of the officials what they estimate the time savings could be for people using this system around the country. I am prepared to wager any member in this Chamber that the time-savings from this bill, for a minuscule sum of money, will be much more considerable than the $19 billion the Government is currently borrowing to spend on motorways, literally saving only minutes of Kiwis’ time across the country.
So we see the potential. We see the benefits. That is why we are supporting the bill to the select committee. But, like the other parties, we do think there are valid concerns, and we will be asking some questions at the select committee. So this bill effectively sets up an online passport. I think it makes sense. I think it is common sense. You have a mishmash of different log-in requirements for different Government departments. Like Darien Fenton, I cannot remember half of my passwords. I have to keep getting them to email them to me, because there are just so many when you are engaging with Government departments, let alone all the other services that people use online for work or for pleasure. So we see the common sense.
I have been very interested to follow over the years the progress of igovt, which is currently the contractual-only service preceding this legislation—the trial that is effectively making this legislation relevant and, I would say, desirable. But I would also note that there are only 400-odd people on igovt at the moment—the Minister might be able to correct me—and I would love to see more people using this service.
I have also got some concerns because I have to write to the Minister of Internal Affairs just to go to the National Library. I asked him more than a year ago whether I could have a briefing from officials, because I am interested in this and I would like to engage constructively, but to no avail—Minister Guy would not let me have a briefing.
So to look at the detail, it is important that we as legislators get our heads around this issue. Technology is shaping lives in ways we cannot even imagine, probably in the next 5 to 10 years, and certainly longer. More and more of us are engaging with our Government online; more and more of us engage with the Government only online. As Chris Auchinvole said, the Government is embracing technology. I think they have done some good things, but I also think it is maybe a bit of an exaggeration to portray ourselves as world leaders in the technological field. We have got Skynet, the copyright infringing and file-sharing law, and we are engaging with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations recently signed in Tokyo, and the punitive rules in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Look, you know, I do not think we are embracing technology as we could be. I do not think we are world leaders in this, but this is one area where we certainly could be. Take the Inland Revenue Department—it was only last year that this Parliament passed a law, the Education Act No. 4, that let student loan borrowers go online to check their balance. In 2011 this Parliament was not passing such legislation. Take the legislation just before this bill, the Road User Charges Bill. At a time when we could be using digital electronic technology, we are instead going down the absolute opposite path and getting average weight-based models of calculating road-user charges.
The stuff we are talking about in this Parliament is topical. We have just seen in America and all around the world that literally 7,000 websites, I think it was—4.5 million people—signed Google’s petition in 1 day. We saw the two Houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate, in the US fully step backwards from the punitive copyright legislation there—the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. We have seen the Megaupload arrests where we have had 70 police officers flying in on helicopters to catch someone in relation to alleged copyright infringing. And, to the right side of the ledger, we are seeing the Government invest a considerable sum in ultra-fast broadband, which the Green Party supports the intent of.
I think what we have seen in terms of the Skynet legislation, debates in New Zealand, and the stop online piracy and protect IP debates in America, is that it is no longer OK—as a popular blog post also points out—for us as legislators to not know any more. It is not a badge of honour to pretend we do not use computers and we do not know how to engage—it is not OK any more. We have to get on top of our game, I think these are salutary lessons, and I look forward to engaging with the other members, the officials, the submitters, and the select committee.
So we will be supporting this legislation to the select committee. We think it is common sense. We think there are some definite inefficiencies—we could be engaging with other departments—but also there are some tremendously exciting opportunities that flow out from this legislation. Take the last election: we saw the lowest-ever level of youth non-enrolment in our country’s history. I heard anecdotally of people around the country who would have enrolled and would have liked to vote but had to send in the blasted form via a fax machine from overseas. We heard of people who would have loved to do it online, in between checking Facebook, or Twitter, and to enrol online. There is no framework or legislative allowance for that.
I would like to see this law look at how we take this unique identifier to understand the potentialities not only for our economy and society but also for our democracy. So what we see with that change, which I think would be desirable in our future, is a challenging of the central tenet, which we have talked about in the clause 4 debate in this Parliament, which is that we should not worry about privacy concerns. Everything is taken care of in clause 4, “Principles”. At the moment the main protection is the fact that it is only opt-in for people to have their data saved, but, if we are going to unleash the powers of this legislation, obviously we are going to have to look at a mandatory-type system in the future and what the privacy implications are there.
So we see that people cannot opt out in every circumstance when it comes to this bill. People cannot opt out when it comes to statistical analysis. As Ruth Dyson aptly put it, there is a digital divide. We still need to make sure people have options. We cannot replace every type of communication or validation with the Government. It has been good to see that the Privacy Commissioner has been involved in the drafting of this legislation. I think we might want to investigate in the select committee actually going slightly further than what this bill outlines, which is that currently the Privacy Commissioner can go to the chief executive of the Department of Internal Affairs and ask for a report. I wonder whether we should write into the legislation, or through an Order in Council, a regular reporting requirement, given that this is the front line of both the privacy and the new technological developments in New Zealand.
The regulatory impact statement talks of the risk of function creep, which I think is a definite risk. When we look at the Privacy Commissioner’s website, principle 12 of the privacy principles says categorically—and it is going to be interesting to ask her how she is going to deal with it—that the Government is not allowed to give people one personal number to use in all their dealings with Government agencies. There is a whole bunch of questions around privacy, around the sharing of information between Government departments, and around what I believe is a flagrant overuse of Orders in Council by this Government to pass regulations.
These are all questions the Green Party looks forward to raising with officials and submitters and the other parties in the select committee process. We urge Kiwis to get out there, make a submission, and find out more about it. I think there is a whole host of subsidiary issues, which I think would be valid to raise on the select committee. There are questions around the need for a time line for those Orders in Council to be broadened by the Government, and there are some questions around what the scope of those fees is going to be, for the full costing.
I think we have got to ask the officials flat out whether they are confident we can avoid cyber-security or hacking threats, given having one unique repository for information does make us vulnerable. We have seen Governments fall victim to that recently. As a historian, in the interests of future archivists, what are we going to leave as a legacy, given that so many of us found out about our families around the world because those paper forms, those parish books, still exist and we can still access them? So I think there is a whole bunch of important questions. This is the front line of the privacy and the technological debate in this country, and the Green Party looks forward to constructively engaging with all the parties in Parliament. Kia ora.
KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): I stand in support of the first reading of the Electronic Identity Verification Bill. Over the course of each year individuals are likely to have to visit or deal with several agencies to undertake various transactions that require their identities to be verified.
The Electronic Identity Verification Bill will regulate and enhance the operation of the igovt identity verification service. Once fully operational, individuals will be able to use the service to verify their identity via the internet for interaction where it is necessary for the agency to know who it is dealing with. The ID is in electronic form and is made up of four pieces of information about the person that can be used by logging into a service and giving consent for use of your ID. Instead of providing a document that contains a lot of other information, such as a passport, it reduces the amount of detail about yourself.
Since the early 2000s it has been recognised that there would be inefficiency and inconsistency if each Government agency developed its own identity verification system. The Electronic Identity Verification Service was developed as a shared service to provide members of the public with the option of providing their identity to the different Government agencies. Complying with the evidence of identity requirements of these transactions adds cost, travel and transaction time, and inconvenience for customers and processing costs for the agencies. Detecting and acting upon fraudulent applications and criminal activities committed through the use of false, lost, or stolen identity documents can impose cost and additional requirements on agencies and individuals who identify information as being wrongly used.
The scope of the Electronic Identity Verification Bill will set clear parameters and provide adequate penalties to deter and punish abuse of the system and ensure compliance with the Privacy Act 1993, especially in relation to the disclosure of personal information. An individual has the choice to decide whether to apply for an electronic identity. This is, in fact, a record kept in electronic form that contains unique detail personal to that very user. The following details should be given to provide a person’s unique code and validate personal information, such as full name, sex, date of birth, and place of birth. This electronic identity is personal to each individual and cannot be transferred. Significant benefits have been estimated. Individuals who choose to use this service will have potential reduction in compliance costs, travel time, transaction time, and risks associated with identity crime. I fully support this bill and look forward to the select committee process. Thank you very much.
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): Firstly, Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, congratulations on your appointment to your role. We know that the Speaker’s role is in a very capable pair of hands, and we look forward to working with you over this parliamentary term. We would also like to congratulate the Minister of Internal Affairs on her first bill. We know it is a big moment, and we hope it is the start of many more of these moments.
On behalf of New Zealand First I rise to support the Electronic Identity Verification Bill to select committee. We are looking forward to the chance to discuss the bill further, and to hear the public debate on this particular issue. We know that the internet is a huge concern for many, many members of the public, and the fact that the information can be hacked into, and can be accessed by unauthorised persons, is a really big fear, I think, for everybody. Of course, more and more people are actually working online. But again, it is an option; it is not compulsory, which we are pleased to see in this bill.
We note that the public has to have confidence in any service of this nature, so we are going to look forward to canvassing it further. Security, to us, is of the utmost importance. We are pleased to see that there has been a trial already, because it is only by working through a trial that anyone can find the loopholes and correct those loopholes.
Another thing we are happy to see is that a physical card with a number is not going to be issued to everyone. We are all notorious for losing cards, and once the card is lost, everybody wonders who is actually accessing that information. That, to us, is a very important factor in this particular bill. On that note I will say that New Zealand First will support this bill to select committee.
JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am very pleased and happy to stand in support of the Electronic Identity Verification Bill. As we know, online transactions and communication are transforming service delivery for Governments and businesses around the globe, and this is a very logical, pragmatic step in terms of streamlining those processes by which information can be transferred and shared. In order to do that, and protect the privacy of people, it is incredibly important that people’s identities are accurately verified in a very high-confidence manner.
Very interestingly, several years ago the Press reported that 100,000 victims in New Zealand suffered electronic identity theft, and it is good to see that this measure is going to propose an identity verification process that is going to have extremely high confidence, so that New Zealanders can feel confident that their identity will be protected. We know that through this process there will be incredible savings not only for the Government but also for individuals; I think the Green member mentioned close to $300 million worth. The regulatory impact statement prepared by the Department of Internal Affairs states that it could even be over $500 million. When you think about the savings that will save New Zealand taxpayers, that is a considerable amount. When you think about the efficiency and time savings for people who have to verify their identification with Government agencies, that is also going to be a tremendous saving in terms of their time and compliance costs. It will also reduce the risks around identity fraud, which we know is increasingly becoming something that we need to counter and work on, so that New Zealanders are protected.
As I come to a conclusion in just a few minutes, I want to congratulate the Minister on the presentation of her first bill as Minister of Internal Affairs. Congratulations to her; I know that she is going to do a fantastic job in her role, and we are going to see many strong bills come through. I also just mention the previous Minister and his work, as well.
I think we can have great confidence that this is going to be a great step for New Zealand. At the end of 2009, of the 2.7 million people in New Zealand who used the internet, 46 percent of them sought information about Government agencies, 35 percent had downloaded or completed a Government form online, and 20 percent had made payments to the Government online as well. So this is a very timely piece of legislation, and it is something that will enhance productivity in our Government departments, but also will enhance productivity amongst New Zealanders as well. I am very happy to commend this bill. Thank you.
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this Electronic Identity Verification Bill. Can I begin in the fashion that many others have tonight and congratulate you, Mr Assistant Speaker, on again being chosen for your office of Parliament, and I also congratulate the Hon Amy Adams, the new Minister concerned with this Electronic Identity Verification Bill, a bill that Labour supports being referred to a select committee.
This really is a bill that shows the sign of the times at the moment. The regulatory impact statement that comes with this bill shows that 2 years ago in 2009, of those internet users in New Zealand, 46 percent had sought information about Government agencies online, 35 percent had downloaded or completed a Government form online, and 20 percent had made payments to the Government online. That was a couple of years ago, so I am sure that those numbers will have advanced somewhat in that time, and it just shows that a number of New Zealanders are now looking online to do their business with the Government. To make it as hassle-free and streamlined as possible, not just for those who are the end-users but also for the Government departments involved, we think is a very good thing. It is going to be very useful both for Kiwis and Government departments in the age of doing business online.
Many of us have dealt with constituents who have found it frustrating at times, when dealing with Government agencies, having to provide the same amount of information, or varying amounts of information, to certify or verify that they are who they are. I think the previous speaker, Jonathan Young, was talking just a few minutes ago about the hundreds of thousands of cases of identity fraud involving people dealing online. I think it may have been in relation to Government departments but, if not, certainly that is still a lot of people who have encountered identity fraud of some description when they have been using the internet.
I think the real benefits of this will be with real Kiwis, the end-users, who will now no longer have to, as I said before, provide various forms of identification to the, I think it is, 28 Government departments that are using the igovt database at the moment. I know from my own personal experience of being overseas and having to send information back to New Zealand to Government departments that it was frustrating to have to deal with different Government departments and their different systems of operating, so if we can have definitely one system through which people can deal with a plurality of Government departments, that will be good.
Of course, it will save a fair amount of queuing for people out there who deal with Government departments, and it will make sure that those Government agencies that are already using the igovt service can push this out further to make sure we can find efficiencies. That is what we really do want: efficiencies both for the public and for the Government departments, especially in these very difficult times. There will be things that we will be watching very closely, though. Of course, around security, there must be absolute confidence among the public that this service or database will be secure. I notice that there are some serious parts of this bill around punishment for any offences that may be caused. I think it is a sentence of no less than 10 years and a $250,000 fine for anyone who is caught misusing the information, so we think that is a good move in this bill.
Ruth Dyson also made the point earlier that we want to make sure that Kiwis still do have the avenue to have some face-to-face contact, if they either do not have the confidence to use the internet, the confidence in the system, or the use of the internet readily available for them. So we do want to make sure that this is not moving towards the internet or online being the only option for people to interact with their Government departments. We still want to make sure that there is a friendly face behind the counter for when people are interacting with agencies such as Work and Income, the Housing New Zealand Corporation, and other agencies that are involved in the system.
Ruth Dyson also pointed out that New Zealand Post will be the lead agency for collecting information and for taking photos, I understand, for this legislation. We know that one move by New Zealand Post at the moment is to downsize its outlets and to reduce the number of outlets. So we hope that there is going to be the appropriate amount of resourcing in our New Zealand Post stores to make sure that these stores, which I think are pretty much already run off their feet, have the ability to service the people who are coming into those stores, to make sure that they can get that work done. And a point also made by Ruth Dyson is that some security around the future of New Zealand Post, especially at the time the current Government is looking at asset sales, would be beneficial for all New Zealanders. But in terms of making sure they are streamlining services, we do welcome the moves that are being made to help our Government departments, making sure that we have efficiencies within them and making sure those people who are supposed to be serving the public have more time to be able to meet their duties to the public when they are coming to them.
Again, public confidence in the system is going to be paramount, and we do note that there are safeguards within this legislation for wrongful sharing of information, especially at a time when, you know, internet safety and internet piracy are in the headlines. We want to make sure that the security around the system is 100 percent.
Also noted has been the involvement of the Privacy Commissioner. That is also a welcome move in this legislation, to make sure that they can request the chief executive of the Department of Internal Affairs for a report if there are any concerns around privacy and the security of the information that is being held on the database. We are talking about very sensitive information—family information—that is being held on these databases, and for it to get into the hands of the wrong agencies or to be misused by a staff member in an agency would be a tragedy. We do support this legislation through to select committee consideration. It has been a piece of work that has been a long time coming, but we do welcome it and we will support its referral to a select committee.
NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): I am very pleased to support this Electronic Identity Verification Bill. Can I start by acknowledging the new Minister of Internal Affairs, Amy Adams. She is a superb individual who is going to do a very good job—is doing a very good job—and it is good to see her speaking on this bill. I also want to pay tribute to the Government Administration Committee. As a former deputy chair of that committee I have often thought that perhaps the House does not realise some of the important work that that committee does; this is an example of the important work that the Government Administration Committee does.
The first thing I would like to say is that this is part of a wider modernising agenda. As a youngish member of this Parliament—I acknowledge Chris Hipkins over there, who is another youngish member of this Parliament—I acknowledge this Government’s agenda in terms of modernising our Parliament but also our Government services. Many young people talk to me about the fact that a lot of their interaction with politicians and Government services is online, whether it is through our significant investment in terms of our broadband package or whether it is through a bill like this, which is saying to New Zealanders and to many young New Zealanders that we are going to make it easier for them to interact with the Government and politicians. I think that is a very important point and a very important purpose of this bill.
A couple of other points that I would like to make about this bill is that we know that the real heart of this bill is about balancing the protection of people’s personal privacy with making it easier for them to interact with Government services. I had the fortunate experience of working in the Department for Constitutional Affairs in the area of data protection when I was in the United Kingdom, and one of the things that I realised over there—and I do not think a lot of New Zealanders realise it—is how world leading we were when we brought in the Official Information Act. I really hope and believe that, with the current Minister, Amy Adams, this is part of a wider agenda to ensure that our Government is keeping up with the pace of technology, and ensuring that data and personal information of the individual are protected, while also ensuring as much as possible that we can make Government services more easily accessible to New Zealanders.
I want to touch on one particular clause: clause 4. I think that is a very important clause because it cuts to the heart of the principle of the National Party in terms of freedom. This is an optional service; this is not something that will be forced on New Zealanders. It is there for those New Zealanders who want to engage more online, to have confidence in their interactions, to be able to save their time, and to not have to do a lot of these different interactions with different Government agencies. It really does emphasise that important principle of the National Party, which is freedom, because this is an optional service.
The second point that I would like to make is around the savings. I heard from the member Kris Faafoi. As a constituency MP he knows how many people come to your office and say that they spend time going around various offices and various Government agencies having to verify themselves several different times. Not only is this bill about making it easier for individual New Zealand citizens to not have to spend that time and that money doing that but also it is about saving Government departments money, and at a difficult time financially. I was very pleased to read in the regulatory impact statement a statement that very clearly said that over a 10-year period—and I think this is quite phenomenal—this could save New Zealanders between $385 million and $527 million. I think that is something that we should celebrate as we progress this to the select committee: not only could this save individuals time but also it could significantly save Government departments time.
This bill is not only about Government savings; it is about modernising our Government services into the 21st century. It is about making it more accessible for all New Zealanders, but particularly the next generation of New Zealanders. But also it is that balance of ensuring that the individual has the power to correct their own information. There is nothing more violating than either having your information abused or there being incorrect information about you. I think that is one of the other wonderful things about this piece of legislation: it enables the individual to have that power over access to their own information. So I am very pleased to support this bill to the select committee under the esteemed leadership of the new Minister, Amy Adams. Thank you.
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I intend to take only a fairly brief call on the—
Hon Tau Henare: Thanks, mate.
CHRIS HIPKINS: —Electronic Identity Verification Bill. Not that brief, Mr Henare, not that brief. That sort of woke him up, I guess.
Kris Faafoi: You just made it longer.
CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes, and the more he interjects, the longer it gets. He never learns—never learns—from history.
The Labour Party will certainly be supporting this bill to select committee, because we think there are some very worthwhile elements in it. Increasingly, citizens of this country interact with Government departments online. It is inevitable that that trend is going to continue and get larger, and we want to make that as easy as possible for people. It is a fairly constant gripe from people that Government departments often require the reproduction of huge volumes of information—in many cases, simply from other Government departments—and this potentially, I think, starts us down a track that says that the Government itself needs to think a little bit more carefully about how it shares information between agencies so that people do not have to constantly go to one agency to get some information held by one agency in order to give it to another Government agency, which is one of the constant bugbears of constituents who come into any constituency member’s office.
Now, we need to be very careful in the way we do that. This is a very, I think, conservative first step, which is simply around the verification of identity. But if it works, if it is proven to be successful, and if sufficient safeguards are in place, there is actually potential for this to expand further. Now, I know that there will be a certain number of George Orwellian figures out there who will be very concerned that this is the Government coming to take over their lives and that we are going to be storing all this huge array of information on every individual citizen. The Government holds a whole lot of that information anyway; it is just that the Government is not very efficient at communicating with itself about what information it actually holds.
But to return to my original point, safeguards are going to be really important in how we use this information and how we deal with it. The Public Service, I think, needs to be moving to a much more citizen-focused, seamless approach to service delivery. I think it really frustrates individual citizens when, in dealing with different Government agencies, they are constantly being given the run-around and they are constantly having to reproduce the same information over and over again. It very much creates the impression that within Government agencies the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, and that is something that any modernised and more efficient Public Service is going to have to deal with.
It certainly makes sense to introduce this legislation so that we do not have a whole lot of different Government agencies going out and establishing their own identity verification services, because that would obviously be very costly. I was particularly interested, though, to look at when this bill is going to be coming into force, because I know that the Minister in charge of this bill, Amy Adams, was a very diligent member of the Regulations Review Committee in the last Parliament. As part of the responsibilities of the Regulations Review Committee, one of the things they look at is when a bill is going to come into force. One of the things the Regulations Review Committee frowns upon quite seriously is bills where the commencement date for them is unclear or where it is subject to ministerial prerogative—where Ministers can simply decide when a law comes into effect. So it is kind of ironic that having been such an ardent supporter of the Regulations Review Committee’s work in this area, the very first bill that Amy Adams brings to this House in her new ministerial role contains exactly such a clause, which allows this new law to come into effect at such time as an Order in Council is made, rather than at a specified date. So, basically, it removes the power to determine when a law comes into effect from the Parliament and gives it to the executive, to a Minister. That is something that the Regulations Review Committee frowns upon quite seriously—
Charles Chauvel: Very seriously.
CHRIS HIPKINS: —very seriously. The chair of the Regulations Review Committee, I can tell, is very concerned about it. I am sure that is something that the select committee will need to examine in great detail when it goes to the select committee. I am sure that the Regulations Review Committee, as it always does, will have a view on that particular matter.
Charles Chauvel: And we’ll express it.
CHRIS HIPKINS: And it will be expressed, I am sure. So overall, I think the bill is a fairly welcome step. We need to proceed with some caution. I am sure the select committee will be very diligent in going through the bill, considering the privacy implications of the bill, and ensuring that, in fact, this bill does not take us down the wrong track. I think overall, on that basis, the Labour Party certainly is happy to support the first reading and referral to a select committee.
Bill read a first time.
Bill referred to the Government Administration Committee.
Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Internal Affairs): I move, That the Electronic Identity Verification Bill be reported back to the House by 29 June 2012.
Motion agreed to.
Bills
Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill
Second Reading
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): I move, That the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. Let me first extend my thanks to the Law and Order Committee for its work on the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill. The committee received 11 submissions on the bill and has recommended that it proceed without amendment.
This bill demonstrates the Government’s support for front-line law enforcement staff. It helps to protect our police and corrections officers by explicitly denouncing those offenders who commit offences against these officers while acting in the course of their duties. Without this amendment, the courts are not under any obligation to consider the fact that an offence has been committed against a police or corrections officer as an aggravating factor in sentencing. The current law includes a number of offences that apply specifically to police and corrections officers. However, when an assault on a police or corrections officer is serious, the offender is charged with a generic offence, such as attempted murder or wounding with intent to injure. Generic offences do not specifically recognise that the victim in a particular case was a police or corrections officer acting in the course of his or her duty. The absence of a specific aggravating factor in section 9 of the Sentencing Act means this fact does not have to be considered by the courts at all when an offender has been convicted of a generic offence.
This bill creates a specific aggravating factor for offences against police and corrections officers, making it mandatory for judges to consider the fact that the victim was a police or corrections officer as an aggravating factor in sentencing. The bill sends a strong signal that assaults against police and corrections officers will not be tolerated. We know the number of assaults on police and corrections officers has increased over the years. The Government believes the role of police and corrections officers as the first line of defence for the public is deserving of enhanced protection. This bill ensures that our police and corrections officers are given the level of State protection that they deserve.
Police and corrections officers have a legal obligation to deal with dangerous people in dangerous situations. This obligation is unlike that applicable to any other occupation. Where staff in other occupations can walk away, police and corrections officers must move forward to deal with dangerous situations on behalf of the community, as our front line of defence. Our police and corrections officers are responsible for keeping our communities safe from the most dangerous people in society, so it is important that the Government reciprocates by taking a firm stance on assaults against our front-line officers and that the Government expressly denounces this abhorrent behaviour.
This bill demonstrates this firm stance. This bill shows that the Government is taking assaults against our police and corrections officers seriously, by requiring the courts to specifically consider this as an aggravating factor in sentencing offenders. I commend this bill to the House.
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour): The Sentencing Act contains a number of instructions from Parliament, which is the supreme lawmaking body in our system, to the judiciary as to how that branch of Government should carry out one of its most basic responsibilities: the sentencing of convicted persons. Section 7 of the Sentencing Act sets out the purposes this Parliament tells the courts they ought to observe in carrying out the act of sentencing. Section 8 sets out the principles that the courts are to take into account when sentencing or otherwise dealing with offenders. Section 9(1) lists factors that judges are to take into account as aggravating ones when dealing with the exercise of sentencing. I want to list some of the aggravating factors that are currently in the Act, so that members have a clear understanding of the context of what is being done by this amendment.
The first aggravating factor is the actual or threatened use of violence in the conduct of the offence, or the actual or threatened use of a weapon. The offence, if it involves unlawful entry into, or unlawful presence in, a dwelling place, will be aggravated. If the offence was committed while the offender was on bail or still subject to the sentence of the court, that will also be an aggravating factor. The extent of any loss, damage, or harm resulting from the offence, particular cruelty in the commission of the offence, the abuse of a position of trust or authority in relation to the victim, or the vulnerability of the victim by reason of his or her age or health, or because of any other factor known to the offender, are also aggravating factors that a judge must take into account in sentencing.
Clause 5 of the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill will add a new aggravating factor to section 9(1), and I am going to read the aggravating factor that we are contemplating here. We heard the Minister of Justice refer to it briefly in her speech. It is: “that the victim”—presumably, the victim of the offence in question—“was a constable, or a prison officer, acting in the course of his or her duty:”. So that is expressly said to be a factor that the courts must take into account. This is in response to, we learn from the regulatory impact statement, a 13.9 percent increase between fiscal years 2004-05 and 2008-09 in assaults on police officers, and a 56.3 percent increase in assaults on corrections officers over the same time.
Labour did not oppose this amendment on its first reading, and our members listened carefully to the evidence at the Law and Order Committee. We will not oppose this bill at its second reading, because it seems to us that it is a measure that can do little harm. But the question we really need to be asking ourselves at this juncture is whether the bill will do any good. It stands to reason that if there has been a marked increase in assaults on police and corrections officers over the last 5 or 6 years, then we have a problem. But we also need to not ignore the evidence, and the evidence is this. There are already a number of specific offences that exist on the statute book in respect of violence against uniformed service persons in the police or the corrections service. For example, there is already a maximum of 14 years’ imprisonment for using a firearm against any police, traffic, or prison officer. It is already the case that there is a maximum of 3 years’ imprisonment provided for the aggravated assault of a constable in the execution of his or her duty. Under the Summary Offences Act it is already the case that 6 months’ imprisonment is prescribed for assaults on a police officer, and elsewhere in the Summary Offences Act there are special provisions for resisting a police officer, a prison officer, or a traffic officer, with a maximum penalty of 3 months’ imprisonment.
There is already a special regime in place. We put it in place to punish, in particular, assaults on front-line responders, and yet we still have this big increase in assaults on them. That would tend to tell us that whatever appears in the law relating to sentencing is not a big deterrent to those who choose to assault police officers or corrections officers. The regulatory impact statement actually recognises that this is to be an Act of this Parliament that leads us very close to window dressing. I am going to read what is said in the regulatory impact statement: “The proposed amendment will not require the court to take any specific action in terms of the type or severity of sentence imposed. The court will be required to take this factor into account—along with other specified and unspecified aggravating factors—in arriving at the appropriate sentence to be imposed in a particular case. Because judges’ assessment of aggravating and mitigating factors are not amenable to empirical analysis and the proposed amendment does not entail specific action by the court, no monitoring or evaluation of the proposed amendment is possible. As noted above, the Government has decided to undertake the proposed amendment to the Sentencing Act. The narrow and specific nature of the proposal has restricted the range of options that can reasonably be considered.”
The problem here is that the Minister has seen a practice that she rightly wishes to condemn. Nobody can support an increase in assaults on front-line responders. But then, as so often happens in this Parliament, the response that has been employed is suspect. It is not evidence based. In fact, we know that there is no way to tell whether or not all the parliamentary time that we are now devoting to this measure will make one jot of difference to the safety of police or corrections officers. When we are in that situation we just need to ask ourselves why we are doing this: whether it is all about responding to particular interest groups and particular folk on a certain end of the political spectrum, or whether we are actually sincere in trying to legislate for a solution.
There are other questions about this bill. What about other first-line responders, like nurses and ambulance officers, who are also in danger of assault in their workplace? Why not provide for them in this sort of legislation? I think it would be an appropriate thing to consider amendments of that nature in the Committee of the whole House if this bill proceeds to that point.
I think it is fair to say that as far as the cynicism inherent in this measure is concerned, the Government knows what it is doing. This legislation has hardly been rushed through the House. It had its introduction on 13 October 2010 and it has wended its leisurely way through the processes of the Parliament since then. Clearly, the Government does not feel there is any urgent need to move in this way. And that has been, sadly, typical of the Key Government’s approach to law and order—engage in window dressing and engage in legislation that sounds good on talkback radio and in sound bites, but that makes no difference to safety on the streets. If we want any further evidence of that we can think of the three-strikes legislation, we can think of the stalled alcohol law reform legislation—
Hon Dr Nick Smith: Would Labour repeal it?
CHARLES CHAUVEL: Labour will repeal it; that is right. Labour will repeal all non - evidence-based measures that do not make one jot of difference to public safety. The three-strikes legislation, the stalled alcohol law reform—all these measures have a common genesis. They are done because they are something that can be rehearsed in public and there can be chest-beating about it, but actually there is very little difference that is made to law and order in the end. Now, at the same time, important measures, like those defining the search and surveillance powers of our police, languish on the Order Paper. We have a new Minister of Justice, and she has the opportunity to make a new beginning. Sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, we are not seeing it.
Dr CAM CALDER (National): It is a great pleasure to rise and speak on the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill. I must take issue with my colleague across the floor Charles Chauvel, making the comments he did about this Government’s record on law and order. In 1854 William Howard Russell, reporting on the Russian cavalry’s advance on Balaclava, spoke: “They dashed on towards that thin red line tipped with steel.” In 2008, under the previous Government, for the Russian cavalry read the assorted miscreants, recidivists, and gang members of the small villages, towns, and cities of New Zealand. The thin red line is now tinged with blue and made up of men and women armed with little more than their courage, their hope, and wooden batons against the relentless tide of crime. That was then, in 2008, and this is now. Since then we have had an excellent Minister in charge of measures of law and order and corrections in the form of the Hon Judith Collins, and huge gains have been made.
I can speak from the heart on this, having been based in Manurewa for 3 years. It is a wonderful, diverse community, full of people hard-working and ambitious for themselves, with a small number who lack a sense of purpose and a feeling of belonging, who become, regrettably, the object of the long arm of the law. It has to be said there are many more long arms of the law in Manurewa since this Government has been in power. In fact, there are 300 more uniformed men and women—300 more uniformed men and women—in Manurewa, Manukau, and the Counties-Manukau Police District, where crime has been shown to have fallen significantly. There are 300 more spread around the rest of New Zealand in our small towns and villages and urban centres, such as New Plymouth; in places like Otago, Dunedin, and Wānaka, where my colleague Jacqui Dean is based; and, of course, in our greater urban centres such as Auckland and Christchurch.
This Government has done an enormous amount for law and order. Some of the tools that our police have got since 2008 include Tasers and police safety orders. I have been out with the police on a number of occasions in Manurewa. May I commend those men and women in the Counties-Manukau team who go out there, risking their lives day and night, to protect our community.
This is one of the reasons this bill applies only to police and corrections officers, because it is our Government’s view that it is the police and corrections officers who cannot hide behind anyone else. Nurses do a wonderful job. I have worked as a doctor at accident and emergency myself, and I know what it is like on a Saturday night when the drunks come in. I know what it is like on a Saturday night when the drunks come in, and the nursing staff and the medical staff in our hospitals do an outstanding job. But if they get into trouble, who do they call? They call the police. It is the police who have to take the brunt of this unbridled aggression and appalling behaviour day in and day out. That is the reason that this is yet another layer of protection this Government is affording our men and women in the thin blue line.
This is a denunciatory piece of legislation. This says it is not appropriate to assault the custodians of law and order—those people, those men, those women who time and time again go out there and put their lives on the line to keep us safe. I commend this bill to the House.
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East): I am actually very grateful to that member, Cam Calder, for his contribution to this debate, because he has actually spelt out in his contribution exactly why the top priority for this Government in this area should have been the alcohol law reform bill and why this Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill will not make the extent of difference it could make if, in fact, it was extended to first responders such as nurses in our emergency departments and other staff in that area.
But more important, and they have not been mentioned yet, are our ambulance officers. They too are confronted with a situation, and, yes, they may call the police. But the purpose of this is actually to state the abhorrence, as the member said, of the act of committing a criminal act against an individual who is acting in the course of their duty. A first responder in an accident situation will, in fact, be an ambulance officer more often than not. They will be there before the police are there, and they are the ones who are subjected to outrageous attacks on occasions, as well. And if the purpose of this legislation is as the member said—and I think this is the purpose of the legislation; it is not to act as a deterrent, and thereby potentially reduce the number of assaults on anyone concerned; it is designed simply to state this Parliament’s abhorrence of such attacks being made on people in those positions—then there is no reason not to include people who work for our ambulance services and people who work at the front line of our health services. They are much more likely to come into contact with this kind of behaviour than any group other than, obviously, the police and the corrections officers themselves. So I think it would be a very good thing for us to expand this.
Now I did see that the Justice and Electoral Committee considered this as an issue, and its response to it was that the bill itself was to recognise the legal obligation of first responders to dangerous situations. Well, I actually think that that language applies equally to our ambulance officers, in particular, but to emergency staff at our emergency departments as well.
The other thing that I would just mention in relation to this is that when the select committee looked at this, it felt that there was potentially a problem with the scope of the legislation and whether there was sufficient scope in the purpose of the law to recommend an amendment to extend it beyond that. I think the solution to that lies in this House, because, of course, when it comes to the Committee stage it would be very easy for the Minister of Justice to move, or seek leave of the House, that any out-of-scope amendments extending the coverage of the legislation could be dealt with in the Committee stage. I certainly could speak for the Labour Opposition in saying that we would be very amenable to such an amendment. I think it would send a very powerful message if the House took that approach to our ambulance officers, and to other staff as well. And if the reason is genuinely that the select committee felt that it could not go beyond the scope of the legislation as introduced, well then, the remedy lies in the House’s hands. That is something that I would ask the Minister to perhaps look at over the next wee while before we get to the Committee stage of the bill.
The second issue that was looked at in select committee was the question of creating a reciprocal aggravating factor. Now, I actually agree with the position that the select committee came to on this. As for the purpose of the legislation in sending a message in terms of how we feel about this kind of behaviour—that in itself—I do not think it is appropriate to reverse the obligation, when that obligation already exists, in fact. So I do believe that the select committee came to the right point of view on that.
Now I want to turn to the regulatory impact statement. Those of you who know me know that I love regulatory impact statements. I think they are the most important part of the legislative process. I have been working very hard on ensuring that we have a really good process around regulatory impact statements, and I know a good regulatory impact statement when I see one and I know a very poor one when I see one. I am sorry; this one fits into the very poor category. But that is because of the brief that the officials were given. I will just run through the regulatory impact statement, because I notice some new members in the House and they will not have heard my speech before—
Hon Dr Nick Smith: They will be invigorated.
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL: They will be invigorated by it—absolutely. My normal speech goes something like this: the purpose of the regulatory impact analysis is to one, state the problem; two, identify all of the options for addressing the problem; three, undertake detailed analysis—and that means risk, opportunity, cost, and benefits, so you really do have to undertake the analysis with all of the options on the table—consult with relevant stakeholders, and then recommend a particular course of action. The final point, which people do not always remember, is to follow it up with a process for the analysis of the efficacy of what you have done—so that you are actually looking back over a period of time, seeing how the change has actually been implemented. Now, that is a very good process.
Unfortunately, this statement has not done any of them, except for stating the problem and the solution in one sentence, which is that there has been an “increase in the number of assaults on police officers and prison officers over the past five years and a spate of serious incidents in recent months, [therefore] the Government has decided that the Sentencing Act 2002 should be amended to ensure that the fact that an offence is committed against a law enforcement officer will be taken into account as an aggravating factor at sentencing.” So all of the in-between steps have been left out of the process, and with regard to that final one about analysis of its impact afterwards, it says here: “Because judges’ assessment of aggravating and mitigating factors are not amenable to empirical analysis and the proposed amendment does not entail specific action by the court, no monitoring or evaluation of the proposed amendment is possible.” It is not even difficult; it is just not possible. So it fails on that final point, as well. We have had a statement of the problem, gone straight to the solution, and unfortunately I think we have missed a bit of an opportunity to do something a little bit more than this.
I am not opposed to the concept of setting out in the Sentencing Act another aggravating feature—I am not, at all—but I do not want anyone to think that the aggravating features in the Sentencing Act are in any way a method by which we reduce the offending concerned, because in actual fact it does not work like that. Usually when we are talking about assaults, we are talking about things that are done on the spur of the moment. We have heard of alcohol involvement, which is why I think the Alcohol Reform Bill would have been a better priority for us to be dealing with tonight. So there are not any occasions that I can think of where people in the circumstances of being engaged in an assault say “Gee, I wonder what sentence I’ll get for this if I get caught?”. That is the problem with the concept of it not reducing the problem. I think there has to be more than this; it cannot just be this to deal with the underlying issue.
When we look at how the High Court regards assaults on police officers, again the regulatory impact statement is a great source of valuable information. This is how the High Court has described an attack on a police officer. The High Court has said it is the “equivalent to an attack on the community because our police are the representatives of the community in the matter of law and order in society. They are society’s frontline …”. The Court of Appeal has emphasised the gravity of using serious violence against police officers and upheld deterrent sentences in a number of cases. That was done on an ongoing basis. That case dated back to 1985. So if we had had the problem definition and the analysis done in between, then we might have actually identified that in fact the law already allows the courts to take this matter into account, and they usually do. In fact, that has been the problem of the process—nobody has identified for us when they did not take it into account, or whether they allowed a mitigating factor that this would not allow. This does still allow mitigating factors; it is only one of the aggravating factors to be considered, and that is why it is very difficult to monitor. So I think that this whole legislation could have been improved, and it can still be improved.
DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am pleased to speak on this bill, the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill, for the first time and to state the Greens’ continuing support for the bill, despite the fact that, somewhat like the Labour Party, we do not see any particular need for it in the form that it has been presented in. My esteemed colleague Keith Locke spoke during the earlier reading of this bill. With his departure to greener pastures, I have inherited the task. It took, of course, remarkably little time to read the bill in its entirety—a very few number of paragraphs and one substantive clause. It is undoubtedly the shortest piece of legislation I have read in my, admittedly limited, experience.
There seems to be no particular justification for this bill. Our reason, essentially, for supporting rather than opposing it is that to oppose it could be seen to oppose what is basically judicial practice of the time. The judiciary does acknowledge that assault on police or prison officers is a serious matter and is treated as if it is an aggravating issue, and for that reason I guess we are continuing to support this.
The Crown Law Office, in its review of the bill, was quite unequivocal, and I quote: “New Zealand sentencing decisions take into account the fact that a victim of an offence was a police officer or a prison officer, acting in the course of his or her duty, as a matter of established practice. The Bill confirms the common law position.” This bill is almost superfluous, so clearly there is opportunity within it to make it do something useful, to make it do something better.
Mr Chauvel has already listed some of the existing aggravating factors mentioned specifically in the Sentencing Act. These include the actual or threat of use of violence and the threat or use of a weapon, and clearly these are appropriate to be referenced in sentencing legislation. People have the right to the security of their person. It is a basic tenet of our law that people ought to feel secure in themselves and to be safe from assault upon them.
The aggravating factors include unlawful presence in a dwelling place. Again, people have a right to feel secure in their own homes and in the places where they live and work, and if that security is lost, that is a significant issue. That is an important thing, and it is a fundamental role of the State to protect the security of the person in their home. In that sense, clearly, these aggravating factors already identified are somewhat generic and less specific, and that is as appropriate as one would want it to be.
The list is clearly not definitive or exhaustive in the existing legislation. There has been no specific reference to date to police or corrections officers. It is acknowledged that police and prison officers do put themselves in harm’s way. Judges take that into consideration, and we can demonstrate that through case law and through simple observation. In fact, the case law quoted by the Crown Law Office goes back to at least 1980 and up to the early or mid-2000s. It is current practice, it has been practice for quite some time, and it is questionable that we really need to take this step.
The judiciary do their best to protect police officers. They are not loath to impose quite significant sentences on people proven guilty of assaults on police or prison officers, but we must also bear in mind that length and severity of sentence are not in any degree proven to be deterrents for potential offenders. The Police Association itself supports this view in its submission. It states there that it can see that simply adding longer or tougher sentences is not a deterrent, particularly to violent crimes, which, as has been pointed out, are typically irrational, spontaneous actions. People plan burglaries; they plan to deal in drugs or other illegal activity. Violence, particularly against police or corrections officers, is often a reactive, spontaneous action. You can have the longest, toughest sentences in the world; it will make not a blind bit of difference in that moment when somebody offends against an officer. So let us not delude ourselves or be under any illusion that these sorts of measures that this bill would put in place will actually make our communities safer and our police and prison officers safer.
I would add to that that in my belief—I say now and we have said consistently over the last several years—a lot of the actions of this Government, the former Government, have actually made our prisons and our streets more dangerous. I think of things like the “three strikes and you’re out” legislation, like double-bunking, and like the imposition of tougher penalties and more severe terms for inmates in our prisons. Those have all contributed to making the job of our corrections officers more dangerous. Words on paper will not remedy that. In that sense, this will not be particularly effective.
The Justice and Electoral Committee—it must be conceded that I did not sit on that committee, and I am sure the House will be thrilled, as we are, that the Greens are now in sufficient numbers that we will have sitting members on every select committee and will be able to participate; we are very happy about that—
Hon Dr Nick Smith: We’re delighted for you.
DAVID CLENDON: Indeed, I am sure you are! Thank you. The select committee did deal with these two issues. I made comment on the notion of reciprocal aggravating factors and this situation affecting other people in the public sector. The notion of reciprocity is suggesting that given that police are in a unique position, we could say, if they are to be uniquely protected, then they should also bear unique responsibility, shall we say. It was captured quite well by the Council for Civil Liberties in its submission, where it said, and I quote: “… if offences against police officer and prison officer are to be elevated to the status of ‘aggravating factors’, then it is logical that offences by police officers and prison officers are also elevated to the same status.” There is perhaps an implied suggestion in the existing aggravating factors that a person in a position of authority—a person in a position of trust—ought to be treated more severely by the courts, and, clearly, that does encompass police and prison officers, but we do think that there is an argument to be made that there ought to be that reciprocity. Given that the specific rights of police and corrections officers are to be embedded in law, then it seems reasonable that the unique responsibilities of those roles also should be acknowledged in this law. That is something that we will be bringing to the Committee stage of this conversation.
The matter of other public sector officers of various forms, and the vulnerability of some of those people who are providing a very significant public service, we think could also usefully be acknowledged in this legislation. We could start with nurses, ambulance drivers, doctors, and people working in emergency departments at hospitals. We could think of people working in mental health services, and things as basic as noise control officers and animal control officers. I would make a special case for an example like fisheries officers. The penalties for people offending against fisheries legislation are very, very severe and can involve significant loss of property, vehicles, boats, and dive gear, and loss of liberty at the extreme. Fisheries officers are often working in very isolated situations against people who have considerable motivation, dare I say, to respond potentially violently against being restrained or arrested by a fisheries officer and taken to task by them.
So I would suggest that there are cases where these sorts of aggravating factors ought to specifically cover some of these other public servants who are often doing a very difficult job in very vulnerable situations—situations where they are vulnerable to violence against them—and, even in small communities, to violence or threats of violence that could affect their family and their social life. I do think that if we are going to look at amending this part of the bill, we should think a little more broadly.
I think I will end my contribution there, except to say that, yes, we will continue to support this legislation. In its current form it does no particular harm. It could be amended to do some positive good, and we do look forward to suggesting some amendments, some additions to it, at the Committee stage. Thank you.
JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am pleased to stand in support of this Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill and note that parties on the other side of the House likewise are supporting it. I do want to say that we continually hear the comment that none of this legislation will act as a deterrent to those activities. There are times when a judgment from a court is not actually just to serve as a deterrent but as a protection to society, particularly if somebody is prepared to assault a police officer or a corrections officer. We need to question whether that person ought to be at liberty to continue or to assault members of the public, because assaulting a person in that level of authority shows that they have no regard at all to the rule of law. Let us not be mistaken—this bill is not about a soft counselling session to create a deterrent, but about a protection. It is sending a signal. We are writing a line in the sand to say that the protection of our men and women in uniform—who represent the rule of law in our society—is something we take with the utmost seriousness. To think that this legislation is unimportant, I believe, is a travesty of the purposes of this House, which is to protect our society.
I am sure that each of us here in this House know men and women in our communities who are police officers or corrections officers. Let us not forget that they are our friends and our neighbours. They are sportsmen and women, they are coaches, they are sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, family members, and brothers and sisters. They are people like us who want to make a contribution, not only in their vocation but as contributors to our society. Their job, unlike anyone else’s in our community, pits them against the most violent in our communities, something that none other is required to do.
I would like to read out what the Police Association printed in its Police News at the end of last year, because this tells the story of two of its officers who received bravery awards. These are constables in Christchurch. Let me read: “Constable Wardle was speaking after receiving an New Zealand Police Association bravery award along with his colleague former constable Marty Stiles. The two officers were involved in an incident in the Christchurch suburb of Phillipstown in July last year, during which Senior Constable Bruce Lamb was shot in the face, his police dog, Gage, was killed and his colleague, Constable Mitch Alatalo, was shot in the leg. Constables Alatalo and Wardle were conducting a routine search under the Misuse of Drugs Act, during which the aggressive manner of one of the occupants led them to call for backup. Constable Stiles and dog handler Senior Constable Lamb, and his dog Gage, responded. The occupant refused to come out of his room. When Senior Constable Lamb opened the door, the man opened fire with a rifle, shooting him through the face. His next shot killed police dog Gage. The gunman then came to the doorway and opened fire again, this time hitting Constable Alatalo as the officer retreated, escaping from the house … While under fire, Constable Stiles grabbed his fallen colleague, Senior Constable Lamb, by the belt and dragged him back down the hallway towards safety. At the same time, Constable Wardle (then acting as Sergeant), confronted the gunman with a Taser. As he did so, the gunman aimed at Constable Wardle and pulled the trigger, but the firearm jammed. The officer fired the Taser, but it failed to incapacitate the offender. To buy enough time for Constable Stiles to evacuate the wounded Bruce Lamb, Constable Wardle reloaded the Taser and continued to challenge the offender, who briefly retreated before again following the officers out of the house and down the drive while pointing his rifle at them. Constable Wardle provided cover for his colleagues while they retreated. Following the officers’ retreat, further armed police arrived. The offender rearmed himself with a higher powered rifle, and was ultimately arrested by the Armed Offenders Squad.”
This is the reason why this legislation is before the House, because these men and women are facing life-threatening situations that can happen any moment of any day. As a Government we stand by our men and women in uniform, who are there to protect the citizens of this nation. National is delivering on our promises to take action on violent crime. We have passed 18 new laws to make families safer in their homes and communities. We have made sentences tougher and strengthened bail law. We have boosted the number of police on the streets and given them new tools to tackle crime, while improving services for victims. We are proud of the stance that we are taking. Thank you.
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): On behalf of New Zealand First I rise to support the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill. It is absolutely essential that our police officers, our prison officers, and other staff who work in related roles in these areas are safe and are always as safe as possible in their workplace, and that any offence that is committed against them will be taken into account at sentencing. The Government and the courts must take this seriously. Any workplace safety issue is viewed very, very seriously and the same must apply here. We do not like to hear that the number of assaults on police officers and prison officers is increasing at the rate that it has done; figures suggest a 33 percent increase over the 2004 to 2009 period.
It does raise a number of questions. Will the amendment make any difference? We are saying that hopefully it will, because it is highlighting the issue to the public. But we ask what about the other related areas—for example, the mental health workers, the doctors, and the psychologists who are employed in the prison service? They are not in uniform but they do need protection. This could be one bill where they actually are provided that protection. We would gladly support an amendment to that effect.
Training is another area that actually makes us question what is happening in that area. We need to ensure that police and corrections staff have the best training they possibly can get. It needs to be robust, it needs to be vigorous, and it should be good enough to equip them to carry out their roles in the safest possible manner. If there has been this increase in assaults on police and corrections officers, then that should be good reason to ensure that police recruitment and Department of Corrections recruitment is not being deferred, and that the number of these people in these services remains high. We will be looking very carefully at the figures over the next wee while to ensure that they actually are.
John Hayes: Bring back Ron Mark.
BARBARA STEWART: We are bringing back a strong law and order focus.
We will be looking very closely at these bills that the Government is actually pushing through and passing to ensure that they do meet the criteria of our particular law and order policy. New Zealand First has always prided itself on the strong stance it has taken in the law and order area, and we will be continuing to do that. We will be supporting appropriate legislation in this area. At this point in time, I know that my time is nearly up. New Zealand First will support the second reading of the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill. Thank you.
JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): It gives me huge pleasure to speak in the last dying minutes of tonight about the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill. You know, we had a police officer in Ōāmaru who was going about his business late on a Friday night, and these scumbags, these local little scumbags, thought they would beat him up when he stopped them to have a look at their brake lights, which were not working properly. Do you know what these scumbags did to this police officer? They beat him into the gutter. Do you know what this lone police—
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member, but the time has come for me to leave the Chair.
Debate interrupted.
The House adjourned at 10 p.m.