Tuesday, 16 April 2013

Tuesday, 16 April 2013

Tuesday, 16 April 2013

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Amended Answers to Oral Questions

Question No. 12 to Minister, 27 March 2013

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Minister responsible for the GCSB): I seek leave to make a personal explanation to correct an answer I gave to a supplementary question asked during question No. 12 on 27 March 2013.

Mr SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action? There appears to be none.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: In response to a supplementary question asked during oral question No. 12 on 27 March, I said that Ian Fletcher’s appointment was made by the State Services Commissioner. I should have said that the appointment was made by me, following a recommendation from the commissioner.

Questions for Oral Answer

Questions to Ministers

Intelligence Agencies—Legality of Activities, Cybersecurity Role, and Legislative Reform

1. DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.

David Shearer: Why did the Prime Minister state six times in his press conference on 24 September that he did not know of any other unlawful action or errors made in relation to legally questionable spying on New Zealanders, when in fact he had been informed about that in July earlier?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: It was because I believed that to be correct.

David Shearer: Why did he ask only to be informed at that time, when he said today on Radio New Zealand that when the illegal spying was flagged by the Government Communications Security Bureau director in July, he indicated to him how serious the situation was?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: It was because I believed that to be the prudent course of action.

David Shearer: Why did he not instruct the Government Communications Security Bureau to suspend all legally questionable spying on New Zealanders as soon as he became aware of the serious problem in July?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The very unresolved nature of the matter, I believe, did not warrant that action.

David Shearer: Given that it was unresolved, did he not think that it was a more prudent course of action to stop any illegal spying on New Zealanders?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Not at that time, because that was not established and it has not been established, actually, at this point.

Louise Upston: Can the Prime Minister outline to the House the increasing threat that the National Cyber Security Centre has reported on?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Actually, I can—I can. The National Cyber Security Centre reported in 2011 that it had 90 instances lodged with it. These constitute serious instances that do damage or compromise the target or company involved. In 2012 that number increased from 90 to 134. I can inform the House today that for this calendar year the number already stands at 79, and we are not even at Anzac Day. We have already passed half of last year’s total of serious cyber instances. These attacks are steeply rising and putting at risk our Government and private sector security. The Government Communications Security Bureau has a vital role to play in combating this and that is why it is crucial the legislation that I proposed yesterday is passed by this House in good time.

David Shearer: Why did he stop illegal spying in September when he did not feel it was possible to stop it in July? What happened in between?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I think it is technically correct to say that I did not stop it in September. Actually, the director-general did, and he advised me.

Louise Upston: What steps has the National-led Government taken to strengthen New Zealand’s response to an increasing cyberthreat?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: This Government has taken a number of steps in relation to an increasing cyberthreat, including creating the National Cyber Security Centre within the Government Communications Security Bureau. The centre has publicly reported on the number of serious cyber instances, and it plays an important role in interacting with industry, across Government, and internationally, to protect our infrastructure and systems. We have also created the National Cyber Policy Office within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, which leads the development of cybersecurity policy advice for Government. It also provides advice on investing Government resources in cybersecurity activities. We are taking the cyberthreat very seriously, as are other Governments around the world. The reporting of instances here is still relatively new, so it is highly likely there is a lot more to come in this area.

David Shearer: Why has the amendment to the Security Intelligence Service legislation suddenly been shelved, and will he make public the draft legislation so that we can see what changes have been planned for the Security Intelligence Service?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: In answer to the last part of the question, no.

Louise Upston: Can the Prime Minister outline for the House the legislative proposals for significantly strengthening the oversight of our intelligence services?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes. The Government is proposing to significantly strengthen the oversight of our intelligence agencies and this is a very important step in rebuilding public confidence following the Kitteridge report. Among the changes we intend to make are the following: removing the requirement that the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security be a retired High Court judge. This will increase the pool of people who can do the job. Second, we will make the inspector-general’s office more proactive by increasing the requirements on the office and moving it a step forward from the existing review-focused work. Third, we will increase the resourcing and staffing of the inspector-general’s office, including creating a new role of deputy inspector-general. Fourth, legislation will explicitly expand the inspector-general’s programme and the office’s work will become more transparent. There are more changes, but in the interests of time I will stop here with what are very important and significant proposals for change.

David Shearer: In relation to the unanswered part of my last question, why has the amendment to the Security Intelligence Service legislation been shelved?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Because, in my view, the primary focus of attention should be on the changes to the Government Communications Security Bureau law and the increase in oversight.

David Shearer: In light of his answer and the lack of confidence that people have in the intelligence agencies, why will the Prime Minister not agree to a full independent inquiry to restore that confidence in our intelligence agencies?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Because I do not believe it is necessary.

State-owned Energy Companies, Sales—Mighty River Power Share Offer and Electricity Market

2. TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) to the Minister of Finance: What progress is the Government making in its share offer programme to reduce debt and free up capital for priority spending?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Yesterday the Mighty River Power share offer opened to New Zealand investors. This is the first offer in the Government’s $5 billion to $7 billion programme. The Mighty River Power offer period is for New Zealand retail investors only. This ensures New Zealanders will be at the front of the queue for shares and encourages widespread ownership so that 85 to 90 percent of Mighty River Power shares are owned by New Zealanders. New Zealanders have until 3 May to apply to buy shares. Shares are expected to be listed on the NZX on 10 May.

Todd McClay: How many New Zealanders pre-registered for shares in Mighty River Power?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: There were 440,000 New Zealanders who pre-registered for shares in Mighty River Power. Those who pre-registered may get an allocation preference of up to 25 percent if the offer is oversubscribed. We have yet to see just how many of those who have pre-registered will actually apply for shares. New Zealanders with applications for up to $2,000 worth of shares are guaranteed not to be scaled back, and New Zealanders who hold their shares continuously for 2 years will receive a loyalty bonus.

Hon David Parker: Why did thousands of pre-registrants for the Mighty River Power share offer receive emails last night with their names and reference numbers blacked out? Is it because the Government’s track record on privacy is so bad that it has swung too far the other way?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I understand that the provider of the email service detected some kind of error in the system after the emails had gone out. That has been corrected. But I can assure the member that that will not dampen the enthusiasm of those 440,000 New Zealanders who have shown an interest in Mighty River Power shares. They are making serious decisions about their personal investments, and that does not suit the Labour Party, which wants them to—

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Todd McClay: What are the benefits of the mixed ownership programme?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: There is a range of benefits. In fact, the benefits are significant enough that the Opposition parties have not promised to buy these companies back. These companies will be subject to the disciplines of financial markets, where they are likely, on average, to perform better than under public ownership. Funds raised from this partial sale will be reinvested through the Future Investment Fund. These investments will be in infrastructure, hospitals, schools, and the rebuild of Christchurch as part of a $19 billion capital expenditure programme by the Government over the next 4 years. We expect that the sale of shares will raise $5 billion to $7 billion, or around 3 percent of the Government’s balance sheet value. The alternative is to borrow more on volatile world financial markets.

Todd McClay: As part of the Government’s wider programme to improve the electricity sector, what progress has been made in making the market more competitive for hard-working New Zealanders?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: When the National Government came to office in late 2008, we considered it was urgent to do something about the runaway electricity price increases under the previous Government, which had added up to a 72 percent increase, or around 8 percent compound increases, in the electricity prices under the Labour Government. So we commissioned a technical advisory group to review the market, and, as a result, the Government passed the Electricity Industry Act to re-allocate assets among the State-owned enterprises to increase competition in wholesale and retail markets, created the Electricity Authority and made it responsible for promoting competition—a change from the Electricity Commission—developed a liquid hedge market, and created the What’s My Number campaign to promote consumer switching. All of these actions have had some impact on the runaway 8 percent per year price increases under the previous Labour Government.

Government Communications Security Bureau—Prime Minister’s Adherence to Cabinet Manual Standards

3. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he believe that he has met the requirements of the Cabinet Manual to behave in a way that upholds, and is seen to uphold, the highest ethical standards in his ministerial capacity, his political capacity and his personal capacity; if so, why?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes, because I have.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How was he upholding the Cabinet Manual on 24 September last year regarding the Government Communications Security Bureau when he said “I’ve never had advice in the four years that I’ve been minister that they’ve in any way ever acted unlawfully”, despite saying last week that he was told about illegal spying in July 2012?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Because the statement I made on 24 September was correct.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Was the Prime Minister told in July of 2012 that there had been illegal spying—yes or no?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Not the way the member defines it, no.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My language has been plain and simple and to the point. There is no way one can misconstrue the first and the last question. How can he possibly get up and get away with saying “Not the way the member defines it.”? How else could I define it? I am asking him whether he was told in July 2012 of illegal spying. How do you define that? It is as plain as daylight.

Mr SPEAKER: And the Prime Minister, in my mind, addressed that question quite emphatically, saying “No, not in the way the member is defining it.”

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Could I have your ruling? How would you define the question I just asked?

Mr SPEAKER: No. That is not a point of order now. You are now disputing—what the member can do is continue with his supplementary questions.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We have limited supplementary questions in this House. That is not a satisfactory ruling—that we can count on supplementary questions when you know that that number is limited.

Mr SPEAKER: On this occasion I will allocate an additional supplementary question to the member.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: What is the difficulty with the question “Was he was told about illegal spying in July 2012?” that he cannot answer?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I have answered it. As I have made clear publicly, what was raised in July was a flag about the issues of the operability between the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau legislation. I was advised that there was legal work that had to be done and was ongoing, but it was unresolved. In fact, actually, in terms of legal opinions, it is still not resolved today. But there was a decision reached by the Solicitor-General in March 2013.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Given that it took him a full week to disclose a phone call he made to Ian Fletcher about the Government Communications Security Bureau job, given that he knew Mr Fletcher’s phone number, despite not having seen him for many, many years, and given that he had dinner with Mr Fletcher on at least two occasions—

John Hayes: Conspiracy.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well, actually, a conspiracy is when two or more—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! If the member could just concentrate on his question now, please.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well, Mr Speaker, all I am hearing is a barrage over here.

Mr SPEAKER: I accept that interjections are not helpful. Would the member please continue.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Given that it took him—[Interruption] Oh, you sensitive chaps.

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Given that it took him a full week to disclose the phone call he made to Ian Fletcher about the Government Communications Security Bureau, given that he knew Mr Fletcher’s number, despite not having seen him for years, and given that he had dinner with Mr Fletcher on at least two occasions, did he make more than one phone call to Mr Fletcher prior to his appointment to the Government Communications Security Bureau?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I did not have dinner with Ian Fletcher on two occasions.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a point of order.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: My question asked whether he made more than one phone call to Mr Fletcher—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The difficulty was that there was quite a lot else added to the question, but if the Prime Minister could please address the last part of the question, which was whether he made more than one phone call, that would help the order of the House.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not have that information with me. If the member wants to put it down in writing, I am happy to get it for him.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. With respect, what is the use of question time when the Prime Minister can give that sort of answer? He was asked whether he made more than one phone call prior to the appointment, and he cannot remember.

Mr SPEAKER: The Prime Minister answered that he did not have that information with him. That is a perfectly satisfactory answer to that question. Does the member wish to ask his additional supplementary question?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How was he upholding the Cabinet Manual when he told the House that the first he knew of the Government Communications Security Bureau spying on Kim Dotcom was 17 September 2012, when in fact he had been told on 29 February 2012 and made a quip to staff about it?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I refute the premise that the member is basing that question on.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Supplementary question, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: No. Order! The member has now used not only his entitlement but also the additional supplementary question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, I have got five.

Mr SPEAKER: No, he has four today and I have given you one extra. That comes to five, and you have used five supplementary questions. Question No. 4, the Hon Phil Heatley.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. By my calculation—and your clerk can tell me whether it is right or wrong—having given me one extra, and I had only four written down here, that makes five. I have not got to ask the fourth one yet.

Mr SPEAKER: My clerk is on the phone. He has said you had had four questions, I gave you another one, which came to five, and you have asked five in total. [Interruption] He has asked five questions. We are moving on to question No. 4.

Beneficiaries—Statistics

4. Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) to the Minister for Social Development: What reports has she received on the latest benefit figures?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development): The latest benefit numbers show that there are around 29,000 fewer New Zealanders receiving benefits than in the last quarter. This is the lowest that benefit numbers have been at this time of the year since 2009. As at the end of the March quarter there were 310,146 people on benefits, including 92,550 sole parents on the DPB, just over 58,000 on sickness benefits, and 48,756 on unemployment benefits.

Hon Phil Heatley: How many people have come off benefits for work, and what difference will this make?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: In the last quarter more than 17,600 people went off work-tested benefits—the unemployment benefit, the DPB, and sickness benefits—and got into work. What we also saw, as is usual in the month of March, was a lot going back into training and into study. But we know that getting people off welfare and into work means greater opportunities for them. This is making a difference to New Zealanders’ lives.

Hon Phil Heatley: What trends has she seen in the number of people receiving sickness and invalid’s benefits?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: From December 1999 to November 2008 the sickness benefit numbers grew by 50 percent and numbers for the invalid’s benefit grew by 60 percent. When I first came in as Minister, I was told that this was the track these benefits were on and to just accept it. Quite frankly, this National Government was not prepared to. Despite the toughest global economic recession, the growth of sickness benefit numbers has been just 14 percent and has been tracking down over the last 12 months. Growth in the number of invalid’s benefits has, actually, stayed the same and has not increased.

Exchange Rate—Economic Policy and Effect on Export Sector

5. Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) to the Minister of Finance: Will the recent rise in the New Zealand dollar to a post-float high on the Trade Weighted Index cause job losses among non-primary exporters and import substitution businesses?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): It is too simplistic to conclude that, although of course it is possible. Jobs come and go for all sorts of reasons including winning or losing customers, the success or failure of competitors, and changes in market prices, which can, of course, be influenced by the exchange rate. A high exchange rate does make it more difficult for exporters to be profitable, but it is clear that over the past 6 years or 7 years, despite a rising and high exchange rate, many New Zealand exporters have remained or became profitable, and are growing. This is demonstrated in, for instance, the Performance of Manufacturing Index for the manufacturing sector, which has shown that since 2009 the manufacturing sector has been growing most of the time. More recent statistics suggest that our firms are fairly resilient. New job listings on seek.co.nz are up 4.9 percent compared with March last year, and TradeMe reports job vacancies in the first quarter were up 5 percent on a year ago.

Hon David Parker: Does he agree with the IMF and the Governor of the Reserve Bank that the New Zealand dollar is overvalued and hindering the rebalancing of the New Zealand economy; if so, what measures will he take to reduce the level and volatility of the New Zealand dollar?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes, I do tend to agree with the Reserve Bank and the IMF on this matter, and I also agree with both of them that there is no easy or obvious fix to a relatively high exchange rate. That high exchange rate is driven by the relative health of the New Zealand economy compared with other developed economies. I would expect the exchange rate is likely to come down when other economies stop printing money and their interest rates start rising. In the meantime, we are focusing on what we can control, which is the competitiveness of the New Zealand economy, and our 300 initiatives in that respect are set out in the Business Growth Agenda.

Hon David Parker: Given that exports have barely moved as a percentage of GDP in the period since he was appointed, how will his goal of exports at 40 percent of GDP be achieved under what he himself has called the highest rolling average exchange rate since World War II?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, under the circumstances, we actually have not done too badly. I agree that the high exchange rate is a headwind to a rebalancing of the economy. The other significant headwind is going to be the rebuild of Christchurch, where very substantial resources that may have been invested in the externally focused sectors are going to be invested in rebuilding Christchurch, but that is something that we have to do. In the long run, our focus on getting the Government’s books under control, improving the efficiency of the 30 percent of the economy the Government controls, and focusing on the competitiveness of our businesses, compared with offshore, including Australia, is going to lead to an improvement in our export performance.

Paul Goldsmith: What reports has he received showing that businesses are becoming more confident and investing for growth, despite the headwinds caused by the high New Zealand dollar?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: There are a number of such reports that show the resilience of New Zealand businesses, which recognise that an increase in the exchange rate is effectively an increase in the living standards of most New Zealanders. Those reports include the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research’s quarterly survey of business opinion, which shows business optimism at the highest level since March 2010; the latest monthly economic indicators show that the outlook for the economy is looking more positive; and the BNZ - Business New Zealand performance of manufacturing index remained positive in March and just off a 12-month high. Of course, if the exchange rate remained at elevated levels of 86c or 87c against the US dollar, that would be a very significant challenge for New Zealand businesses.

Hon David Parker: Given that just last week he said that the two biggest hindrances to export growth are the Canterbury earthquakes and the exchange rate, should he not abandon the primacy given to inflation targeting over other aspects like the exchange rate, and do something to address the exchange rate in order to increase exports?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, I would certainly stand by those comments. If the member means are we going to go printing money, the answer is no, because in the long run that will drive down the living standards of all New Zealanders. Bear in mind, a rising exchange rate means that New Zealanders can buy more with their Kiwi dollar than ever, including petrol and including food. I do not know what the Labour Party has got against rising living standards for New Zealanders.

Hon David Parker: Why is he steadfastly sticking to a monetary policy regime that was devised before the fall of the Berlin Wall when so many other countries have moved on and is driving the New Zealand dollar to heights that close down New Zealand businesses and jobs?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Labour Party needs to make sure it is not led by the nose by the Greens—as it is on its electricity policies, as we will find out on Thursday—on this matter of the exchange rate. The member is fooling himself if he believes that there is some easy way of a small, open economy picking its exchange rate. You just cannot do it in a way that maintains a sensible economy without massive risk to taxpayers. The member has flown around the world talking to all sorts of experts, but, actually, conventional monetary policy is the most appropriate for the New Zealand economy as it is, and with growth between 2 to 3 percent we are in much better shape than a whole lot of other economies.

Transport Funding, Auckland—City Rail Link, Roading Projects, and Value for Money

6. JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green) to the Minister of Finance: Does he have a plan to fund the Auckland City rail link in the upcoming Budget given that public backing for the rail project is more than twice as strong as the Government’s proposed new motorway north from Puhoi?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): I am advised that the Pūhoi to Wellsford road has considerable backing, particularly in Northland and the North Auckland region. I am further advised that the road has a cost-benefit ratio that is higher than the rail loop, both with and without consideration of wider economic benefits. Discussions with the Auckland Council on transport options are continuing. Of course, the Government must be satisfied that any investment represents value for taxpayers’ money, and, as for financing plans, the member will just have to wait for the Budget on 16 May.

Julie Anne Genter: I seek leave to table the business cases for the Auckland City rail link and for Pūhoi to Wellsford, which show that—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Are they publicly available or easily available to members? [Interruption] They are.

Julie Anne Genter: If his goal is to achieve value for money for the taxpayer, why is he prioritising $2 billion on duplicating a motorway that carries fewer than 20,000 vehicles per day instead of unlocking Auckland’s rail network with the city rail link, which will take tens of thousands of cars off the road at peak time?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: These decisions are all made in the context of the documents the Government publishes about its plan for roading over the next 4 or 5 years, so the member is free to go and look at how that is explained and put together. In respect of these particular projects, the Pūhoi to Wellsford project has a reasonable cost-benefit ratio. One would also take into consideration an issue commonly raised by Opposition parties, and that is the economic deprivation of the far north. It has a strong view that better infrastructure will, in the long run, help economic development and therefore provide jobs for people in the far north. In respect of the rail loop, there is ongoing discussion with the Auckland Council, which has put its case consistently over a number of years. On the face of it, the benefit-cost ratio for that project is lower than for the Pūhoi to Wellsford highway.

Julie Anne Genter: Would it not be smarter to invest in targeted safety upgrades to the road north of Pūhoi now and a bypass around Warkworth, which would achieve 90 percent of the safety and economic benefits much sooner than a new duplicate motorway, leaving $1.5 billion to invest in a project that will make a real difference to hundreds of thousands of Aucklanders and how they get around their city every day?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I accept that the member is an advocate for the central business district rail loop, but even if there is a decision made that it is a worthwhile project, there would then be a discussion about who should pay for it, because, as the member has pointed out, it is something that primarily benefits the Auckland commuters. I would also point out to the member that it is not a trade-off between the Pūhoi highway and the central business district rail loop. The Government has a broad-ranging investment programme in transport, which has included very significant investment in the Auckland and the Wellington rail networks. In fact, it is very significant, picking up from where the previous Government started off. There has been very considerable progress made with those investments, and the Government will also weigh up any decision around the rail loop with all the other transport projects all around the country, many of which have better benefit-cost ratios than this one.

Julie Anne Genter: Does he deny that the roads of national significance have not been tested by Treasury’s better business case guidelines and, therefore, his Government is prioritising 85 percent of new infrastructure spending on projects that have not been thoroughly assessed and that were chosen before this party came into Government?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Some of the weight given to the roads of national significance was set out in the manifesto presented by the National Party Opposition back in 2008, and of course at that time it did not have access to all the analytical capacity—or, in fact, to any of the analytical capacity—of the Public Service. But those projects have all been thoroughly scrutinised for value for money, and any new projects that the Government invests in, whether it is roads, hospitals, schools, or rail, go through a very thorough process to test them for value for money.

Julie Anne Genter: Can I confirm that the Minister has just said that he is prioritising projects that have not been through Treasury’s better business case guidelines for infrastructure development, instead of prioritising projects that would actually make a real difference to congestion in Auckland, the single biggest project of which is the city rail link?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, I think that the point here is that the reason there is a healthy debate about the city rail link is that when you put it through the kinds of robust guidelines that have been developed, it shows relatively low benefits for the investment. That is not to say that it cannot happen, but I do not think we should try to fudge the figures around the general benefits of the central business district rail link, and if the member has reasons why it should go ahead other than its economic value to New Zealand, then I am sure that those are going to be part of the debate. But the fact is that under rigorous assessment, it is not the kind of project that stands out ahead of all the others as a valuable investment.

Julie Anne Genter: Given that road users and freight will benefit most from the city rail link according to all the numerous studies that have been done on this project, because it is the best option to reduce congestion, why will his Government not make it a priority, instead of its election promises to the provinces?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Actually, we spend a fair bit of time in the provinces defending the fact that a lot of the investment is in the big cities, particularly the Tauranga-Hamilton-Auckland triangle. All those matters, of course, will be taken into account as this debate continues to evolve. I know that in the mind of the Auckland Council this is a project that it believes is vital to the development of its city. The rigorous economic assessment of it does not rank it highly, but the discussions are continuing.

Julie Anne Genter: Given that Auckland is expected to grow by more than the entire population of Wellington by 2031, why is his Government not prioritising smart infrastructure like this city rail link, which will unlock the capacity of our existing rail asset and take tens of thousands of cars off the road at peak time, giving Aucklanders real choices and freeing up the roads for freight and commercial traffic?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, our Government is aware of what the likely growth pressures in Auckland are, which is why there has been very extensive investment. The one under way now—the Waterview tunnel—is, I am advised, the largest roading project in the southern hemisphere at the moment, and that is all about unlocking the potential of the completed motorway network, because regardless of whether the central business district rail tunnel goes ahead, the overwhelming majority of commuter trips in Auckland will continue to be in either cars or buses, and they will continue to need motorways. So these are not mutually exclusive ways of approaching investment in Auckland’s infrastructure. The Government has done metro rail, it is proceeding to complete the motorway network, and it is in an ongoing discussion with the council about the central business district rail network.

Julie Anne Genter: For the benefit of the Minister, I seek leave to table information from traffic engineering guidelines that shows that the capacity of a motorway lane is 2,000 people per hour—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Is the information freely available to members?

Julie Anne Genter: It does not seem to be available to the National Government—

Mr SPEAKER: If it is freely available to members it will not be tabled.

Julie Anne Genter: I also seek leave to table a letter I have here that is not available on the internet, but it is a letter to the Secretary of State for Transport in the United Kingdom from 25 transport professors, and it does question the economic benefits of—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Leave is sought to table this letter, a UK letter, signed by 25 professors, etc. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. It can be tabled.

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

Economic Relationship with China—Trade, Education, and Tourism

7. Dr JIAN YANG (National) to the Minister for Economic Development: How is the Government recognising the importance of China for New Zealand’s trade, education and tourism sectors?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development): Last week the Prime Minister led the largest-ever New Zealand business delegation to China. New Zealand’s economic prosperity is highly dependent on our ability to form and maintain strong links with other countries. This trip was particularly important for encouraging and facilitating more growth in our trade, tourism, and international education exports with China. Total two-way goods trade with China now totals $14.6 billion, and greater investment developing between our two economies means we are broadly on track to meet the target that the Prime Minister and Premier Wen set in 2010 of doubling the two-way trade to NZ$20 billion by the end of 2015. This target was reconfirmed between the Prime Minister and President Xi Jinping during the successful China visit last week.

Dr Jian Yang: What progress was made on furthering New Zealand - China education partnerships during the trip to China?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Around 24,000 Chinese students come to New Zealand schools and tertiary institutions every year, making China our largest source of international students. While in Beijing last week I signed a strategic education partnership with China’s education Minister, which will build on the existing positive relationship between the two countries through supporting more educational institutional partnerships. As part of that partnership I witnessed the vocational training programme arrangement between Wintec and Qingdao Technical College and Tianjin Light Industry Vocational and Technical College. I also witnessed the Waikato University and Sun Yat-Sen University memorandum of understanding, the New Zealand Little Schools and Wuxi local government memorandum of understanding, the launch of a Gibson Group documentary on Chinese student experiences in New Zealand, and I had the pleasure of launching the first Chinese language version of the New Zealand children’s classic Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy.

Dr Jian Yang: What announcements were made during the trip to China to make it easier for Chinese tourists and business people to visit New Zealand?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: China is now New Zealand’s second-largest source of visitors, and we are committed to ensuring they enjoy a top-quality tourism experience. The number of Chinese tourists to New Zealand is growing rapidly—for the first time exceeding 200,000, in the year to February 2013. That is up nearly 40 percent, year on year. A new, bilingual, Chinese section of the Immigration Service website is making it easier for visitors to lodge visa applications. While in China last week the Prime Minister announced that to make it easier for Chinese tourists to visit New Zealand, from 1 May this year the Government will extend multiple-entry visitor visas that are routinely granted to independent Chinese travellers to 24 months. He also announced a new 3-year multiple-entry business visa, which will lower the cost of travel for frequent business travellers and make it easier for them to move between the two countries.

Dr Jian Yang: What else is the Government doing to encourage growth in international tourism?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Today the Prime Minister announced that this year’s Budget will see significant investment in areas that encourage international growth. As part of this package, the Government will invest an additional $158 million over 4 years in tourism marketing and promotion. Achieving growth in tourism earnings requires targeted new investment to position New Zealand as a high-value destination in markets that have real potential for growth, like China. The Prime Minister will release exact details of the new investment later in the week. People to people links, whether they be as a result of tourism, education, cultural exchanges, or doing business, are crucial for building understanding and lifting economic cooperation between countries to create more jobs and growth in this country.

Solid Energy—Financial Position and Minister’s Role

8. Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour) to the Minister for State Owned Enterprises: What responsibility, if any, does he take for Solid Energy’s precarious financial position?

Hon TONY RYALL (Minister for State Owned Enterprises): Yes, as answered in the House on 28 February, I am the Minister responsible for exercising the powers of the shareholding Minister under the State-Owned Enterprises Act. The Act also lays out that the responsibility for the operational and financial performance of all State-owned enterprises, including Solid Energy, lies primarily with the boards of those companies, although shareholders and the Government are ultimately held accountable by the House and the public. I am not responsible for the significant commercial risks faced by Government-owned businesses, nor, in the case of Solid Energy, a 40 percent drop in world coal prices.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Why did he not appoint a Crown observer to the board of Solid Energy, given that Treasury advised him to do so in a briefing on 31 October, which said: “the presence of the Crown observer has an important signalling effect, continually reminding the company that its focus should be on moving to a sustainable position, and minimising risks to the Crown.”?

Hon TONY RYALL: Because at that time the Government had appointed a new chair, and we were also about to have new board members appointed to Solid Energy.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Does he stand by his statement to One News last night that “all state owned enterprises need to be able to publicly justify their spending”; if so, was the following spending justified: $1.8 million on overseas travel, $1 million on nine communications staff, $500,000 on public relations and advertising, and $200,000 employing private investigators for security, when Solid Energy already had a security firm to secure its sites?

Hon TONY RYALL: I do believe that State-owned enterprises’ spending should be publicly justifiable, just as Solid Energy had to justify why it was spending taxpayers’ money on paying security people to spy on groups when Labour was the Government.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Has he questioned Solid Energy’s expenditure of $48,000 employing lobbyists Saunders Unsworth to advise on “select committee protocol” for a 1-hour appearance before the Commerce Committee; if not, does he consider it a good use of taxpayers’ money, when the company executives could not even adhere to the simple committee protocol of answering basic questions?

Hon TONY RYALL: I would have to say that spending $48,000, if it were solely for the purpose of appearing before the select committee, is an awful lot of money, but what I think it does demonstrate is that there is, for that member opposite, hope after politics.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question began with “Has he questioned Solid Energy’s expenditure …”. “Has he questioned it?” was the question.

Mr SPEAKER: OK, and if the member would like to ask that question again, I will listen carefully to the answer.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Thank you. There might be hope for the Minister as well.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will simply ask his question again.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Has he questioned Solid Energy’s expenditure of $48,000 employing lobbyists Saunders Unsworth to advise on “select committee protocol” for a 1-hour appearance before the Commerce Committee; if not, does he consider it a good use of taxpayers’ money, when the company executives could not even adhere to the simple committee protocol of answering basic questions?

Hon TONY RYALL: Yes.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Why did the Minister take no action to rein in the extravagant expenditure of Solid Energy as the company’s financial position was rapidly deteriorating, given that he requested, and was receiving, month-to-month monitoring reports on the company, and if he believes he was right in taking no action, could he please advise the House why he bothers taking his ministerial salary and what exactly his role is as the guardian of the taxpayers’ purse in respect of State-owned enterprises?

Mr SPEAKER: There were a number of questions there; the Minister can answer any.

Hon TONY RYALL: Ministers took very significant action as a result of the declining position for Solid Energy, including putting the company on intensive monitoring. The chair has changed and the board has changed. What has not changed is the fact that this company had to deal with a collapse of 40 percent in the world coal price. Our Government did take action. It is a shame that that Government did not take action when it was allowing that company to spy on New Zealanders—

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Christchurch, Recovery—Housing New Zealand Insurance Settlement

9. NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central) to the Minister of Housing: How will the $320 million settlement of Housing New Zealand’s insurance claim for earthquake damaged properties help achieve the Government’s priority of rebuilding Christchurch?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Housing): The settlement is hugely helpful in that it enables the corporation to fast track repairs and replacements. Currently, each house has to be individually assessed and checked off with the insurer. It also restricts the ability to write off some of those seriously damaged homes and replace them. This settlement gives the Government the flexibility to rebuild for the future with the greater diversity of house sizes and to move away from heavily concentrated State housing estates. The greatest benefit of this settlement is that it allows the repair programme to be completed in 3 years rather than in 5.

Nicky Wagner: What is the Minister’s response to the Opposition’s criticism that it is unfair for Housing New Zealand to have settled its claim ahead of some private homeowners’ claims in Christchurch?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Government wants all earthquake insurance claims resolved for State agencies and for private building owners, and we want that done as quickly as possible, but it would be a nonsense for Housing New Zealand to sit back and to say that it is not going to settle its claims until every other insurance claim is resolved. The losers from that would be Christchurch’s most vulnerable families who depend on the corporation for their accommodation.

Nicky Wagner: Has the Minister seen the Opposition’s claims that this insurance settlement sets a double standard and that in the red zone Housing New Zealand has got a better deal than that of ordinary homeowners?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, that claim is quite wrong. For private homeowners, the Government has offered at the full 2007 valuation for homes and land that were insured and at half that for those that were uninsured. This is over and above the Earthquake Commission’s requirements by law, and the Government is, in fact, putting $1 billion on the table to assist with that. Housing New Zealand is not receiving any compensation for the 400 properties within the red zone for the loss of land value.

Government Communications Security Bureau, Director—Appointment Process

10. GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Prime Minister: What role, if any, did he play in recommending the appointment of Ian Fletcher as Director of the Government Communications Security Bureau?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): As I have publicly stated before, I agreed with the State Services Commissioner’s advice that a potential short list of people identified by a recruitment consultant for the job should not be considered by an interview panel. I agreed with Iain Rennie to look elsewhere to fill the position. I rang Ian Fletcher and said that if he was interested in the position, he would need to go through a process and should call Maarten Wevers in the first instance. The interview panel was unanimous that Mr Fletcher was suitable for the position, and Mr Rennie then recommended his appointment to me. I took his appointment to Cabinet and it was agreed. I then recommended the appointment of Mr Fletcher to the Governor-General.

Grant Robertson: Why did the Prime Minister not give that information in his correction that he gave before the start of question time today?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Because it was not necessary.

Grant Robertson: Why did he not tell New Zealanders the truth about his role in the appointment process when he was asked direct questions about it in this House and by the media?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: As I have said on numerous occasions, when the member asked me, it was a supplementary question to question No. 12. I was not expecting that particular question, and, frankly, the phone call was so unmemorable I had not remembered it. But I was the not the person who filled in my tax return—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That adds nothing to the quality of the answer.

Grant Robertson: Why did he say 2 days after the question in the House “I didn’t undertake the recruitment, that was fully done by the State Services Commission”, when he was the person who rejected the short list, he was the person who suggested Ian Fletcher, and he was the person who made a phone call to Ian Fletcher—2 days after the question was asked in the House?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Because in the context of the question I was asked I believed that to be correct. The recruitment was undertaken by the State Services Commissioner, and that is actually accurate in terms of the way it was done.

Louise Upston: Can the Prime Minister tell the House what reports he has seen of the Auditor-General’s view about the appointment of Ian Fletcher?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Funnily enough, I can. I have seen the Auditor-General say that he does not intend to carry out an inquiry into the appointment of Ian Fletcher. Let me quote from the Auditor-General: “The Prime Minister has responsibility for this appointment. Unlike for chief executives of other government departments, the relevant legislation”—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I have a point of order from the Rt Hon Winston Peters.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. With the greatest respect to the House and to the Auditor-General, if she has had a gender change, we should know about it.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Prime Minister has every right to answer the question that was put by Louise Upston, if he wishes to continue.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: To continue: “The Prime Minister has responsibility for this appointment. Unlike for chief executives of government departments, the relevant legislation does not prescribe any particular process that has to be followed before making that appointment. … The State Services Commission provided support to the Prime Minister in this appointment process. … It is relatively common for recruitment processes to adapt as they progress”. [Interruption] The members might not like it, but the Auditor-General says “No problems.”, the State Services Commissioner says “No problems.”, and, in fact, there is nothing wrong with the appointment. Ian Fletcher was the best candidate for the job.

Grant Robertson: How did he come to have Ian Fletcher’s phone number when he called him in July 2011?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No clue.

Mr SPEAKER: No. Order! It was a reasonable question, which I do not think should be difficult for the Prime Minister to answer. How did he come to have the phone number?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I genuinely have no clue. I do not know how I got the number.

Grant Robertson: In light of his last answer that he is clueless about—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, that will only lead to disorder. Would the member just ask his supplementary question. [Interruption] Order! If the member wants a supplementary question, he will ask it.

Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is a perfectly reasonable question. The Prime Minister said he had no clue—

Mr SPEAKER: As to how he got a phone number.

Dr Russel Norman: Mr Robertson said he was clueless. That is the same thing.

Mr SPEAKER: No. Order! That is not a helpful comment from Dr Russel Norman. Would the member please ask his supplementary question.

Grant Robertson: Can the Prime Minister understand why New Zealanders are struggling to believe anything that he has got to say on this matter when he cannot even answer the question of how he came to have Ian Fletcher’s phone number?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No, because I did not, at that point, have Ian Fletcher’s mobile phone number. To the best of my knowledge, I actually rang the directory service to get the Queensland number. I do not actually have his number.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Parliamentary question time will become a total waste of time if the Prime Minister can make it up as he goes along. He told the House that he happened to have Ian Fletcher’s number. Now he explains, weeks later, that he went and found it somewhere else; he did not have the number. What is the truth here? That is the purpose of question time.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! It is pretty clear to me that on reflection he had time to remember how he now recalls that he got the number. I do not think that is unreasonable at all. [Interruption] Order! The most important thing—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: It is not important whether it is strictly clear to you. What is important is that it is not clear to the rest of the country or anybody else in the House how you derived that understanding.

Mr SPEAKER: Well, the Prime Minister has now given an answer that has made it a lot clearer.

Grant Robertson: In light of the Prime Minister’s last answer, can he tell the House how he managed to get a mobile phone number from a directory service when you cannot get mobile phone numbers from directory services?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Because when I rang the Queensland service, it was redirected to that mobile.

Welfare Fraud—Information Sharing Between Agencies and Further Deterrents

11. MIKE SABIN (National—Northland) to the Associate Minister for Social Development: What early results can he report from the Government’s efforts to deal with welfare fraud?

Hon CHESTER BORROWS (Associate Minister for Social Development): Over the past week we have seen our new welfare fraud measures deliver their first results. Last Thursday the first inter-agency welfare fraud investigation resulted in the arrest of two people on charges related to a $375,000 welfare scam. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I am now having trouble hearing the answer because of the noise level coming from the Opposition side of the House. Would the Minister please start his answer again.

Hon CHESTER BORROWS: Over the past week we have seen our new welfare fraud measures deliver their first results. Last Thursday the first inter-agency welfare fraud investigation resulted in the arrest of two people on charges relating to a $375,000 welfare scam. This scam saw hundreds of beneficiaries making false claims for emergency dental and other assistance. The case was investigated by Ministry of Social Development fraud investigators working with the Police and the Inland Revenue Department, and it shows how agencies sharing their resources and information can help catch fraud that affects not just one but several Government agencies.

Mike Sabin: What success can he report from enhanced information sharing between the Ministry of Social Development and the Inland Revenue Department?

Hon CHESTER BORROWS: Improved information sharing is already paying big dividends, with 525 people who were working and no longer entitled to a benefit being identified and their benefit being cancelled. Although I am glad these people have found work, they have no right to abuse the welfare system and take money they are no longer entitled to. With the benefits already stopped costing $5.6 million a year, these results illustrate the potential for information sharing to prevent welfare fraud.

Mike Sabin: What can we expect to see next from his welfare fraud reforms?

Hon CHESTER BORROWS: Later this year the House will consider the Social Security (Fraud Measures and Debt Recovery) Amendment Bill, which will change the law to hold to account partners involved in relationship fraud. In the second half of the year our low-trust client measures will come into force, placing stringent new checks on beneficiaries who have previously tried to rip off the system, and we will continue to see offenders caught as a result of our inter-agency work and information sharing. For a tiny minority who think it is OK to steal from the welfare system, the time is up. If they do not come and put things right with us, we will be coming to them.

Mining, Marine—Amendment to Restrict Protest Activity

12. GARETH HUGHES (Green) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: Will he recommend returning the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill to the select committee so that the public can have a say on the so-called “Anadarko Amendment”; if not, why not?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): As I told the member last week in question time, no. Supplementary Order Paper 205 was robustly debated in the House last week and voted on, and Green members, for example, took many calls in the Committee of the whole House and made their views very well known.

Gareth Hughes: Why, then, is the Minister rushing ahead to pass the so-called “Anadarko amendment” into law, given that a recent poll out today shows that 79 percent of New Zealanders and over 60 percent of National Party voters want the amendment to be withdrawn completely or at least sent back to a select committee hearing?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, I note that it was a Greenpeace poll, and what is very clear is that if you ask a certain question, mischaracterising the law, you get a certain answer. Actually, if it characterised the law correctly, I am sure it would find that the law is very popular among many New Zealanders.

Gareth Hughes: Are the Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Palmer, Peter Williams QC, New Zealander of the Year Anne Salmond, and over 36,000 New Zealanders who have signed a petition in the last few days all unreasonable to be asking for public consultation on this amendment?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: They are clearly wrong in their legal interpretation.

Gareth Hughes: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do not feel the question was addressed. The question was whether these New Zealanders are—

Mr SPEAKER: I think the question was very adequately addressed.

Brendan Horan: Given that a Horizon Research poll in the last week has found that 79 percent of New Zealanders oppose criminalising protest at sea, is he not ashamed that he is muzzling the people of Tauranga, who would make submissions if the select committee process went ahead?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: As I have made very clear, this HorizonPoll was commissioned by Greenpeace. It asked a certain question; it got a certain answer.

Gareth Hughes: Can he guarantee that we will not see a Gulf of Mexico - sized oil spill in New Zealand; if not, is it not deep-sea oil drilling rather than peaceful protest the dangerous and reckless activity he should be stopping?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: If the member was right, perhaps he could have focused on that in some of his speeches instead of the sideshows the Green Party members did focus on. The reality is we have very robust processes—

Hon Member: Just answer the question.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, I am answering his question. If he would sit down—

Gareth Hughes: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think that was entirely unfair of the Minister to start off with an attack. He did not attempt to address the question whatsoever.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Minister is moving to it. The question was whether he can guarantee, etc. The Minister should answer the question.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: There are very robust processes and regulations coming through this bill, in fact, that make me very confident that we will not see that sort of disaster.

Question No. 10 to Minister

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I seek leave to ensure that there is absolutely correct information and to make sure I give an answer to Mr Robertson.

Mr SPEAKER: What is the point of order?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I am seeking leave to make sure I give you the fullness of the answer.

Mr SPEAKER: Are you seeking leave to correct an answer? [Interruption] I am not sure what the point of order is.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I am seeking leave to complete the answer, for fullness.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave would need to be required. Leave is so denied. [Interruption] Order! I have a point of order and it will be heard in silence.

Question No. 3 to Minister

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. If you check the Hansard I believe that what you ruled earlier today on question No. 3 is incorrect. We asked a primary question and four supplementary questions, one of which was a repeat of the right to ask one of those supplementary questions again. I think you have got your count wrong.

Mr SPEAKER: I will certainly check Hansard and have a look at that for the right honourable member. Supplementary questions are, of course, always at the discretion of the Speaker. If a mistake has been made, I will certainly make sure we find a way to correct it.

Question No. 10 to Minister

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to make it clear that if the Prime Minister seeks leave to make a personal explanation to correct an answer that was incorrect, the Labour Party will not oppose it.

Mr SPEAKER: That is the only way forward. If the Prime Minister feels that his answer was incorrect because it was incomplete, he has every ability to seek leave to make a personal explanation.

Question No. 10 to Minister—Amended Answer

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I seek leave to correct that.

Mr SPEAKER: The member so seeks leave. Is there any objection? There is none.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I have now checked with my office. We cannot be 100 percent sure whether I rang the directory service or my assistant rang the directory service—either is possible. Either the call was redirected or the number was given. We are fairly sure that it was redirected. That is the fullness of the answer.

Bills

Crown Minerals Amendment Bill

Conservation Amendment Bill (No 2)

Continental Shelf Amendment Bill

Reserves Amendment Bill

Wildlife Amendment Bill

Referral to Commerce Committee

BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): I move, That the order of the day for the third reading of the bills arising from the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill be discharged, and that they be referred to the Commerce Committee for further consideration. This would allow for public submissions, if called for.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the motion be agreed to.

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 64

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Motion not agreed to.

Third Readings

Third Readings

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): I move, That the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill, the Conservation Amendment Bill (No 2), the Continental Shelf Amendment Bill, the Reserves Amendment Bill, and the Wildlife Amendment Bill be now read a third time. These changes are central to this Government’s work programme to improve the regulatory system for the petroleum and minerals sectors in New Zealand. This legislation delivers on the objectives of the Crown minerals review to encourage the development of Crown-owned minerals, so that they contribute more to New Zealand’s economic development; to streamline and simplify the regime where appropriate, ensuring that it is in line with the regulatory reform agenda, and making it better able to deal with future developments; and to ensure that better coordination of regulatory agencies can contribute to stringent health, safety, and environmental standards in exploration and production activities.

The petroleum and minerals sectors are already important contributors to the New Zealand economy. Mining is the backbone of many local economies in which they operate. For example, the petroleum industry in Taranaki directly employs almost 4,000 people, with another 4,000 in supporting sectors, and contributes around $2 billion—probably more—in local GDP. Crude oil is New Zealand’s fourth-largest commodity export, worth around $2 billion a year. But the potential for growth is even greater. New Zealand has extensive mineral wealth and 18 petroleum basins. This legislation sends a clear signal to investors that this is a supportive regime that requires high standards of its operators. It is central to changes that will allow us to realise the tremendous opportunities that this high-value sector offers.

The Crown Minerals Amendment Bill states that its purpose is to “promote prospecting for, exploration for, and mining of Crown owned minerals for the benefit of New Zealand.” It also emphasises the importance of good industry practice in relation to activities undertaken by permit holders under the Act. Among other things this incorporates the ongoing oversight of compliance with health and safety legislation.

There is a lot in this legislation that will allow regulators to focus on the activities that really matter, and will streamline and simplify processes for the hundreds of permits for which the risk profile and potential return to the Crown are lower. The changes introduce a distinction between tier 1 and tier 2 permits. A streamlined regime for tier 2 permits will provide administrative benefits for Government and reduce compliance costs for permit holders. Tier 2 operators will be required to report on a more limited range of matters less frequently, without creating greater risks to the environment or health and safety, or affecting the financial return to the Crown. This will enable New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals to focus on the smaller number of high-value, complex tier 1 exploration and mining operations. Combined with the improved capacity within New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals, this increased oversight will seek to ensure Crown-owned minerals are managed in a way that both maximises returns and ensures that activities are undertaken to the standards we expect.

These bills recognise that it is important that various regulatory functions remain distinct but the system as a whole needs to work seamlessly across Government. This differs from the approach taken under the Act to date, which creates strict separations between the allocation, health and safety, and environmental management functions. The report of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy underlined the importance of the system working as a whole to assimilate information from various sources and take this into account in permitting decisions and ongoing oversight of all activities under a permit. These bills establish a range of measures to ensure that all regulators share information and have an opportunity to discuss activities under permits with permit holders on a regular basis. I am encouraged by the steps regulators have already taken to work together more effectively in this area.

Of course this legislation is not a substitute for health and safety or environmental regulation. This Government is continuing work on all fronts to ensure that the industry is bound by rules that appropriately reflect the risk profile associated with it.

The wider work programme to implement the recommendations from the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy’s report, development of new regulations for petroleum drilling, review of minimum insurance requirements, reform of the Resource Management Act, and development of regulations under the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act represent an active reform agenda that demonstrates this Government’s commitment to ensuring fit for purpose regulatory settings for this sector.

The minerals and petroleum sectors are appropriately subject to a raft of legislative requirements. The multiple legislative reviews affecting the sector are designed to ensure New Zealanders have confidence in the standards that the sector is expected to operate to, which is critical for the future viability and public acceptance of further growth of the sector.

Finally, I would like to mention the additional provisions to create new offences for interference with offshore activities. Such protest actions can impose significant costs on companies carrying out legitimate activities under permits and can create very serious health and safety risks. This amendment fills a gap in the existing legal framework and provides clear expectations and penalties for the new offences. Assurance that lawful activities can be carried out without interference is a necessary part of establishing a predictable investment climate without avoidable risks.

The Crown Minerals Amendment Bill is key to realising the potential value of the petroleum and mineral sectors. It provides clear expectations on permit applicants and permit holders, and embeds better coordination processes across regulators. It signals a more flexible approach to permit management that recognises the risk and return profile of each operation. I commend the bills to the House.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour): Labour will be opposing at the third readings the amending bills from the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill. It would be nice if everything that Minister Bridges just said was true, but, unfortunately, largely it was a nice piece of fiction. Minister Bridges might think that by merely saying that environmental protections are important and paramount, like some grand wizard, it will automatically be so, but, unfortunately, that is not the reality. This legislation seriously undermines the ability and the role of the Minister of Conservation to carry out the protection and preservation of the conservation estate. It seriously undermines the democratic rights of New Zealanders to protest. It is a missed opportunity.

I want to say upfront that there are some things in this legislation that are good. We welcome the health and safety changes that came out of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. Those recommendations were picked up. That is positive. There are some changes to streamline and to pre-evaluate some players in the industry, which we do welcome. But we are very disappointed that, despite some promising approaches made to Labour by Minister Heatley when he held the portfolio at the first reading, we were not able to find agreement on this legislation.

I want to pick up, first of all, the issue that the Minister of Energy and Resources raised last, which is the changes that are being made to introduce criminal penalties for protesters in our exclusive economic zone. Let us be quite clear: this does not plug a gap in our international obligations. The reason it does not is that it applies only to protest vessels. It does not apply to the vessels that industry uses. It does not apply to any other vessels carrying out an activity in the exclusive economic zone. Not only that: it does not just apply only to protest vessels, it applies only to protest vessels that are protesting against oil and gas exploration. If this was about safety and if this was about plugging a gap in our legislation, then we would make it apply to everyone. I want to know from the Minister why any vessel that is behaving in a way that would be illegal in our territorial waters under the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act—why are those vessels not being covered in the exclusive economic zone? Why is it only one narrow class of vessel that is being covered? Surely, if someone is behaving illegally or dangerously or recklessly then they should be covered by this change. Why are they not, Minister? The Minister refused to answer that question all through the Committee stage. No National Party member has even begun to address that issue.

This is not about safety and this is not about our international obligations. If it was, then this issue would have been raised with the Commerce Committee whilst we were considering the bill. Not once did officials raise this issue with the select committee. Instead, the Minister waited until the bill had been reported back to the House to drop this amendment in Supplementary Order Paper 205 on the Table. It has not had the proper scrutiny. It is incredibly bad lawmaking. It was embarrassing to see our Attorney-General come down to the House to defend it. This is a man whose job it is to uphold the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in New Zealand. When we have had a number of eminent legal minds say that this not only contravenes a number of our international obligations but also contravenes the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, to see our Attorney-General come down, imply he had a legal opinion, which he had to admit he did not have, and defend the indefensible is, frankly, embarrassing—frankly, embarrassing.

As I said throughout the Committee stage, if the Minister had wanted to extend the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act out into the exclusive economic zone, which is what the High Court said he should do, then Labour would not have had a problem with that, because if people are behaving dangerously, if lives are being put at risk, then, absolutely, that needs to be dealt with. This does not deal with it. All this is is a public relations stunt that sends a message to the oil companies that this Government is prepared to do anything to get them here. It is prepared to sacrifice any democratic rights or environmental standards in order to see this activity go ahead.

We have already seen it with the exclusive economic zone legislation, which is the version of the Resource Management Act that will apply in the exclusive economic zone. That does not comply with our international obligations. That is incredibly weak and permissive, as well. We are seeing it in changes being touted around the Resource Management Act—a tilting of the playing field, constantly in favour of industry over the environment. Whilst—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Jobs.

MOANA MACKEY: “Jobs.”, says Minister Nick Smith. Well, I think that this is going to turn out to be the biggest false economy that the National Government has ever put in place. At the moment New Zealanders have trust in the processes that are laid out both in the Crown Minerals Act and in the Resource Management Act. They trust the process, and if the outcome is that a mining project should go ahead, they are less likely to want to oppose it if they trust the process. This is going to result in huge amounts of litigation. This is an absolute boon for judicial review.

I want to refer to one of the changes the bill makes. Currently, if a mining company wants to mine on Department of Conservation land, then that concession goes to the Minister of Conservation. That decision-making power is now being shared with the Minister of Energy and Resources. The Minister of Energy and Resources’ role under this bill is to promote mining. Does anyone not see a problem with a Minister of Energy and Resources, who enthusiastically goes out and promotes mining—we had Minister Heatley, when he held the portfolio, in a general debate doing a big rah-rah speech about the Denniston project, in particular—giving himself half the decision-making powers on whether that concession should go ahead? Did he not think that an organisation or an individual might think there was a slight little bit of predetermination of the decision there? That is why we have kept that power with the Minister of Conservation, because that is where it is most appropriately held. That is where you are going to get the fewest legal or judicial review processes taken against the Government. This is a false economy. This is not going to result in the outcomes that the Government thinks are going to happen.

But we come back to a fundamental point, which is why we are doing this. We are doing this because, for this Government, there is no plan B. This is it. It has put all its economic development eggs in this one basket. So far, we have seen Exxon Mobil pull out, we have seen Petrobras pull out, we have seen Apache pull out—this is a high-risk area. It is serious money, and companies are not going to invest unless returns are going to be—unless, one, they find something, and, two, they find it in commercial amounts. And the likelihood of that is actually not very high, but this is all the Government has. This is the plan. This and asset sales are the plan, so if it does not work, well, it is kind of stuffed, and it knows that.

So what we have seen is a progressive watering down of environmental regulation, a watering down of environmental protections, and now a watering down of people’s democratic rights in order to grease the wheels as much as possible for this to go ahead, because the Government is desperate. Well, that is not a good basis for lawmaking or decision making in this Parliament.

If we have learnt anything from the Rena disaster or from the Gulf of Mexico, it is that sometimes things go wrong, and we need to be absolutely prepared for that. So instead of ramping ahead with this activity and scaling it up to extraordinary levels, this Government should be asking itself some very basic questions. One: do we have the capacity to deal with any disaster, should that happen in New Zealand? I think the Rena disaster showed us that perhaps our capacity to deal with it was not as great as we thought. That is No. 1. The second thing is this: is the regulation that we have in place adequate to ensure the levels of environmental protection that New Zealanders expect? We have confidence in the Resource Management Act; we do not have confidence in what the Government is planning to do to it. We do not have confidence in the exclusive economic zone legislation. That legislation is dangerously weak, given that it governs the activity that is going to be carried out in some of the most difficult parts of New Zealand, out in deep water in the exclusive economic zone. Four kilometres deep is what Petrobras was looking at in the Raukūmara Basin; the Gulf of Mexico was 1.4 kilometres deep. So we are talking about seriously challenging technical difficulties if something goes wrong, and we have to be able to respond to that.

We want to be sure that we are actually going to see benefits coming to New Zealand and coming to New Zealanders, and I accept that in Taranaki this industry has been very good for economic development in that part of the country. That does not mean that there is a guarantee that that is going to be the case everywhere else. Petrobras said, when it was still looking at the East Coast, that there were not going to be local jobs and there were not going to be those local benefits that we got out of Taranaki. So people on the East Coast—and if any National MP, including our local MP or Minister, had bothered to front up to any of the meetings that were held on this issue, then they would have been told this—were asking: “Why are we expected to carry all the environmental risks, the risks to our economy, the risks to our livelihoods, for absolutely no economic benefit on the East Coast?”.

There are a number of serious questions that the Government simply is not asking. It is not asking them, because the answers may indicate that it might need to slow down, and that there may be some regulatory gaps that need to be filled in order to provide that level of assurance to New Zealanders. New Zealanders have seen what has happened around both our own country and the world with these environmental disasters and human disasters and tragedies. Instead, we are doing the exact opposite. Instead, what we are doing is we are stripping out some absolutely fundamental protections. What we are doing is we are skewing the playing field. To the member who is about to take to his feet, I would like to know why it is that the economic benefit test applies only to the mining industry. Why should the tourism industry, which is operating on Department of Conservation land, not be able to have that same economic benefit test applied? In fact, we seem to be passing an awful lot of legislation for one industry in this country, to the detriment of the environment and the democratic rights of New Zealanders.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I would like to answer some of those questions that the previous speaker, Moana Mackey, has asked. Taranaki is one of those regions that has a great balance and protective care but also economic development regarding its environment. We have agriculture, we have oil and gas exploration and production, and we have tourism all operating together at the same time, yet without a complaint regarding any of those activities.

It is important to also understand that there is great economic benefit, and I say to the previous speaker that at some point in time the East Coast needs to embrace the opportunities that are before it, as Taranaki did 50 years ago. Now we have in Taranaki the average wage in the oil and gas sector at $95,000. Just before Christmas, over 125 jobs were advertised at over $100,000, and all the time, if you come to Taranaki, as I am sure the member has in the past, you will witness and see and appreciate and enjoy a great environment. There is no reason why economic development cannot proceed with robust environmental concerns and care.

If we go back to where oil and gas exports were at one point in time, they were the fourth-largest export from this country. Then we saw the Tūī field come on stream, and one field in its production lifted the oil exports to the third-highest export commodity in the country. When you think about that, think about hospitals. Think about schools. Think about police stations that are being built, as one is, in New Plymouth at the moment. Think about roads. Think about New Zealand superannuation being able to be increased, for our elderly New Zealanders, at a higher rate than inflation. Think about jobs, and well-paid jobs. Think about all the benefits that can be achieved whilst all the time having a robust environmental regime in our legislation, which this Government is putting in place, particularly around the exclusive economic zone, which never existed before under that previous Government’s time and regime.

I am very pleased to stand in support of this legislation. I believe that it touches on some very important areas and brings some very good, balanced, pragmatic, sensible, and principled pieces of legislation together that will enhance the future productivity of this country whilst also protecting our environmental principles. Thank you.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): The member who has just resumed his seat, Jonathan Young, started his contribution by saying that he was going to answer a few of the questions posed by my colleague Moana Mackey. He totally ignored every single question that my colleague Moana Mackey had asked. But that is not surprising, because the Minister who sat in the chair during the Committee stage of the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill did exactly the same thing. The only contribution that he made to the Committee—and I am talking about the Hon Simon Bridges—was to be abusive. He was then followed by the Hon Chris Finlayson, who was also abusive—personally abusive of Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Dame Anne Salmond. Dame Anne Salmond, New Zealander of the Year, was denigrated in this Chamber by our Attorney-General and by the Minister responsible for this legislation. I thought it was an outrage, and I am looking forward to a bit more contrite behaviour from both those Ministers in the future.

I was also surprised by the contribution from Jonathan Young, who actually should know better. He does come from an area where exploration is really relevant. He knows that all the good things that happen in Taranaki that he was boasting about—and I agree with him; they are very good for that region—happen under existing law. The opportunity to have environmental protection and conservation values recognised exists under current law, and this legislation weakens it.

As has been pointed out, Labour supported the legislation going to the Commerce Committee but we said we had bottom lines about the role of the Minister of Conservation in making decisions that should not be weakened, and about the importance of protection of our environment and conservation that, again, should not be weakened, and that if those fundamental issues were not addressed, then we would oppose the legislation. I think it is a shame. I think it is a huge missed opportunity, and it is particularly frustrating because, in an area where such a lot of investment is required before there is potential financial return, the best thing that this Parliament can offer to the exploration industry is security. If we could get wide, cross-party agreement on important issues such as the regulatory regime, such as the policy framework, then the industry would have a lot more confidence in going into these areas, where they need such a lot of investment.

The National Party does not have a clue about giving an important industry confidence in investment in the future. All it wants is a narrow opportunity for some of its benefactors to invest in this area. Well, it should not be done at the cost of our conservation estate. It should not be done with a risk of environmental damage. This legislation enhances that risk, rather than reduces it.

I am not sure whether the Minister of Conservation is going to take a call in this debate, but I am frustrated that a Minister who has such a good record for a National Party Minister in the area of conservation is about to have so much of his advocacy and his decision-making ability weakened by this legislation, and I think Nick Smith would resent it. I want to briefly congratulate the Minister, though. Over the weekend he made one of the best announcements I have ever heard, and that is the signing off, from his perspective, of the Akaroa marine reserve—the Dan Rogers Marine Reserve. It is a decision that is celebrated, and I want to sincerely congratulate the Minister on making that decision. It does not justify this legislation, though. In fact, it makes it even worse when you have a Minister of Conservation who clearly understands the issues and the passion. I ask why on earth we would then want to say: “But let these other areas go ahead of it. Let the Minister of Conservation have their decision-making power weakened.” That is dumb. It is stupid. It gives exactly the wrong message from the New Zealand Parliament, and I do not think that Nick Smith in his heart of hearts supports it. I guess this legislation was drafted up while he was not in Cabinet, and that might explain some of it.

There have been a lot of conversations during the earlier stages of the debate about the outrage of Supplementary Order Paper 205, which was introduced by Simon Bridges. The select committee put a lot of effort and energy into this legislation. There were a lot of attempts to get things right as much as possible, and, where there was clear disagreement, that was sort of put to one side in an effort to make the legislation workable. There was a reconsideration by the select committee as a result of the Pike River inquiry recommendations, and I want to commend the chair, Jonathan Young, and the officials for the way that they looked at those really difficult issues, which came about as a result of a tragedy, and across-party work was done very, very well in order to ensure the future safety of our miners. I think that was a great example of how this Parliament should work together.

Then along on his black stallion rides Simon Bridges, throwing abuse to as many people as he can as he goes, trampling over basic democratic rights, and, in my view, misrepresenting the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act consideration on his Supplementary Order Paper. I heard both Simon Bridges and Chris Finlayson in the Chamber struggling about the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act consideration of that Supplementary Order Paper, but I understand that Simon Bridges said on TV in just the last couple of days that the Supplementary Order Paper had got a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act sign off. Well, I would like him to table it. I do not believe it. I do not believe that there would be a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act sign off on that Supplementary Order Paper. It is a blatant attack on the right of protesters. It is absolutely selective. Simon Bridges totally lied to the House and the public when he said that it was introduced because of urgent matters of health and safety. If it was about health and safety, it would have applied to everyone in that situation, but it does not. It applies just to protesters.

So I believe that the public of New Zealand feel totally misled and feel as if they have been denied the democratic process of Parliament, where any matter other than something that is urgent and critical gets referred to a select committee for proper public scrutiny and discussion. None of that has been the case in this area, which fundamentally removes New Zealanders’ right to have their say. We value protest in New Zealand. Of course we do not always like it—if we are on the receiving end of protest, of course we do not like it—but we should cherish our ability in a healthy democracy to make our views known within a legitimate framework, and that right has been taken away from people with Supplementary Order Paper 205.

My colleague Moana Mackey talked about why this legislation has been pushed through—why there is a need—and her summary was exactly right: the National Government has no plan B. If it is not asset sales or exploration at the cost of conservation and the environment, there is nothing, and that is not a proper plan for the security and future of New Zealand. It is not the brighter future that New Zealanders were promised by John Key. All it offers is the denigration of the precious environment that we boast about so much internationally—the precious environment that is at the heart of our tourism, is at the heart of our “100% Pure New Zealand” campaign, and is at the heart of many values of New Zealanders, as well.

Why would we risk that? Why would we say that those values are no longer important? Why do we have an economic benefit test against something that is values-based? If we do that, as we do in this legislation, then our values will always lose, and I do not believe, and I know that a lot of New Zealanders do not believe, that money is more important than our values. I think that is a wrong place to start in terms of a legislative framework.

We have heard a lot about the bad things in this legislation, but there are some good things and I just want to briefly mention them. The move to enshrine schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act and the automatic inclusion of some areas in schedule 4 is a very good move. I have no confidence at all that in the future National might not revert to mining in schedule 4 land, but certainly the move to automatic inclusion is good. The introduction of the two-tier system of permit management, with the higher, more complex permit applications getting a different level of consideration than the more straightforward ones, I think is a very good thing. The improved coordination between the Crown minerals permitting regime and the health and safety and environmental legislation is a very good move, as well. I wish it was extended to all permits, rather than to just tier 1 activity.

I am disappointed that the fundamental issues were not resolved so that we could support this legislation. It would have been a good message to the industry. I am outraged at the breach of process by Simon Bridges. Therefore, we will be opposing this legislation strongly.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare Pāremata ko tēnei rā. I would like to start my speech on this legislation with two quotes. One is a traditional tangata whenua whakatauākī. Whatungarongaro te tangata, toitū te whenua—people perish, but the land remains. However, in the case of this legislation, after it goes through the House, some of the land may not remain. The other quote I would like to give is from the miners of Waihī in 1912, inspired by the funeral of Frederick Evans: “If blood be the price of your cursed wealth, Good God we have bought it fair”. The cursed wealth referred to is the wealth of large companies, especially overseas ones, and their exploitation of both people and the environment. The Crown Minerals Act, as it will be, is set up to facilitate both of those above all else. We hear about Taranaki. We hear how wonderfully it is going. We hear about the West Coast. What we see in those communities and in my community is two-tier economies: economies where sections of the community are benefiting and other sections are being left behind, and I will refer to that later in this kōrero.

However, back to the cursed wealth. There is only one substantive redeeming feature of this legislation, and that is Supplementary Order Paper 152 amending Part 1 of the original bill, the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill, which included the recommendations of the Pike River commission of inquiry. If nothing else, at least we can support the lives of workers, and the Greens supported that Supplementary Order Paper.

However, the rest of the legislation is mainly a declaration of war, challenged by the public at the select committee: the Minister of Energy and Resources as a promoter of mining, not as a regulator; the joint ministerial decision-making over the access to the Department of Conservation’s land—and there were a huge number of submissions on that issue. The only change was to make this for significant issues. Well, any application on Department of Conservation land has significance to people. There were the public notification issues, the extensions to exploration licences, and the tokenism towards te Tiriti rights via iwi engagement reports that have no proper framework or recognition of any kind of veto. The fact is that coal is a fossil fuel, oil is a fossil fuel, and we need to transition away from this dependency on these fuels towards a sustainable and renewable economy.

Then there are the Orders in Council that undermine the Minister of Conservation. The undermining of the Minister of Conservation throughout this legislation is a very, very serious matter, and the Orders in Council mean that instead of the Minister having rights over designations, it will go straight to Cabinet, and we know what happens there under this Government.

The net economic benefit is the wrong criterion, because decision making cannot be about just economic benefit. It needs to be about a net total benefit, including the environment, because no environment—no economy.

And then there is the legendary Supplementary Order Paper 205, the “Anadarko clause”, to lock up the defenders of the marine environment if they go anywhere near an oil rig or an oil vessel. It was opposed by, I think, 79 percent of people who were recently surveyed. It is also, potentially, a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and I also am dubious that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act has been consulted properly on this legislation. Forget about rights in international waters, let us breach any kind of protocol and jam this Supplementary Order Paper into the legislation at the last moment! It is very, very sad to see the Government following appalling process and ignoring the Commerce Committee, which we sat on. Despite some of the bright young faces on the Government benches, this is forcing an outdated, authoritarian, dictatorial, knee-jerk response against Te Whānau-a-Apanui and Greenpeace because they won. It is not only unfair but ridiculous, and the Government has now made an enemy of some very middle-of-the-road citizens, who may not want to go out on the water themselves but do not believe that this is the kind of behaviour they would expect from a Government or that it is a recognition of people’s legal and human rights.

Also there was my Supplementary Order Paper 211, which was voted down, which would have stopped any confusion about schedule 4. It would have stopped prospecting, exploration, and mining in schedule 4 land and it would have clarified to all parties that no mining promises made to the public by this Government were actually fulfilled. This legislation further erodes the integrity of schedule 4 by changing the definition of “minimum impact activity” and, according to the Minister of Energy and Resources, under questions from me last week, it will allow for drilling for exploration but not for mining. The Minister does not understand mineral exploration. You do not drill for exploration. You drill so that you can mine, and then, when you have got your permit because you have done your exploration drilling, you mine it; you do not drill it. Never mind, Minister, you will catch up, and you will hear from the public on this matter. There is a simple approach to schedule 4 land that this legislation should be supporting: leave it alone. That is what the people marched for, that is what they asked for, and that is what should happen.

Another part of this legislation refers to a very controversial decision that has been in front of the courts. Yesterday I stood on the Denniston Plateau. I stood there with an astonishing vista of mountain and ocean, an astonishing and delicate array of native plants and geology. I will hold this photo up for the benefit of the House. This is me, yesterday, on the Denniston Plateau, in front of this astonishing array of national treasures. If any of you have been to the Burren in Ireland, which is a national treasure in Ireland, you will know that there is a similar feeling there—a feeling of absolute diversity, a feeling of absolute beauty, and a feeling of absolute specialness, which the Irish are capitalising on for their economy, but we are about to destroy. This includes, of course, the kiwi, our national bird. Well, why not mine it? It is only a kiwi. There is the gecko, the giant snail, and, in fact, a wonderful large kōura that I took a photograph of in a crystal-clear piece of water up on the Denniston Plateau. It was right in the area where Bathurst Resources proposed its open-cast mine. Some things are not compatible. You cannot rehabilitate after you have open-cast mined an area. There will not be any of these species left.

I also stood in the museum, to honour past miners, as a great-grandchild of a mining family who stayed poor until my family left the industry. Like so many miners’ families, poverty and the cycle of poverty, the boom and bust, remains. But open-cast mining on the scale proposed by Bathurst Resources on the Denniston Plateau is supported by a provision of this legislation that will allow joint decision-making by Ministers, being retroactive in effect, towards Denniston, and this cannot be mitigated. There may be 200 or so jobs for 5 years, and then the West Coast will be back to the boom-and-bust cycle, of which the collapse of Solid Energy is so typical.

The Mayor of Reefton came to the select committee and asked us when there would be a genuine regional and infrastructure pay-off from all this mining in his area. He stated that he loves digging up gold and coal, but asked when he would get that sustained benefit for his community, because it was not happening. The answer, Mr Mayor, is never. It is not about local sustainability. Times have changed, but still the pattern for mining communities is the same all over the world. It is a boom; it is a bust. Whether it is Waihī, whether it is Reefton, whether it is Westport, it is a boom and then it is a bust. In the meantime, we bust things that cannot be fixed, like the Denniston Plateau.

However, on a more positive note, times have changed. The idea of green coke from woodchips, producing green steel, is still a new idea beneath our horizon, but it is a growing idea. Humans are endlessly creative. We can find other things, other methodologies, other economies than destroying places like the Denniston Plateau. That should be part of a national park, not a net economic gain, as it is described. It is unforgivable devastation, and there will be national resistance. There will be positive and celebratory national resistance to oil drilling in the ocean. There will be positive and celebratory national resistance to the destruction of the climate and biodiversity and communities who deserve so much better. There are huge opportunities in places like Denniston for wonderful things to happen.

The Government needs to wake up with this legislation, because the Government is losing the last shreds of its credibility as a just Government or a Government with any kind of vision. This legislation represents Government at its worst, building in bias and legislating for privilege, instead of supporting an economy that is sustainable. When the people of this country marched in the streets, they marched because we want to love and protect our special places. We want the integrity of our oceans to remain. We know that we can create employment that is sustainable and that is healthy for future generations without destroying these very important places, let alone taking away the basic rights of citizens to non-violent protest.

The failure of imagination in this legislation is extreme. It is very, very disappointing to see it go through. There are some technical amendments that will tidy up some of the frameworks, some of the permitting regimes, but in the end this legislation has come down squarely and fairly on the side of injustice, on the side of the miners who want to take our resources and use them for the short term, not for the long-term vision of our communities. Stand with us on the Denniston Plateau, because we will be standing there, and see what it means to actually believe in the sustainability of our environment. Kia ora.

Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei): I stand to support the Crown minerals legislation. I stand alongside the Labour Party and the Green Party in support of past miners, but unlike the Labour Party and the Green Party, I am also interested in present jobs in the mining and petroleum sector, and future jobs in the petroleum and mining sector. The Labour Party, which was built out of the West Coast mining sector, of course, has turned its back on them now.

The interesting thing, of course, is that the Labour Party and the Green Party will take the royalties. That is right. When they are in Government, in the distant future—I am sure they will be in 10 or 20 years from now—they will take the royalties and they will take the taxes collected off the backs of the mining jobs, tens of thousands of them, across New Zealand. They will collect the royalties and they will collect the taxes, and they will spend that money, which is the interesting thing, is it not? They are very interested in the income, the royalties, and the taxes off the mining and petroleum industries, they are very interested in the idea of spending that money, but they oppose the industry at every single turn.

I have to ask why, when you consider that on the West Coast of the South Island and, of course, in Taranaki, you have got two regions there that have very successfully developed their mining industry. Take Taranaki, for example. In that area they have the largest industry—the dairy-farming industry—working alongside the second-largest industry, the petroleum industry, working alongside a very successful tourism industry in Taranaki. So there you have one region in New Zealand where petroleum works alongside dairy farming, works beautifully alongside tourism, and it is very successful indeed. In fact, in terms of job growth and GDP you would struggle to beat Taranaki.

My question to the Labour Party is: why cannot that success, working alongside petroleum, dairying, and tourism, be reflected in other regions in New Zealand? There are 16 other regions in New Zealand where agriculture is successful, as is tourism, so why cannot the oil and gas sector be successful, like they have been in Taranaki? Well, there is no reason. I would not say it would be able to happen in every region, but surely there is a second, a third, a fourth, and a fifth region in New Zealand where those three sectors can work closely and successfully to get it like they have in Taranaki, and the Labour Party could run off with the royalties and spend them the way it will do when it is in Government—well, one day. That is why I support this legislation.

I would like to point out and thank the Minister of Energy and Resources, Simon Bridges, and his colleagues Nick Smith, Minister of Conservation, and Amy Adams, Minister for the Environment, because they have actually done more for public safety and the environment, when it comes to oil and gas and mineral exploration, than was done in the previous 10 years under the Labour Government. For example, we have got the Crown minerals legislation going through at the moment, with enhanced regulations around health and safety, and mining and petroleum. We have the exclusive economic zone legislation—there were no rules out in the exclusive economic zone before this Government came into force—and, of course, there are the new regulations on health and safety, which are working their way through the system.

I support this legislation. It is good to see this industry promoted. I am glad that we have listened to the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand, the New Zealand Minerals Industry Association, Straterra, and many others, and we are taking on many of their recommendations. I recommend this legislation to the House.

ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on the third reading of this legislation arising from the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill. Can I say, on behalf of New Zealand First, how disappointed we are that it has come to this, when it was doing so well under the former Minister of Energy and Resources, Phil Heatley, and then under the current Minister of Energy and Resources, Simon Bridges. It was all going along swimmingly well. We had said in this House during the first two readings that we supported economic development, we supported, as a party, the Government’s initiatives in terms of improving the well-being and the prosperity of people within this country, in terms of accessing our minerals and the resources that are there, both onshore and offshore, and we felt it was in the interests of the New Zealand economy to support this legislation.

We heard a number of months ago, in the first reading, how $2 billion had been received by the Crown since 2008 from royalties of minerals and resources, and that is very good. It could be improved a lot with a review of how much is charged in terms of those royalties. But, again, New Zealand First felt that that was a positive thing for the economy. We also supported the idea of a two-tiered system for the permit management, so that higher risk, higher value minerals would have a higher level of permit management, as compared to lower risk, lower value minerals. The bill also would sift out applications that did not meet the standards. We saw merit in that in the beginning, and in terms of ensuring that those who were applying did meet the required standards. We also were impressed in the early days of this legislation, when it came first to the House, that there would be increased community consultation in relation to the Crown interests and in terms of taking resources and minerals from both onshore and offshore. Indeed, this lined up with the Act that was put through Parliament last year, the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act, on which New Zealand First also supported the Government in terms of that 200-mile limit—the fifth-largest exclusive economic zone in the world. Again we saw merit in New Zealand taking a responsible attitude towards looking at the resources that were out in the vast ocean, and looking at it in an environmentally sustainable manner in terms of recovery of some of those resources.

That is where it was all going swimmingly well and New Zealand First was supportive of the legislation. Unfortunately, a deal-breaker occurred in the last week or so in the form of Supplementary Order Paper 205 of the Minister of Energy and Resources regarding protests on the high seas against mining, exploration, drilling, or resource recovery in our 200-mile limit. That Supplementary Order Paper, which was dropped in at the very last minute, at the eleventh hour, floored us somewhat, because we felt that it was inappropriate. I spoke in this Chamber on the matter last week, and said that we felt it was inappropriate to start mixing a bill that was going to become an Act all focused on minerals exploration and focused on the actual operations of mining and mineral resources with starting to take into account the safety, health, and well-being of people on the high seas who may be going about their daily lives in terms of protest at certain activities out there—drilling, mining, or whatever. We felt that was really undermining the heart of what Kiwis stand for. We always support the underdog. We always support the person who is prepared to stand up and be counted.

As I mentioned in the Chamber last week, we ourselves are a country, as a country and as a Government, that was prepared to go to Mururoa Atoll in 1973 with our two frigates, the HMNZS Otago and the HMNZS Canterbury, and make it known to other Governments and other authorities that we did not support what they were doing there in Mururoa in terms of nuclear testing. We felt that it was our legitimate right to go there, to do that in a safe manner, and to do it in a responsible manner. We did feel that it was our right to go over there and cause a little bit of mayhem on the high seas for the French at the time. Likewise, I think a lot of New Zealanders who were opposed to nuclear vessels saw merit in the protests at the submarine USS Haddo when it came into port in New Zealand and many protesters went out to voice and show their opposition to nuclear weapons and nuclear propulsion. Again, although that perhaps did not go down well with all New Zealanders, a lot of New Zealanders did uphold the right of those protesters to go out there and show some opposition to nuclear activity. So we did not feel it was quite right for the Minister to say “Well, that can still occur; it just can’t go on within 500 metres of any vessel on the high seas”, and that these protesters should just line up outside the head offices of the mining companies or outside their respective onshore bases but should not actually do that at sea. At the end of the day, we all know that often protest results come about only by people actually being at the coalface of the protest and making sure that others are aware of it. New Zealanders, I think, will always uphold the right of lawful and reasonable protest.

In that respect, we did feel that if there were going to be concerns here, they should have been addressed under a different Act, not under this Crown minerals legislation. They should have been addressed in some alteration to the Maritime Transport Act, to ensure that the master, the crew, and the passengers of any vessel were taken care of in a way that kept their safety and well-being uppermost. We felt, in that respect, that section 65 of the Maritime Transport Act, which says that “Every person commits an offence … which causes unnecessary danger or risk to any other person or to any other property, irrespective of whether or not in fact any injury or damage occurs.” is already in the Act and perhaps the legal advisers could have looked at ways to extend that out to encompass activities in our economic zone, so that it was seen as a safety and health issue, and not simply a sidling up to the mineral and mining companies to perhaps take the heat away from them in terms of their economic activities.

That was a gamebreaker for New Zealand First. It is a bit unfortunate. I have spoken to the Minister on a couple of occasions, as late as this afternoon, and asked whether the Government would withdraw that provision—somehow take it out of the legislation—so that we could focus back on the actual Crown minerals, the resources, the economic benefits, and all that sort of thing, and away from the aspect of taking away basic rights of New Zealanders to protest. He was not able to do that, and said it was too late, unfortunately, to address that situation, and it could not be done at this stage. So, as a result, New Zealand First is not, unfortunately, going to be able to support this legislation.

Having said that, we know that it will pass, because the Government has the numbers for this to pass, and it will go into law. We do just signal to the Government that we do not think this was necessarily the right way to do this. We think it is very important for jobs and for employment in this country that we do address the Crown minerals situation, but we feel at the same time that those minerals need to be reassessed in terms of how much we charge in the way of royalties and how much we get back from those royalties. New Zealand First, for instance, has come out with some very good policy in recent weeks, where we would return 25 percent of all royalties taken from any region back to the region where that resource is taken from. We believe that is a very positive thing for regions throughout New Zealand, so that of the economic benefits returned to the Crown, at least 25 percent of them are returned back to where they are taken from. In that respect, we certainly hope that some of those sorts of recommendations are taken up by the Government in the future, because we do want to see this country prosper, we do want to see more jobs and more opportunities for our people in this country, and we do want to grow the economy. But, unfortunately, while this gamebreaker sits here within this legislation, New Zealand First cannot support it.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you for the opportunity to stand and support this legislation divided from the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill. First of all, I would like to acknowledge the previous Minister of Energy and Resources, the Hon Phil Heatley, and the present Minister, the Hon Simon Bridges, for this important legislation, which is very important for our economy.

There should be absolutely no doubt in the minds of New Zealanders that if we want to sustain and improve our standards of living then we need to encourage the development of Crown-owned minerals. This legislation is a very positive step towards achieving a high level of economic growth and a high standard of living. The legislation updates and streamlines the regulatory regime around Crown minerals. The National Government, after winning the last election in 2011, declared its four big priorities. One of them is to build a more competitive and productive economy. The proposed legislation reflects our commitment to New Zealand and New Zealanders. With those words, I commend this legislation to the House.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I wish I could say that it gave me great pleasure to get up and speak to the third reading of these bills, which come from the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill, but it does not. I am very sorry that legislation is being passed in this way about these matters. There are some things in the legislation, which my colleague Ruth Dyson outlined earlier, that we are perfectly happy with. Certainly, she identified those things. For example, we welcome the schedule 4 provisions and the two-tier process around permitting complex and more straightforward applications. Those sorts of things we have no trouble with.

But bad process always results in bad law. Good process sometimes results in bad law, but much less often. Bad process always results in bad law. With the introduction of the Minister’s amendment around protest vessels, we have, dare I say it, a sneaky little amendment brought in without public scrutiny. In fact, Parliament was used to prevent that amendment from going back to the Commerce Committee for proper consideration and submission. When the Green Party moved a procedural motion that it be returned to the select committee, the Government used the weight of its numbers, regardless of the process, to deny that leave and to deny the public the opportunity to speak to this matter and to have their views made known. So what we will have is legislation that is bad in process and bad in parts.

The explicit purpose of this bill is to promote the prospecting for, exploration for, and mining of Crown-owned minerals for the benefit of New Zealand. That is what it says in the Bills Digest about the purpose of this piece of legislation. This is a contentious area, without any doubt, and for the Minister to proceed in more than a cavalier way—in, I think, a sinister way—with the amendment that he introduced, which will restrict protest vehicles from getting within 500 metres of a drilling rig or a seagoing vessel that has mineral exploration as its purpose, is simply a denial of community upset and community disquiet about deep-sea exploration. There have been sufficient examples overseas of the dangers of deep-sea mining and deep-sea drilling for people to be legitimately concerned.

When protestors get close to property and trespass, they are arrested and they pay the price. Lucy Lawless and others recently in relation to a Greenpeace protest at New Plymouth were arrested when they transgressed the law, and they have paid the price for that or are in the process of doing so. To ban protesters from getting close to the object of their protest is simply a curtailment of democratic rights that we should not be tolerating in this country. Protestors often do things that are dramatic in order to get attention. I do not want our society, in its rapacious desire, led by this Government, for fossil fuels, for ongoing depletion of natural resources at all costs, to compromise our democratic freedoms in the process.

This is, in large part, bad law. It encourages the development of Crown-owned minerals so that they contribute more to New Zealand’s economic development. Yes, on the surface it could be a reasonable thing to do, and even a beneficial thing to do, if it were being seen in a vacuum. But at the same time as this legislation is going through the House with its tawdry little ministerial amendment, we have round one of the Resource Management Act changes in front of the select committee, we have proposals on round two of the Resource Management Act changes, and we have proposals on water quality and management, which give nobody who has an interest in this area any confidence—any confidence—that this Government cares about the protection of the environment. There is no guarantee in any of these provisions—which are not crowding in upon us now by accident; this is designed by Government—and there is no evidence in any of this crowding of legislation and proposals for legislation that gives anybody in New Zealand interested in our environment confidence that this Government will protect it or intends to protect it.

For example, in response to an earlier National Party speaker, Jonathan Young, MP for New Plymouth, who contributed to this debate, I just want to ask, on behalf of the people in Tikorangi, what that member is going to say and what he is going to do about the community disquiet, the community concern, around the Kōwhai wells, especially Kōwhai C in Tikorangi, just out of Waitara. It is an area that I personally know very well. I spent quite a lot of my childhood there. On the basis of this bill, and the way that this Minister has ridden roughshod over community concerns, and concerns expressed by notable New Zealanders—who are not stupid, and who are clever and intelligent and perceptive about these things. In the face of that concern, he has proceeded against due process to bring in an amendment that makes this bill a travesty.

It seems to me that Jonathan Young has now been given the right by the Minister to ignore the people of Tikorangi, to simply say to the people of Tikorangi: “Oh yes, heard what you said, don’t agree with you. You might be clever. You might be the New Zealander of the Year, but your opinion”—oh, sorry, Mr Speaker; this is in quotation marks. He might say to the people of Tikorangi that those people are clever, they might have the New Zealander of the Year amongst them, but he puts no store by their opinions. That is not good enough. It might be the way John Key wants to run his Cabinet—and the new boy on the block, Simon Bridges, is following the Prime Minister’s pattern—but it is not good enough if one is trying to run a democratic country that is accustomed to democratic rights and to being able to make a difference where it sees the need. Thank you.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): I rise to support the legislation arising from the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill. National’s priority is to build a more competitive and productive economy. Natural resources industries play an essential role in our effort. Oil, gas, and minerals make a significant contribution to the New Zealand economy. Oil is one of our key exports, along with dairy, meat, and wood. The oil and gas industry sustains 7,700 jobs nationally. However, there is huge potential for mineral exploration to contribute even more to New Zealand’s economy. This bill will go a long way towards unlocking that potential, while taking care of environmental and safety issues. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): In 1992 the National Government deregulated the mining industry. In 1997 it created schedule 4 areas—that is, high conservation value areas, including national parks, which were out of bounds for mining. In 2009, it proposed to mine in schedule 4 areas. And now, in 2013—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Some.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: —no, no, it opened them all up, Mr Smith. You cannot get out of that one. In 2013, the National Government is proposing to lock in schedule 4 areas, once again, in this legislation.

I will start with the good news. This legislation does include some provisions that Labour supports. The first one that I must speak of with passion is that of implementing the recommendations—or some of them—from the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy, which, unfortunately, was the result of 1992 legislation by the National Government. It is moving to address the problems created, and I acknowledge that, as do the families of those 29 miners, as do the people of the West Coast and in the mining sector. We need safe mining. This legislation makes some improvements in the process for applying for mining permits, with a two-tier system that gives due recognition to the important ones. It incorporates health and safety provisions into all aspects of mining, including prospects, and that is as it should be. It makes it easier to revoke permits where operators do not meet standards, and it does increase the penalties.

Those are the good points of this legislation, and I would like to acknowledge them. However, there are some problems with it. One of the things raised by my colleagues there, of course, is the one that relates to the Minister of Conservation but perhaps has precedent and flow-on issues for other landowners. In 1992, along with the deregulation of the mining industry and mine safety, the Government said that landowners should have the ultimate right of, I guess, blockage and ban on any mining on their land. Prior to that, the Crown owned the minerals under the land and gave, with those mineral rights, the right to the land. It was not right. It overrode private property rights. What is happening here in these bills is that for the Minister of Conservation, who holds conservation land on behalf of all New Zealanders, her rights to manage that land will be potentially overridden by the Minister for Economic Development.

There will be some, particularly in my patch down on the West Coast, who might say “Oh, that’s great.”, but when they actually stop and think about it, if we want sensible, environmentally friendly, sustainable mining, we have to go about it the right way. Labour supports that, but it must be done in an environmentally sensitive manner, it must be done in a way that returns real benefits to the community—not just temporary benefits—and it must be done in a way that upholds the highest levels of health and safety across the mining sector. Labour has had that view for a long time and we will not resile from that. The problem is that if, as these bills go through, those rights of the Minister of Conservation—who owns the land or manages the land—are overridden, then there is the potential, if the economic benefit test on mining applications applies to other landowners, for their rights to be overridden too.

What the Government has done at the last minute is bring in a ban on protesting. Everyone thinks it is a bunch of long-haired hippies running out there, all in wetsuits, whom you see protesting about offshore mining. Well, can I say that many landowners—many ordinary New Zealanders—protest against mining because they see the proposals as not being environmentally sensitive and not providing benefit to the community, and they too want to protest. We have to be careful that the passage of this legislation does not undermine—as it does for those offshore—ordinary New Zealanders’ rights to stand up and say “This is not right.” Their ability to do that ensures a better process and often ensures a fairer and better outcome.

The Government riding roughshod over New Zealanders’ rights to protest is unconstitutional. That is why Labour has taken a position of opposing this, and I support the opposition on that basis. In spite of positive provisions in the legislation implementing better health and safety standards in the mining sector, there are other provisions in these bills that mean that, on balance, Labour cannot support this legislation.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to oppose the legislation arising from the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill. I am opposing it because of the content—these are bad bills passed through a bad process—but more important, I think, because of its impact on core Kiwi values, which is that we love our conservation estate, we love our natural environment, and we want to protect it. It goes against our values as well because it contains an egregious amendment, the “Anadarko amendment”, which goes against a core Kiwi value that we can make our world a better place and we can do the right thing. And we have stood up for so many progressive causes over the decades in New Zealand. This goes against the Kiwi value to do the right thing and protest.

Thirdly, I also rise to oppose it because of the economic strategy that is behind these bills that are about to become law. The “drill it, mine it, frack it” approach to economic development—this dirty, old-fashioned, 19th century economic agenda—is not delivering for our economy. That is why we have got the worst-ever economic performance in over 50 years. The plan is in tatters, with oil companies like Petrobras and Apache Corporation leaving the country. We see others like Anadarko delaying their activity. What this country is crying out for is real, tangible, positive economic solutions. That is what I will seek to talk about in this short call.

Firstly, I want to raise some comments on this legislation and to look at the “Anadarko amendment” before looking at some those positive economic solutions that we need for Aotearoa New Zealand. Firstly, the legislation does have some positive amendments. We would like to thank the submitters and the Commerce Committee for including those. They include the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy recommendations. The legislation now includes the ability to put a moratorium on certain mining types. However, there are many and numerous problems with this legislation.

The whole purpose of the legislation is where it is flawed and where it goes wrong. The concrete foundations are cracked. We see the whole purpose as being about picking winners in this one sector: oil, gas, fracking, and mining. It is about disempowering communities. It is about weakening the powers, role, and ambit of the conservation Minister. We now see the Minister of Energy and Resources involved in access agreements. We see the changing role of the Minister of Energy and Resources. His job is now to attract permit applications. We see changes to schedule 4, where now for the decisions on what should be included or taken out, the control is being given to Cabinet in an unprecedented fashion. We know where this Cabinet is going to go. It is lengthening permits, which is convenient for the mining industry. That is the agenda: it is trying to support the mining industry, trying to pick winners. It is a lazy economic gamble, hoping that someone else—mostly foreign-controlled companies—will find something in the soil. They will benefit, yet we know that in terms of royalties, taxes, and jobs—these are the other sectors of our economy—Kiwis and the New Zealand economy are not going to be the winners.

When we look at the “Anadarko amendment”, Supplementary Order Paper 205, this is lawmaking at its worst. We are picking a specific industry to get specific legal protections that no other industry gets. It is an amendment to legislation that was passed under a hasty process. It was introduced on Easter Sunday, there was no select committee hearing and no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet, yet we see the Government coming in and attacking some eminent New Zealanders, like former Prime Ministers, the current New Zealander of the Year, and eminent legal professionals. It is an absolutely shocking performance from the Minister of Energy and Resources and the Attorney-General. We see the amendment substantively trying to turn the New Zealand military into the private security forces of the oil and gas sector.

It is egregious and abhorrent legislation. It goes against those core Kiwi values, but what gives me hope is why the Government is introducing it. It is introducing it because it is scared, because it knows that protesting works. It worked in terms of Petrobras. Although the criminal penalties have been increased, we know that this is just going to go down as a challenge to those people in New Zealand who love and want to protect our marine environment. You are going to see more protests as a result of this legislation than you did before. They want to protest because they want to stand up for a clean, smart economy. That is what PricewaterhouseCoopers is talking about. With its recent estimate, we could be earning $22 billion. This is what the successful business leaders are talking about, when they say we could be building 50,000 jobs in clean energy. This is what other people are saying: we could be saving $600 million a year in terms of electricity savings by moving to a 100 percent renewable energy sector.

This is our vision for our economy, not flogging off the assets, and not digging them up—mining, fracking, and drilling. It is about investing in our sustainable brand. It is about building prosperity that is long term, not the boom-and-bust cycle Catherine Delahunty talked about. It is about a real, smart, sustainable vision, and that is what we are inspired by, what we are motivated about, and what we are standing up for in this Parliament. We are going to keep doing it, Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Lands) Bill or not. We are standing up for a smart—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): I will take a short call. I just want to congratulate Minister Simon Bridges on the very good Supplementary Order Paper 205. I just want to say that we are not talking about protesting on Queen Street. We are not talking about protesting on Princes Wharf. We are talking about protesting on the high seas, and anyone who has been on the high seas will tell you that it is an unpredictable and dangerous environment.

I am sure that if the Green Party members were out there going about their lawful business, they would be very unhappy if they had people boarding their vessels, if they had people jumping in front of their vessels, or if they had people interfering and stopping them going about their lawful business. That is what this amendment is about. It is not about preventing people from having their right to protest. They can, but they are going to have to comply with a non-interference zone, and they are going to have to make sure that everyone remains safe when they are going about their lawful business.

The other thing they have to consider is that if there is an accident, if there is an incident, who is going to be called on to go out there and try to resolve it? It would be our emergency services. Every time that happens, we are putting them in danger also. It is a very, very good amendment, and I support it. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill, the Conservation Amendment Bill (No 2), the Continental Shelf Amendment Bill, the Reserves Amendment Bill, and the Wildlife Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 61

New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Bills read a third time.

Bills

Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): I move, That the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. The bill amends the Legal Services Act 2011 and other Acts to ensure that legal aid remains affordable in the future and that legal aid services remain available to those who need them. The bill focuses on improving the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of the legal aid system. The bill also continues the Government’s drive to improve the prioritisation of legal assistance provided to vulnerable people. It builds on the Legal Services Act 2011, which replaced earlier legislation governing the legal aid scheme and contained a package of changes to improve the administration of the scheme and the quality of services provided by legal aid lawyers.

Legal aid expenditure increased 55 percent between 2006-07 and 2009-10—from $111 million a year to $173 million a year—placing the legal aid budget under extreme pressure. This growth was expected to result in a $402 million gap between forecast expenditure and available funding. The Government had to act to bring this growth under control. We have done so through a package of changes to the eligibility criteria for legal aid, how legal aid services are purchased, and the payments received from legally aided persons. Some of these changes did not require legislative amendment and are already in effect. Those that require legislation are contained in the bill.

The Justice and Electoral Committee has considered the bill, and I thank the select committee and officials and commend them for their efforts. The committee has suggested by majority some sensible changes to the bill, many of which were proposed by the Government Supplementary Order Paper, 134, which was referred to the committee. The Government has adopted all the changes proposed by the committee’s majority. The committee received 25 written submissions on the bill and heard 15 oral submissions. The Government heard submitters’ concerns and provided the committee with a Supplementary Order Paper intended to respond to these concerns. The Government Supplementary Order Paper proposed substantial changes to the bill, leading the committee to invite further comment from submitters. The committee received five written submissions on the amended bill, which were generally supportive of the bill’s additional focus on outcomes for legal aid clients.

Since the bill was first read, two main factors have reduced the need for changes to eligibility criteria. The first of these is the reduction in forecast expenditure on legal aid, in part due to the non-legislative measures we have undertaken. The second is the expected impact of the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill, which, by putting greater focus on children and vulnerable people and encouraging more people to resolve minor family and civil matters between themselves rather than through the courts, is estimated to save $41 million in legal aid costs over 4 years.

The reduced expenditure provided scope to reassess reductions in eligibility to further align with the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill, particularly by bringing the changes to legal aid in line with its focus on protecting vulnerable people and children. The changes contained in the Government Supplementary Order Paper were the outcome of this alignment with the Family Court reforms.

The committee endorsed the Government Supplementary Order Paper and recommended, by majority, further changes. Significantly, the amended bill refocuses on outcomes for legal aid clients. The Government Supplementary Order Paper improved the bill by maintaining the existing financial means test for less serious criminal cases and retaining certainty in civil legal aid matters that will receive legal aid.

The Government Supplementary Order Paper also made changes that will increase debt repaid to the Crown from those legally aided persons who are able to afford it. The bill now extends provisions to allow interest to be charged on all finalised debt, and the use of deduction notices is streamlined to allow the use of this more efficient method of repaying debt by deducting money directly from people’s wages, benefits, or bank accounts.

Despite the gradual reduction of legal aid expenditure, legislative change is still required to bring expenditure under control. The Legal Services Act’s purpose is to promote access to justice by establishing a system that provides legal services to people of insufficient means and delivering those services in the most effective and efficient manner.

The Government has responsibilities both to provide access to justice and to use public funds responsibly. We recognise that in a time of fiscal constraint, difficult choices are required. The bill makes the savings required to ensure the ongoing viability of the legal aid scheme. It balances this by enabling funding to be prioritised to those vulnerable people who have the greater need for legal assistance. I commend this bill to the House.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Andrew Williams. Andrew Little, sorry.

ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: My apologies.

ANDREW LITTLE: No offence taken. I am flattered to have been confused with such an honourable member. That speech from the Minister of Justice about the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill confirms that this Government’s changes in the justice sector are about cost cutting and, far from promoting justice, are about denying access to justice.

There is a principle that lies at the heart of any justice system, and that is access—access to justice. Access to justice, if it is to be of any use at all, must be equal. There is no system of justice if it is confined to the rich and the powerful. So legal aid plays a very important role, and what any Government does in the area of legal assistance and legal aid is very important.

The State in exercising its coercive powers, whether through the police or other prosecuting agencies, or, indeed, simply through bringing people before the State-funded courts, must make sure that those who are brought before the courts have a reasonable chance of getting good representation and having their interests heard, particularly when there is a risk, or a chance, or a threat that their liberties may be denied and they may be detained. Then it is even more important that they have access to legal advice and representation.

So State assistance to low-income people, to the poor, to the impecunious—as they are often described—whether in criminal matters or whether they are parties to a civil matter, is absolutely essential. Without legal aid, without legal assistance, we have a justice system for the rich, and that will never do in a liberal democracy such as ours. The Legal Services Act 2011, which is the primary piece of legislation in this whole matter, states as its purpose “to promote access to justice” by, amongst other things, providing “legal services to people of insufficient means;”—providing legal services to people of insufficient means.

This Government has embarked on, or at least in this case it did embark on, radical change to legal aid following the Bazley report. When you talk to the legal profession, you find differing views about that report, the merits of it, the basis of it, and the evidence that was used to support the changes that were recommended in it. But there is no doubt in my mind that the Minister has confirmed it in her speech just now that the real concern is not about the quality of justice or the quality of representation; it is about the cost to the State of ensuring that that is provided.

We all understand that the State’s coffers are not bottomless, but the principle of justice and access to justice is one that must sit very high in the priorities of any Government, to support the people. We must make it a priority to make sure that people are adequately supported and therefore adequately represented.

The Bazley report also talked about a concern about quality, and Dame Margaret Bazley raised the question about what she described as the long-term viability, and therefore the sustainability, of the system. She claimed that there was abuse of the legal aid system. Well, I have read the report, and I fail to see what the real evidence of abuse was. But let us assume that there were some lawyers who were not up to scratch, and who were claiming legal aid for not doing a very good job.

Hon Maurice Williamson: No, really?

ANDREW LITTLE: They were very small in number—very small in number—and Mr Williamson may well have observed some himself. I do not know. There may well have been some. But let us have a look at the consequences of the administrative changes made to the legal aid system to date.

We are seeing good lawyers now refusing to do legal aid work because rates have been cut and the hours available to do particular work have been cut, and those lawyers—good lawyers, lawyers with strong track records, and I was talking to some just the other night in Auckland, former police officers turned lawyers who know criminal justice, who know the other side, and who know what good quality and adequate representation look like—can no longer make it work for them. There are a growing number of lawyers who are no longer doing legal aid, because they cannot make it work.

Who is suffering as a consequence of that? Not them, because they will find other work. They will find the fee-paying clients who will use them—well, the lawyers might have gone into family law once upon a time, but they may not even go into that when this Government has finished with that area. They will go into other areas of work. But defendants—those who have been arrested, those who are facing prosecution, and who are impecunious—are the ones who miss out. They do not get the voice in court that a proper liberal democracy requires them to get. If this bill is about making positive changes and improvements to the legal aid system, it will not do it. It simply will not do it.

Some of the more insidious changes that appeared in the original bill that came to this House in the last Parliament have been removed as a result of the work of the Justice and Electoral Committee and, indeed, of the Minister of Justice’s Supplementary Order Paper 134, but the underlying principles that have driven the change have not been removed, such as the desire to cut costs for the sake of cutting costs, not for the sake of improving representation.

There was an argument given, or a reason given, for why this bill has been so delayed, and that is that the Government can get on with its Family Court reform. That is turning into a complete shambles now, because having sort of run at Family Court reform like a bull in a china shop and having said: “We are going to make all these changes. We are going to withdraw the rights to legal representation. We are going to take independent legal representation off children.”, the Minister then said a couple of weeks ago: “Oh no, we got that wrong. We are going to have to change that.” But we still do not know what the change is. And we do not know what impact a piece of court reform, the Family Court reform, which was about reducing—at least in one part—the cost of legal aid, is going to have. We simply do not know whether there is going to be a saving in legal aid or not at all.

This bill does not change its underlying premise, which is simply about cutting cost—simply about cutting cost. There are still problems with this bill—there are still problems with this bill. The first one is that it leaves in place barriers to legal aid and legal representation when people need it most. One of the provisions that it leaves in place is that if you have already been legally aided, and you are required to repay your legal aid, and you are behind in your payments and you then face another court hearing that would otherwise entitle you to legal aid, you may not get legal aid, because you are behind in your payments for your last matter.

That is not justice. Impecunious people often find it difficult to meet their financial obligations. That is the nature of being poor. That is the nature of poverty. When it comes to the administration of justice, and when it comes to appearing before the court and facing a prosecution, we should not deprive people of proper representation because they have an outstanding obligation to the State for another matter. That is wrong. That is unjust. We are opposed to the bill for that reason.

The second problem is user fees. This bill introduces a user fee for those who are legally aided. It is absolutely bizarre. Why, when you are dealing with the poorest in our community and the most impecunious, would you, on the basis of providing State assistance, then say: “Now you are going to have to pay a fee as well.”? It may be only $50, but $50 for somebody who cannot make ends meet is $50 too much, $50 they cannot afford.

And then there is the third aspect, which is charging interest to the legally aided on amounts outstanding. Legal aid was never a banking system. It was not about an overdraft and making a loan from a bank. It was about providing assistance at a crucial time in your life, when you need it most.

The general direction this Government is taking in justice is wrong. It is about cost-cutting. The courts are in uproar because of the cuts in the courts, the Crown solicitors around the country are in uproar because their fees and their budgets are being cut, and the court staff are under stress. The Family Court staff in Auckland know that what they are operating now is a complete shambles, and they cannot make it work. Everything this Government is doing in justice is wrong and bad for people, and this is just another measure this Government is taking. We are opposed to it. It will not help people who need it most, and it will be bad for the justice system.

SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): As chairman of the Justice and Electoral Committee it is a great pleasure for me to rise and stand in support of the second reading of this Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill this afternoon. In so doing I would like to congratulate the Minister of Justice, the Hon Judith Collins, on her very good introductory comments, because prudent fiscal management lies at the very core of this John Key, National - led Government. It is about ensuring that hard-earned taxpayers’ money is well spent, while at the same time making sure that the investment that is made by the Crown of taxpayer money in tight economic times extracts absolute maximum value.

Andrew Little stated—and I thought wisely so, given that he is from the Labour Party—that the State’s coffers are not bottomless, but he absolutely chose to ignore any kind of attempt at providing a solution as to how the State might fund a bottomless legal aid requirement, and especially so given our difficult financial times. Legal aid expenditure increased by a massive 55 percent between the years 2006-07 and 2009-10, and this growth, had it not been focused upon, would have resulted in a massive $402 million legal aid funding gap over 5 years. So the current legal aid system, in this form, was unsustainable, and National has taken action to bring it under control. We are committed as a Government to ensuring that the legal aid system remains affordable in the future, and that legal aid is available for those who need it most. We want to make sure that legal aid is available for those who need it, while also ensuring that it remains absolutely affordable.

Our proposals are designed to save $138 million over 4 years. These changes will not, as the Labour Party implies, affect cases involving vulnerable parties. They will not make any changes where care and protection of children are involved or where there are serious criminal matters. The bill is designed to get parties to resolve more minor legal matters between themselves, rather than through the courts, and that is a very good premise upon which to work. And, although we make sure that legal aid is there for those who need it most, this bill strikes a very good balance between ensuring that the viability of the current legal aid scheme is continued and at the same time prioritising funding to people who have the highest need for legal help.

So what have we done so far in terms of legal aid reform? Well, this Government has started to reform legal aid to improve the quality and to reduce costs after eligibility and lawyers’ fees were expanded previously under the last Labour Government, which did so without any real regard to the cost of that scheme. We passed the Legal Services Act, which, amongst other measures, established performance standards for legal aid lawyers. We expanded the Public Defence Service to take up to half of all criminal defence cases. We made victims of serious crime eligible for legal aid for coronial inquests and parole hearings.

This Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill provides greater flexibility to adjust eligibility into the future and improvements in the assessment of eligibility. The reforms include a tightening of the merits test for family cases by no longer needing to take into account the interests of other vulnerable parties. The bill adjusts the special circumstances consideration in the means test for family and civil cases so that it focuses on the expensive cases. There are a raft of other measures in the bill that have been addressed and worked through by the Minister of Justice’s Supplementary Order Paper 134 and by the Justice and Electoral Committee, and I want to congratulate and thank members of the select committee for the work that they have done. This is a good bill. The Hon Judith Collins made excellent comments in her introductory remarks. I absolutely commend the bill to the House.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East): I too rise to speak in relation to the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill. I, like my colleague Andrew Little, believe very strongly that this is certainly an improved bill from the one that was introduced, but it is not one that we can support. I refer to the comments made by the Minister of Justice. She reflected on the $41.3 million over 3 years that the Government intends to save from the cost of legal aid in care of children cases in respect of a piece of legislation, the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill, which is still before the Justice and Electoral Committee. I just want to comment on that, because everyone has so far mentioned that particular piece of legislation and talked about the impact of those savings. But when we hear Government members talk about the savings in their fiscally responsible way they never ever talk about who will carry the cost if things do not go the way that they anticipate they will.

Let me just let the House know exactly what the Minister means when she says that there will be $41.3 million worth of savings, “Legal aid would not be available for simple track proceedings and up to and including settlement hearings in standard track proceedings. This would only apply to care of children cases. Lawyers could be engaged and privately funded. Legal aid would still be available for without notice proceedings and for standard track proceedings once they were set down for hearing.” What that means in fact is that without a claim of, essentially, abuse within the relationship or an abusive environment there is no capacity to get lawyers involved in the early part of proceedings unless you can afford to pay for it yourself. Where you already have a disproportionate relationship between two people, in terms of their capacity to afford legal assistance, that immediately puts the more vulnerable of the two on an unequal footing yet again where one party can obtain legal assistance that they can afford to pay for while the other cannot. “This option only affects those parties who, because of their low income, are eligible for legal aid. If they cannot get legal aid, they are likely to be unrepresented. But the opposing party may have a lawyer.”—this is what the regulatory impact statement sets out—“This could lead to the represented party’s view being put more strongly and create or exacerbate power imbalances between the parties. It may also lead to a perception that access to the court is the preserve of those who can afford it.”

Well, that is correct. That is absolutely spot on. They have acknowledged that that is the impact of it, but the advantage that they see is that it “manages legal aid expenditure.”, and that just does seem to be the overriding consideration. The regulatory impact statement then goes on to say that “some people may have difficulty completing the forms, proceedings may take longer and a judge may feel he or she needs to see the parties in court more often. There is likely to be greater demand for court staff and non-governmental organisations to assist people. Better information resources, clearer court processes and use of support persons (McKenzie friends) would help mitigate these disadvantages. For lawyers, legal aid work would reduce but other work would not.” I think they are missing the point. This whole figure of $41 million assumes proceedings with the mandatory family dispute resolution option, and the whole purpose of this option, as the Minister herself stood in this House just a few minutes ago and said, is about getting people to sort out their private disputes away from the court and not coming near the court, and therefore saving her budget this extraordinary amount of money.

But the judges do not agree that that is going to happen. Certainly the lawyers that we have heard at the Justice and Electoral Committee do not think that that is going to happen, as well. In fact, what they are fearful of is that the most vulnerable of individuals who come before the courts will find themselves in an even more vulnerable situation. They talked of people who cannot read—adults who cannot read; people for whom English is a second, third, or fourth language who will not have the capacity to understand necessarily what they have to include in their affidavit; people who have intellectual disabilities, who we know find themselves much more vulnerable to abusive environments than those who do not; and others with disabilities, and again we have had people give evidence in relation to that matter. We have had lawyers give us examples of cases that, I think, when we do get around to debating that bill, members of this House would be moved to hear the details of them. We have heard evidence in private that we will be able to refer to when that bill does come back to the House.

What I am concerned about is that we have already heard two speeches from the Government that reflect a mind-set that is about knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. Of the examples that we have had given to us I will just reflect on one lawyer who gave evidence down in Christchurch, because I think it is incredibly relevant to this. She was working for a larger law firm, and of course when the legal aid changes were first mooted the entire law firm decided that it would not make itself available for legal aid cases any more. That law firm in Christchurch is not alone in terms of its pulling out of legal aid work. This particular lawyer, who presented, I think, a very compelling submission to the select committee, said that she could not desert the clients that she had. They were largely refugees, recent migrants, people with difficulty with English not being their first language, people who had some of the most vulnerable situations that they were having to confront. She said that her conscience, her ethics said to her that she could not stop providing that service to her clients, so she left the law firm and set up on her own in a difficult situation in Christchurch. This is post-earthquake. This is with all of the stuff that is going on. She set herself up in her own practice so that she could continue to provide legal aid support to that particularly vulnerable group of clients.

I think that members of the Government have to remember that when you start talking about big numbers like $41 million that is actually potentially taking away the capacity for vulnerable New Zealanders to access our courts. That is what the legal aid system is all about. I just want to remind people of the risks that were set out in the regulatory impact statement for this bill when it was introduced: “reductions in the price paid to lawyers could create gaps in provision, particularly in the family and civil jurisdictions where there is more choice of private work and in some smaller centres where there are already supply issues.”—we have already seen that come to pass—“The introduction of income and asset thresholds for the criminal means test will be in tension with section 24(f) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, providing for the right to an affordable defence. It could also delay some court cases if judges defer proceedings because of inadequate representation. Restrictions to eligibility will disadvantage people on low incomes, who have few options to find legal services elsewhere. Generally this includes young Māori men in the criminal jurisdiction and women and children in the family jurisdiction.” And I do want members of the House to think about young Māori men in the criminal jurisdiction, and women and children in the family jurisdiction. Then it says: “Withdrawing legal aid for low income groups is likely to lead to additional costs elsewhere in the justice system.”, which is where I began. “In particular, it may increase the number of self-represented litigants, with flow on costs due to delays, additional assistance required from court staff and the judiciary, and higher numbers of appeals of decisions.” I think this is very poor legislation. It may have been improved at the select committee as a result of the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 134, but it is still not worthy of passage through this House.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): One would be hard pressed to say it is a pleasure to speak to the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill. It is more a matter of being resigned to having to speak in opposition to this raft of justice legislation that comes from this Government. Most of it is poorly thought out and it will not deliver the results or the outcomes it is intended to produce. I did not have—

Hon Maurice Williamson: Say something nice.

DAVID CLENDON: I will say something nice, just to please Mr Williamson.

I was not sitting on the Justice and Electoral Committee for this bill. I do have to commend the select committee for this bill being significantly better, or, should I say, less bad than it was, going into the committee. I will speak in some detail of some of the clauses, or some of the provisions, that were in the original drafting that are, frankly, a disgrace, and the Minister of Justice should have been ashamed to put her name to some of those draft provisions. I will come to that in time.

One of the first things one notices, in reading the select committee report on this bill, is the intention or the proposal to change the name of the bill, from the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill to the Legal Assistance Bill. I guess I would say “Good try, folks.”, but I think you cannot really deny the fact that, nevertheless, this bill is about cost-cutting.

As a student, practitioner, researcher, and teacher of resource management, I know a bit about sustainability. Often in the language of sustainability you are talking about resource allocation, and particularly the allocation of scarce resource. The scarce resource we are talking about here, under this Government, is access to justice, which is becoming increasingly scarce in this country, with the array of legislation that we are seeing put into place. Misguided policy in the Family Court proceedings is another very good example, or, rather, a very poor example, of that. So I am afraid nobody will be persuaded by the change of name or the change of some elements of the bill that this is anything but a cost-cutting exercise.

The Government does not seem to have woken up to the fact that the line-by-line budget reduction it is imposing on its Ministers—the obligation to snip away at every single line item—is actually a flawed and a doomed process. Any business owner, or any successful business owner, knows that if you try to cut every line item in your budget without thought to the consequence, without thought to the cumulative effect, then very quickly you will find yourself in a condition of failure. This bill will not reduce costs overall to the Government, to the State, or to the justice system. It will simply displace costs into other parts of that system, and on the way it will also impose significant social costs, which will be borne by some of the most vulnerable, by some of those least able to bear those costs.

That point was very well made by the District Court judges, in Wellington, who very carefully prefaced their comments, recognising that the judiciary and Parliament stand in a relationship of tension. They were not taking a political stance; simply a pragmatic one. The point they are making is that driving down access to justice for individuals, taking away the opportunity for people to get legal representation, will lead to more self-representation in the court. More self-litigants will endeavour, typically quite badly, to represent themselves in the courts because they cannot afford to pay a lawyer and legal aid will not be available to them.

What did the District Court judges in Wellington have to say about that? They said “Formal legal proceedings in which parties represent themselves often take significantly longer than they would if counsel were appointed, and require judges to take a proactive role assisting the undefended party.” They make the point that it is often necessary to appoint a friend of the court—an amicus curiae, if my Latin pronunciation stays with me—and that simply puts costs on the court’s budgets, rather than some other place. The judges go on to say: “The District Courts are concerned that any savings made by restricting access to legal aid in summary criminal matters may be offset by an increase in the number of self-represented litigants putting pressure on court time and resources.”

They go on to say that self-litigants, self-representation, also put extra load on court staff, who experience difficulty in communicating and in getting information to people who may be itinerant, who may not have a fixed address, and who may have poor literacy skills, and they are constantly having to explain matters. Instead of being able to speak in convenient legal shorthand, as they can with legal representation, they are obliged to spell it out. All this bill does, as do so many others, is displace costs in the misguided attempt to reduce them.

There were numerous submissions to this bill, as there have been for others, from the legal fraternity, from the profession, from the Law Society, from the Criminal Bar Association, from individual lawyers, and from community law centres and the like. Unfortunately, the constant refrain we hear from this Government, and, indeed, from the Minister, is that the lawyers are simply displaying self-interest. That is a very unreasonable and an unwarranted claim—that lawyers are simply self-interested. Mr Little commented on some of the conversations he has had with lawyers and legal firms. I have had very similar conversations as recently as last night with people who are saying that many legal practices now will actually not go there with legal aid cases, because they simply cannot afford to bear the loss, to bear the cost, that it imposes on them.

It is interesting that the Criminal Bar Association, in its supplementary submission, referenced the Bazley report and pointed out that it recommended that criminal lawyers operate a proper business infrastructure, that they deliver a high quality of service to their clients and to the courts, and, indeed, to the justice system, and that competency and seniority be properly remunerated. These are absolute obligations that any ethical legal firm, or any legal practitioner professing to have an ethical basis for their practice, must accept—that there is a cost to deliver these services and the bottom line is that if the legal aid provision is not sufficient to meet those costs, then there is a limit to their capacity to operate ethically and properly, and in a way that will fulfil their obligation.

As I said, there is a great deal to criticise in this bill, even now. I do have to acknowledge that there were some considerable improvements made. One of them was the so-called Henry VIII provision, which in the initial drafting would have allowed the Minister, effectively, by Order in Council to determine eligibility and to vary eligibility over time. I think the phrase was something about maintaining the viability of the whole system. Yes, it does need to be viable, but “Henry VIII” clauses are, as we know, anathema. We do not want the ability given to Ministers of any colour or of any Government to make substantive alterations to legislation. That is Parliament’s job, not a Minister’s job and not by Order in Council. The “Henry VIII” clause was refused.

I think one of the most disgraceful elements of the first draft of this bill—and, again, I give credit to the select committee for having recommended that this be taken out—is around the matter of disposable capital. In the original drafting, it was proposed that a person’s capacity to pay for their own legal representation should in part be determined by an assessment of their disposable capital, their disposable assets—such things as people’s furnishings, their clothing, their tools of trade, and assistive technologies for people with disabilities. In other words, under the original draft, before one could claim legal aid, you might have to sell your sofa and your kitchen table, your clothing, the tools that you use to make a living, and your hearing aid. What an extraordinary and a disgraceful proposition, and all credit to the select committee for having thrown that one out, and I hope we do not see anything of that ilk reappearing in any other legislation.

Similarly, with regard to the proposition that there should be changes to the appointment processes for youth advocates, the Youth Court judges came out very strongly and essentially said “This is not broken; don’t fix it.” The process works very well. The Youth Court advocates do a very good job. It is a very difficult job. They are well qualified. They meet a very high bar before they can be recognised and perform in that role. Let us not try to mend something that is not broken.

I would like to very briefly just comment, too, that a number of submitters pointed out that the overall thrust of this bill, by making access to justice less readily available to the least well-off, is actually at odds with our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The right to consult and instruct a lawyer is embedded. I look forward to continuing this conversation in later readings, but for now, suffice it to say, the Greens will oppose this legislation.

ALFRED NGARO (National): I rise to take a short call in support of the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill. The previous speaker, David Clendon, was a bit confused. On the one hand, he commended us for the changes we have made, yet he then continued to criticise us. Having been on the Justice and Electoral Committee, I commend the Minister of Justice, having heard from the Opposition and from others, for acknowledging the need to defer this bill. The reason for that was to allow consideration of the Family Court review report to Cabinet in May 2012. This deferral was to ensure that the legal aid reforms were consistent with that review. This is what has happened, hearing what has come out of that review.

There have been nine changes to Supplementary Order Paper 134 and four recommendations from the select committee. The changes are retaining the existing appointment frameworks for lawyers; removing the proposal to use Orders in Council; removing the tighter financial means test for less serious criminal offences; removing household goods from the eligibility calculation, which Mr Clendon spoke about; reducing the proposed user charge; and charging interest 6 months after a legal aid debt is finalised instead of immediately; and new provisions provide clarification around the ability for the Legal Services Commissioner to refuse legal aid. There were four recommendations from the select committee, including giving legal aid providers reconsideration, review, and appeal rights for decisions.

We have listened, we have heard, and we are aligning this to the Family Court review, as had been petitioned by the Opposition. As a member of Justice and Electoral Committee, I am proud and confident that we have heard and we have ensured that we are meeting the needs in respect of the eligibility of those in need. I commend this bill to the House.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I am afraid I would have to say that the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill as introduced was a thoughtless attack on the legal aid system in New Zealand. It was basically a quest to save money without regard for the legal aid needs of people who cannot afford to pay a lawyer. The Government was willing to do serious damage to the system. In respect of criminal legal aid, people with less serious charges to face, but still needing a defence, would have had to defend themselves, often with disastrous consequences for justice and good court procedure. The availability of aid for lawyers for the child and for youth advocates would also have been seriously reduced, and proceedings for which aid could be granted could have been removed through legislation.

Predictably, there were a large number of submissions on the bill, especially in respect of those matters. To her credit, the Minister of Justice has listened to the chorus of protest and has shown a willingness to amend the bill. In October she introduced Supplementary Order Paper 134 to undo some of the harm that the bill would have done. That Supplementary Order Paper does indeed address many of those matters. Firstly, and in particular, it does retain the existing appointment framework for lawyers for the child. [Interruption]

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. There seem to be a lot of interjections from one side of the House to the other.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am the—[Interruption] Order! I am the judge of that.

DENIS O’ROURKE: I hope that members on both sides of the House will observe the rule that if there are to be interjections, then, please, by all means, address them to me but not to each other.

That was the first issue that was addressed. I agree, in fact, that the lawyers for the child and youth advocates were indeed absolutely necessary. Those people cannot represent themselves, and the courts would be constrained in delivering justice without the assistance of lawyers. The second issue is this: the removal of the proposal to use Order in Council to alter the proceedings for legal aid eligibility. It is something that is called a “Henry VIII” clause, and it is good to see it gone.

The tighter financial means test for less serious criminal cases has also been removed. I approve of that and also some common-sense stuff like removing household goods from the calculation of eligibility for legal aid, which is just that—a good, common-sense deletion.

The Minister of Justice has indicated changes to be introduced in regulations. New Zealand First approves of the reduction of the user charge from $100 to $50. We think that is fair and sensible. Also, we are glad to see the provision that says that interest will not be charged for the first 6 months on legal aid debts. We do think, however, that it would be better still if no interest was charged on legal aid debts.

The Supplementary Order Paper also introduced several new propositions, including increased ability to refuse to grant civil or family legal aid in certain circumstances. That is still being worked through, through the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill, and again there are many protests, so we will wait and see how that turns out. The point is that it is another attack on the accessibility of people to lawyers, to legal representation, in this country.

I did want to comment on the provision that requires an applicant in arrears for repayments on previous legal aid debts to be subject to a test under which they could have legal aid for a proceeding removed. The point about that is that that is not a fair and proper legal aid system. That provision should have been removed altogether. If there is any concern about people not paying their legal aid bills—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member, but there can be no reference to the public in the gallery.

DENIS O’ROURKE: If there is any genuine concern about people not paying their legal aid debts, then that can be addressed better in other ways, not by removing legal aid altogether. That is not consistent with the purposes of the Act, and that provision should have been removed altogether. The members opposite may laugh about that, but, in fact, there are people out there who will not laugh when they are denied legal representation by a provision that is completely against the purposes of the Act.

Another issue is this: charging interest on legal aid debt. I am glad that the Justice and Electoral Committee recommended what I asked it to do, which is to delay the imposition of interest for 6 months. It would have been better, however, if interest on legal aid debt was removed altogether. Clause 12 of the bill as introduced requires a payment of interest from the beginning. The delay of 6 months is a good provision, but better still would be no interest on legal aid at all. The reason for that is simply that too many people—too many low-income people—will be affected by that provision. It does not provide any real encouragement for those people to repay their debts sooner. In fact, many may give up. An interest-free provision, I believe, is a proper Government contribution to legal aid in this country, and interest should not be required at all.

I also approve, however, of the reimbursement of costs for lodging a caveat over property to secure legal aid debts. That is already done, in fact, as a condition of the grant. However, it is perfectly proper, I think, for the new legislation here to put that into law to regularise that. Concerning additional eligibility for legal aid, New Zealand First disagrees with allowing the commissioner to refuse legal aid, as I have said, if there are arrears. We think that is very unfair.

Overall, we think that Supplementary Order Paper 134 amends this bill to improve it very significantly, but in the end it has not done enough to address some of the problems, especially those that I have mentioned. So, taken together with the availability of legal assistance, which is already not easy to get in this country, and the proposals for the Family Court legislation that are going through at the moment, the problems with this bill mean that New Zealand First cannot support it. The bill’s genesis was penny-pinching. There have been some good amendments now proposed, but none of them go far enough to make this good law or a bill that we could support.

Dr JACKIE BLUE (National): I am delighted to speak to the second reading of the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill. This bill makes changes to how Crown-funded legal services are funded and includes legal aid, providing a lawyer for a child, and youth advocate services. This bill was deferred to allow consideration by Cabinet. Subsequently, in October last year, the Government Supplementary Order Paper 134 proposed substantial changes to the bill as reported back from the Justice and Electoral Committee. Those changes have been adopted and there will be an opportunity in the Committee of the whole House to discuss those changes. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): You know, I was curious at the level of interjection from the National benches before. They were all baying while my colleague Denis O’Rourke from New Zealand First was on his feet. You would think that if the National Government wanted to say something on this bill, the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill, which is so embarrassing to it, so replete with U-turns and back-downs, that it would have taken a full 10-minute call. But not one—not one—National member of Parliament fronted up to this House to take a full call to explain themselves to New Zealand and explain why they could have got it so wrong in bringing in the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill. Maurice Williamson, who is a liberal in the National Party, must have been intensely embarrassed that his then Minister of Justice, Simon Power, brought a piece of legislation into this House—supported and endorsed by every member of the National Cabinet and every member of the National caucus—a piece of legislation so utterly wrong, so utterly prejudiced, and so utterly extreme and mean-spirited that the Justice and Electoral Committee had to come back with its tail between its legs and bring back a bill that is scarcely recognisable.

But I have got to say this: I congratulate the select committee. Select committees should have the guts to look at the legislation introduced by Ministers who have not done their homework and throw it out on its ear if it is totally inappropriate, and this legislation was totally inappropriate. You know, what we have got here in this report back is a 12-page apology by the select committee, including members of the National Party and its allies, saying “We got it wrong.”, and even then it has not taken it far enough.

You know, what I really object to in this legislation is that it undermines a core principle that goes to the heart of the justice system, and that core principle is this: justice is available for all, not simply according to your ability to pay for it. What this legislation would have done, in order to save money, was deny people who could not afford justice the ability to access legal representation in court, and that means injustices almost certainly happen. It means that people who could not afford to be represented would have represented themselves, and you know the old saying in law is that the person who makes himself a representative in court has a fool for a representative. But it is not only the injustice that that would have done; it would also have taken longer in court. It would have taken more of the court’s time and, therefore, it would have been more expensive.

You know, the problem with National members is that they regard justice as a commodity that can be bought and sold, rather than as a right—the right of every New Zealander, regardless of their financial means, to be fairly represented in court, to have the right to defend themselves, to have the right to protect themselves against civil action, and to have the right to ensure that their side of the argument is heard in any criminal matter. That is a fundamental principle. It is not something that should be traded off. Yet this legislation contained at its heart a willingness by a National Government—and, to his eternal shame, Simon Power—to say that people will be denied justice because they cannot afford to pay for it. Legal aid is not freely provided in this country. You have got to be on a pretty low income before you are even eligible for it. I think the income threshold for people who are single is $22,000. You know, that is barely the minimum wage. Yet the people who most need that support would have been denied it under this bill, and this bill is just an accumulation of U-turns and apologies for what the National Government got so wrong.

You know, the title of the bill gave it away. It was the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill, and one of the recommendations of the select committee is to remove the word “(Sustainability)”, because “sustainable” actually meant cost-cutting, but it was cost-cutting on the basis of denying legal aid to those on low incomes, without the means to have proper representation. You know, what I really object to is that this was a Government that, when it introduced this legislation, had just finished giving the biggest tax cuts in history to the people on the highest incomes in our country. So it is not—

Jacqui Dean: Oh, not true.

Hon PHIL GOFF: It is not rubbish, at all—not rubbish, at all. They were people like the Prime Minister. He gave himself literally more than a six-figure tax cut while the Government was cutting the eligibility of people who could barely rub two coins together in order to be properly represented within the legal system. Where is the justice in that? It is not socially just, it is not morally right, and in the end, even for this miserable National Government, it was unsustainable and it has had to back down. It has had to come into the House with its tail between its legs and say: “This cannot be sustained.”

I am really concerned about a number of things that were in this bill. For example, it said that an applicant could be refused legal aid if the applicant was in arrears for repayment. I am not justifying people not paying the debts they owe, but I am saying that there are many, many reasons why a person might not be able to afford to repay the legal aid debt that they have incurred. It may be misfortune. It may be that they are on a low income. It may be that they think putting shoes on their kids’ feet and food in their mouths is a little bit more important than repaying the bill that they owe to the legal aid authority. But what this bill would have done was say: “OK, you’ve got arrears. Therefore, you get no assistance.” So a person who, for whatever reason, has arrears would have been denied the fundamental foundation of justice, which is legal representation in court. I ask any one of the members on the National Party benches to justify how that was right. Finally—finally—with pressure from the Opposition parties, National has come back and it has put in an interests of justice test. Well, I want to ask Jacqui Dean why that was not there in the first place. Why was that not there in the first place? It is absolutely fundamental. Then it has made a half-hearted change. It was going to have a user-pays charge of $100 and, in its real sense of generosity, it has now cut that to $50. If $100 was wrong, why is $50 right, when we know that even a small fee can be sufficient to discourage people from seeking legal representation and incurring other costs in court?

But there are other things that were particularly bad, and I think that clause 20 was something that I cannot understand—I cannot understand why members of the National caucus approved this when Simon Power brought it to them. Not one of them—not one of them—has got to their feet and tried to justify this. When you were determining whether a person could be granted legal aid, you would set a threshold that would take into account the clothes that they wore, the furniture, the second-hand furniture, that they would have, and the appliances—the washing machine and the fridge—and it would take into account the tools of trade, the very tools of trade that they required to earn a living. These things were all to be used against somebody on the basis of their ability to get legal aid. How mean, how miserable, how unsustainable is that?

Well, actually, it is not the worst thing. The worst thing they were going to do is that they were going to take into account the technology that disabled people were using to give them the ability fundamentally to function in life. So if you had an electric wheelchair, that would be taken into account as an asset and as an excuse and a reason to deny people legal aid. Maurice Williamson, why did you support a piece of legislation that came into the House that contained provisions like that? They bow their heads in shame, and so they should because this was an appalling piece of legislation, partially repaired by what the select committee was able to do, and congratulations to the Opposition members who sat on that committee and fought the Government and embarrassed the National members into joining with them and saying that these changes are fundamentally necessary.

But the point remains that this was a piece of legislation that was ill-thought-out, ill-conceived, and mean-minded. It should never have seen the light of day, let alone be introduced as a piece of legislation before this House. It has been partly repaired, but the underlying sentiments are still there and this Labour Party will oppose this legislation. I now invite the next National member to get to his or her feet and try to justify—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry to interrupt the honourable member.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): That was the Phil Goff angry speech, which is a little bit different from, but very similar to, the Phil Goff angry speech. So that is speech No. 5, I think, in the repertoire of angry speeches from Phil Goff. It also illustrates—[Interruption] It is a formula. It also illustrates the attitude of the Labour-Green Opposition, in that it closes its eyes and it hopes that what it spends will not make too much of an impact on the economy.

But that is an approach not taken by this National Government, and that is why this bill is called the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill. That is exactly the reason this bill has been brought to the House. We are determined to make legal aid and court services sustainable into the future. National is committed to ensuring that the legal aid system remains affordable in the future and available to those people who need it most. I commend the bill to the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand the next call is a split call—5 minutes. Kris Faafoi.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): That was call No. 5 from the National side of the House today. I think that speech by Jacqui Dean can be best summed up as another nothing speech from that side of the House. There was nothing to justify the miserly, miserable implications that are held in this bill, the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill. There were five speeches, and nothing from that side of the House to justify what is being done in this bill.

I recall a meeting in mid-January 2012 when my former colleague Charles Chauvel, the justice spokesman, and I attended a meeting with a local Porirua lawyer. That lawyer was up in arms about what was being proposed by this National Government in this bill. If I can sum it up—basically, after about an hour’s meeting with this lawyer, a long-serving lawyer in Porirua, she was very frustrated by, and in horror at, what this Government was proposing with this bill—one of her final comments to us, to me and to Charles Chauvel, was: “Where else do they go? If they can’t come to us and get legal aid, where else do they go?”. Basically, of those people whom that law firm represents, there were quite few legal aid cases. When that lawyer, a senior partner in the firm, said to us: “Where else do they go?”, the answer was pretty simple. They have nowhere to go. They could not represent themselves in court. Mr Goff has already spoken about that. These people do not have the ability to go to court and represent themselves. That is why they relied on the services and the help of legal aid, to go to that law firm and try to get some equal access to justice so that regardless of how much money they had in their bank account, or whatever their worldly possessions were, they could have a fair crack at justice. Well, the fear from that lawyer, back in January 2012, was that those people had nowhere else to go. I am pretty sure if we gave her a call right now, she would still say the same.

In an unfortunate volley of interjections, a Minister in the House, the Hon Maurice Williamson, said: “Speak from the heart—speak from the heart.” Where is the heart, from the National Government in this bill for vulnerable Kiwis who no longer have access to justice because of what this Government is proposing in this bill? Where is the heart in this bill from the National Party, from this Government, for Kiwis who now will have a much, much higher hurdle to jump to have fair and equal access to justice? Mr Goff and Mr Little, and I am sure Lianne Dalziel who spoke earlier, spoke about the fee that is being charged to people to access legal aid. These are people who probably do not have enough money, and that is why they are applying for legal aid. This Government is asking them to pay a $50 fee. I understand, through the Justice and Electoral Committee process, that the members on that select committee heard from a number of submitters who basically said: “Yes, we will represent them, but we will probably just wear the cost ourselves.” So those law firms are going to incorporate the cost of that access fee into the cost of representing those people, if they were to get legal aid. So in the end they are saying that if you charge this fee, the Crown is going to be paying anyway. Introducing that fee is in no way going to help those people, and those practices that are offering legal aid, to give fair and equal access to justice.

I want to reiterate what Mr Goff said. This bill is ill-informed, ill-advised, and was rushed. You do have to commend the select committee that saw this bill through. I think there has been quite a diplomatic way in which it has been described. I think they took an awful bill, made some improvements, and now it is just bad—now it is just bad. They have taken what was completely and utterly reprehensible, and now it is just a bad bill. That is why we on this side of the House cannot support the bill. It goes against what is fundamental to this side of the House, and fundamentally goes against the principles of fair and equal access to justice. I know that Mr Simpson said in his speech that this move has been made by the Government so that it could have prudent fiscal management. It has not got the balance right between prudent fiscal management and the principle of justice and equal access to justice.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I too just want to stand in opposition to this bill, the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill. I support the comments that have been made by Opposition parties today opposing this legislation. It does really make you wonder just how much money the National Government wants to suck out of the poor. How much does it really want to keep sucking out of the services to those who have the least, so that it can keep shovelling it, in great bucketloads, to those who have the most? That is what this bill does, along with a whole range of other National Party policies. It is just shovelling money into the coffers of the wealthy, and taking it from those who need it most. This is just one more example of that policy, of that unfairness, of that meanness—that meanness—from this Government.

I heard some of the Government spokespeople speaking about this bill. Yes, it is true, and I agree with others, that they have taken a financial approach to this, as opposed to one of access to justice. It does interfere with a major part—in fact, a core part—of the social contract that New Zealanders, that the community, that citizens have with the State. I was a bit disturbed to hear one National MP—I do not know who it was or which of them it was—talking about how hard-earned taxpayer dollars are well spent. Their concern was that hard-earned taxpayer dollars are well spent. We have also heard tonight exactly what that means when it comes to denying justice to those who are entitled to it. What it means is shifting the cost—shifting the cost so that it does not turn up on the Government books in this form; it simply turns up on the Government books in other forms.

What are those other forms? I will tell you. Those other forms will be the costs to women who are trying to be safe from domestic violence instances, for example, where they are not in a position to declare that in the Family Court. The Family Court legislation changes that are coming will actually undermine their ability to be safe. They will not be in a position to declare it, so therefore they will not be able to get access to legal aid in order to support their claims. What will happen to them? We know what happens to them. We see the statistics of domestic violence in this country every day. That is where some of the costs will be borne—on the bodies of women and children who will bear the bruises because they are unable to escape dangerous situations, because this Government is taking away from them the ability to escape from those situations. They will not have the legal representation they need to be able to get away from those kinds of situations and to protect themselves in the process. That is where some of the costs will be borne.

There will be other costs borne in other places. You know, there is a cost that is going to be borne in the jails. We are going to see the costs reflected in corrections. It costs more than $90,000 a year to keep a person in jail. I was talking to lawyers about this bill when it first came to the House. I was talking to one lawyer who has a range of clients. They are difficult clients, they are often in trouble with the law, they have very few resources, and they have very poor education. It is very difficult. She works with them in order to try to build up their skills so that they are less likely to get into legal trouble, but they need her and her representation in court. If they do not get it—because they will not after this legislation passes—what will happen to them? They will not be trying to get on to courses, they will not be trying to help manage their families, and they will not be out there trying to get work. They will be in jail, because they will not have had the representation that protects them and tries to move them away from a life of crime to a more sustainable and a more socially useful lifestyle.

Just that little bit of extra support that those families and those people could use by getting legal aid to have decent legal representation is simply going to cost the taxpayer in hundreds of thousands, millions and millions, of dollars in corrections costs. That is what we are going to see happen. So this is not really about saving money; this is about just being mean. And it is no surprise to me at all that National would bring to the House legislation like this, which is nothing but mean to the poor. Thank you.

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Justice and Electoral Committee by majority be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be agreed to.

Ayes 61

New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Question agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 61

New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Immigration Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration): I move, That the Immigration Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This Immigration Amendment Bill forms part of a package of measures aimed at deterring people-smugglers and asylum seekers from making the highly risky journey to New Zealand by boat. The bill will also enable the effective and efficient management of a mass arrival to our shores should one occur.

The Government understands the complex challenges that the international community faces in terms of refugees and asylum seekers. Last year the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that there were 42.5 million refugees, asylum seekers, and displaced persons worldwide. Our response to these challenges is significant. Our refugee quota programme is amongst the most generous on a per capita basis, and New Zealand is an active participant in a number of intercountry fora aimed at developing solutions that disrupt, deter, and manage the growing number of people who are seeking protection through dangerous and irregular maritime voyages.

Underlying this trend is the appalling reality of the high number of lives lost at sea. Since 2009 over 600 people are known to have lost their lives on their way to seeking asylum in Australia alone. Although a boat of asylum seekers has not yet reached New Zealand, we know that New Zealand has been in the sights of the people who arrange these journeys. The Government has been saying for a long time now that it is a matter of when, not if a mass arrival occurs. The landing in Western Australia just last week of a boat from Sri Lanka, with people holding signs saying they wished to come to New Zealand and flying a New Zealand flag, clearly demonstrates and reinforces this fact. This is the ninth such documented case in recent years of boats arriving or being intercepted in Australian waters where the smugglers stated that their destination was New Zealand. The denial by Opposition MPs of the likelihood of an irregular maritime arrival is at best naive and at worst grossly irresponsible. This Government is preparing for this likelihood before it occurs, not waiting till it does.

The policy package that this bill forms part of is about two things: deterring a mass arrival, and managing a mass arrival should one occur.

Denis O’Rourke: Where will you keep them?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The measures to manage a mass arrival—

Denis O’Rourke: Where’s the secure facility?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —include detaining—if the member will listen, I am sure he will have his questions answered—people under a group warrant for up to 6 months, and then extending the detention period for up to 28 days, as determined by a District Court judge. We know from overseas experience that asylum seekers who arrive as part of a mass arrival are unlikely to have travel documents and, after making the long journey by sea in dangerous conditions, are likely to need medical attention. It is in their best interests to be housed as quickly as possible so that they can receive the attention that they need, and it is in New Zealand’s best interests that these people are housed in a safe and secure environment while their identity and status are determined and any threat or risk to the New Zealand public is assessed. This is not arbitrary detention; this is to enable the effective and safe management of people. This is common sense.

In most cases, people will be housed in facilities such as the Māngere Refugee Resettlement Centre. Unaccompanied minors will be exempt—

Denis O’Rourke: They could just walk out.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —from the process measures in the bill. Well, the member needs to decide what position he is going to take—either Māngere is a good place or it is not. The point is that these people will be housed in a centre that is appropriate to their level of risk and need, and it will not include children.

There are provisions in the bill that apply to all asylum claimants, not just mass arrivals. These changes will ensure the efficient processing of asylum claims and subsequent appeals.

I want to thank our support partners, ACT, United Future, and the Māori Party, for their continued support of this bill. Although they supported the bill at its first reading, both United Future and the Māori Party had concerns about some aspects of the proposed changes. I am pleased to note that these have been addressed in a cordial and cooperative manner, and both parties are supporting the bill at its second reading. I would also like to thank the previous Minister of Immigration, the Hon Nathan Guy, for his great work in getting the bill to this stage, my colleague David Bennett for his excellent work in chairing the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and the members of that select committee for their work.

Hon Member: Thank you, Michael.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: You are welcome. I also acknowledge and thank officials from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for their support of the select committee.

I also want to thank each person and organisation that made a submission to the select committee on the bill. In total there were 33 submissions to the select committee. Many of the submitters were concerned that adopting this legislation would mean that New Zealand breaches its international obligation in relation to refugees. I can assure those submitters and this House that the Government remains committed to meeting its obligations to refugees. We will continue to accept refugees through the quota programme each year, and we will continue to process refugee claims as efficiently and effectively as we can. We will continue to support refugees to settle into New Zealand and to make the most of what this country has to offer.

Other submitters were concerned about the use of what they described as mandatory detention. There are a number of provisions in the bill to ensure that detention is neither mandatory nor arbitrary. The judge has to be satisfied that the warrant is necessary before issuing the warrant of commitment, has discretion to issue a warrant for a shorter period of detention than 6 months, and can require an immigration officer to report to the court at specified periods on whether the warrant is still necessary.

The select committee recommended a number of changes that improve the bill, which the Government supports. It has recommended that the bill be amended to include the provision that a judge can revert to individual warrants if he or she is not satisfied that a group warrant is necessary. The select committee has recommended a number of other changes, including some minor drafting changes. I have no doubt that the bill is enhanced by the select committee process.

In addition to the amendments to the Immigration Act set out in this bill, changes will be made to immigration instructions for those arriving as a mass arrival group. These are a 3-year temporary visa leading to residency, and limitations on sponsorships of relatives to immediate family for entry into New Zealand. These changes are intended to reduce the perceived attractiveness of New Zealand as a mass arrival destination.

I plan to table a Supplementary Order Paper during the Committee stage to amend the Act to support people-smuggling prosecutions that may not be captured under section 98C of the Crimes Act. This was highlighted by a case recently brought before the High Court in Auckland, where a Thai national accused of smuggling migrants had her case dismissed because the court ruled that it met neither the people-smuggling definition set out in the Crimes Act nor the aiding and abetting offences set out in the Immigration Act. This amendment will help ensure that our legislation is watertight against those who illegally assist people to enter New Zealand.

I am also expecting an amendment to be moved by the Hon Peter Dunne to alter the definition of a mass arrival group. Originally this was set at groups over 10, and was considered by some as being too low a trigger point for when the provisions of the bill apply. I am comfortable with increasing the number to more than 30 to help ensure that the provisions are resorted to only where it is absolutely necessary.

I think everyone in this House would agree that we do not want people to risk their lives, and those of children, who have no choice, by making the treacherous journey by sea to New Zealand. But if these asylum seekers do make it here, the provisions uphold our international obligations, in terms of considering refugee and protection claims, and protecting those people found to have a justifiable claim. I commend this bill to the House.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour): That was a nice bit of soft-soaping from the Minister of Immigration about what is a bill that has caused enormous alarm in the refugee community and the United Nations community. In fact, they were outside Parliament today expressing that concern. They have written to the Minister, outlining once again their concerns about this bill, the Immigration Amendment Bill, the damage it will do to our very good international reputation, and the fact that it will do nothing to achieve its purpose, which is to deter people-smugglers. Well, that was how it was originally positioned when it first came to Parliament. The bill is really about ghost ships—or polar bears, I suppose—the ghost ships of boat people who will probably never arrive on our shores. They are ghost ships that the Government has used as a big stick to justify what is really a very reactionary and unnecessary bill. They are ghost ships of boat people whom this Government seeks to demonise through this bill and to make New Zealanders fear them, in the same way that we have seen Australia do in a very divisive policy that it has been unable to move away from through several Governments. It is a brutal policy that is proposed in this bill of locking away indefinitely ghost asylum seekers numbering what will be 30 or more as a group in mandatory detention.

The justifications for this bill are almost as silly as the Prime Minister’s claims that hackers are targeting this country for information to help create weapons of mass destruction. That is how silly some of the claims, particularly from John Key, have become. Last week John Key told us that the arrival of 60 Sri Lankans on a rickety fishing boat in Western Australia, flying a New Zealand flag and saying they wanted to come to New Zealand, vindicated him, and we should be apologising for daring to criticise this disgusting bill. He said it vindicated his stance, along with his agreement with Julia Gillard to take 150 refugees directly from Australia as part of our precious quota of 750. As part of that deal with Australia, John Key claimed that there was an agreement that asylum seekers, if they ever arrived here, could be sent to Australia for processing.

Putting aside the horror of New Zealand being responsible for sending asylum seekers to those places—those camps in Australia, in Nauru, and in Manus Island that are so reviled and internationally condemned, where men, women, and children spend years of their lives waiting, and where some are so desperate that they sew their lips together. There is a hunger strike going on right now in a detention camp in Melbourne, where desperate people do not know what else to do. Or they commit suicide. Putting aside all of that, I wanted to know what advice the Prime Minister had received on whether Australia would allow asylum seekers who arrived here to be processed in Australian camps. So I asked the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment under the Official Information Act to provide me with information on any advice it had given to the Prime Minister regarding an agreement with the Australian Government to send asylum seekers who arrive in New Zealand to mass detention centres in Australia. Funnily enough, it came back and said it could not supply that information, because it did not exist—it did not exist. So John Key made that one up on the spot, just as he has made up the weapons of mass destruction threat that we have heard today.

John Key told us that he reckoned it was a pretty good deal, when he was referring to the deal he had made with Julia Gillard. He got done. He went to Queenstown to do a deal he thought he could do something about, and he failed. He got done. It is not a good deal to trade our international reputation for a cheap trade in human lives, and that is what John Key is guilty of in trading 150 of our refugee places—our precious refugee places—in a political deal to appease the Australians. What we got was an effective reduction in New Zealand’s longstanding international promise to take 750 UN refugees; it is reduced down to 600. It is precious because we have always had a policy of taking those in most desperate need—the women and the children. This policy that John Key signed up to means that what we got out of it was a chance to join Australia in one of the most appalling offshore refugee policies in the Western World, and what we get with this bill is no better.

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

DARIEN FENTON: I was very much enjoying talking about ghost ships and ghost asylum seekers, and, thinking about it, I have been trying to understand the motivation behind this bill. If you go right back to the beginning of the bill in the first reading, in the regulatory impact statement that underpinned the proposed bill was an assumption that 500 people could arrive in a mass arrival, all from the same country, and all claiming asylum when they got here. Apparently that was based on the arrival in Canada of a steel-hulled vessel with 500 Tamils on board. The Minister has talked about this, and various Ministers have talked about this—John Key and others—but let us be clear about that particular incident. Those Tamils went to Canada because it has a well-established population of over 200,000 Tamils, principally around Toronto, and it has for years been a major source of fund-raising for the Tamil people. But in the bill, we were talking about 500 people one minute, then we went down to 11—there is a bit of difference there—and it is now proposed that there will be a Supplementary Order Paper that the definition be increased to “30 or more”. From Labour’s point of view, this does not change a thing about this bill. It does not change the fact that mandatory detention is not only internationally unlawful and inhumane but also completely unnecessary. We do not need this bill.

I cannot help but think that John Key and his Ministers have got a bit carried away when they have been meeting with the big boys and girls in the so-called five white countries of the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada. I have even heard theories that John Key has done a deal about cyber-security and national security biodata sharing—and, I mean, that might explain it, because this bill would be quid pro quo for the cost of joining that partnership. Of course, we will never know, because John Key will not reveal anything—

Hon Ruth Dyson: He won’t remember.

DARIEN FENTON: Apart from not remembering, he will not reveal anything. He falls back on the defence of it being likely to prejudice—

Dr Rajen Prasad: He’s clueless.

DARIEN FENTON: —the security or defence of New Zealand, not to mention that he is clueless. That is right. I do want to express my disappointment about this bill, though. The Government has failed once again to listen—to listen to the 33 submitters, 32 of whom were opposed to this bill, from many respected organisations, both nationally and internationally, who all warned the Government that this bill represents a turning point in our international relationships and will have consequences for our reputation as we align ourselves with the failed detention policies of the Australian Government.

But we tried to be constructive about this. During the select committee process I approached the then Minister of Immigration, Nathan Guy, on behalf of Labour to offer a multiparty, non-confrontational, pro-convention approach to the possibility of a mass arrival of asylum seekers, as an alternative to this bill. Guess what! Guess what!

Hon Ruth Dyson: What?

DARIEN FENTON: That offer was rejected. The Government was not interested, because it wants to play politics with this bill.

I also know that others tried to help. I want to acknowledge here former National Party immigration Minister Aussie Malcolm. Let me be clear: he is no bleeding heart. He is no bleeding heart. I agree when he says that those who seek to engage in illegal activity to broach our borders deserve no comfort or special treatment. But Aussie Malcolm’s advice to the Government was this: apply the rules of the convention that we have signed up to. The rules work, if they are applied properly. Do not make up your own rules. But that is what we are doing.

According to John Key we face an imminent threat of mass arrival. He wants us to be fearful that a leaky boat will turn up on our shores any day. Of course, we know that is pretty well impossible, but John Key does not even seem to understand the basics of the convention. The basics of the convention are that a person who is seeking asylum must seek asylum at the earliest opportunity. It is impossible to arrive in Australia, as that boat did last week, and then say to the Australians that you want asylum in New Zealand. So this bill is unnecessary. It is an overreaction. We are not dealing with the real issues around migration and immigration. New Zealand is better than that.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): On behalf of the National Party and the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee members I would like to support this bill, the Immigration Amendment Bill. I am a very pro-immigration person. I think that New Zealand’s immigration rules are too strict, if anything, and I would like to see immigration opened up quite considerably, but the country is not quite ready for that situation yet.

I found it very distressing and very sad that the Labour Party comes into this House tonight and tries to prey on the most vulnerable people out there and makes accusations about this bill that are simply not true. This is a Labour Party clutching at straws, trying to paint a picture of something that is not the case. It is trying desperately to create fear, and that is very distressing, I think, when people put their lives on the line when they are migrating. They make some very specific choices in their migration as well. So it is very sad that the left wing is taking that approach to politics here tonight.

It is also sad when you consider that we have a working arrangement with the Australian Government, and the Australian Labor Party is no doubt in control in that Government. It is unusual to see the Labour Party here being so different from its colleagues across the Ditch. I bet you a Labour Government here would actually be signing exactly the same thing, because Labour knows it is in the best interests of New Zealand and Australia going forward.

This is not a turning point in politics or in the approach of New Zealand to migration. It is certainly not a turning point in our approach to refugees. We have a very strong refugee focus in New Zealand. We are one of the few countries in the world that actually takes in refugees. We do our share. We do our share compared with other countries in this world. What we are doing here is making our share a bit more realistic for the problems that we face in our area. That is what we are doing. That is something I do not think anyone would hold against us.

There is one other big thing. I think we heard the Labour Party say things about the Tamil population in Canada being a reason for people to go there. That is just rubbish. There is a big population in New Zealand. There are the same incentives as any other country. But the real unfairness of the Labour Party’s argument—the real unfairness of the Labour Party’s argument—is to those people who follow the rules. It is to those people who come here the hard way, who have to come through the New Zealand Immigration Service, who have to learn English, who have to pass our English language tests, who actually do everything by the book; the people who come into our electorate offices week after week, struggling to get through our immigration systems—they are the real people whom the Labour Party is hurting. In putting those people down, that is what the Labour Party is doing. Those people are doing everything right. We need a migration system that understands that, and does not give somebody else a lift over them. That is not the problem.

Phil Twyford: David, you still don’t understand the issue.

DAVID BENNETT: I understand the issue very well, Mr Twyford.

Phil Twyford: You don’t.

DAVID BENNETT: We do; we do understand the issue very well. It is a bit of a disappointment for the Labour Party to take that approach to it.

New Zealand has a strong commitment to refugees. We have done that year in, year out. That commitment still stays. This bill assists the New Zealand Government in meeting its commitments. It looks after those migrants who are doing everything right, as well. It does not send the wrong signals. It is not an attack on migrants, as the Labour Party and Green Party say, and New Zealand First will just be against it because it does not like any immigration at all. The Opposition has painted this incorrectly.

This bill is in the best interests of New Zealand, it is in the best interests of our migrant populations, and it is in the best interests of our country going forward, especially our refugees.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Here we have another bill from the National Government following hot on the heels of Paula Bennett’s beneficiary-bashing bill last week. This bill, the Immigration Amendment Bill, is all about the politics of distraction. It gives the Government the power to lock up any group of 12 or more asylum seekers under a group warrant for a period of up to 6 months. It is straight out of the playbook of John Howard. There are many things that we could emulate about Australia, but surely Australian refugee policy is not one of them.

Australia’s arbitrary detention of asylum seekers has done huge harm to that country. Its reputation on human rights has been damaged. The policy has caused human misery. Its poster children are the detainees driven to rioting, self-mutilation, and suicide while they are incarcerated in detention camps. The policy has divided the Australian people, it has polarised debate, and it has made any rational consideration of refugee policy in Australia extremely difficult. In fact, it is now widely recognised in Australia that that policy, nearly two decades old, has failed. As one submitter told us at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, “without any fanfare or public statement, Australia has started the rapid release of those held in detainment into community placements and is accelerating claims processing.”

Well, with this bill John Key is channelling the spirit of John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister who won an election in 2001 by lying to the Australian people by claiming that refugees, asylum seekers, in boats off Christmas Island, were threatening to throw their children overboard. That was proved to be utterly false by a Senate inquiry. But by scaremongering that a boatload of illegal immigrants is about to land in New Zealand, even though no such boat has arrived in this country since the time of Captain Cook, the John Key Government hopes to create a political distraction from the tawdry scandals that it is mired in and its failure to grow the economy. Just like Paula Bennett’s continual denigration of welfare beneficiaries as a means of political distraction, this bill picks on and tries to demonise an even more vulnerable and defenceless group of people—asylum seekers and the human cargo of people-smugglers.

The Labour Party accepts that this Government has a duty and a responsibility to protect our borders, but we do not accept the punitive, badly thought through, and unnecessary measures in this bill. The bill simply will not work. Its stated purpose is to deter people-smuggling, but it is very clear that mandatory detention is not a deterrent to people-smuggling, and nowhere is this more obvious than in Australia. After a decade of policy similar to this, between the years 2000 and 2001 the single greatest number of asylum seekers since 1976 arrived in boats off the coast of Australia.

As expert submitters told the select committee, most asylum seekers are desperate people—desperate enough to risk their lives in rickety little boats on the open sea for the chance of a life in a new land. Submitters told us that the research clearly shows that asylum seekers have little or no knowledge of the policies on detention in the countries that they are trying to get to. Why the National Government considers that this bill will discourage people-smugglers is totally beyond me. Does it think that if the asylum seekers end up in a camp in Waiōuru for 9 months, they will contact the people-smugglers back in Jakarta and ask for their money back? Do you really think they are going to do that?

The bill is totally unnecessary. The fact is that a boat carrying asylum seekers has never ever reached New Zealand shores. That is a fact, Michael Woodhouse. It has never happened in the last 150 years. I know that John Key thinks that 66 Sri Lankans landing in a boat 400 kilometres north of Perth with a sign saying “Take us to New Zealand” vindicates his little fantasy that we are about to be swamped with asylum seekers.

Mike Sabin: How far did they come to get to Perth?

PHIL TWYFORD: It was 400 kilometres from Perth. People, look at the map. Look at the map. We are one of the most geographically isolated countries on earth. The Tasman Sea is one of the most dangerous stretches of water anywhere. There is no threat, and if there is, the threat is likely to be so small and so unlikely, how can it possibly justify the Draconian measures in this bill? Do the members opposite really think that our system of Government could not cope with processing a group of asylum seekers who survived thousands of miles on the open sea?

This bill will damage our reputation. If it is beyond the National Government members to realise that it is ethically and morally wrong, that it is unnecessary, and that it will not achieve its stated objectives, then they should at least consider the damage that this bill will do to New Zealand’s reputation. It breaks with a long-standing cross-party understanding on refugee policy. It will undoubtedly be a blemish on this country’s international reputation, which has been built up over decades from respect for the United Nations refugee convention and our agreements with, and support for, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It is inhumane and against the convention to punish asylum seekers and curtail their rights because of the way that they arrived in this country—because they might have arrived on a boat instead of on an aeroplane. It is completely illogical. It is a breach of the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Remember that two-thirds of the asylum seekers who come to this country are found to be genuine refugees—two-thirds. We have in this country a robust refugee claims system that weeds out the false claimants and gives genuine asylum seekers the chance to make a new life. Many fine New Zealanders came to this country as refugees, and many have made great contributions in all walks of life. The children of refugees have gone on to achieve great things because of Government policy that respected human rights and took seriously the principle that how a State deals with its refugees is a measure of its social and political health. I remind the Prime Minister of that.

Finally, let me say that National MPs in their great enthusiasm for this bill and their keenness to mimic John Howard’s disastrous policy in this area have gone around talking about queue-jumpers—as if somehow asylum seekers are simply economic migrants dishonestly trying to worm their way in ahead of skilled migrants. The brains trust of the Waikato, David Bennett, entertained the House in the last speech with this idea that illegal migrants arriving here, or asylum seekers, are simply queue-jumpers. Well, I say to Mr Bennett to remember that 90 percent of the boat people locked up in Australian detainment camps are eventually classified as refugees. They meet the test—90 percent of them, Mr Bennett. Second, there is no queue for people who are fleeing for their lives. There is no queue. Only 1 percent of refugees, Mr Bennett—only 1 percent of refugees in the world—ever get the chance of resettlement. The other 99 percent languish in hell.

I urge the National Party not to carelessly throw away that party’s liberal tradition. Listen to the voices of people like the Hon Aussie Malcolm, former immigration Minister in the Muldoon Government. He came to the select committee and urged that this bill be dropped. Think about what this bill will do to New Zealand’s reputation. Work constructively to find solutions. Beef up the cooperation with Australia, with Indonesia, and with Malaysia to tackle the scourge of people-smuggling at its source, but do not throw it all away with this nasty, petty, divisive bill.

JAN LOGIE (Green): The Greens will be opposing the Immigration Amendment Bill. Tonight I want to start this speech against this appalling, unnecessary, and divisive piece of legislation by reminding this House about why we have a refugee convention. In the words of Rosa Sacharin, who was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany—I have the quotes from a British Refugee Council video—“People don’t like foreigners coming in. People didn’t like me when I came here as a refugee from the Nazis. I escaped. Many millions didn’t. I never saw my father again, nor my brother. When Hitler came after the Jews, we had no legal right to go into any other country.” The refugee convention gave people all around the world, after Rosa, the legal right to enter other countries when they were fleeing for their lives or escaping persecution.

The bill breaks 50 years of consensus in this country of upholding that convention. That is no light thing to do. I want to speak to the people of New Zealand who may be hearing the discussion coming from the Government about these asylum seekers and refugees and having a sense of this blind mass of people coming to invade this country, and remind them of some of the people who have been refugees: the Dalai Lama, who became a refugee in 1959 from Tibet, and is today seen as one of the world’s greatest spiritual leaders; and, more recently, Fang Lizhi—excuse my pronunciation—a Chinese astrophysicist and pro-democracy activist who entered the United States Embassy in Beijing after Chinese authorities cracked down on pro-democracy protests. Something I would have thought this Government would want to encourage in the world—democracy.

Since signing the convention in 1960, New Zealand has accepted refugees and asylum seekers from Czechoslovakia, after the Prague uprising; Asians fleeing Uganda in the 1970s; Chileans fleeing General Pinochet in the 1970s; Jews and Eastern Europeans fleeing the Soviet Union through the times of repression in the 1970s; those fleeing wars in Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos in the 1970s and 1980s; and Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan in the 1990s. We have offered shelter to these people. We have been a refuge for these people in their times of greatest need. Tragically, the world still has too many horrors, and it is an unsafe place for all too many people.

Being as remote as we are, not many of these people make it to our shores. In fact, only about 300 asylum seekers every year make it to New Zealand. I really, really want to remind the House that when we talk about doing our fair share internationally, this is compared with the 2.7 million Afghans to whom Pakistan and Iran gave refuge in 2010. I would dare anyone to suggest that their economy and their society would be better equipped to process and handle that arrival of refugees than we would be. We are so remote. We are in such a privileged place, and we have gained so much from refugees who have come to this country, who have started their life here, who have started businesses, started families, and contributed to our society.

So what will this bill do to help these people needing a safe place in this world? It will enable the courts to detain any group of 30 or more people—we are hearing that the amendment will be to 30—who arrive together. It will limit family reunification to immediate family for those claiming refugee status after a mass arrival. It will provide the power for suspending processing of all refugee and protection claims by regulation, without the oversight of this House. It will remove the right of some claims to be heard before the Immigration and Protection Tribunal—for subsequent claims—along with the removal of certain rights of judicial review. In short, this bill breaches the refugee convention, international law, and our own New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

We heard wonderful submissions on this bill, very powerful submissions that offered a huge amount of expertise from organisations working in New Zealand, from people who have seen the impact of this kind of policy in Australia, and from people who have provided us with expert advice and told us that this is not the way to go. We heard from submitters like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, making a rare public submission; Amnesty International; the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network; the New Zealand Law Society; the New Zealand Human Rights Commission; and the International Detention Coalition. All were opposed to this bill on the basis of the evidence.

There was one submission supporting the bill. This submission advocated for the definition of mass arrival to be dropped to two people. I think that gives an indication of the quality of that submission.

The Human Rights Commission made comment after the bill was reported back. So when the Government says: “Well, we’ve made amendments. Actually, it doesn’t do any of those terrible things you’re saying it does.”, well, let me let you know what the Human Rights Commission had to say. It said: “the Bill and associated policy changes unduly penalise asylum seekers for irregular entry to New Zealand in clear breach of Article 31 of the Refugee Convention. The detention provisions in the Bill will result in arbitrary detention in breach of both New Zealand’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and section 22 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The suspension of applications from nationals of specific countries without providing them protection is discriminatory and may violate the right to seek asylum as guaranteed by international law. Restrictions on the right of judicial review proposed by the Bill goes against the basic and longstanding constitutional right to challenge the legal validity of government actions as protected by … the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.”

That is commentary on this bill in front of this House, not what we saw in the first reading or in submissions. It is what we are considering now. It clearly breaches Acts and conventions that we have had consensus on for 50 years. This is a big deal. This bill is being promoted by the Government as being a deterrent to people-smuggling and just a sensible preplanning initiative to enable it to process a group of asylum seekers. Well, to very quickly address those points in turn—one, it is nothing to do with being a deterrent for people-smuggling, and, if it was, that is an indication of it being a breach of the refugee convention, actually. We have legislation to deal with people-smuggling, and the harshest sentence that we have had around that has been 8 months’ home detention. So if the Government wanted to do something about addressing people-smuggling, then, actually, I would have thought that would be an area to start work in, rather than locking up the people who are most desperate.

Further, on the point of this being a way of processing people, actually, the way people arrive at the moment is that they arrive and the Customs Service tells them whether they are allowed in or not. If they are told they are allowed in, then they head out, they get a short-term visa, and then their application is processed. In Auckland we have a hostel for asylum seekers who do not have financial support, which may provide some ability to assist people during that time, and this Government has withdrawn funding for that centre. Does that not strike anyone as ironic? Here the Government is, talking about needing assistance for processing people, and it has withdrawn the funding for one place that is actually providing support for people at this time and also enables the Government to access and work with these people more easily. This is not about anything to do with administration, and it is not about people-smuggling. To be honest, I am lost for words to know what on earth this could be about and what could be worth breaching our consensus on the refugee convention and undermining fundamental human rights and people’s sense of security and belonging in this country—people whom we should be valuing.

MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): I am very pleased to take a call on the Immigration Amendment Bill on mass arrivals. I will steer a little clear of some of the rhetoric from the Greens. There is nothing unusual there. The fact that the Greens do not support this bill is usually a fairly good indication that we are on the right track.

We have heard also from the Labour Party about this being somehow ethically and morally wrong. Well, I submit to those members that what is ethically and morally wrong is people-smugglers bunging people into boats and sending them off on their way, high jumping those who are working their way through a legitimate process and have genuine refugee status. That is what I think is ethically and morally wrong, and to do nothing about that would be an affront to those who actually are looking for genuine refugee status—those 750 per year whom we do look to address under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’s provisions. That is a significant contribution on the global scale.

We are a long way away. We are geographically isolated, and that is a blessing—that is a blessing. It is also an incentive. There needs to be an adequate deterrent to those who see this as an attractive location. The naivety that I hear from members suggesting that there is no way a boat could arrive here—well, go back a few hundred years and ask yourself how Māori ended up getting here. What, did they fly a jumbo jet over, did they? Take a look at those who have rowed across the Tasman. Take a look at those who have kayaked across the Tasman. To suggest that it cannot be done is just ridiculous. At $50 million for a mass arrival I bet members and people in this House that the first people to be up on their hind legs about doing nothing about it would be the very Labour Party members who are opposing the fact that we are doing something about it now. Would that not be an ironic thing to do?

But it is really a case of how the Labour Party operates, because this Government actually deals with the challenges. It actually does what the New Zealand public expects us to do. It does not just pick the winners. It actually deals with things as they arise, because it has to and that is what it is expected to do. Whereas the team on that side—if I can call them a team; they are fairly dishevelled—chooses to just pick the winners, ignore what it wants to, push to one side things like the Canterbury earthquakes or whatever else when it suits, and then pull that out of the bottom drawer and throw that one up when it does.

This is another good example of a party that would criticise us like there was no tomorrow were we to do nothing. I think deep in those members’ hearts they know that this is something that must be done. I am sure they can find it within themselves to support this bill. I commend the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for its work on it, and the Minister of Immigration for the way in which he has carried himself in this bill. I commend it to the House.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): In early Māori history when the first canoe passed north, beyond Auckland, the waka actually ended being holed, and they went ashore to fix the waka up. The local people helped them, so who do you think they were? Why I am saying that is that some of us have been here a thousand years and we think we have got the right to say something about who comes here and on what terms. The second thing I want to say is that this misnomer that we are all immigrants is absolute balderdash. An immigrant is someone who is living legally in a country not of his or her birth. To use apologetic language to try to excuse the callousness by which you regard a democracy eventuating in a country like New Zealand is actually shameful. We have had a long conscience. It resulted in 750 people a year under the United Nations registered quota coming to New Zealand. That was where the consensus was, but what I am hearing tonight are all sorts of things about bringing all manner of people here regardless of their entitlement or the fact that they are seriously jumping the queue ahead of people going through the registered UN process—the one that we signed up to. Let us get that straight.

To hear, as Mr Bennett from Hamilton East said, that he is for far more immigration despite Auckland being massively logjammed and gridlocked every morning and every night now, and with thousands and tens of thousands of people without homes, just shows you how far away from reality some people in this Parliament are. Do you realise how many of the MV Tampa boys were first deemed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to be eligible? Do you know the answer? The answer is not one. Yet they came here on an arrangement between Helen Clark and Mr Howard, who has been pilloried tonight in this House, and then they brought hundreds and hundreds under family reunification with them. Which part of the New Zealand population was ever told about that?

We know that on immigration the Government is a total mess. It had a recent review of just 1,800 of New Zealand visa applicants who have been successful just a year ago. It looked at just 1,800 of those visas, and it found 15 percent were fraudulent, were false, and were not even legal in the first place. So where are those 15 percent now? They are humming around New Zealand working, and just carrying on as though there is no law whatsoever.

Where we stand in New Zealand First is very clear. We will support this law on one condition: that there is a real plan of action capable of being put in place tomorrow if a boat should—

David Bennett: There is.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No. No, there is not. Oh no, there is not. Mr Guy, the predecessor to this Minister of Immigration, told me: “Well, they’ll go to Māngere.” To which we said: “What? Climb over the wall and just walk off?” Well, he looked a bit bemused by that, but that was the plan. Now he is talking about going down to Waiōuru, down in the freezing cold. For people who come out of a hot climate that could be murderous. This is a Government that is doing a dog whistle because it is concerned a boat might arrive and it does not want to be seen to be the hopeless, incompetent Government on immigration and refugees that has been its record. We have had record immigration in the last 25 years and, pray tell me, do you think we are better off as a country?

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Yes.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh no, we are not. Oh no. The per capita growth that we were promised has never been delivered. All the warnings of many years ago have been clearly borne out. Here we are in Auckland now asking everybody from Kaitāia to Invercargill to pay for Auckland’s gridlock problems, and the Government has no plan to slow down immigration so it can deal with present problems in Auckland—none whatsoever. Do you know why? Because the Business Roundtable just wants more cheap workers and it wants more consumption to prop up a failing economic strategy. If the Government was so good on the issue of people, why are 58,000 leaving every year? Please explain that.

Tonight you have seen exposed the fact that we have here some members getting up and thinking that this is a black swan event. The black swan event is something that comes out of thin air—not likely to happen. But, frankly, we all know that there is every chance it will happen. Not for a moment, though, do I think that the boat that arrived in Geraldton in Western Australia was ever coming here. But it is a great public relations stunt to take the heat off the Australian authorities and claim that you were heading all the way to New Zealand. And here is the rub. The boat on which they arrived, you people, was a fishing boat given by the Australian people to Sri Lanka when they had the last tsunami. So Australia, out of its good heart, gives a major fishing boat to Sri Lanka to help out in a time of post-tsunami crisis, and what do you get from them? Return to sender, but loaded up with refugees. Do members here not read anything? No, they do not. They work on in provincial ignorance without a concern for the facts.

Look, there is a real threat. We think there should be a system in place to deal with it. If it is not dealt with by detention centres, pray tell me here, what do some members think you are going to do with them? If you have got 10 percent, 15 percent, 25 percent, or maybe 40 percent who will never be legal, what do you intend to do? Other than to make dog whistle promises or to say that your heart is filled with goodness and you do not give a darn what the mass majority of New Zealanders—Māori, European, and all new immigrants—actually think on this issue. Tell me where in Asia is there one country following the current debate that you are hearing in the House today in New Zealand? Find me one country in Asia that tolerates this sort of woolly-woofter argument. We have a right to defend our country. We have a right to put the people of New Zealand’s interests first—not last, first.

David Bennett: Well, vote for it. Vote for it.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No. If the Government puts in place proper plans for a detention centre and we see those plans—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: We’ve got a plan.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh no! I do not want to hear the last lot I heard, which was we might put them in the Devonport naval base. Oh, really? So where is the security there? We know that people have come in their hundreds to this country. Never ever—

David Bennett: We’ve got a plan.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Excuse me, how many Afghani refugees came here and were never tested for TB?

David Bennett: Who was in Government then?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The National Party.

David Bennett: You.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, the National Party was. Oh no, you do not. Well, you know it is only a fool who laughs at his own foolish joke.

David Bennett: Well, you were there.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, it was the National Party—all its own work. You know what happened? You go to any Auckland hospital and look at the “Third World disease wards”, and they are packed with immigrants—not New Zealanders; all immigrants—being paid for on our welfare system. Why? Because no TB tests, among other things, were ever done. You know what their excuse was when they were asked “You mean you imperilled the safety and health of the New Zealand population?” They said: “Well, they wanted to be reunified with their families.” How do you like that? Careless, mindless—a soft heart and a head to match.

We have a right in this country to say who should and who should not come. Our history has been, and it has been the consensus of this Parliament for decades, that we will take 750 people from the UN—on the register, on the list, properly processed, and deemed to be genuine. But what you are going to see here, if we keep on sending these messages that we are a soft touch, is hundreds and hundreds dying while trying to get here. Then what will the bleeding hearts say—then what will the bleeding hearts say?

David Bennett: Vote for the bill.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, no. They will, by their condemnation of weak, insipid policies, have actually caused that event, tragic as it will be, to happen.

Let me just say again: if the Government votes for our Supplementary Order Paper on a proper detention facility in this country, then we will support its bill. We will vote for it in the second reading. But if, at the Committee stage, it ignores all warnings of sane, sensible, historic, and international advice, then we will oppose it.

Dr CAM CALDER (National): This bill, the Immigration Amendment Bill, is a compassionate bill. This is a bill that aims at deterring desperate people from putting their lives in the hands of unscrupulous operators. We know that since 2009—that is not very long ago—600 people is the pretty strong and accurate estimate of those who have died, but that does not include ones whom we do not know about. Those we do not know about. This bill aims to discourage and deter people from putting their lives in unscrupulous hands.

It is interesting. I am pleased to hear that the Rt Hon Winston Peters agreed that there is a threat. I am surprised to hear that the Labour Party, with its “eyes wide shut” stance, thinks there is no threat—the threat is so small, so unlikely, so we will forget about it! How far is it? What is the distance between Colombo and Perth? The answer, in case you have not looked it up, is just over 3,500 nautical miles—3,500 nautical miles. That is 5,700 kilometres. This boat, which the right honourable member pointed out was given by the Australians, a small fishing craft, was piloted from Sri Lanka to Perth and arrived. How far is it from Perth to Auckland? Well, it may come as a bit of a surprise: 3,300 nautical miles. How many kilometres is that? It is 5,300 kilometres. It is not very far. It is totally possible that such a craft could easily, if it had not been intercepted, have arrived in this country. It is remarkably naive and misguided and completely disingenuous to suggest that mass arrival cannot take place and could never happen to New Zealand.

New Zealand takes 750 refugees a year through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees—properly processed and looked after. This legislation is not about punishing people with a genuine claim for refugee status; it is about sending a strong message to people-smugglers, and also for the protection of the vulnerable. I commend the bill to the House.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Sue Moroney.

David Bennett: Oh, this will be a bleeding heart.

SUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you to David Bennett, who has just said that this will be a bleeding heart. Well, I am internalising a complicated situation, because what we have got here is a situation where we have been convinced, or at least the media has been used to try to convince New Zealanders, that there is a very real and imminent threat of boat people arriving on our shores and invading our country—and not only invading our country. The little dog whistle from the National Government to New Zealanders is that they will threaten our standard of living somehow, and must, therefore, be dealt with.

But when the boat that was supposedly on its way to New Zealand some time around the Christmas holiday period did not materialise, and questions were asked of the then Minister of Immigration to give some evidence to that situation that had been drummed up through the media, there was none. There was no evidence that could be offered by that Government that there was, indeed, a ship full of refugees on its way to New Zealand shores.

John Key, you know we cannot legislate for your ghost ships. We on this side of the House are not going to legislate for your ghost ships. That is, in fact, what the National Government is asking us to do. It is using this bill, the Immigration Amendment Bill, as it uses many other bills, as a weapon of mass distraction. That is what it is, in fact, trying to do here. It is trying to distract from the many, many problems that that Government faces today.

Just look at today, for example. I can imagine that when those bombs went off in Boston, it was then that the National Government decided it would be a good day to announce that it has appointed one of its own MPs to a watchdog role as the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner. I think—

Simon O’Connor: That’s disgraceful.

SUE MORONEY: Well, have a look at your Government’s record—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! You are including the Speaker in that by the use of your pronouns. You are also straying away from second reading material.

SUE MORONEY: I just ask members opposite to look at their Government’s record when it comes to using legislation through this House and other matters as distraction from issues that are, in fact, going on. I think they would also be quite pleased that the second reading of this bill comes up on a day when they have appointed another one of their supporters to the Human Rights Commission. They are starting to use that commission as if it is a recruitment agency for National Party supporters.

The Human Rights Commission is concerned about the very bill in front of the House this evening. That is why it is so important that we have people who are not under the influence of the National Party or any particular party in these watchdog roles within the Human Rights Commission. Bills like this, which do contravene human rights understandings and conventions and legislation, need good, strong watchdogs in place to be able to come out against the Government when it does these things. That is why the way in which that Government is using the Human Rights Commission is just so wrong.

But I want to come back more explicitly to the details of this particular bill, because we had the member for Hamilton East, David Bennett, speak before, and it was very, very disappointing. He comes from a city—well, he does not come from that city, but he is now in the city—where there are actually a large number of refugees, and there are—

David Bennett: Where did you vote last election, Sue? It wasn’t Hamilton West, was it?

SUE MORONEY: Well, the member asked where I voted at the last election. I voted in Hamilton West, if he must know.

David Bennett: Rubbish! Prove it.

SUE MORONEY: Well, I can prove it, if that is what he wants the House’s time taken up with, but of course I voted in the electorate of Hamilton West at the last election. I am not sure what the point is that he is trying to make. But, look, the point that I am trying to make is that Hamilton actually is a city with a large number of refugees. In fact, it has such a good reputation in terms of refugee resettlement that the Afghan translators whom Labour fought that Government to bring to New Zealand—and we actually won on that occasion—are being resettled in Hamilton. I am really proud to say that in that city, and it took me a little while to work this out, we have one of the best processes. It can always get better, so it is by no means perfect. But we have a migrant resource centre where a whole lot of services that cater for migrants and refugees are co-located in one area. It makes a real difference in terms of the ability of those organisations to resettle refugees and migrants in a fashion that makes them quite included and welcomed into the community. I think one of the most touching things that happens on a regular basis in Hamilton is the pōwhiri that happens when new refugee families are welcomed into our community. It really is a very embracing situation.

But contrast that—contrast what is happening in Hamilton, and the welcome and the pōwhiri that those refugees are given—with this piece of legislation. This dog whistling piece of legislation is actually all based on something that has never happened. There has never been even a threat of it happening, but it uses that ghost scenario to try to do a dog whistle to the rest of the New Zealand population. That, I think, is really an outrageous thing to do. It is outrageous because it undermines and puts other New Zealanders in a really bad context, because that Government actually thinks that New Zealanders are silly enough to respond to this in the way that it hopes that they will. What it hopes they will do is start to blame other people for the sorts of things that that Government is doing, like not getting on top of the recession, and all the things that are creating problems for New Zealanders today.

If David Bennett really believed that this bill was something that was in the interest of all refugees—certainly, he tried to invoke the idea of queue-jumping and that this bill was designed to stop queue-jumping—then why is it that the Refugee Council of New Zealand, which represents all of those people he thought he was talking in favour of, has written to the Minister to express its grave concern about this bill? It called it a sledgehammer approach to the issue. It said that as a signatory to the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, New Zealand has an international legal obligation not to discriminate against asylum seekers based on their mode of arrival. The council warned the Minister that the bill was unnecessary, that it would not achieve its stated purpose, and that it would breach human rights obligations. But, more frightening, it actually jeopardises New Zealand’s international reputation as a world leader in this area, and it hinders progress towards a genuine regional solution. I think that is the most insidious thing about this bill. Yes, it is a dog whistle to hard-working New Zealanders, but it actually risks the international reputation.

It was interesting to watch the members opposite as they squirmed while they listened to Winston Peters’ speech, but what he was doing was speaking out loud what the National Party really believes when it comes to the issue of refugees. National members need to stand up and be accountable to the dog whistle politics that this bill is, and stop using these pieces of legislation to try to distract the New Zealand public from their woeful performance in Government.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): We have this classic case of where the Opposition is, I suppose, dog whistling supposedly on our behalf. I do not believe that anyone from this side has used half the words, terms, or descriptions that the other members have. In fact, I find it disgraceful that the member who has just sat down, Sue Moroney, has decided to politicise Boston today. As someone who has lived in Boston and has friends there, I just find it appalling that one would try to politic within hours. We then hear from New Zealand First going down the sort of scapegoating, scaremongering side, which, I am sure, plays to certain elements in New Zealand, but certainly not with National. And if you listened to the Greens, well, you would basically think that political activism becomes human rights. I would certainly encourage members of that party to go back to the textbooks and get down to the basics of what human rights are about.

One part around human rights allows Governments like our own to manage how we deal with refugees. This is what the core of the Immigration Amendment Bill is about. It is providing a legal framework to deal with a mass arrival. Will it happen? When will it happen? We do not know. But, as other members have rightly pointed out here on this side of the House, it would be the Opposition who would be the first to cry foul if we did not have any legislation like this in place. So it is very timely.

I want to acknowledge the Minister of Immigration and the work that he has done to bring this to the House. I acknowledge David Bennett, of course, the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. We have worked very hard. We have listened to the submissions. We have made the appropriate recommendations. This side of the House once again stands strong and firm and rejects the constant assertions of an Opposition that really is lacking in ideas and constantly trying to tell us what we might be saying. Well, New Zealand, we believe in New Zealanders. We believe in appropriate migration. We believe in looking after those who come to the shores in an appropriate way. Thank you.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In the interest of allowing that member to formulate a debate, I move an extension of his time, so that he can actually say something that is relevant to this conversation tonight.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member cannot seek leave for another member. The next call is a split call. Iain Lees-Galloway has 5 minutes.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): From time to time, this Parliament, unfortunately, considers bills that can be described only as a solution looking for a problem. It is sad to say that the Immigration Amendment Bill is most certainly one of those bills. If we look at the stated purpose of the Immigration Amendment Bill, it is “to deter people-smuggling and to enable the effective and efficient management of a mass arrival of ‘illegal immigrants’.” Let us look at the first part of that stated purpose. The most significant deterrent that we have to people-smuggling will never be a piece of legislation. It will be the Tasman Sea and our geographical isolation from the rest of the world. I know that John Key—

Simon O’Connor: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I believe it is clear—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think I can guess what it is.

Simon O’Connor: Yes. I believe a member is able to use props.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes. Only the member may use a visual aid at the time he is actually speaking. It is not for other members to display.

David Bennett: You’ve got it the wrong way round.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: No, it is the right way round. I know that John Key thinks that the arrival of 66 Sri Lankan refugees in Western Australia vindicates his decision to push this legislation through, but I have news for Mr Key. I know that he admitted today that he really does not have a clue. But the fact is that Western Australia as the crow flies is more than 5,000 kilometres away from New Zealand. Cam Calder tried to suggest that this was not actually too great a distance for a boat to traverse. I would be interested to see a boat ploughing its way through the middle of the Australian desert to make its way to Auckland, New Zealand. The distance by sea is much farther, and it is a treacherous and difficult journey, one that no other boatload of people seeking asylum in New Zealand has ever been able to achieve. And besides which, that group of people, by landing in Australia, actually made themselves ineligible for asylum in New Zealand. So, again, Mr Key cites a problem that does not exist. We already have the law in place to deal with that group of people. Mr Key is clutching at straws, to say the least.

The second part of the stated purpose is to deter people-smuggling by creating a system that is so punitive that nobody would want to take it on. Well, we know from experience that it simply does not work. Let us look at Australia. From the 1990s to the mid-2000s, Australia introduced a range of policies aimed at deterring asylum seekers arriving by boat. Despite that, between 2000 and 2001 there were 94 boats carrying 8,455 people that arrived in Australia. It is not the legislation that will allow people or stop them getting into a country. It is simply the access and their ability to get there, and getting into Australia is an awful lot easier than getting to New Zealand. The other side to this is the effective management of large groups of people arriving. This was modelled on 500 people making it to New Zealand, but it actually talks about groups of 11 or more. Our system can already deal with those. This legislation on that front is absolutely redundant.

The true purpose of this legislation is that it is another one of John Key’s WMDs—his weapons of mass distraction. Remember the first reading of this bill? The first reading coincided with John Banks getting found out for his dodgy donations. The Government needed a distraction back then, so in came this bill’s first reading—for John Banks.

The second reading coincides with the Government Communications and Security Bureau debacle—again, this Government in desperate need of a distraction from John Key’s cluelessness. What will it take to get us to the third reading? That is what I want to know. What will be the next debacle that this Government wants a distraction from to get this bill to its third reading? This bill is quite simply about National’s natural fall-back position, which is that when it is in trouble it engages in the politics of division—the nastiness, the vindictiveness, and the Draconian approach that only National knows how to do.

Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has reported back on this bill, the Immigration Amendment Bill, and has recommended only a few changes. As a result, the fundamental weaknesses of this bill remain. The stated purpose is to enhance the ability to deter people-smuggling to New Zealand by making it as unattractive as possible to people-smugglers. In November 2010 the Minister of Immigration was requested to provide the annual figures for the last 10 years showing the number of people listed in prosecutions confirmed to have been smuggled into New Zealand. The Minister replied that “The department’s prosecution records do not record the number of people confirmed to have been smuggled into New Zealand. Accordingly, I am refusing this part of your request.”

This bill rests on a fear based on complete ignorance of the facts. But whatever they might be, the numbers will have been minuscule, and so the only real significance of this bill has to be in its symbolism. Let us look at the symbolism. It is based on a misperceived fear, it succumbs to the temptation to dog whistle to certain segments of the population, it misunderstands the distinction between refugees and asylum seekers, it exhibits a meanness of spirit, and it dishonours our ancestral tradition in this country.

On 18 June 1842, 171 years ago, Robert Graham embarked from Glasgow in the Jane Gifford, one of 255 souls.

David Bennett: Speed it up.

Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM: Three months and 3 weeks later, in a leaky boat, he stepped ashore. Whether he was an asylum seeker or an economic migrant is neither here nor there. Either way, he stepped ashore and had an excellent life thereafter.

The member who just intervened, the member from Hamilton East, offered criteria for admission of people coming to this land. Let me respond. My ancestor—and, no doubt, his—did not have to pass a language test on arrival. My ancestor became fluent in Māori very fast and became friends with Hone Heke. He did not have to show a minimum net wealth. He did not have to provide proof of guaranteed employment. The following decade he entered the second Parliament, in 1855, and served in the second Parliament through to the fourth, in 1868.

I know that this is the 21st century, not the 19th, but the issue of symbolism remains the same. Cam Calder offered some neurotic fear of people arriving in similar fashion from Sri Lanka. As the father-in-law of a beautiful young Sri Lankan woman, I can assure him that he need have no neuroses—they are not shared here. Eleven years ago the survivors of the Tampa came to New Zealand with a humanitarian gesture from this country, and the issue worked out so well, it made everybody proud to be Kiwis. I dare say that before long somebody from the Tampa will enter this Chamber.

TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Much as I respect Dr Kennedy Graham, the member who has just resumed his seat—and I do thank him for making a thoughtful contribution—I cannot agree with him that this bill, the Immigration Amendment Bill, represents either meanness of spirit on the part of the Government or an overreaction to a fear or a threat that does not exist. I want to remind members that at the start of this debate the Hon Michael Woodhouse set out, in what I thought was a very comprehensive and compelling way, the reasons for this bill. In the short time that I have to speak I just want to remind all members that we could well be in the position that Canada found itself in a few years ago, in 2010, when the MV Sun Sea, carrying nearly 500 asylum seekers, reached the shores of Canada. It was not prepared for that event and it had to react legislatively after it.

This is an example of the New Zealand Government being prepared for a threat that is real. We all would hope that no asylum seekers would attempt the incredibly difficult feat of getting all the way to New Zealand, because it would be fraught with risk and nobody wants to hear of another tragedy on the high seas. But the fact that asylum seekers arrived on the west coast of Australia just last week signalling their intention to try to come here shows that it is an ever-present threat, and something for which we must be prepared. For that reason, I commend the Minister for the work that he has done, I commend the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and I support this bill.

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee by majority be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be agreed to.

Ayes 71

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 50

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Question agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Immigration Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 71

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 50

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 11 April.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): Thank you very much for the call on this Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill. On the last day when Parliament was considering this matter we had an extraordinary tirade from the Minister for Building and Construction, Maurice Williamson, on this legislation and why it was so necessary. He talked particularly about the issue of health and safety and the need for us all to be sure that the tradespeople we engage—in this case, plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers—are properly qualified, properly accredited, properly monitored, and regularly updating their skills in order to ensure that public health and safety is paramount and that work could be trusted to be done. In this context he said that this fee that had been extracted, this disciplinary levy that had been extracted to fund enforcement action against non-registered tradespeople, needed to be legalised because that was basically its intent—to rid the trades, this industry, of cowboys. Although I have a lot of sympathy with that, I do not have sympathy with the Minister’s misinformed and inappropriate tirade and the precipitate nature of the consideration of this bill.

The Minister in his speech referred to an explosion in a Pizza Hut in Nelson. Can I just say that he has now caused Pizza Hut nationwide to go into a bit of a tailspin about the safety of its eating houses. Can I just quote an email I received that included an email from David Hill, who is the Regional Operations Manager of Pizza Hut. He said: “We definitely did not have any gas explosion ever in Nelson Pizza Hut, or any of our other stores either. The comments made by Mr Williamson are obviously incorrect. We have fully compliant maintenance and safety programmes in all our stores. You can assure all your friends who ask that we are a safe place to eat.” That was an email dated Monday, 15 April. I feel the need to raise that as a point because the Minister impugned the reputation of Pizza Hut, and in the course of that I seek to correct that on the record and in the public domain. But, more important, he was wrong, and if he is wrong about something like that, he can be wrong about the detail and the purpose of the retrospective legislation that is being put before the House now.

It was not a Pizza Hut. There was a gas explosion in my neighbourhood fish and chip shop. It was the Milton Street fish and chip shop, a couple of years ago. So it was nothing to do with Pizza Hut. The poor owner, Mr Clark, at the time—it has now been sold and is under different management, and is a perfectly successful and safe business once more—who had operated a fabulous fish and chip shop for a long time in that area was seriously injured. I visited him in the burns unit at Hutt Hospital when he was transferred there because of the extent of his injuries. But nobody has ever been held accountable for that malpractice, if in fact there was malpractice. It certainly seems something went wrong, because a gas cylinder exploded. We do not have reticulated gas in Nelson, and so it works off gas cylinders. So Mr Williamson, the Minister, was quite wrong.

There is a man who now has to work in Tākaka whose reputation has been destroyed because of the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board. There is something much more rotten in the State of Denmark in respect of the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board than there is with the poor man who was burnt in an explosion in Nelson in a fish and chip shop and the poor gasfitter and plumber who was blamed but never found culpable. I draw this to the House’s attention because a man’s reputation and business has been ruined because the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board, to my information, has been covering up people who are responsible for signing off safety certificates. They have been covering up members of their own board or close friends who have been operating in a way that one could only call corrupt. This is now a serious matter, and instead of bringing to this House legislation that retrospectively approves an illegal fee that the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board has been extracting from plumbers for the last few years, why does not the Minister, if he thinks there is a fault or was a fault with the original 2006 legislation, correct that fault, instead of retrospectively validating a levy that was incorrectly applied?

Mr Williamson interjected during the last debate when we were talking about this. He interjected “Oh, members of Parliament only hear from a very few people—only hear from the same people, the same plumbers and gasfitters complaining about this, and we could all name them.” But they represent others. I think the Minister needs to get out more. I have had plumbers coming up to me at the Nelson market on a Saturday morning. They cannot get in to see Nick Smith, because he requires them all to make an appointment. So they come down to the market and they see me, and they complain. In fact, one sat with a sign outside Nick Smith’s caravan last Saturday morning, complaining about this bill. He was an ordinary plumber and gasfitter. He knows his trade. He has been doing it for decades. This bill, instead of correcting any fault with the 2006 legislation—and that is, actually, disputable; whether there was a fault with that legislation. It has taken a long time for the Government to work out that there was a problem with it, if indeed there was one. But if there is a problem with it, why does not the Minister fix it, instead of validating an illegal levy that has been imposed by a board that has behaved with less than stellar performance and less than exemplary conduct? This is not good enough.

The Minister told the House that the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board will be bankrupt if it has to pay back the money it has taken from ordinary tradesmen. If that is the case, then it will have to work from the ground up, again, to re-establish its funding base. The board has an ongoing process of demanding legitimate levies from plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers. It will never be bankrupt. It will always have levies coming in from the tens of thousands of tradesmen who pay to be certificated adequately and approved by the board. I am all for health and safety, but I am not for retrospective legislation validating an illegal levy by a dubious board governing these tradespeople. Thank you.

HOLLY WALKER (Green): It is interesting. I never imagined when I entered Parliament that I would be so engaged by an amendment bill dealing with the regulation of the plumbing, gasfitting, and drainlaying industry. But I guess that is one of the strange and wonderful things about this place: you never know quite what direction you will be taken in. This bill, the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill, has in fact been one of the more complex, more controversial, more challenging, and more constitutionally interesting bills that I have worked on so far in my time in Parliament. It is certainly the first time I have experienced a hung select committee. So it has been a very interesting experience indeed.

When this bill was first mooted by the Minister for Building and Construction and he wrote to parties seeking our support, the Green Party indicated that we could tentatively support the legislation. We, like the Minister and other parties in the House, recognised that there probably was a problem with the 2006 Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act, which, as has been demonstrated by a series of complaints to the Regulations Review Committee, to the Ombudsman, to the Auditor-General, and then again to the Regulations Review Committee, did not allow the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board to collect the levies and fees, as it had been doing, from its members for the purposes of prosecuting unlicensed practitioners. As the Minister has pointed out, it is clear—well, perhaps it is not clear but there is some indication—that it was the intent of Parliament in 2006, when enacting the legislation, that the board should be able to prosecute unlicensed practitioners. The Green Party agrees in principle that this should be the case.

The board should be able to prosecute unlicensed practitioners. Indeed, it is in the interests of the many law-abiding plumbers and gasfitters that there is the capacity to prosecute unlicensed practitioners, because these so-called cowboys—to use the Minister’s terminology—do give their industry a bad name. There is something to be gained for those registered, law-abiding plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers by ensuring that those who are not are being prosecuted and dealt with effectively. So the Green Party certainly could support legislation to make it clear that the board has the lawful ability to collect from its members levies and fees for the purposes of discipline and prosecution of licensed and unlicensed practitioners in the future. That we could support, and that we have communicated to the Minister.

I know that there are many in the industry who have grievances with the board and who would not support going even that far—allowing the board to collect these levies in the future. There is, as we have heard from previous speakers, a lot of bad blood in this industry and a lot of mistrust of the board, which is unfortunate but which is not unfounded, historically speaking, based on the actions of the board over a number of years at certain times. However, I do believe that these grievances are largely historical and they could be addressed, as the Hon Ruth Dyson pointed out last week in her contribution to this second reading debate, if the board showed a greater commitment and a greater degree of transparency in how it spends the offences fee, to reassure those with concerns that the fee is actually spent on the purpose for which it is collected, on the prosecution of unlicensed practitioners.

As an advocate of transparency and open governance, I certainly did sympathise with submitters from the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Federation who showed the Government Administration Committee the efforts that they have been to under the Official Information Act to obtain from the board information about how the levies are spent. They have had no end of difficulty and long delays in getting hold of that information. I think proactive disclosure from the board would go a long way towards addressing some of these concerns. With that caveat—that greater transparency on how the levies are spent is needed—the Green Party could, as I have said, support legislation that gave the board the ability to collect offences fees in the future.

Our concern with the amendment bill currently before the House is its retrospective nature. As a number of speakers have remarked, retrospective legislation is not something that this House should ever take lightly, and we are certainly not persuaded that it is justified in this case. The fact is that the board, whether it thought it was doing it legally or not, has for a number of years been charging illegal fees and levies. People have taken perfectly legitimate complaints about this to every available adjudicator—as I said before, to the Regulations Review Committee, the Ombudsman, the Auditor-General, and again this year the Regulations Review Committee. Every one of those complaints has been upheld, and at each stage the complainants have been vindicated that they have a legitimate complaint. What message do we send from this House about natural justice and due process if at the end of all of those complaints and all of that process we say: “Yes, you’re right, actually—we’ve figured out it is illegal. Thanks for bringing that to our attention. We’ll just change the law now, thank you very much.”?

You can understand why the complainants are upset that this House is considering the retrospective validation of those illegal levies. In fact, it reminds me of the legislation that the Prime Minister has signalled we should expect soon in this House about the Government Communications Security Bureau to validate years of illegal spying on New Zealand citizens and permanent residents. That is a higher-profile example than the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board, but the retrospective nature of this Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill is no less distasteful than that example. The fact that people thought it was legal at the time is no excuse for illegal conduct, and people have taken legitimate complaints about the collection of this levy.

The solution, in the view of the Green Party, is to change the legislation for the future but not for the past. We recognise that if we were to take this course of action, it might require the board to refund some or all of the fees and levies that it has collected since 2006. That, indeed, was the recommendation in the findings of the complaint to the Ombudsman. We think it is probably fair enough that it does refund some of those levies and fees that it has collected illegally. However, as the Minister has pointed out, this could potentially put the board under some financial strain and possibly bankrupt it. Well, if that is the case, I would like to ask the Minister what is so bad about going to the Minister of Finance and asking for some Government support to allow the board to refund the illegal levies without going under. After all, it was a Government error in the drafting of the original legislation in the first place that allowed all of this to happen. Yes, admittedly, it was a different Government, but the Crown is the Crown. In this case I think that there is a case for the Crown to take some responsibility and contribute some financial assistance if it is needed.

The best estimate that I could work out, based on the information that was available to us as members of the select committee, was this might mean a liability of something like $1 million. I know $1 million is not an insignificant amount of money, to be sure, but it is certainly an amount that I think the Minister of Finance and the Crown are capable of finding in the Budget and absorbing. That is a solution that the Green Party could have supported—fixing the legislation going forward into the future, but allowing due process to take its course for the collection of the illegal levies and for the existing legitimate complaints.

We do acknowledge that the industry needs a fix, but retrospective validation is not justifiable, and the rushed process at the select committee has not helped. Yes, I acknowledge that the time was extended from 1 week to 3 weeks, but that is still an extremely short time, and there were a large number of people who wished to submit in person who did not have the opportunity to do so. This is a divided, conflicted industry and, unfortunately, it seems absolutely certain to remain so with the passage of this legislation. The Green Party will continue to oppose this bill.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): I stand to support the second reading of the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill. The quality of our plumbing and gasfitting shapes our health and safety. This means we need qualified and skilled people to do this work, and we also need to prevent unqualified and unskilled people from putting the public at risk.

This bill addresses irregularities of funding largely. Most boards have been funded by fees and levies. It is important to ensure that boards have funding for all their functions. Primarily, the role of the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board is to prosecute people who carry out illegal sanitary plumbing or gasfitting work.

In fact, this bill tidies up any anomaly around the funding of the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board so it can effectively carry out its job of prosecuting for people’s safety. The board can also fund the investigation and prosecution of people within the trade who are found to be in contravention of best practice or who are practising without the appropriate skill or qualification.

This bill is one part of the work the Government is doing across the building sector to help those in the sector improve their skills and the capability to build right the first time. I support this bill.

ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill. In this respect, can I just state firstly that New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill. We are of a mind that, once again, this Government is trying to retrofit legislation, and this should not have been brought to this House in this position some 5 or 6 years later. This Government has been in power for 5-odd years, and, quite frankly, it is too often that retrospective legislation is being put in place to sort out problems of this nature.

In this particular instance there have obviously been some errors made, but it would be now wrong that so many plumbers and gasfitters and others in the industry should be penalised for something that was not of their doing, because people have made a huge error in terms of the officials, in terms of the legal advice in the original legislation, and then, indeed, the oversight of that legislation. Therefore, innocent parties and people who are going about their business should not now be hounded retrospectively for money, in many cases where they simply do not have those funds to pay the retrospective fees that are trying to be charged. In some cases where they are being hounded unnecessarily, we feel it is very onerous on many of those tradespeople, and it is not something we would condone.

In this respect, Minister Maurice Williamson, we believe, again is trying to sort something out, which he should have done perhaps in a more collegial way with the industry. In this situation I am sitting on, many, many, many emails have come in from all parts of the industry that are most incensed about how this is being handled, and it is very disappointing that it has really driven a wedge between many elements within this particular industry and that you have people fighting each other over this whole issue.

This Government seems to be getting into a habit of, if something is not quite working, changing the law or rewriting the law or changing the legislation. Today we heard from the Prime Minister, who said that because illegal spying has gone on for something like a decade, and because it had been caught out with conducting illegal observation of New Zealand citizens, let us just change the law, let us just rewrite the law, and let us suddenly make all that legal. This is the sort of thing that is going on too often. These things need to be picked up a lot earlier. These things should not just fester year after year, and then suddenly somebody says: “Oh, we made a mistake there. Let’s just rewrite history. Let’s rewrite the law, and let’s put all that right.” We had that in the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill a few weeks ago, where, again, rates had been struck in Tasman that had not been correctly done—again, let us rewrite history, let us rewrite legislation, to get it off the hook. Unfortunately, we cannot go through life all the time where you just rewrite history to try to let people off the hook. Sometimes people have to just stand up and say: “We made an error and we’ll take it on the chin.” In this case, the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board has made some grave errors in this, and, quite rightly, many of those involved with that should be taking full responsibility, not trying to put it on Parliament to sort the problem out.

We are also concerned that the Minister has tried to suddenly rush this bill through the House, and ram this through in desperation, but that seems to be a habit of that particular Minister, in terms of other bills such as the Building Amendment Bill (No 4) and other aspects of building and construction. A lot of it is all about sorting out problems of the past. We had the leaky homes situation, which, again, could be tied back to the same Minister from a decade or so ago, where legislation changed and the building code was changed to allow for kiln-dried timber and to allow for monolithic cladding to be applied directly to kiln-dried timber - framed houses. All these sorts of things seem to have the same stamp on them, and the stamp is one Minister Maurice Williamson. It seems to be that Minister Williamson spends more of his time sorting out errors and problems and retrospective mistakes, much of which he has had some involvement in, than actually doing things for a proactive improvement in the building industry. Much of it is very negative in terms of dumbing down the building industry and taking away from it.

It is somewhat ironic that under the Building Amendment Bill (No 4), which is going through the House, there are proposals to have a lot more self-regulation, to have a lot more checking by the tradesmen, to have a lot more of a hands-off approach—to have less council and local authority involvement—in the oversight of inspections, and all that sort of thing. So, on the one hand, this Minister is saying let us remove a lot of the legislation around controls and compliance by local authorities, and let the building industry have a lot more of its own say on these things, in what is very much a hands-off approach from this Minister. But then he turns around and comes to the House with this particular bill, where he suddenly wants to impose the legislation to tighten up the restrictions on plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers. It is almost as if he cannot decide quite what he wants as a Minister. Does he want hands off or does he want hands on? He seems to want to back two horses, in this respect, and he is in two minds as to which way he is going. In this respect there are elements of this industry that are very aggrieved by this. They feel that they have been hard-done-by, and, quite frankly, the ministry and others involved in building and construction, and the Minister himself, should have addressed this a long time ago, so that it was not the situation of many, many years ago—going back to 2006 or 2007—when these levies were incorrectly charged, or the board was incorrectly going after people whom it could not lawfully go after, for the levies. In this respect, New Zealand First has great difficulty with this. We think, again, that you could drive a bus through this bill, in terms of the message it is sending, in terms of this legislative Chamber and the way that Parliament works, and New Zealand First will not be supporting it.

Dr CAM CALDER (National): Despite the disagreement in the House, I do not think that anybody would disagree that the quality of plumbing and gasfitting impacts directly on all our health and safety. There was a very poignant contribution before from my colleague the Hon Maryan Street from across the House.

This bill, the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill, validates the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board’s disciplinary levy, so that it enables the board to discipline unregistered operators.

It is very interesting to hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Opposition benches about this process of validation. A cursory request to the Parliamentary Library revealed that when in Government between 1999 and 2008, on one of just a few of the times when the then Labour Government used the technique of validating unlawful use of parliamentary funding by political parties, Michael Cullen was quoted as saying, in 2006, that “Parliament regularly passed validating legislation”. Of course, one of my favourites was “Harry’s law”, which was passed to keep one of the Labour MPs in power. He was quite well-loved—Harry Duynhoven, who is now the Mayor of New Plymouth. He was in breach of—

Jami-Lee Ross: Labour, was it?

Dr CAM CALDER: —yes, this was Labour—citizenship laws as an MP because he held two passports. According to the law, he should have been immediately forced to resign from Parliament. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse, as the Minister of Justice would tell us. Neither should it have been for Harry. But, no, the Labour Government then decided instead to change the law, so that what he had done was no longer illegal.

You know, we have heard some riveting contributions thus far on this debate, including a bravura performance from the Minister for Building and Construction. I have been warned that I will get myself into hot water if I speak too long. It has been a varied debate so far. Some speakers have put forward what they thought was a watertight argument. However, I believe that some of the contributions have leaked around the edges of irrelevancy. I have been asked to keep this a short call today, so I shall, therefore, turn off the metaphorical and rhetorical tap.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): That was a sad performance from a member, Dr Cam Calder, who normally does a little better than that. Occasionally, one just hopes that when one gets to the second reading of a bill, we might find a National Party member who has read it and refers to it. Maybe I am hoping for too much when it comes to the mid-ranked and, in fact, some of the brighter MPs from the National Party, like the one who has just spoken.

To make it clear, the Labour Party is opposing the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill. I say this more in sadness than in anger. I did some work with Maurice Williamson in order to facilitate getting the bill into the House and to move it quickly through the select committee process. It is fair to say, at this point, that I regret the cooperation that occurred on that occasion. I was gullible—I think that is the right word—enough to take the Minister for Building and Construction at his word that this was a relatively minor matter and that it would get the unanimous support of Parliament. Clearly that was wrong, and, as the Government Administration Committee has sat and people have looked more carefully at the legislation, what we are seeing here is, in fact, a case of retrospective taxation without representation. It is a combination of two of the worst sins that a democracy and a Parliament can do, wrapped up in one tiny little validation bill.

I say to the Minister that it is pretty sad that he is trying to ram this through in the way that he is, in the dead of night—in the dead of night—as he is wont to do with his legislation. What we know, of course, with this Minister and a number of his colleagues is that it is a case of legislate in haste and repent over a long period of time. What we are—

Hon Maurice Williamson: Who cocked up the original bill?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The Minister says that he voted for a bill that was cocked up to start with. It may or may not be the case that there was an error in the earlier legislation. Certainly there was an error—well, I hope there was an error—in the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board’s understanding of the legislation. There is no doubt that the board has committed some acts; it has taken money off people in a way that it was not entitled to do. Authorities have looked at it. The Ombudsman has looked at it, the Auditor-General has looked at it, the Regulations Review Committee has looked at it, and all of them have found that the board acted in an ultra vires manner in the way that it collected this funding. The Regulations Review Committee as far back as 2011 concluded that the board appeared to have made an unusual or unexpected use of its levy power.

What is clear is that the bill makes actions that were previously unlawful lawful. It is just a question of whether we should be doing that. I mean, what would people say if this was a general taxation matter, and people had to pay hundreds of dollars each in additional taxation as a result of this sort of retrospective legislation? The Labour Party is not comfortable with the retrospective validation if this is done. In fact, the rule of law and the supremacy of Parliament is something that is very important. When a law is passed and boards are given authority—a levy-making authority, as is the case in this case with this Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board—then there is a requirement on the boards to act according to that law and to not go outside the vires that has been established for them. Retrospective legislation is something that should be used in very limited circumstances, and one should be very careful not to disadvantage individuals or groups of individuals when one is involved in retrospective legislation.

Normally with validation it is a validation of a right, not the validation of taking money away from individuals that, it has been established, should be repaid to the individuals. What is more, these people have spent a not unreasonable amount of money in establishing their rights. It is not cheap to build cases to the Auditor-General, to the Ombudsman, and to the Regulations Review Committee. They put in a lot of time and energy and got a lot of advice, and they won. What we have now is Maurice Williamson coming to this House and saying “Too bad that you won with the Ombudsman, too bad that you won with the Auditor-General, too bad that you won with the Regulations Review Committee. We are now going to change the rules of the game and confiscate the wins that have rightfully accrued to this group.”

It may well be that it is appropriate, going forward, for there to be a right to levy in order to ensure that cowboys are properly regulated. I think if that is what the bill did, we would be happy to support it, and to support it quickly through the House. If the Minister wants, at the Committee stage, to make an amendment to the bill in order to make it consistent in that way with proper process, then I am sure he will get Labour’s support and, unless the Green Party is going to sleep—I think I am getting a nod from Holly Walker, as well—we will get support from the other parties, and we will—

Hon Maurice Williamson: If you guys stump up with the money, I’ll do that.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The Minister says “What about the money?”. Well, I say to that Minister: is it the right of Parliament to confiscate money from individuals who are rightfully entitled to it, on a retrospective basis? Is it right to retrospectively tax individuals when they have won their case, effectively, with three different authorities? My view is that that is not an appropriate thing to do. The Labour Party has prepared Supplementary Order Paper 204. Whether the Supplementary Order Paper goes far enough, I am not sure; there has been a bit of debate about this within the Labour caucus. It is a Supplementary Order Paper that attempts to get a point of balance and to force an agreement between the warring parties in this area, and, in the absence of an agreement, to get the Chief Ombudsman to make a ruling that would be binding as far as the level of payment is concerned. We think that that is a proper approach, because the Labour Party’s view is that if one is to be taxed, it should be prospectively and not retrospectively, and that validating legislation should be used to benefit or to protect individuals, not to punish them.

PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I am struggling to know quite what to make of that previous comment and contribution to the House by Mr Mallard—

Hon Trevor Mallard: The Hon Mr Mallard.

PAUL GOLDSMITH: The Hon Mr Mallard. I am not aware that we are in the dead of the night at the moment, but we certainly were riding high on our high horse talking about the rule of law and lofty sentiments about the rule of law and the grave care that should be taken before any validation legislation is passed. It does not sort of fit naturally with the historical record, which my good friend and colleague referred to before, in relation to the use of validation legislation by the Labour Party only a few years ago to retrospectively validate unlawful use of parliamentary funds by political parties during the 2005 election. We recall that election, which the National Party should indeed have won, were it not for incorrect spending at the last moment. It was an amazing amount of spending, in the last few days of an election campaign, which was suddenly retrospectively fixed.

This legislation here is all about clearing up what was always the Government’s intention—that the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board’s prosecution function would be funded by the industry, because all its statutory functions are funded through fees and levies charged under the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act 2006. It is appropriate for the industry to pay for this activity because it is the industry that benefits from maintaining high standards and from preventing unqualified people from taking work from skilled tradesmen. We all want to know that our plumbing and our drains are done effectively and properly, and this industry does need to be policed. It had not operated effectively, and this legislation retrospectively sorts that out.

Passing retrospective legislation is not something that you do lightly, but there is a long and healthy tradition of doing this where it is required for the best interests. If members on the other side want to hear some more examples of previous cases of it, we could refer to the parliamentary committee under Labour that proposed the validating of the collection of fisheries levies, which were worth at least $240 million in 2002. Also, Labour rushed through in September 2001 validating legislation for recently invalidated unions. The list could go on and on.

What I think we have here tonight is a practical piece of legislation that is fixing a problem that has come up. We do not need to stand and wail and gnash our teeth as members are doing on the other side of the House as if this is the first time this has ever happened in Parliament. We only have to look back to see that from time to time this has been done in an appropriate way. So, on that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand the next call is a split call. Brendan Horan, 5 minutes.

BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): I am just absolutely amazed that that side would stand there and tell New Zealand that black is white and white is black when our plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers know what is right is right and what is wrong is wrong. They can certainly see bovine excrement and know what to do with it.

What the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill does is vindicate the actions of the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Federation, an incorporated society with over 1,000 members whose purpose is to ensure that the industry gets treated in a fair and equitable manner. It has been lobbying against the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board, a board that is simply not listening to them. It is not listening to the industry that it supposedly regulates. This bill is proof that the federation has been right and it shows that the board, its chief executive officer, its four legal staff, and the Minister for Building and Construction got the interpretation of the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act wrong and the actions taken by them were contrary to the guidelines issued by Treasury and the Office of the Auditor-General.

It is vital that the board use its statutory powers properly to gain the trust and respect of the industry, but currently this is not the case. The industry is full of suspicion and discontent. The competence of the board and the Minister who appointed its members is questioned by the industry. Given that the industry funds the board through fees, many plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers are becoming increasingly disaffected, which has led to the establishment of the federation, which is now the largest industry organisation in this sector. It was organised just less than 2 years ago. So it should question the competence and actions of the board, as the industry has faced a tenfold increase in discipline levies and offence fees in less than 6 years, and it is now at the level where the industry—and, ultimately, the consumer—pays around $1.8 million annually for these functions. That is over $36,000 per week for discipline and prosecutions.

We do not see other boards that are 100 percent funded by the industry that also pay 100 percent for the prosecution of non-registered people. Is this bill seeking a precedent for other industries? Are people in other regulated industries going to be levied in a similar manner? The cost of housing is very topical at the moment. What will these levies do to the price of housing if others in the construction sector are treated in the same manner as the plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers?

Members of this House will be aware that the legislation already provides the board with an inexpensive method of dealing with unregistered persons who may breach the Act, by instituting a range of infringement fees. But, to date, the board has failed to implement this option. Many in the industry challenge the fees they are required to pay and have asked the board for a breakdown of what constitutes the fees. This is the same board that is spending tens of thousands of dollars appealing its deregulation as a registered charity. That is right. It tried to set itself up as a registered charity and got kicked out, but with the Minister in its back pocket, it is above the law. It wants to charge the industry over $1,000 to search for fees information. This is information that should be readily available to all who ask.

This bill is a cover for incompetence. The board did not listen to the industry and ended up before the Regulations Review Committee, requiring the Government to bail it out. The Ombudsman in a recent report stated the board was wrong with regard to the offence fee and suggested it return over $600,000 to the industry. The board is again before the Regulations Review Committee regarding the fees, and this bill will again bail the board out of a position it should never have got itself into. You see, to quote a famous politician, Winston—and, of course, I am talking about Winston Churchill—this board and its relationship with the Minister seems to be odious in the highest degree. I cannot and will not support this bill.

STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I rise to speak on the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill. The Green Party has reflected on this bill. As the bill has progressed through submissions, we have seen that the retrospective aspect of this bill is not acceptable, and we will continue to oppose this bill. We are not going to vote for sorting out this illegal collection of funds to make a legal right, and that is something that some of the submitters have put to us through this period of time.

I heard a lot from the member Mr Goldsmith that when it is in the best interests it is the right thing to use retrospective legislation, but you would have to ask in whose best interests this is being done—a shonky board or the actual gasfitters, plumbers, and tradesmen who have paid through the nose significantly for a board that did not function very well at all? The communication we have had with tradespeople—and a number of people in the House here tonight have had some of that communication—convinces me that, besides this principal issue behind the bill, which is the retrospective aspect of the funding, we are talking about a dysfunctional board in the past. It was a board that was conflicted and ineffectual in part. Significant fees were amassed unnecessarily through unduly bureaucratic behaviour, and then it did not follow through with what it was responsible for. There was the talk of the cowboys, and the fish and chip shop / pizza place—

Hon Maryan Street: No, it wasn’t Pizza Hut; don’t say it again.

STEFFAN BROWNING: I know it is not a pizza place, and I am not going to talk about or give an ad for Pizza Hut, but I know that place too, because I also come from the top of the South Island and I was a customer at that place. As was mentioned earlier, there are people there who were hurt and who have been skittled professionally, and there are other ones who have walked through totally free because this board could not even do its job. And yet it has spent something like $200,000 of disciplinary fees on the investigation, with no result. I think it is a very, very important time to hit the refresh button for that organisation.

Talking of refresh buttons, we can talk about some other retrospective-type behaviour that we are getting from this Government. We can look at the Government Communications Security Bureau, for example, and what it has done. We can think back to some retrospective stuff in terms of Aziz Choudry, when the SIS in that instance went and busted illegally into his house. Then what did the Government have to do? The Government of the day had to turn round and pay him a settlement, and then it changed the law again. Why? To look after Aziz Choudry? The law change was made to carry on and to cover their butts for the illegal activities that they had done on many other people, and here we go again for some more—maybe retrospective? We will wait and see—when Mr Key covers up his shenanigans with the Government Communications Security Bureau. That is past history. It is not just him; it is others as well, but it is a long history. And what are we doing now? We are looking to do something by using that illegal behaviour and then turning round and ultimately penalising the community in another way.

Going back to plumbers and retrospective stuff, it is interesting—and a very important example was given to us—in terms of how different boards, professional boards, handle complaints. It was mentioned by one of the submitters to the Government Administration Committee about the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand, and it is a very, very sad indictment. We have already had the one with the fish and chip shop, but this one was the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand and was to do with the building in Christchurch that ultimately led to the death of 115 people. And what has happened there? That professional body was not even able to go through and carry out a decent disciplinary action for the people responsible there. The Green Party will be opposing this bill. Thank you.

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Government Administration Committee by majority be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be agreed to.

Ayes 61

New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Question agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 61

New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Building Amendment Bill (No 4)

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 14 March.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): This debate has been interrupted twice now. This is the third time we have had a go at the second reading of the Building Amendment Bill (No 4). This debate has actually been a bit like the Government’s stewardship of the building review process, which keeps stopping and starting, never really reaches a conclusion, and, frankly, does not add up to much.

I want to just reacquaint the listening audience with what this bill is about and make a few points about why Labour is not supporting this bill even though we have supported, in general, the Building Act review process, which has enjoyed quite wide support from the industry, and goodness knows that New Zealand consumers—homeowners and buyers—are desperate for a bit of consumer protection.

So although we support the general process, we feel that the last bill and certainly this one are piecemeal, uncoordinated, and really fall well short of what the industry expects in terms of this reform process. There are one or two good things in here, but many of the provisions fall well short of what is needed in terms of giving consumers redress.

HOLLY WALKER (Green): Like the Labour Party, the Green Party supported this Building Amendment Bill (No 4) at the first reading, but we find ourselves, unfortunately, unable to continue to support it at the second reading and beyond. And like our colleagues in the Labour Party, after listening to submitters and reflecting on the bill, and bearing in mind the disjointed way in which the Government has gone about implementing the Building Act review, we are concerned that the important consumer protections required in the building industry are not adequately provided by this bill.

It is vital that we get these consumer protections right, because this bill, along with other recent and forthcoming amendments to the Building Act and the Construction Contracts Act, puts in place the regulatory context for the building industry in the coming years. And never has the building and construction industry been more important to the country. We are facing, as we all know, a housing crisis in this country—a crisis of affordability, a crisis of supply, a crisis of housing quality. We have got a huge undersupply of affordable housing. We have got a market failure in the housing industry, which the Minister of Finance has acknowledged. In Auckland alone it is estimated that we need approximately 13,000 new homes to be constructed each year to meet the current demand for housing, and yet only around 3,000 each year are being built at the moment.

So to solve the housing crisis in Auckland and around the country will require a drastic increase in building activity. We must have building regulations that get it right for consumers if that is going to be done responsibly. Similarly in Christchurch, where the earthquake rebuild is under way, we need decent building regulations to guide the rebuild. We know that Canterbury homeowners are already vulnerable and stressed, and we saw a survey recently of Canterbury residents that really highlighted that. Those who are building new homes or reconstructing damaged homes need adequate consumer protections to ensure that their rights are protected and not further violated after 2 years of a brutal and frustrating process in Christchurch.

It was because this Building Amendment Bill (No 4) sought to put in place greater consumer protections that the Green Party supported it at the first reading. I will also note at this point that it does, of course, make changes to the regulatory regime for the construction of dams in New Zealand. Although these are interesting and important, especially for engineers, we feel that they are uncontroversial in relation to this bill.

From our perspective, the most important changes in the bill are those that introduce mandatory disclosure of certain information by building contractors, those that create new offences for breaches of these requirements, and those that add new powers for territorial authorities to deal with buildings at risk because they are near or adjacent to dangerous buildings. Similar provisions also increase the maximum penalty for doing building work without a building consent, and clarify the powers of the Chief Executive of the Department of Building and Housing, now, of course, absorbed into the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, to review the performance of territorial authorities, regional authorities, and building consent authorities.

However, what became apparent in the submissions on the bill, and especially those from the likes of the Home Owners and Buyers Association of New Zealand, the Auckland Council, the Wellington City Council, the Christchurch City Council, Local Government New Zealand, and even Hawkins Construction, was that although the bill pays lip-service to greater consumer protections it is in fact quite weak in this area, and it should not be supported.

The bill still lacks a significant consumer protection element. It relies far too heavily on industry bodies like the Registered Master Builders Federation of New Zealand to design their own protection mechanisms, which in reality are not and will not be enforced. If the Government was serious about genuine consumer protections in the building industry it would introduce a mandatory warranty scheme administered by an independent authority. That would give true confidence for consumers that their warranties and protection mechanisms were fair and being enforced. Apparently it was considered by the Department of Building and Housing, as it was at the time when the policy advice was developed on this bill, but it was rejected after pressure from the Registered Master Builders Federation of New Zealand and others. I think that is a real shame. Let us not forget why consumer protections are so important in the building industry, and remember that we need think only of the deregulation of the industry by subsequent Labour and National Governments in the 1980s and 1990s.

It was in this vacuum, in this period of deregulation, that the leaky homes crisis was allowed to occur. We have seen the terrible consequences for homeowners when poor regulation and poor building and construction standards conspired and allowed that to take place. After years of toing and froing we have now a process for dealing with the leaky homes disaster, but it is a limited process, it is time constrained, and there are many homes out there that are yet to even begin to demonstrate the signs of damage. So it is barely the tip of the iceberg. In that context and with those lessons in mind it is vitally important that we get it right for the future. We in the Green Party believe that this bill is a missed opportunity to do so.

Finally, I wish to emphasise that better warranties and better consumer protections, although they are important, are only the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff when things go bad for homeowners and builders. When a homeowner finds that something about their property is dangerous or that it is no longer habitable, they need mandatory warranties administered by an independent authority to back up their rights, and this bill fails to provide that. But we urgently need to think about how to regulate to ensure that buildings are constructed to a higher standard before things go wrong and before we need that ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

I think it is clear that building to the code alone is not enough. There are many who would argue that the code, in fact, needs to be stronger, more ambitious, and promote higher standards of energy efficiency, sustainability, accessibility, and intelligent design. We do ourselves a disservice with our existing building code.

There has been a review of the Building Act. As we know, that has resulted in this piece of legislation and others, but I think it was a missed opportunity to really address our building code, and whether it is in fact producing the kinds of buildings that we need for the 21st century in New Zealand. A decent review of the Building Act, I think, would take those issues into account.

We have not been convinced by the Government’s approach to the Building Act review. We are not convinced that this series of building amendment bills will result in any substantial improvement in the quality of New Zealand’s housing stock, will facilitate the construction of more affordable housing to meet the demand especially in Auckland and Christchurch, or will adequately improve consumer protections. For these reasons we can no longer support this bill.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I do wonder whether that Green member, Holly Walker, is reading the same Building Amendment Bill (No 4) as I have been reading and studying throughout the select committee process, because far from, as the member contends, lessening the protections, I think this bill goes a good way towards implementing the Building Act review.

I am going to go through what this bill does do. What it does do is quite considerable, in my view. It reduces compliance costs, reduces complexity and delays by reducing reliance on building consent authorities, and makes building contractors much more accountable than before by requiring disclosure of information. The information that is going to be required to be disclosed includes the legal status of the contractor. That might be whether the contractor is operating under a limited liability company. We are all very aware of a number of building companies that have simply closed the books, closed the company, walked away, and re-formed in another incarnation, leaving behind them a litter trail of poor homeowners with many problems to fix but nowhere to go.

We are requiring information about the people who will carry out the building work. We want to know about their track record, their dispute history, their skills, and their qualifications. We want to know what, if any, financial backup or insurance they have to cover the cost of fixing faults. If that is not providing more protection to homeowners, please tell me what is. The bill protects consumers by requiring written consents for most residential building work—information that, in a contract for building, could include the parties; the dispute resolution process, should things go wrong; the process for varying the consent, should that be required or desired by either party; a time frame for performing the contract; and the payment process.

The Labour-Greens have a view on this and what is actually contained in the bill. As I sat through those very same submissions to the Local Government and Environment Committee, I do not recall seeing that member Holly Walker, but that is by the by—or the Labour member Phil Twyford, for that matter. When I sat through the submissions on this bill, I recall a pretty robust debate, as always, but a certain acceptance that the protections built into this Building Amendment Bill (No 4) were, in fact, making a vast improvement. It protects consumers by requiring written contracts for most residential building work, and if the parties do not have a written contract, or their contract does not contain a required clause, then regulations will prescribe default clauses that will be taken as being included. So even if they are not put in the contract, there will be, by regulation, default clauses providing additional protections.

The bill will have specific methods for enforcing warranties. That is really designed to give consumers the peace of mind that they will have recourse for shoddy building work, which is what this bill is all about, and seeks to protect homeowners. Building contractors will be expected to fix any defects in their work that are reported within 12 months of completion. Once again, that is added protection for homeowners. And, finally, it increases the maximum penalty for failing to comply with building consent requirements. That goes from $100,000 to $200,000. Please tell me, Labour-Greens, if that does not add protections into the building industry that specifically protect the homeowners and buildings. With those few words, I commend the bill to the House.

ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on the Building Amendment Bill (No 4). New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill. We have grave concerns about aspects of it, in keeping with the long-held history of the National Government—not only in this term of Government, but back in the 1990s—of creating the leaky building syndrome. We are, as a nation, still suffering from the change in legislation that the National Government brought about in the 1990s, which now sees this country in for $20 billion - plus of leaky building repairs, because of changes to the building code back then. Here we are now seeing the 2013 version of the same, which could well result in the same.

When you look at the Building Amendment Bill (No 4) and you see what is exempted in terms of building work, and what will not require any consent in the future, it is a little bit daunting in terms of what could be the situation if you jump ahead another 10, 15, 20 years and imagine the next group of MPs sitting in this House, when we are all well gone—well, maybe not all of us, but most of us will be well gone—looking back and saying: “How did they in 2013 allow that to happen? Why did they not learn from the mid-1990s, when they created the leaky building syndrome situation?”.

When you look at the exempted work, it includes as exempted “Single-storey detached buildings not exceeding 10 square metres in floor area”. They do not need a consent. Well, in many parts of Auckland at the present time, where there is great pressure on housing and people are living in garages, caravans, and all sorts of things, a 10-square-metre building can actually be an outhouse and can actually be dwelt in. It can be used as something that can be attached to a home, out on the back lawn, but in this legislation it can actually be put up with no consent whatsoever. So any sort of jerry-builder could actually put up any sort of dwelling on the back of any property in the Auckland area under this legislation, and there would be no control on it. That is what will happen. Under the current district plans that are in existence under the legacy councils, this sort of thing was not permitted to occur. I certainly know from the North Shore perspective that we did not want people putting up rabbit hutches on the backs of their properties and people living in all sorts of dwellings on the backs of properties in order to get around the building code. That is one of the things that will happen with this. Certainly in a place like Auckland, that is what will happen.

Also exempted are things like pergolas. A pergola is a structure, and if it is not built correctly, it can be very dangerous. They can fall down. Under this bill, building work in connection with a pergola is exempt. So, basically, again, any jerry-builder could put up a pergola. With a group underneath that pergola or with things hanging from it, or with things on top of it, if it were to collapse, people could be injured. But under this legislation, it is exempt.

Repairs or replacement of outbuildings is exempt. Again, basically, a lot of people will be able to get around the law because they will be able to say that it was just an outbuilding and that they were just repairing or replacing it, so they did not get a consent, and they will, effectively, rebuild the jolly thing without any consent. In places like Birkenhead, Devonport, or many heritage areas in the Auckland area, this is the sort of thing that goes on in terms of getting rid of heritage buildings. They basically leave one old window frame there and then rebuild the whole rest of it into some other sort of structure, and get around the heritage issues in respect of that. Basically, old parts of the city get slowly destroyed because people who are not sympathetic to heritage use loopholes in the law, such as this, saying that they are just repairing or replacing an outbuilding, can actually get rid of an outbuilding that could well have heritage value.

Also exempt are interior alterations to existing non-residential buildings. Alterations within a commercial building or non-residential building can be done, and, again, that can have extensive implications in terms of safety and in terms of the integrity of the building if it is being done as just repairs and changes with internal walls. In that respect, it also says here that internal walls and doorways in an existing building are exempt. If you do start playing around too much with internal walls and doorways in an existing building, it can have a big impact on that building. Again, less reputable builders, perhaps, less reputable developers, or people doing modifications to existing homes or renovations of existing dwellings could easily say: “Well, sorry. We didn’t need it, because we were just doing internal walls, internal doorways, internal renovations—all those sorts of things.” They could, in fact, be putting the building structure at risk.

It also says here that closing in of an existing veranda or patio will be exempt. Well, again, under the current situation and in terms of the coverage of a home on a property and the footprint that that home takes up, often patios and verandas can be quite sizable. Again, under this legislation people will be able to start filling in existing verandas and patios. That starts to become a thing where a house can incrementally change—you know, there is a patio there, there is a bit of a veranda there, or whatever. Just start easing out the houses. In a place like Auckland, suddenly more and more bedrooms are being conveniently tagged on to properties without a lot of legislative oversight.

We are seeing some real loopholes being put into the law here—for instance, carports. Carports will be exempt. Again, a carport usually has a decent-sized roof, and it is usually of reasonable substance. Are we going to have another situation like with Cave Creek, where we have to have a carport falling down on somebody because it has been improperly constructed for somebody to ask: “How did they ever exempt carports from being in the legislation? Why did they not require that these be checked by the appropriate authority to make sure that they were built right?”

Many other structures are also the same through here. We really do feel that the National Government should have learnt from its mistakes with the leaky homes. If you start deregulating and taking all the controls off and if you start watering it down to such an extent, and if you combine that with tradesmen of questionable ability, and where they may have learnt their building trade is questionable, you could end up in a situation where Auckland—and I particularly apply this to the likes of Auckland—in 10, 15, or 20 years could have some very, very shoddy building works going on under this legislation, and we could all say: “How on earth did that legislation go through under the National Government of 2013?”. New Zealand First will not support that.

PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I rise to take a short call on this bill, the Building Amendment Bill (No 4). It is interesting to follow New Zealand First. Mr Williams is an old-style regulator, who is terribly worried about the prospect of freedom stalking the land and about people like me—jerry-builders—going out and knocking up things on my property.

Hon Simon Bridges: Who’ve you been knocking up?

PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, funnily enough, at Christmas I erected a trampoline. It was quite a large trampoline and it could fall over. I might have done it wrong, and I am sure that if Mr Williams had half a chance he would have the council inspecting that, at great expense, no doubt. The horror of horrors of people building outhouses and things like that and doing what they like on their property should never, never happen, according to Mr Williams. So I do think we need to strike a more practical line of approach.

The building sector accounts for around about 5 percent of GDP in this country, which is about the same size as the agricultural sector, and it employs 171,000 people—and 100 extra, I am informed. About one in 12 is in the building sector so it is an important part of the economy, and we need to make it as efficient and effective as possible, given particularly the great burdens and requirement for housing in this country, in Auckland particularly, and in Christchurch.

This bill is part of a suite of legislation that flows out of the Building Act review. We have dealt with the Building Amendment Bill (No 3) formerly, and this bill tidies up those matters that we have heard about around making contractors more accountable through the disclosure of information.

My colleague Jackie Blue talked about the concern that a lot of people have around people wrapping themselves up as a company and disappearing the next year, after they have built a particular house, and not being around. So this legislation is about making it clear that people know the history of their builder in terms of their contractual arrangements before they go into any contract.

Quickly running through it, the Local Government and Environment Committee heard a lot of submissions and has recommended quite a number of changes to the legislation around all sorts of things, from the measurement of dams and canals, the meaning of affected buildings, the classification of dams, to the classification of canals.

We listened a lot to the submitters over the course of the weeks that we listened on the select committee, and I have no doubt that as a result of that this legislation is better and is not going to have—there is always the risk of unintended consequences on this kind of complex legislation. I think that over the course of the select committee’s work we did iron out a few kinks. We have got this legislation into a good shape, and on that basis I commend it to the House.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to speak to this second reading of the Building Amendment Bill (No 4), and I want to go back to some of the history and the overview of where this bill came from. In 2009 the Government agreed to terms of reference for a review of the Building Act 2004 in order to reduce the costs of building but not the quality of the building control system. That review found that the building regulatory system was not broken but that it was very costly and it was inefficient. The review noted—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.