Thursday, 16 May 2013

Thursday, 16 May 2013

Thursday, 16 May 2013

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Bills

Appropriation (2012/13 Supplementary Estimates) Bill

Procedure

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): I hereby present the Supplementary Estimates of Appropriations for the Government of New Zealand and supporting information for the year ending 30 June 2013 (B.7).

Mr SPEAKER: That paper is published under the authority of the House.

Bills

Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill

Procedure

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): I hereby present the 2013 Budget Minister’s Executive Summary, the speech, the Fiscal Strategy Report (B.2), the Economic and Fiscal Update (B.3), the Estimates of Appropriations for the Government of New Zealand for the year ending 30 June 2014 (B.5), the information supporting the Estimates of Appropriations for the Government of New Zealand for the year ending 30 June 2014 (B.5A Volumes 1-10), and the departmental statements of intent.

Mr SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House.

First Reading

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill be now read a first time.

Bill read a first time.

Budget Statement

Budget Debate

Budget Debate

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill be now read a second time.

It’s my privilege to deliver the National-led Government’s fifth Budget.

When I stood up to deliver the Government’s first Budget, in 2009, New Zealand faced challenges I think we’re only able to fully appreciate with the passing of time.

The world had entered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, from which it has yet to fully emerge.

The New Zealand economy had been in recession for more than a year and some economists were predicting the unemployment rate would go higher than 10 per cent.

The previous government had increased its spending by 50 per cent over the previous five years and that was simply unaffordable.

The Treasury told us that if we kept the policy settings we inherited, we’d never see another budget surplus again and government debt would increase to levels we’re currently seeing in Europe.

That wasn’t the end of it. Few at that time anticipated how difficult the global recovery would be. And no-one anticipated the Canterbury earthquakes which, apart from the terrible loss of life, have been one of the most expensive natural disasters in history.

So, starting in Budget 2009, we set out our plan to get New Zealand out of a deep hole.

We were prepared to run deficits for a few years, to support the fragile economy, preserve jobs and protect the most vulnerable New Zealanders, including families with children, from the worst of the recession. That meant increasing government debt.

But at the same time, we set out a credible path back to surplus and a plan to start paying back this debt.

That plan involved reining in expenses and getting on top of the longer-term drivers of government spending.

We also set out a comprehensive programme to build a more productive and competitive economy that supports higher incomes and more jobs.

This has included our tax package in 2010, our on-going resource management reforms, the introduction of 90-day trials, investment in infrastructure, building on our international trade deals, and a significant investment in skills, training and apprenticeships.

We have been driving for better results from public services. And, since the earthquakes, we have been working hard to support Cantabrians through the aftermath of their disaster and through the rebuilding of their city.

Mr Speaker,

The Government’s plan has not involved radical change. We’ve done what we said we would do, and we’ve taken people with us.

And that plan – using sound and proven economic policies – is working, as international bodies like the IMF have recognised.

New Zealanders can look to the future with well-earned confidence and optimism.

The New Zealand economy grew 3 per cent last year, which is almost the same as Australia, and higher than almost every other developed country.

Wages are growing, cost of living increases have been modest and interest rates are at 50-year lows.

There are 50,000 more jobs in the economy than two years ago, although unemployment does remain too high and attracting new investment that creates jobs is a particular focus for the Government.

The fiscal outlook has improved markedly as a result of the Government’s sound management and we are on track to post a surplus in 2014/15.

These are real achievements that are benefitting New Zealanders and their families.

Budget 2013 is about building momentum in this programme.

But there is a risk that all the gains we are now making could be lost in the future, by going back to policies that have failed in the past.

We know what these are – high and wasteful government spending, more costs and more taxes on households and businesses, and more state control of the economy that chills private sector investment and destroys jobs and growth.

New Zealanders were conditioned in the 2000s to believe that Budgets should be about the novelty of new, expensive spending programmes that held out promises of economic and social transformation, arranged by the Government.

Those promises were illusory. There was no sustainable revenue stream to pay for the increased spending, and there was nothing genuinely transformational to show for it.

In contrast, this Government believes that Budgets are about careful stewardship of public money, and investing wisely in programmes to improve people’s lives and help grow the economy.

In the end, it is the effective use of public money, not the amount of it, that makes a positive difference to the lives of New Zealanders and their families.

Mr Speaker,

The Government has four priorities this term:

responsibly managing its finances;

building a more productive and competitive economy;

delivering better public services; and

supporting the rebuilding of Christchurch.

Across our programme, we are working constructively with the ACT, United Future and Māori parties, and I want to acknowledge their support and assistance.

I intend to talk about each of the Government’s four priorities in turn. But first I want to summarise the economic outlook for the next few years.

The Budget forecasts show annual growth of between 2 and 3 per cent over the next four years.

These forecasts include the impact of the recent drought, which is expected to reduce economic activity by 0.7 percentage points in 2013.

Low interest rates, increased activity resulting from the Canterbury rebuild, and strong commodity export prices will all contribute to growth. And across the Asia Pacific region, growing numbers of consumers will be demanding the goods and services New Zealand produces.

The New Zealand economy is expected to grow more strongly over the next two years than many other developed economies, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the Euro area.

Budget forecasts also show an improved outlook for jobs and for wage growth. As a result, household disposable income is forecast to rise by almost 20 per cent over the next four years.

The current account deficit is forecast to rise gradually to over 6 per cent of GDP in the next few years, driven by stronger investment by businesses and households, including investment in the Canterbury rebuild. If investment in the rebuild is excluded, the current account deficit remains below 5 per cent of GDP.

New Zealand’s net offshore liabilities will worsen slightly as insurance pay-outs for Canterbury continue. However, national saving is expected to rise, led by the Government getting its finances in order. Household saving rates are expected to retain the gains made over recent years, following the large dissaving over much of the 2000s.

In summary, New Zealand is well placed.

However, a number of risks and challenges remain. The recent drought, for example, may have a more persistent effect than expected, and rapid house price growth, if sustained, may place more pressure on the domestic economy.

Internationally, risks for the global economy appear to have receded over recent months, although global conditions continue to place upward pressure on the New Zealand dollar.

Budget decisions have been made with this economic context in mind.

Mr Speaker,

I want to talk now about the first of the Government’s four priorities, which is to responsibly manage the Government’s finances.

The Budget shows that the Government is on track to meet its two key fiscal targets.

We are on track to get back to surplus by 2014/15.

And we are on track to reduce government debt to 20 per cent of GDP by 2020.

Budget forecasts show an operating surplus before gains and losses of $75 million in 2014/15.

We are achieving this while still spending $5.1 billion on new initiatives in the current year and over the next four years in Budget 2013 – funded, in part, by reprioritising existing spending.

A surplus is forecast because tax revenue is picking up and the Government is continuing to restrict growth in expenses. Core Crown expenses are forecast to drop below 31 per cent of GDP in 2014/15 – down from 35 per cent of GDP just two years ago – and then remain well under that level.

The Government’s return to operating surplus is not dependent on the Mighty River Power share sale. The share offer programme effectively swaps one type of asset for another – electricity company shares for cash – so its primary effect is on the mix of assets and debt that the Government owns, rather than on the operating balance.

Budget forecasts also show net core Crown debt peaking at 28.7 per cent of GDP in 2014/15 and declining thereafter. Longer-term projections show net debt dropping to 17.6 per cent of GDP by 2020/21, in line with the Government’s target.

This is a remarkable turnaround in the books. Projections in Budget 2009, for example, showed that if the Government had maintained the spending track it inherited, and hadn’t made policy changes, net debt would exceed 60 per cent of GDP by the early 2020s.

But I would remind everyone that forecasts and projections are, by definition, about the future. While the fiscal outlook has improved markedly over the last few years, a lot of work is needed to make the forecasts a reality, particularly when it comes to reducing debt.

Taking on more debt has been appropriate to support the economy and cushion New Zealanders and their families from a number of major shocks including the recession, the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes. And, as a percentage of New Zealand’s GDP, our level of debt is still well below most of the countries we typically compare ourselves with.

But, in dollar terms, net government debt is still rising by around $130 million a week and is expected to reach $70 billion in 2016/17, which is the equivalent of around $15,000 for each and every New Zealander.

As households around the country know, carrying substantial debt is neither comfortable nor financially prudent. Annual interest payments on our debt will this year cost about as much as total spending on the Police, early childhood education and the Unemployment Benefit combined.

A sizeable debt also risks keeping interest rates and the exchange rate higher than they would otherwise be, and in turn crowding out the internationally-competitive sectors of the economy.

So the Government is firmly focused on capping, then reducing, its debt.

And, alongside debt reduction, future surpluses will also give us more choices. These choices will include, for example, investing in public services, reducing costs on businesses, and helping families get ahead.

Mr Speaker,

Three key changes have been made to the Government’s fiscal parameters.

First, the operating allowances for new spending have been slightly adjusted.

The operating allowance is $900 million in Budget 2013, compared with the $800 million signalled in the most recent Budget Policy Statement, and will be $1 billion in Budget 2014, compared with $1.2 billion in the BPS. From 2015 onwards, operating allowances will grow by 2 per cent per Budget.

This change to future allowances will mean bigger surpluses and a greater ability to pay down debt.

In addition, new capital spending in this and the next three Budgets will continue to be funded from the Crown’s balance sheet, including from the proceeds of the Government’s share offer programme.

Second, the Government intends to delay contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund until the long-term debt target is reached – that is, until net debt is no higher than 20 per cent of GDP.

This means Super Fund contributions are now expected to resume in 2020/21. This is two years later than was projected in the most recent Half Year Update, but is the same time as was expected when contributions were initially suspended in Budget 2009.

I want to stress that this change in no way affects New Zealanders’ entitlement to New Zealand Superannuation, either now or in the future.

The choice for the Government is whether to use future cash surpluses to reduce debt to more prudent levels, or whether to put money into world sharemarkets while holding higher debt. The first option is clearly more responsible.

Third, and finally, the Government is now satisfied there is scope for significant reductions in ACC levies.

I will outline these proposed changes in a moment. The impact on the Government’s books, however, is to reduce total Crown revenue, and therefore the total Crown operating balance. This has already been built into the Budget forecasts.

Mr Speaker,

I now want to turn to the second of the Government’s priorities, which is to build a more productive and competitive economy that supports higher incomes and more jobs.

The Government’s plan for building a more productive economy is set out in the Business Growth Agenda.

This focuses on six key elements that businesses need to grow: access to export markets, innovation, infrastructure, skilled and safe workplaces, natural resources, and capital markets.

Each of these areas involves government investment and regulation, and with regard to the second of these I acknowledge, in particular, the contribution of Regulatory Reform Minister, and ACT Party leader, John Banks.

The Budget adds a number of new initiatives to the Government’s existing agenda.

In particular, the Budget contains a $100 million-a-year internationally-focused growth package.

This growth package acknowledges New Zealand’s need to pay its way in the world through increased trade and investment, which in turn creates jobs and opportunities for New Zealanders.

The largest part of the package is a $200 million boost in funding, over four years, for science, innovation and research.

This extra funding will be invested in expanding current business R&D grants, as well as establishing a new repayable grant for start-up businesses to assist them to become investment-ready. There is also new funding for the National Science Challenges and the Marsden Fund.

The internationally-focused growth package also provides a significant boost for tourism, as the Prime Minister recently announced.

The Government will invest $158 million over four years to attract more visitors to New Zealand, particularly high-spending visitors. This includes funding to attract high-end visitors from emerging markets and funding to attract international business events to New Zealand.

The growth package also includes additional funding of $40 million over four years to market and promote New Zealand’s international education sector, which already contributes more than $2 billion to our economy each year.

Mr Speaker,

When the Government took office in 2008, we were confronted with significant financial problems at ACC and we took action to rebuild its long-term sustainability.

The Government is now satisfied there is scope for significant and sustainable reductions in ACC levies.

We have therefore made an allowance for levy reductions of around $300 million in 2014/15. Final figures will be determined after ACC consults on levies later this year.

ACC’s improved performance, and an on-going review of its funding policy, mean the Government has also allowed for levy reductions to increase to around $1 billion in 2015/16.

When combined with the $630 million reduction in levies in 2012/13, these proposed changes amount to around 40 per cent lower ACC levy rates for households and businesses.

Mr Speaker,

The Budget also confirms a number of revenue measures, and I want to thank Revenue Minister, and United Future leader, Peter Dunne for his work in this area.

These measures include proposals to let loss-making start-up businesses claim tax losses on R&D expenditure, together with proposals allowing tax deductibility for certain types of ‘black hole’ expenditure.

Changes to thin capitalisation rules will help to ensure that multinational companies investing in New Zealand contribute their fair share of tax.

And Inland Revenue will receive additional funding of $7 million a year so it can better pursue tax compliance in the area of property investments. This is expected to return about $45 million a year in additional tax revenue.

Mr Speaker,

Proceeds from the Government’s share offer programme – including from the Mighty River Power float last week – are being placed in the Future Investment Fund, and will be used to pay for new public assets.

The Budget confirms another $1.5 billion of investment from the Fund.

$426 million will be invested in redeveloping Christchurch and Burwood Hospitals which, as previously announced, will be the biggest building project in the history of New Zealand’s public health system.

Contingencies totalling over $700 million have been set aside for key projects that include new, modern schools, Christchurch’s justice and emergency services precinct, and Canterbury tertiary education institutes.

The rest of the $1.5 billion investment includes $50 million for school network upgrades, $94 million for the fourth year of KiwiRail’s turnaround plan, and $80 million for irrigation infrastructure.

Overall, across multiple Budgets, the Government intends to spend a total of $1 billion from the Future Investment Fund on 21st Century schools and classrooms, and $1 billion on priority health investments.

Mr Speaker,

Investing in hospitals, schools and other public assets depends on money coming into the Future Investment Fund through further share offers.

Today I can announce that Meridian Energy will be the next company to be prepared for a partial share offer in the second half of 2013.

As with Mighty River Power, New Zealanders will be at the front of the queue for shares in Meridian and we will be targeting widespread New Zealand ownership.

The Government’s share offer programme remains important for the Government’s books and for the economy.

As well as raising money to invest in new public assets, it benefits the companies themselves through greater market discipline. In addition, the share offer programme gives New Zealand savers the opportunity to invest in large, New Zealand businesses.

Mr Speaker,

Housing can be made more affordable in New Zealand by focusing on the key areas that actually make a difference: land supply, consent processes, provision of infrastructure, and productivity in the construction sector.

The Government is working with councils on these issues, because the decisions they make about housing affect the entire economy. High housing costs affect financial stability and create an increased demand for housing assistance.

Today we are introducing legislation to speed up the provision of new housing in areas where the pressure is greatest and housing is least affordable.

Special housing areas will be designated under accords between the Government and councils. Council approvals for new housing in those areas can then be managed under a streamlined process.

Where agreement cannot be reached, or targets are not met, the Government will be able to issue the consents itself.

This legislation, which will apply for three years, is an immediate response to housing pressures in areas facing severe affordability problems.

It gives time for the Government’s resource management changes to bear fruit, and address land and housing supply issues in the longer term.

Mr Speaker,

Alongside the Budget, the Government is confirming measures to help ensure New Zealand’s financial stability.

Earlier this week, the Reserve Bank Governor and I signed a memorandum of understanding that gives the Reserve Bank the ability to require banks to:

hold additional capital on their balance sheet as a buffer during an economy-wide credit boom;

hold additional capital against loans in specific sectors if risks emerge in those sectors;

use more stable sources of funding to avoid short-term funding shortages; and

restrict high loan-to-value ratio lending in the housing sector.

These measures will be available – if required – to help protect the economy and the financial system from boom and bust cycles.

Mr Speaker,

The Government’s third priority for this term is delivering better public services within tight fiscal constraints.

Spending restraint is not a handbrake on providing better public services. In fact, big increases in spending have often been a measure of failure, rather than a measure of success.

Our approach has been to spend well, not always to spend more.

The Government’s spending increases have been modest and focused on programmes that will achieve results and improve the lives of New Zealanders and their families.

Last year, the Prime Minister set 10 challenging results for the public sector to achieve over the next few years, in areas such as reducing long-term welfare dependency, supporting vulnerable children, boosting skills and employment and reducing crime.

These results span the public sector and the Budget contributes to meeting all of them.

Mr Speaker,

I want to start with the Government’s support for vulnerable children and families. This is already very substantial, with billions of dollars spent on income support, as well as targeted support for families with complex needs.

The Ministerial Committee on Poverty was established under the confidence and supply agreement between the National and Māori parties, and I want to acknowledge my fellow Minister and Māori Party co-leader, Tariana Turia, for her support.

The Budget confirms several important initiatives in this area.

Funding of $100 million over three years has been provided for the Healthy Homes insulation programme, targeting low-income households with children or high health needs. The extended programme is expected to insulate around 46,000 additional houses.

More than $21 million has been provided over the next four years for rheumatic fever prevention.

Another $1.5 million has been provided next year for budgeting services for low-income families, on top of the $8.9 million that is already provided.

The Government is also exploring a warrant of fitness programme for social housing, and will investigate and pilot a low and no interest loan scheme for low-income borrowers.

Some of these initiatives were included in the Children’s Commissioner’s child poverty report, which the Government will be responding to in the next few weeks.

Mr Speaker,

It is widely acknowledged that paid employment is the best way to lift vulnerable families out of poverty.

That’s why the Government is focused on helping those families by creating conditions where businesses are prepared to invest and to take on new staff. And it’s why the Government’s welfare policies have an unrelenting focus on supporting people into work.

The Budget provides $189 million over four years for the next stage of welfare reform.

This includes funding for more intensive case management for people who are able to work, and means that Work and Income staff will be actively working with over 40 per cent of beneficiaries.

Mr Speaker,

Despite the Government’s $15 billion investment in housing, some people cannot get social housing assistance when they need it. The provision of social housing is also dominated by Housing New Zealand, with relatively few other providers.

The Government is therefore announcing three major changes.

First, we will begin developing pathways for New Zealanders in social housing to regain independence and self-sufficiency in housing as their individual circumstances permit and as alternatives allow.

Reviewable tenancies, which already apply to some Housing New Zealand tenants, will then be progressively extended to all social housing tenants.

This will mean people can be in social housing when they have high needs, and for as long as those needs persist. But they will be given support to move into alternative housing when their situation improves and they are in a position to take that step to independence.

This will free up houses for other people and families with high needs, who would otherwise be shut out of social housing.

The Budget contains funding of $47 million to support this policy, starting in 2015/16.

Second, the Government is increasing its spending on income-related rent subsidies by $27 million over four years and will make this available as a capped pool to community housing providers.

Opening income-related rents up to community housing providers puts them on an equal footing with Housing New Zealand and opens the door for much greater participation in the social housing sector.

Finally, housing needs assessments will be shifted from Housing New Zealand to the Ministry of Social Development. This means needs assessments will be independent of any housing provider, and people seeking different types of government assistance can get it from one organisation.

Mr Speaker,

The Government has made frontline health services a priority, and this is benefitting many more New Zealanders and their families.

Elective surgery procedures, for example, have increased significantly, emergency room waiting times have dropped, more MRI and CT scans have been performed and more children have been immunised.

The Budget continues the Government’s focus on better healthcare and prevention.

It includes $1.6 billion over the next four years for new initiatives and to meet cost pressures and population growth.

$1 billion of that funding, over four years, will go to district health boards to cover demographic growth and cost pressures. $70 million has been set aside for aged care and dementia services, $48 million for more elective operations, $36 million for heart disease and diabetes care, and $25 million for preventative screening services.

The Government is also providing $92 million over four years to pay family members who care for their disabled adult children.

The additional funding in the Budget takes the total health budget next year to $14.7 billion.

Mr Speaker,

The Government is helping more New Zealanders get the skills they need to build successful careers and fulfil their potential.

We are lifting student achievement at all levels of the education system, making more information available to parents and lifting the quality of teaching and professional leadership in schools.

We have set ambitious targets for student achievement. In particular, we want to have 98 per cent of school entrants having participated in early childhood education, and 85 per cent of 18-year-olds achieving NCEA Level 2 or equivalent qualification.

The Government’s total investment in education will next year increase to over $9.7 billion.

Over the next four years, the Budget provides new operating funding of $173 million for early childhood education and $215 million for schools, including nearly $80 million for operations grants. It also provides $134 million in capital for new school property.

Our particular focus is on supporting children who have too often missed out on educational opportunities. The Budget therefore provides $41 million to support vulnerable children to participate in early childhood education and $6 million for a new mentoring programme to help vulnerable students achieve NCEA Level 2.

Mr Speaker,

The Budget also includes over $130 million of new investment, and reprioritised funding, in tertiary education over the next four years.

Extra funding is provided for Māori and Pasifika trades training, to boost science and engineering courses, and to increase the proportion of young people with higher-level qualifications.

The Budget also confirms funding to support the new and expanded apprenticeship system the Prime Minister announced earlier this year.

The reprioritisation of tertiary funding includes initiatives to increase repayments of student loans from overseas-based borrowers and reduce defaulting.

The Government is also reining in big rises in student allowance costs by focusing on younger learners and on people studying for their first degrees. People aged 40 and over will be restricted to 120 weeks of student allowances, while people aged 65 and over will no longer be eligible for an allowance.

Students of all ages will continue to have access to the interest-free student loan scheme.

The Budget also invests in expanding the Māori cadetship programme, which will increase the number of cadets from 250 to 350 each year. I want to acknowledge Māori Affairs Minister, and Māori Party co-leader, Pita Sharples for his leadership and support in this area.

Mr Speaker,

Over the last four-and-a-half years, the Government has had a comprehensive programme of reform to protect communities, prevent crime and put victims first.

This is delivering results.

Reported crime has fallen by almost 17 per cent over the past three years.

And our justice agencies are focused on areas that will get the best results in the future.

The Department of Corrections, for example, is investing $10 million over two years to reduce offending by prisoners after they are released.

And, as previously announced, the Police are investing more than $160 million over a number of years to give frontline officers access to new technology such as smartphones and tablets, which means they can deal with issues on the street without having to return to the station to do paperwork.

Mr Speaker,

The Government’s fourth priority is to support the rebuilding of Christchurch.

Since the first earthquake, almost three years ago, the Government has made it clear that it will stand beside the people of Canterbury as they rebuild their lives and their communities.

I want to pay tribute to my colleague, Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee, and the many public servants, community organisations and families who continue to work so hard to help each other through the many challenges that remain in their community.

Considerable progress is being made. The SCIRT Infrastructure alliance has completed $700 million worth of work, with another $400 million under construction. The demolition of nearly 1,000 buildings in the Christchurch CBD has almost finished and the cordon will be removed at the end of June. And, by the end of this month, the Earthquake Commission will have completed 38,000 repairs and paid out more than $5.3 billion in claims.

The Treasury has recently increased its estimate of total rebuilding costs from $30 billion to $40 billion – the equivalent of almost 20 per cent of New Zealand’s annual GDP.

The Government’s share of that total cost will be significant.

On current estimates, around $7.6 billion will be incurred by the Earthquake Commission and other Crown entities.

Direct government support amounts to another $7.6 billion, making a total Crown contribution of around $15.2 billion.

Of the Government’s direct support, $5.5 billion has already been allocated through the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Fund, which was established two years ago and is now fully committed.

This Budget confirms an additional $2.1 billion of operating and capital spending to further support the rebuilding of our second-biggest city.

Over $900 million of this funding comes from the Future Investment Fund, for projects including redeveloping Christchurch hospitals, establishing a justice and emergency services precinct and supporting tertiary education institutes.

The Government is also investing $300 million in anchor projects for the Christchurch city centre. And almost $650 million of additional capital funding from departmental balance sheets will be used for health and education projects in Canterbury.

Mr Speaker,

New Zealand is on the right track.

The Government’s books are the envy of most developed countries.

The economy is growing and families are benefitting from that.

The country is seeing the benefit of improved public services that are focused on getting results.

Things haven’t always been easy. But as a nation, we have coped with adversity and we’re now making real progress.

We are seeing the benefits of the Government’s programme of sensible, responsible change.

There are a lot of opportunities ahead of us as a country.

Providing we stick to the plan the Government has set out, I’m confident we will grasp those opportunities and keep building the brighter future New Zealanders deserve.

Mr Speaker,

I commend this Budget to the House.

DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition): This is a blackjack Budget. This is a Budget where Bill English holds all the cards but has stacked the deck against ordinary, hard-working New Zealanders. It is a game of winners and losers, and those who lose out are the millions of Kiwis slogging their guts out every day. Those people are the backbone of this country and the engine of our economy, and they deserve a Government that is better than this. Do not get fooled by the scraps that are falling off the table in this Budget. This is, and always has been, a Government for vested interests, for casino giants, for movie moguls, for investment bankers and sharebrokers, and for big noters, self-promoters, and National Party no-hopers. If there was any doubt about that, we see today that Mighty River Power executives are getting $1.2 million in share bonuses—just a few hours ago. That is whom this Government stands for. That is why I move an amendment, That all the words after “That” be omitted and substituted with the words: “this House has no confidence in the National-led Government because it has failed to deliver on its promises and because it has put vested interests ahead of the interests of hardworking New Zealanders.”

This is not a Budget for the people. It is certainly not a Budget for the couple that I know of who are approaching 40, with two kids, who still cannot get into their own home—afford their own home—because they do not have parents who can stump up with the deposit. That is becoming the way, and the only way, you can get into house ownership in Auckland. I know another family whose soccer fees are $100 for each kid, which means that only the eldest of their three will get to play this season. These are parents who are well educated, who are hard-working, but who no longer believe that things are going to get better for them, because under this Government all they have seen are broken promises. They have been let down by what has become a game show Government, with host John Key, glamorous assistants John Banks and Peter Dunne, and together you will see them on your TV screens at night hosting “Fire Sale of the Century”. On “Fire Sale of the Century”, everything is up for sale: farmland, Mighty River Power, Genesis, Meridian Energy, Air New Zealand, labour laws, gambling licences—you name it. It has all got to go.

We have even had Deal or No Deal, with special guests, of course, Skycity. Big prizes are on offer. We have got hundreds of new pokies, gaming tables, and a one-time-only 35-year extension to a gambling licence, if you happen to know the right people—if you happen to know the right people. To the taxpayer, what do we get? Well, we get a convention centre—except that Skycity still owns that as well. And it does not stop there. John Banks takes over the show Would I Lie to You, and he is playing it as an in-court special. Peter Dunne stars in the ultimate Survivor. Sometimes he outplays; he never outwits, but somehow he always seems to outlast.

Behind this game show there is actually a very tough and serious reality in our country. I have criss-crossed this country over the last year, meeting thousands of people. They are decent people and they cannot understand why, when they are doing everything right, when they are doing what their parents said would get them ahead, they still feel like they are failing. They are starting to understand that John Key cares more about his mates than their mates, because the only time they have seen this Government stand up for anything is when it is fighting to protect its own privileges; not for those working hard—like the cleaner I know of who was working 40 hours at a hotel on a minimum wage. She was not able to make ends meet, so she took on extra hours at a hotel down the road. But she was told that she could not do that, because it was a conflict of interest. She is cleaning toilets, for heaven’s sake. What conflict could there possibly be? But that is why this Government wants to be “more flexible” with our labour laws. It is easier to squeeze the little people like her, who just want to get ahead with their families.

And what about our vulnerable kids? Well, I am like everybody else: I am surprised. Why? There is no food in schools in this Budget. It is because John Key would rather spend $40 million on private schools than spend it on kids who need to go to school with full stomachs. That $40 million would go a long way to feed a lot of vulnerable kids.

But I have to say it is welcome that the Government has finally woken up to the fact that there is a housing crisis—woken up after we announced KiwiBuild’s plan to build 100,000 affordable homes. But when you go through this Budget, there is nothing in there that will guarantee more affordable homes—more homes for National’s mates, but no more affordable homes. So if you are a first-home buyer, or wanting to be a first-home buyer, out there today watching this Budget, I am sorry, but it is nothing but disappointment in front of you. The only way to guarantee Kiwis affordable homes is to roll up your sleeves and build them. That is the only way you are going to get more affordable homes. We have had 4 years of this Government fiddling with the Resource Management Act, and nothing has changed. House prices are continuing to skyrocket, and the Government will do nothing to tax the speculators—the speculators who are making a killing, pushing prices up.

This Government’s only plan for getting ahead is to sell New Zealanders what they already own—already own. In 2017, because of the sale-down of our assets, our books will be in worse shape financially than they are now, because the dividends will have gone. Just a week ago, or 2 weeks ago, Mighty River Power was 100 percent Kiwi owned. Now 2.5 percent of owners own half of our asset. The reality is that this is a Government for the well-heeled and the well-connected.

The reality is that this Government has been exactly that from the time that it came to office. This Government gave $2.25 billion in tax cuts to those people at the very top—at the very top. That is 40 percent of the cuts to the top 10 percent of New Zealanders, and while other Kiwis are doing it tough—so tough that just last week the 200,000th Kiwi got on a plane and flew to Australia with a one-way ticket. Two hundred thousand Kiwis have gone to Australia since that Government came into office, because they cannot see a future here, because the only future John Key is worried about is Skycity.

When it comes to the future of millions of New Zealanders, it is just too hard and he is too busy. Let me give you an example of that, on why he will not be able to secure superannuation: “2020 is a long way away and there are a lot of things on my plate that I need to deal with in the here and now, rather than things in 2020 and beyond.” He knows things need to change, but he will not do anything about it, because it is just too politically expedient to sit on his hands. In 2 more years, according to this Budget, our superannuation bill will exceed our education bill—in 2 years—and this Government will do nothing about it.

So what does he think is more important than that? It is payouts, bailouts, and golden handshakes. It is breakfast with Ian Fletcher, a cup of tea with John Banks, and dinner with Skycity. Every time that man sits down for a meal with anybody, they get something out of it. There is something in it for their mates. Just like the MMP review—if it is not about protecting John Banks and Peter Dunne, then what is it about? He has ignored what New Zealanders actually voted for, and there is a word for that—there is a word for that—and the word is “arrogant”.

This Government is mired in broken promises. Budget after Budget, its promises simply have not stacked up. In 2010 John Key promised a step change with 170,000 jobs, but since the last election the National Government has come up with only 8,000. In 2011 it promised unemployment would be at 4.8 percent; it is at 6.2 percent. For 3 years we have been promised wages would grow by about 4 percent. Last year it was 1.7 percent, and nearly half of Kiwis got no wage increase at all. Every year National promises a brighter future, and every year New Zealanders are let down. This year will be absolutely no exception, because National has created a two-speed economy: a fast lane for property speculators, and a slow lane for first-home buyers; a fast lane for power company bosses, and a slow lane for people who are struggling to pay their power bills; a fast lane for foreign and corporate investors buying our assets, and a slow lane for our manufacturers and our exporters. Bill English keeps on saying that we are on the right track, but, quite frankly, it is a track to nowhere.

What we have heard today in the Budget is about tinkering. It is about pilot projects. There are more pilots in this Budget than in the entire population of Air New Zealand—

Hon Shane Jones: Soon to be sold.

DAVID SHEARER: And soon to be sold. We needed to hear today a Budget for every New Zealander—one that would have made a difference to everybody’s lives, and one that would have given people real hope. That is what a Labour Government is committed to doing. We have the courage to make the big changes. We have the bold and innovative ideas that show what a smart, active, hands-on Government can really achieve, because I want to create and build, not just trade and sell off. Our ideas are practical, they are responsible, and they will change people’s lives for the better.

Here is what Labour will do. We will bring down power bills for Kiwi families. National says: “No, electricity prices aren’t too high.”, apparently. We will reduce power prices for businesses so they can invest and create more jobs. National says: “No, just let the prices go up.” We will build 100,000 affordable homes. What does National say?

Hon Members: No.

DAVID SHEARER: Exactly—“No, get back to us after the election.” We will tackle the high dollar that is crippling employers, and what will National say about that? “No. You exporters, you’re on your own. You get off and you are on your own.” We will expand KiwiSaver and secure New Zealand superannuation, and what does National say to that? “That’s just too hard—that just doesn’t suit our vested interests.” We will raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and champion a living wage. What does National say to that? “No, we’re happy with a low-wage economy, actually.” We will pay employers the equivalent of the dole to take on an apprentice, but what does National say to that? “Let’s cut young New Zealanders’ wages, instead.”

We will live within our means. Has National been able to live within a budget for the past 5 years? No, it has not. For 5 years it has run a deficit—unlike Labour, which produced surpluses 9 years in a row. How is this Government going to get to surplus this year? By overcharging you on your petrol tax and overcharging you on your ACC levies. So the next time you fill up with petrol, just remember where that surplus is coming from. It is coming out of your petrol tank. Our Budgets will get in behind hard-working Kiwis, create jobs, and they will grow the economy. People are doing their bit, and they expect the Government to do its bit as well. That is what should shine through every Budget, year after year. That is what I am committed to.

In a minute you will hear from John Key and we will hear the one-liners, the weak excuses, and the scaremongering, and most of it, of course, will focus on the Labour Party, with little about what he will do, although I am sure he will try to convince us about the nirvana that is waiting at the end of the tunnel, after we sell off all our assets. But at the very heart of this Budget there is another deficit, and that deficit is one of ideas, because what this country really needs is a Government that has the courage to take on the big changes, a Government that will give hope—a Labour Government. We have had enough of the game shows and the “Wheel of Misfortune”. Someone should give John Key a vowel, because his Government is “O for awful”.

In the immortal words of Aaron Gilmore and General Patton: “Lead, follow, or get out of the way”. Well, John Key, you have had your chance. Follow Aaron Gilmore, and get out of the way, because I will lead a Government that puts the interests of New Zealanders first, ahead of vested interests—a Government that puts people first. Thank you.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): That was truly awful. It was like watching MY SKY on half speed. I found myself desperate to change the channel, but under Labour you are allowed to watch only one channel. That is the way it goes. That contribution from the Leader of the Opposition was a contribution he made after he recently returned from his economic fact-finding mission to North Korea. You see, I thought that the days when a Labour leader no longer wanted New Zealand to be a Polish shipyard were gone, but in fact it is quite the contrary. Mr Shearer yearns for New Zealand to be a Polish shipyard. But I have got a bit of bad news for Mr Shearer. Firstly, Poland has already moved to partial privatisation. It has abandoned the single buyer of electricity, and, by the way, it has a convention centre. Anyway, credit where credit is due.

The Labour Party has finally adopted one of the very sensible policies of the National Government, and that is the mixed-ownership model. That is right. These days, the Labour Party is 51 percent owned by Labour and 49 percent owned by the Greens. Yes, these two parties have come together in this happy little place, where fruit meets loop. That is where they are. Like one of the most famous combinations of all time, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, it is “Sherlock Shearer” and “Dr Norman” in search of solving the mystery, and this one is The Hound of the Baskervilles. According to them, Bill English is the devil-beast that haunts the moors that New Zealanders live on. Sadly for our two would-be crime solvers, it turns out that the devil-beast is not only a thoroughly competent Minister of Finance but the envy of the Western World. Far from being someone who wants to haunt the moors, he wants to build tens of thousands of homes, well-insulated and affordable, on the moors. He has got this funny, quaint little notion. He wants New Zealand to earn money, not print it. That is the way he wants to go. He wants to support enterprise. He does not want to regulate for monopoly. He is a man who supports businesses, big and small. He is a person who cares about individuals, rich and poor, and that was on display in his Budget here today. Like all great Sherlock Holmes mysteries, there is a twist in the tale, and the twist is as simple as this: the devil-beast is the Opposition, not the Minister of Finance.

Let us have a little history lesson, because you did not get any of that in David Shearer’s speech. We came into Government in late 2008. This is the fifth Budget that has been delivered by a National Government and by Bill English. It is a sensible and thoughtful Budget, and I do want to start by thanking the Government’s support partners, John Banks and the ACT Party, Peter Dunne and United Future, and, of course, Tariana Turia, Pita Sharples, and the Māori Party, who have worked hard for solid, stable progressive Government in this country.

But let us put a bit of a reality check into this debate. The Opposition members have got their heads down because they do not want to acknowledge the facts. They have got their heads down because they do not want to know what really happened. We came into Government in late 2008 and Treasury said to us: “This is what’s happening—there is a global financial crisis.” Actually, it turned out to be the worst crisis since the Great Depression. That is what happened. We came in and inherited basically a decade of mismanagement by the previous Labour Government and wasteful spending it could not afford. We came into office when economists were saying the unemployment rate would rise to 10 percent or maybe 11 percent. And all of that happened before the Christchurch earthquakes, which we now know cost the economy north of $40 billion overall. That was before there were droughts, before there were floods, and before there was a recession so deep that it claimed yet another victim in Europe earlier this year in the form of Cyprus.

So what does Budget 2013 tell us? It tells us that this Government and this country will be back in surplus by 2014-15. Actually, next year the deficit will be under 1 percent of GDP. This is a country that will have a deficit of $2 billion. In case no one noticed, I point out that a couple of days ago in Australia they announced a Budget deficit of $20 billion, and they have had commodity prices rising much faster than we have had in New Zealand.

But it gets a little more interesting than that, because when we came into office—and Labour members know it; that is why they are looking in their books, because they are trying to work out where they went wrong—Treasury said: “This is the way it is: a decade of deficits. You’ll never be back in surplus. Debt to GDP in this country will be 60 percent by 2020.” What does Budget 2013 tell us? Under the economic leadership of Bill English, this country will be back to having a debt-to-GDP ratio of 20 percent—not 60 percent, but 20 percent. So when David Shearer says that Bill English and the National Government do not care about the people of New Zealand, well, guess what? We care enough to make sure that they do not have an additional $60 billion or $70 billion worth of debt around their necks. That is how much we care. We care enough to ensure that we have now got an unemployment rate that is 6.2 percent—the 11th lowest in the developed world. We have a growth rate that was 3 percent last year and is predicted to be 2.5 percent or 3 percent. We have an inflation rate under 1 percent, and we have interest rates at 50-year lows.

Mr Shearer had the audacity to get up and try to argue that under a Labour Government New Zealanders got more money. Well, no, they did not. It all went away in inflation—the whole lot. They paid interest rates twice as high as under this Government. They went backwards. The only reason Labour could finance its wild spending patterns was that New Zealanders borrowed tens of billions of dollars. The party is over, and it is New Zealanders who are having to pay it back, because they did not get any progress under a Labour-led Government. You did not hear David Shearer saying what external analysts think of this National-led Government—not a word, not a peep, not a sound out of him about what the rest of the world is saying. When Christine Lagarde, the chief executive of the IMF, came out and said: “I like what this Government is doing. This Government is getting the big issues under control.”, there was not a word from David Shearer about that.

The week before last something pretty interesting happened. Standard and Poor’s said this country is the ninth least risky country in the world to hold Government debt in—the ninth least risky. That does not sound like failure to me.

So let us just take a moment to talk about some of these policies. Let us go to housing, and I mean a real solution to housing, not some illusion that is purported by people who started at one position, said something was affordable and they would deliver at one rate, and backtrack within 5 minutes before they could even get anywhere near there. No, no, I am talking about a real, comprehensive solution. So what has the Government announced today?

Phil Twyford: Tinkering with the RMA.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well, OK, let us talk about that, then. So now we are going to have a National-led Government that, with the support of Auckland Council, will produce 39,000 new dwellings—real dwellings—in the next 3 years. That is way above what is currently being delivered. In terms of social housing and helping people in need, Labour reckoned it cared about those people, but it did not care enough to insulate their homes. It did not care enough to make sure there was not mould on the walls. It did not care enough to make sure they were actually upkept. Labour members just said: “We’ll come into the Parliament and tell people we’ll build a few more houses, and we will just forget about the fact that 70,000 people are living in homes that are not fit to be lived in.” Labour members did not care about those people.

This week this Government announced Project 324. You did not hear that from David Shearer, but this Government stood up and said we will be building 2,000 extra bedrooms on existing houses in Auckland, which will help ensure that larger families have more accommodation so that issues of overcrowding and rheumatic fever can be dealt with. It is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This Government cares about all New Zealanders. This Government, when it came to the issue of insulation, did not just talk about it. We did not just talk about it. Oh, Labour had plenty of money to spend on all sorts of wasteful things, but when it came to New Zealanders being warm, oh, it did not care about that. It had 9 years in Government and did basically nothing. This Government will have 230,000 homes insulated in 4½ years. And, what is more, $100 million in this Budget, with the support of the Māori Party, is going out to the most at-risk families in New Zealand, with 46,000 extra homes to be insulated. But, oh, no, that did not get a mention from David Shearer, because he does not want to admit to those families that, actually, a National-led Government cares about all New Zealanders—it cares about all of them.

If we want to talk about homeownership, the fastest way to ensure that someone can afford a home is to make sure that they can afford their mortgage, and to do that, you need good fiscal management. You need to make sure inflation is under control. You need to make sure that interest rates are low.

This is a Budget that cares about growth. It puts $158 million into tourism and attracting more tourists from new emerging markets like Latin America, Indonesia, and China—high-end tourists, tourists coming for business, tourists coming to a convention centre. So let us just talk about that convention centre. That is right. Labour had 9 years where it sat around and did very little. Oh, that is right—no, it did do one thing. It built a convention centre, which Helen Clark went out and opened, which was paid for by 230 pokie machines, and Labour members all celebrated because of the economic measures. But when National gets one, which, by the way, is three times larger and a way better deal, it is an outrage—an outrage. I will tell you what: Helen Clark will come to the opening of this one if she is in town, because she knows that it is good for the economy. She knows that it is good for New Zealand.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in this Budget will be pumped into science and innovation—for example, to Callaghan Innovation. Right across New Zealand, $200 million over 4 years will be put into science and innovation. There will be more money for research and development grants, for National Science Challenges, and for the Marsden Fund.

Let us move to the mixed-ownership model, and what a success the float of Mighty River Power was. What a success. We hear all this nonsense that New Zealand has given some asset away. New Zealand has given New Zealanders a chance to invest. Majority control has been retained by the Crown. By the way, it is the same model under which Air New Zealand has been operating, established under a Labour Government. It never ever campaigned to buy back the bit that it did not own, even in the 2011 election. Mighty River Power has more retail investors in it than any other stock on the New Zealand Exchange. And where do we want those New Zealanders to invest? Well, I say New Zealand. I say New Zealand. David Shearer wants them to invest in Australia. He wants them to invest in other markets. He does not want them to invest in New Zealand.

The doozy of all the statements in his speech came when he said: “Oh, by the way, the accounts are going to get worse because the Government won’t be getting the dividends.” Does he remember that about 3 weeks ago he announced a policy with his mate there, “Dr Watson”, that he is giving away the dividends? They will not be arriving in any form to a Labour-led Government. Oh yes, the Labour members talk tough about Mighty River Power, Meridian, and the other shares, but will they talk tough to the people of Christchurch, who are getting a state-of-the-art hospital facility? No, no, no, no, no—that is all OK. That magically appears when Russel Norman prints some money. That is all fine. It does not really matter.

What about the $50 million that is going into internet connections for our schools up and down the country, so that young learners can get internet connections? You will not see David Shearer or Grant Robertson going out to those schools and saying: “Hey, kids, you can just have dial-up.” Because that is what you would get under a Labour-led Government. It is like MY SKY on half speed. Do not worry, because the Labour Party will not mention that. You will not get the $80 million going to irrigation around New Zealand. There is a lot happening in this Government.

Let us look at health and education for just a moment, because they are critical issues. In health, this is a Government that has delivered. This is a Government that has hired 1,000 extra doctors and 2,000 extra nurses. There is more money for rheumatic fever, more money for maternity care, and more elective surgical operations. This is a Government that has spent health dollars well. This is a Government that has gone out there and said that we care about that. This is a Government that is also going out there and saying to the most at-risk New Zealanders that we care about them. There will be insulation for their homes. We will be making sure there is money for rheumatic fever. Yes, there will be some money for hungry kids. Yes, there will be money for better budgeting services. Yes, there will be a whiteware procurement policy that helps people out.

This is a Government that says to business that we will get on top of those ACC costs that you inherited under the mismanagement of Labour, and we will cut them to the tune of $1.5 billion. And in education we will carry on the great work we have done of getting more kids into early childhood education and more kids into National Certificate of Educational Achievement, making sure that our schools have 21st century learning capability and literacy.

Let me finish with this. Budget 2013 shows that after 5 years of a centre-right Government, this is what building a brighter future looks like, delivering for New Zealanders. And, by the way, guess what happened today? That is right. The manufacturing numbers came out, and the Performance of Manufacturing Index showed that the sector is expanding again, month after month after month. The only crisis, I tell you, is not in the manufacturing sector; it is in the leadership of the Labour Party. But do not worry, because there is only 51 percent of its leadership. It has got 49 percent over there with Russel. And speaking of Russel Norman, when the unemployment rate dropped to 6.2 percent from 6.8 percent, he said that that was an epic failure. I would hate to think what he thinks success is. It is as simple as this: the election will be fought in 2014 on the economy. Bill Clinton once said: “It’s the economy, stupid.” People will be looking at a Government that has managed to work its way through by making sure that this country earns more money and does not have to borrow it or print it.

This is a Government that has delivered competitiveness to our economy. This is where real jobs are delivered and where real growth takes place. The election will be about National versus that devil-beast. I know whom I will be voting for, and it will not be the devil-beast.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green): That was a particularly angry and bitter Prime Minister for a Prime Minister who has just delivered a Budget, but there you have it. I guess when you are the Prime Minister of a Government for the 2 percent and of the 2 percent, that is how you feel about your Government.

The Government gifted billions of dollars in tax cuts to the top 2 percent. It then transferred ownership of Mighty River Power from the 100 percent of New Zealanders to the 2 percent. The other 98 percent—well, they got to pay higher GST and higher electricity charges while the 2 percent—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The level of noise from the corner over there is too loud and unreasonable for the member trying to give his speech.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. National Party members do not like the truth. They do not like to hear the truth—that National is a Government of the 2 percent, for the 2 percent. It was 2 percent of New Zealanders who got given ownership of Mighty River Power, and it was 98 percent of New Zealanders who lost ownership of Mighty River Power and who have to pay higher taxes, higher GST, and higher electricity charges.

The three key challenges facing the New Zealand economy are how to deal with the growing current account deficit, how to deal with the growing environmental deficit, and how to deal with the growing social deficit. This Budget makes all three deficits worse. It is another triple deficit Budget. New Zealand’s external deficit with the rest of the world is now over $10 billion a year and rising under this Budget to $17 billion a year by 2017. We are funding that by more offshore borrowing and by selling assets to foreigners.

Our environmental deficit can be seen in our growing greenhouse emissions and the widespread contamination of fresh water from Northland to Southland. Groundwater in Canterbury is now so contaminated with dairy runoff that it could literally kill an infant if they drank it, according to the medical officer of health. Our social deficit is seen in the rapid growth in inequality and poverty, Third World diseases like rheumatic fever, and an impossibly expensive housing market. This Budget from the Government of the 2 percent makes economic, environmental, and social deficits worse. But, before I deal with these critical issues facing the New Zealand economy more broadly, I want to discuss the Government’s much-lauded possible return to surplus by June 2015.

After the National Government’s record $46 billion borrowing spree to pay for, amongst other things, tax cuts for the wealthy and pork-barrel motorway projects, the National Party is slowly, finally, getting its out-of-control borrowing under control. But Bill English still plans to borrow $70 billion by 2016-17—that is right, $70 billion. That is $15,000 for every person in the country under this big-borrowing Government. Future New Zealand taxpayers will pay dearly for this borrowing spree, one of the worst in the OECD.

Since the global financial crisis the increase in net Government debt as a percentage of GDP by this Government is worse than Australia, worse than Poland, worse than Italy, worse than Denmark, worse than Canada, worse than the Netherlands, worse than Chile, worse than Austria, worse than Belgium, worse than Hungary, worse than Estonia, worse than Germany, worse than Mexico, worse than Korea, worse than Finland, worse than Israel, worse than Switzerland, worse than Sweden, worse than Turkey, and worse than Norway. I suppose we should take heart that National did not borrow quite as much as the Governments of Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland. National inherited Government accounts that had virtually zero net debt.

The previous Labour Government had paid down Government debt against the opposition of the National Party, who said that the surpluses should be used to pay for tax cuts for the rich rather than to pay down the Government’s debt. The Labour Government did not do so well on current account deficit, but on Government debt reduction, you really could not fault it. If the then National Opposition had had its way, the New Zealand Government would have hit the 2008 global financial crisis with high Government debt, and, hence, less fiscal headroom to buffer the effects of the global downturn.

So, after opposing the reduction in Government debt, Bill English came into office inheriting zero Government debt. The first thing Key and English did was to give away $2 billion a year to upper-income earners. Then they came up with a wish list of $12 billion in pork-barrel new motorway projects without business cases—they just picked them for electoral reasons. The Government books then turned savagely into the red and National started to build up Government debt once again.

It then told us, after the big tax cuts for upper-income earners, that there was not enough money in the Budget, so there would have to be cutbacks, there would have to be asset sales, and it would have to increase GST for middle and lower income New Zealanders. So there were cuts to night classes, cuts to the Department of Conservation, and we were told that we had to sell electricity assets to pay for school buildings and for irrigation subsidies for National’s donors.

Today the Nats crow about the projected potential Budget surplus. Only in an Orwellian world would the party that did everything to undermine the Government’s accounts get any credit for any potential return to surplus. But the more important issue is whether the Government’s Budget balance is the biggest issue facing the New Zealand economy, anyway. Bill English certainly did not think so in the past. He said in his Budget 2010 speech: “New Zealand’s largest single vulnerability is now its large and growing net external liabilities.” He said that the growing interest bill from that rising debt was a drain on our incomes and a drag on the economy.

Later that year he promised more saving, less debt-fuelled consumption, and a continued shift away from leverage property investment. Well, we saw what came of that in the housing market. He used a Treasury chart—because Treasury backed him on this—to show how the tradable sector, the internationally competitive part of the economy comprising exports and import-competing industries, actually shrank in the 5 years from 2005 to 2010. By contrast the non-tradable sector, the spending part of the economy, grew by 15 percent.

All these statements from Bill English highlighted the imbalances in our economy as a major problem that National planned to fix. We publicly agreed with Bill English’s analysis of the problem, even if we were sceptical of his solution. Of course, the Greens had been calling for action to rein in the current account deficit for many years before with the then Labour Government, when the country also had massive current account deficits. Today, after 4½ years of a National Government, we are holding National to account. Has National’s management of the economy produced a rebalanced economy?

Treasury and Bill English no longer produce the tradable versus the non-tradable graph—surprise, surprise—so we had the Parliamentary Library update it. It turns out that things are getting worse. If you look at the spending side of the New Zealand economy, according to Bill English’s graph, that is growing at a great pace while the internationally competitive part of our economy has stagnated. In fact, in the last quarter of 2012 the tradable sector actually contracted. So, using Bill English’s own favourite measure of responsible economic management—that is, the tradable sector versus the non-tradable sector—it is clear that economic rebalancing is failing. That is the real story of this Budget. As a country, New Zealand is borrowing to fund its consumption, and, as with so many things, National has no idea what to do about it. National figures that as long as the top 2 percent are getting richer, it does not matter whether the country as a whole is getting poorer.

The metric that effectively aggregates all measures of rebalancing across the economy is the current account. The current account is the key economic measure of the success or failure of the broader economy. It is a far more important measure than whether the Government is in surplus or deficit, because it tells a story of whether the country is in surplus or deficit. Today we see that the country’s deficit is getting much, much worse. New Zealand’s current account deficit is one of the worst in the OECD, second only to that of Turkey. It is currently 5 percent of GDP and projected by Treasury to continue to widen to 6.5 percent of GDP in 2017. The average deficit within the OECD is less than 1 percent.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that New Zealand’s current account deficit will be the worst in the OECD every year until 2018, which is the end of its forecast period. There are only two ways to finance the country’s massive current account deficit: either through further overseas borrowing to pay the interest on the money that we have already borrowed, or through selling assets to foreigners. Borrowing must be serviced by future generations of New Zealanders. Selling assets means that we are literally selling the productive capital and land out from under our feet. It is no surprise that the Budget today projects that the net debt position of the country will increase to 81 percent of GDP by 2017. That is over $200 billion in net debt that we are going to owe to the rest of the world, or around $43,000 for each and every New Zealander. That will be the legacy of this National Government.

This Government has not made the hard, smart, and courageous political decisions for the long-term good of our nation. It is our children who will ultimately inherit a country that is less economically secure, increasingly owned by foreigners, and offering fewer opportunities for those children to be the dynamic creators of their own destiny. They will leave, as so many have before, particularly under this Government. But I want our best and our brightest to have a reason to come home again.

In 2010 I found myself strongly agreeing and supporting Bill English’s vision for a rebalanced economy, even if we did not believe that his tax cuts for the wealthy would deliver that rebalancing. So now we find ourselves in the slightly unusual position of wanting to finish the work that Mr English identified and then abandoned—that is, the work to rebalance our economy. Economic rebalancing will be a key priority for the Greens in Government, as you cannot have a smart Green economy without it being economically sustainable. Genuine rebalancing can be difficult because you have to manage the economy with a long-term view in mind, not just the next election. Genuine rebalancing is not for politicians focused on the short term. Genuine rebalancing is, as far as the Green Party is concerned, the only responsible way to run an economy.

So how do we propose to rebalance the New Zealand economy? We have a package of solutions, but today I want to focus on just three. Firstly, the Green Party has the courage to implement a comprehensive tax on capital gains, excluding the family home. We have been advocating a capital gains tax for years and it is heartening to see Labour coming on board. A capital gains tax would drive investment from property speculation into the productive economy, assisting rebalancing. A capital gains tax would help take some of the heat out of the rising house prices in Auckland while simultaneously helping the Government to balance the books. A capital gains tax would lower demand for mortgage borrowing partly funded from overseas, easing upward pressure on the exchange rate.

Secondly, we also have to address monetary reform if we want to deal with the housing bubble and the overvalued currency that is destroying the tradable sector. We would give the Reserve Bank a broader legislative mandate to look beyond just inflation and look at the external imbalances. This would enable a lower official cash rate to take pressure off the currency, helping the export and import competing sectors. We would work with the bank to accelerate the use of new tools for managing non-tradable inflation and asset bubbles. The announcement in today’s Budget is a case of too little, too late.

Furthermore, nearly every central bank in the world is getting active about defending their economies, many by using quantitative easing or publicly created money. Having considered all the feedback on our proposal to use quantitative easing, or QE, to help bring down the value of the New Zealand dollar, I still think there is value in running a trial programme of refilling the Natural Disaster Fund with offshore assets paid for by using quantitative easing. The private banks are allowed to create money for private profit; I do not see why the central banks should not be able to create money for public benefit.

At the moment our Natural Disaster Fund is completely empty. In fact, it is negative. If there is another disaster soon, there will be literally no funds to cover the cost, meaning we would need to borrow to pay for it, and, of course, we would be borrowing freshly printed money from offshore central banks—the irony. Using quantitative easing in this targeted way is a good way of measuring how effective it can be at putting downward pressure on the dollar while putting the resource into an important area where it is needed—funds to pay for a potential disaster. The Reserve Bank has finally conceded that you cannot be a pacifist in a currency war, and is currently using its limited reserves to intervene in the currency market in an underpowered attempt to lower the dollar. It needs more firepower, and quantitative easing can provide that firepower.

Thirdly, we need capital market reform. Ninety four percent of our banking sector is foreign owned and constitutes the single largest component of capital drain out of New Zealand. Record bank profits are strip-mining the country of much needed capital. The Government has a market mechanism to slow down the capital drain from New Zealand. It is called Kiwibank. We would strengthen Kiwibank—thanks Jim Anderton—by allowing it to retain more of its earnings so it can grow faster. We would also add further capital injection if necessary, so that it can scale up to really take on the Aussie banks. We want to help build Kiwibank into a sophisticated retail and commercial bank so that it can compete. A stronger Kiwibank is great for economic rebalancing.

I want to move from the economic deficit to the social deficit. When Bill English unveiled his centrepiece tax shift in Budget 2010 he promised it would work to rebalance the economy. We now know that was not true. We do know, however, that the tax cuts for the wealthy and the GST increases for the rest have made New Zealand more unequal. The gap between those who have a lot and those who have a little is now the widest it has ever been. New Zealand has gone from being one of the most equal countries in the developed world to being one of the most unequal. This is a dark social and economic legacy, one that hurts us all but falls heaviest on our children, especially those unlucky enough to be born into the most vulnerable families.

One quarter of all New Zealand children are growing up in poverty—that is about 270,000 kids. They are our friends’ children. They are our neighbours’ children. They are the children of our colleagues and acquaintances. They are our nieces and nephews. They are our mokopuna. They are our children. Bill English told us this week that he does not know how to fix child poverty, even though he knows how to create child poverty. The Budget delivers virtually nothing to address poverty. It is more important to National to deliver a 0.05 percent surplus than to deliver for our poor kids. Budget 2013 feels more like crumbs for kids rather than an honest meal, and maybe it is not even crumbs.

There are solutions to child poverty if you have the courage to find the ways to fund and implement them. We need a finance Minister who understands the economic cost of not addressing child poverty. Child poverty costs $6 billion a year. This is a conservative estimate, and it does not cost that much to end it. To implement our solutions to bring 100,000 kids out of poverty would cost approximately $360 million a year for the next 3 years. A more equal New Zealand is a happier, less divided place to call home.

Then there is the environmental deficit. If you love spending weekends at the beach, exploring our national parks, or swimming in your local river this is not a Budget for you. National is funding the rapid expansion of irrigation before establishing strong environmental standards around water. Since 2007, an area the size of Lake Taupō and Lake Te Ānau combined has come under intensive irrigation. National is planning to increase it by the same amount again. National is toxic to our rivers. National has rolled out the red carpet to foreign oil companies to drill for deep-sea oil before it even knows how to plug a deep-sea oil well if it goes wrong. National is toxic to our oceans.

The Department of Conservation is being forced to cut jobs. In total, 161 Department of Conservation jobs have gone under National’s watch. The jobs are from the front line—the jobs of the people who work to protect our biodiversity. National is toxic to our wild places. The taxpayer subsidies being paid to greenhouse gas emitters mean that New Zealand’s emissions are continuing to increase even as the global level of carbon dioxide hits 400 parts per million. National is toxic to the climate.

When National took office it told us that a key measure of its success was the rebalancing of the economy. Now, 4½years later, we can definitively state, using its own figures, that National has failed to rebalance the economy; that is why the word was never mentioned in the speech. Budget 2013 has focused on the potential end in sight for Bill English’s borrowing binge. I guess that is a good thing, but stripping it back a layer, we see that this possible fiscal surplus is a house built on sand. Tax cuts for the 2 percent and asset give-aways to the 2 percent are not smart ways to run an economy for the long term.

A smart Green economy would involve making some of those courageous decisions that would shift our economy on to a more sustainable and resilient footing. A smart Green economy would protect our environment, because our economy depends on our environment. A smart Green economy would see our growing rates of child poverty as unconscionable. The Greens have the courage to run an economy in the long-term interests of 100 percent of New Zealanders, but more than that, we care not only about the 100 percent of New Zealanders today but also about the generations yet to come. Thank you.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): Our first reaction to this Budget was to call the Serious Fraud Office. Never in the history of this country has a Government so blatantly cooked the books, and it was not even clever. This is financial deceit on a grand scale. The boast about balancing the books would see a company accountant in the court being prosecuted for fraud. Any balance towards the black out of the red is achieved, first, by selling assets like Mighty River Power and, soon, Meridian Energy, in October this year, with more State assets yet to come; and, second, by not spending significant amounts in last year’s Budget on key items like health, education, and overseas aid, as well as deliberately delaying Treaty settlements promised in last year’s expenditure. So why would anyone trust today’s announcement? Last year, for example, the Government got up and said that it was going to spend so much on all these items. Well, this is what happened. NZAID, which is our international standing, underspent by $96 million—a massive amount—deliberately so. Then you have got the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—a massive $91 million underspent. Education—a massive $64 million underspent. Health—underspent by a massive $57 million. It was item after item of non-expenditure on items promised last year, to give you some artificial surplus promises in 2013, 1 year later.

Mr Key, Mr English, and Mr Joyce will claim that this Budget is responsible, prudent, fit for our times, brings gains after 5 years of pain, is next year’s surplus, and is a confidence booster, but I notice that there are a lot of nervous MPs right now sitting in their offices because they know that this rescue craft will not get them home in 2014. That is what they claim of the Budget—that it is responsible, prudent, fit for our times, brings gains after 5 years, brings next year’s surplus, and is a confidence booster. Not one of those claims is true. Here are the facts. This Budget is consistent with every Budget since 2009. But if that has any merit, why, since the 2008 era of the three financial stooges, have more than 200,000 mainly young New Zealanders left New Zealand? Not one of those backbenchers or Ministers can front that bald, glaring, stark fact. What has happened to the 170,000 jobs in 4 years promised by John Key in the 2011 campaign? What has happened to the export-led growth promised in the “rebalanced economy”? If any of today’s claims had merit, there would be positive answers to those three simple questions.

Over 200,000 Kiwis have left New Zealand because they cannot get a job in their own country. Of the 170,000 jobs promised, Mr Key, Mr English, and Mr Joyce have found 8,000—8,000. As for export-led growth, well, the difference between our income from exports against our payments for imports and interest payments is a giant, black $10 billion hole, unparalleled in any other First World economy. It is worse than Portugal, worse than Ireland, worse than Greece, and worse than Spain. Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain—the so-called PIGS. Well, if they are pigs, what has National made New Zealand? We know and we will tell you. Again, “The Three Stooges” claim that there will be GDP growth. In short, the economy has grown by somewhere between 2 and 3 percent. Much of that is from the Christchurch rebuild. I notice that now we are second in the Pacific Island countries, after Australia. Australia is first, way ahead of us, then it is New Caledonia, on 3.4 percent, and then New Zealand. How did that happen? Much of the growth would come from the Christchurch rebuild, but, apart from Fletcher’s, who is getting the benefit of this growth? Who is benefiting? An elite handful, domestic and foreign, or the mass majority of ordinary, everyday Kiwis? The answer is clear. Since 2008 the per capita income—that is, wages or earnings per person—has barely moved. Ordinary Kiwis are struggling. Meanwhile, the cost of everyday living has skyrocketed. Electricity, rates, insurance, the shopping basket—you name it; it has all gone up. And do not boast about interest rates. Kiwis are paying four times the home interest rates of the US, Britain, Japan, and Europe, and paying twice the credit card rates.

So what, pray tell me, have these geniuses Mr Key, Mr English, and Mr Joyce turned us into? They have created an economy that reduces the mass majority of New Zealanders to the status of mice on a treadmill. They have created an economy that reduces the mass majority of New Zealanders to the status of mice on a treadmill. It is a bit like this treadmill here, you see? It is a bit like this. They have to run faster and faster to stay in the same place. The rich and powerful elite who run the world’s financial system created a global economic crisis. I know that some of my National Party critics recognise the animal on this treadmill. It is called Steven. It has got hair, so it must be a young Steven. But I know what they recognise. There is something that they see an affinity to.

New Zealanders have to run faster and faster to stay in the same place. Ordinary people pay the price. This is a Budget devised by the rich and the powerful for the rich and the powerful. The rest of us stay like a mouse on a treadmill.

Hon John Banks: You’re the mouse.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The rest of us stay like a mouse on a treadmill. Mr Banks never even got up to clap for his leader. Oh, he was strangely silent. Oh, mind you, so was the Māori Party and so was United Future. There they were, all sitting, not prepared to salute their leader. The rest of us stay like a mouse on a treadmill. If we look back at our recent history, the road New Zealanders have been forced to follow has always led to this treadmill. Like a mouse chasing a bit of cheese—

David Bennett: You always have been going round in circles, Winston, so it won’t make much difference.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Look, just because you can see your relation, do not get so excited. It started with Roger Douglas. You know, in the 1980s, when Labour threw New Zealanders to the wolves of the world, goaded by the half-baked theories of mad monetarists, those monetarists came to the conclusion—

Hon John Banks: Winnie, who wrote this?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Now, Mr Banks, for you it is “Sir” over here. I mean, we are staying here after the next election; you are going. You are a goner. Mr Banks, your party is toast. They came to the conclusion, these mad monetarists, that the only road to success was to secretly restructure the place and sell it. What they actually did was start the first run of the treadmill.

In the 1990s the National Party promised—Mr Banks was there—to stop the treadmill, but in reality we made the treadmill spin faster. New Zealand First slowed it down in 1996 when we came to power, and, to be fair, a reformed Labour tried to keep the brakes on between 1999 and 2008. But of late the same rogues are back in place and the treadmill has started again, and it is picking up speed. We have to stop the treadmill, take New Zealanders off it, and give them a real economic and social future.

Our once great history was one of nation building and looking after our people. This Government is selling Mighty River Power and Meridian Energy to put money in a Future Investment Fund. It is all there in the Budget speech. That fund is used to pay for schools, health, and the like. Those things used to come from the consolidated fund. That means that past generations are paying now to keep the country afloat. So thanks, Grandad and Grandmum—you built those power stations, now you are going to build all these new things while these people try a giant creative accounting fraud on the people of New Zealand. Do not forget, the surplus next year is created by swallowing up nearly all the Mighty River Power float. The surplus is $75 million for 2014-15. What was the price of Mighty River Power? It was $1.7 billion. So it is $1,675 million short, and the Minister of Finance has the audacity—as a Treasury-trained person with a fiscal responsibility bill before a select committee—to get up here and think he can pull that con on the country.

How did we lose our great vision? Why is New Zealand today a high-price, low-wage economy? Many of our workers are in jobs that pay wages upon which they and their families cannot survive. Recently, this Government gave the Mighty River Power directors pay rises of 70 percent, or more than $45,000 a year. The workers were given a rise of 25c an hour—another spin on the treadmill, Mr Banks. There was a time when lead managers of New Zealand power operations got four times the workers’ wages. Today it is 30 times the workers’ wages. If I was in the Māori Party or the ACT Party or the United Future party or if I was a National Party backbencher, I would not laugh at that, because all I can see is electoral suicide when I hear those figures, and you will hear more about that as the months roll by. No wonder these egregious self-serving few are cheering from the rafters due to a few crumbs thrown to the mice today. Even the mice have to be kept alive.

It is really hard for the strugglers. We have already shown the plight of the workers. Not only do they have to survive on low wages but they have to compete against a flood of cheap imports made by cheap labour—[Interruption] If I was going to court shortly to explain why I got 42 cheques and cannot remember one of them, I would keep my mouth shut. I would spend all my time with my barrister. I would get myself a psychologist to try to explain deliberate amnesia. I would not be here barracking the fastest-growing political movement in New Zealand, called New Zealand First.

Hon John Banks: Oh, Winnie, you’re deluding yourself, man.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh, we all know that it is true. Half the ACT Party people wanted to come and join New Zealand First, and I said no, we will not have fascists.

Hon John Banks: Name one.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Families are hit with higher food costs. Name one? What about the man called Eckhoff who was an MP for the ACT Party? He wanted to join us.

Hon John Banks: Who—who?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: That man Eckhoff who was an MP. John Banks does not even know him, because when Eckhoff was a good member for the ACT Party, John Banks was not even a member of it. He is only a temporary fill-in. We know that. Mr Banks, keep quiet. You never were any good at this game.

The household disposable income forecasts in this Budget are an illusion. What about the manufacturers and exporters running to stand still on a treadmill of soaring costs and an overvalued dollar? You know, sometimes you have got to have luck on your side, because today our Reserve Bank member’s bill got drawn again for the second time in 2 years. This is an all-time record, and we feel that the force is with us. Our message to the manufacturers and to the exporters is “Hang on, men and women out there in manufacturing and on farms, help is on its way.” What about small business—what about small business? Go to the industrial suburbs of our cities, like Pētone. There are streets of empty warehouses and factories. What about the police? We gave them an extra 1,000 front-line police when we last had the reins of power. National is cutting these numbers back. The crime industry is being contracted out to the criminals. Everyone knows, except the ninth floor of the Beehive, that Whānau Ora provides funds to the Mongrel Mob. We all know that. What about health services? What about home help for the elderly? Everyone is on a treadmill except the Government’s fat cat mates. They live off the struggle and the sweat of the mice on the treadmill.

The housing crisis continues with a few patchwork and piecemeal ideas revealed in this Budget. The very idea of cheap infill housing sends a shudder through everybody and anybody who has seen the industrial housing estates of Britain and Europe. The Government’s idea of infill housing will create giant transit camps across Auckland. The results overseas show that these housing estates become breeding grounds for crime, poverty, and misery. What about the elephant in the room about which nobody in this country will speak except New Zealand First? We know that mass immigration is being used to prop up New Zealand’s consumer demand on our economy and to replace the mass of Kiwi flights abroad. Most of these new arrivals are going straight to Auckland. Auckland has got a giant housing, infrastructure, and roading problem—none of which our biggest city will ever solve—

Jami-Lee Ross: We’re solving it.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —until we address the elephant in the room that a sea of political correctness dares not face. We do not want the young pup from out there in Howick telling us: “We’re solving it.” This fellow knows nothing about these issues. You know, I have seen so many people like you, my good friend, who have come and gone like lightning. I will make you a guarantee. I will be here long after you are gone. I will be here long after you are gone, and I will not have to be here very, very long—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Order! You are bringing the Speaker into the debate.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I do not intend to stay here for ever, but I guarantee that I will be here long after he has gone. What has this Budget done for heartland New Zealand—the engine room of the economy and the place that feeds New Zealand’s wealth? Nothing. Doughnuts. The Government’s economic policies are geared to shift the population to Auckland. What about Northland, Hawke’s Bay, Otago, Westland, and Southland—the places that used to have vibrant, thriving communities? What about Wellington? The genius Steven Joyce, the Minister for Economic Development, has been so dynamic that he has destroyed the economy of the capital city. His leader says that it is dying. The regions keep New Zealand afloat, but this Government ignores them.

Last week it was gloating over unemployment figures, down from the record quarter before that, and again clutching at straws. What is the Māori unemployment rate? It is about 14 percent. And Pasifika unemployment? It is 15 percent. The teenage unemployment rate? Twenty-six percent of people aged 15 to 19 are unemployed. What is the National Party’s answer today, backed by the Māori Party? For these thousands of young Māori who cannot get a job, and Polynesians and Europeans and all other people in this country, there are 100 more cadet places, up from 250 to 350 places—not hundreds, not thousands; oh no, just 100 more places. They are standing on the dole still, waiting to go on the treadmill.

For the majority of New Zealanders, this Government has done nothing. It is pinning its hopes on asset sales and pandering to rich tourists. While ordinary people struggle, the Government gives cash to casinos and handouts to Hollywood. While Kiwis leave, the Government is repopulating this country from everywhere else, and they are all going to Auckland. The current account deficit is a disaster—the worst in the First World. It is a staggering sum, our Government debt. It is $57 billion now and going towards $70 billion, and private debt is a nightmare. There is nothing in this Budget that starts to develop a pathway out of that debt. It exposes just how incapable the Government is of coming to grips with the economic challenges facing New Zealand. The GDP growth is actually very average, given our low performance in the past. There were some sweeteners trotted out today, but it keeps the mice on the treadmill. It keeps the fat cats feeding on them, and the Ministers keep cooking the books.

Against the cacophony of the clapping of the clowns on the Cabinet benches and the braying of the backbenchers—it would be funny if it were not so serious—we notice that the cling-ons remain strangely mute, strangely silent. We want to make an appeal to the National Party rank and file members. I want to talk to those members of the National Party who were there when I was once a member of a great party called National. I remember that party when it had great policies, great principles, and great, practical politicians and leaders, and when even its enemies used to respect it. But this National Party is not the party of Hamilton. It is not the party of Holland. It is not the grand old party of Holyoake. This is the National Party of Madoff, Merrill Lynch, and money speculators. We appeal to those left with a conscience in the National Party to remember when Keith Holyoake stopped Rupert Murdoch buying the Dominion newspaper. He said we had to own our own country, and we still do. We urge people in the National Party out there to remember what the country was like when their party was great—it is no more. My challenge to them today is this: are we men and women or are we mice, as the National Party and its cling-ons would make us? We are men, and we have a spirit. New Zealand First makes this promise here today: back us, and we will guarantee an outcome that gets you off the treadmill. Back us, and your young people will have hope. Back us, and you will get to decide the outcome of the 2014 election. No other political party can make that promise. Back us, and we will hold the balance of political responsibility, and we will use it properly.

Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Māori Party): The Māori Party is pleased to acknowledge the initiatives in Budget 2013 that are aimed at addressing some of the inequalities present in our society. I am talking about the many announcements that have been made across all portfolios that focus on increasing housing supply, upgrading housing standards, addressing educational underachievement, addressing health inequities, addressing the issues of unemployment, and many more. These issues directly tie into the drivers and symptoms of poverty.

It is one of the nation’s greatest shames that as a First World, highly privileged country we continue to have great levels of disparity and marked inequitable outcomes for many of our whānau. It was for this very reason that when the Māori Party was invited to become a partner to this Government we placed a high priority on addressing the needs of our most vulnerable whānau and citizens. We pushed to establish a Ministerial Committee on Poverty. Today, as Budget 2013 has shown, we are heartened by the commitment made by all Ministers across the House, who put their money where their mouths were and delivered for our low-income whānau.

I believe that ultimately there are two primary fronts on which we must tackle this issue if we are to address this in the long term. They are through education and training, and, secondly, through supporting people into jobs. I am particularly pleased with the announcement already made by Tariana and Minister Joyce that 3,000 trade training placements will be established for Māori and Pasifika peoples. Not only is this initiative about upskilling people and encouraging them into skilled trade positions; it will go a long way towards addressing the disparity in the unemployment rate between Māori and Pacific and the rest of the country.

Although the unemployment figures are showing a downward trend, both the Māori and Pacific unemployment rates remain at an unacceptable level—more than twice that of the rest of the people of our nation. Māori unemployment sits at 13.9 percent and Pasifika unemployment at 15.2 percent. Before anyone in this House is quick to point the finger on this, I would remind everyone that Māori and Pasifika unemployment has been an issue for many generations. Whenever there has been a recession, a downward trend in the economy, or job cuts at a major factory, it is usually the Māori and Pasifika people who are the most vulnerable—often the first off and the last back on to work.

I am pleased to tell this House that Budget 2013 has extended the Māori Affairs cadetships—and it is all very well for Winston to say “another 100”—to 350 a year. They have been proven to get results in not only getting people into work but keeping them in jobs and moving them up the ladder. Since the programme was initiated in 2009, 87 percent of those participants have remained in permanent employment long past the initial cadetship programme, which lasts only 6 months. A further 9 percent have gone on to further study. So over the next 4 years our cadetship programme will assist 1,400 Māori people into work, and that is something I am really proud to support.

But let me tell you something else about our trade training and cadetship programmes. What makes these programmes successful is not only finding jobs; it is providing support, mentoring, pastoral care, training, and networks. Both of these programmes are marked by a 360-degree programme of support, and that is how it should be if we want to build resilience in our communities.

Trade training has a special place in the minds and hearts of many Māori. From the 1960s to the 1980s thousands of young Māori were enrolled into the Māori trade training schemes of the time. These programmes were run out of the then Department of Māori Affairs, Te Puni Kōkiri, and were one of the most successful Māori work programmes ever run in New Zealand. Those who participated in these programmes were taught skills and trades that kept them employed for the rest of their lives. The skills they learnt also supported them to put kai on the table, to support their tamariki and whānau, and to participate in our communities, and ultimately people remember these times as some of the happiest in our collective history. Whānau from throughout New Zealand participated in these programmes. Many of them were sent to other rohe to learn their trades, and ultimately many of them settled in these new regions, such as in Christchurch and in Auckland where trade training schemes were run.

These stories of migration of those who had moved from one rohe to another are remembered in our stories, in our whakapapa, and in our history. To this day, I still come across people and whānau who have been part of this scheme. For example, while I was in Christchurch helping to establish He Toki ki te Rika, the first modern-day trade training programme down there, the old trade trainees who are now employers and managers of building companies came in to support the programme and formed a group that will help young Māori into employment. In fact, whenever I go down to Christchurch and see someone who has lived there a long time and who is Māori, I just ask whether they are from my place, from Ngāti Kahungunu, because many of the Kahungunu people now reside there.

I wanted to remember this history and I wanted the House to hear this proud history because this is no longer something nostalgic; this is something that this Government is working towards making real again. I particularly want to acknowledge the work that Ngāi Tahu have done in establishing He Toki ki te Rika in Christchurch after the earthquakes. Their trade training model, which enrolled the support of the construction industry, iwi, Te Puni Kōkiri, community providers, marae, and educational institutions, was really ingenious. I acknowledge them for their leadership in Māori trade training. I do not know whether it was by design or destiny or what, but Christchurch was one of the original sites of the old Māori trade training programmes. I remember when Ngāi Tahu launched He Toki ki te Rika that it was a reminder of a great legacy that they had been part of, and, indeed, that we as Māori people from across the country had been part of.

I also want to acknowledge the Minister of Finance, the Hon Bill English, for his role as the chair of our Ministerial Committee on Poverty—

Hon David Cunliffe: Why?

Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES: —because of the outcomes that have come out from that. I have lost the last page, so I will just talk. Because $60 million for Te Reo Māori initiatives is major; $100 million for housing warm up projects is major; diabetes, $35 million—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Where’s Flavell today?

Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES: Hold on. Listen to what I am saying.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Where’s Flavell today?

Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES: Flavell is on the road, and so is Tariana—we have got a by-election going, mate. It is all right—steady. Diabetes gets $35 million, rheumatic fever gets another $21 million added to the $24 million that we have already achieved, and extending the house sizes—3,000 houses—gets $2.9 billion.

You see, the thing about the Māori Party is it is not going in there just for things for Māori culture; it is about seeing needs for New Zealanders, sitting at the table, and boring in and getting support for these projects. A lot of these projects have come from us being there, present at the table, and pushing the case for New Zealand. Kia ora tātou.

HONE HARAWIRA (Leader—Mana): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa te Whare. In 2011 I made the Feed the Kids campaign Mana’s first ever major campaign. I found that whenever I raised it in the House I noticed that although we all know that child poverty exists, politicians were retreating behind glib phrases, saying nasty things about bad parenting, blaming the global financial crisis, or going quiet to fit with the party line. They were refusing to deal honestly and openly with what has become a major disgrace in 21st century Aotearoa.

Unfortunately, whenever they are in Government both major parties struggle to admit that child poverty is a problem, but they happily attack those in power about it as soon as they go into Opposition. So would it not be nice if for once, just this once, both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition called a joint press conference—and, yes, Russel Norman, Metiria Turei, Winston Peters, Tariana Turia, Pita Sharples, and even Peter Dunne could be there too if they wished—to say “On behalf of the Parliament of New Zealand and the people of New Zealand we want to acknowledge a major problem in our society called child poverty. It’s something we’ve been shuffling to the sidelines for too long, but today we freely admit that child poverty exists here in Aotearoa. We’re not proud of it—in fact, we’re bloody ashamed to admit it—but we’re going to do something about it. And, as the leaders of the two major parties in Parliament, we want everyone to know that as we move to take up our place as a leading nation in the world, we begin that journey by recognising the reality of child poverty and taking steps to eliminate it as the bipartisan priority of the highest order.”

Would that not be great? Would that not be something worth cheering for? Would that not be something to be proud of? And just imagine what a difference that would make to those families living on the edge. I mean, what value is the trade deal with the USA or with the military parade in China if when we get home, we have still got 270,000 kids living below the poverty line?

I would love it if we had a Feed the Kids programme at every school in the country, so no child missed out, with coordinators helping organise local businesses to work with their schools, helping families come in to cook, and getting people in to teach kids how to make a garden and grow kai, prepare kai, cook kai, and even how to clean up afterwards.

To those who say that feeding the kids is the parents’ responsibility, I agree with you. But let us agree also that providing the environment where stable families can function well in our society is the Government’s responsibility. The fact is that in 2013 we have whole communities locked into long-term, intergenerational unemployment and facing crippling welfare cuts. They are having to deal with rising electricity prices, medical charges, school fees, food bills, house rentals, and fuel costs. They are worrying themselves sick lest one of their kids gets ill, the car breaks down, there is a cold snap, or they miss the Work and Income New Zealand appointment. On top of that, we also have the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty telling us that poverty is costing the country $6 billion to $8 billion a year, that we have 270,000 children living in poverty, and that some 100,000 kids go to school hungry every day.

These are not problems caused by bad parenting. These are problems caused by decades of bad economic choices and flawed decision-making at a Government level. Remember, it was not the poor who caused the global financial crisis, caused the banks to go belly up, or bailed out the banks and failed finance companies with taxpayer money. No, those were all macro decisions; big-picture choices made not by bad parents but by bad Governments. That is why Governments must honour their responsibility to provide for our most vulnerable citizens, the kids, until families are able to once again take care of themselves and their children.

I would have been happy to support any effort to eliminate child poverty, however small, because feeding even one child is a good idea. That is why, given all the positive comments from the Prime Minister over the past few days and the bragging from the Māori Party about how hard it is fighting for the poor, I am bitterly disappointed to see that this Budget has set aside not one cent to deal with child poverty. If I could, I would organise Feed the Kids gigs, like we had in Ōtara last month, right across the north—from Moerewa to Mitimiti, from Te Hāpua to Te Atatū, and from Whangarei to Whangaparāoa. Then I would take them on the road right across the country, just to see happy kids. Nothing beats seeing 2,000 kids happy just to get a feed, see some celebrities, jump around, sing and play, and go back to school with a full lunch. I am glad we have more time to take this kaupapa on the road and to take another shot at convincing politicians that the Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill is worth supporting, even if it is just to a select committee—thank you, Mr Dunne.

While I am talking about kids at school, let me talk about what is happening in the field of education—specifically, Māori education. Yesterday I blasted the Māori Party for voting for ACT’s charter schools when charter schools will have no accountability to whānau, to the Reo, or to Te Aho Matua, no obligation to put registered teachers in front of our kids and no transparency under the Official Information Act or the Ombudsmen Act. And they are going to get heaps more money than kura kaupapa ever got. Yes, of course I can hear Māori calling for different options from mainstream schools, but why do you suppose they are doing that? It is because the racist education system we have got right now sucks, that is why, and because for the last 5 years the Māori Party has done bugger all to change it. That is why.

The Māori Party does not have any options. Because it does not have the power to get money for kura kaupapa Māori, to keep kotahitanga going, or to get manaaki tauira reinstated, it is left pasting a Māori name on an ACT policy and then trying to sell it to Māori. I mean, really? Charter schools will have no accountability to whānau, no commitment to the Reo, no responsibility to Te Aho Matua, and do not have to accept Māori kids. There will be no appeal if they throw Māori kids out, and no obligation to put registered teachers in front of our kids, after telling all of our nannies that they cannot teach in kura kaupapa Māori until they got a degree—and the Māori Party calls that a good idea.

Instead of attacking me, why does the Māori Party not—with its millions of dollars in departmental money and hundreds of staff—actually come up with some basic bottom lines, like Mana does? Mana wants a formal commitment from the Government on a date to implement the tribunal’s recommendations on kōhanga reo, equal funding for kura kaupapa Māori, elimination of the racist rules applied only to kura kaupapa Māori, compulsory Māori language in schools, specific increases in achievement for Māori students at school, specific reductions in suspension and expulsion of Māori students from school, reinstatement and expansion of the Te Kotahitanga programme to help teachers understand how to get the best out of Māori students, and reinstatement of the manaaki tauira funding to help all Māori students get into university.

Mana will work with anyone to help grow Māori medium education and develop viable policies for mainstream education, but know this: anyone wanting to call themselves a Māori party and talk so much about kaupapa Māori should be ready to be congratulated on their ability and challenged on their inability to deliver on kura kaupapa Māori. The Māori Party got nothing in last year’s Budget for kura kaupapa, and, to nobody’s great surprise, it got nothing in this year’s Budget either.

In terms of housing, let us be clear: Aotearoa has a housing crisis, fuelled by property speculators and supported by this Government’s refusal to impose a meaningful capital gains tax that would force the speculators to offload properties and put houses back on the market. This would lower house prices, enable first-home buyers to buy in the affordable housing market that the Government is talking about, and allow the Government to build proper homes for those on low incomes—because that is where the real need is—as a commitment to ensuring that every family in Aotearoa has a warm and comfortable home to live in, and then develop a home purchase programme based on the same universal family benefit that gave every Kiwi an opportunity to own their own home and made Aotearoa such a great place to live. The need exists at the bottom end, and that is where the change has to take place.

What is required is a simpler, more committed strategy. Impose capital gains tax on those with two or more properties, to bring more houses on to the market at a price that enables first-home buyers to get in. Build 10,000 State houses a year for the next 10 years for families on low incomes, with a policy that encourages tenants to plan for home purchases and enables them to do so through a universal family benefit. Apart from a commitment for more money to fight rheumatic fever, this Budget has nothing but crumbs to deal with the massive problems facing Māori, Pasifika, and Pākehā people struggling to make ends meet or deal with the ever-growing plight of our hungry children. As far as this Budget is concerned, all we wanted was to feed the kids. We did not get even crumbs for kids. Kia ora tātou.

Hon JOHN BANKS (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party and the people of Epsom to support the Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill. ACT will support this Budget and associated legislation over the next couple of days. The Minister of Finance Bill English’s Budget represents an oasis of fiscal sanity in the face of Opposition parties, whose primeval instinct is to spend, to regulate, to impose new taxes, and to print money.

The Budget is a good Budget in very difficult times for this country, but it is not a great Budget. On the OECD’s measure, the Government sector is spending about 43 percent of everything that New Zealanders produce—that is 43 per cent. In Australia it is 34 percent. The Government is taking too much and is making us poorer. We have lost many of our productive young people to Australia because their economy offers a better future. The 2025 Taskforce found that the income gap with Australia was 35 percent in 2008. The latest statistics for 2011 indicate that it has risen to 41 percent. The gap is unprecedented. Unless we close this gap, we can expect to see more and more New Zealand grandparents crossing the Tasman to visit their grandchildren. There is no mystery. They are richer in part because more of the wealth of Australia is left in the hands of the people, yet the Labour Party wants even more spending. You would have to go back to the 1970s to find a Labour Party less ready for Government. Labour is not serious about addressing the challenges faced by New Zealanders. The future is not about outbidding the “old dudes” and “young fogies” of the Green Party.

When I first came to Parliament all those years ago—10 Parliaments ago—the Government of the day was trying a command and control approach to the economy. It did not work then and it will not work today. How does this Budget measure up in terms of getting the Government off the backs and out of the pockets of hard-pressed, hard-working taxpayers? Well, first the good news. The size of the Government is set to decline under this Minister of Finance, providing we can continue to restrain expenditure. Spending growth has been reined in, despite the Christchurch earthquakes. This Budget continues that trend. The Government has not blown out the fiscal deficit like so many other countries and the last reckless Labour Government. The Government has stayed the course on partial privatisation, despite court action and the dodgy referendum by the Labour Party and its mates the Greens.

There have been significant welfare reforms. We are starting to tackle the culture of dependency and hopelessness. There is no tampering with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act. There is a willingness to improve the quality of regulation. We will have a regulatory standards proposal for this House to consider in the very near future. There will be meaningful change to the Resource Management Act. The Government recognised that house prices are too high because land values are too high. The Government is moving to free up the supply of land, which ACT has long called for.

In education, partnership schools are on the way. The Budget provides just under $19 million over the next 4 years for partnership schools. Partnership schools will be a paradigm shift in education and opportunity for our poorest families. I want to thank Cabinet and the Minister of Education for making partnership schools happen. The Government will spend $9.7 billion on education in this Budget. The annual funding for partnership schools makes up less than 0.5 percent of that $9.7 billion. From 1999 to 2008 Labour increased spending on education by 47 percent. It spent billions and had no significant impact on the tail of underachievement in our schools—47 percent increase in spending by the Labour Government, and no significant increase in the outcome for our most vulnerable, the bottom 20 percent, who are consigned to oblivion.

Partnership schools are a new and innovative option specifically focused on raising achievement for our most disadvantaged students, and I am glad to be associated with that. The only fear that the trade unions in the school movement have, and schoolteachers up and down this country have, is that partnership schools could be a great success. Anyone who opposes spending less than 0.5 percent of the total education budget on a new initiative to raise achievement for our most disadvantaged students is playing petty politics—petty politics.

So now for the not-so-good news. The macro outlook—growth and unemployment—is still mediocre. We look good because most member countries of the OECD look bad. We will not close the gap with Australia without lifting growth and productivity. The balance of payments outlook points to an international competitiveness problem. Taxes are too high because of wasteful and unnecessary Government spending. The more expensive the Government, the poorer the citizen. Let me say that again for the record: the more expensive the Government, the poorer the citizen. The Government needs to roll back Labour’s poor-quality programmes—interest-free student loans and Working for Families, to name just two.

Here is what the ACT Party will be urging National to do, in a great Budget. We regard $78 billion of gross public debt to be far too high, so we need to reduce debt through less spending, as the first initiative—less Government spending. We need to put the “avgas” into asset sales programmes. I welcome the announcement that Meridian Energy is up next. Air New Zealand is performing well. Running an airline is a risky and tough business. We do not need to issue a prospectus. Why not sell the Government’s shares immediately? National should dump the Cullen fund. Let us use it to pay off our debt. No one has savings in a bank account at home while they have a big mortgage on their house. Progressively raising the age of eligibility would help make superannuation much more affordable. If you want to save $1.7 billion a year, every year, year after year, then raise the age of eligibility for superannuation from 65 to 67.

We have stopped the growth in Government spending. That is good. It is time to start tackling the size of the Government. We have to aim for around 30 percent of GDP on OECD measures. That means confronting middle-class and corporate welfare. We need to confront middle-class and corporate welfare. The 2025 Taskforce found that given the surpluses at that time, reducing core Crown operating expenses to 29 percent of GDP, as it was in 2009, would allow a top personal and company tax rate of 20 percent.

The Budget projections through to 2017 start to make this lost opportunity available again, and that is good. That is a long haul, but it is a goal worth pursuing. Spending reductions and partial use of surpluses could fund tax cuts. Tax cuts would improve economic growth and international competitiveness. The risk with future surpluses is that they simply are used to expand the size of Government.

Finally, this House needs to be more brave on regulatory reform. Further regulatory reform would help New Zealanders to understand how dopey policies like the nationalisation of electricity would be. Regulatory reform would highlight how poor policies lead to poor laws, and that results in poorer citizens. We have the Regulatory Standards Bill on the Order Paper, and that is on its way. The ACT Party and the people of Epsom back this Budget. We say it is a good Budget in difficult times, but, in order to tackle the challenges New Zealanders face, we need great Budgets. Unfortunately, the most significant risk we face is from bad policy and bad politics generated from the Opposition benches. My job, indeed, is to ensure that they do not get their hands—that is, the Opposition parties—on the levers of power.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): This afternoon I sat through the 30th Budget that it has been my privilege to hear presented in this House. There has been a range of Budgets over the years. I think that, in terms of my involvement, there are two Budgets that stand out. The first was the 2006 Budget delivered by the Hon Dr Michael Cullen. That stands out because it introduced the concept of KiwiSaver, the long-term national savings scheme, and in many senses it put an end to what had been three very ugly decades of debate on the superannuation issue.

The second Budget that stands out is the Budget presented earlier this afternoon by the current Minister of Finance, for an entirely different set of reasons. Unlike Sir Roger Douglas’ “great rescue Budget” of 1984, which had to deal with the excesses of Muldoonism—in other words, the internally generated problems in having the most regulated economy at that time, outside the communist world—today’s Budget deals with positioning New Zealand for the future, in the context of an international situation that has been far from certain in recent years.

We have been through, as the Minister of Finance pointed out in his speech, the greatest international economic crisis since the Great Depression. If that is not bad enough, if that is not something any of us have any direct experience of previously, add to that the greatest natural disaster the country has ever seen, and, in terms of cost, one of the greatest natural disasters the world has ever seen, in the form of the Christchurch earthquakes, and the Government’s problems compound dramatically. But it does not stop there. We have just been through a summer of enormous drought, which is expected to make a significant impact on GDP and on our economy.

So when you put all those factors together, I think it is a remarkable achievement that today in the Budget we see the Minister of Finance project with confidence a return to a Budget surplus of modest proportions in the next financial year, but considerably stronger in the out-years from there. When one bears in mind all of those upheavals and the fact that that process of change is occurring in just 5 years, that is a remarkable transformation for this economy.

For those who say that we have not seen the benefits, I think that part of the problem, in a funny sort of way, is that we never got to the pits of despair. We never saw the depth of recession in New Zealand that we are seeing in France at the moment, that we have seen in Cyprus, and that we have seen right through Europe. We never got to the depths of despair that we are now starting to see even in Australia, where, earlier this week, a strong projected Budget surplus has suddenly amounted in election year to a massive Government deficit.

New Zealanders, through prudent management over the last 5 years, have been insulated from the worst of those economic impacts. Although unemployment has moved upwards and is still unacceptably high, it is about half what it was projected to be and it is about a third of what it is in most other countries of our type the world over. We are still, none the less, now well-positioned for the challenges that lie ahead. I think they contain some opportunities and some risks.

Let me deal with the risks first. We heard in the speech of the Leader of the Opposition this afternoon—one of the weakest Opposition leader’s speeches I have heard in recent times, I might say, but be that as it may—what was essentially an ideological prescription, such as it was, for the nation’s cures, such as higher taxes, picking on certain groups of the population, and setting them against each other; the politics of envy returning. And I have to say, with the greatest of respect to my colleague to my left, that there were overtones, from a different perspective, of an ideological approach, in his remarks just a few moments ago.

The reality is that we actually live in a post-ideological age, and there needs to be a level of pragmatism and studied care in terms of the management of economies and the transitions out of the situations we have seen New Zealand in in recent years, and moving forward. There are some lessons to be learnt, which I think the Government is learning, and I acknowledge the work of the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery and the Minister of Finance in particular in terms of what is going on in Christchurch. When those events occurred, the rule book went out the window in terms of how you recover, and how you restore—in that case—a regional economy. There was no guiding set of principles. There was no ready reckoner or reference book to go to. The Government had to act pragmatically, as the circumstances dictated. A lot of things happened that were completely foreign to the way in which public services were delivered previously.

The challenge now, as we move forward, is to capture those good innovations and use them in terms of the way in which we manage the public sector of the New Zealand economy as a whole. It is not about that old competition for resources, as much; it is about the smarter use of the resources that are available. I think one of the themes in this Budget is very strongly about the smarter and better use of available resources, rather than that constant David Copperfield - like clamour for more and more and more.

The next thing I want to say in respect of that change is that the initiatives announced this afternoon with regard to housing are, I think, a superb example of that approach at work. We all know, and have known for too long, that the proud State housing system, which is really part of the New Zealand national tapestry, is creaking. We have people who are trapped in those houses, people who cannot get access to State accommodation when they need it, and this peculiar notion, which has been allowed to build up, that the houses that people were occupying were effectively theirs for life even when their circumstances had moved on.

The changes that this Budget foreshadows will make it easier for people to transition to different types of accommodation more suited to their needs at particular points in their lives, and also make it easier, then, for the people who might need the three and four-bedroom homes at an earlier stage to have access to them. I acknowledge the work the Minister of Housing has done in this sense. I think it is smart and I think it is innovative. I think it is working within the system to achieve positive gains, a better use of the assets, better rewards for the people whom we serve, and fundamentally a more pragmatic approach overall—equally so with the decisions that we will make a little later in this sitting with regard to the housing permits concept, where again, with a problem that we all know successive Governments have struggled with, this Government is achieving cut-through.

So when you look at the Budget you can play the traditional political game, if you like, and sort of do the unders and overs and say that it is not fair, or this sector has not gained as much as that one. But I think those days are past. I think what people look at now—whether it be the public sector, the non-government sector, or the private sector—is who is best placed to deliver services, to deliver the things that people want, and how we work with them to facilitate those opportunities.

For example, in the health sector—and I will give the House two examples with which I am directly involved—we launched a new mental health plan at the end of last year. For the first time we will be actively engaging with the 300-odd NGOs in the mental health sector to make sure that they can be part of the solution, not constantly left to one side as advocates for something better. Shortly we will announce a new suicide prevention action plan, and again that same principle will apply. It is not about a clamour for more resources. It is about saying: “How can we much more smartly and intelligently use what we have to advantage, to serve the people well?”.

Hon Member: Are you all right?

Hon PETER DUNNE: I almost seem I should be in need of the health system, but it is that time of year. Can I simply conclude by saying that this is a pragmatic, sensible, well-shaped Budget—one that is adequate for the times.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I move, That the debate be now adjourned.

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

Ayes 64

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

Noes 56

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Motion agreed to.

Urgency

Urgency

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I move, That urgency be accorded the introduction and first reading of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill and its referral to a select committee; the introduction and first reading of the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill and its referral to a select committee; the introduction and passing of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2); the introduction and passing of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill; and the introduction and passing of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill.

This suite of bills is all part of the Government’s Budget as announced today. They each have a particular part in delivering on that Budget. The two housing bills are related particularly to areas where there is a great deal of shortage and, in particular, to the Auckland market, where the Minister of Housing has done a great deal of work with the Auckland Council to get some speed into the way in which some of the housing issues up there might be resolved.

The New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) clarifies the Government’s position on paying families who look after disabled adult children. There is $92 million set aside in this year’s Budget for that, and this bill will give effect to that expenditure.

We also intend to pass the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill through all stages. This is an amendment to the Crown Minerals Amendment Act. This bill makes necessary corrections to the amendment Act, before it commences on 24 May. It would therefore be appropriate that it go through all stages in this session of urgency. New Zealand, of course, does increasingly benefit from its petroleum and mineral resources.

Finally, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill increases the petrol tax by 3c a litre for each of the next 3 years. These increases come into effect on 1 July, so it is important that we pass this small and technical bill through all stages this evening.

The bills to be considered under urgency are normally laid on the Table at the start of the urgency session. That will occur today, once the vote is taken, but I do want to make it clear that copies, or advance drafts, of those bills have been provided to all parties, so they have had some time, albeit short, to consider their positions.

Phil Twyford: About 10 minutes.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well, no. Actually, it was really almost 3 hours. We know that 3 hours is a long time in politics.

A party vote was called for on the question, That urgency be accorded.

Ayes 64

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

Noes 56

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2)

New Zealand Bill of Rights Act Compliance

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General): I hereby present a report on the rights and freedoms contained in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 in relation to the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2).

Bills

Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill

First Reading

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Housing): I move, That the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill be reported to the House by 26 July 2013 and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 188 and 191(1)(b) and (c).

This bill is a core part of the Government’s work to improve housing affordability. It confronts the reality that homeownership rates have been in decline for a quarter of a century; that house prices have soared unsustainably over the past decade; and that far too many families’ housing, whether they buy or rent, is unaffordable. There is no silver bullet for this huge issue. It will not be solved with gimmicks or slogans but with substantive, sound policies that address the real issues that are driving up house costs for New Zealanders. We have founded our housing work on the comprehensive report produced last year by the Productivity Commission.

We are particularly focused on the issue of land supply being addressed in this bill. We have got work under way on infrastructure costs announced in February in respect of the review on development contributions. We have got work on materials costs under way with the inquiry that we announced at the weekend. We are making changes to get compliance costs down. We are investing heavily in skills in this Budget to improve the productivity of the residential construction sector.

It also has to be acknowledged that interest rates play a huge role in housing affordability and homeownership trends. Anybody who looks at the homeownership issue post World War II will see that it is very simple—homeownership goes up when interests rates are low, and it goes down when interest rates are high. I am very proud to be part of a Government with an exemplary record on interest rates—the lowest since I was in nappies in the mid-1960s. We are determined to keep them as low as possible for as long as possible. That highlights the broad reason that we need this bill. We all know that house prices are going silly—up 12 percent in Auckland in the last year. When that happened in the last decade, the Government did nothing. The Reserve Bank wound up interest rates, up went the Kiwi dollar, and there was permanent damage to the New Zealand economy. This bill is about avoiding a repeat of that negative economic cycle. The message from the Reserve Bank, from the IMF, from the OECD, and from the Productivity Commission is that we must confront and address these land and housing supply issues.

Some people are refusing to accept the link between rigid land supply policies and high house prices. I challenge them to look at the evidence. We have seen the availability of sections in Auckland plummet over the past 10 years, and the price of a section has increased over the last 5 years from $100,000 to $325,000. The study by the Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Trust showed that raw, undeveloped land in Auckland inside the metropolitan urban limit is 10 times the value of land outside the metropolitan urban limit. We are currently building only 4,000 homes per year in Auckland when we need 13,000 per year to keep up with population growth.

This bill is a circuit-breaker to get some pace and some momentum in addressing housing supply. It recognises that councils control a very important lever with their land supply and housing development policies. It makes provision for accords with local authorities where there are affordability issues. It requires the Government to work with councils in good faith to secure such agreements, like those we have achieved with Auckland, but also to enable intervention if we are unable to make progress.

The essential mechanism in this bill is the creation of special housing areas. These will be both greenfield and brownfield areas that are suitable for residential development, where infrastructure is available or can be built, and where there is demand for new housing. Within these areas, qualifying developments will be able to be approved by way of a streamlined process. There is a special limited notification process for only those affected. Council panels will be required to make a decision within 6 months on greenfield developments, and within 3 months on brownfield developments. That compares with the current situation, where it takes up to, and sometimes more than, 3 years.

In the Auckland context, this bill enables the council to get some real progress in implementing its Unitary Plan in areas that are the least contentious. This is a 30-year plan for 400,000 homes. It enables a robust process for hearings on controversial projects like high-rise apartments, but enables us to get on and build the first 10 percent of houses in that plan. It is a balanced agreement, and I wish to especially acknowledge Mayor Len Brown for his pragmatism and support in coming to this accord. It is an ambitious agreement, and sets out a plan to consent 9,000 homes in the first year, 13,000 homes in the second year, and 17,000 homes in the third year. That will have us consenting three times as many homes over the next 3 years as have been consented over the last 3 years. I have been encouraged by the response to the accord. Already a developer has come forward and has said that it will enable him to bring forward 1,000 sections next year that he otherwise would not have brought forward. ANZ National Bank economist Cameron Bagrie said that the accord “hit all the right notes”. The Employers and Manufacturers Association chief executive has described it as “infinite common sense”. He says that it will unlock the logjams to getting houses built, and that it is so refreshing to see Auckland Council and central government finding common ground on this difficult issue.

The accord is good news for households, it is good news for Auckland, and it is good news for New Zealand. Enabling the development of 39,000 new homes will take the heat out of the Auckland housing market. It is going to give some hope to families looking for a home, whether they want to rent or buy. The $20 billion build is going to create thousands of jobs. And the relief for the rest of New Zealand is that this increased housing supply in Auckland will take pressure off an early rise in interest rates, and upward pressure on the Kiwi dollar. I would also note that the accord specifically makes provision for more affordable housing. We have shown how to do that with the Hobsonville development, where we have required 20 percent of new homes to be in the affordable range and targeted to first home buyers. I was advised by the Hobsonville development company that it is not getting 20 percent; it is getting 27 percent of houses sold in that range. A similar approach is required here, where consideration must be given to providing lower-cost new homes when approving qualifying developments. This legislation gives us the tools to implement that accord. This is an interim measure. My colleague Amy Adams is progressing a comprehensive plan of Resource Management Act reforms that will be legislated in time, and then with planned changes will be able to assist with the long-term challenge of housing affordability.

I cannot help but conclude this debate by challenging the Opposition on a few points. First, it has had more positions on the Auckland Council than the Kama Sutra. It has rallied against the formation of the Auckland Council, and, in the next breath, it has rallied to the council’s support and demanded that the Government not intervene on housing issues. Now it opposes the accord that we have successfully negotiated with the council. Secondly, it has consistently opposed any measures through Resource Management Act reform or in this bill to free up new land. I have a simple question for the Opposition: how can it promise Aucklanders tens of thousands of homes at $300,000 each, when the average section price in Auckland right now is $325,000? The idea that the only way to build more affordable homes is for the Government to build them is an idea that it must have got from the same North Korean economics school that it got its electricity policy from. If it truly believes this nonsense, why stop nationalisation at the housing and the power sectors? Let us have cheaper food by the Government taking over all the supermarkets, or cheaper cars by having the Government buy them all for us! My greatest worry for homeowners is what the Labour-Greens policies will do for interest rates. Sound economic management and a comprehensive approach to housing affordability in all those areas is the best way that we can make homes more affordable for New Zealanders. That is what this Government is about, and I call on the House to support this sensible bill.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): What a disappointing contribution that was from the—

Grant Robertson: No, typical.

PHIL TWYFORD: —a typical response—current National Minister of Housing. The Labour Party will be voting for the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill at its first reading, and we will be voting for its referral to the Social Services Committee. We do that in the knowledge that one does not lightly support a bill like this, which overrides key elements of the Resource Management Act.

This bill is the latest piece of legislation from the National Government that takes powers away from local councils and local communities and gives them to central government. It is one of a long line of provisions we have seen under this Government that actually strip powers from local communities. So in that knowledge we support it, at this stage, only in terms of its referral to the select committee, and we support it because the provisions in this bill represent a partial victory for Len Brown and the Auckland Council in the face of the most extraordinary drama queen behaviour from Nick Smith over the last few months.

Nick Smith turned up in Auckland 3 months ago accusing the mayor of killing the dreams of Aucklanders. He said that planning laws in Auckland and the Auckland Plan were strangling the lifeblood out of housing development in Auckland. And we had all sorts of dramas and histrionics from Nick Smith, the “Minister of Housing Shortages”, as he tried to create the same kind of crisis, the same kind of drama, he has created in every portfolio area he’s had over the last few years. ACC was perhaps the worst, and he has brought exactly the same approach to housing.

What is very clear from the announcements about housing that we have seen from the Government over the last week is that it is utterly spooked by Labour’s policy, Labour’s KiwiBuild policy, to deliver 10,000 affordable starter homes for first-home buyers. That has completely spooked the Government. We know that because we know that the New Zealand Herald opinion survey in January showed that 70 percent of New Zealanders supported Labour’s policy of putting 100,000 Kiwi families into their first home. That has spooked the National Party, and we have seen a flurry of desperate announcements as it tries to recover lost ground. So that is the context for this bill coming to the House today—the National Party’s troubled relationship with our country’s biggest city, Auckland.

National is offside with Aucklanders. Gerry Brownlee is completely offside with Aucklanders when it comes to public transport and the city rail link. Nick Smith has kindly offered himself as Len Brown’s opposition in this year’s mayoral election. No one else of any substance is willing to stand against Len Brown, so Nick Smith gallantly offered himself, and I think he has actually done a pretty good job of alienating Aucklanders on an issue that they desperately care about—affordable housing.

So what is the result of all this drama queen activity from Nick Smith over the last few months? What we see today is a cherry-picking of some elements of the Auckland Plan. That is why I say it is a partial victory for Len Brown and the Auckland Council. But, to be honest, Nick Smith could have saved everybody a lot of grief if he had simply gone along with Auckland Council’s proposal to give the Auckland Unitary Plan legal weight upon notification. So, once the plan was notified in September this year, a lot of grief could have been saved, and the Government could have saved a lot of political face if it had given the new unitary plan, which includes the measures contained in this bill, legal weight in September just as the plan would have had under the pre-2009 resource management law. But no, Nick Smith has put everyone through a whole lot of drama.

So what does the bill do? It creates the framework for the Government to negotiate accords with regional councils around the country. It has negotiated one with Auckland Council. That accord allows special housing areas to be set up with fast-track consenting, and it will have the effect of bringing new greenfield land into the supply of the Auckland housing market, which I think, as most people recognise, is one of many factors behind the high cost of new houses in Auckland. But the National Government would like to think that land supply is the be-all and end-all when it comes to solving the housing affordability problem and that deregulating the planning laws is the main solution. I think most people realise that it is not.

House prices have gone up 36 percent in Auckland since National came to office, and this bill is the best that National can do. It is rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, tinkering with planning regulations, and a whole raft of other things that we will debate over the next couple of days in relation to State housing. It thinks that by simply tinkering with planning regulations under the legislation that allows these so-call housing accords it will solve the housing affordability problem. That is the fallacy that underlines this bill.

This bill will do nothing to guarantee that one more affordable house is built in Auckland. It simply opens up new greenfield land in the supply of land and fast-tracks the consenting procedure. The numbers that National bandied around for tens of thousands of new houses are simply targets for consenting. They do not guarantee a single new affordable home. I think Aucklanders will see through this. They will see that this is a desperate attempt by the National Party to regain ground on the housing affordability problem.

The housing market is failing. It is failing to build enough affordable homes. It has basically seized up because there is no money to be made currently for developers and builders in building affordable homes. Fast-tracking consenting and bringing new land into the system may be part of the solution, but it will go nowhere near guaranteeing and assuring Aucklanders that they are going to see the production of new affordable houses.

We saw yesterday the unveiling of the new development at Long Bay, an hour’s drive from the central city. We saw houses costing between $750,000 and $1 million. Is that National’s definition of affordable housing? We have seen Hobsonville, where the Minister talked about affordable housing. Does he really think that $700,000 houses an hour’s drive from the city, an hour’s drive from where all the jobs are, is National’s solution to the affordable housing crisis? It is simply just not credible.

I want to point to one of the biggest problems with this bill, and that is the very, very weak language contained in the housing accord about affordable housing. The accord itself starts by acknowledging that improving the affordability of housing is a complex issue, it requires consideration of wider issues, not all of which will be able to be addressed under this accord. Well, you got that right.

Listen to this language, which is actually in the accord itself. It is talking about when developers are seeking consents for new housing developments. “All Qualifying Developments are … required to give consideration to the provision of affordable housing”. They do not have to build affordable houses; they simply have to give consideration to the building of affordable housing. “Conditions of consent may include requirements for a proportion of the development to include affordable housing”. They may have to give them; there is nothing in here that requires builders and developers to build affordable housing. It is a joke. It is a charade.

If the Government was serious about dealing with the affordable housing problem, it would roll up its sleeves and actually work with the private sector and local councils to build affordable housing, which is exactly what Labour will do under its KiwiBuild policy. Look at Hobsonville. Look at the Long Bay development. All the economic incentives in the building and development industries are telling developers to build houses that sell for three-quarters of a million dollars, because that is the only way they can make a decent cut, a decent margin, on those developments.

This bill will be supported by Labour as far as the select committee, but we have reservations about it. We have reservations that will require considerable scrutiny at the select committee about the constraining of the rights of appeal under the Resource Management Act, and we are very sceptical about whether this will do anything to achieve more affordable housing. It is typical of National’s weak, tentative, and timid approach to dealing with the issue of affordable housing. It pretends that tinkering with the Resource Management Act will result in more affordable housing for Aucklanders. We doubt that it will. It requires a serious response by the Government. It should pick up a hammer and actually build some affordable houses.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): Talofa lava. It is a pleasure to stand to take a call on this bill, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, because this bill is critical to the agenda that our Government has to help those in need, to help deliver quality services, and to help provide an environment where jobs and opportunities are readily available.

I support the extensive work that our Minister of Housing, the Hon Dr Nick Smith, is doing in this area. He has outlined some of the key steps around reforming housing in this country. I am also glad that Mr Twyford is supporting this bill. I do not know whether Mr Twyford is really supporting the bill or whether he is following instructions from Mayor Len Brown to support his part in this accord.

You will hear the cries of protest from Mr Twyford and the other Opposition members. These simplistic creatures, as the Attorney-General calls them, wish to attack that which they do not understand. But what New Zealanders understand is that over the course of the last Labour Government house prices ballooned, interest rates skyrocketed, and ordinary Kiwi families were pitched further and further out of the housing market.

From 1999 to 2008 interest rates went up from just under 3 percent to over 8 percent. Inflation went from just above zero in 2000 to over 3 percent in 2008. Median house prices in Auckland went from $235,000 in 1999 to almost double—$450,000—in 2008. So it is no wonder hard-working New Zealand families were unable to get on the ladder of property ownership under the last Labour Government. Let us compare that with the John Key - led National Government. We have delivered the lowest interest rates for over 50 years, and the lowest inflation since 1999—it is under 1 percent. We have continued economic growth on the back of a global economic crisis. That is better than many of our trading partners across the globe.

But those members opposite have a shameful record on housing, leaving some of our most vulnerable families on the scrap heap of inadequate, old, cold, and mouldy State and social housing. That is their record. That is their legacy from the last time they were over here on the Government benches, and I would say that Michael Joseph Savage would be disgusted at the contempt that the current Labour front benches—

Grant Robertson: What Michael Joseph Savage would hate, Sam, is a Government that sold 50,000 State houses.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: —like Mr Robertson—have for hard-working New Zealand families. I have seen it in my own electorate of Maungakiekie and in Tamaki where our National Government has had to transform the local housing stock to make it warmer, cleaner, and larger, for those in need, Mr Robertson. The Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart programme has provided insulation for over 230,000 families. I see that the Hon Gerry Brownlee is here. He was instrumental in improving the lives of those families across this country and this Budget improves the lives of 40,000 more. You cannot trust Labour on housing—[Interruption]—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: —just like you cannot trust Labour on the economy.

In 2005, and the Speaker knows it, the Labour Party was talking about sustainable housing supply, affordability, and housing quality, yet it did nothing. It issued reports, it had a bunch of meetings, a couple of hui, workshops, and policy discussions, and all the time that Grant Robertson, Jacinda Ardern, and Chris Hipkins were merrily skipping around the Beehive, tugging at the apron strings of “Mother Helen”, real New Zealanders were hurting, real New Zealanders wanted some action, and real New Zealanders got nothing.

Real New Zealanders wanted a Government that cared about the issues that mattered to them. They got that in 2008 when they installed this pragmatic, stable, and forward-looking National Government. National has a busy programme of housing policies that will make a real difference to New Zealanders. We are addressing the root causes, as the Minister alluded to, and freeing up land supply through this bill. We are launching an inquiry into building materials and construction costs, and substantive changes to the Resource Management Act are coming up. We are working on development levies and better coordination of core infrastructure.

We cannot say the same about the Labour Party. It has come up with this gimmick of a policy called KiwiBuild—100,000 homes in 10 years, all at the plum price of $300,000 per home. Well, Mr Twyford says that we are spooked by that, but what New Zealanders are really asking is how the Labour-Green plan will be able to build a house in Auckland for $300,000 when the average land price alone is $350,000. [Interruption] What are they going to put on these sections, Mr Twyford? A tent? Maybe one of those playhouses from Toyworld.

With respect, Labour members’ slogans will not meet the needs of real New Zealanders looking for real homes. Unless they address the issue of land supply, which this bill does, their policy, like many of their policies, will be consigned to the depths of the nearest recycling bin. On the other hand our Government is clearly working with the Auckland Council so that we can address land supply and housing affordability issues, and get that across the line in the near future. Our Minister has laid out our expectations for the housing sector, and we are not ashamed to be ambitious but also realistic.

What the Productivity Commission talked about in its report are current land restrictions, charging for infrastructure, and looking at excessive building costs and low productivity. The International Monetary Fund, Treasury, and the Reserve Bank have all said so much, and that is why we are acting right now. This Government stands on its record. The Budget delivers more for all New Zealanders, ensuring a bolder, brighter, and better future. This bill will deliver New Zealand’s largest city with the opportunity to meet the housing needs of thousands of families who need affordable housing. I commend this bill to the House.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): That was a shabby speech from Sam Lotu-Iiga, because his side of the House has to take some responsibility for turfing out 13,000 households from State housing in the 1990s. That is what Sam Lotu-Iiga’s National Government did. In the 1990s people lost their homes under National—13,000 State houses were sold off, and it takes years and years, Mr Lotu-Iiga, to come back from that kind of shabby policy. So do not lecture this side of the House on Michael Joseph Savage’s legacy. What Michael Joseph Savage stood for was actually looking after people, not turfing out people into the street like National has a record of. This party on this side of the House stands proudly on its record on social housing. That side of the House has no idea whatsoever about what social housing is about, and we will not be lectured by Mr Lotu-Iiga and his colleagues on that.

Once again, National has come to this House with a programme of tinkering to try to solve a housing crisis, because that is what this is about. Yes, availability of land is an issue, but availability of land is only one small aspect. It will not deal with the greatest element of the housing crisis and the issue that the National Government should be focused on in this legislation today, and that is the affordability of housing. Mr Lotu-Iiga and his colleagues think that a $700,000 home, 1 hour’s drive from the Auckland central business district, represents affordable housing. That is what Mr Lotu-Iiga and National believe, and that is wrong. There is nothing in this piece of legislation that will really address the underlying issues around affordability of housing, because this Government is not prepared to roll its sleeves up and ensure that there are houses being built. That is what Labour’s KiwiBuild policy is about. It is about actually rolling up our sleeves and saying: “We’ll get alongside construction companies and we’ll make sure those affordable homes are being built.”

All this legislation does—all this legislation does—is set up some targets. It does not ensure at any point that there will be affordable housing. All it says is that the land will be there. It does not say anything about affordable housing. Labour has the plan that says we will actually get that affordable housing. This simply does not go there.

Melissa Lee: How?

GRANT ROBERTSON: They, on that side of the House, ask how. It is really simple, for my National Party colleagues. We build houses—10,000 houses a year in the affordable frame. Melissa Lee, answer me this. Is a $700,000 house affordable?

Melissa Lee: The average price is $350,000 for a section.

GRANT ROBERTSON: A $700,000 house is affordable. Yes, she does believe that a $700,000 house in Auckland, an hour from the central business district, is affordable. It might be affordable for Melissa Lee, but it is not affordable for most Aucklanders, and that is what is missing from this piece of legislation. It is very important to focus on the fact that what this does is set up special housing areas that will give consideration to affordable housing. [Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I have a member on my left and a member on my right who are interjecting on each other and they do not have the floor. It is totally out of order and disrespectful to the person speaking.

GRANT ROBERTSON: It is important to note that what is set up under this legislation, under the accords in the special housing areas, is a process that will give consideration to affordable housing. It will not actually ensure that affordable housing is built; it will simply give consideration, and that is typical of the tinkering. There is a lot of talk about giving consideration to things in this Budget. National is going to give consideration to warrants of fitness for rental housing. It does not think it will actually do it; it is just going to think about it. This is the Budget about thinking, not about doing, when it comes to housing. We actually need warrants of fitness for rental housing across the board. It may come as a shock to the National Party to learn that only 20 percent of children in poverty live in State housing. Eighty percent of children living in poverty live in private rentals, and that is not covered at all by this.

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Wait for the next bill.

GRANT ROBERTSON: We certainly will be talking about it in the next bill. This bill, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, does enable, once an accord is developed between central government and local government, a process to go in place that will see some fast tracking and some streamlining of processes within the Resource Management Act.

We on this side of the House are saying that we are prepared to see this bill go to the Social Services Committee so that we can debate those issues. But I give fair warning. Sending a bill of this nature to a select committee for a few weeks is completely unacceptable. If the Government is going to propose major changes to the Resource Management Act, to the way that the Resource Management Act is implemented when it comes to land, we need to know that that has been thoroughly debated. Sending it off for a few weeks will not make that happen. There may well be improvements that can be agreed on between central government and local government in this area, but we are not going to be able to give that adequate consideration without a proper select committee process.

When we look at the relevant bit of the legislation that covers this, what we discover is that under this bill the rights of appeal, when there is a special housing area established, will be limited to developments of four or more storeys. That fits in with elements of the Auckland Unitary Plan, and it is quite clear that the Government has finally got around to working out that it should actually do something to facilitate the implementation of the Auckland Unitary Plan. But bear in mind that this legislation will now cover the whole of New Zealand. It is not just about Auckland any more. Therefore, if we are going to be deciding that the limit of four storeys or more is the relevant limit, we actually need to think about what that means in other parts of New Zealand. So it is all very well to propose to this House these changes when they are based on what happens in Auckland, but that is exactly why we need a full and proper select committee process, so that we can actually analyse how this will have impact on the rest of the country. The proposal from the National Government today is to restrict that select committee process to a few weeks, up to the end of July, and I do not believe that that is acceptable at all.

The fact is that land supply is only one part of the equation, and if National had a fully comprehensive housing policy that it was bringing to this Parliament, it would talk about far more than this. Mr Lotu-Iiga cannot rely on the next bill, because that does not do it, either. It does not do it, either, because the National Party has been in denial about housing from the moment it came into office. The Government has finally caught up with the fact that there is a housing crisis. It has finally caught up with it after house prices have gone up by 36 percent in the time that this party has been in office—36 percent. But for the last few years all we have heard from John Key is that there is no housing crisis, and along the way people in Auckland have been priced further and further out of the housing market. To come to this House with a bill that tinkers around and says: “Yes, we’ll put some things in place that might allow there to be more development in Auckland.” is not enough to make sure that we address that housing crisis.

If National was serious about addressing the housing crisis, it would add to this a process of how to build more affordable homes. It would put into place a capital gains tax, which members on that side of the House have refused to acknowledge is an important part of dealing with the housing crisis. They cannot see why all but two developed countries in the world have a capital gains tax, but, apparently, it is a terrible, terrible thing for New Zealand to consider. Taxing capital, taxing the National Party’s mates—that would be a terrible thing to consider. A capital gains tax is an important part of a good, sustainable housing policy.

The housing market has failed. Labour has recognised that with our KiwiBuild policy. National has come to the party very late with a bill here that will address one aspect of the problem of housing in Auckland—one aspect of the problem of housing across New Zealand. This is a bill that needs thorough debate. We are prepared to send it to a select committee because we believe it needs to be analysed. We are prepared to send it to the select committee because the Government has finally caught up with the needs of Auckland and the fact that parts of the Auckland Unitary Plan need to be put in place. But we send it there with significant reservation, because this bill changes important aspects of the process of resource management approval. We want to have a thorough debate about those processes. Our support for this bill is not guaranteed past the select committee consideration, and the Government needs to give serious attention to a proper select committee process so that we can put in place a proper affordable housing policy. This bill falls well short of the mark of the kind of housing bill that should be coming to this House.

HOLLY WALKER (Green): Well, I guess we can start on a good point, and that is it is good to see that the Government has finally realised there is a housing crisis going on in New Zealand. It has taken it long enough, but it has cottoned on, and it has cottoned on to the fact that that crisis is particularly apparent in Auckland. We have known for some time, and we have been saying in this House for some time, that Auckland needs approximately 13,000 new buildings—new homes—to be consented and built each year in order to keep up with the growth and the population change and the demand for housing in Auckland, and yet over the last several years the average has been between only 3,000 and 4,000 new homes built each year. That is nowhere near enough to keep pace with the demand for housing in Auckland, and that has created a crisis.

It means that homeownership is increasingly out of reach for young New Zealanders and first-home buyers. Just last week we had reported the staggering news that the average house price in Auckland is $735,000, which is certainly a pretty high bar for your first-home buyers. That is up by 12 percent over the last year.

The Minister of Housing, when he spoke earlier in this debate, talked about interest rates. He said that when interest rates are low, house prices are low, and he was very proud to be part of a Government that had presided over very low interest rates, and yet the average house price in Auckland has increased by 12 percent in the last year. It is now $735,000 and it is forecast to reach $1 million in the next 3 to 4 years—$1 million will be the average house price in Auckland. This is a crisis situation and the Government has finally cottoned on. This bill, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, is its attempt to do something about it.

We have been saying for a long time that the solution to this crisis is to increase the supply of housing. The Government has finally cottoned on and it is at least attempting to do something about the supply side in this bill. This bill, indeed, is the Government’s answer to the lack of supply of affordable housing. The first thing I think we have to say about this bill is that it is nowhere near enough, and it never will be enough without a dedicated Government house-building programme and houses that are set aside for progressive ownership by young families and first-home buyers, to give them a foothold on the property ladder. Unless this bill incorporated something like that, it could never be enough to address the urgent supply crisis that we have.

The Green Party will oppose this bill at its first reading, but we will listen carefully and contribute constructively to the debate at the Social Services Committee with an open mind. But with the limited time that we have had to consider this bill, we cannot support it at its first reading, because it raises a number of significant red flags for us. The first of those is that it is modelled, as the Minister said in his speech, on the Hobsonville model. I thought we could perhaps go into that a little bit, because, in my submission, the Hobsonville model is hardly the model you would want to roll out across Auckland and across the country for the provision of genuinely affordable housing. It could have been when it was first established. Indeed, it probably was the model that you would want to roll out, because when it was first initiated it was a mandated mix of social, affordable, and private housing developments with concurrent community development. It was a groundbreaking development, and it was a real experiment in creating both affordable homes and a livable neighbourhood in the same area.

But, tragically, this Government axed the social housing component of the Hobsonville development when it came in. In fact, the local MP in that electorate—one John Key—said when he announced that decision that it would be “economic vandalism” to have State houses and, presumably, their riff-raff tenants in such a nice area as Hobsonville. So—

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: He didn’t say that.

HOLLY WALKER: He did. He said that it would be “economic vandalism” to have State housing in Hobsonville. Look it up. Not only did National axe the social housing component but also it axed the Gateway Housing Assistance loan scheme after only 17 families had used it to buy their first affordable home in Hobsonville. All that is left, which is a quota provision for so-called affordable housing, puts that affordable housing into two brackets. The first bracket starts at $400,000, and the second, and larger, bracket of affordable housing starts at $485,000. I would challenge anyone on the Government benches to go and ask a family in Auckland on the average income who are renting and hoping to buy their first house whether $485,000 is affordable for them to buy their first home. They would laugh you out of their overpriced, low-quality, rental property. They would laugh you out of their rental property, because $485,000 might be affordable for some of those on the Government benches, but it is not affordable for families on the average income who are looking to buy their first home.

As Phil Twyford pointed out in his contribution earlier, there is absolutely no requirement in this bill that the new special housing areas that it creates will have to guarantee the provision of affordable housing, even using that Hobsonville Point definition of affordable. They will merely have to give consideration to the provision of affordable housing, and they may well go on and actually create housing developments that have no affordable housing component, at all. There is absolutely no guarantee that this radical trumping of the Resource Management Act process that this bill contains will actually produce any more affordable housing for Aucklanders or for anyone else in the country.

The second big red flag for the Green Party with this bill is the powers that it grants to the Government to overrule and override local councils’ planning processes in these new special housing areas. We know that this bill is prompted largely by the crisis in Auckland and we know that it is based on the Auckland Housing Accord, which was reached last week between Len Brown, the Mayor of Auckland, and Nick Smith, the Minister of Housing. In the case of Auckland, the Government and the council have, indeed, agreed on the terms of the accord, although, I might add, not without some incredibly heavy-handed tactics by the Minister to begin with. But they got there in the end, and they have now committed to work together to implement the housing accord that they have agreed on.

But this bill does not apply just to Auckland. In fact, although Auckland is the only region specified in the schedule to the bill for now, there is the provision that other regions of the country can be added later on based on data from Demographia and Roost Mortgage Brokers about affordability of housing in those areas. Based on that data, we might be looking at areas like Waikato, the Bay of Plenty, Nelson, Christchurch, and Wellington, which could be some of the next areas to have a special housing area. But there is no requirement that the Government reach an accord with the councils in those areas before it goes ahead and sets up special housing areas. There is no requirement that the Government works collaboratively with those councils. There is a requirement that it tries to reach an accord with them, but if the Government cannot, it can just unilaterally say: “Well, we tried, but we couldn’t reach an accord with the council. But we think there needs to be a special housing area in this area and we are just going to do it anyway.”

In that situation, the bill grants considerable powers to the Government to override local planning processes if it cannot reach an accord with those councils. The Government can appoint the panel that will make decisions about the developments in those social housing areas. It can essentially control the process and override local democracy. There are incredibly Draconian amounts of power that the Government can take in that situation, if it tried and failed to reach a housing accord in one of these other regions. I suppose we should not be particularly surprised by that, given that this is this Government’s modus operandi and we need only look at Christchurch City Council and the former Environment Canterbury to see what the Government thinks about local democracy and the credence that it gives to the local decision makers. So if I was in Christchurch, where, indeed, the housing crisis is almost as bad as Auckland’s, I would be very, very worried about what the Government was going to come in and do to my city, under this bill.

We could perhaps have supported legislation to set up special housing areas in areas where a genuine accord had been reached by the Government and the council working collaboratively together, but we cannot support the Government coming in over the top and running the process in the way that this bill allows. And there is another risk with special housing areas, because since there are no quotas on affordable housing and there is no emphasis on in-fill and brownfield development, it is a potential recipe for sprawl. We have seen this Government’s obsession with land supply and opening up the urban fringe and rural land for housing developments, which does not actually increase affordability. Indeed, with the transport and infrastructure costs, it can be a real cost to families.

So there are a number of red flags for the Green Party in this legislation. We cannot support it at first reading. We will engage constructively and collaboratively at the select committee, but with those red flags about affordability, about the Government’s powers to override local councils, and the recipe for sprawl that it could potentially represent, we cannot support this legislation.

MELISSA LEE (National): Ahn nyung ha se yo, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is a great pleasure to rise in support of this Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. Before I begin, though, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Minister of Finance, the Hon Bill English, who has delivered a magnificent Budget—a Budget that builds momentum for a brighter future for all New Zealanders.

Moving on to the bill. As I get into the bill I would like to give a piece of advice to Ms Holly Walker, who just sat down. People who want to get into their first home do not actually pay median house prices. Often, they buy at the bottom of the market, which is affordable. When you look at the websites that actually sell houses, you can buy plenty of houses—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Order!

MELISSA LEE: Sorry—members and people can buy lots of houses that are priced well under $400,000.

Too many New Zealanders, however, have to spend too much of their income on purchasing their ultimate Kiwi dream. Owning their own home—the piece of land with the house on it—has been a dream for Kiwis for many, many years. This situation is bad for people who have these dreams, because in Auckland, as many members have said, we actually do have a crisis and it is a given that having high housing costs means that New Zealanders owe more. The rising house prices affect interest rates and the exchange rate. The lack of housing—an affordable house at a cost people can afford—will mean more demand for State housing assistance as well.

The situation is obviously not ideal. This National-led Government is doing something about it, unlike the empty promises of the Labour Party claiming it will build 100,000 homes in Auckland for under $300,000, which is a complete lie because an average section in Auckland costs roughly around $350,000.

Does Grant Robertson know how to build a house? Does he actually know that you have to purchase a section to build the house on top of it? Does he know that it actually costs money to purchase the materials required for building that house? Does he know that the tools for building, the hammers, in fact cost a lot more than the $300,000 that that party promises New Zealanders it can deliver? I say to Labour: stop misleading the good people of New Zealand who desperately want to dream about getting into their dream home. Stop misleading them, because that is totally, totally unfair, and it is a lie.

The National Government, however, is doing something about house prices. We are going to improve the affordability of homes. This bill provides for a special Auckland housing accord that sets a target over 3 years of 39,000 new homes being consented to. This is a greater number than the 3,600 homes currently being consented to each year. The accord will allow for greenfield development to be consented to in 6 months instead of 3 years, as it is currently. This accord is a great example of how Government can work collaboratively with councils to make housing available.

Hon Simon Bridges: That’s right.

MELISSA LEE: That’s right, Simon. It is collaboration. This bill will allow the same success to be repeated in other areas, other centres, around New Zealand. Up and down the country this can actually be repeated.

The Productivity Commission identified land supply as one of the key areas that constrains housing development. It is the view of this Government that when five key areas are targeted, we will improve and achieve affordability of the homes that Kiwi dreams are built on. The five key areas are land supply, material costs, infrastructure, productivity in the construction sector, and compliance costs, and we are dealing with these five sectors. We are delivering for New Zealand.

This bill will speed up the provision of new housing in areas where housing is least affordable. Faster approvals will help meet demand and help to put out a bit of the fire in the overheated housing market in Auckland, and that has to be a good thing. I commend this bill.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First considers that there is some good—and some bad—in the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, but we think it is far too little and we think it is far too late. The basic problem with it, of course, is that it is reactive to a huge problem that has been suddenly realised—just like a light going on for the National Government. National is impulsive. Like a possum in the headlights, it knows it has to move. It is likely to move the wrong way, and it is probably moving too late.

The bill is based on simple expediency and is ideological, rather than balanced, in its approach. It favours developers’ agendas and sidelines local democracy. It is ad hoc rather than strategic. It is careless about planning documents and substitutes quick-fix, band-aid solutions. It is short term, not the enduring, long-term plan that New Zealand needs. It is superficial, rather than well considered, and it is incomplete and inadequate, rather than the comprehensive plan we need to solve the housing crisis. And it is a housing crisis in New Zealand at this time. Overall this Government is a bit like the crew of a sinking ship all racing to find a lifeboat, instead of actually trying to save the ship itself.

I can say to you already that right now, as we speak, profiteers are buying up land that might be used under the new bill’s provisions. They are out there right now, having heard what was said in this Budget, trying to buy up as much land as they can. It will be a boom time, especially for Chinese investors and other quick-fix, quick-dollar merchants.

But there is some good in the bill—[Interruption]—and if those people opposite want to know what it is, because so far they do not even seem to know their own bill, then perhaps they should spend more time listening than caterwauling from the other benches. New Zealand First would support special housing areas as a concept, but we would do so only on the basis of a genuine accord with local government, we would do so only with appropriate streamlining, and we would do so only within appropriate, specified time frames for consents. So far we do not see anything in this bill, or in anything that members opposite have said, that would give us any real comfort about those things.

New Zealand First would oppose the general non-notification approach as set out. Our concerns, especially with that, would be the loss of local democracy, with too much power given to developers, and the fact that it would lead to ticky-tacky developments, which are not the quality developments for housing that New Zealand needs. We do not see any reference or intention to try to integrate these areas into transport, health, and other plans, and what New Zealand fundamentally needs is a much more integrated policy framework for these things.

New Zealand First would also oppose the width of the proposals concerning plan changes. We think these are too likely to completely compromise district plans, and the proposal needs to be somewhat more limited. They need to be consistent with plan objectives, and in this, coming from Christchurch, I would have to say that we should be learning from Christchurch’s experience. There are far too many developments there for housing in inappropriate areas—housing built on areas that we all knew were subject to liquefaction in an earthquake, subject to sea level rise, and subject to flooding. The developments should not have gone on in those places. So it is very important that these sorts of proposals for special housing areas should be consistent with the objectives in district plans, otherwise we are going to entrench all the mistakes that we saw happening in Christchurch.

We would support the Government’s proposals for the go-it-alone provision, enabling it to issue its own consents where an agreement has not been reached, but we think also that that proposal needs to be more limited. Again, there needs to be a requirement for consistency with the objectives of the district plan. We do think that it should require notification where the plan itself had required that.

Overall, we think that we need to balance speed—and we know that this is an urgent issue—with quality, because that is just as important a consideration. We are not seeing much of an assurance in this bill or in anything that the National members have said that would address those issues.

Another issue is what the Government is not doing, and there is plenty. The first question I would ask is how this plan would help homeowners seeking their first home. How would it help low-income earners approach the problem of buying a new home or finding a section? How would it help them to provide the deposit that is necessary, and how would it then help them, even if they could find a deposit, to finance a new home in this day and age? The answer is that there is actually nothing in this bill, or in the Budget or in the Government’s proposals, that anything like adequately addresses those issues.

The Government’s approach is really a half-baked one. It addresses only availability, and only in a limited way. It does not address affordability, really, at all. It is silent on affordability. Supply alone will not result in solving the affordability issue. That is a separate issue, which needs special consideration.

Another point is how we fix the problem of migrants arriving in this country under the first tier of the parent category, with their half a million dollars, buying up land and homes in Auckland. Nothing has been said about that. People in Auckland know that that is a major problem. The Government is also silent about that issue. New Zealand First would put a stop to that, and that is what we want to see this Government do, too.

We do not have only criticisms. New Zealand First also has comprehensive plans for housing, and our first objective is to simply see that homes are within the reach of all in New Zealand. We believe that there should be a land bank—land actually purchased by the Government to make it available for housing in appropriate areas in New Zealand. We want to see long-term agreements for sale and purchase made available to people so that they can buy a section without having to come up with the full capital cost upfront. They can then pay it off over time, and they can still borrow, in that case, to build a home on the section.

We also think there needs to be a comprehensive New Zealand housing strategy that addresses not only availability and affordability. We want to see things like compulsory insurance, quality housing provisions such as earthquake-proofing, leak-proofing, insulation, and a whole range of other issues to be incorporated in such a strategy.

In the end, New Zealand First will support the bill, but only to refer it to the select committee. We think that there is much to be fixed in the bill. If we can see that that is looked at seriously by the Government and we can fix many of the problems in it, then New Zealand First will certainly consider supporting the bill further. But, as it stands, it would not be supportable, so New Zealand First will support it only to the select committee stage at this point.

Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei): I proudly stand and support the Hon Nick Smith on the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, because he has brought to us a comprehensive solution to housing here in this legislation. He is not a man of silver bullets, like the Labour Party—that is what it comes up with. It always comes up with these silver bullets.

We in the National Government have understood that there is a range of things that need to be done to address the housing pressures that we have. No. 1 is to upgrade the houses that we have already got. I do not know why the Labour Party in the 9 years it was in Government did not insulate all State houses. It was pointing around to private landlords saying: “You should upgrade all your houses. You rent poor-quality houses out to people.”, and yet the Government’s own 70,000 State houses under Labour were not even insulated. This Minister of Housing, Nick Smith, will finish insulating every State house across this country that can be insulated by the end of the year. We are upgrading all the State houses.

The Resource Management Act changes and the Building Act changes are covered under No. 2. Cutting red tape—very important.

Our third strategy is having consistently low interest rates. I remember the days of Labour during the 2000s, when interest rates reached 7 percent, 8 percent, 9 percent, and 10 percent. With interest rates at 10 percent, if you had a mortgage of $300,000, that was $30,000 a year in interest. Under National, interest rates are at 5 percent and 6 percent. Every 1 percent in interest rates on a $300,000 mortgage is $3,000 a year you keep in your back pocket. The Labour Party does not understand that mortgage rates matter. It would manage an economy that would see 8 percent, 9 percent, or 10 percent mortgage rates, and that is a disgrace.

Our No. 4 strategy is take-home pay. The Labour Party would tax you. You would have less take-home pay. You would not be able to sustain a mortgage. The Labour Party does not understand.

And now, the Hon Nick Smith is going to address the issue of land supply through housing accords and the preference to partner with councils to improve housing affordability. Why partner with councils? Because councils matter and local community opinion matters. But we say this: if necessary, the Government will intervene in local authority areas to make sure that land supply is freed, if no one does anything. If everyone twiddles their thumbs in the way that the Labour Government did for 9 years, we will step in.

The Auckland Council will be the first council that we do a deal with. We have already discussed that with the council. Fortunately, the Labour Opposition has been contacted by the Auckland Council, which said: “Vote for this”, and it has subdued itself.

Hon Member: Len Brown.

Hon PHIL HEATLEY: Len Brown has made the call—

Hon Member: Deputy leader—I think he’s deputy leader of them.

Hon PHIL HEATLEY: —Len Brown, the “deputy leader of the Labour Party”, has made the call—and we are absolutely delighted that we are going to be in an accord with the Auckland Council to free up more land for housing.

Can I say this: the Labour Party is against freeing up land for more housing. It is all about density. Then we have the extreme people on the right, who are all about opening up farmland and all the rest. The National Government is saying: “We need a balance. We need to intensify land that is already in housing, and we also need new land for housing.” It is a balanced approach. Greenfields and brownfields—that is our approach.

Lastly, can I compare that with the Labour Party housing policy. This is Labour’s policy: “Michael Joseph Savage built a bunch of State houses 50 years ago, so we’ve got credibility.” Well, I say to the Labour Party that it would be a sad day if my son, Bryn, was to go for his first job and, when he was asked: “Why should we employ you?”, he said: “Because my great-great-grandfather was a good guy.”, and the employer said: “But what have you done?”, and he answered—like the Labour members would—“Nothing, but Michael Joseph Savage 40 or 50 years ago built a bunch of State houses.” Michael Joseph Savage would be turning in his grave to know that they did not even insulate those State houses during the 9 years they were in Government. What a disgrace.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): Listening to that last speaker, Phil Heatley, who has just resumed his seat, makes me want to spit. Quite frankly, Mr Heatley had 4 years to start to care about housing affordability, and he did not. This Government has now presented its fifth Budget in a row, and this is the first time—the first time in five Budgets—it has thought to talk about housing affordability. And why? Because it has been spooked by our policy. It has been spooked by the offer of supply. That Minister who has just left the Chamber—that Minister—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! [Interruption] Order! The member knows that we cannot refer to the absence of members.

Hon MARYAN STREET: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It took them a long time to respond to that, did it not? But the Minister of Housing, as he is now, is so out of touch with housing needs that he does not even know about a woman with five children living in a garage in his own electorate—in his own electorate. So the reason that woman now has a Housing New Zealand house is that I made a fuss of it and made it a front-page news item. Within a day she had a State house. That is not about the provision of social housing; that is about a Minister being embarrassed that he does not even know the state of homelessness in his own electorate.

We have Chris Tremain, the real estate agent from Napier, sitting over there saying: “People don’t buy houses at the average of the market.” The point is, when they are first-home buyers and they live in Auckland, they cannot afford even the bottom of the market. They cannot afford the bottom of the Auckland housing market. If your average is sitting at $735,000, the bottom of the market is not going to be affordable, either.

First of all, the thing that the Minister and his predecessor have failed for the last 5 years to do is acknowledge that there is a housing affordability crisis. There was a housing affordability crisis in 2007, when I became the Minister of Housing. Housing affordability was a huge problem because of the inflated expectations and borrowing that people had on the back of the wide boys who support the National Party. We know that that housing bubble collapsed—that housing bubble collapsed. We know what the history of that was, and we know of the increase in mortgagee sales we have seen since then.

We brought in a piece of legislation that was much more meaningful than the wishy-washy accord with local bodies that the Government is proposing in this legislation, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. I brought in a piece of legislation that gave local authorities the legal tool in their tool kit to apply pressure on developers to make 10 percent of any residential development affordable housing in exchange for certain trade-offs, such as waiving development levies. That was a voluntary piece of legislation. It should, according to some arguments, have been compulsory, but in the end it was a voluntary piece of legislation. But it was much better than this piece of nonsense, which says that qualifying developments “may” be required to include—“may” be required; I can hear them crying—affordable housing or may “give consideration” to the provision of affordable housing. These people, who do not know the reality of most people’s lives, do not know it. [Interruption] And do not tell me, Mr Tremain, that you do—Mr Tremain, who owns 20 properties. I do not believe that he understands that there is a housing shortage and a housing problem.

This piece of legislation has come about simply because the National Government has been spooked by what has turned out to be a very popular policy.

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Spooked?

Phil Twyford: OK—panicked, then.

Hon MARYAN STREET: All right, “panicked” will do. There are two things that are important in addressing housing affordability, amongst the things that the members opposite talk about; that is quite right, all of those things are important. But why, then, did this Government, on coming into power in 2008, repeal the legislation that allowed local bodies to get into conversations with developers and provide affordable housing? Why did it axe that legislation? Why did it axe the shared equity scheme that would have allowed people to buy their first home, by freeing up State-owned, Crown-owned, land? By freeing up Crown-owned land, we were offering people the property, which stayed in the ownership of the State, and they could buy the house. Over time, as the circumstances of that family improved, they could buy the Crown out—they could buy the Crown out. The programme was axed by this Government.

But I have to say, in addition to axing good legislation and good programmes—including the Welcome Home Loan programme, which saw thousands and thousands of people get into their first home once the KiwiSaver limit had been reached. They were able to maximise their contributions and have that matched by the Government, and then they were able to get into their first home. No, that programme was cut, as well. So not only was the Government cutting programmes and repealing good, constructive legislation but also it then chose to axe its own programme, the Gateway Housing Assistance programme, which was meant to assist people—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. Honourable members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the evening meal.

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

Hon MARYAN STREET: Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Before the dinner break, I was railing against this Government’s Budget, being its fifth Budget but only its first Budget to consider affordable housing. The reason for that is that the Government has taken fright, even 18 months out from the next election, because the Labour Party has announced a constructive solution to housing affordability that people have responded to very warmly. Because of that, the Government has been spooked into action.

In fact, I would be grateful if the Government had been spooked into action, but all it has got here in this bill is an accord that it can run with local authorities, or the Auckland Council, that says that qualifying developments, building developments, may be required to include affordable housing, or may give consideration to affordable housing. If this Government cared about housing affordability, why did it axe the previously existing legislation, which was stronger than this and also addressed the issue of local authorities and their ability to provide affordable housing? Why, if it cares suddenly about affordable housing, did it axe Labour’s shared equity scheme? Why, if it cares about affordable housing, did it scale back the Welcome Home Loan programme? Why, if it cares about affordable housing, has it axed its own Gateway Housing Assistance programme?

Why, if it cares about affordable housing, did it axe the Hobsonville project? The Hobsonville project was to deliver 3,000 houses, of which only 500 would have been social housing, 500 of which would have been modest, affordable houses for first-home buyers, and the other 2,000—how many do they want—would have been for private purchase. There could have been a range of houses of different kinds of affordability built there. But, no, the Prime Minister said: “No State houses in my backyard.” He called it “economic vandalism”.

This Government has come very late to the stage of providing affordable housing. It says that we need to expand the metropolitan urban limits and that we also need to have more dense housing. Well, that has been known for the last 5 years. That has been on the programme for the last 5 years. Why has the Government just awoken to it now?

We will support this bill in its first reading, only because we care about affordable housing, not because we think this bill provides any answers. The other reason I want it to go to a select committee is that it has Resource Management Act implications, and I do not trust this Government where the Resource Management Act is concerned. It deserves close scrutiny. Thank you.

ALFRED NGARO (National): Kia orana. I stand and rise and am proud to take a call on the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill in its first reading. The intent of this bill is very clear. It is about Government, it is about councils, and it is about streamlining a consenting process for new housing developments. That is the intent of this bill. That is the sense. This is legislation that will apply for 3 years. The first accord has been signed by Auckland. That should make Mr Twyford happy, but it does not. It does not make him happy. Why? Because it was signed by Mr Brown himself, who is a member of the Labour Party. What is really quite clear is that what this does for Auckland is ensure that it sets a target of 39,000 homes consented over 3 years—far better than the current arrangement, which is 3,600 homes each year.

We have heard a lot of rhetoric. We have heard a lot of calls asking where the plan is. We know that in order for housing development to happen, we need to focus on five key areas. The first area is around land supply—land supply.

Hon Maryan Street: I know.

ALFRED NGARO: So we know about that. But what you do not know—what you do not know, Mrs Street—is this—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I do know.

ALFRED NGARO: In your place of Nelson—we are talking about the place of Auckland. Let us take the area of Mr Twyford, OK? Let us talk about land supply. The talk is that it is unaffordable. Well, let us take this: on here, right over here now, you can go on to TradeMe, into the property section, and you can purchase a place in Vitex Lane, which is in Waitakere, behind the Waitematā rugby club, with three bedrooms, one bathroom, and it costs $265,000.

Here is the rhetoric. They take the average in Auckland, which is what? Does anybody know on the other side? Let me just tell you that $675,000 is the average. That is correct. But the thing is that as first-home buyers you do not buy at the average price. You buy a home at the entry point. Many of us who have worked hard have done that. Our first home that we bought was not $675,000; it was probably what it really is right here: $265,000, three bedrooms, and in Waitakere. Yes, Mr Twyford, you would know about that. Here, this is really clear. By providing for the issue around land supply, you enter in at $400,000. What that means is that others can then go on and maybe buy a $600,000 home. What does that do? It provides other opportunities for others to enter into the market. That is what it does.

Here is the other thing that is really important: material costs. I have another question for the other side: what is the average cost of building per square metre in New Zealand at the moment? Do we know? Do we know? No, we do not. Why? I will tell you what, if I were to cross to the Greens, to the 49 percent members, they would be able to tell us. I know Jan Logie would be able to tell us. She knows because the Greens have got a housing policy that everyone is listening to at the moment. The average cost per square metre is $1,700. We know that is unaffordable. We know that is unaffordable, hence the reason that the second part of the plan is to work on the cost of building. The third part of the plan is around infrastructure. The fourth part of the plan is productivity and construction in the sector. Compliance cost is the big issue. We know that is the big issue, hence the reason why this accord is working.

But those out there who are listening should not be afraid. This is not about the big Government coming along to take over. What it is saying is that where the council cannot come to an agreement, where the accord is not possible, the Government will then come in to ensure that the affordability, the accessibility to homes, is there as well. [Interruption] It is not the scaremongering of the other side. It is, No. 1, whether it is accessible to buy and affordable. Yes, at $265,000 you can buy your first home. I know families and I know people who have done that. Secondly, we are reducing material costs. Why? Because at $1,700 per square metre, it is just not affordable.

This bill is addressing the key issues around affordability. It is a plan. But we excuse the other side. You have only just received the bill, so you have not actually read it. Instead, you just keep talking about one issue. This is a great bill. We look forward to the select committee stage, to having the debate, and to sitting down with people who actually know about building and planning and about making a difference for our communities. I commend this bill to the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Before I call the next speaker I just inform members that this is a split call. The member speaking will get a 1-minute bell.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour): Alfred Ngaro, the member who has just resumed his seat, found one affordable house in Auckland, so now there is no housing crisis in Auckland. Apparently there is no housing crisis because he went on TradeMe and found one house that he thought poorer families could afford. So we do not need to do anything—problem solved. That probably explains why we do not see more action from this Government on affordable housing. Government members do not believe that there is a housing crisis, because their voters can afford to buy houses in Auckland and around the country, so they really do not care about the rest of New Zealand, who are struggling to get into their first homes.

We had an extraordinary performance from the former Minister of Housing, Phil Heatley, before the dinner break. We all love the court jester routine, we really do, but I am afraid I need to correct some of the things that Mr Heatley said. We spent 9 years undoing the damage of the 1990s National Government. We rebuilt 9,000 State houses when that lot sold 14,000. They did no maintenance the entire time they were in Government. We started that maintenance programme up again. We managed to go a long way to repairing the damage of the 1990s National Government.

So what did the National Government do when it came in? When it came into Government we had the global financial crisis. A sensible thing would have been to have housing as a major part of an economic stimulus package. That is what Australia did. It had $5 billion for housing. It kept people in work. It kept income tax flowing. It kept GST flowing, and it built a resource that it was desperately short of, just like New Zealand was.

What did National do? Nothing. It repealed Labour’s affordable housing bill. That was one of the first things it did. It got rid of Labour’s shared equity scheme, because of low uptake, when the housing Minister Phil Heatley instructed Housing New Zealand not to advertise it. He said: “Don’t tell anyone about the shared equity programme.”, and then National was surprised when there was low uptake. We tend to take it for granted that schemes are more successful when people know they exist, but apparently that is not obvious to National.

As my colleague said, there should be 500 affordable homes and 500 State houses going into Hobsonville, out of 3,000. There is no social housing because the Prime Minister of this country, who trades on his State house upbringing every chance he gets, shamefully said there should not be State housing in Hobsonville because it is economic vandalism to have poor families living on sections that have sea views—because, God forbid, poor children get to look at the ocean as well. That is our Prime Minister. How many affordable houses have there been? A handful, because the National—

Hon Maryan Street: 17.

MOANA MACKEY: Seventeen—seventeen when we promised 500.

Hon Maryan Street: And they’re not affordable.

MOANA MACKEY: They are not affordable because they were done through the Government’s Gateway Housing Assistance scheme. The wonderful thing about the Gateway Housing Assistance scheme is that the only people who could afford to access it were people who could afford a market home on the day that they entered into the scheme. So it was an affordable housing scheme for people who could already buy a house in Auckland. I know a young woman who is one of those 17 people. The only reason she got into that Gateway Housing Assistance scheme in the Hobsonville development was that her parents put their house up as collateral against the loan. That is not an affordable housing scheme, it is an embarrassment for the Government.

We had the Kāinga Whenua scheme for Māori housing where the former Minister of Housing Phil Heatley got up and said he had fixed the Māori housing problem—he had fixed it—and the scheme was going great guns. The problem was that the scheme had not actually started yet. When it did start, no one qualified for it because the way it was set up did not recognise that the individual families who were applying could not qualify for a Kiwibank loan. And Kiwibank was mightily annoyed that it was being required to turn people away from the scheme because they just simply did not meet the lending criteria while National members were out there talking it up.

Then we had charitable status being revoked for the Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust. If this Government really cared about community housing organisations it would have moved to relegislate to make it clear that the provision of affordable housing does qualify under the Charities Act. What did Minister Phil Heatley do at that time? He did absolutely nothing. Now every community housing organisation in this country is potentially under threat because of that precedent to have their charitable status removed, which means that money that should be going to build affordable and social housing would be going into paying tax that they were not paying before.

We need to build affordable homes. As Duncan Garner said tonight: “There is nothing in this Budget for affordable housing.” If you look for it—

Maggie Barry: Is he a member of your party too?

MOANA MACKEY: No, he is not a member of the party, Maggie Barry. And you might want to listen to this, because it is true. The fact is that we need to build more homes, and they need to be affordable homes. The community housing sector, which is now being required to be Housing New Zealand on behalf of the Government, is where the expertise lies. They are the people who have the expertise and experience in building affordable homes, and instead they are going to take over being the social landlord for this Government. Use that sector wisely because it knows what it is doing. It has the ability to make a real difference. It is not there to do the Government’s job for it, but, as we see in the next piece of legislation, that is exactly what the Government is going to have it do.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to take a short call on the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, and explain why the Green Party opposes this bill, following on from my colleague Holly Walker. We oppose the bill because it fails to provide for affordable housing, and because it removes community consultation and local decision-making on new subdivision development. It is another example that this Government does not trust local government. It is not about a partnership with local government. It is about centralised decision-making.

This is the same Government that in Opposition made such a fuss talking about nanny State when the former Labour Government sought to introduce energy-efficiency standards for lightbulbs. Nannies care about the people whom they are responsible for. This Government is the dictator State. It does not trust local councils and local communities to think for themselves and to do the land-use planning that they want to meet their needs. This bill is breathtaking in the powers that it gives to housing Minister Nick Smith to override plans, to get rid of prohibited activity status, and to override consent processes.

Now that the Minister is no longer the Minister of Local Government or the Minister for the Environment where he could meddle directly with local authorities and the Resource Management Act, he is doing it by the back door. This bill gives him major scope to meddle both with sensible and strategic decision-making by local councils on where the urban limits should be, and to trample all over that concept so that it can benefit National’s property developer mates and give them a very easy ride through the resource consent processes for their property development and their new subdivisions on the fringes of our cities.

This bill is not a solution to the housing affordability crisis. It is about trapping families in ghettos, on the fringes of Auckland and potentially in other cities. Simply extending the urban limits to provide cheap housing will provide windfall profits for those people who have land banked on the edge of the cities, but it potentially traps families in those urban fringes. That is because those areas on the outskirts of the cities often do not have public transport because this Government has refused to invest in public transport. They rely on cars. When petrol prices increase it means transport is unaffordable. There are often no job opportunities in those fringe areas, so they cannot work locally. They do not have the amenities, either. People are forced to commute long distances, and it is not affordable. The types of houses that are built there are often large because land is cheaper, rather than being compact, energy efficient, and affordable.

Investing in this policy is about investing in ghettos—marginalising people. It is not about providing more affordable housing. We want compact and livable cities where people can connect with good public transport. That means more brownfield development and more medium density small dwellings centred around existing community amenities. It means good public transport close to where people work. That is a much better model for helping the first-home buyer to get a foot on the property ladder, rather than this bill.

This is another attack on the Resource Management Act. It is because the Government wants a much more permissive approach to planning. The bill provides for the Minister to be able to override prohibited activities. It provides for these special housing area applications not to be notified unless there is an affected neighbouring landowner. What we will see is the community not being involved in new subdivisions. When that happens there is poor planning. We have suburbs in Christchurch, new subdivisions, where the streets are not large enough to allow buses to go through. That is because the developer prevailed. They did not think about the wider community needs. In the same way, the Minister goes in to push through new subdivisions without these being properly planned, and without them being in the context of the urban limits where we are trying to reduce sprawl, and councils are trying to do that. Instead, it is about freeing up land to create ghettos for people on the margins of the cities, who do not have good access to transport or good job opportunities. It is not about providing affordable housing.

MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): We have just heard a very, very good example of why the Green Party is probably never going to be more than a 10 percenter. Of course, they are a 49 percenter in the mixed-ownership model across there, but never more, really, than a 10 percenter in the view of the New Zealand public.

I just want to, firstly, commend the Minister of Housing for this circuit-breaker. This is a very, very complex area. It goes to the heart of the New Zealand psyche in so many ways, because the purchase of a house is not only probably the biggest investment that Kiwis will make but also something that Kiwis are very passionate about as well. So we have found ourselves in this most difficult position over years, and probably under successive Governments, where land prices have become unaffordable.

What staggers me is the sort of criticism that we hear from the Labour Party—although it is indicating that it will be supporting this bill, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill—and the negative and, you know, “beatings will continue until morale improves” sort of approach that it has become so expert at, which really can be summed up in the whole flavour of the Budget debate. Today there has been no greater contrast, I think, in the two leaders in this political theatre than what we saw from John Key and what we saw from David Shearer. What we saw from David Shearer was a plethora of negativities, which we have become used to, but scattered in amongst it was only the slightest shred of an alternative way forward for the country. That alternative way forward, of course, is about a capital gains tax and about “North Korea-ising” the New Zealand power supply. Well, I am not sure that that is going to move the hearts and minds of New Zealanders.

This first housing accord is about setting a target of 39,000 consents within 3 years. It allows for greenfield developments in 6 months, not 3 years, and brownfield developments in 3 months, not 1 year. When we talk about the barriers and the roadblocks, if I can use that phrase, this is about councils and the Government doing what Kiwis—in particular, Aucklanders—need of them. I once again just want to say that this is a Minister who identifies a problem, gets on, and applies a solution to it. This is something that should be supported across the House. I commend this bill.

A party vote was called for on the question that the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill be now read a first time.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Can I just remind members that when a vote is being taken, it is to be taken in silence. Interjections can be seen as intimidation on someone else, and can actually lead to a breach of privilege. I just caution members about that.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 104

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 33; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 15

Green Party 14; Mana 1.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Social Services Committee.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Housing): I move, That the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill be reported to the House by 26 July 2013 and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 188 and 191(1)(b) and (c). The fact that this bill has secured the support of 104 of the 120 members of this House is really a broad spectrum acceptance that New Zealand has a real challenge around housing affordability and that the provisions that the Government has provided in this Budget provide for a real way forward. I think we acknowledge that the Labour Party had nowhere to go.

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, it did not. Look, if you look at its 9 years—

Grant Robertson: Well, we don’t want to spend any time with you.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I challenge the members opposite. If you look at the history of every single Government since this Parliament was formed, the truth is that the previous Labour Government had the worst record on housing affordability by any of the measures. So it is important that we get on and address these issues with some urgency.

This motion will provide for this bill to have 10 weeks before the select committee. The importance of the timing is this: everybody is aware that the issues of housing affordability are most acute in Auckland. It is also true that Auckland Council is at the moment in the process of working on its draft unitary plan. The council has set down a plan of notifying that plan in September. This bill is closely connected with that. We want to align those processes so that this bill can be passed by August and so that we can get on and make progress on the supply of housing the moment that plan is notified. That is the reason why the report-back date of 26 July is so important.

I make one further point. This bill is an interim measure. The Government has substantive resource management reforms being worked on by my very capable colleague Amy Adams. She will be bringing through a bill to deal with the long-term issues that will flow through into the plan changes that give us the capacity to set the right foundation for housing affordability in the long term. If this truly is to be a mechanism that is going to make a difference in the short to medium term, Parliament needs to get on and do the work. The select committee is well capable of dealing with this timetable, and that is why I ask the House to support this measure to get on and make sure that houses are more affordable for New Zealand as quickly as possible.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): It was interesting to hear Nick Smith talk about the record on housing affordability of the previous Labour Government when housing prices have gone up 36 percent since his Government came into office.

Hon David Parker: In a recession.

GRANT ROBERTSON: As David Parker says, in a recession housing prices have gone up 36 percent in Auckland under this Government. So Nick Smith wants to lecture the House about housing affordability. The fact is that in this bill, which has been referred for a truncated select committee process, there is very little that ensures housing affordability at all. The Government has to take it into consideration—yet again another part of this Budget where things are being considered rather than being done. The housing plans may include affordable housing. This bill, if it were to do what was needed in affordable housing, may need to be rushed through this House. If there were something in this that we could all see was addressing the range of issues that are required to get affordable housing in New Zealand, maybe there would be a justification for pushing it through. But this deals with only one aspect of that.

It is disturbing to be standing here again, only a few days after I last spoke in a referral motion debate where the National Government, once again, decided that the select committee process on a bill should be truncated in the way that it is. We are down now to a 2-month consideration of this bill. I simply do not believe that that length of time will be sufficient to allow the scrutiny that this bill needs. Dr Smith obviously missed a lot of the speeches from Labour members, because he clearly did not understand that our agreement to send this bill to a select committee had reservations attached to it. Those reservations are what need to be explored in a proper select committee process.

The regulatory impact statement on this bill indicates why there are issues with such a truncated process. It talks about the fact that the development of the option the Government has put forward under Budget secrecy rules has meant that options have not been consulted on with stakeholders and affected parties outside of Parliament. That is what the regulatory impact statement is telling us—it is saying to this House that, because of the way the Government has gone about developing this proposal, it has not talked to anybody about it. It has not talked to local government, which is critically involved in whether or not this can work and whether or not it is actually possible for there to be specified housing areas. We heard from Nick Smith that he thought it would be a partnership between central and local government. Well, local government has not even been consulted up to this point, and now it is going to be faced with a truncated select committee process where its ability to actually influence the bill, where its ability to raise some of the issues that we are concerned about—about whether or not these housing areas will actually work—will be limited by this referral motion.

Once again, the National Government has brought a bill to this House, having mucked around on this issue for months and months, and having ignored the pleas of the Labour Party, of Auckland Council, and of others to actually get on with helping Auckland to address its housing crisis. For 5 years it has sat on its hands on the issue of housing, and it comes to the House today and says: “You’ve only got 2 months. It’s got to go straight through.” Well, that is, once again, this National Government treating this House with disrespect, with contempt for the processes of democracy, and with contempt for the select committee process.

New Zealanders all around the world who are interested in politics and who write about politics talk about the importance of our select committee process. It is quite unique in the world, and it is vitally important to this House’s processes. We do not have a second Chamber. We have only one Chamber.

Hon David Parker: This is it.

GRANT ROBERTSON: This is it. We have to have a robust select committee process in order to give legitimacy and credibility to the work we do here. Law commissioner John Burrows said in 1990 that select committees are “a crucial bastion of democracy in our legislative process.” Every time National brings a truncated motion to this House without good justification, although John Burrows says select committees are a crucial bastion of our democracy, National says: “We don’t care about that.”

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: What would Len Brown say?

GRANT ROBERTSON: Sam Lotu-Iiga interjects as he wanders around the House, saying “What would Len Brown say?”. I will tell you what Len Brown would say, Mr Lotu-Iiga. He would say: “Where was National for the last 5 years when there was a housing crisis in Auckland? What was National doing then? Sitting on its hands, doing nothing to resolve the housing affordability crisis, having the Prime Minister deny that there even was a housing affordability crisis.” That is what Len Brown would be saying, and he would be saying: “I want to see a process where people can have their say.”, because that is what we should have in this process.

Whenever there is a truncated select committee process, I am concerned about the way in which the public will be able to make submissions. This is a bill on which people will have strong views. It does make significant change to the Resource Management Act. It places significant obligations on local councils to work with central government on whether or not there will be special housing areas, and it does give significant power to the Minister of Housing where there cannot be agreement on those areas. Those are significantly increased powers, and there will be a range of submitters who will want to submit on that—not only local government. The New Zealand Law Society, which will often make submissions on these bills when they are making such significant changes to law, will be forced into a rushed process as well.

Hon David Parker: EDS.

GRANT ROBERTSON: There are also environmental NGOs, as my colleague David Parker says, such as the Environmental Defence Society and others who have provided—

Hon Maurice Williamson: Oh, those luminaries.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Maurice Williamson is not a fan of the Environmental Defence Society. He had better talk to Nick Smith. Nick Smith does like the Environmental Defence Society. We know that, and it should be given a chance to have its submission on this bill. Maurice Williamson should be given his chance to have a submission on this bill. The putative Mayor of Auckland, Maurice Williamson, would want to have a submission on this bill, to make sure that he can have a say about what is happening with housing affordability in Auckland. But Maurice Williamson’s opportunity to actually have a say on this bill will be severely limited by this truncated select committee process.

I just want to return to the regulatory impact statement, in terms of the reasons why a longer process is needed. I have mentioned already the fact that it is noted there that there has been no external consultation whatsoever. It also says that there is insufficient information on land supply restrictions across local authorities in New Zealand. So the select committee is going to need to research that. It is going to need to say what the extent of the problem is elsewhere in New Zealand, and whether the things that are in this bill stack up. Are they required? We know quite a lot about what is happening in Auckland around the impact of land supply, but we do not have that information about the rest of New Zealand. Although this bill is driven by the fact that the Auckland Council has finally managed to convince the Government to act and support it in its Auckland Unitary Plan, it actually applies to the whole of New Zealand. That means that we do need more time at the select committee to be able to get information about what the impact of land restrictions is on other local authority jurisdictions.

The regulatory impact statement also says that at the moment there is insufficient detail on the specific operations of how this option will work. We do not actually know what the impact of this will be on the behaviours of landowners or on the commercial decisions of property developers. We need the time at the select committee to be able to analyse whether or not this is the right option, and whether or not this is the way this should go. One of the interesting points that the regulatory impact statement makes is that there is insufficient information on the provision of the infrastructure that will actually be required to support the kinds of developments that are being proposed in this bill. That is because the National Government has only just caught up with the idea that it needs to do something about housing affordability. It has put up a bill in front of this House that goes only to some small extent of addressing that. It ignores all the other measures that it would be possible for the Government to put in place, and puts up a bill that maybe might consider doing something about housing affordability. It does that in a truncated select committee process that simply will not give New Zealanders the opportunity to have a say. It will not give this legislation legitimacy.

Legitimacy in our parliamentary system in New Zealand comes from a proper select committee process. We are not going to see that proper select committee process under the motion that the Minister of Housing has just moved. A report-back date of 26 July is simply not enough time. In the system in this House, 6 months is what it should be, 4 months is what it often is, and 2 months is simply not enough. This Government needs to understand that the people of New Zealand deserve to have a say. Labour had supported this bill to the select committee, but we do not support this referral motion. This referral motion is wrong. It is a continuation of this Government’s anti-democratic approach when it comes to lawmaking, and, particularly, when it comes to the role of local government. I urge members in the House to vote against this referral motion, so that New Zealanders can have a proper say on this and so that we can actually explore real options for housing affordability, rather than this weak, limp response from National.

HOLLY WALKER (Green): The Green Party shares many of the process concerns raised by the previous speaker, Grant Robertson, with this truncated process referral motion. Firstly, we note that it does seem that the Government is making a habit of referring bills to select committees with shortened select committee processes. As has been pointed out by the previous speaker, we do have a unique select committee system of scrutiny in New Zealand, which we should be very careful not to undermine with routine shortening of the process.

Secondly, as has also been pointed out, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill is a vital bill. Well, perhaps the bill itself is not vital, but the issue it addresses is one of the most significant social and economic challenges facing the country—i.e., the housing crisis and the crisis of affordability. There is a high degree of public interest in the outcome of this legislation and measures to improve housing affordability, and, therefore, there will be a high degree of public interest in the submissions process on the bill. There are also a large number of affected stakeholders, aside from the general public, potential homeowners, and existing homeowners. There are a large number of institutional stakeholders who deserve the right and the chance to have a decent say on the bill, not least of which are the local councils.

As has been pointed out, the regulatory impact statement makes clear that there has not yet been consultation with local authorities around the country. This is a really important point because although the Auckland Housing Accord has been negotiated, and the Auckland Council is certainly on board with the provisions for that accord, this bill actually extends the possibility of similar accords and of special housing areas around the country, and yet there has been no conversation and no consultation with other councils that are potentially affected. And given that there is a provision for these special housing areas to be rolled out to other regions and the fact that the Government is potentially able to dictate the terms for those special housing areas if an accord cannot be reached with those councils, it seems particularly important that those local government stakeholders do have the opportunity to fully engage with the select committee process on this bill.

Similarly, with insufficient information on land supply problems across New Zealand, we need to be clear that the Social Services Committee has the right information and enough time to digest and process that information before we roll out a bill that extends a model across the whole country when we have not yet even analysed whether and how it needs to apply in other parts of the country. So for these reasons we certainly oppose the truncated process of the select committee. We think New Zealanders have the right to have their say at the select committee, and that it is a complex and technical piece of legislation addressing a very important social and economic challenge, and therefore parliamentarians need to have sufficient time to engage with the material as well.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Chris Hipkins.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Well, that is very fortunate, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. That is what my parents call me as well. If there is one message that comes out of this particular motion, it is that born-to-rule Tory arrogance is back in vogue on the other side of the House. Those members do not really give a stuff about the democratic process or about ensuring that New Zealanders get a chance to have a say on the legislation that goes through this House. The National Party knows best. The National Party knows best. It is going to push through the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, and not give a stuff about what New Zealanders have to say, whether they want to have a say on this process, or whether they even want to make a submission. It does not actually care about whether members of Parliament have an opportunity to engage with this and actually do the job of parliamentarians properly.

Let us consider what the referral motion actually does. The referral motion more than halves the time for this bill to be reported back to the Parliament.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: They don’t like hard work.

CHRIS HIPKINS: No, we do not like it. That is absolutely true. We do not like it over here. This side of the House actually believes that we have a select committee process and time frames around the select committee process for a good reason: so that New Zealanders get a chance to have a say on the legislation that affects them, and particularly when we have got legislation here that gives the Government the power to vary it, because by Order in Council the Government can vary the provisions in this legislation. That is something that New Zealanders should be interested in, because it hands over more and more power to the born-to-rule Tories over there, who seem to think that they know best and that they do not have to have a democratic mandate for the things that they are pushing through this House and for the changes that they are making.

What are they going to do? They are halving the report-back time frame in this House, and they are allowing the select committee to meet even when Parliament is sitting, so members of Parliament who might be participating in other debates cannot do their jobs properly. They are getting very lively over there on the other side of the House, because they do not like it. They do not like being hauled up for the fact they are so arrogant. [Interruption] I am sorry. I am not a waiter, so please do not shout at me. I am not a waiter, so just hold your horses. You will get your chance to have a say in a moment.

They do not like it. They do not like being hauled up on the fact that they are riding roughshod over the democratic process. But people up and down the country know that that is all they can expect from this Government. This is a Government that cancels elections when it is not comfortable with what the outcome of those elections is going to be. It just decides: “Oh, sorry. People might elect a council that we don’t like and isn’t going to do things that we agree with, so we will just cancel the election altogether.” That is the approach of members on that side of the House. They do not really mind about that. They will just cancel the elections altogether and when they think that the public might have something to say about a bill that they do not want to hear, they will just truncate the process, they will shorten it down, and they will prevent people from having a say on the legislation. This legislation may well be good legislation, but it is bad, bad process. [Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Order! Mr Hipkins is making a hard-hitting speech.

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I am on my feet. Some interjection can be expected, but not so much that it drowns out the speaker. The Speaker will not allow that.

CHRIS HIPKINS: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I was just getting warmed up. Nick Smith in his speech earlier on mentioned the fact that 104 MPs in the House had voted in favour of this legislation, and he used that as the justification for preventing New Zealanders from having a say in it. We are supporting the legislation because we do believe that there is a housing affordability crisis in New Zealand and—

Hon Member: Oh! Oh!

CHRIS HIPKINS: “Oh! Oh!”, they say over there. Well, they are just waking up to it now. They are just waking up to it now. They have been in Government for 5 years and finally, after 5 long years, they have suddenly realised that there is a housing affordability crisis in New Zealand and maybe it would be a good idea to do something about it.

Louise Upston: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I draw your attention to Standing Order 286(3), which is very clear about the scope of this debate.

CHRIS HIPKINS: Speaking to the point of order, this is a fairly robust debate being held under urgency and I am responding directly to comments that the Minister who moved the motion made.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Well, can I just say this to members. This is a debate on an instruction to a committee that it report by an early date, and giving certain powers for the committee to meet. The debate is not an opportunity to debate the substance or merits of the bill.

CHRIS HIPKINS: I will refrain from doing what the Minister in charge of the bill did, when he commented extensively on the substance of the bill in debating this referral motion. I will confine my comments to what an outrageous abuse of the parliamentary process this referral motion is in preventing New Zealanders from having a say on this particular piece of legislation.

Reporting this bill back to the House within 2 months of its going to a select committee does not allow the select committee sufficient time to advertise widely, to travel if it needs to, to hear submissions, and to give people the chance to have their say on it. This does not apply just to Auckland. I refer to the very beginning of the explanatory note, which states that by Order in Council this can be extended to further regions and districts by the Government with no referral back to the people to have a say on it, and there are many provisions in here that allow the Government to extend the powers of it by Order in Council. Therefore, many New Zealanders will have an interest in it and will want to have a say on it. But the Government does not want to hear from them. The Government does not want to hear from them. It is quite happy to ride roughshod over the democratic process after 5 years of doing nothing about housing affordability. This referral motion is about the National Government being seen to do something and being seen to do it with urgency, without there actually being any legitimate urgency behind it. Actually, it is impossible—

Maggie Barry: People need housing, “Chippy”.

CHRIS HIPKINS: “People need housing.”, Maggie Barry says. Oh, my goodness! Maggie Barry has pronounced. “Let them eat cake!”, Maggie Barry pronounces to the House—let them eat cake. “People need housing.”—one of the most profound statements that we have heard in the House today. Maggie Barry says: “People need housing.” My goodness me! My goodness me! She has woken up over there and decided that the people are allowed to live in houses. Goodness me! What an admission from the born-to-rule Tory Government over there.

People also have a right to have a say in the laws that affect them and the laws that govern this country. But on this referral motion, despite the fact that we support the bill at the current point and we want people to have a chance to have a say in it, we absolutely object to shortening the process down so that people do not have a chance to adequately consider the bill. Six weeks, roughly, is what the committee will get. Actually, it is slightly longer than 6 weeks. It will be a bit longer than that. It has flip-flopped around from what we were told earlier on when I wrote “6 weeks” down on my piece of paper here. But that time frame does not allow people a chance to have an adequate say.

I do want to respond to something else that Nick Smith said during his speech when he talked about the Labour Party’s track record on affordable housing. Well, I say to Nick Smith that Labour managed something that this Government has not managed in 5 years: a booming economy and 9 years of surpluses—something that this Government has not managed to achieve. So to hear Nick Smith lecturing Parliament on housing affordability in that context is a little bit rich.

I want to come back to whether or not the parliamentary process will be sufficient if the committee has only until 26 July to consider this piece of legislation. How many parliamentary adjournment weeks are there in that time? Adjournment weeks are when select committees do a lot of their work on a bill like this. How many adjournment weeks are there? Select committees should be meeting during adjournment weeks. They are not time off; they are a time for the select committees to actually do their work. How many adjournment weeks are there doing that period of time?

Hon Member: You don’t want no adjournment week.

CHRIS HIPKINS: What was that? Nothing. He has gone very silent. Suddenly he has been caught out making inane interjections. That is not unusual for that member over there. Suddenly, when he is challenged on them, he has not got anything to say. So there will be a question of whether the select committee actually has adequate time to consider the legislation.

Of course, the Government in the referral motion here has allowed the select committee the power to meet while the House is sitting. This is only about the second or the third time in the term of this current Parliament, since the last election, that a referral motion of that nature has been put before the House. The Government has not needed to do that before, because, actually, with cooperation, particularly with legislation that both sides of the House support, there is normally an opportunity for relevant time frames to be met. But this born-to-rule Tory Government does not seem to think, providing it can get a wafer-thin majority, that it should actually bother to extend the courtesy of allowing members from all sides of the House to participate adequately in the process.

Those members know what is best. They are just going to push through everything. They are going to do it under urgency. They are going to abuse the parliamentary process under urgency for bills that do not actually have legitimate urgency. There is nothing in this legislation that suggests it should not be done over a 4-month time frame rather than the 2-month time frame that the Government has promoted.

Maggie Barry: People need homes. Let’s get on with it.

CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh, Maggie Barry says: “Let’s just get on with it.” “Let’s just get on with it.”, Maggie Barry says. Let us forget about what anybody says, forget about New Zealanders who actually in a democracy might have a view and might want to have a say. “Let’s just get on with it.” Maggie Barry has pronounced that this is the right thing to do, therefore we should just forget about letting anybody else have a say. I am looking forward to her contribution in this debate on why she thinks that only 2 months is a sufficient period of time to consider this legislation and to allow the public to have a say.

It is an abuse of the parliamentary process. There is no justification for ramming this bill through under urgency, and pushing it through the select committee process under the select committee equivalent of urgency. It is a bad referral motion, and even though we support the bill, we will not support the Government preventing New Zealanders from having a say on legislation that affects them.

BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): I rise to oppose the Minister of Housing’s motion in respect of the referral of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill to the Social Services Committee. Once again this Government is trying to bypass the democratic process. During the democratic process we hear from submitters, and a bill is stretched in every direction. That is how democracy works. At the end of the process, hopefully, we get a bill that works. Today, just over there, the Prime Minister stood up and said that within 3 years there would be 39,000 houses built. Did anybody do the mathematics there?

Mike Sabin: Consented.

BRENDAN HORAN: That is what he should have said. He should have said that 39,000 would be consented. But that is going to be very difficult too. Who is going to process the applications? Is the council supposed to pay for people to be employed to process those applications? There are many applications. There are many resources. We have got resource consents. We have got building consents. Who is going to build these buildings? Where are the developers? Where have they gone? Well, many of them are bankrupt from the recession.

Hon Maurice Williamson: That sounds like a song. “Where have all the developers gone?”.

BRENDAN HORAN: That is a song. “Where have all the developers gone?”. Who is going to build all these ghost houses? We expect that, with the proper—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Can I just remind the member that this is actually a debate on an instruction to a committee.

BRENDAN HORAN: Yes, Mr Speaker. So we expect to see developers submitting. We expect to see plumbers submitting. Who is going to build these houses? Where are all the plumbers? Where are all the tradespeople? Did you do the maths? It will be $20 billion worth of building projects in 3 years.

Tim Macindoe: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My point of order is twofold. The first is that the member should realise that he needs to sit down when you are on your feet ruling on a point of order, but, more important, I draw his attention again to the point that you are making to him—that we are debating the question specifically about a truncated select committee process. Nothing that that member has said so far has been relevant, and I ask you to ensure that he sticks to the question.

BRENDAN HORAN: It is quite relevant to the bill when I am speaking about submitters and the select committee process.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Can I just remind the member that there is an instruction before the House about this bill going to a select committee and about the committee reporting by an earlier date. Also, the instruction gives certain powers for the committee to meet. That is what he needs to bring his debate around—that the committee reports by an early date, and that certain powers are given to the committee.

BRENDAN HORAN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will get back to what I was saying. We need the correct amount of time for the select committee process and for the submitters. I cannot see how it is going to work, and on this side of the House, we believe in doing something well and doing it once. [Interruption] Let us have a look at Simon Bridges’ bill that was rushed through under urgency. That is going to come up again very, very shortly to fix up the mess. Aucklanders cannot afford to have this Government make a complete mess of Auckland. So, please, let us have the proper select committee process. Let us follow the rules of democracy that New Zealand has always been proud of. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I will go for seniority.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): Age before beauty—age before beauty. If the Government wanted to reinvent the wheel, why does it not choose to reinvent the wheel properly? What it has done in this, the first time it has mentioned housing affordability in five Budgets, is choose to send it to a truncated select committee process. Why is it doing that, when that is one of the things that offends people the most—not having access to due process around submissions, and being able to be heard. We have heard from Government members tonight that this is a complex issue. Then why truncate the process? Why make sure that as few people as possible can get to submit on this? If the Government is going to reinvent the wheel, because it has scrapped and repealed every constructive piece of effort made by the previous Labour Government to address housing affordability because we knew it was a problem in 2007, and now it is 36 percent worse—36 percent worse—under the National Government’s watch, then why is it not allowing a decent run at submissions for submitters on this bill, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill?

All I can conclude is that the Minister in whose name this bill is, the Hon Dr Nick Smith, likes urgency. He likes to look as if there is a lot of activity happening. We have seen him almost destroy ACC in that process, and now it has to correct that—now it has to correct that. But time is needed because this legislation is half-baked.

I will quote John Armstrong in the New Zealand Herald when he was talking about National’s housing affordability package: “Package? What package? No wonder National avoided over-selling the contents of their plan to make housing more affordable. The plan looks more like a rough first draft.” A rough first draft. So if the Government is going to take this rough first draft to the Social Services Committee, the very least it could do is allow a decent period of time for the select committee to polish it, to turn it into something halfway useful, instead of this limp-wristed, lily-livered piece of nonsense that allows the Government to talk with local authorities—Auckland in particular—and other territorial authorities as they choose, by Order in Council. It has not worked out what it means. It has not worked out whether or not Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Nelson, and Queenstown are still the most expensive places in the country to buy a house, which is why the shared equity programme was put into Nelson and Queenstown and those three major centres, under my watch, but which was axed by the incoming Government. It cannot conceive of housing affordability, despite Maggie Barry’s protestations about it being a critical issue in more places around the country than just Auckland. It is a critical issue. The Minister of Housing, who does not know that there was a woman with five children living in a garage in his own electorate, wants to rush this bill through the select committee. Surely he could pay people the courtesy of making sure that they have the opportunity to submit properly.

I come back to the point I made before in the earlier debate, and that is around the Resource Management Act provisions. It is around consenting and it is around the processes that councils have to engage in, in order to ensure that affordable houses that are built are fit for purpose, are sound, are of good quality, and will work on the sections that they are intended to be built upon. So in order to make those things happen, there may be some room to speed up processes, but let us have a proper look at it. Let us have people come to the select committee and represent the concerns that they might have under closer scrutiny. It is typical of this Minister, I have to say, that things under his watch do not get close scrutiny. When he had the local government portfolio, he blew up the figures in that portfolio, as well, so he had to be shifted out of that. I already mentioned ACC to my colleagues. I already mentioned that every portfolio he touches he seems to cause some kind of explosion in it that requires him to be relieved of it. This one is of the same ilk. If the Minister does not even know what is going on in terms of homelessness in his own electorate, how can he be trusted to set down legislation—set down legislation—that is to provide affordable housing, hopefully in more places than just Auckland? I ask why not Wellington, Christchurch, Nelson, and Queenstown—and Tauranga, which has now been added to the list of the most expensive places in the country to buy a house.

People who are renting properties in Nelson are renting at exorbitant rates because the property prices are so high. The rental market is linked in with that. If the Minister is going to address housing affordability, let him do it comprehensively, and not with this limp-wristed piece of nonsense, which is not only—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Why did you vote for it?

Hon MARYAN STREET: If the Minister had been in the House earlier, he would have heard that we are voting for it because we actually care about housing affordability. We would like to take a sow’s ear and turn it into a silk purse, so if we can improve on the legislation, it would be good to be able to do that. In the 2-month period that this legislation is going to a select committee, it is, as John Armstrong said, so much “a rough first draft” that most of the drafting of the legislation is going to have to happen in the select committee. It is going to have to happen in the select committee and, therefore, it requires more time. We will get a bodgie job of housing affordability, made by a Minister who has this ripping-and-busting approach to everything he touches, and that is not appropriate—not appropriate—when we are looking at one of the most critical crises in our country.

Mike Sabin was right earlier: buying one’s own home is part of the Kiwi dream. It is part of the Kiwi dream. He was absolutely right about that. We all agree with that. We all know, except perhaps for some, that there is a housing crisis. Two months is insufficient time to do justice to this critical issue. Thank you.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour): There is a very simple reason why this bill, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, should be going to a select committee for longer than 2 months. It is that this issue is too important to get it wrong, this issue is too important to risk making mistakes, and this issue is so complex that 2 months simply is not long enough to actually give the legislation the proper consideration that it deserves.

This is something that we have seen from this National Government time and time again—these truncated select committee processes. The Minister of Housing knows all too well what a dog’s breakfast that causes, because he sat on the very truncated Emissions Trading Scheme Committee for legislation that got 7 weeks at a select committee—a similar period of time. It was a complete waste of time. It was a waste of the officials’ time. It was a rubber-stamping exercise. That was clear from the outset. We were deliberating when we had not even received final advice from the officials on key issues, and that is not to criticise the officials, because they did everything that they could, given the absolutely impossible hand that they were dealt by this National-led Government. So that is what happens when you have truncated select committee processes.

I find it extraordinary that we are getting these truncated processes on pieces of legislation concerning issues that are so complex and so critically important, like housing affordability or New Zealand’s emissions trading scheme. Arguably, these are issues that require far more thought and far more information and far more consideration than some of the much simpler pieces of legislation that go to select committees for months on end. So I do not know why the National Government is insistent on ramming this through, unless it does not want the scrutiny that a proper select committee process would deliver.

The Hon Nick Smith said earlier that the Opposition did not like doing this, because we are scared of hard work. It is actually the opposite, Dr Smith. No work goes into these bills when they go to a select committee for 7 or 8 weeks. You know that as well as I do, because Dr Smith was a member on a committee that had that process. So—

Hon Anne Tolley: Of course it does—we work hard. What a lazy member of Parliament!

MOANA MACKEY: Anne Tolley says that it is about being lazy. We actually want to do proper work on this bill. We want to have a process that really allows proper scrutiny and consideration. We want to work hard on this piece of legislation; it is the Government that is preventing that from happening by having a process that by its very nature is going to make it far more difficult for people to submit; far more difficult for key stakeholders to submit; far more difficult for the officials to provide an in-depth departmental report; far more difficult for the members on that select committee, the Social Services Committee, to then challenge aspects of that support, to then ask for further information, and to then deal with issues that may arise during that process; far more difficult for officials to get the drafting done properly—and the drafting, as we all know, is key—and far more difficult for members on that select committee to be able to scrutinise that drafting and to make sure that what was being agreed to in terms of what is being put in place is actually what ends up in the drafting. That is the very important work that select committees do, and if National members do not value that work, then they should just come out and say so. If they do value it, then there is absolutely no reason why there should be a 2-month deadline for the select committee.

Across the country—and outside Auckland, in particular—key stakeholders have not been talked to about this. They have not had time to consider what it means for them, and that is critical because, although Auckland has its unitary plan and has been talking to the Government, this legislation is going to apply across the board. The issues for different councils are going to vary greatly. We need to make sure that we have taken the time to talk to Local Government New Zealand and to talk to the various councils, which are now going to have to hurriedly rush and push something together to get it to the select committee. I mean, the bill is just the bare bones. We do not really know what it is going to mean for those other councils. We could have the opportunity to actually do that work if we had the bill at the select committee for longer than 8 weeks.

The reality is that the Government does not want that work done. It is doing this because, after 5 years, it is desperate to look as though it is actually doing something about housing. The only reason we are actually passing this legislation is that it was spooked by Labour’s housing announcement last year, because, finally, the public saw that there was a choice between having a Government that would do something about housing and housing affordability and that would take it seriously, and the current Government, which, in 5 years, has done absolutely nothing except repeal every single piece of legislation we had put in place.

What a good select committee process would give us the opportunity to do would be to consider what are going to be the likely implications for the various councils, because housing affordability is not just as simple as looking at the cost of a house. You actually have to look at the relative income of the places where people are purchasing their houses, as well. So something that might seem affordable to people on an income in Auckland—on the North Shore, perhaps, where Maggie Barry comes from. She has been very vocal in this debate with—

Maggie Barry: What’s wrong with the North Shore? You’re knocking the North Shore, are you?

MOANA MACKEY: No, I was not. I was just mentioning that you were from the North Shore, Ms Barry. That was all—that was all. Slightly sensitive—just calm down, take a few deep breaths. I did not realise that telling people you were from the North Shore was such an insult and that you were so ashamed of it. Now that I know, I will never mention it again—never mention it again. You are not from the North Shore. She is not from the North Shore. I withdraw and apologise—I withdraw and apologise.

But the issue that I was trying to raise before Ms Barry did what she does was that the average income on the North Shore and the average price of housing is going to be very different from what it is in Gisborne, and a house that looks affordable to someone who, as you said, is looking at the Auckland housing market might not be—

Tim Macindoe: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I raise the same point of order again. The member is now straying well away from the point of this particular question, and I ask you to bring her back to the question or to resume her seat.

MOANA MACKEY: No, I was not. I was saying why we needed the process.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Well, can I just say to members that the debate really is on the point that the committee report by an early date and that the House is giving certain powers for the committee to meet. That is the narrow focus of the debate.

Hon Phil Heatley: That’s right.

MOANA MACKEY: That is the most sensible thing Phil Heatley has said all night. The point that I was making was, of course, that 2 months is simply not long enough to consider—

Tim Macindoe: You were talking about the North Shore and who lived there.

MOANA MACKEY: I was responding to Ms Barry’s interjections, just as I am responding to yours now. So if you want me to get back to the substance of the thing, I suggest you just zip the lips and then I will do that.

So the point that I was making was 2 months on an issue this complicated is simply not long enough. It is simply not long enough on an issue that is this complicated. So I ask the Government what it is afraid of. What is it afraid might come up at the select committee that it needs to truncate the process and not have the adequate time to consider these things? I remember when we were in Government and we had similar issues come up, we often had longer time periods. We had inquiries into these kinds of issues. We allowed select committees to do the work that they do. Select committees should be allowed to do the work that they do, and when they are given such ridiculously short time frames, they simply are not able to do it.

My concern is that the truncated time line could actually result not just in legislation that actually does not do anything, which is a risk with this piece of legislation, but we could end up with legislation that actually does damage because it is not carefully thought through. Rushed law is bad law. Rushed lawmaking is bad lawmaking. If the Government really wants to take this issue seriously—

Hon Phil Heatley: Why do you hate North Shore people?

MOANA MACKEY: I know it is all a joke to Phil Heatley—all a big laugh, you know. He is all right, he has done OK, so why should we make sure that the rest of people in New Zealand can have access to affordable housing—[Interruption] What? You have got four houses? Yeah, I do not know why you told me that, but, anyway—that was really random.

Anyway, the point is that there is a danger that we actually make bad mistakes when we rush lawmaking and that we actually end up with unintended consequences, which would not occur if we simply allowed—we are not asking for more time than a select committee normally gets—for the proper course of a select committee consideration to take place. There is a reason why there is a generally understood time frame for select committees. It is because that is what practice and experience have told us is the time it takes for officials to do the work that they need to do; for submitters to be able to find out about the legislation, put that work together, and send it to a select committee; and for members to actually be able to read the submissions that come in—National Party members might not read the submissions that come to select committees, but members on this side of the House do—and then for the officials to go away and do that work; and for the committee to deliberate. That is what they do, and over a period of years we have come to an understanding in this House about how long that process generally is.

Sometimes we have been happy to support the Government where we have seen that there is a real reason and a cause for a short time frame for the select committee, and sometimes there are very real and legitimate reasons why that needs to happen. Where there are legitimate reasons, we are always happy to assist the Government in that matter. There is no legitimate reason for such a truncated time frame with this piece of legislation. If we are going to do it, let us do it right and let us make sure it is done right. The reality is the Government does not care about doing it right; it just cares about looking like it is doing something.

ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): This is a—[Interruption] We can laugh and carry on as much as we like on a motion like this—it might be procedural—but these motions are very important. They raise a very important issue. When matters come before this House, whether they are part of the Budget or the appropriations, or whether it is through a more considered process, putting a matter before this House, putting a piece of legislation before this House, and calling on this House and the members of it, and those who sit on the select committees to give it consideration is a task that should not be taken lightly, should not be treated with contempt, should not be treated with conceit, but should be given due time and accorded due process. That is fundamental—

Shane Ardern: I knew it wouldn’t be a problem for this member to talk for 10 minutes about nothing.

ANDREW LITTLE: —and whether you are from Taranaki - King Country, or whether you actually care about issues in the area that you come from, particularly social housing and the shortage of affordable housing, which is an issue across the nation and everywhere, from the dark hills of Ūruti to the lowlands of Christchurch and Dunedin, availability of affordable housing is a big issue for New Zealand.

That is why New Zealanders in their droves have come in behind supporting Labour’s policy of a new programme of affordable housing. It is because, now through this Budget, this Government is calling on this House to consider this issue in this admittedly scant piece of legislation, that nevertheless the proper time and resources should be given to consider it. That means time for the officials to prepare their information and their evidence, but, most important, time for members to gather their information, to give due consideration to the advice they are receiving, and, indeed, to look at the legislation.

It is just possible, on any given piece of legislation that comes from the Government, that with proper consideration and proper time given for that consideration, members on the Government side might be persuaded that change is appropriate, that improvement is possible, and that a change might be made to the legislation that is better for the citizens on whose behalf we undertake this very important action. So we do not take this lightly. This is an important motion and we are opposed to it. We are opposed to this Government, repeatedly now, coming to this House with motions calling on shorter and shorter time frames to consider important legislation. It did it just earlier this week on the Government communications security legislation. It wanted a shorter time frame to consider that.

These issues are important. We know how sensitive they are to the voting public, because the public are in touch with our respective offices, the electorate MPs and list MPs alike. They are writing letters to the paper. They are ringing up the talkback hosts on the various radio stations, and they are saying that it is not right in a democracy in our country that we should have the institutions of Parliament treated in such a cavalier way. We are opposed to this because members in this House are entitled to demand that any legislation that comes before it is given proper consideration, proper time, and due process.

It comes down to this, and I said this earlier this week too. It comes down to the principle of the rule of law. We are a nation that ranks very highly in international comparisons and considerations of the rule of law. That is to say that we are regarded as a nation that respects the laws that we make, the rules that we abide by, the role of the courts, but, most important, the way laws are made in Parliament, which means—in this country—in this House. What happens in this House leads our reputation on that very important institution called the rule of law. And when we treat it with contempt, when we treat it in such a cavalier sort of way, then our international reputation goes down. Our international reputation suffers. It is not enough for some members to be invited on to international television shows to establish our reputation. That is not what we establish our reputation on. Our reputation is established, for anything that counts, on the way that we conduct ourselves, the way we conduct our business as a nation but, most important, in this House—the highest court in the land in a Western democracy, the ultimate source of law in a Westminster democracy.

So we treat with considerable alarm and we look askance at resolutions like this that call upon us to act with a haste that is, frankly, rude and should not be tolerated, if we are to do our job properly and discharge our responsibilities. This Government has demonstrated that it is a Government that has no hesitation in cutting corners when it comes to matters of due process. Its appointments to statutory boards are just one example of that, but its treatment of this House is increasingly another example. We are getting these motions, and we have yet another one tonight on an important piece of legislation, on an important bill dealing with an issue that is of great importance to all New Zealanders. Now we are being told: “Rush through it. Don’t give it your best. Don’t give it your best attention. Don’t care that we’ve got an adjournment week”—2 adjournment weeks, 3 weeks, in fact, it may even be 4 during the course of this bill. It is 4 adjournment weeks while this bill is meant to be being considered. “Rush through it and don’t care what the people want. Don’t care what citizens might think. Don’t bother giving them adequate time. Don’t even care about the NGOs that have a relevant stake in this matter”—the Darryl Evanses of this country and the Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity; all those who might have something interesting to say about this; the territorial local authorities, which will have something worthwhile to say about this; and Local Government New Zealand. “Don’t give them the time of day. Treat them with contempt.”, as it treats the members of the Opposition. That is the attitude of this Government and it is wrong, and it is high time that it was called to book. That is the least we can do in debating this motion—make it very clear and emphasise our objection, underscore our opposition, and say that it is simply not acceptable anymore.

We understand that at the time of the Budget there are invariably pieces of legislation that need to be considered in a hurry and that need to be considered under genuine urgency. This is not one of them. This is the opposite. This is an exception. This should not be given a rushed consideration. It should be given proper consideration as should be any important piece of social legislation. It may well be important for this Government to boast that it is giving the appearance of doing something, but this is a bill that touches on an issue that affects not only the real lives and the material lives of a growing number of people who cannot get into their first home but, actually, it affects ultimately every New Zealander.

If we do not have a housing market that makes housing accessible and available to people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all levels of income, then that is a market failure that does deserve the attention of this House. But if it deserves the attention of this House, then it should be given the proper attention of this House. That means consideration by the select committee under the proper Standing Orders of this House, which means proper consideration and proper time being given. It is totally objectionable, it is utterly unconscionable, that an issue like this—even at the time of the Budget, even at the time of the appropriations—should be rammed down the throats of members of this side of the House; that it should drag in, or cause undue and unnecessary inconvenience to, those who do have the resources and the means to be consulted and to make a submission on it. That is unreasonable.

It is not a good day for democracy in this country. It is not a good day for the conduct of this House. It is time to put a line under it and say we demand better management of this House and of important legislation by this Government. We will remain opposed to this motion.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): A “proper job” is an old Cornish saying, and I fear that this House is not doing a proper job of giving the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill the scrutiny that it needs when the Government has asked for the time frame for the consideration of this bill by the Social Services Committee to be truncated from 4 months to around 2 months. This House and we as members of Parliament have a duty to make sure that for a piece of legislation that the Government thinks is significant to bring into the House under urgency—it is one of the major pieces of legislation in this year’s Budget—we give the public and those stakeholders around New Zealand a fair chance and a good period of time to let their feelings be known.

My colleague Andrew Little made a very good point in his contribution that the select committee process—and I am sure all members of Parliament right around this House would agree—gives the opportunity for people to come in and make submissions and to improve a bill. Reducing the amount of time that this bill is going to be considered in the select committee to 71 days really does rob the opportunity for many, many people to come to Parliament or to visit the select committee to make their views heard.

This is a significant piece of legislation, as the Minister of Housing said. Before we got to this truncation debate, 104 members of this Parliament voted for it. We do realise that housing affordability is a major issue for New Zealanders. It is a bit of a pity that the National Government is about 4 years too late with that. But it has come to a piece of legislation within this bill that needs a good hearing and needs very close security, and, as I said, the Government needs to give the opportunity for people out in New Zealand to have their say and possibly improve this bill. To reduce it to a 10-week hearing of submissions as opposed to the usual 16 really is not giving people out there enough of a chance to have their voices and their views heard on this bill.

We do have concern that this is the second time in 1 week that the Government has come to this House and asked for the select committee consideration of a bill to be truncated under urgency. Another piece of legislation debated last week around the security of telecommunications was brought before this House and we had to do something very similar to what we are doing now. We ask what the rationale is of a significant piece of legislation being brought into this House and ask why, if it is so important, we are limiting the opportunity for people who think this is a very, very important issue, to come and have their say in Parliament. We do believe that the select committee consideration is very important in order for the public to have scrutiny around pieces of legislation, especially significant pieces of legislation such as this.

This is a complex issue. That is why, I think, the Government has decided to take some action after a very long time of inaction, and to take some action in this Budget announcement and to bring this bill to Parliament. Because it is a complex issue, we do believe that the public should get that other 6 weeks that they are being robbed of in terms of being able to make submissions to the select committee, as has already been stated. It also gives a bit more time for members of Parliament to consider some of the submissions that are made at the select committee, to offer up amendments at the select committee consideration, and to talk through some of the complexities that are certainly going to be brought up around the complex issue of housing supply and housing affordability.

In the explanatory note on the bill, the Government says this bill “provides a mechanism for central government to work together with territorial authorities to address housing supply and affordability issues”. By taking time away from a number of local councils and district councils, which, I am sure, will be very interested in this piece of legislation, and by taking away 6 weeks from that select committee process, I think it robs them of many, many opportunities to make submissions and to scrutinise this bill.

As I said, this is the second time in a week this has happened. This time it is at the behest of the housing Minister, Nick Smith—

Darien Fenton: Bad habits.

KRIS FAAFOI: —who does have a bit of a bad habit around due process. To truncate this select committee process from roughly 16 weeks down to 10 weeks suggests that he does have a bit of form. I am suggesting around the sacking of the Environment Canterbury council—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

KRIS FAAFOI: Apologies, Mr Assistant Speaker. So we need to make sure that we are not creating a pattern of behaviour in terms of due process in this House, because it is very, very important that this Parliament have credibility, that we make sure that in the eyes of the public we are doing things properly, and that we do follow due process. We have got major concerns when, as I say, we have got two pieces of legislation in 1 week that Ministers have asked to have the time frame for the submissions to the select committee truncated. The Minister has asked for this to be reported back on 26 July, which gives 71 days for the public to have their chance to have a say on this rather significant—

Andrew Little: That’s shorter than Aaron Gilmore’s term in Parliament.

KRIS FAAFOI: It is just a little bit short of Mr Aaron Gilmore’s term in Parliament. But there are 71 days for individuals, for companies, for organisations, and for, importantly, those local bodies that will have a huge interest in trying to make sure that people within their communities have a better supply of housing, and have much more affordable housing. I am not sure whether 71 days is enough to be able to give these issues that are going to be traversed within this bill enough air time and enough opportunity for every one of those stakeholders who think they can make a good contribution to the process to be able to make their voices heard.

This is a serious issue of due process. We are here as parliamentarians. The select committee process is a very important part of the process in terms of making sure the public can have scrutiny and have their say.

But truncating this period to just 71 days does not give them the significant opportunity to be able to make a contribution to that. Housing affordability is an issue that is on the radar now because the Labour Party put it on the radar. Credit where credit is due, the Government has done something, but that is not to say that when you do something, you run roughshod over the parliamentary process and truncate the time period in which New Zealanders right around the country will be able to make a contribution to the select committee process. So we would ask that the House not support this motion to shorten the time period for the select committee process. We would ask that this Parliament give that opportunity to the people of New Zealand—all those around New Zealand who have opinions, who have views about housing affordability and housing supply. It is a very important issue for Kiwis at the moment. It is going to be a defining issue at the election campaign next year. Those people around the country, because this issue is such a big issue, need to be given the opportunity to speak their minds, to give their opinions, to look through some of the details and the data around housing affordability. To be able to do that, they are going to need more than 71 days—more than the 10 weeks that the Government is asking for.

The views of New Zealanders need to be listened to. The views of New Zealanders need to be listened to. The Government does not necessarily like that—as I say, two pieces of legislation in just the 1 week—but the views of New Zealanders should be listened to. They should get their full opportunity to make their views heard on housing affordability. This is a Government that does not like due process. We have seen two examples of it in the last week—

Tim Macindoe: You’ve said that five times.

KRIS FAAFOI: Pardon?

Tim Macindoe: You’ve said that five times.

KRIS FAAFOI: Well, what do you want? Do you want me to speak about something else, and then you raise a point of order? This is a very important issue. The views of New Zealanders around the country need to be listened to, and this Government wants to shut the debate down.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill be reported to the House by 26 July 2013 and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 188 and 191(1)(b) and (c).

Ayes 70

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 49

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill

First Reading

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Housing): I move, That the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill be reported to the House by 1 October 2013. This bill implements a substantive shift in Government housing assistance from a State housing model to a social housing model. We all know that New Zealanders are facing increased pressures from high housing costs, that poor housing contributes to poor health and education outcomes for children, and that the old model of massive State housing estates does not work. I want to acknowledge the work of the Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group and its thoughtful and substantive report, on which this reform is based. The easy politics in the area of Government housing assistance is just to demand that more public money be spent. A Government would never balance the books with this approach. This reform is all about getting the maximum social dividend from the Government’s investment and spending on housing assistance.

The first big change is to say that the level of assistance should not be based on whether the Government owns the house. It should be based on the needs of the family, the income of the family, and the quality of the house. This bill enables the hundreds of millions of dollars spent each year on the income-related rent subsidy to be available to approved social housing providers. So if a high-needs family is housed by the Salvation Army, an iwi, the IHC, Access New Zealand, or the like, the Government will pay the same subsidy as if it were a Housing New Zealand house. The real advantage is the capacity for these organisations to provide, alongside housing support, the specialist wraparound services that are support for those families. It might be family support services, it might be mental health support, it might be alcohol and drug support, or it might be disability services. We all know that integrated support works best.

A more diverse social housing sector also provides for greater innovation. We already know that community social housing providers do a better job of helping people back on to the pathway to housing independence. We are a Government that does not think all the answers lie with politicians and officials, and we welcome the opportunities a more diverse social housing sector offers. I note that in Australia the community social housing sector has more than doubled in size over the past decade and now represents 20 percent of its social housing. In Canada it is over 50 percent. They are getting better social outcomes than from a monolithic State house approach. We are behind the pace, with a very small community social housing sector, and this reform is designed to grow it.

Providing housing for all our most disadvantaged and needy families is difficult for social organisations to finance. These families just cannot pay full market rents. The game-changer in this bill is that having the Government pay approved social housing providers the difference between the market rents and what can realistically be paid by those tenants makes it a far more viable proposition. This is not the only support the Government is providing to social housing providers. We know the sector is small and needs a kick-start to grow. That is why we have set aside $140 million in the Social Housing Fund to help investment in non-government social housing provision. Next week I will be announcing the next round of grants.

This change of opening up the income-related rent subsidy to other social housing providers beyond Housing New Zealand requires a parallel reform. Housing New Zealand currently does the needs-assessment for families needing State housing and income-related rent. This will not work in the new multi-provider social housing system, so responsibility for this role is to be transferred from Housing New Zealand to the Ministry of Social Development. This makes common sense. I can recall so many frustrated constituents who were being pushed from pillar to post, from the Ministry of Social Development to Housing New Zealand, as they struggled to establish whether their housing needs were best met either by a State house or by receiving the accommodation supplement. From April next year there will be only one assessment. It also makes sense that a person’s or a family’s housing need is assessed alongside their income and other social needs.

The second substantive reform in this bill is the legislative provision for reviewable tenancies. This is all about ensuring we use our social housing for the people most in need. This policy approach started with new tenants from 1 July 2011, now covering 10,000 of those in Housing New Zealand homes. Reviewing tenancies will now be applied to all State house tenants and tenants of community housing organisations who pay an income-related rent. The review of tenancies will be undertaken with common sense. We understand the importance of certainty for tenants, particularly those with serious and long-term needs. This policy involves developing pathways to housing independence, and will be focused on those tenants paying market rent. This is about social housing being available for people while they have that high housing need, and as their needs change—they secure a better job, the children leave the nest—they can then free up that house for a new family of higher need.

The reforms in this bill need to be considered alongside Budget 2013. It should be noted that providing income-related rents for community social housing is not coming at the expense of Housing New Zealand, and $27 million of additional money is being provided to fund that change. Nor is the policy of introducing reviewable tenancies a money-saver. Having high-need families replace those on market rents in State houses actually increases the cost to the Government, and that is why we have set aside $47 million in the Budget for that purpose. We are also increasing the income-related rent subsidy for Housing New Zealand tenants, to take into account the increase in housing costs. This bill also makes provision for the new rental Housing Warrant of Fitness scheme. To be eligible to receive an income-related rent subsidy, social housing providers will need to meet certain standards.

I would also note that this Government is providing for the biggest programme of new investment ever in the history of Housing New Zealand. Housing New Zealand is budgeting to spend $2.9 billion over the next 3 years. The most ever spent in a previous year was less than half of that. This money will be spent on completing the insulating of all State houses; it will be going into Project 324&5, which is adding additional bedrooms on to three-bedroom houses, which we have too many of, putting extra bedrooms on 2,000 of those homes; on the huge rebuild job that we have in Christchurch; on earthquake-strengthening State houses in other parts of the country that are not up to standards; and on major new redevelopments. These investments are about improving the quality of our State homes, and ensuring they are the right size and in the right place.

This Government’s housing policy does represent a significant change. We are far more focused on getting good outcomes, rather than just simply counting the number of State houses. We are creating a more diverse and more innovative social housing sector. We make sure our support is going to the families that are in greatest need. We are focusing on the quality, not just the quantity, with the development of the rental housing warrant of fitness. I urge the House to support the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill. It is a better approach, it will help more families, it is well researched, and it is widely supported. It is the sort of reform that all New Zealanders wanting a brighter future for their country should support. I commend the bill to the House.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I will give this Government credit. It is true that it lacks an economic plan. It is true that it has left New Zealanders feeling disgusted by the sale of our gambling legislation to an Australian casino. It is true that it is on the long, steady decline to electoral oblivion in 2014. But at least—at least—it has woken up to the fact that there is a house affordability crisis, and I will give it credit for that. It has actually worked it out. Steven Joyce has looked at the polls. He knows there is a housing affordability crisis. He knows that Aucklanders, particularly, are deeply concerned about it. He knows that unless the Government is seen to be doing something, unless it is perceived to be actually taking some action, then it is in deep trouble. I will give Nick Smith this: he has at least, since he took over from Phil Heatley as the Minister of Housing, conveyed the impression of activity. But the problem is that the very direction, the very nature, of the policy that he is pursuing for social housing, and for housing affordability more generally, is undermining the values that New Zealanders have held dear for many, many years about the role of the State in guaranteeing a social safety net for New Zealanders who need the assistance of the Government for a certain time in the provision of decent housing.

Chris Hipkins: Nick Smith was part of the Government that did away with income-related rentals.

PHIL TWYFORD: He was—he was in the Cabinet of the Government that was responsible for selling off 13,000 State houses in the 1990s and left it for subsequent Governments, particularly the fifth Labour Government, to clean up that mess. I say to the House that Labour will be in Government before long and we will be cleaning up the mess that this Minister is leaving.

The effect of the reforms in this bill will be to weaken the role of the State. This bill offloads the responsibility of central government in providing income-related social housing for people who need it. The crowning glory of National’s housing policy is to evict 3,000 State tenants. That is going to be Nick Smith’s political epitaph. That is his greatest achievement as the Minister of Housing—to see 3,000 Housing New Zealand tenants booted out of State housing. I ask Mr Smith—I ask him—is this an aspirational target, to boot out 3,000 State house tenants? Is that aspirational, or are you, Minister, absolutely confident that you can kick out 3,000 State house tenants? Is it simply an aspirational target like the 39,000 houses that Mr Smith says that he is going to build in Auckland? He says he is going to build 39,000 houses simply by opening the gate to new greenfield land on the fringes of the city, and streamlining a bit of Resource Management Act consenting. By doing those things, Mr Smith tells us—tells the nation—that he is going to build 39,000 affordable houses. Well, we will see, Mr Smith. We will see if you do that. Only National would come to this House with an aspirational target in the area of social housing to boot out 3,000 State tenants while we are in the middle of the worst affordable housing crisis in living memory. This is this Minister’s idea of some kind of progressive reform: to kick out 3,000 State house tenants in the middle of a housing affordability crisis. That says it all.

Let us talk about some of the detail of what the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill does. One of the first things that it does is that it allows the community housing providers to get access to the income-related rent subsidy. What is that? That is the difference between local market rents and what State house tenants are paying under the current policy. The context for this—it is very important to understand the context for this—is that Nick Smith wants to offload 12,000 State houses to the charity sector. That is his idea of strengthening social housing provision in New Zealand. He wants to flick off the worst, the most run down, and the least fit for purpose State houses to a charity sector that is fragile, undercapitalised, under-resourced, and ill-equipped to manage that kind of asset. It is exactly what the National Government did to rural and country hospitals in the 1990s. It did not want the State to have responsibility for providing health services for rural and provincial communities and isolated communities, so what did it do? It offloaded them to the community and said: “Here. We don’t want to provide this essential service anymore. You go away and run it.” Did it hand over the revenue, the funding streams, and the capital to allow those community trusts to properly manage, maintain, and upgrade that vital infrastructure? No. It was a recipe for decline. It was a sordid act of back-door privatisation and, simply, National’s habitual response, which is to offload and devolve the very functions that New Zealanders expect the State to take responsibility for. It is cynically disposing of a big chunk of the Housing New Zealand estate, the least fit for purpose houses, to NGOs. It is not handing over the capital that would be needed to properly maintain and ultimately upgrade those assets. It is a recipe for decline.

Labour supports the social housing sector. We want to see a Government social housing programme that works in partnership with community housing providers, but that is not what this is about. This is not an act of genuine partnership between the Government and social housing providers. It is shuffling pieces on the chessboard by moving a big chunk of the social housing estate out of Government control and into the community sector. Not a single extra Kiwi family in need will be housed by this move. It will not make a blind bit of difference to the number of people who are currently languishing on waiting lists, desperate to get a decent roof over their heads.

The second thing that this bill does is that it passes over to the Ministry of Social Development the responsibility for assessing the need and assessing the eligibility of State house tenants. The justification for this is that the purpose—the agenda of this set of reforms—is to try to establish a kind of quasi-market for social housing in New Zealand in which Housing New Zealand will be set up to compete with community housing providers. If you are going to have that kind of set-up, then what you have got to do is have a neutral party that assesses the need and eligibility, and that is why Nick Smith wants the Ministry of Social Development to take it over. My concern is that this is just the latest move by the National Government to de-power—to strip away—the functions of Housing New Zealand.

It is already a weakened organisation. It is already dysfunctional. Phil Heatley’s “Smarter, Faster, Fairer” fiasco restructuring of Housing New Zealand has seen tenancy officers taken off the front line. Housing New Zealand tenants have been forced to engage with the organisation through an 0800 number. It has weakened the organisation. It has driven up tenant churn and turnover. It has driven up fraud, it has driven up non-payment of rent, and it has been an absolute disaster. The organisation is in no state to do the kinds of things that Nick Smith is asking it to do, and he wants to weaken it even more by taking away what is a central function of a social housing provider, and that is the assessment of eligibility. Housing New Zealand is going to be left simply as a tenancy manager for the rump of the old social housing estate. Minister, you may as well just get Barfoot and Thompson to basically manage the tenancies. Why not? Just go the whole hog. You clearly do not believe that the State has a role in providing social housing for vulnerable people. No, you do not Minister, and your party does not. Everything that you have done as a party in the last 20 years says that you do not believe in the importance of the role of the State in delivering income-related social housing. Given the logic of these reforms you may as well just hand the whole lot over to Barfoot and Thompson. This National Party has an ideological belief that the State cannot do good in this area. Every opportunity it gets it wants to devolve, contract out, fragment, and fritter away Housing New Zealand’s role as a social housing provider of income-related rental housing. Labour would like to see Housing New Zealand revitalised and rebuilt, working in partnership with the social housing sector.

The final point I want to make is applying reviewable tenancies to 3,000 people who will be booted out under Mr Smith’s aspirational target—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. His time has expired.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the first reading of the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill. I want to again thank the Minister next to me, the Hon Dr Nick Smith, for his vision, hard work, and determination, and for bringing these solutions to this House tonight.

Budget 2013, as we heard from the Hon Bill English, makes bold changes to the way that we will deliver social housing assistance to those most in need. We are ensuring that housing is in the right sizes, in the right places, and in the right conditions for those who need it most. This bill will help address the issues that Labour, quite frankly, did not have the intestinal fortitude or the appetite to fix. It will increase the pool of resources available to our service providers and get much needed support to those in need.

You see, Labour broke the housing sector by its inept leadership under the direction of former Ministers Maharey, Chris Carter, and Maryan Street. This infamous triumvirate of slum landlords provided cold, damp, and mouldy homes to those most in need. New Zealanders are grateful that this Government will have insulated every Housing New Zealand home by the end of this year. You see, that triumvirate oversaw a sector where the average price of housing in Auckland between 1999 and 2008 grew by 91 percent.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: How much?

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: Ninety-one percent—two and a half times the rate that those prices are going up under this National Government. Those members oversaw interest rates at an all-time high of 8 percent, a rate of inflation of over 4 percent, and a waiting list that grew longer and longer and longer. That is absolutely disgraceful, and it is a direct example of the type of hands-on leadership those opposite continue to preach in this House.

It was hands on with the economy, and they increased house prices, inflation, and interest rates; hands on with electricity, and they wiped $500 million out of the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders; and it was hands on with ACC—and Mr Smith would know this—and the social insurance scheme almost became insolvent. You cannot trust, and the people in New Zealand cannot trust, Labour to get its hands on anything. If you compare that with the John Key - led National Government, you will see that it has delivered the lowest interest rates for over 50 years, the lowest inflation rate since 1999—

Iain Lees-Galloway: No growth.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: —under 1 percent, and Mr Lees-Galloway knows that—and continued economic growth during the most turbulent financial times globally. That may not matter to Maryan Street, and it certainly sounds like it does not matter to Miss Dalziel, but it matters to the average Kiwi paying a mortgage and supporting their family. This bill is part of our reforms to deliver assistance to those most in need and those who need social housing.

As the Minister has already stated, this bill extends income-related rents to community housing providers. It transfers the needs-assessment process to the Ministry of Social Development. It provides reviewable tenancy for all Housing New Zealand tenants. You see, we on this side of the House are about growing the involvement of those who are best placed to help our most vulnerable. Government is not the only answer. If we are to be lambasted for using the skills, assets, and expertise of our social housing providers like the Salvation Army, CORT Housing, and others—

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Transit camps.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: —then so be it.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Transit camps, that’s what you’re offering. What about communities? We need communities, strong communities.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: The Greens call this privatisation; we call it helping those families that most need help. Community housing providers—and Miss Dalziel knows this—can often do a better job of meeting the need, because they provide wraparound services for their clients. The Minister has already referred to the fact that they provide churches, NGOs, and community providers. Often they integrate their housing with support for people with disabilities, mental health issues, addictions around drug and alcohol, as well as family dysfunction. There is no reason why a family in need should receive less support just because the bricks and mortar of their house are owned by a community provider rather than the Government. So what is important is that those most in need get that support that they require.

We are looking to bring in renewable tenancies for all Housing New Zealand tenants, and I also want to commend the former Minister the Hon Phil Heatley, because he began that work under his tenure. This will allow people to transition and give them support to move into alternative housing when their situations improve—

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Transit camps. No communities.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: —and they are able to become independent. Miss Dalziel, Miss Street, and their former colleagues oversaw tenancies where people with incomes of over $80,000 were living in State houses while thousands languished and suffered on waiting lists. In Maungakiekie I have often seen three-bedroom homes occupied by single tenants who refuse to move to more appropriate accommodation and make way for families who are actually in need. This bill is about improving access to social housing for those who actually need it. State housing will always be there for those who need it and for the duration of that need. That is most important.

As the Minister has already said, we are making a record investment of $2.9 billion into Housing New Zealand over the next 3 years. We are tackling the issues that matter to New Zealanders. We were elected on a platform to deliver better, smarter, and more innovative public services. With this bill we are delivering on that promise. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): Well, we have just heard a speech that was full of fake sound and fury, straight from the research notes. Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga read them—page 1, page 2, and page 3. I have to say how disappointed I am in a member who has been here 4½ years and still has to read out the research notes. He could not even make a speech straight from his heart. He had to read his fake outrage off a note.

I have to tell you that this is the Nick Smith quinella—the second bill we have had on housing this evening. I have to tell you it is a real gamble, because what we know about Nick Smith is he never does his homework, he makes up fake figures, and he goes around telling people one thing and then the evidence comes out under something else. So I say to people look out for the bodgie figures, and look out for the bodgie evidence as to why we need the change in this bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill. He is “Mr Old Flip-Flop”, because he was part of a Government that got rid of income-related rents. It hated income-related rents. It did not like State house tenants getting a fair deal under a National Government. Suddenly he embraces income-related rents and would like many more to have it in the other parts of the housing sector.

There are three main parts to this bill as I see it: powers for Housing New Zealand to be able to review State house tenancies to ensure appropriate tenants are matched to appropriate housing; secondly, to enable Housing New Zealand functions to be transferred to another Government agency at a later date; and, thirdly, to provide a framework for the provision of social housing by multi-providers in the social market. So I said “Let’s go straight to the regulatory impact statements and see what they have got to say about it.”, because what I learnt with Nick Smith is that the regulatory impact statement on his Better Local Government legislation was the most shocking one I have ever seen. It tore apart his local government reforms. It said that there had been no work done on it and no evidence, and that was backed up over and over again. Well, what did I find, Dr Smith? Your regulatory impact statements are not on the website. You say in the bill here: “Look up the website. You’ll find them.” So I went to the Clerk’s Office, and the staff had to find the statements. They had to run them off and put some on the Table. Why did they not have the regulatory impact statements available?

Well, I had a wee look at them. There are two of them. One is from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. What does it say? It says there is limitation to the analysis provided—there is limitation. Once again Nick Smith has a limitation to the evidence provided. The ministry said it is the early days of reform and most of the decisions being sought from Cabinet at this time—they have not all been finished, you see. The Ministry said it also has not done the consultation. It has consulted with Government departments and has had “targeted informal engagement” with the community housing sector, but “given the Budget sensitivity of the options outlined in this paper, non-government stakeholders have not been consulted on the options.” They have not been consulted, and it is dated 22 March. They have not been consulted, and what is written on it? “Budget Sensitive.” So they were not consulted.

What does the second one say? It is from Housing New Zealand, and I find this very interesting because it goes through, and it just happens to set out some of the risks, and—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You can do better than this, Annette.

Hon ANNETTE KING: Oh no, you do not want to hear about the regulatory impact statements, because these are the independent statements about your lousy work. That is why he does not want to hear about them.

And what does this one say? Housing New Zealand talks about what will happen in terms of the information-gathering powers. What are the costs? Well, the costs will be increased accommodation supplement payments to tenants moving from State to private housing. That is one of the costs. Secondly, there will be increased administration costs; and, thirdly, cost to the clients complying with information requirements. And then there will be costs to those other than tenants who are asked to provide information. None of that was put forward by Dr Smith today—not one of the costs or problems outlined. The Government hid the regulatory impact statements so the House here, which has to debate it tonight, could not get it.

Well, I will tell you what this bill is. This bill is the “Get Rid of Housing New Zealand Bill”. This is the first step in getting rid of Housing New Zealand. You see, the National Party has always hated State housing. Right back to the 1930s when a Labour Government brought them in, the National Party has—

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Were you alive back then?

Hon ANNETTE KING: Oh, and that member probably lived in one, but now, of course, he would like to get rid of them. You see, National has never wanted to have State housing. So this is the beginning of getting rid of Housing New Zealand. It wants to flog it off. Why is the Government not honest? As Phil Twyford said, why not go the whole hog and flog off Housing New Zealand to any old agency out there, the private sector, which could just carry on providing houses for it. You could probably get Beerfoot and Thompson or whatever it is called—

Phil Twyford: Barfoot and Thompson.

Hon ANNETTE KING: It could probably do it. Why not be honest, Minister? This is step one in getting rid of Housing New Zealand. The Government wants to get rid of Housing New Zealand, and it started it some time ago. Mind you, the poor, old, hapless previous Minister could not get any traction on anything. He was so set in his ways and so unable to move that all he could do was talk about it. Nick Smith—I have to give him credit—does know how to make things happen. Even if they are terrible things, he does know how to make things happen.

So what did the Government do? The first thing it did was it closed the Housing New Zealand offices. Nobody can go to a Housing New Zealand office now unless they can get through on the 0880 number and get an appointment. You know, the funniest thing happened recently. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Social Development were going through a town in New Zealand and they saw a Housing New Zealand office. They rocked up to the door and they thought: “Let’s pop in. Let’s pop in and say hello. You know, we’re the Prime Minister and the Minister for Social Development—very important people. We’ll just pop into Housing New Zealand’s office.” What happened? They got to the door, and the door was locked. They could not get through the door. They tapped on the door, and nobody opened it.

You see, that is what has happened to Housing New Zealand offices. The Government closed the doors. It did not want—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Rubbish.

Hon ANNETTE KING: Oh, “Rubbish.”, says the Minister. How long has he been the Minister? Oh, maybe he gets in the door. He has to give them a ring on the 0800 number and make an appointment, and then he gets in the door. The Government closed the office and it turned the service into an 0800 number. Well, what a problem it had with that—thousands of calls that were never picked up and thousands of people who did not get any service at all. It was an absolute mess, and this was Better Public Services. Those were the first steps. Now we have this bill, and in this bill are the next steps in getting rid of Housing New Zealand. I think this is a very sad day. We will oppose this bill because the Government wants to get rid of Housing New Zealand. Why not be more honest?

And why are we rushing this bill through at all? Part of it does not even come into effect until 14 April 2014—next year. That is when the Government wants to ensure that it can transfer the functions to another Government department. We now know that it is the Ministry of Social Development. I actually think it is quite a sensible idea to have the Ministry of Social Development giving advice, because we used to have a housing advisory service that was available to anybody who needed advice. That was closed down as part of the downgrading of Housing New Zealand. So it is going to transfer it to the ministry. It does not happen until 14 April—if it happens by then—so what is the rush in terms of this bill? And the ministry is going to be able to provide information, and Housing New Zealand will be just another provider of social housing—just another provider. That is right, Minister, is it not? It will be just another provider.

I support the community housing sector as well, but I have a question for this Minister: can those who have got income-related rent transferred to the community sector, living in one of its homes when they are assessed as no longer having income-related rent, be removed from the community house of a community housing provider? I cannot find out whether that is the fact. If it is the fact, what right does the Government have to control who lives in the homes of the Salvation Army, the Housing Foundation, or Habitat for Humanity? What right does it have to interfere in that? That is something that needs to be answered. In conclusion, the Minister talked about quality, not quantity. This Government has never been able to provide either. We will get that only under a Labour Government.

HOLLY WALKER (Green): As we have heard from both sides of the House so far, this bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, represents a major overhaul of social housing in New Zealand, and its significance should not be underestimated. It does signal overtly what has been clear for some time, which is that the Government wants out of social housing. It wants Housing New Zealand to operate only as a landlord, effectively, and not as a social agency. Housing New Zealand’s 69,000 properties are the second-largest single asset on the Government books. The Government clearly wants to treat them as such, as a commercial asset, not as an essential social service. That much is clear from the Cabinet agreements from 29 October last year, which are revealed in the regulatory impact—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member. There cannot be interjections when people are standing.

HOLLY WALKER: Thank you. That much is clear from the regulatory impact statement’s Cabinet agreements, which read like a neo-liberal manifesto. This Government’s vision for social housing has “a shifted emphasis from a model whereby the Government provides social housing primarily through ownership, to one where it purchases services and enables greater consumer choice and diversity through a contestable funding pool; a larger percentage of social housing delivered by non-government providers; a less dominant role for [Housing New Zealand], one where non-government social housing providers enter the market, and/or existing providers expand their operations, and [Housing New Zealand] makes more efficient use of capital.” That is the vision.

How does the bill give effect to this wonderful new neo-liberal corporate version of social housing? Well, it provides for renewable tenancies for all Housing New Zealand tenants, it shifts housing needs - assessments from Housing New Zealand to the Ministry of Social Development, it extends the income-related rent subsidy to community housing providers, and it provides a framework for a very limited warrant of fitness for some rental properties. There is a very small amount of good news in this bill, and that is the extension of the income-related rent subsidy to the community housing sector.

But there are some incredibly damaging measures in this bill as well, and the worst of those is the extension of renewable tenancies to all Housing New Zealand tenants. In July 2011 renewable tenancies were introduced for new Housing New Zealand tenants. That has been in place for not even 2 years. We have barely seen any tenancies renewed under the pilot scheme of renewable tenancies, which is now being extended to all tenants. So with barely any reviews undertaken, the Government is going to roll them out to everyone, even though it has not had the opportunity to actually test them to see how they work in practice, to analyse the data, and to review what the outcomes are for the tenants who have been moved out of Housing New Zealand homes, because it has not had time to implement the pilot policy yet. The Government is already rolling it out to everybody in Housing New Zealand properties. It does not make any sense. Renewable tenancies are very dangerous, because many of the social harms associated with poor-quality, unaffordable housing are associated with the high degree of churn experienced by tenants in the private rental market. That is things like children changing schools frequently. It is things like social dislocation and isolation experienced by families who move frequently and who are unable to put down roots in their community. It is things like the inability to be part of their community and participate fully because they are constantly moving around. That is very common in the private rental market, and that is what we are going to see now in the social housing market because of the extension of renewable tenancies to all tenants in Housing New Zealand and social housing properties.

At the moment, if Housing New Zealand tenants are able to get into a Housing New Zealand home, they get a blessed relief from this dislocation of the private rental market, because finally, after years of that dislocation and severe housing stress and often homelessness, they actually have a place to call home, where they can put down roots, where they can become part of the community, and where their children can go to the same school for a number of years, and they can begin to rebuild their lives. That is one of the beauties of the Housing New Zealand and State housing system. And, perversely enough for the outcomes of this bill, the ability for tenants to participate fully in their education and their community and to develop social connections dramatically improves the chances that they will be able to recover and move into private housing or purchase their own house under their own steam. So Housing New Zealand’s existing policy actually makes it more likely that those tenants are going to be able to recover and move on. Extending renewable tenancies will affect many people before they are ready to do that, and it is likely to contribute to a higher level of churn in the social housing market as well as in the private housing market.

The other concern we have about extending renewable tenancies is that it is going to affect a high number of elderly and disabled tenants who have been in their Housing New Zealand homes for a long time, and for whom being moved on will be incredibly disruptive and harmful. The Minister has told us that he is budgeting to evict 1,000 tenants, or households, in the first year of this policy being in place, and 2,000 in the second—so that is 3,000 evictions, as we heard before, in the middle of a housing affordability crisis. In the Green Party we say that he should build 3,000 new houses to accommodate this demand, and he should give those tenants—because he will talk about tenants in Housing New Zealand homes who are already paying market rents and therefore do not need to be there—the opportunity to purchase equity in their Housing New Zealand houses. If they are able to pay market rents, then that money that they can afford to pay should go towards purchasing equity in these houses, so that not only do they have the opportunity to get on to the homeownership ladder but also we increase the supply of affordable housing by continuing to build new Housing New Zealand properties to replace them.

The second concerning element of the bill is the shift from Housing New Zealand to the Ministry of Social Development of the responsibilities of needs-assessment for tenants. Again, it signals that Housing New Zealand and the Minister want out of service provision in the housing sector. Arguably, I think in some ways this could be seen as an improvement, because Housing New Zealand has been so terrible at doing these needs-assessments since the introduction of the 0800 number. There is, indeed, some rationale to have eligibility assessed by the same agency that assesses eligibility for the accommodation supplement, so there is some potential with this idea. The problem is that what we know about Work and Income New Zealand and the Ministry of Social Development and their attitude towards dealing with clients is that they have a strong incentive not to tell people about their full eligibility and entitlements for support. They have a strong incentive to move people off welfare and not to put them on to the support that they could be eligible for. And we have got no confidence that they would be any better at applying that process to housing needs - assessment and making sure that people were accessing their full entitlement to the accommodation supplement or making sure that they were getting into an income - related rent subsidy house. So we are not convinced that the Ministry of Social Development is actually capable of doing that in a way that potentially might have some benefit.

There is also a risk, in moving this needs-assessment away from Housing New Zealand, that the agency making decisions about what houses to build and where—Housing New Zealand—will no longer be informed in making those decisions by the knowledge that it gleans by being the one that does the assessment of those needs. So there is a separation there.

Extending the income-related rent subsidy to community housing providers is, as I said, one part of the bill that we do support in the Green Party, because we agree that the community housing sector generally delivers high-quality housing that is specifically suited to the needs of its tenants. We could support that, but that on its own is not enough for us to support this legislation. We would note that, as well as extending the income-related rent subsidy, there is a very real need for the Government to fund some capacity-building in the community housing sector—that if it wants the community housing sector to pick up the slack where it does not want Housing New Zealand to provide service any more, it has to build capacity in the sector to allow that to happen.

Finally, I note the rental warrant of fitness. If there is one reform that we urgently need in the housing sector, it is a warrant of fitness for rental housing. But what we have got is a damp squib. We have got a very limited warrant of fitness, which applies to only Housing New Zealand houses initially, and later, perhaps, to the community housing organisations. Focusing this on Housing New Zealand is a waste of time and it is a red herring, because I have received through an Official Information Act request Housing New Zealand maintenance guidelines and I have got a book this thick of the guidelines that Housing New Zealand already has for the quality of its houses. The problem is not that it does not have robust standards at Housing New Zealand; it is that it does not implement or maintain its properties up to those standards, and it does not respond on time when tenants make complaints. A warrant of fitness will not make a blind bit of difference to that. Most children growing up in poverty in poor quality homes do not live in Housing New Zealand properties; they live in private rental houses, and this bill does nothing for them. The Greens will be thoroughly opposing this bill for all of those reasons.

MELISSA LEE (National): It is a pleasure to rise in support of the first reading of this Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill.

I have to say I am appalled by that last speaker, Holly Walker. I did not realise that people moving off a benefit was such a bad thing in this country. I did not realise that people becoming independent of Government support was such a bad thing that that member opposes support from the Government for people to become better and to live much more independent lives away from Government support. I did not even realise that Miss Annette King thinks that we are closing down Housing New Zealand. Why should we be spending $3 billion on Housing New Zealand if we wanted to close it down?

This is about the Opposition becoming very frightened that we are getting into the territory that it claims is its domain: helping the people who are poor in this country. But what did the Labour Government do in the 9 years that it had the Treasury benches? I would like to ask that question. Obviously, nothing. It was the slum landlord that had people living in cold homes that we had to warm up. We are warming up houses up and down the country and we are very proud of that record.

This bill ensures that the housing we provide is the right size, in the right place, in the right condition for those who need it the most. Our social housing package is a key part of our promise to deliver a better public service. We want to provide the right environment to grow the community housing sector.

There are many community housing providers—organisations such as churches, NGOs, charities that provide support for vulnerable people—and they do a great job. There is no reason why a family in need should receive less support just because the bricks and mortar of their house is owned by a community provider rather than the Government. So we are actually saying that we are providing the same support. We should remember that the important thing is to provide the support that people require, not bicker about who owns the bricks and mortar, in this instance.

Often community housing providers can provide better support to people in need, as they are already providing integrated support for those people in a holistic manner, whether they are providing counselling, whether they are providing support for people who are trying to come off drugs or alcohol, or maybe they are in a situation where there is domestic violence. They provide holistic support, and this support that the Government will be providing will be even better for the job that they already do. That is why this bill provides for income-related rent subsidies to be extended to the community housing providers. This will mean that community housing providers can house more people, without the worry of where they are going to find the funds. They will be funded on the same basis as Housing New Zealand.

The other aspect of the bill is the assessment of people’s housing needs being shifted from Housing New Zealand to the Ministry of Social Development. Currently, people are assessed by Housing New Zealand for housing support and assessed by the Ministry of Social Development for social and income support. The shift in responsibility to the Ministry of Social Development will mean that the process will be fairer and will facilitate a more holistic view of people’s needs, alongside other social and income support. The shift will also mean that people’s housing needs - assessments will be made independently of housing providers. It will be done by people who best understand their need for income and social support.

As I said earlier, the Government is making a record investment of $2.9 billion in Housing New Zealand over 3 years. That is definitely not a signal that we are giving up on Housing New Zealand. We are supporting it to provide a better service for New Zealanders.

Also, Opposition members have previously talked about the reviewable tenancies and why they disagreed with it. Many members in this House have actually come across situations where people are living in Housing New Zealand homes where their families have grown up and moved on, but because they were already given the house—often very big houses to house bigger families—they refused to move out of these homes. There are many other families who actually need the bigger homes and they cannot move in. What we are saying is that reviewable tenancies, which we make these people sign, is not a case of evicting people out of their homes. The Minister never said anything about evictions. This is about providing the right housing for the needs of the people—the housing for the right need for the right people. We are not evicting people but are providing a better housing service for people in this country. This is a great bill. I commend it to the House and look forward to the submissions in the select committee consideration.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): The Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill is just another knee-jerk reaction by the Government to the intensifying New Zealand housing crisis. The Government’s priorities are saving money and reducing the size of State services, rather than ensuring that the needs of people, especially those at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum, are adequately met. It will be a darker future for them.

The bill offered here is another one of the Government’s moves being made in isolation to what is really needed: a comprehensive New Zealand housing strategy in which social housing must have a vital part, not a reduced one. The social housing sector in New Zealand is grossly neglected. In comparison with the United Kingdom and Europe, our sector is primitive and fails to meet the needs and expectations for social housing in this century. New South Wales is another example of a place where a much more innovative and up-to-date approach is being tried and found.

This bill goes in the opposite direction. The expectation that somehow the laying-off of social housing to community housing organisations will solve our housing needs is unrealistic and risky. Housing New Zealand as it is is also unable to meet these needs adequately. There are too few rental houses, especially in Auckland, but also in Christchurch, where the earthquakes have caused rents to rocket. There are too few houses to meet the need and there are poor-quality rental units. There is not adequate support, either, for State house tenants who need the assistance of other social agencies. We have in some parts of the country, effectively, State house ghettoes with attendant crime problems in some places, but we have contrasting areas with no such issues in others.

This inconsistency, and the fact that there are too many State houses in some places and not enough in other places, shows that we have had no strategic approach to social housing needs in New Zealand for far too long. We now need new housing models, such as those being established in New South Wales, and more innovation and options for people in the rental market—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: That’s what the bill does.

DENIS O’ROURKE: —this bill does not do that properly, at all—and we need more experimentation. A good example, actually, is the competition for a new housing model in central Christchurch currently. It came up with some well-considered mixed housing ideas, which I hope will all be tried. This bill does none of this.

New Zealand First’s policy is to make rental housing affordable and accessible to people on the lowest incomes and to offer a range of options to meet all social needs. The Government’s social housing policy reduces the scope of the operation of Housing New Zealand and it will transfer large sums of money to community housing organisations. This raises many unanswered questions—most of all, how will the need for a robust regime of accountability be met? The bill before us does not adequately address these issues. And what about the application processes? Last year the Salvation Army was turned down for not meeting the financial criteria, but part of the $3 million Māori fund was allocated to Whangarei Accessible Housing Trust, which was running at a loss. Figure that out.

What about the competency of third sector housing providers applying for social housing? Grants are given of large sums of money, and these organisations will own the housing funded by the Government. How do we know it will be well spent? There will be no State asset in return. What happens if a recipient organisation fails? Where do the assets go? How transparent and accountable are the processes for allocating funds to community providers? What safeguards and risk management have been put in place for the funds allocated to non-profit community providers? Will well-meaning community providers have enough competence in the housing market, when private investors have lost many millions of dollars in the building and property market themselves? Will these organisations have the competencies to maintain and manage assets properly?

New Zealand First believes that it is unwise to confuse social objectives with property investment objectives in non-governmental organisations. The outcome will be risky, uncertain, and unlikely to be acceptable in practice. The State would do better to provide social housing directly and not rely so much on the NGO sector. There is a place for those organisations, such as those organisations that provide refuges for women—and there is a need for that facility—and there are others, too. But these are a discrete and relatively small area of need.

The social housing need in New Zealand is now huge, and is growing. More and more Kiwis are unable to afford a home. Many will never be able to buy one. Their need is for options for long-term rental housing, which in this country only the State can reliably provide. The income-related rent subsidies that this bill will provide to community organisations also has too many pitfalls, especially—

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

Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Friday)

Thursday, 16 May 2013

(continued on Friday, 17 May 2013)

Bills

Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): Last evening I was giving some reasons—good reasons, I think—why New Zealand First would be unable to support this bill. I said that it is unwise to confuse social objectives with property investment objectives in non-government organisations, because the outcome would be risky, uncertain, and unlikely to be unacceptable in practice. The State is better to provide social housing directly and not rely so much on the NGO sector. I said there is a place for them, and that should be preserved, but it is a discrete and relatively small area of need.

The bill provides for income-related rent subsidies for community organisations, but we think that has far too many pitfalls, mainly concerning issues around accountability and consistency in operation. The bill also contains new provisions for moving people out of State houses if they are found to be financially able to do so, as though somehow that is necessarily the right thing to do. For some it may be a good thing, but, as I have indicated, there may be good reasons for people to choose to remain in State house rentals, and New Zealand First does not see any reason why they should not do so. I fear that people who have such good reasons will be nudged out of State rentals, when it is not the best option for them. The Government seems to think that if they can afford to own properties, they should be moved out of a rental home, when there are many other issues for such people in relation to their priorities and their social needs. Affordability is in any event a subjective exercise, to be assessed on the particular issues for the individual concerned, and should not be some clinical objective exercise.

I note that the bill will allow Housing New Zealand to alter rents for State houses and to change the nature of the tenancy as the tenant’s circumstances change, and to forcibly obtain information from those people. There are several examples in the bill. I will read a couple of them, which gives a flavour. It says, for example, that the bill would “enable Housing HNZ to investigate the circumstances of”—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. His time has expired.

Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei): Can I be the first to congratulate the Minister of Housing this morning on the changed paradigm in housing that he is bringing forward. It is something that the community housing sector is supporting—in fact, even promoting—because it has said for a long time now that we need to make sure that people looking for housing have a significant choice right across the board, not just Housing New Zealand properties. Currently, the paradigm is that people needing housing will go either to the Ministry of Social Development or to Housing New Zealand. If they go to the Ministry of Social Development, they get a subsidy of about $3,000 or $4,000 a year on their housing and they rent privately. We are delighted that the private sector actually provides housing in New Zealand. I do not know why the Labour Party attacked the private housing sector. Quite frankly, if that sector left the market tomorrow, the Government would be left with billions and billions and billions of dollars’ worth of required investment. So we are glad that landlords provide housing in New Zealand.

Or the needy family would go to Housing New Zealand, and there they get a subsidy of about $6,000 or $8,000 a year. So, naturally, people go to Housing New Zealand—because the subsidy is twice as much as what they would get on the accommodation supplement—line up, and then you get the waiting list. Under Labour we saw the waiting list hit 10,000 people a year—10,000 people a year—because everyone wants a State house. Furthermore, once you are in a State house—currently, under the Labour Party principles, anyway—you do not leave; you have it for life. It does not matter whether you took on a four-bedroom house with three kids and a husband. Twenty years down the track, when all the children have left and your husband has passed away, at the moment you can rattle around in a four-bedroom State house, even while a needy family of six is languishing on the waiting list for 10 years. The Labour Party thinks that is fine. Well, we are saying no. We believe that we can transition that single person into a smaller State home or into a community house.

I am saying that it is good that the Minister has changed this paradigm, where once you either lined up at the Ministry of Social Development or lined up at Housing New Zealand, preferred Housing New Zealand, and had a State house for life. Now, of course, we are going to see people go to the Ministry of Social Development. They will have the opportunity to go into private housing with the accommodation supplement, into State housing with income-related rents, or into the third sector, which is a great thing because in the community housing sector care they wrap around services for mental health clients and they wrap around services for the disabled, for the very young, and for the very old. And for those young mums they care for they provide budgeting services, and sometimes there are medical visits as well.

We are going to be supporting the community housing sector with both capital—significant capital—and cash flow, the income-related rents, so that we can provide housing right across the board: the private rental market with the accommodation supplement, income-related rents in State housing, and income-related rents in the community housing sector. We are giving tenants choices right across the country. I support this Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, and I support the Minister in taking the courage to actually deliver to New Zealand what the community housing sector has been pushing for and promoting for years.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour): The reason, Mr Heatley, that the Housing New Zealand waiting list hit 10,000 when Labour was in Government was that your lot hocked off 14,000 State houses to your developer mates when you were in Government in the 1990s. So let us be clear where the blame lies for the waiting list. Unlike National, Labour does not hide the need by slashing the waiting list.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You had 9 years.

MOANA MACKEY: We did have 9 years. We managed to rebuild nearly 9,000 State houses in those years, Dr Smith.

This bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, signals the beginning of the end for Housing New Zealand, and, let us be clear, that is what this bill is doing. National’s reviewable tenancy policy is an utter disgrace. You can tell that National MPs do not appreciate how privileged they are to enjoy security in terms of their tenancy, in terms of the fact that they have a home, and they clearly do not understand that not every family in this country has that privilege. They take it for granted.

The reason housing is so crucial is that it provides stability. Families can put their roots down. They can get involved in their local communities. They do not have to live in fear of not knowing where they are going to live from week to week, from year to year, of not knowing what schools their kids will be going to, and of how many times they are going to be transient. Transience is one of the biggest killers of educational achievement in this country. Too many families in this country do not have the stability that they need and that Phil Heatley and Dr Nick Smith take for granted. They do not have it. They are growing up in households that are transient, and that is bad for our country.

What we have in this country is one Government department that has the ability to provide the stability that families need—one—and that is Housing New Zealand. We have a unique opportunity to do something incredibly important for families through a Government department, and the National Government is stripping that away. What an incredibly cruel thing to do: to strip that away from the one Government department that can provide the crucial element of stability that is missing from so many children’s lives in this country.

Reviewable tenancies are a cruel solution to fix what is a non-problem. This is a non-existent problem. In 2011, I have to point out, Phil Heatley said that it would apply only to new tenants, and that he would exclude the elderly and the infirm from that because it would be distressing for them to know that they would have to go through that process. Well, that is gone now, apparently. We knew back then. We said 3 years ago that it would only be a matter of time before that was extended to everyone, and that is exactly what has happened.

This is a non-problem because Housing New Zealand tenants were already being reviewed annually for their eligibility for the income-related rent subsidy, and, where their circumstances had changed, tenancy managers—remember those; we used to have people who actually looked after and developed relationships with these families—would work with that family to move them on, and, overwhelmingly, they did. When I talk to tenancy managers, do you know what they said was the single biggest issue in terms of moving those families on? It was not that they refused to move, like the National Government has tried to tell us. It was that they had nowhere to move to—nowhere to move to. The National Government is saying “How dare they have the audacity to not want to be homeless! How dare they dig in and say they don’t want their kids living in a garage!”. They have nowhere to go. Fix the issue of housing supply, and this problem goes away, and in a way that does not undermine the stability of every family living in a Housing New Zealand house currently, particularly where there are children in those families.

The other thing this does is scare tenants away from taking on extra hours at work, because they do not know what that is going to do to their eligibility for a home. So where in the past they could go to their tenancy manager and say: “For 2 months I’ve got more work; let’s discuss it.”, and know that that was not going to lead to them being evicted, now they do not have that security. So people are going to turn down hours at work for fear of losing their home, for fear of being made homeless, and the National Party expects us to believe that this is a good policy.

As I said before, we do not have tenancy managers any more at Housing New Zealand. When Phil Heatley was the Minister of Housing he changed the eligibility for State housing so that it went from your inability to find housing to your ability to find housing. The test changed, and it seemed like a small change at the time, but let us be clear about what it did.

What it meant was that the solo mother I met who went to Housing New Zealand was told that the best thing she could do—because she technically had the ability to find housing now; that test had changed—was to stop paying her rent in the private rental she was in and get herself evicted, and then she would be eligible for a Housing New Zealand property. That is the scheme that Phil Heatley put in place; that is the scheme that the Hon Dr Nick Smith is continuing here. Or what about the homeless man in the shelter in Auckland? He was told that he was considered housed because he was in the night shelter. That is the Housing New Zealand policy that this Government has brought in. It is cruel, it is callous, and it is all part of a plan to destroy the tradition of social housing in this country, and this bill continues that. Let us be very clear that that is exactly what this bill does.

I now want to come to the issue of the extension of the income-related rent subsidy to the community housing sector. Yes, this is something the sector has been asking for for a long time. Again, let us be clear. The money that has been provided in this Budget, when it is fully rolled out, will cover less than 20 percent of those properties that are currently owned by the community housing sector and are providing social housing. The sector currently provides around 5,000 houses, and 17 percent will qualify for this. That is all the money that there is. That is not even considering any new housing. Phil Heatley goes on about them being able to do much, much more in the area of social housing. Well, Mr Heatley, you have not even provided enough money to cover what they already do. In fact, less than 20 percent of what they already do is covered by this.

Annette King asked a very important question of the Minister last night. She asked whether the reviewable tenancies policy is going to apply to those tenants who are receiving an income-related rent subsidy and who are now going to be housed by the community housing sector. We had the answer in the New Zealand Herald this morning: “A spokeswoman said this would include tenants in housing owned by community groups ‘wherever the Government is supporting them through income-related rents’.” So, yes, if someone is on an income-related rent in a community housing social provider home, when they reach market rent the provider is going to have to evict those tenants.

I do not know whether the Hon Dr Nick Smith has met with many of these providers yet; I know Phil Heatley did, and he knows how strongly that sector believes in secure tenancies—how strongly that sector believes in the stability that secure tenancies provide. I note, again from the New Zealand Herald today, that “Community Housing Aotearoa co-chairwoman Lisa Woolley said her own agency, Vision West Trust in West Auckland, had a policy of ‘long-term tenancies’. ‘It’s all about making sure the family is stable, connected to their community, that their children are going to the same schools.’ ” What a cruel blow for a sector that has been calling for the extension of the income-related rent subsidy for a long time to then be told that alongside that it has to implement a dreadful, callous policy of evicting tenants—evicting tenants—when they reach a market rent. Let me give you an example.

Take someone with a mental health issue. Phil Heatley thought it was OK to evict people with mental health issues. In fact, he relished it. He relished it. He relished evicting mental health tenants. I had a tenancy manager say to me that when they had a mental health patient who went into crisis, and the neighbours rang them to say that this person was going a bit crazy, they used to call an ambulance. Now they call a police car. That is the difference. The tenancy manager said that when the ambulance or the mental health advocate turned up at the property, the neighbours would say: “What can we do to help?”. When a police officer turns up, they say: “How can we get rid of this person from our community?”. That is the current situation we have.

I come back to the example of a community housing provider that supports people with mental health issues. It provides wraparound support, and I completely agree that it will do a better job than Housing New Zealand does of providing support for tenants with mental health issues. The provider gets that person to a point where they are well enough to take on extra hours at work, where they are well enough to start working full-time, and then that person no longer qualifies for the income-related rent subsidy. But that provider knows that the minute that wraparound support is not there, that person is going to go backwards. Well, the National Party says: “Evict them. We’ve fixed the problem. It’s OK.” What we know, and what the community housing sector knows, is that it is not that simple. Just because someone is doing better does not mean it is always going to be the case—that wraparound support needs to be there.

The community housing sector has said for a long time it does not want to do the Government’s job for it. It wants to be in partnership with the Government—doing it as well as, not instead of, the Government. What we see with this legislation is the Government saying “Well, you can do our job for us now because we no longer see a serious role for the State in providing social housing.” An effective partnership between the Government and the community housing sector would see a strategic farming out of tenancies, basically. We would see tenancies being transferred to organisations that deal with specialist needs in social housing—whether that be dealing with the elderly, whether that be dealing with formerly homeless people or at-risk youth, or whether that be dealing with mental health patients—as the Government looks for providers that can do that in a way that Housing New Zealand cannot and strategically moves those tenancies over, or those properties over, instead of what we are seeing here, which is holus-bolus just shoving 12,000 houses and evicting 3,000 people.

I do not think the National Government realises that it can evict as many people from Housing New Zealand properties as it wants, but they do not just disappear. Those people have to go somewhere. They do not just disappear into the ether because the Hon Dr Nick Smith has evicted them from a Housing New Zealand property. Fix the problem of housing supply and all these non-problems that we are trying to fix in this bill go away. This is a cruel and callous piece of legislation, but it is legislation we would expect from this Government.

MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): What the member resuming her seat, Moana Mackey, has not taken into account is the previous bill, which is addressing exactly that issue. It is interesting that Labour members are railing against this bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, and wringing their hands in the way that socialists have become so accustomed to doing, yet this morning on the news Dr Russell Wills, the Children’s Commissioner, was commending this Government for the suite of things that it has announced in this Budget, and particularly mentioning the work that we are doing around social housing. Labour members seem to think that in keeping people beholden, their “one size fits all, we have the size and we will make the people fit into it” model is the only way that things should be. My question to them is this: if we keep doing what we have always done, will we keep getting what we have always got? It is something that those people seem to argue about. They argue about it when they are in Opposition, and do nothing about it when they are in Government, which is pretty much why—a lot of hand-wringing, absolutely, and a lot of tsk tsk’ing over the chardonnay.

This bill will provide opportunities for a place like Northland, where iwi providers have been very eager to get into social housing, but under the current model it simply is not economically viable. With the opportunities that this bill will present, it provides an opportunity for iwi to take ownership over social housing. In the broadest context it provides for greater flexibility and provides far more wraparound ability for people to provide the services that they know people need. The idea that the Government is the only one that can do that is why the Labour members are sitting there languishing, and sort of rolling out these policies of old with their new nuanced membership. They have gone off target. What they say does not resonate. There was no greater indication of that than yesterday’s leaders’ speeches. Did we not see an absolute contrast? I wonder who wrote David Shearer’s speech. I think it was David Cunliffe—I think it was David Cunliffe.

Surely this is about the housing. It is not about who owns it. It is about who can provide it and meet the needs of those who are the most vulnerable and who are in need. As Dr Russell Wills said this morning, this is a positive move. This is about showing support where it is needed. I commend it to the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand the next call is a split call.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): The way that Budgets usually work is that a whole lot of documents get dumped on us, and we and our staff ferret away for a wee while to find out where the nuggets are—where the secrets really are—that the Government has hidden amongst the figures. But you do not to look very far in this Budget in terms of this bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, because it is actually in the press release that Dr Nick Smith put out. At the end of the first page of his press release around this policy, it says in a very simple sentence: “The review of tenancies will be undertaken with common sense.” We all know that Dr Nick Smith and common sense are mutually exclusive. They just do not work together. So when Dr Nick Smith says that the review of tenancies will be undertaken with common sense, we know that that means in English that the National Government will stuff this up—it will stuff this up.

What it wants to do, as many speakers on this side of the House have said, is, over a number of years, evict 3,000 people from their State homes—3,000 people from their State homes. That is 3,000 families from State homes, and they will be from right around the country, including in Sam Lotu-Iiga’s electorate, and including in my electorate. There will be many, many people from right around the country who will find themselves being evicted from a State home. This continues the trend of Dr Nick Smith running things into the ground—running things into the ground. He was not happy enough with running ACC into the ground, creating a huge crisis there. He was not happy with that. Dr Nick Smith was not happy with taking the wrecking ball to local government. So now that he is back in Cabinet, reformed, he is back and he is taking the wrecking ball to Housing New Zealand.

This is a very serious issue, especially in my electorate of Mana, because there are a lot of State housing tenants in my electorate. The issue of Housing New Zealand matters—of waiting lists, of maintenance, of the supply of enough housing—is a major issue and probably takes up half the time of my electorate staff. They will be very worried at what the Government is proposing in this bill—very worried—because it continues a trend from National of taking the hammer to Housing New Zealand. We talk about Nick Smith undertaking these measures with common sense. Was it common sense from this Government to close down the Housing New Zealand office in Porirua, to shut the door to the public, to the tenants, to the thousands of the corporation’s tenants in Porirua? Was that common sense, Dr Nick Smith? Was that common sense, I ask the National Party? Was it common sense that Phil Heatley started an 0800 number, which no one could get an answer from. No one would answer the phone. It took minutes, if not hours, for people to get someone just to simply answer the phone. Was that common sense from the Government? If that was common sense from the Government in those two areas, what can we expect from the Government in terms of evicting 3,000 people out of State homes?

Is it common sense the way that this Government is undertaking its earthquake-strengthening programme? Is that common sense? But what we have got here is another effort from Nick Smith to run Housing New Zealand into the ground. This Government does not like Housing New Zealand. Let us make that clear. It would prefer to wash its hands of what it probably considers to be the State house problem. That is what is happening here. The Government is washing its hands of the State house problem. It has closed down the offices, so no longer can someone in my electorate simply go along to someone behind the counter and ask: “What is up with my house? What is up with my maintenance?”. There is no customer service there—no customer service whatsoever. There is no customer service in Porirua, at all. So what they have to do now is ring up Phil Heatley’s 0800 number, wait for at least 45 minutes to get someone to answer the phone, and then it takes months—

Hon Member: Or longer.

KRIS FAAFOI: —or longer—to get something as simple as a broken window fixed. But, no, when tenants are 2 weeks in arrears with their rent, the corporation comes down like a tonne of bricks—it comes down like a tonne of bricks. If you want to wreck something, it is obvious that Nick Smith is the person to get in to do the job—absolutely. ACC was not enough, and local government was not enough. Housing New Zealand is next in his sights and that is a very, very sad thing for the people of New Zealand.

JAN LOGIE (Green): The Green Party will be opposing the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill.

Mike Sabin: Oh, surely not.

JAN LOGIE: No surprise. Although we have some lukewarm support for a couple of aspects of this bill, we are strongly opposed to many of the measures within it. This bill establishes renewable tenancies. I usually like the word “renewable”, but not in this situation. It shifts housing needs-assessments from Housing New Zealand to the Ministry of Social Development and extends income-related rents to community housing organisations, but, sadly, also undermines their autonomy. It attempts to pretend that the Government is actually doing something about the problem of cold, damp housing in this country, when in fact it is just providing window dressing. Renewable tenancies: evictions by another name. The evictions of 1,000 people in the first year are heralded by this bill, and 3,000 in total. That is into a housing crisis, where in Auckland alone it is estimated that we are 12,000 houses short already. In South Auckland, the average annual turnover in private rental housing is four families a year, because they cannot afford to meet the market rentals. That is where a young pregnant woman was found living in her car because she was earning a few dollars over the threshold for Housing New Zealand housing and could not find a private rental that she could afford. Shame on this Government.

As my colleague Holly Walker noted in her very compelling speech last night, which I recommend to everyone, much of the harm of private rentals comes from the churn that we see because people cannot afford the rent or their landlords decide to get somebody else in and they have to move. This means that children end up moving between schools and cannot become part of a learning culture. People lose their social bonds and the connections that come from sharing your vegetables with your neighbours, that enable you to get by that little bit better, and that come from when people develop community. I have been a renter most of my life and I have moved, on average, twice a year, which is just that reality of being a renter. I can attest to that loss of community and the high cost of moving—it costs a lot to move and re-establish yourself. That is money that is going to be lost from the poorest families in our community, the people who can least afford it.

This bill is a bloody travesty. Still, this Government seems to have forgotten the point of State housing, and I would like to remind it that it was a Liberal administration under Richard Seddon that first recognised the need for State housing. You brought in State housing—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

JAN LOGIE: Sorry, Mr Assistant Speaker, not you. The National Government—a Liberal Government—was the first Government to bring in State housing, because it recognised the growing reports of extortionate rents and squalid living conditions—

Holly Walker: Sounds familiar.

JAN LOGIE: —familiar—and it recognised a need for the State to provide a response. When Mr Sabin says we are whingeing about this and being liberals opposing it and we are not acknowledging your other bill to bring in extended urban limits and provide new housing, I would remind you that in the 1950s the National Government opposed the development of State houses on the fringes, recognising that development in the inner city made more sense and was better for people’s sustainability. This Government has lost its way. You have lost your values.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

JAN LOGIE: Sorry, Mr Assistant Speaker, not you, of course. This National Government has lost its way and is forgetting the people who most need its support.

There is one aspect of this bill that could potentially provide some help, and that is extending income-related rents to social housing. We recognise that social housing does do the job well. Wraparound services are really positive. However, I provide three caveats on this. One is that it needs to be in addition. I acknowledge that this Government lost 300 homes from the State sector for the first time.

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: What’s $30 million going to do? In addition.

JAN LOGIE: Three hundred houses makes a difference. That is 300 families, Mr Lotu-Iiga. It is sad to see them lose them.

ALFRED NGARO (National): I am proud to take the final call in this first reading around the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill this morning. I, first of all, just want to quote from the Housing Corporation Act 1974 on one of the key functions of the corporation. Section 18(2) states: “The Corporation’s functions include—(a) providing rental housing, principally for those who need it most:”—for those who need it most. I just want to say that in acknowledging all the contributions, those who are opposing this bill and those who are supporting this bill, at the end of the day we all agree that where there is need, and for those who need it most, we should meet that need. We have been holding each other accountable about the things we have done in the past, but we are now in the present, and heading into the future.

What our communities want to hear is what this bill will do to make a difference. It is really clear when we have gone out into our communities. I was over at the Māngere Housing New Zealand office, meeting with the new team leader there, Stacey Herbert. We talked about the issues and the challenges.

I went out to Monte Cecilia Housing Trust over at Māngere. We went out to some of the boarding houses. We began to see some of the challenges that they were facing. I know and we know that the needs are there. What this bill is trying to do is this very thing: it is not trying to kick people out, it is not trying to say that if you have got a need that we will not meet that; what it is doing is, in one sense, providing for those who need it most. There is a waiting list there. I talked to Stacey Herbert, and there are many who are in great need who cannot access those homes—the very homes and the very needs that the Opposition is talking about.

So what will this bill do? Well, the reviewable tenancy provision inside this bill for all tenants means that those who do not need those homes can now move on, to provide for those who do. That is the simple fact of what it is trying to do. We have been accused of being the right-wing Tories, the people who do not care for people. In fact, they have called us the rich to the poor, while many of us, if not all of us, have come from backgrounds where we have had to make a living and work hard to be where we are at today. We know what it takes—we know what it takes. For those on the Opposition who may not have read it, there is a report called Home and Housed. It is a vision for social housing in New Zealand. What it clearly says is this: “Shelter is one of the most basic human needs, but a home is much more than the place where we hang our hat:”.

In 2009 there was an accommodation review, an opportunity to see those who could move on. Around about 2,500 tenants were actually reviewed and researched. They were asked whether they could afford the income threshold to meet the opportunities for homeownership. Out of 2,500 only five were able to afford that. So what do we do, then? Do we then allow them to stay where they are? No, what we want to do is provide opportunities. Those who were on the Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group included people like Alan Jackson, who was the chair; Major Campbell Roberts from the Salvation Army; Andrew Body, who is a director of Crown Fibre Holdings; Martin Udale, an independent consultant in housing; Diane Robertson, the head of Auckland City Mission; Brian Donnelly, the executive director of the New Zealand Housing Foundation; and Paul White, from Torea Tai Consultants. All of those people work in communities and some of them are part of the Salvation Army, and this was their recommendation: that we should have reviewable tenancies for all tenants—for all tenants.

Moana Mackey: But you’re not, you’re doing 17 percent.

ALFRED NGARO: I want to finish off with this, Mrs Mackey: we act with common sense. We are not going to go out and kick people out on to the streets, as you have said.

Moana Mackey: You are.

ALFRED NGARO: We do not. Why? Because we know—I know the community that I work with. I know the people who are there. That is the not the intent of this. What this is for is to give people the sense of hope of a future, of an opportunity. We know about transience. In my community I have worked in we have seen the impact that it has. But here is a greater thing, Mrs Mackey: what about the opportunities for homeownership for those who are transient? What about the opportunities for them to do better for themselves, to stop true transience?

Moana Mackey: You’re not doing anything about that.

ALFRED NGARO: I commend this bill and I look forward to its hearing at the Social Services Committee. I hope that Mrs Mackey will second herself on to the committee and we will have a robust discussion, because at the moment we have not heard a lot from some of the other Auckland MPs. We look forward to that. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 56

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Social Services Committee.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Housing): I move, That the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill be reported back to the House by 1 October 2013.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2)

First Reading

Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): I move, That the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. It is the Government’s intention that this legislation should pass through all stages today. The New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) is the Government’s solution to the decisions made by the High Court and the Court of Appeal in relation to Ministry of Health v Atkinson and Others. This is a compassionate and responsible solution. It does shift the boundary between family and taxpayer responsibilities, but it has landed in a fair and reasonable place. The Ministry of Health advises that New Zealand will be only the third country in the world, after Sweden and the Netherlands, that will pay a wage to some family members caring for other family members.

For over 20 years, under Governments of all hues, the Ministry of Health has operated a blanket policy of not paying family members for the support they provide to disabled family members receiving disability support services. Support by Governments has consistently been based on the principle that families have primary responsibility for the well-being of each other within their family. Care and support provided by family members to their loved ones are part of that responsibility, and are provided out of love and affection and not for money. The Government’s primary role in this regard is to support families in their role. That is why public funding for care and support is targeted to meet the needs that families are unable to meet.

The Atkinson court case raised issues that went to the heart of the relative obligations of families and the Government, and the degree of responsibility that family members in different situations have for each other. The court in the Atkinson case found that the Ministry of Health, under all Governments, had a policy on disability support funding that was unjustifiably discriminating against parents caring for adult disabled children. This bill takes account of the court’s decision and clarifies the Government’s position on paying family carers. The bill provides certainty without the further need to resort to the courts on individual cases, and it manages the significant financial risks for the Government. This approach balances the interests of disabled people, family carers, and taxpayers, in challenging fiscal times.

The Government provides over $1 billion each year to fund support services for over 30,000 disabled people. The majority of these people are supported by family members in some way, and the Government recognises the crucial role that families play in supporting and maintaining the well-being of disabled people in our nation. It is—and it remains—a fundamental tenet of Government-funded support services that, generally, families have prime responsibility for the well-being of their members, but, clearly, change is needed. In some circumstances, providing ongoing support for people with lifelong disabilities can place an unreasonable demand on families. In particular, the situation of family members supporting adults with lifelong disabilities is an extraordinary circumstance involving a burden of care beyond that ordinarily required or obliged of family members.

In consulting the disability and family carer communities on the issue of paying family carers, submitters told the Ministry of Health that if prioritisation is required, the priority should be on disabled people with the highest needs. Support should be given to those families who need it most, and submitters wanted some flexibility to deal with individual circumstances in their best interests. The Government recognises that changing the policy to pay all categories of family carers would result in unmanageable fiscal costs to the Crown. In considering targeting, the Government decided that the fairest way of managing these risks was to provide support to those people who need it most. The bill reflects this community feedback. It allows and supports a pragmatic and compassionate solution to a difficult situation facing family carers. It amends the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act to enable the Crown, through the Ministry of Health or a district health board, to adopt policies and make payments to family carers of specified disabled family members.

The bill provides for clarity about which support services are provided and under which specified circumstances. The approach recognises that the Government’s responsibility is to support families in their caring role. The policy cannot support all groups. This means people will not generally be paid to provide health or disability support services to their family members. This is particularly so for those parents who care for their non-adult children, and for spouses who care for each other. The societal expectations and responsibilities for care in these situations are substantially different from those of parents who care for their disabled adult sons and daughters. The bill will allow the Ministry of Health to introduce a new policy of paying parents and resident family members other than spouses to provide disability supports to disabled adults aged 18 and over in high and very high need situations.

The bill is a significant change in that eligible disabled people will now have the choice of employing a family member to provide them with support at home. This approach is consistent with the Government’s overall direction for disabled people to have more choice and control in their everyday lives. The Government in this Budget has committed $92 million over 4 years to implement this policy. The Ministry of Health will allocate funding to adult disabled people in high and very high need situations who wish to employ their parents or resident family members to provide personal care and household management supports they have been assessed as needing. There will be some flexibility within the policy to consider disabled people in particular circumstances who do not meet the eligibility criteria but where payment is clearly desirable. An example might be disabled people living in remote rural areas where alternative care is not available.

The new family care policy does not affect the existing arrangements for those non-family members who have always been able to be paid to provide home support for a disabled family member who does not live with them. The Ministry of Health also provides the carer support subsidy, totalling $34 million per annum, to unpaid full-time carers to reimburse some of the costs of bringing in another support person to give the main carer a break from their caring roles. In addition, the Ministry funds respite services of $17 million per annum to support short-term breaks for full-time family carers. The Ministry of Social Development does provide income support to the vast majority of those disabled people being cared for as adults.

The Crown has acted in good faith to respond to the court’s decisions. We have carefully balanced providing the best supports for those families with the greatest need, while being responsible with limited taxpayers’ funds. We have landed in a fair place. The bill clarifies the Government’s position on paying family carers and provides certainty without the need to resort to the courts on individual cases. The bill provides flexibility to implement and modify policies on paying family carers in the future. This issue has challenged Governments of all parties for 20 years. As recently as April 2008 the previous Government rejected paying family carers.

This bill meets three central issues. The first is the need for each disabled person to receive the most appropriate care to enable a good life. The second is to recognise the extraordinary work done by family members in many hundreds of homes caring for family members with very high or high needs. The third is for support to be fiscally affordable for our country. I am pleased to be able to present this bill today, and I commend the bill to the House.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Can I begin by acknowledging the families who took the human rights discrimination proceedings that have eventuated in this legislation coming in, and acknowledge how traumatic it is for people to have to expose their personal lives in order to get justice. They did that, and they are now being responded to by this legislation.

It is a puzzle to me why we are ramming the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) through all stages under urgency, because the payments do not come into effect until October of this year. There does not seem to be any need for urgency given that. The Minister of Health quite incorrectly stated that this is a major breakthrough and that this is the first time that there will be family caregiver policies, but in his very legislation it specifically says: “the Crown and any DHB are, and have always been, authorised to adopt or have a family care policy and to change, cancel, or replace such a policy.” That is in the Minister’s legislation that we are debating right now. So there is already the ability for the Crown and any district health board to authorise a family care payment, and they have in many instances. What the Minister has created is a new threshold for family care payment, which will actually restrict the right of access of some who already meet the criteria.

Some families who, for example, are in very isolated parts of our country—and in New Zealand we have a large number—and for whom it is very difficult to get a stable, qualified, appropriate caregiver, have been able to get a family carer paid for to provide the support services that a disabled person needs. This new policy, by saying that the family caregiver payment will be limited to those with high and very high needs—in fact, it specifies that there will be only 1,600 such people entitled to receive a payment—may well, by the implication that the legislation is overriding existing policy, limit the ability of district health boards and the Ministry of Health to be responsive to families’ needs and to pay family caregivers as they currently are able to do under existing criteria.

I am concerned that in the rush for this legislation, some of those “devil in the detail” points may well cause unintended consequences that mean that some families will be worse off than they currently are. I doubt very much that that was the intention of the Minister, and I certainly doubt that it is the intention of any of the National caucus members, despite what they are doing in housing. I am sure that none of them is intending that families will be worse off as a result of this legislation, but with the very narrow criteria, that is certainly a possibility.

The other significant concern I have is that in this legislation it specifically says that the legislation “stops claims of unlawful discrimination being made concerning any care policy,”. This stops future claims being made except for “any claim that arises out of a complaint that was lodged with the Human Rights Commission before 16 May 2013.” What is the date today? We know that in Parliament it is 16 May, but in the real world, where complaints are laid, it is actually 17 May. So we are passing legislation that stops any future claim being made. That means that parents who are providing care currently and who are anticipating, because of the Minister’s bold announcement that family caregivers would finally be paid, that this would solve their problem will now have the detail of the criteria that only very high needs or complex needs disabled people qualify for this family caregiver payment. Today they will learn that they do not meet the criteria for family carer payment, and, what is more, that they are being stopped from laying a complaint with the Human Rights Commission about discrimination.

This legislation says: “A claim that arises out of such a complaint may proceed, but the remedy that may be granted is restricted to a declaration that the policy is inconsistent with NZBORA:”—the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. So the Minister is not only significantly limiting the criteria for payment for family caregivers but also saying that anyone who misses out, who does not meet those criteria, will not be allowed to take a complaint to the Human Rights Commission unless they are expecting just a note saying that their complaint is justified because the policy is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

That is a significant move that this Parliament is proposing to take, and not at a normal pace. The Government is ramming the legislation through all stages under urgency and extinguishing people’s right to challenge the policy of the Government. I am puzzled by that. It is the only reason that I can conclude for the Minister deciding to take this legislation through all stages under urgency. There is nothing urgent about it. As he quite rightly pointed out, this issue has been around and unresolved satisfactorily for a very long time. The policy decision to determine whether a family responsibility extends to caring significantly for adult disabled family members is a big and complex call and this side of the House has made numerous written offers to the Minister of Health to try to adopt an agreed position so that we could have a parliamentary agreement on such a policy rather than something that appears out of nowhere and is then rammed through all stages under urgency. In my view that is not the way to deal with a significant and sensitive issue—an issue that affects thousands of New Zealanders and one that is hard to take a sensible call on.

I think the Minister has got it wrong and I think the Atkinson family, who were the instigators of this legal action and who are being responded to, might think that as well, because although they will be compensated for their care under this policy, albeit by agreement and not specifically under the legislation, had they applied next week, they would not meet the criteria. They have won their case. It has been to the High Court and the Court of Appeal. They have won it through New Zealand’s legal system, but under the criteria that the Minister Tony Ryall has currently laid out in this legislation, that family would not meet the criteria. Families like the Atkinsons all around the country will have heard about this legislation and think: “Thank goodness, our issues are finally sorted and resolved.” When they learn the detail of the legislation, they will be puzzled.

It is a bit of a contradiction, this legislation. It responds to the court case. The Minister trumpets it as being the first ever resolution of the issue of family carers being paid. He is wrong. In the legislation itself it spells out the fact that there is, and has always been, the ability of the Crown or a district health board to determine, under whatever criteria they wish to, that family caregivers can be paid—and many are around the country. What this legislation does is now set a very high level, a very high threshold, for meeting those criteria. My concern is that it may very well exclude some families who are currently getting paid. If the Minister in the Committee stage wants to introduce a Supplementary Order Paper that clarifies that this will not extinguish any existing rights that families who meet the current criteria for being paid as family caregivers have, I think that would certainly resolve that situation.

This is a disappointing step because it is not as courageous as it could have been. It was not introduced with any discussion with other parties that I am aware of, except those needed to get this bill across with a majority. I think this issue is bigger than just a parliamentary majority. I think it has been around for so long that across-party support would have very appropriate.

The final concluding comment I want to make is my disappointment that this family caregiver payment specifically excludes spouses. In many relationships spouses are the appropriate people to provide care, and in my view that is not a matter that Parliament should intervene in. That is a matter for the families themselves to determine.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): Thank you for the privilege to speak on this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). This morning a prominent disability spokesperson said the sector will be relieved that a resolution has been arrived at. The bill, indeed, does respond to the Court of Appeal’s decision in Ministry of Health v Atkinson and Others and it does create a fair policy to pay for family members who care for their adult disabled children.

It is very important to emphasise that this has been about since 2001, since the Human Rights Commission first ruled. That, of course, was at the time of the Labour-Green Government. In 2002, I must say, the Hon Ruth Dyson did speak about paying carers in limited circumstances. In 2005 the Office for Disability Issues on its website said a family carer’s payment would raise ethical issues, such as monitoring the care quality and the impact on family relationships if one member became a service provider and another the client.

Then in 2008 Ruth Dyson in her Carers’ Strategy “later included the idea of a carer’s payment to some carers, limited of adults.” What I do also note is that this was never responded to by the Labour-Green Government at any stage, with any payment whatsoever; in fact, it was not prepared to do so. So during that whole time the Labour-Green Government did nothing, even though the Human Rights Commission had ruled as early as 2001. I think it is very important that this debate is taken in the context of the history that I have just gone over.

This is the National Government’s solution to the court challenge, and it did come after extensive consultation with the sector in 2012, where a large number of submitters responded and where there were a wide number of meetings throughout New Zealand to ensure that the disability sector was well informed of the complex issues associated with this challenging issue. Indeed, it does shift the boundary between family and taxpayer responsibility. In the New Zealand context we have had a situation whereby families have not been paid for looking after fellow family members for many decades. The solution we have arrived at is indeed a very fair place. We recognise the importance of families in providing care and support to their adult disabled family members. This, of course, does mean that there is always a delicate balance. There is no doubt that there will always be a grey zone in terms of what persons have extensive disabilities, and that has to be judged on an individual basis. One will never be able to have the fiscal ability to pay for all.

I think the Attorney-General came up with a very well-thought-out report when he made his statement. It included the fact that the objective of the bill is to ensure that the Government does not incur unmanageable fiscal cost as a result of the decisions. We will have the Green Party, of course, wanting to print money. That is how unrealistic it is and how unrealistic it would be. It is important that that very well-written report of the Attorney-General is also taken into context.

This is a significant investment in family care and gives choice and control to more disabled people and their families in the support they receive. It amounts to $92 million over 4 years to pay some family members who care for their disabled adult children. Funding will now be available for about 1,600 disabled people with high or very high needs to pay some family members to provide care.

This is something that could have been resolved under a Labour-Green Government. Over a period of 8 or 9 years it failed to do so. I am very pleased to be able to say that the National Government is at last resolving this. In my view, it would be hugely helpful if the Labour Party supported this bill, otherwise it might be accused of providing a response that perhaps we could apply that word to that we are not allowed to say in this House; it is known as the “h” word.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Can I begin by saying to Dr Paul Hutchison that it is 5 years that this Government has been in place. If this was so easy to resolve, why was it not resolved in the first year of a National Government? Maybe it was because the whole issue, actually, was before the courts and could not be resolved in that time frame. He also said that the sector would be relieved. Well, I have to say that that is not the feedback that is coming from this sector. People in the sector are bemused. They feel misled, and, actually, they are shocked. But they ought not to be, because if they go back and they read what Mr Ryall has been saying over a number of years, they would know that the bottom line for him has always been cost and not care. It has always been cost and not care. Of course there must be restriction on costs in the health sector. It has always been the case. But he has consistently made it clear that he does not agree with adult disabled children being cared for by their families. If you go back to statements that he made in September 2012, he was part of the scaremongering that it was going to cost $400 million, and that really brought out some of those who have to care for families.

I draw to your attention Mr Cliff Robinson, a parent from Thames who is caring for two adult disabled children. He said: “This is just scaremongering on the minister’s part. And also, to even think about means testing people who [are] disabled … just horrifies me.” I think what it has really shown is the lack of understanding about what is involved in caring for disabled children. Members opposite can laugh about it, but have they actually met constituents? And I would have thought Dr Hutchison has. I will never forget a woman coming into my office carrying her adult child. Her adult child was now 22 years of age and had left the education system, and no longer had support. This woman, who was a highly qualified woman, had given up her job to care for her highly disabled child, and it was a huge impost on this family.

You know, it is not that long ago when places like Kimberley Hospital and Training Centre flourished in New Zealand, where we took our disabled family members and we put them into institutions and we closed the door, and we said it was the State’s total responsibility to look after those family members. But over time we became more informed and we became more compassionate about what could be done with a disabled person. They were not non-people; they were people, people with feelings and people with needs. So over time, and rightly so, we shifted much of the care of our disabled people into the community, and many families have picked up that role. They have given up jobs, they have given up income, and they have looked after their family members.

So Paul Hutchison, when he says the Labour Government did absolutely nothing about it, is being disingenuous. As he will know, firstly, it was before the courts, and, secondly, if he just read the legislation his own Minister has put in, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2)—I suggest he reads new section 70D, which says: “The Crown and any DHB are, and have always been, authorised—(a) to adopt or to have a family care policy:”, and to change, cancel, or replace such a policy.

My real concern about this bill is that here we are, at 10 o’clock in the morning, and last night the regulatory impact statement on this bill was not available, as they were not available, either, for the housing bills. We are told to go and look them up on the internet—and I am sure Maurice Williamson will understand this. We are told to go to “www.hashthishashthat.”, and to look it up, find the regulatory impact statement, run it off, read it—not there. It had not been put up. So the regulatory impact statement on this bill was first provided this morning to this House, and we are now required to make decisions on this bill under urgency and pass every stage of it. I have to say to those listening that this is a dreadful process. The fair-minded people of the National Government know that this is a shonky process under which to put through any bill that affects so many important families looking after disabled family members. Why is it being put through with such haste? It does not come into effect until October 2013. Can members opposite count how many months away that is? Could it not have gone to a select committee for a while?

I mean, I was even interested in the consultation group the Government set up to look at what changes it would make—the task force. Well, I notice the task force did not have a person with disability on it. I do not suppose they are capable of being on a task force in the minds of this Government. So there has been insufficient time, and a lack of consultation. We asked last year, as I know other parties in this House have done, for a cross-party approach, to get an agreement between parties on this very, very complex issue. I say to Dr Hutchison that Tony Ryall said how complex it is, so to just throw out there “Oh, Labour did nothing about it.” is to disregard how complex it is. But we offered a cross-party consultation on this, and were we consulted? We got a bill today and we got some information on it half an hour ago. That is called consultation and cross-party support in this House. It is just not good enough.

And I want those members there to have a look—I cannot see any of them with the regulatory impact statement. What they will have are their research party notes, all saying the same thing. Go and have a look at the regulatory impact statement. I have never seen a regulatory impact statement anything like this one. Have a look at it. This is the regulatory impact statement. Have a look at where you are meant to be finding out what is going on in this bill. This is what it looks like. It is full of blanks where we are not allowed to know much about what this bill does. They have cut out nearly all the information that would be meaningful. I particularly like page 27. Let me show you page 27. This is page 27 of the regulatory impact statement, and what does it say? It says: “Blank blankety-blank-blank blank-blank blank blankety-blank blank-blank-blank.” That is the regulatory impact statement on this really important bill. Hang your heads in shame, National members. That is what we are supposed to make decisions on in this Parliament.

When I did find some words that I could read in the regulatory impact statement, it put up a number of options from the Ministry of Health. One of them was that we actually should pay around $16 an hour. That is what it says in the regulatory impact statement—the little bit that is written. It says it ought to be the minimum wage, plus other payments that would bring it up to around $16 an hour. What does this bill do? What does the Minister do? He says that the minimum that can be paid is $13 an hour—$13.75. Well, how generous—$13.75! They are to be paid less than other caregivers in our community. I have to say that this is not a breakthrough; this is all about trying to restrict what the Government will pay to people. It will restrict whom it goes to and who will be paid.

And I believe that National has done very little in terms of trying to get a cross-party agreement, or an agreement with the very people who are affected who look after their family members day after day. I acknowledge that it is complex, but why would we not in this Parliament at least allow the public to have a say? I know why the Government does not want the public to have a say. It is because the public are more in tune and more empathetic to those who care for disabled adult children than the Government is, and it does not want that exposed at a select committee. I have been on those select committees where the National Party members hear submitters and say “Thank you very much for that wonderful submission. We really appreciate receiving that wonderful submission you have spent so much time writing for us.”, and then vote against every recommendation the public make. So the Government knows there would be people coming and saying “Hang on a minute. This is not what we thought you were going to do. This hasn’t been worked through with us.”, and it does not want that to be exposed to the public of New Zealand.

This is insufficient time. This whole Parliament ought to tell the Minister to take it back, to give us time to work across the parties on it, and to bring in a bill, put it to a select committee, and you could still have it passed by 13 October 2013. That is what ought to happen, and that will be our very strong argument today. It is not good enough. It is disgraceful to bring in a bill and to hand us this sort of rubbish, saying this is what the bill is about.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou katoa. I would just like to acknowledge the families. Thank you, all of the families who have worked with me on this issue. Thank you, all of the families who could get no help from any other MP on this issue. Thank you for coming to Parliament last term, when I held a forum to talk about this and no MP except the Greens would come to the forum. I do not feel like my head should be down today, but I think everyone else’s should be, because, complex or not, this is a job. This is whom we are here to represent. These are the vulnerable people in our society who look to us for leadership, and after 12 years of going to court to prove discrimination, what has happened is that a bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), has been brought forward that will discriminate legally. I will take you through how; I have a lot to say.

No. 1, this legislation discriminates against family carers, who are allowed to be paid lower rates for the same work. The principle of the Ministry of Health v Atkinson court case was recognising that it was discrimination, and now this bill entrenches the fact that they can be paid less for doing the same work as other people. That is a new discrimination. It discriminates against carers of family members who are eligible for disability support in categories 1, 2, and 3—i.e., mild to moderate needs. It denies those disabled people choices over their carer, and is contrary to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Disability Strategy. It legitimises discrimination against family members under 18 and against spouses.

Ian McKelvie: It does not.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: It literally says that spouses cannot be included, even if they are doing the same work as other family members. And when we are talking about work, this is 24/7 work. I am a friend of Cliff Robinson in the Coromandel, and he has two adult children he cares for 24/7. I know all the people in the court case, and I know the people who are not in the court case, who will be excluded in this bill, and they are absolutely disgusted with this outcome.

It also discriminates against 45 people who complained to the Human Rights Commission but whose cases have not yet been accepted. Now they cannot be accepted, because the Government has locked them out of any form of complaint, any form of remedy. People’s future access to courts and the Human Rights Review Tribunal has been locked out. They cannot even challenge, beyond a declaration that the Act is a breach. The Government does not want to ever have to justify its discrimination in front of a court again. This is vengeance because it failed in court after court after court for 12 years. This is vindictive and unfair, and, what is more, it is setting up a new level of complexity, and these people have been through enough. Sometimes people’s hopes are broken by life, and sometimes by legislation, and this is one of those times. The Government has lost in several courts of law, so now it is making sure it limits the opportunity of whom disabled people can choose to be cared by. It has done it because it was beaten in the Human Rights Review Tribunal, in the Court of Appeal, and in the High Court. Now it is making a law that is actually, as the Attorney-General said, a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and it discriminates right back at them.

Of course, you would think that these are the greedy, who are trying to get lots of money for doing that easy job of looking after a seriously disabled family member 24/7. But, in fact, what happens is that these people are already doing the 24/7 job, and we have managed to exploit them for years. It is a cheap option, and this law is a cheap option because it is capped; I will go into that in a minute. But I do not know that people understand what happens in these homes. Unskilled carers on low wages, who can now be paid more than these people, come to the home, and the family member has to teach them how to care for the family member whom they are caring for for nothing. This is an endless series of discriminations against the people with disabilities and their families, who want to be respected. These parents cannot go to work, because they are so busy teaching the carers how to care for a severely disabled family member, and now there is a big cap on who can actually get remunerated. The Government has said quite clearly and blatantly in the bill: “We don’t like this. We don’t want to do it. We think families should naturally want to give up their lives 24/7 for severely disabled members. We think that’s fine. That’s not discrimination.” But, hey, the Government lost, so it has to do something and this is how it makes sure it protects itself from spending too much money.

The bill explicitly states that no one can complain on the grounds of discrimination. What other bill does that? No one can complain to the Human Rights Review Tribunal or the courts on the basis of being discriminated against. So if they miss out on the $92,000 over 3 years, which is highly likely for a number of families, they have no redress—none whatsoever. The Budget provides $92,000 over 3 years so that 1,600 families might, if they can prove it to the Ministry of Health, get a family member to be paid to care for a disabled family member. This amounts to $14,375 per year. Is that a wage? It is a pittance. It is less than what carers get, but that was always the plan. The plan was, when the ministry lost in court—they kept throwing public money at the case and lost many times—the Government was going to make sure that whoever got paid, got paid a small amount, which is $14,000 a year for the 1,600 families who are lucky enough to get into the scheme. You cannot—sorry, not you, Mr Assistant Speaker, although I am sure you would have a view—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I hope so.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: It cannot be called—it cannot be called—a resolution or a solution.

Let us summarise what is wrong with the bill. It is discriminatory against people who complain to the Human Rights Commission. It entrenches the concept that family members who do the care work are not working. Twenty-five years ago Marilyn Waring wrote a book called Counting for Nothing. It was about the work that does not get valued in our society—the backs of the people we run off. That is what she was talking about 25 years ago, and this is what is being entrenched in law today: that these people are not working. The adult mother in Christchurch who has an adult son who is violent, who has to wash his bottom—she tells me these stories on a regular basis—cannot be paid. She is in dire poverty and nobody except me has ever talked to her about this. She said that she cannot be paid and that her carers who come in because her son is violent will now be paid more than her, if she can prove that she has got a right to be paid at all. It is outrageous, as Sue Kedgley once used to say on a regular basis.

However, it gives all the power to the Ministry of Health and the district health board, rather than setting up a newer and fairer framework to negotiate a payment. We have always said this was a complex issue and we have always said we should not walk away and that there should be a cross-party approach. That is why I held the forum. I was hoping that some people would take an interest in this and that some people would have the guts and the courage, in this House, to actually engage with these families—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Order!

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Sorry—would have the stomach, puku. Is that better? Courage might be a word. Courage, fortitude, anything—I think the families would accept any of those words. That is whom I am trying to speak for here today.

The bill caps the fund so that those people who are not accepted by the district health board or the ministry will not get it. Once they have spent that $14,000 per family, everyone else will miss out. It is a rubbish process. The consultation from the start was awful, and the options that were put up were absolutely awful, and the idea that “natural care” could be defined in the way Governments have always defined it is awful, and the idea that millions of families and millions of individuals want to apply for this money is ludicrous. It is a hard job. You talk to Cliff. You talk to Vicky. You talk to Gillian. You talk to the families. Is it an easy job? I could not do it. I actually could not do it. I really could not. It is a really tough job.

So let us have a look at the bill in detail. It has got lots of interesting words in it, lots of doublespeak, but it is based on the fundamental tenet that the Government’s primary role is to support families, and it will not acknowledge the way in which those families actually live. It will not acknowledge that. The real agenda is in the next line, which says “We must protect ourselves from unmanageable fiscal costs.”, and the Government has certainly done that. It has done a very, very good job of protecting itself, but I thought we were here to protect the people, the most vulnerable people in our society. The definition of a civilised society is one that protects the most vulnerable. These people have been to court for 12 years on behalf of others who are now in a very, very difficult position because if they have not lodged, and if they do not get accepted, there will be no right of redress. There will be no right to complain.

So I think we are seeing a very sad day in the House today—a very sad day—because I know that at a select committee many families would have told their stories and I am sure that people would have listened. I am sure that people on all sides of the House would have been interested. I have more to say. We do not support this bill.

SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the New Zealand Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) at this stage. I want to congratulate the Hon Tony Ryall, who clearly is one of the best health Ministers the country has ever seen. And the more that our opponents on the other side bay about that, the sillier they look, actually, because competence shows through. I just want to congratulate him on finally getting to the point where compassion is being shown for these people.

I want to raise a couple of points that were debated earlier by the Hon Annette King about some of the process, if you like. Can we just go back a little bit in time and look at who the health Minister was at the time that the Human Rights Commission court appeal was first promoted or first suggested. Who was the Minister?

Hon Annette King: Not me.

SHANE ARDERN: Look, I understand that the honourable member herself was the health Minister at that time. What did she instruct the ministry to do? What did she instruct the ministry to do? She instructed the ministry to fight this in the court: “Do not allow this to proceed. Fight this tooth and nail. Do not allow it to progress”. She also suggested—and I understand there is a Cabinet minute to back this up—“Do not consult with the public or even with the rest of the rest of the Parliament. Do not consult with anyone. In fact, make sure that this is kept below the radar.” How does that square with what she just said earlier on about the process that is happening right now? How does that square with that? You know, there is a word—I understand that if you use it against a member, it is unparliamentary, but if you use it against a situation, it is not.

This Government is now proposing to inject $92 million over 4 years into helping these unfortunate families. We all have personal cases. To listen to Catherine Delahunty you would think she is the only one in this Parliament who has ever encountered one of these unfortunate people. Actually, within my own family, very close to us, we have an affected person or persons, so very much we understand individually, as constituent MPs, the circumstances that some of these families find themselves in. I would suggest to that member that she does not have a franchise on compassion in this regard.

This is an excellent move on the part of the Government. This is an excellent piece of legislation and I look forward to its passage through the House.

BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). Unfortunately on this occasion we are going to oppose this bill. This bill is a real contradiction in terms. There were some positive aspects. When we looked at the $92 million we thought that at last some money was going to be made available for these families. But when we read further, the negative connotations overwhelm the positive aspects. When we have a look at the amount, $92 million for 4 years, it is only a drop in the bucket. It is $92 million, over 4 years, to pay carers to look after their own disabled family members, and it cannot be a family member or a spouse if they are going to get paid.

We all know that this is a response to the family carers case that was ruled upon by the Human Rights Review Tribunal, the High Court, and then the Court of Appeal. Today’s Dominion Post said that this was a half-baked scheme, particularly when you cannot employ a family member or a spouse to look after the disabled person. When we look at it, the facts are that there are approximately 1,600 disabled people with high and very high needs who will be funded by this proposal.

So we have $92 million, over 4 years, which works out to $23 million a year. If we divide that $23 million a year by the number of people requiring a carer, the amount that they will be paid works out to be a real pittance—$14,000 per person, per year. It is really a pitiful amount of money to provide for these people, who are protecting our country’s most vulnerable people. I know of many families who will not allow another family member to provide for or care for their family member. They are happy to do it themselves, but they would not be happy for someone else to care so intimately for these people. Of course, this is not even recognised in this legislation. Family carers provide a great service to New Zealand. Their love, their compassion, their tireless caring, their sweat, and their tears nurture these people, our fellow New Zealanders. They are very compassionate, they are caring, and they are working in an extremely demanding role, one that most of us could not do, day after day after day.

If the National members do not value and appreciate that work, basically they should say so. We know that disabled New Zealanders do not receive enough support in our country. There is not nearly enough financial, emotional, and professional encouragement for disabled people to integrate into a normal, more independent life. There have been reports of disabled people not receiving sufficient support even in the area of speech therapy, which would really help their integration into society and help their self-esteem as well. What many people fail to realise is that carers need time out, too. It is really tiring caring for a disabled person, yet, if a parental carer needs time out, in many cases they need to apply for a domestic purposes allowance. We are making these people—our people—jump over all sorts of hurdles just to make ends meet, while expecting them to support our most vulnerable.

Carers are a great group of people. I know of one family where the father works at home during the day so the mother can sleep because she works at night to bring in the extra money to try to make ends meet. These people are really struggling to try to keep their loved ones at home. On behalf of New Zealand First I have to acknowledge Mr Atkinson and the others who have fought long and hard to receive any funding, and recognise their efforts, their endeavours, and the sacrifices they have made for their families. We know that this measure proposed by the Government is totally inadequate. It is definitely not enough. We cannot understand either—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Members, there is too much background noise. It is discourteous to the member speaking.

BARBARA STEWART: —why this bill is going through under urgency. There will be no public submissions and no other opportunities for the public to have any input into this particular bill. It is disappointing. Again, we see the focus of this Government on cost, and not on care. We know it is a complex issue. It should never be pushed through by the House under urgency. That is how New Zealand First is viewing this bill. We will oppose this bill. Thank you.

SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): What a pleasure it is as a member of the National Party—a proud member—to stand in support of this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) introduced by the very capable Minister of Health, the Hon Tony Ryall. This bill comes to the House after years of prevarication, of blocking, of putting everything it could in the way of it by the Labour Party during its 9 long years in Government. When it had surpluses for Africa and plenty of money, it chose to do nothing about it—years of “obstification”, obstruction, and blocking by the Labour Party. So this is a major breakthrough.

Hon Maurice Williamson: Ha, ha!

SCOTT SIMPSON: Yes, it is one of those Maurice Williamson words. It is one of those Maurice Williamson words on a Friday morning. This is a major breakthrough, and one that society and all of New Zealand, I think, will take pleasure that something is finally being done.

In 2001 Susan Atkinson and others, including Cliff Robinson from my electorate of Coromandel, were part of a group who brought an action into the courts. It has taken years and years to finally put it right. Who was the Minister of Health back then? Well, it was none other than the Minister Annette King from the Labour Party. It was she who blocked and fought. It was she who instructed Ministry of Health officials—instructed the lawyers to block it and fight it. She told the ministry to fight it all the way. That former Labour Party health Minister should hang her head in absolute shame. We do not need her to lecture us, when back in 2005 she expressly opposed the Atkinson action. She expressly opposed it. That member actually instructed the ministry lawyers to block it on every count. She went further—she went further. The Cabinet minute seems to indicate, in fact, that she instructed that there should be no consultation—no consultation. Under her watch, Labour and the health Minister under Labour, when they had taxpayer money that they could have done something about it, did nothing about it.

This is a proud day for the National Party. The Minister Tony Ryall is doing a very good job. He is introducing this legislation not a minute too soon. I support it. I commend it to the House. Thank you.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour): Well, this is a morning for learning new words from the previous speaker, Scott Simpson. What was it? “Obstification”? “Obstification”, yes. Is there a dictionary in the House? Is there a dictionary in the House? Let us look it up.

Iain Lees-Galloway: He learnt it when he was getting his “edumacation”.

DARIEN FENTON: He learnt it when he was getting his “edumaction”, yes—very, very good. Anyway, I am pleased to take a call on this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), although I do so with great disappointment. I think it is a very miserly measure that is being rushed through the House this morning. The Government is clearly reluctant to pay. This bill is full of reluctance, full of extinguishments of rights, full of excuses, and full of ifs, buts, and maybes.

The worst thing about it is the fact that it is being rammed through under urgency, when the people who are most affected by this—that is, the disabled people and their families—will have no opportunity for input. They will have no chance to have a say about how this will affect them. They will have no chance to come along to a select committee and tell their stories. What is sad is that there will be no chance for the members of a select committee to gain some understanding of the issues that face disabled people and their families. What is worse is that the Government has ignored offers of cooperation from other parties. We have called on the Government to put aside the court case, which it did eventually. We called on the Government to cooperate with other parties in order to find a solution that the whole Parliament could support. Last year the Government put out a consultation document that I believe was clearly designed to pre-empt any decision making. Although the Government boasts about the fact that it had workshops and things all around the country, it was very clear from the messages that the Minister of Health was giving back then that this was going to be a very, very limited solution and that it would be heavily targeted.

While I have been sitting here I have been thinking about a disabled member of my family. People who have disabled members of their family will understand this. My auntie was severely disabled. My grandmother used to carry her around on her back. She carried her around on her back. She got up in the middle of the night and looked after her. She did not put her in an institution, like so many people did in those days; she looked after her. She taught her to read. She taught her to catch the bus so she could go to town. She taught her to understand money so she could use the little pittance she got. I think that was exceptional in those days, but I know the toll that that took on my grandmother. I know that it contributed to her dying sooner than she should have, because that was years—that was a lifetime—of struggle for her. Even when Peggy, my auntie, went into a residential home, once we stopped putting people in institutions, it was still a burden on my grandmother. There was still that responsibility. So I want to pay a tribute to my grandmother and my auntie and to all of the families who are in this situation of having a much-loved disabled family member whom they do their best to care for, to keep at home, and to remove the responsibility from others, including the State, to care for them, because they love them and want to give them the best possible chance at having a decent life.

One of the things I am concerned about in this bill is the proposal to pay the minimum wage. The proposal is to pay, effectively, half of what private carers are earning, as the Minister has said. As Catherine Delahunty said, this is entrenching a new discrimination, another pay inequality—and we know all about those. I am also very concerned about the responsibility that goes on families. We support individualised funding, but there has to be support put in place for family members who are employed by their disabled adult children, so that they are able to manage the responsibilities of being an employer, which is, essentially, what they will be, or one of the choices that they have. But, as I have said, paying the minimum wage is, I think, unacceptable. I think the families will be very disappointed. I think it shows how this Government values the support and the contribution they make in caring for those very disadvantaged people.

Mind you, it is not surprising, because we had a Budget this week where carers came off worst—actually, third-best; not just second-best but third-best. Rest home money—yes, there is more money for aged care, but there is nothing in the Budget that addresses the low income, the critical pay issues, in aged care. There is something about training but nothing about addressing the fact that most residential aged-care workers are on the minimum wage or just above—nothing about that. The former Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Judy McGregor did a very extensive report on the critical issue that is facing us with caring for an ageing population, but there is nothing in this Budget that even recognises that there is a problem.

There is nothing for home-care workers, many of whom actually care for both disabled people and older people. There is nothing for home-care workers, who are now having to go to court as well to claim the minimum wage for the travel they have to carry out between clients. They go to one home, the clock starts ticking, and they get paid the minimum wage for the hour they work. Then the clock goes off again, they get in their car, and off they go to another place, which could be miles and miles away. But they get no recompense for that, except a measly allowance, if they are lucky. They are now going to court to challenge the Government about paying the minimum wage for the period of time that they have to spend on the road in between jobs. And so they should, because so many other people who work in the health care sector or other sectors actually get paid for every hour they work, whether it be going between jobs or not.

There is another group of carers who are currently taking a case to court as well. They are the carer relief workers. They are the carer relief workers who are employed—well, they are not employed but they are funded through the Ministry of Health and district health boards. They are paid $75 for a 24-hour period—

Barbara Stewart: Really?

DARIEN FENTON: —for a 24-hour period—$75. They are pursuing a minimum wage case as well. But guess what? The Ministry of Health and the district health boards are arguing that they do not employ them, so they are not responsible for paying the minimum wage. The disabled people they care for, the people whom they provide respite care for, are the employers, according to the Ministry of Health and the district health boards, but they are responsible, it is hands off, not our problem, pass the buck, and put the responsibility on to the disabled people, who are the employers.

That is what worries about me about this bill too. I think we will see more of that buck shifting going on to the people who are most vulnerable and who need as much support as possible, not only in their choice to employ somebody from their family but also to make sure that that support person is paid properly and that their employment relationship is able to be managed. That is a very, very important issue in this bill that I want to see some more discussion on at the Committee stage.

Going back to how I started, can I say that we are disappointed with this bill. We are particularly disappointed that it is going through three stages today, under urgency. I know that it is a step in the right direction, but it is a drop in the bucket. The process is awful, and the information that the Opposition parties have been given about the background to this bill, with the regulatory impact statement like this, is outrageous—it is outrageous. But we are used to that under this Government—we are used to this under this Government. Its process is awful. I think it is disrespectful to the carers, the adult carers of disabled people, and it is disrespectful to New Zealand. Thank you.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): Ni hao, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak in today’s debate on the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). According to this bill, disabled adults aged 18 years and over who are assessed as having high or very high needs, based on a number of criteria, will be able to employ their parent or other family member, except for their spouse or partner, to provide up to 40 hours of support per week. The disabled person will be assessed by a needs assessment and service coordination centre for eligibility. That person, if eligible, can then choose a family carer or a contracted service provider. If they choose a family carer, they will receive funding to pay their family carer an hourly rate as an employee.

The core issue of this matter is to find a balance between the responsibilities of the Government and of families. It has always been challenging to find the balance. It is a challenge not only to the New Zealand Government but also to Governments all over the world. The current National-led Government is now facing up to the challenge, and it is doing extremely well. So I would like to congratulate the Minister of Health, the Hon Tony Ryall, on this achievement. We recognise the important role of families in providing care and support to their disabled family members. It is estimated that the paid family carer policy will cost about $23 million per year. This is a significant investment in family care. It gives disabled people and their families more choice and control in the support they receive. The National-led Government is currently providing much support for disabled people and their family carers. This bill is another step towards providing better services to disabled people. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Here we are on a Friday morning, under urgency, debating the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). As members from around the House have canvassed, the issues around this bill are complicated, complex, challenging, and highly emotive. They are issues that ought to be properly considered, there ought to be proper consultation across the parties and with the public, and they ought to go to a select committee. So, for that reason, I predict that there will be a lengthy debate around the issues in this bill at the Committee stage, and I also expect there will be a number of amendments to this bill because, frankly, the Government has not quite got it right.

But here we are under urgency on this challenging issue, and when the public does not get an opportunity to have a say, the members of Parliament who are debating such legislation ought to have all the information available to them. One of the ways in which we get that information is through the regulatory impact statement. I have not seen anything so ludicrous in this House as this regulatory impact statement. For those folks at home, the regulatory impact statement canvasses the issues that the Government has had to consider, and it looks at what the wider impacts of any piece of legislation will be. It is about openness and it is about transparency.

Well, we get a bit of a warning on page 2 of this regulatory impact statement, when we look at the objectives: “Responding to issues arising from court decisions”. It says: “The overall objective is to develop a response to the implication of the Courts’ decisions. These implications arise across a range of family relationships and services where there is a significant risk that discrimination may arise.” That is absolutely correct. “These relationships and services include: parents and other resident family members of disabled adults; other family relationships, particularly spouses and parents of young disabled children; disability support services funded by the Ministry; support services funded by District Health Boards (DHBs)”, and blankety-blank-blank. There is one other, which, for some bizarre reason, the Government does not want us to know about. Well, that is page 2.

We get through pages 3 and 4 OK, where we canvass the different options that the Government may have had. Then we get to the nuts and bolts, the analysis of the options, and what will be the impact of the different options. This is where we in the Opposition actually get to look at all the different possibilities and decide whether we think the Government has got it right. Well, there is an entire column here completely blanked out. Even the title is blanked out, but, from reading it through, I suspect these are the legal implications for the Government: what might be the weaknesses of this bill, and what might be the options for people to challenge the Government over this bill? Is this Government setting up a future Government for legal challenges? Is this Government causing a future Government trouble and possible costs for taxpayers? We do not know, because the Government is not prepared to tell us. Let us go on to the next page: “Analysis of targeting options”. The same column is missing. Again, the Government is withholding information from the Parliament and from the people of New Zealand.

Then we get down to page 12: “Significant legal issues and risks arising from the preferred response”—significant legal issues arising from the course of action the Government has chosen to take.

Hon Annette King: What are they?

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I do not have a clue what they are. None of us has a clue what they are, because that is the first paragraph, and that is the rest of it—that is the rest of it. It is completely blanked out. Have you ever seen something so ridiculous? Table 4 says: “Implications of including or excluding family carers of people receiving DHB-funded HCSS”—again, suspiciously, that same column is missing. Is it the legal implications? I think it is.

Darien Fenton: What are they covering up?

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: What is the Government trying to cover up, indeed? Then we get to paragraph 43: “Spouses of adult disabled people, parents and other resident family members do not have the option of being paid family carers despite having extensive caring responsibilities.” That is what paragraph 43 says. Then we get into what might be the implications of that. Oh, look, once again, it is all blanked out. We do not get to have a look at all of that. Table 5: “Implications of including/excluding spouses”—again, the legal implications are blanked out. Then we get into the preferred policy of not paying family carers to provide any services other than home and community support services. The information is missing again.

How about that for a page out of a regulatory impact statement? Look at that one! That tells us plenty, does it not? Does that not just tell us all about this Government’s commitment to democracy and transparency? What an outrage. “Risks arising from other agencies’ policies”—well, once again we do not know what the risks are arising from other agencies’ policies, because they have all been blanked out too. It just goes on and on and on. At page 22 we have some bits and pieces missing. Then we get to actually a reasonably good section where it is prepared to share, and then we get to the conclusions and recommendations. No. 80 states: “Other options were discounted because implementing them would be too expensive, would not be feasible within the time frame available, or would exclude family carers of disabled people with high needs.” Then it goes into the details about that, and it is all gone. We go on to the next page, implementation—it is all gone as well. And then there is another one of those masterful pieces where the entire page is completely missing.

Well, goodness me! Look at that—that is a mere 28-page regulatory impact statement, and look at how much of it has absolutely disappeared. That is not transparency. That is not democracy. It would be bad enough even if we had the opportunity to go to a select committee for people to have their say, for the families to come and tell us whether or not they think the Government has got it right, whether or not this is the response they were promised, and whether this was the response they were expecting. I just want to check with you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I was expecting this to be a 5-minute split call with the Greens—can I just check that one with you, Mr Assistant Speaker? I want to know whether the families—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): You are absolutely right. The member should sit down.

JAN LOGIE (Green): I will just relax. This New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) is a slap in the face to some of the hardest-working New Zealanders, and is a demonstration of this Government’s heartless—and I would go so far as to say almost sociopathic—disregard for human suffering and also human endeavour. This bill seeks to reaffirm that people will not generally be paid to provide health services or disability support services to their family members. It confirms that the Crown and district health boards may operate—and always have been authorised to operate—policies in respect of family carers that allow payment in certain limited circumstances, or allow for payment at a lower rate than that for carers who are not family members. It stops claims of unlawful discrimination.

I would like to take this short call today—and I wish I had more time, because there is so much to say, but I guess I will get more chances because we are speeding through—and I would like to speak as the Greens’ women’s spokesperson, to recognise that this bill is a women’s issue. This bill is a feminist issue. I know that the public face of this bill has been a man, and a wonderfully brave man at that. Nothing that I am about to say is to undervalue his work; in fact, the very opposite is true. But about two-thirds of family carers are women. As the website of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment points out, the higher proportion of female carers in all age groups is consistent with lower rates of employment among females, including lower rates of full-time employment. In this country, there is a feminisation of poverty. Women are carrying this economy, and that is made invisible by this Government. This bill is an entrenchment of that inequality.

This bill reinforces what Marilyn Waring described 25 years ago this year as the “counting for nothing” phenomenon. Of course some men are doing this work. Men have now been pulled into this slipstream of women’s inequality and have been caught in that trap, which has been created by this entrenched gender inequality. This has come about from the time when male statisticians and economists drew up the current accounts for nations all around the world. They ignored all work within the home. They made work within the home invisible and pretended that it was non-productive. Despite the fact that it would be really easy to make it productive—because it is actually work that is paid for in other contexts, and all we need to do is use that counting measure in the home—this bill reinforces that inequality and that male patriarchal system that means that women are bearing the brunt of poverty in this country.

History has led us to where we are now. People pretend that we are in an enlightened age of equality and equal opportunity. Well, this bill is another bleak reminder to the women of this country that nothing much has changed. Here, this Government had the opportunity given to it by the courts to recognise discrimination and to improve the situation for women and people with disabilities. And what has it done? It has chosen to change the law to entrench it.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The question is—

Ian McKelvie: Mr Speaker—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Ian McKelvie.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I shall be brief, Mr Assistant Speaker, seeing as you did not want me to speak at all. It is great to stand in this House and support a piece of legislation, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), brought to us by Minister Ryall. It is a bill that will make a very real difference to those amazing mothers, or fathers—despite Jan Logie’s assertion—or family members who have worked so hard to make their disabled son, daughter, or family member’s life more bearable.

I have to just counter very briefly a couple of comments made by the Opposition. The Hon Ruth Dyson was misleading the House when she said that current caregivers may well lose current benefits. That is absolutely, patently nonsense. The bill will also be a great relief to many rural family members who are isolated and find it very difficult to get alternative care. I also want to comment very quickly on the somewhat gratuitous comments from the other side of the House that scarcely touched on the issues of the bill at all—in fact, the bill got stuck firmly under Labour’s shadow version of this year’s Budget. It was blanked out—the most part of that blank, of course.

I also want to touch very quickly on the Greens’ comments, because I think they clearly think they have a mortgage on knowledge of this sector of our community, which is far from the truth. And as for Barbara Stewart’s contribution, at least she spoke with compassion, although she ruined that compassion by opposing the disability sector and opposing it receiving a very good start and, I guess, a new start, really, with some contribution to what is a very difficult life for so many people. This initiative will be welcomed by the disability sector and the people who face challenges in life that most of us cannot imagine. I have great pleasure in supporting this bill as it progresses through Parliament. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time.

Ayes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a first time.

Second Reading

Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): I move, That the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time. It is worth taking an opportunity to set out to members exactly what this legislation does. It is part of the Government’s solution to the challenge proposed by the Court of Appeal under the Atkinson case. It does move the boundary between family and taxpayer responsibility in respect of the care of each other, but the Government believes that it lands in a fair place that balances the various interests of those who are being cared for, those who are doing the caring, and taxpayers in general.

As I said earlier on, this bill comes to this Parliament after, really, 20 years of consideration by Governments of both sides. We know that in 2001, when the Hill case first came to the Human Rights Review Tribunal, it was considered by the previous Government. The previous Government began a series of papers and considerations. It had a number of reports and discussions with Ministers. A number of strategies were kicked on and kicked on every year. It culminated in 2008 with the Carers’ Strategy and Five-year Action Plan.

In 2007 the Labour Government considered paying family carers, and in the strategy documents that it considered in 2008 the Labour Government expressly decided not to proceed with paying family carers—in April 2008 the Labour Government expressly decided not to pay family carers. Labour was supported by the Greens in that Government, and Labour expressly decided not to pay family caregivers. In fact, the Labour Minister of Health instructed officials to oppose this case at at every step, and that action was supported by every Labour Cabinet Minister. The Labour Government instructed the Ministry of Health—even before then, it was clear the ministry was to oppose this—to oppose the Atkinson claim every step of the way.

I know that this is a political chamber, and I know that the Opposition will never support any legislation that is part of a Budget, but I do have to say it is galling to hear the crocodile tears from the former Ministers who expressly decided not to pay family carers—expressly decided not to pay family carers. In fact, Mrs Dyson said this: “We have to have a sensible debate about what are legitimate family responsibilities—what you should do because we are a caring, loving member of the family, and then what is actually work you should get paid to do.” Then, when asked about paying family carers, she said that top of her Budget bidding list was more money for equipment services—more money for equipment services. She was not interested in more money for family carers. I know we are going to get political speeches today. I know the Opposition will never agree with Government legislation—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the Minister. It is a convention here that we do not use the words “lie” or “liar”, and I ask the member to desist from using those phrases in the future.

Hon TONY RYALL: Who was it?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): It does not matter.

Hon TONY RYALL: Oh, OK; they will not admit it.

Hon Paula Bennett: Dyson.

Hon TONY RYALL: Oh, Dyson! The member who said family carers—

Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Members are to be addressed as honourable members or by their full name.

Hon TONY RYALL: The Hon Ruth Dyson told disability groups that she thought it was important, but when asked whether family carers should be the top priority, she said, as the Associate Minister of Health, that the top of her Budget bidding list was more money for equipment services.

Hon Paula Bennett: Not family carers.

Hon TONY RYALL: Not family carers. I know we are going to get the political speeches, but it is galling that members of the Government that expressly decided not to pay family carers are now saying: “Oh, when the health Budget doubled, we might have—”. Well, they do not really say. They have not addressed why they never paid it. The argument has been “Oh, it was very complex.” Well, what about the years of reports that they got? What about the years of resolutions in Cabinet? It came to nothing, because the Minister of Health at the time expressly instructed ministry officials and Crown Law to fight the Atkinson claimants every step of the way.

I can advise the House that this bill protects the interests of the Atkinson claimants. Those Atkinson claimants who wanted to be on an interim payment arrangement are, and those Atkinson claimants who are prepared to accept back payment to the Court of Appeal decision date have been paid. There will be a remedies hearing in respect of their settlements prior to the Court of Appeal decision, so those people who wanted to be paid under this arrangement in the interim are currently being paid. What I have to say to that—

Hon Annette King: Have they been paid?

Hon TONY RYALL: The ministry advises that those people who wanted an interim payment received one. I am not going to engage with Annette King, because she was the Minister in a Government that expressly decided not to pay family carers—not to pay family carers. So it is all politics today. It is all politics.

What this legislation does is it proposes that the Government invest $72 million over the next 4 years in order to pay wages to family carers who care for their resident adult disabled children. This addresses the crux of the claim put forward by Atkinson. The focus of this will be on the 1,600 families whom we assess as having high or very high needs. Those people will be able to qualify under policies that will be in place from 1 October 2013. That is pretty important. Policies are going to be developed and people will have the opportunity to be supported in this way. It is recognition from this Government to respond to the Court of Appeal case. We know that there will be many people who believe that they should be paid too, but this respects the decision of the courts, and also the longstanding tenet of Governments of all colours that families are primarily responsible for each other, and that will still remain a very, very important part of this legislation.

In the debate ahead I think it is right to look at why it has taken so long for Parliament to get to this position. It is right to look at whether we are striking the right balance between the interests of the families, the carers, and taxpayers. I think we are. I think we have landed in a fair place—a fair place that recognises the concerns of the courts but also makes sure that we as taxpayers are able to make a contribution that we would expect to be made in this situation. The reason why the bill is going through under urgency on this day is that it is important that we do not settle these matters on an individual basis before tribunals or courts. We need to have a policy in place that deals with the concerns of the courts with the Atkinson claimants’ case and proceed from there.

I know that the debate will be full of bluster from the other side—bluster from the other side—but members should remember when they hear that bluster that those members are the people who, in the times of plenty, decided to do nothing. They expressly decided not to pay family carers and expressly decided to tell the ministry to oppose it every step of the way.

Hon Annette King: 11 years of National—did nothing.

Hon TONY RYALL: Oh, now it is 11 years of National. Look, it is all politics from Annette King—it is all politics. When she was in charge, she did nothing.

These people are currently being paid nothing, and from 1 October we will have a scheme in place that supports family carers, those who are caring for their disabled adult family members, in a way that is respectful of the huge contribution that they are making to the care of their loved ones.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Can I just begin my comments by saying to the Hon Tony Ryall that actually this is not about politics; this is about the quality of the policy decisions that have been made in relation to a matter that has, as the Minister of Health quite rightly said, been live as a topic of debate for 20 years, 11 of which have been under a National-led Government of one form or another. So it is a bit rich for the Minister to say that the Labour Government did nothing when this is now his 11th year of having this matter on his plate.

This New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) should be an issue where a lot of discussion is had between the many parties that make up this Parliament, carers in the community, and family members who are affected by this policy to see whether we have got it right, because this policy is not straightforward. This bill is a determination by this Parliament about the caring responsibilities that should naturally go with a family and that where the threshold is reached, that that caring should be paid for out of taxpayer money. That is not always an easy call.

The determination that the Minister has made is that a very high threshold of need has to be met before a family is entitled to be paid. I do not understand why that threshold would be at all relevant. If it is a matter of rationing the money, then the Minister should be upfront and say that. If it is because he genuinely believes that parents who look after their disabled adult daughter or son are not entitled to be paid for that because they do not have much of a need, then I think he is wrong. I think that in terms of a public policy position it is absolutely wrong.

But the worst thing is that this Parliament is debating this legislation through all stages under urgency without any opportunity for us to hear from the families who are affected. These are families who subjected their personal lives to public exposure by going through the Human Rights Commission, to the High Court, and then to the Court of Appeal. They deserve better respect than this rushed legislation is giving them, in my view. I do not think it would be much of an effort to have even a shortened period of consideration by a select committee.

The reason the Minister wants this to go through all stages under urgency, without any member of the public having an opportunity to have a say, is that this bill extinguishes the right of family members who will not be allowed to be paid under this family caregiver policy and who will not meet the criteria to go to the Human Rights Commission and have a case heard against the Government. I think extinguishing rights is not something that this Parliament should do at any stage, let alone by ramming legislation through all stages under urgency. It is wrong to do that to family members who just want their work supporting their disabled son or daughter, or husband or wife, or parent, recognised.

I do not understand why the Minister decided—instead of explaining to the members of Parliament who are so interested in this legislation the rationale behind this public policy, behind extinguishing the rights of those families who are excluded—to spend the whole of his time attacking the former Government. How is that going to progress thinking and rigour in this debate, which affects so many families who, frankly, deserve better? They deserve better consideration and they deserve respect. They are certainly not getting that from the National Government.

There will be time in the Committee stage for amendments and questions to the Minister. I hope he answers the questions, because it is going to be the only time that we will have in which to have any questions addressed. In his first reading speech I thought I heard the Minister specifically exclude spouses from the consideration of being paid as a family caregiver, and I think that is wrong. I do not think that this Parliament should determine who in a family provides care for one of their own family members. I think that is a determination that should be made by a family. Why, as a parliamentarian, should I, Tony Ryall, or any member of the National Government say: “No, this is wrong. We won’t be paying you as a husband or wife, but we would pay you as a son or daughter or parent.”? Why would it be our determination that decides who receives that payment? The report of the Attorney-General—which actually has got nothing blanked out, so I would recommend it to colleagues to read—specifically includes a spouse as being a family member under this legislation. That point is actually quite important, and I am confused as to the reason that the Minister said the spouse was excluded, and yet the Attorney-General, the Hon Chris Finlayson, has clearly included spouses in his report on this legislation.

I want to move just briefly to the regulatory impact statement. This is an opportunity for all members of Parliament to see independent consideration of the impact of this legislation. Normally, it is a pretty robust process. I have seen some regulatory impact statements that are a bit weak, but this one looked like it had a lot of pages, so I got quite excited. I thought we were going to have a very good analysis of this legislation. Looking through it, I have never ever seen a regulatory impact statement like this before. Look at this. It is blanked out—it says “legally privileged”. And on the next page, this whole page in the regulatory impact statement is blanked out. How are we to judge the quality of this legislation based on the regulatory impact statement when the whole of this page is blanked out? On the next page, the contents of this column are “legally privileged” and blanked out. Page after page after page has blanked-out information.

This is the information that Parliament is entitled to have so that we can have a proper, robust debate based on facts. What we have got is a regulatory impact statement that has page after page after page blanked out. Here is another whole page blanked out. No wonder the Hon Tim Groser is hanging his head in shame. We would never see that Minister bring a regulatory impact statement to this House with page after page after page blanked out. We are not able to have a robust debate. This goes through the entire document—through the entire document page after page is blanked out and is “legally privileged”. It is Parliament that makes the law of our land, not some bureaucrat based in a department down the road blanking out information that we should be entitled to have. How do we know about the robustness of this legislation if we are not even entitled in this Parliament to have the information and, therefore, have a proper debate?

This is one of the most important issues in the disability sector, and, as the Minister quite properly said, it has been a live debate for over two decades. A number of family members took this case to a Human Rights Review Tribunal hearing. It later went to the High Court and then to the Court of Appeal. I was very pleased when the Minister of Health decided not to take it further but to call it quits. I thought the Minister of Health would then work with other parties, work with Carers New Zealand, and come back to this Parliament with a robust, agreed, sensible decision.

When the options that have been considered by the Minister are looked at—they are contained in the regulatory impact statement on one of the few pages that is not blanked out—we see that this whole issue could have been addressed for the 5,400 family members, family carers, of disabled people. This could have been totally addressed for a mid-point cost of an estimated $65 million a year. That is actually not a lot of money in the scheme of things. The Minister has boasted that he has addressed it for $92 million over 4 years. That is only $23 million a year. I think that the family members who are excluded from this because they do not meet the very, very high threshold that the Minister has imposed deserve better. In my view they should have been considered in this payment, and they certainly should not have had their rights to take a case of discrimination to the Human Rights Review Tribunal extinguished by this legislation.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): Again, it is a privilege to be speaking on this bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I want to repeat what I said in the first reading—that it was only this morning that a prominent disability spokesman said that the sector will be relieved that a resolution has at last been agreed on. This undoubtedly is a fair, pragmatic, and compassionate resolution to a longstanding, challenging, and complex situation.

It is indeed a little rich to hear the Hon Ruth Dyson go on about consultation. We heard both that member and Annette King saying this morning that they wanted—and they offered—cross-party consultation. But really they are indeed saying this far too late, given the context of their own response to the human rights ruling in 2001. The fact is they did not respond. The fact is that in 2005 they—this was Annette King and her fellow Cabinet Ministers—explicitly stated there would be no consultation with other parties. This was supported by the Greens—this was supported by the Greens—and then again, in 2008, the Labour Government expressly decided not to pay carers. Again, it was a Government propped up by the Greens.

Hon Ruth Dyson: You’re better than this, Paul.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: Well, I thought the member would be better than this. Indeed, there has been a veil of silence from the Labour-Green coalition regarding consultation, which is what I am talking about, until suddenly they find themselves in Opposition and then they start saying: “Hey, look. That’s what we really wish.”

I was interested to hear Annette King say: “Let’s look at the history, because over these two decades we have deinstitutionalised the places where disabled people were left, often left to wallow and not be cared for properly.” We have always agreed with that. Indeed, some of those packages that have been replaced are very, very reasonable ones, although of course there will always be the requirement for reform. In that consultation process that the National Government went through last year—it was a wide consultation process; I think there were something like 264 submitters and something like 12 meetings around the country—there were examples of the sorts of packages that were available for people through the system in New Zealand. Often that is not realised.

One of the classic examples was of an adult who had a rare progressive neurological disorder and used a powered wheelchair, living out in the country with her parents. Her support package is $106,000 per year, together with total additional funding of $43,000. That may not be as much as her parents would have liked, but it is a realistic package, given the amount of money and resourcing that we have in New Zealand.

So I want to end by saying that the Government is indeed balancing the interests of those being cared for, their families, and the taxpayers.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): It has been an interesting debate so far from the members of the Government, particularly the Minister of Health, who does not particularly like to listen to the debate and so minimises the time that he has to listen. If he wants to talk about politics in this issue, I would say that he is a Minister who is well known out there in the health sector as a walking political slogan. Most of what he says is political slogans.

I was interested in the contribution from a number of members on this bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). Rather than debating the issues, they wanted to spread blame around. Well, I will give the Minister credit for saying that this is an issue of 20 years’ consideration, Mr Hayes—20 years of consideration: 5 under a National Government, 9 under a Labour Government, and then you have got another 6 under a National Government. So if we are going to throw some blame around about what was not done before Labour became the Government, well, let us go back that far in history, Dr Hutchison. I noticed you did not do that. Let us stick with the issues.

Let us start with the regulatory impact statement. I ask the members of the Government whether they have read it. Have they read it? Not one of them has read the regulatory impact statement. Do they know what a regulatory impact statement is for? You see, a regulatory impact statement is provided to the Parliament—to the Parliament, Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, and you will appreciate this point—to inform members of what a bill is about. It is, you would say, a neutral way of providing information about a bill to the Parliament. It is something that the public can then read to get a very good understanding of what a bill is about.

But when you receive a regulatory impact statement that has been so heavily edited that anything that would give you some of the guts of what this is about has been crossed out, then we have a problem. You know, this blacked-out page I am holding is just an example from the regulatory impact statement. It would be better used as a draughtboard than the provision of information for the people here in the public and in this House. Probably what it shows is that it was rushed legislation—very rushed legislation. Work had not been finished.

The reason I can work that out is that as late as yesterday the Minister was advising the media that operational details of the policy were still to be finalised and would be available by September 2013. So the operational details of this policy are not available to this House. They will never be available to the public of New Zealand. Why? Because this bill is going through Parliament, through every stage, under urgency today. Does that mean the public have a say? Do they get to look at the operational details? No, they do not. They see absolutely nothing about this bill, because it will be passed under urgency.

Why urgency? I know that the public will ask that. Why urgency, when it does not have to be passed until October 2013—this year—and the operational details will not be available until September this year? Why could this bill not have gone to a select committee chaired by Dr Paul Hutchison, who I am sure would have enabled people to come and have a say. I suspect he did not have a say on this at all and heard about it at about the same time as everybody else.

We have heard from the Minister and others that the sector is pleased with these decisions. Well, I think we should read a bit of the feedback that has come in from those who do represent those with disability—a big negative. I will read them out. “Big negative—the minimum wage. Why would those who are caring for a disabled family be paid less than other carers? Are they worth less, do they do less? Why would they only be paid the minimum wage?”

Secondly, they were very upset at the exclusion of spouses and partners from being eligible to do the care. Have members opposite met with Carers New Zealand, an organisation that represents hundreds and hundreds of carers around New Zealand? Nobody has met with them. If they met with them, they would find out what the average age of a carer is in New Zealand. It is around 80—80 years of age. Let us have a look at Mr Cliff Robinson, a man who is caring for his two disabled children. He said he was looking for a half-decent scheme today. He got a half-baked one.

Here he is in this photo. Do the members opposite have any idea how old this man is? He is 75 years of age and is the father of two children, who are very disabled, aged 43 and 40. Spouses or partners would not eligible to look after them. [Interruption] Have a look at your own bill. They could not have spouses looking after them. So Mr Robinson can look after his children, but he could not look after his wife if she were in the same situation.

The third thing is there is a very high threshold of need. Have a look at the threshold of need that was provided by the Minister’s office to the media—but not provided to this Parliament so that we could look at the threshold of need. In addition, let me read this to the members opposite: “In addition, the Government did all this without any engagement with carers in the policy design or systems that will be used. One person got on the technical advisory group, but they had to only respond to questions from the Minister.” That is what has happened with this bill. It is an absolute disgrace. I just cannot understand why this Government is carrying out this bill in this way.

In the few pages that do exist in the regulatory impact statement, the Ministry of Health put up a number of payment options. It made payment options under three different categories. What we find is that the Government said it has been very fair. It has taken the mid-point—$23 million a year, covering 1,600 highly disabled people. That is what it said was being fair. Do you know, it had to move down only one column and it could have provided care to 5,400 disabled people? The difference in that payment is $17 million a year—$17 million a year—to provide care to 5,400 disabled people. Think about it, members opposite. Think about those people. Think about what they face every day.

Ian McKelvie: That’s $17 million more than they’ve got now.

Hon ANNETTE KING: It is no good yelling out now. Think about it, because you were not consulted before. I know this is hurting. I know it is hurting, because members opposite understand that what I am saying is right. Why, for $17 million, would you not include 5,400 disabled people? That is what I call mean-spirited, and so will the rest of the community. One thing the community understands is that when you are looking after a family member who needs 24-hour care, 7 days a week, there is no let-up, except for a little bit of respite the Government generously offers every now and then. There is no let-up. It is like caring for the most dependent of young people. The Government could have chosen option 3C—mid-point. Difference from what the Minister chose? Seventeen million dollars.

I am also interested—and we will get on to this later in questions to the Minister—in the Attorney-General’s report to Parliament. I did not find it until this morning. I am not sure whether other members did, but I suspect that, like the regulatory impact statement, the Government was not in a hurry to provide it to Parliament. I think it is interesting that on the last page of his report, the Attorney-General, the Hon Christopher Finlayson, said that new section 70E appears to limit the right to judicial review because it would prevent a person from challenging the lawfulness of a decision on the basis that it was inconsistent with section 19(1) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. On balance, he concluded that that limitation cannot be justified under section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That is from the Attorney-General—that is what he has said. We will look closer at this, because this is Parliament’s Attorney-General, a member of the National Government, providing that advice, and he has obviously not been listened to.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): It is indeed ironic that this bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), which supposedly addresses historic discrimination, turns out to be a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It suggests poor law at best, and it also suggests a deeply cynical attitude to what discrimination actually means. What it means for the status of the Human Rights Review Tribunal will certainly be debated by lawyers and will, no doubt, end up in more painful litigation. However, I just wanted to address some of the arguments in the context behind the bill.

I do not claim to know everything about this issue. I have been involved in it only for the last 4 years. I think that rather than blaming each other and talking about who did what to whom, let us all acknowledge that Parliament has not dealt well with these families, Parliament has not addressed the issue in the past, and Parliament has been dragged, screaming, to this point through the courts. Nobody looks good. Let us just be honest instead of pretending that anybody can hold their head up. None of us can. Why not be real about it?

As for compassion, no one, especially not me, thinks that we have a monopoly on compassion. I am sure that everyone in this House knows somebody who has an experience of disability and caring for people with disabilities. But what is interesting is where the action is. If we have all this compassion, if we understand Cliff Robinson’s case so well, as everybody seems to, where was the action? I have been working with Cliff and the families for 4 years trying to get a response, and compassion is fine, but action is what the families want. Sympathy and empathy are all very well. Action—money to pay your bills in order to live with dignity while your family members also live with dignity—is what they want from us.

I think that is what we owe them, and that is why this bill does not meet the needs of the people who so bravely went through the court case. They have not all been paid. They have been given an interim payment. They have been told that it might not be until October before they get a remedy. So although they are explicitly protected in the legislation, no one else is protected. That is why this legislation is such a serious matter.

Let us look at the context behind the Government’s arguments. Apart from the fact that it wanted to protect itself fiscally, which is really the only thing that the bill is clear about, the rest of it will be debated in ghastly family group debates between the Ministry of Health, the district health board, and the families themselves, who are not always in the best position to advocate. They bring many stories to the Greens about their ability to advocate complex issues around care with providers. It is not simple. They are the experts, but they are treated as if they are trying to rip off the system if they try to get paid for what they do.

I am thinking about a family I have been working with. They have a 14-year-old son who has multiple health issues, 24/7 care, and who has chosen to stay at home. He said this directly to me: “I must stay at home with my family.” He wants his mother to be his carer, but in order to do that the income of the family has been drastically cut. So this family may or may not be able to get the money. It will depend on their ability to negotiate with the Ministry of Health, and it will depend on whether the Ministry of Health and the district health board think that they are liable, and whether they get in this capped amount of $23 million per year. It is very difficult for families to prove that.

Because of Government policy towards this, there has been a fundamentally suspicious and punitive approach towards people caring for family members. It is as if they have to be spied upon because they might be ripping off the system, rather than acknowledging that what they are doing is a really, really important job. It has cost them, in many cases, their own health, and their mental health.

But one of the Government’s arguments is that families should do it for nothing. The debate was about natural care. Minister Ryall continues to say that that is a tenet of the Government’s bill. “Natural care” is a wonderful-sounding phrase. Natural care is what we do when we raise our children. It is what many of us did for our elderly parents when they needed support in their home as they got older. It is what many people do for family members—whānau ora, natural care. But there comes a point in natural care where a line is stepped over.

The stories that are being told to me about people who live in the other world are not natural care. It is not natural care for adults to have to wash and take care of, control, manage, feed, deal with, and support some family members. We need to put the person with the disability at the heart of the matter. If the person with the disability chooses to be cared for by a family member, many times it is because they feel safer with that person than with carers on a 4-hour roster. People might have a 24-hour roster where the carers change every 4 hours. They have changing carers. They do not know those people all the time, so they actually trust—not surprisingly—their family member more.

The Government’s argument was that this could distort relationships in families. Of course it could. Power exists in all relationships, especially between disabled people and their carer, whether they are a family member or an agency. It does not matter. The reason that that is always going to be a risk is that people with disabilities are at the bottom of the heap, and their status in our society is the lowest possible status that you can have. Their ability to advocate for themselves is severely limited by the barriers that we create, not because they are incapable of articulating their needs, but because we are incapable, in many instances, of giving them the support to say what it is that they need.

I met with a number of groups in the last 4 years that said we need change. They said we need a cross-party approach towards the issue of paying family carers so that the person at the heart of this is protected at all times and has the ability to choose. A number of the people I met were saying that their young people want to live independently but they cannot find a safe set-up. I know there are safe, independent set-ups. They are more expensive than exploiting someone at home, but in my town, for example, there is a very good trust called the Lifestyle Trust, where they have 25 houses where young people and other people, some with complex intellectual impairment in particular, who want to live independently, are supported. But if, like Cliff and his family and others, they choose to stay at home, their carers should be able to earn a living wage.

One of the most reprehensible and depressing aspects of the bill is saying that the people who do that work do not have to be paid what the outside carer gets paid. So you are setting up a bizarre anomaly where someone who might get paid 8 hours a day to look after a family member is paid one rate, and then the carer will come in and get paid more. I guess you could call it progress, because at the moment they are paid nothing, but, actually, what that does to their human dignity is that, after all the struggle, after all the court cases, and after all the bitterness and debate, they are still being told: “Your work is not of value. The caring that you do for your family member—you should do it for love.” Love is very much involved in the sacrifice that is being made, and love should not be exploited, and workers who are family members should not be exploited.

That brings us to the issue of spouses. Actually, it is up to the disabled person as to whether they want their spouse to care for them, not their mother, their father, their brother, or their cousin, but this law appears—and we should clarify this with the Minister—to not allow that. It makes an artificial distinction between who can be paid, and whether they are a spouse or not. It does many other things as well. It is interesting, given that Whānau Ora is supposedly the flagship of the Government along with the Māori Party, and it is potentially a liberating policy, but whānau ora means that the whole family are involved in an issue and their needs are met and we recognise what families are trying to do together.

I think that putting the disabled person at the heart and putting the whānau ora principle into this would have resulted in a very different piece of legislation. It is very, very sad to see the discrimination that comes in in this bill, which the Minister, of course, has not mentioned. He has not mentioned the fact that in the bill it explicitly states that people will have no right to complain—none whatsoever—either to the Human Rights Review Tribunal or the courts. So what this bill is saying is: “We have come up with an inadequate solution without proper consultation, and now we are going to shut it down—end of story.”

No more will people be allowed to complain. No more can they go to the Human Rights Review Tribunal. Those cases that did not get on the list are over, and these people will be desperate, but no more will they have the right. I am amazed at a law that actually says: “You will not have a right to take any kind of case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal.” I think it is really churlish, when they have lost—and they lost a number of times in court—to say: “We are not prepared to even allow people to say any more. That is the end of the story. If you fail to be accepted through the assessment process—no more. Go home. Look after your family member for nothing, or put them into a residential care facility that may or may not be acceptable to them, but that is the end for you.” More will be said. We are against the bill.

SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is a pleasure to speak in support of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) in its second reading. I just want to acknowledge the work of the previous speaker, Catherine Delahunty, in terms of her support for Cliff Robinson and his family. Cliff Robinson and his two children are constituents of mine in the Coromandel electorate, and it is fair to say that Catherine Delahunty has been a staunch advocate on their behalf, and I thank her for that.

This is a good bill. It is an important bill. Today is a day of pride for the National Party and the National-led Government, but it is a day of shame for the Labour Party and its former health Ministers and their teams during the 9 long years of the previous Labour Government. Really, as we get through this second reading debate, there is really just one question that should probably be asked and answered: was it the Hon Ruth Dyson who, during her term as the Associate Minister of Health in those years of Helen Clark’s administration, pushed for a carers’ package, and was it, actually, the former Minister of Health Annette King who pushed back and opposed it? I support this bill.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Look, there have been a lot of political statements made, like the one made by the previous speaker, Scott Simpson, who spoke not at all to the bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), but just spouted a few political statements. He is learning well from the Minister of Health—let us be honest. I think the nature of the debate has been governed by the fact that the proper process for considering legislation has been completely curtailed.

This is a house of political debate. This is where we debate the broad policies, and where there is often a bit of robust hurling of barbs at one another. It is at select committees, of course, where we sit down as a group—this bill would, I imagine, come to the Health Committee, which is one of the better-functioning committees, under the chairmanship of Dr Paul Hutchison, and where the members actually genuinely want to do what is right for the health and well-being of New Zealanders. We may not always agree on the broad policy, but we give submitters a fair hearing. We listen intently to what the official advice is, and we take our time, in comparison with some other select committees, to really consider our inquiries and the legislation that we look at.

Ordinarily, this second reading debate would be an opportunity to come back to Parliament and discuss what submitters had come to tell us at the select committee. But, of course, the submitters, who would be the people who will be directly affected by this bill, have had no opportunity to do that. There has been no select committee process. There has not even been any consultation with them, just as there was no consultation with other parties in Parliament, and just as the Attorney-General’s report and the regulatory impact statement were dumped on the Table at the last minute—actually, after the last minute. They are supposed to arrive at the same time as the bill, and they did not, and that is an outrage.

I want to share what I think would be the words of one submitter, because we have been contacted by people who will be impacted on by this bill, and here is the kind of thing that we are getting. The initial reaction was really positive. It was the reaction that I think the Minister was hoping for—that everybody would have the wool pulled over their eyes and think that this was the solution that the sector was looking for. And that was the initial reaction: “Positive recognition of the obligation of carers … not legislating away … getting started … focused on highest needs first.”

It all felt really positive, and the first paragraph that we received from this person was incredibly positive. But then comes the second paragraph, which reads like this: “But … but … but …”. There are so many buts in this legislation. The big negative, they say, is the minimum wage—the fact that family carers are going to receive less than other carers doing exactly the same job, exactly the same work, and with exactly the same passion. Actually, you might argue that the family carers will have more passion for their own kin, but that is the situation. They are stuck on the minimum wage. This person says: “There will be anger amongst many people, and this will be seen as very unfair and mean-spirited.”, and I have to concur. This legislation is unfair and it is mean-spirited. “Even going for the industry average of a dollar or two more would have been seen as more acceptable without breaking the bank.” That is what this person had to say. “Many will also be very upset at the exclusion of spouses and partners being eligible.” I think this person is right. “Why is it that they are excluded?”, they ask. “Perhaps because of implications for over-65s, but it will rankle deeply with the people.”

So the Minister has failed. The Minister said that this is all about politics. It is always about politics with Minister Ryall. What he has been trying to do is get the politics right without actually doing the job properly, but he has been found out. He would be found out if the bill went to a select committee. He knows that. That is why he has forced the bill through under urgency, but I am sorry, Mr Ryall, the people are not as stupid as you believe they are, and they have figured it out.

I will read more of what this person says: “Together with these issues, what is emerging is it gets worse hour by hour.” In other words, they, like us, are looking through the bill, they are looking through the regulatory impact statement—what of it they are allowed to read—and they are looking at the Attorney-General’s report, which says this is an unjustified contravention of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and they are seeing this legislation for what it is, which is an attempt to appease people who have an absolutely justified claim, without doing the job properly.

As Annette King pointed out, doing the job properly would cost just $17 million more than what this bill will cost the Government. I appreciate that people out there listening will go: “Seventeen million dollars? That sounds like an awful lot of money.” Anybody would like to get their hands on $17 million. But the truth is that for the health budget and for the Government’s overall budget, $17 million is not a lot of money.

Later on in this passage of urgency we are going to pass legislation—well, the Government is going to attempt to pass legislation; I have to admit I am probably conceding defeat already—that will increase fuel taxes. That increase in fuel taxes is going to generate $20 billion more money than the Government needs for its roading programme—$20 billion more than the Government needs for roads. Yet it cannot find $17 million for the families of people with disabilities. Does that not just tell you where this Government’s priorities lie? Does that not just tell you where this Government’s priorities lie?

John Hayes: We don’t photocopy dollar notes. It doesn’t grow on trees. It doesn’t grow in the Manawatū River.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: John Hayes has perked up all of a sudden. Perhaps he realises just what a bad deal this is for people with disabilities and for their families—and for their families.

John Hayes: No, it’s not. It’s a damn good deal.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: John Hayes says that this is a damn good deal. Well, he needs to go and talk to the families affected, the people who are already contacting us because they have figured out that this is a swindle, Mr Hayes. This is a swindle and nothing more from this arrogant Government, which does not believe in democracy. It is pushing this bill through under urgency without providing Parliament with the full information, and it is forcing us to try to pick the details apart and get to the heart of it.

I have to admit that when we first saw that the Government was going to take action on this, we thought that was great. It had taken it a while. The court case was actually completed a year ago, and the families gave the Government a year—they voluntarily gave the Government a year—to sort this out. And the Government has taken a whole year, and, again, that shows you where those families lie in this Government’s priorities. The Government was not prepared to act straight away. It messed around, it sat on its hands, and now it is putting the bill through under urgency because it knows it is at risk of litigation from the families. It took a whole year—

Ian McKelvie: Haven’t you got a split call?

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: No, Mr McKelvie. I get my full 10 minutes on this one. I also want to say that we have a genuine question. We have a genuine question—if the Minister of Health could just put his props down for a second. Here is a genuine question. How does the employment relationship between the Ministry of Health, the person with the disability, and their carer work? I am concerned—and we on this side are concerned—that if the direct employment responsibilities are between the person with the disability and their carer, that raises significant issues for the person with the disability. They do not have an army of human resources managers behind them to make sure that they get that relationship right. They do not have the support or the advice that the district health board or the Ministry of Health would have. It is a genuine question, because reading through the bill and reading through the analysis and the supporting material, I just cannot tell exactly what the situation is.

So when we get to the Committee of the whole House, I hope that the Minister will clarify that situation, because we may want to make changes to that employment relationship to try to get this right. We disagree with the Government on this. We do not think that this is the full package. We do not think that this is the answer. But we do want to do our best to try to get it right for them, and I hope that the Minister takes that consideration on board, amongst the other issues.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): The previous speaker, Iain Lees-Galloway, blamed the National-led Government for not paying for family carers. The fact is that the previous Labour Government decided not to pay a single cent to family carers. In April 2008 that decision was made. Well, the Labour Government decided to forget that fact. It was convenient, deliberate—that is indeed a disgrace.

As I said earlier, the core of this matter is the balance between the responsibility of the Government and that of families. The Government is currently spending over $1 billion a year on a wide range of disability support services, including home and community support services, residential care, support for high and complex needs, equipment and home modifications, supported independent living, and also care support and respite care. This bill is another effort of the Government to provide better services to disabled people while using taxpayers’ money carefully and responsibly. The previous Labour Government felt helpless and did nothing on this issue. The National-led Government actually is now acting on this matter. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand the next call is a split call.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Kia ora. Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute to the discussion about the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I just want to pick up where my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway left off. I think the select committee process would have provided a really good opportunity to discuss issues such as were highlighted by the Ministry of Health in its own discussion document, where it said: “the court’s decision may have broader implications for other … funded disability supports and for family carers of other people receiving government-funded support …”. I mean, we all know that this is a reaction to the Atkinson and Others case. This case has been going since 2000, so it was in its 12th year when, on 14 May last year, the Court of Appeal made its decision. That judgment was very clear. It said, basically, that the Government—the Ministry of Health—was unlawful to discriminate against someone because of their family status.

I think that is actually the critical question that the select committee process would have been able to go through. I reiterate what my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has said. The Health Committee is an incredibly well-run select committee. I think that the way we engage with each other is very much evidence-based, and it is very much about trying to work collaboratively, and I think this is an area and an issue that we could have worked collaboratively on.

The reality—as John Forman, who is the chair of the Carers Alliance, said—is that there is “disappointment that spouses and partners of disabled people were specifically excluded …”. That really is the criticism that I think I want to focus on. We have been through a process, a legal process, that said the Government was discriminating. The case was taken by parents, and I want to acknowledge the parents. I want to acknowledge Peter Atkinson on behalf of the estate of Susan Atkinson. I want to acknowledge Gillian Bransgrove, Jean Burnett, Laurence Carter, Peter Humphreys, Clifford Robinson, Lynda Stoneham, Stuart Burnett, Imogen Atkinson, and their counsel, who have fought for their right to be supported in their support of their disabled adult children.

That was the context of the case, but the reality is that the principle applies to other people in other situations, and that really is the issue. The Government really is selling short family members in similar situations who are caring for adult members of their family who have a disability. So to delimit it in the way that it has done really is a breach of how this House operates. If we had been able to go through a select committee process, we would have been able, I think, to resolve and reconcile some of the other challenges that that Court of Appeal decision has highlighted. For me, that is the fundamental flaw in the process that we are going through.

It is very sad, and I know that the chair of our select committee, Paul Hutchison, is always very concerned about evidence, about principles, and about why the Government makes the decisions that it does. I am sure he would have welcomed our select committee hearing submissions on this particular bill. For me, that is the fundamental issue. That is what I want to highlight. Yes, we are going to resolve the issue for some families who have disabled adults, but this does not resolve the issues for all families who have members who have a disability. I think we have lost that opportunity, and I think to say that the fiscal implications should drive what we do is wrong. Kia ora.

JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to speak again, so soon after the first reading, in the second reading of this bill, New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). In the first reading I spoke about why this is a feminist issue. I would like to speak just a little bit more about the economic model that this bill is a demonstration of.

I was at the Public Health Association Budget day breakfast this morning and one of the economists at that meeting was talking about the counting-for-nothing model and how that has contributed to child poverty and growing inequality in this country. He noted that provision 6.28 in Household Surveys and the National Accounts explicitly excludes from our national accounts the preparation of meals, the care of children, the care of sick and the infirm, and transportation.

The consequence of that exclusion—and this bill is such a demonstration of the thinking behind that exclusion—is that the Government can focus on the external economic growth model as if it has nothing to do with our families. It can say: “Well, if we put all of our focus and our effort into growing business, then we may have enough money as a country not to have to introduce these fiscal constraints that deny people their very rights and allow the Government to discriminate.”

But that kind of thinking is the same thinking that says that earthquakes and pollution and prisons grow our economy and that the increase in GDP from those evils is something we want to strive for. It separates out and ignores the very well-being of every person in this country in their homes, in the places that I believe most New Zealanders feel actually count. The very focus around this means that the impact of any of these little bits of social spending is completely, in the words of this economist, swamped by the policies that drive social inequality.

In this case it is the inequality between men and women, and the inequality between disabled and abled people, who, through their loss of choice and control and funding for their families, are entrenched into poverty because this Government, and the very model that it is working in, says that they do not count. The lives of these people, the hours, the love, and the care, count for nothing in the Government’s economic model. I think that is morally bankrupt and I think New Zealanders deserve something better.

The Government is saying that this is a good deal. Well, it is a bloody good deal for the Government and its model. The Government is getting the benefit of all of these people’s work for nothing, virtually—for a token. We see this again in the income support area, where the Government has allowed for 7,500 people to get the supported living payment for the care of the sick and the infirm—which is care for people who would otherwise be hospitalised—and they are being paid below the poverty line. For those families, that is what that means. They are being guaranteed an income below the poverty line so that the Government can save on the extraordinary costs of hospital care, because they love their family members and want more for them. That is the economic model that we are being fed as a positive for our communities. What a joke. It is offensive.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time.

Ayes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a second time.

In Committee

Clause 1 Title

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): It is a pleasure to speak on the major part of this bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I note that in new Part 4A, “Family care policies”, inserted by clause 4, new section 70A, “Purpose of this Part”, says quite clearly: “The purpose of this Part is to keep the funding of support services provided by persons to their family members within sustainable limits in order to give effect to the restraint imposed by section 3(2) ...”.

I think it is very, very important to emphasise that this policy does indeed give disabled people the choice of whether to employ a family carer or a contracted provider. And as I pointed out in the second reading of this bill, the packages to carers of those who used to be held in institutions are really very realistic. They will come to over $100,000 in certain circumstances. Traditionally, as we have all debated during the last two readings, for 20 years no family members have been paid—no family members have been paid. But this bill enables that choice of payment to those who, indeed, have very high needs. This will open up payments to something like 1,600 families who have in the past not had that benefit.

Certainly, targeting high and very high needs people was supported by 68 percent of all submitters and 71 percent of family carers, in response to the consultation document that was put out by the Government in 2012, and I believe that there were something like over 600 replies to that. There were 273 submitters, and there were 12 discussions around the traps in New Zealand. Again, it is important to point out that changing the policy to pay all groups of family carers rather than only carers of those with high and very high needs would result in spiralling and unmanageable costs of as much as $175 million a year. We do, of course, have that difficulty—where are the grey zones? But when we hear the rhetoric of both Labour and the Greens—the Greens, which would print money, and Labour, which has refused to pay anything at all, even though it has known since 2001 that this was an issue—it is indeed of great concern.

This policy adds to the extra $100 million that the Government is spending on disability support services over the next 4 years. The total investment in disability now reaches something like $1.1 billion. This is a realistic, compassionate, fair solution to an issue that has gone on for a long period of time. And as one of the disability spokespersons said this morning, the sector will be very relieved that at last a solution has been offered by the National Government.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Just before I call the next member, just so that we are clear about the parameters in the debate, this is a debate on clause 1, and it is a wide-ranging debate on clause 1. The reason for that is the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) has not been considered by a select committee. However, when we come to clauses 2, 3, and 4, these will be narrow debates, and I refer members who are going to speak to Speaker’s ruling 114/7. All of those who are going to be speaking, please have a look at Speaker’s ruling 114/7. So it is a wide-ranging debate.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Thank you very much for the opportunity to take a call in the Committee stage of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), and I hope that the Minister of Health takes the opportunity to answer some of the questions that were foreshadowed during the truncated debates that we have already had on this bill.

Can I first of all agree with one point that the previous speaker, Dr Paul Hutchison, made and that is that for some family members who have been denied access to payment for caring, this bill does progress that issue and that is a good thing. It is massively outweighed by the frame in which the Minister has put this resolution. The Minister has quite clearly said in his press statements and in the introduction to this bill, as well as in the questions and answers from the Ministry of Health that accompanied it, that it is the total responsibility of family members to care for their disabled other family members. That undermines the whole point of this bill.

The point of this bill should be to say that under the public health and disability responsibilities that the Government has, a family member who is performing a support service that would otherwise be performed by a paid caregiver should be entitled to be paid as well. So the whole framing of this debate has been that a Minister was dragged, kicking and screaming, from the Court of Appeal and into Parliament to address the issue that was raised by the Atkinson family. The Minister knows that when Labour was leading the Government, the matter had not been resolved by the courts. It was resolved by the courts during his term of Government, and for the last 12 months he has been working out how he could get out of the responsibility of paying for family caregivers.

The other point that I want to raise in relation to the issues that Dr Paul Hutchison raised is that it would pay the member well to read the regulatory impact statement because that has accurate costings, rather than the drivel that he reported to the House. The accurate costings are that it would have cost only an additional $17 million per year to include all people who are family caregivers who are currently not being paid. That is a miniscule amount of money within the total health budget, and if the Minister wants to fix the situation then he should have fixed it.

So the remaining 3,000 or so—2,800—families, for whom the Ministry of Health in its regulatory impact statement has presented this information to Parliament, will be feeling very angry and very let down by the promises that the Minister has made to solve the situation. Not only did the Minister promise to solve it, he then attacked Annette King, and other members of the Labour Government, for not solving it, and he has not done it either. He has not done it. It has just slipped through his fingers. He had the opportunity. He had the court case. He had it resolved during his time as Minister. After taking it to the High Court, and then it going to the Court of Appeal, the Minister did not fix the situation. This bill does not do it.

On page 11 of the regulatory impact statement it says quite clearly that having no targeting and paying all family carers who are providing home and community support services would cost, at mid-point, $65 million per annum, with the range going as high as $75 million. That would ensure that the 5,400 family members of disabled people, who are currently providing that home support, would in fact be paid for it. So there is a smidgen of good in here, and why on earth the Minister did not do his work properly and get the entire package sorted is beyond belief. But he has made it worse than that. Not only has he denied access to payment for so many thousands of family caregivers but he is also, in this legislation, extinguishing their right to take a case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal on the grounds of discrimination. That was the basis on which the other families won this concession. Had the Atkinson family—or any of the other families, actually—taken that action under the criteria that the Minister has laid down, I do not think they would be entitled to payments still. They are getting it only because they have been through the legal process and the Minister has finally agreed to settle.

The Minister has agreed to settle with those families, but under the criteria that he is laying out in this legislation for very high and complex needs disabilities, those families would not be entitled to the payment that they have won through the courts. So why would the Minister disentitle other family members from taking what is their legitimate case? That is the very question that is answered in this report, which is also on the Table, from the Attorney-General, the Hon Chris Finlayson. He takes quite a long time to say it, but it is from the Attorney-General. On page 3 of his report he says, at point 17: “It is important to note that a savings provision … preserves the position of the parties in the Family Carers case and one other case … That litigation may continue or be settled as if the Bill had not been enacted.” So regardless of this legislation, those families would have reached a settlement with the Minister or the Ministry of Health.

Then point 18 says: “New section 70E appears to limit the right to judicial review because it would prevent a person from challenging the lawfulness of a decision on the basis that it was inconsistent with s 19(1) of the Bill of Rights Act.” He goes on to say, in point 19 of his report to the House: “On balance, I have concluded that limitation cannot be justified under s 5 of the Bill of Rights Act.” So why would the Minister want to do that? Why would the Minister want to trumpet the fact that he has finally resolved an issue that has been a public policy debate for over two decades, according to him? Why would he want to resolve that issue by creating another clear—and confirmed by the Attorney-General—discrimination, while at the same time extinguishing the rights of those families who have confirmed this discrimination created by this legislation, and prevent them from taking the matter through any system of human rights to redress? That undermines the whole point of this legislation.

There are further negative aspects to it. There is the fact that the Minister has not determined that a family member should not be paid perhaps at the average rate that other caregivers are being paid at, but only at the minimum wage—so family caregivers’ work is worth less than for somebody who is not from that family. I do not agree with that. If a person is doing the work, then they should be paid at the same rate as anyone else who is doing it.

I do not think that the sector has been involved in the discussions on this final piece of legislation. I agree that if there was a roll-out of this provision for payment of family caregivers, then those with the highest needs would be a priority, and that is correct. But this is not a roll-out. This is the beginning and the end of the situation. This is legislation that is not being brought in incrementally. This is legislation that is being done through all stages of this Parliament under urgency with no consideration at all—not even one day—by a select committee. None of the families involved, none of the caregivers, not Carers New Zealand, and no organisations that are involved in the provision of this support for disabled people are being allowed one word of input into this legislation. It is being passed right through all stages under urgency without any public scrutiny.

I think that is an immoral position for the Minister of Health to take. To have such a significant piece of legislation affecting the rights of so many families of disabled people—to have those rights extinguished without them having an opportunity to have one say—is an outrage. I am beside myself with surprise that the Māori Party, with the Minister for Disability Issues as one of its members, with the Minister of Māori Affairs as one of its members, is supporting this legislation. We know very well that many, many Māori families are particularly impacted by this legislation because many Māori families refuse to have anyone else support their family members because of their cultural priority that they look after their own members. So for the Minister for Disability Issues and the Minister of Māori Affairs to be supporting this legislation beggars belief. It is the price of the baubles of office, I guess, but it is a great surprise to me. I think that the Minister could well rethink the strategy.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): It has been a very interesting first and second reading of this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), because I have noticed that the Minister of Health has spent a lot of his time scuttling in and out gathering evidence against the previous Government. He has been rummaging through the Ministry of Health’s drawers to try to find anything that he can throw at the Opposition. I would say to the Minister that he might have been better off spending his time providing us with information about this bill before he brought it into this House.

I want the Minister to tell us why the regulatory impact statement was not available until today, and why so much of it has been blacked out. Why have the public of New Zealand and the members of this House, who rely on a regulatory impact statement to have an idea what the bill is, faced page after page after page blanked out, taking away information. Everybody knows that a regulatory impact statement is there to assist the House to have a debate about an issue. The Minister must have approved a regulatory impact statement that took out vital information that we could have used in this House—that his own members could have used. I would like to know why we face that—I cannot remember a regulatory impact statement like that. The regulatory impact statement, for example, on Better Local Government was a real shocker against the Minister of Local Government at the time, Nick Smith, but he did not go through it and cross out the bad bits he did not like. I will give him credit for that. He allowed the information to be put there for us to argue against, for the select committee to look at, but this bill is not even going to a select committee. Why was there no effort made, as was offered last year by members of the Opposition, to work with them on this issue?

As the Minister said when he started off in a very steady way, this is a very complex issue spanning over 20 years. And then, as the debate went on, he had his members’ and his own speeches becoming more narrow and more narrow, throwing a bit of blame around. He has been the Minister for 5 years—5 years the Minister of Health. In 5 years he could have done something, so it is no good holding up pieces of paper saying that Labour did not do anything, because National was the Government 9 years before we became the Government. Did it do anything on this issue? No, it did not. It made no decisions on it, and this Minister has been forced to make decisions that he did not really want to make. He can hide his face behind paper, and he ought to hide his face behind paper, because what you get out of his press statement, I think, is very interesting indeed. What he actually says is that the public of New Zealand expect family members to look after their own family. Well, in the main, they do, but there is one part of our society where we say we need to give particular care, and it is those who are not able to look after themselves.

The bottom line for this Minister has been all about money. When you look at the options, the little bit of the paper that we can read, you see that he did have some choices. I happen to know that the choices that the Ministry of Health is providing to him at the moment on carer policy he does not like at all. He certainly did not like the options that it put up. Why did he not choose one of the options under option 3C, or option 2C, because the difference in money is $17 million a year. You would have gone from 1,600 people with disabilities being supported to 5,400. Would that have been such a huge impost on the Government’s coffers? It certainly is not when it can throw money around for private schools, and it can throw money around to advertise to sell off our State assets at $1 million—$1 million for an advertising campaign. It was about priorities. Why could he not have settled for an option that would have been more expensive, but not greatly so when you look at the entire health budget?

I would also like to ask the Minister what consultation he had with those who are the carers, because we happened to receive this morning information from those who do caring. They say that they had very little involvement at all. They did not engage the carers in the policy design or system. Why not, Minister? In fact, you had one person on the technical advisory group who was allowed to respond only to a series of questions from the ministry. That comes from the carers themselves. It is no good shaking your head, Minister, and denying it. They happen to know what happened to them. They happen to know what consultation they had. He is calling them a liar. I do not believe the carers of New Zealand are liars. That is what happened to them. There was very little opportunity for them to look at this policy at all, and, in fact, I believe it has been so rushed that that is why the regulatory impact statement has not been properly completed. The Minister does not need to rush it. Tell this Committee why, when it will be implemented in October this year, he needs to put it through urgency in this Chamber. Why not try to work across this Chamber and get agreement on it so it could put in place for the future—not something that he decides to do? But it is very much the way this Minister works. He knows everything—he knows everything. He is an authority on everything. He does not need the assistance of the carers of New Zealand. He does not need the assistance of the members of this Committee because he is all knowledgable.

I have to say it is also very disappointing, and maybe he would like to tell us why it is, that when carers are going to be paid they get to be paid the minimum wage. The ministry did not recommend the minimum wage; it recommended around $16. So why has the Minister said that it will be the minimum wage that will be paid? Why are these caregivers to be paid less than other caregivers? Are they less competent? Are they less important? Are the issues they face less troublesome for them? Would the Minister like to respond to why they will be paid the minimum wage? Maybe the Minister would also like to tell the Committee about the operational details of this policy, because the operational details of this policy—Minister, is it correct—will not be ready until September this year? Can the Minister answer that? Will the operational issues not be ready until September this year, because that is what your office said yesterday? They will not be ready until September so we will not even know how it is going to operate. Perhaps the Minister could tell us what he classifies as very high and high needs. Which sort of disability will be included in the high to very high needs? I would like him to explain exactly the sort of person who would have high to very high needs. Would they be people with physical or neurological disability? Would they be people with muscular dystrophy? Whom has he decided will be those with very high needs?

I believe that the people of New Zealand deserve answers to questions like this today. They need to understand that this is the only opportunity for debate on this bill, which is going to affect many people’s lives. Today is it. The next hour or two is the time allowed. That is it. That is all this House has. Instead of spending time rummaging around trying to attack the Opposition, answer some questions about the policy. Put some answers on the table, Minister, instead of just playing your usual game of being a know-all and wanting to play the political game on every issue. He could have worked with the Opposition. He could have worked with all parties. You have heard it from the Greens, you have heard it from New Zealand First, and we had a statement put out last year saying that we would work on this issue. There was not even a phone call. When did we hear about this? Yesterday. When did we get the bill? Yesterday. When did we get the regulatory impact statement? Today. When did we get the Attorney-General’s report on it? Today. That is the level of consultation and information that is being provided to this Parliament. To treat the Parliament with that sort of contempt is just not good enough.

But, let us face it, what else would you expect? What else would you expect from a Government that has become so arrogant that it knows exactly what everyone needs and believes it knows what people who are disabled need? Do not worry about it, Government members know. Well, they do not. They have been asked to address an issue. What does a person who has got two disabled adult children, a 75-year-old man looking after his own children, who are 45 and 43, say? He thought he was going to get a half-decent scheme. What does he say he got? A half-baked one. That is the problem—a half-baked scheme, because the Minister of Health was not prepared to take the time to consult properly with the carers and to work with other parties, but wants to shove it through this House under Budget legislation and urgency.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare nui. It is not great to be here—I think we should be at a select committee, I really do. I am very, very disappointed that we are not, because this is a very serious oversight on an issue that, given all these years of angst that have gone on, we should be talking about to the people who are experiencing it. And they are watching—never imagine they are not. We are being watched as we speak.

I had an email just a little while ago from a carer, who said: “I am just appalled that the Government continues its discriminatory and exploitative process against families caring for severely disabled people.” This is what she does: “What part of 168 hours in the week allows for only a maximum of 40 to be funded when you are the parent carer? What do these people think we do? Go out on the tiles? Off duty after 5 p.m. till 8 in the morning? Disappearing every weekend? Should our funding be based on their ivory tower understanding of what happens? How do they get this 18-year-old number? I understand that those under 18 have been allocated funding for care, but why can their parents not be funded as any other carer is? Do two parents at home get paid and only one that’s left because of death or because a partner leaves—can that person get paid if they are a spouse? I am just flabbergasted that spouses and partners continue to be exploited.”

So perhaps the Minister of Health could answer her question: are spouses able to be paid? We would really like to know, because of the situation. “This is outright discrimination.” she says. “Are the Government wanting more legal action? No doubt further legal action could delay things and be their cheaper option.”—which has certainly been a strategy for the last 18 years—“This causes total stress and adds insult to injury with an already very difficult situation. People who care for severely disabled people need all the help that they can get and that they are assessed as needing. These battles are real struggles for the carers, who should be helped, not hindered. It’s not clear if children catering for parents are allowed payment.” That would be another question that she would like answered. “A very disappointing Budget for people with high or very high needs, whom it was supposed to be aimed at. The court action deemed that funding should be for the assessment of allocated funded hours that the Ministry of Health would be prepared to pay to anyone else. Why are they now saying ‘We will pay parents only what we feel like’ but, yes, anyone else can get paid their fully allocated hours? Why is the start date October? Promises for June were made.”

This is really true. After the end of the court case, promises were made that there would be a resolution by June 2013. She says: “No one is holding their breath.” They have been through so many promises and so many dates have been set. After the court case a year ago, it is not that the Government has chosen to take the opportunity to do something wonderful; it has no choice. It would be in breach of law if it did not act.

I also had an email this morning from a very experienced advocate who works for disability groups. He said: “I’m just summarising the policy from what I can read of the regulatory impact statement, and I have to say that it gets worse and worse. But don’t worry, once this is through there will be heaps of sector resistance.” So that is not good news. People have got better things to do than fight the Government when they are dealing with issues of their own family members or themselves needing care for disability. It is really, really disappointing to set up another round of conflict, even though the bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), certainly does its best to shut down any options for complaint. But the human spirit is not like that. The human spirit will not be told it does not have rights and will not be told by any Government that it will put up and shut up and have no right to complain. This is a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which is clear. The people out there who are involved in this issue are not, after virtually 20 years of litigation, going to just give up because the Government says they have to. Let us get real about this. There are going to be more challenges. We have a better path we could follow. We could follow the path of engagement.

So let us have a look at the process, which is why not holding select committee hearings is such a disaster. What has happened up until now has been pretty bad. There was eventually, after the last case was lost and the Government members realised that they would look like fools if there was an appeal—the Government had already spent several million dollars of taxpayers’ money fighting these cases—a decision to have a consultation process. The consultation document was, indeed, a novel of interesting proportions. It had a sort of Tolstoyan, sort of War and Peace—mainly war—aspect to it, because it made it very, very clear that there would be the possibility of taking money away from other parts of the sector if the people who were consulted chose the wrong path. So there was always this implied threat that “Actually, you’d better be careful and not want too much, you people who already have nothing, because if you do, it will be taken off other people in the sector”—a very good message if you want to divide and rule what is already quite a divided and difficult sector. People have very different needs and very different experiences of disability, and they do not need to be divided and ruled by being threatened.

The consultation document actually resulted in a lot of angst and anger from people who did go to the meetings and did want to engage very seriously with the issue. So then there were some options put up around whether Work and Income could manage it. Not surprisingly, the families and people with disabilities said: “Oh, no, we will not become part of the WINZ machine. We will not be treated as beneficiaries. We will not be treated the way beneficiaries are treated. We do not want to. We have enough experience of this. We want to be treated as people doing a job.” And who can blame them? The “WINZ machine”, or Work and Income, as it is actually called, is not a compassionate, liberating, transformative, support machine. Those words have very little to do with what happens on the ground every day in Work and Income. So that is why people wrote that option off. They definitely did not want that option.

The other options were around getting an allowance or being an employee. Both of those have fish-hooks in them and also have possibilities. The Government says it claims to have chosen the employee model, but in reality, when it says that people can be paid less for this if they are carers who are family members rather than being from outside the family, this is clearly not a normal employee situation. It is clearly discriminatory, and that is where there will be more trouble to come. In reality, we have to decide whether we are going to recognise people’s work—and the Human Rights Review Tribunal, the High Court, and the Court of Appeal have all said it is discriminatory not to—and then we have to pay them a fair wage. It is pretty fundamental that people should be paid a fair wage.

So what happened after the consultation? Well, after the consultation round there was a silence—there was a deathly silence—which involved people like me being rung up constantly by other groups saying: “Have you heard anything? What’s going on?”. So, you know, I sent a few questions through to the Minister, and “In due course.” was the reply. But there was no information about where we were going. This is the 21st century, when sophisticated community consultation processes can be facilitated. But that did not happen. I go back to my own father, who always said that “consultation” is a cross between a con and an insult, and I do find that has a certain resonance in this case.

What happened was that the Government then set up a technical working party. There was considerable effort made by some of the families involved in the litigation, as they would have liked to be represented as experts. There is a fundamental issue here, which is that these people are experts, Minister. They have lived and breathed what you and I possibly have not. They know that there is a need to be fair and reasonable around State money because they have lived with minimal State money for a very long time. They are not expecting a banker’s wage, they are not expecting an MP’s wage, they are not expecting a consultant’s wage; they want the basics so they can survive with dignity and so can their family. This bill refuses to deliver that. They should have been included in the technical working party, and they were not. One person from the carers groups was included, and after three meetings there was a shut down. The technical working group was no longer involved. The Ministry of Health went back with the Minister and they started talking about it without involving anyone else.

And this bill is the result. This is the result. It is a paranoid, fiscally cheap option, which could have been so much better if they had kept the door open, if they had kept talking to people and kept engaging. I think it would be fair to say that most of us realise that we cannot just write an unlimited cheque on this issue. We have to recognise the constraints. But those constraints should be defined by the human needs of the people. The people themselves should define those constraints, not the Ministry of Health and the Minister, who have resisted every step of the way and have written into this bill that they basically do not believe that family members should be paid—but if the courts are going to make us do it, oh well, we will find a cheap solution. The bias, the prejudice, and the invisibility towards the knowledge and expertise of people with disabilities and their families is now going to be entrenched.

With that description of what has happened, we now find that the bill will not go to a select committee. So where is the expertise going to come from? Where is the knowledge going to come from for us to make an assessment? We are going to go into the third reading without hearing from the families and without hearing from the people with disabilities, who have many ways of speaking about their experience and would like to speak to us. Our job is to listen to those people about how we can fairly meet their needs. Our job is to hear them, not to set up a short consultation process, threaten them that the Government is going to take the money from another part of the sector, and then lock things down while the Government makes up a solution that is fiscally safe for the Government but that perpetuates discrimination to the point at which the Attorney-General says that it is actually a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

So where are we going to go with this? Back to court? Are we asking people who are already stretched, who are already broken? They are not allowed to go back to court in this bill. They have been told really clearly in this bill that they cannot go back to court. There is no court that they are allowed to take their claims to. As for what the Government has done to the Human Rights Commission and to its status, it is very interesting. Presumably, the Government believes in human rights, and in the Human Rights Commission and the Human Rights Review Tribunal. But it has said that the most vulnerable citizens, the most marginalised citizens—who are people with disabilities and their families, with high needs—have no access. It is very bizarre that those with money and those at the highest level of society in terms of material wealth will have access to the courts in the land if they get into trouble, which, strangely, they sometimes do, with other people’s money, but the most vulnerable will not have access to the courts. That is written into the law. I am really ashamed—

Iain Lees-Galloway: Mr Chair—

Hon Maryan Street: Mr Chair—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Shall I toss a coin? I think I will go for seniority. I call the Hon Maryan Street.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): That is right—age before beauty again. I rise to join this debate in the Committee stage of this bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), because there is a need to do so. I wish that I did not have to, but I do. I want to talk particularly about the regulatory impact statement, which a number of colleagues have traversed already. I want to talk about it from a slightly different point of view, and I want to talk also about the report of the Attorney-General.

In the course of drafting legislation, regulatory impact statements are made. The advice that has gone to Ministers is put out and the justification for the choice that the Minister has made is displayed—or that is normally the case. That is normally the case. So we have here in this regulatory impact statement the comparisons between the options that were available to the Minister of Health, on advice from officials. There were nine options. There was a matrix of three different options, with three possibilities within each of those.

The option that the Minister has chosen is the medium targeting one, which would pay family carers in high and very high need situations. He has chosen the third of the options in that stream, which we are advised would cost between $17 million and $30 million—$17 million and $30 million. Another option that he could have chosen was option C, which is that of no targeting and paying everybody—all family carers—who provides ministry-contracted home support services. The third option in that stream would have cost a maximum of $46 million. So we have a difference of $16 million between the two better options.

That $16 million could have taken the scope of people being covered from 1,600 disabled persons whose families would be paid to support them to 5,400—everybody. And yet the Minister has chosen to take the lesser of those options, for the sake of $16 million. That $16 million dollars is fairly comparable to the amount of money the Government took out of adult and community education some years ago, which did enormous damage to a whole network of adult education learning opportunities across the country. The Government has cut a third of the environment portfolio appropriations—34 percent out of that portfolio. It is giving $80 million as a subsidy to farmers for irrigation, and yet it cannot find $16 million to do the best option for the most people—the best option for the most people.

So looking at this regulatory impact statement, I think to myself that if I were a Minister—and I was, briefly—and I look at this through a Minister’s eyes, I would want to go through these recommended options and say “OK. Where are the risks? What are the risks in here around these options, and why would I not go for the best option for the greatest number of people?”. I would look for advice from officials about the significant risks. I go through the paper and I come to the bit that says “significant legal risks”. “Significant legal issues and risks arising from the preferred response” is the heading here—significant legal issues and risks arising from the preferred response.

Ministers must always be mindful of the risks. They must always be able to defend why they have taken a particular policy option and what the upsides and downsides of that policy option are. And so I go straight to that section, like a homing pigeon, having been a Minister, and ask what the risks are here. And what do we find? Here is the heading. Here is the answer: it is all blacked out. So I go over the page because I want to know some more about the legal risks. And here is the page—everything is blacked out. Here we go.

How am I, as a responsible member of Parliament, meant to know, and on what basis has the Minister made a responsible decision, if this blacked-out paper is what we get in the way of consideration of significant legal issues and risks pertaining to the best option? This is not good enough. The Minister can sit there knowing that he has to just endure this period of time in the House. He has to just get through it. And if he sits there quietly and if none of the National members get up to defend the bill, he knows that the time will pass—because all of this is time limited—and he will get his way in the end. So he will sit here and think: “I hope everybody who has an interest in this is at work or not watching Parliament on TV, because otherwise I might have to get up and answer some questions.” But the truth of the matter is that this blacking out of the paper is not good enough, and it is no basis on which this Parliament ought to be assessing the proper risks and legal issues around this.

Let me touch further on the legal issues. The Attorney-General has written a report and points out the fact that clause 4 of this bill inserts a new section 70E into the principal Act that prevents a person from making a complaint to the Human Rights Commission or commencing proceedings at the Human Rights Review Tribunal. It prevents the Human Rights Commission also from taking any further action in relation to a complaint made after 16 May. What is the date on the wall today? Because we are in urgency—most of the rest of the world thinks it is 17 May—in this place it is 16 May. This is the first occasion when people have been advised that if they did not get a complaint in before today, they were not going to be able to go to the Human Rights Commission.

At the end of this report from the Attorney-General, he says that the new section 70E “appears to limit the right to judicial review because it would prevent a person from challenging the lawfulness of a decision on the basis that it was inconsistent with s 19(1) of the Bill of Rights Act.” “On balance,” he says, “I have concluded that limitation cannot be justified under s 5 of the Bill of Rights Act.” It cannot be justified.

Why do we not have the Minister getting up and saying “I understand what the Attorney-General has said, but I reckon on these grounds, Parliament should take that into consideration but proceed in this way.” We are getting no response from the Minister because he just wants to sit here and wait for the time to elapse, for this to get out of his hair, and for us to all sit down, but it does require some response. Not only is the blanking out of sections of the regulatory impact statement not good enough but the Government is not responding and not saying to this House why it should not take into account the point that the Attorney-General has made, which is that it is an infringement of human rights in New Zealand if we proceed with this legislation the way it is. Why do we not hear from the Minister, justifying why we should proceed with this legislation?

Labour would like to vote for this. We would like to support it, because we believe that people do deserve to be paid for caring for disabled family members. This is, otherwise, health care on the cheap, and that, I have to say, is a feature of this Government also. It wants conservation on the cheap by devolving it to volunteer groups. It wants housing on the cheap by devolving it to the third sector. It wanted and enjoyed health care on the cheap by limiting the amount that it pays family members and then making people pay for it, as my colleague says.

This bill is not good enough. It should have gone to a select committee. There is no need for it to be passed in urgency. It raises too many points that need to be thoroughly debated and submitted on by the public of New Zealand. This is not good enough. It is the way this Minister works—simply to wield power and push his will through—but it is not good enough.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): It is a pleasure to follow the Hon Maryan Street. Age is a matter of fact, and there is not much I can do about that, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder—that is just the way it goes. Mr Chairperson, you have deemed that this debate on clause 1 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) ought to be a wide-ranging debate, given the fact that this bill has not been to a select committee and that submitters have not had the opportunity to have their say. It is our duty, as members of Parliament, to do our best to represent the interests of those submitters.

However, clause 1 is, of course, the title clause, and it is customary for the Opposition to suggest some amendments and possible alternatives to the title of a bill. The title of this bill actually does not tell us very much. Folks up in the gallery might have been told that we are debating the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), and I bet they thought: “That tells me absolutely nothing. I’ve got no idea what that bill will be about.” So I have got a few suggestions for the Government. My first suggestion is the “Pulling the Wool Over the Eyes of People with Disabilities Bill”, because that is essentially what it does. The Government was full of promises. It was going to fix the problem. Carers who were looking after family members who had a disability were now going to be able to be paid. That is what the Government said. That is what it told people in the disability sector that it was going to do, and people out there believed it, unfortunately.

It is rather unfortunate that they chose to believe the Government, because it is not the most trustworthy Government we have ever seen, but people out there believed Tony Ryall when he said that the Government was going to comprehensively deal with the issues raised in that court case that was settled a year ago. In fact, of course, as we know, that is not the case at all. That is absolutely not the case at all. The Government had three options—well, actually, it had nine options, when, as Maryan Street said, you put the matrix together of the options of targeting and how the employment relationship will actually work. The Government chose the one that kind of just about does enough to appease people—just about does enough to maybe try to pull the wool over people’s eyes—but certainly does not go the whole way. It certainly does not answer the whole problem. So I would call this bill the “Pulling the Wool Over the Eyes of People with Disabilities Bill”.

Another name for it is the “Doing Half the Job and Taking Away People’s Rights Bill”, because, as I said, it does about half the job—actually, I think that saying it is doing half the job is kind of generous. It does not really quite get to doing half the job. It does maybe about a third of the job, because this will, in fact, affect about 1,600 people with disabilities, not the 5,400 people whom it should cover. If the job was being done properly, it would cover all those people. It is doing not even half the job, but let us call it the “Doing Half the Job and Then Taking Away People’s Rights Bill”.

I think that second part is possibly one of the most abysmal parts of this bill, because even the Attorney-General, Chris Finlayson, says that this bill is not up to scratch. He points out in his report that new section 70E, inserted by clause 4, “prevents the Human Rights Commission from taking any further action in relation to a complaint made after the 16 May 2013.” If members look up on the wall, it says that it is 16 May. That is one of those weird things about Parliament; it is actually 17 May. But that means that anybody who lays a complaint from yesterday onwards—well, they just do not have the right or the ability to lay a complaint. However, of course, any complaints made before 16 May can be proceeded. That creates an inequity. That is a discrimination, and it is a discrimination that the Attorney-General says is not acceptable. He says that new section 70E “appears to limit the right to judicial review because it would prevent a person from challenging the lawfulness of a decision on the basis that it was inconsistent with s 19(1) of the Bill of Rights Act.” And there you have it right there. It contravenes the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and, therefore, this legislation is wrong. It is discriminatory. As Catherine Delahunty said, it is deeply ironic that a bill that the Minister of Health promoted to people as being something that would remove discrimination actually creates a new form of discrimination. So I would call this bill the “Doing Half the Job and Taking Away People’s Rights Bill”.

I think the Minister would probably want to title it the “Gosh, I Hope No One Looks At This Too Closely Bill”, because when you get down to it, you realise what it actually does, and that is probably why the Minister did not want it to go to a select committee. [Bell rung] I was talking about why you would want to call this bill the “Gosh, I Hope No One Looks At This Too Closely Bill”. The Minister did not want this to go to a select committee because he did not want people who are directly affected by this bill to get a chance to give it the proper scrutiny that it deserves. But we have already started hearing back from the sector. People are looking at this bill because they want to know what the impact will be on them, and people are telling us that initially—initially—they thought the Minister was getting the job done, just as the Minister wanted to happen. He wanted the politics to work out on this, but then when they looked at it, when they peeled the layers away from the onion, and when they looked at it a bit more closely, they realised what was wrong with this bill. They are outraged that this bill says that family members who care for people with disabilities will be paid less—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for the meal break.

Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: In the 4 minutes and 7 or so seconds that I have remaining I would like to turn members’ attention to the amendment in the name of Ruth Dyson that refers to clause 1. It would amend clause 1 with the following: “This Act is the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Lower Pay and Removal of Human Rights) Amendment Act 2013.”, which is, to be fair, a much more accurate reflection of what this bill actually does.

Although we have talked about how, you know, it seemed like a really good idea, and it seemed like the Government was responding appropriately to the needs of families of people with disabilities, what we have actually found out, of course, is that the legislation does three things, two of which are referred to in this amendment. The first thing, which is not referred to in this amendment, is the fact that it severely limits exactly who is eligible for these payments, and that is certainly not what the families were expecting.

The second thing it does is it actually tells those carers that they are going to be stuck on the minimum wage. That is what they are going to be paid: $13.75 an hour. If someone was doing this as a job and taking care of someone who was not a family member, let us be honest, the rates are not that flash—it is not exactly the highest-paid job in the world—but they are significantly better than this. The response we have had from the people who will be affected by this bill is that it is just such a miserly approach. If the Government could have found just $1 or $2 more an hour, then that might have made it just a little bit easier to swallow for the families of people with disabilities who are looking after those people.

So what we have got here is a lower rate of pay than what people could expect to get if they were working in the disabilities sector and if they were caring for someone who was not a member of their family. That is the only difference. There is no difference in the nature of the work. There is no difference in the difficulty of the work. If anything, it is probably more demanding, because they are taking care of these people 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is not something that you would go and spend 8 hours a day at work doing, and then go home and leave it all behind until the next shift. It is not like that, at all. In fact, these people, in many ways, are even more committed than the incredibly dedicated people who are out there working in the disabilities sector. What does the Government say? It says that their contribution is not the same—is not as good—as the contribution of those people who are carers for a living.

The second aspect, of course, is that it is a removal of human rights, because what it says to people is that if you have got a complaint or if you have got a concern and you were thinking about taking this issue to the Human Rights Commission, that right has gone. So you are OK if you did it yesterday, the day before yesterday, or any day before then, but from today onwards it is all over. It is all over, and that, frankly, is nothing more than simple discrimination—absolutely unjustifiable discrimination—and even Chris Finlayson, the Attorney-General, said that. He said that it is absolutely unjustified to have that discrimination in this law.

So I certainly support the amendment to clause 1 proposed by Ruth Dyson. We need to make sure that our legislation is appropriately titled and that people can get a full understanding of what is actually being done, right from the beginning. If this bill had the title suggested in this amendment, then people would be able to far more easily see through the spin—not that they are not. Minister Ryall, I am afraid that all the efforts are not going to work, because people are seeing through this, and people know—

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

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak in the Committee stage of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I understand that because we are going right through all stages of this bill and there is going to be no select committee process—which is something that we on this side of the Chamber think is unfortunate—the debate around these clauses is going to be wide-ranging. I did want to start around the amendment from the Hon Ruth Dyson that my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has spoken about, which would replace the title as it currently stands. It would have the legislation entitled “New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Lower Pay and Removal of Human Rights) Amendment Act 2013”. Iain Lees-Galloway did a brilliant job of talking through some of the semantics of the new wording that the Hon Ruth Dyson has put through.

One of the major concerns that I have about what is contained in this bill, and it is in the subsequent change in the title from the Hon Ruth Dyson, is that there is an ability to not only pay those family members who are caring for those of their loved ones who have disabilities the minimum wage but to pay, potentially, even lower rates than that, which is concerning. I understand that that is in clause 4 of the bill that has been put before us, and I think that is why the Hon Ruth Dyson has put forward an alternative title to this bill that more accurately reflects what is contained in terms of the conditions of this bill.

The second half of her amendment to the title of this bill is around the removal of the ability of those families who think they are getting a rough deal to have a right of appeal on human rights grounds. As Iain Lees-Galloway said in his speech, we are talking about family members of people who have disabilities, and some of them have given up their lives to make sure that their family members are properly cared for. The best that this Government can do is to offer them the minimum wage and to take away their right to complain or put forward an appeal if they feel that they are not getting the same deal that someone who is doing a similar amount of work—or the families feel they may be doing an even a greater amount of work—is getting paid to look after those people with disabilities.

I think this is an unfortunate trend that has come forward from this Government, because in other pieces of legislation there has also certainly been a trend for this Government towards same work, less pay—same work, less pay. That has definitely been the case for the youth rates that the Government has brought in. It has certainly been the case for our younger people. You have to question the amount of compassion of members on the other side of the Chamber when you have got family members who are looking after their loved ones with disabilities, and the Government will not compensate them at the same level as other people, staff who are working for other organisations, are paid. It will not pay them the same amount of money as those other people, even though there is a family connection, and you do have to question the level of compassion.

As I said, this is clause 1, the title clause. Iain Lees-Galloway has talked about some of the alternative titles for this bill. I think that another title for this bill could be “The Government Again Wriggling Out of Its Responsibilities Bill”, because this is another way that this Government has tried to look like it is taking action on something, but it is doing the complete opposite. It is washing its hands of its responsibility—its fair responsibility—towards those who are looking after their family members with disabilities in their own homes. We saw in a previous bill that the Government has tried to wash its hands of the responsibility of Housing New Zealand tenants. The Government plans to kick 3,000 Housing New Zealand tenants out of their houses. We see that again with this bill, because the Government is trying not only to wriggle out of its responsibility to pay those people who are looking after their family members with disabilities but also to take away their right to appeal that decision by the Government.

This House still says that today is 16 May, but as of yesterday those people who think they are not getting a fair go under this legislation are not going to have the ability to go and appeal against the conditions that this bill will put them under. There was no select committee process for this bill, so another alternative title we could have for this bill is the “New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Lower Pay and Removal of Human Rights and Zero Scrutiny From the Public) Amendment”—

SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 56

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 1 be agreed to:

replace clause 1 with the following new clause:

1 Title

This Act is the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Lower Pay and Removal of Human Rights) Amendment Act 2013.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 56

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 Commencement

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): We now come to clause 2, the commencement clause. This is a very narrow debate.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a call on the commencement clause of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). Yes, indeed, this is a very narrow debate. It concerns when this legislation will come into force. We will need to consider, first of all, in discussing the bill, the context in which it is being debated—it is being debated under urgency—and the contents of this bill, which, basically, remove the right to a judicial process for a group of New Zealanders. Therefore, the date on which it comes into force is actually very significant. It is being pushed through under urgency to, basically, prevent anybody else using their right at the moment under current law to use a judicial process. This bill is being pushed through to stop further claims being made, and that is why we are here under urgency debating it.

So let us talk a little bit about the commencement clause, which states: “This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” Well, there are many, many aspects to this particular clause that are of a slightly more technical nature, but “the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” is pretty ambiguous, because, actually, we do not know when the Governor-General is going to sign this particular piece of legislation. In our constitutional arrangements, the Royal assent is exercised on behalf of the Queen, who is the head of State, by the Governor-General. So the first question we need to know the answer to is when the Governor-General is available to sign it, and, in fact, of course, there is no guarantee that the Governor-General will sign it. In our arrangements, there is no obligation—there is no concrete obligation—on the Governor-General to sign any legislation that this Parliament passes. In fact, part of our constitution is the never-yet exercised right on the part of the head of State to veto legislation that this House might pass. It has not happened in the New Zealand context, but it has, indeed, happened in other contexts. What might happen if the head of State decides to refuse to sign something?

There is a very interesting example where this happened. It was in Belgium, which I visited recently. What had happened was that the King had refused to sign a piece of legislation to give it the Royal assent and, therefore, the Belgian Parliament was forced to work out how it might get this particular piece of legislation through in the absence of the Royal assent. What were the grounds for the refusal of the Royal assent? The King had refused to sign it on the basis that the legislation being passed—I cannot remember what it was, but it was in the nature of the sort that we would have a conscience vote on in the New Zealand Parliament—violated his own conscience. So even though the democratic Parliament had passed the legislation, the head of State decided that he could exercise his conscience on it, as well, and he refused to sign it. That created some interesting constitutional issues there. So the Parliament, effectively, used a little-known mechanism that allowed it to remove the head of State for a defined period of time. In this case it was for only the period of time that it was necessary for the Prime Minister to sign the legislation, because if there was no head of State, then the Prime Minister could sign the legislation. Belgium removed its head of State for the duration of the time that it took for the Prime Minister to sign the legislation instead, and that is how Parliament got what was the equivalent of the Royal assent for that particular legislative measure.

But in New Zealand it is a little bit less clear what would happen to a piece of legislation if, in fact, the head of State, or the Governor-General, refused to sign it. It has not happened in New Zealand’s history. I think that is something that is quite interesting, because it is very possible that the head of State in New Zealand could look at this bill and say: “Well, this legislation, which removes the right to a judicial process”—to a legal process—“from citizens of New Zealand, has been passed by Parliament under urgency without according it the usual legislative process.”

So we have got two issues here. We have got the issue of people’s rights being taken away, and then we have got the issue of the correct parliamentary process, where the public and people of New Zealand have the chance to have a say, also being taken away. So those two things could, together, compound the concern of the head of State, or the Governor-General. The Governor-General, or the head of State—the Queen—may refuse to give this legislation the Royal assent. I think that is pretty unlikely because, like I have said, it has never happened before in New Zealand’s history that the Royal assent has been refused, but it is a really important principle—the principle that New Zealanders have the chance to have a say on legislation that impacts on them.

There is no good reason why this legislation could not go to a select committee, even for a shortened period of time. In fact, there has been precedent in Parliament where legislation that needs to have immediate effect can have a clause inserted into it that it would come into effect from the day that it was introduced. So even if it was introduced yesterday, I think—which is actually today, under the parliamentary urgency system—

Hon Ruth Dyson: Not in the real world.

CHRIS HIPKINS: No. Well, that is right. In the real world, it is Friday; in the parliamentary world, it is Thursday. It is still Thursday here. So this legislation was introduced today in the parliamentary world, which is yesterday for everybody else in the rest of the country. So if we were to send the legislation that was introduced on Thursday—let us just say “on Thursday” to avoid confusion—to a select committee, it could have a clause in it that said that once it had been considered by the select committee, had been brought back to the House, had gone through this process that we are now doing—the Committee stage process—and had then passed its third reading and been given the Royal assent, it would come into force at that point. It would come into force backdated, effectively, to the day that it was introduced. That has happened before in the House. Therefore, the idea that this legislation removing New Zealanders’ rights needs to be pushed through this House under urgency is seriously diminished, because there is another way the Government could achieve that.

So, therefore, those two things—the removal of citizens’ rights and the bad process that the Government is using to do it—could be sufficient for the head of State to look at it and say: “Well, I am not going to give this the Royal assent.”, and could the head of State then send it back to the House? The head of State could send it back to the House and say: “Well, I want some evidence that the House”—that this Parliament—“has gone through a sufficiently robust process in passing the legislation.” I think it would probably be a good thing if the head of State did that, but, then again, it might create some other issues around the separation or the appropriate balance of powers.

The issue that we have here is that there really is not a good justification for this process. One of the reasons the Labour Party is voting against this legislation is that there is not a good justification for pushing it through all stages under urgency in the way that it has been and for not supplying the New Zealand public—the people whose rights are being taken away by this legislation—with the chance to make a submission at a select committee and to talk about it.

What tends to happen with bills like this one is there will inevitably be a mistake in it. We know that, because after we have done this, we are to debate changes to the Crown Minerals Amendment Act, which the Government amended literally only weeks ago. That amendment Act has barely been in place for a number of weeks, and we are going to be amending it because the Government stuffed it up. I think that bill did go through a select committee process, and the Government still managed to stuff it up. This bill has not gone through a select committee process, so we could be back here in no time debating—

Grant Robertson: We might be back here later in the day.

CHRIS HIPKINS: We may be back here later in the day, given the way Parliament works, fixing up a mistake in this legislation because it has not been given scrutiny. There is not one piece of legislation that has gone to a select committee that I have been a member of that has not in some way been improved by going through that process. That is one of the reasons why we have the select committee process, so that we can adequately examine legislation and so that we can make sure the Government is doing its job. How can we do that adequately, and how can we discharge our functions as a Parliament, when we have things like the regulatory impact statement being mostly blacked out?

A regulatory impact statement is designed specifically so that Parliament can ensure that the Government is exercising its responsibilities and doing its job appropriately, and we are being denied that information. That is another reason why the head of State could look at this legislation and refuse to give it the Royal assent—due process has not been followed. Parliament is not following its own rules. By passing legislation without due scrutiny—and I am going to ask Grant Robertson to pass me the piece of paper, the regulatory impact statement, sitting in front of him—

Grant Robertson: A very good piece of paper.

CHRIS HIPKINS: —a very good piece of paper. When we have a regulatory impact statement that looks like this, which no one can actually read to make sure that we are doing our job appropriately, it is good grounds for saying that this legislation should not stand.

This legislation is being passed by the narrowest of margins. The last vote we had, on clause 1, passed by the narrowest of margins in this Chamber, against the will of the very significant minority, and the process also shut New Zealanders out of this process. But that is what New Zealanders have come to expect from this Government. That is what they expect from the born-to-rule, Tory, arrogant Government. More and more it is willing to ride roughshod over the democratic process and over the rights of New Zealanders—[Interruption]—and the Government members laugh about it because they think it is funny. They think it is hilarious that New Zealanders will not get a chance to have a say on legislation that affects them and removes their rights. That is wrong.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to clause 2 of this legislation, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill. I am particularly keen to speak to this because I have an amendment in my name to this clause.

As my colleague Chris Hipkins has mentioned, this is a very narrow provision in the legislation. Clause 2 deals solely with the commencement. As it stands, it says: “This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” Generally, that would not be a problem. Generally, Parliament would agree to that, but, generally, a bill of this nature, which does not require any urgency to be accorded to it, would have gone through a proper parliamentary process. It would have had an introduction from the Minister, it would have been referred to a select committee, the select committee would have called for submissions from members of the public, and the members of the select committee—in this case it would have been chaired by Dr Paul Hutchison—would have been able to look at the legislation with fresh eyes and without the tainting of the Minister who has shepherded it through to this stage and obviously has a close and vested interest in its passing.

The select committee could have looked at it with fresh eyes, and members of the public could have had their say about this legislation, but none of that has taken place. Instead we are seeing, in an absolute breach of the protocol of Budget urgency, this bill being rammed through all stages, one after another after another. So at midnight tonight or tomorrow morning—I do not know when—this bill will be passed without a single member of the public having had the opportunity to have their say.

This is not a technical bill, and this is not a bill that is irrelevant to people; this is a bill that cuts to the heart of families in New Zealand who have disabled members. This bill is about whether or not family members, when they provide home care for disabled family members, are able to get paid. But because of the commencement date and the process that has been undertaken by this arrogant and out-of-touch Minister, none of those family members will have a say.

My amendment to this clause reads as follows: “After the current wording”—which I just alluded to—“insert: (1) This Bill can only be submitted for Royal Assent if the Bill has been submitted to the Health Select Committee for public consultation and comment, prior to the Third Reading.” With that amendment we could have this debate. We could hear the Minister’s justifications for this bill being so limited. We could hear the Minister’s justification for extinguishing the rights of excluded family members, so the family members who are not covered, who will continue supporting their family members but will not get paid, can hear not only why they have had their payment denied by the Minister but also why their rights to the Human Rights Review Tribunal have been extinguished. They would be able to have a say at the select committee if my amendment was passed.

I do not think that is a big ask, actually. There is no reason at all for this move to be hidden under the cloud of the Budget. It is not a budgetary matter. It is not a matter for urgency. It is actually, in my view, not a matter for confidence and supply. I think that the only reason it is being put through under Budget urgency is so that the three votes of the Māori Party could be attached to it. If this bill was amended as per my amendment to clause 2, we would be able to have that debate with the full scrutiny of members of the public and the 3,800 families who are not given financial support under this legislation, who are being denied it, and who are also having the right to a Human Rights Review Tribunal denied.

The way that the current commencement provision reads, no such scrutiny is allowed. The bill, having gone through all of its stages in one go with hardly a pause for breath, let alone any fresh consideration, will come into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent. I think that is a big mistake. It has been pointed out in many previous debates in this Parliament what happens when legislation is rushed. Almost without exception the Minister has to come back, look embarrassed—even more embarrassed than currently—and ask for more time from Parliament to correct the mistakes.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): I want to pick up where my colleague Ruth Dyson has just left off in speaking about her amendment to clause 2 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill. This amendment, as has been noted, would insert after the current wording: “This Bill can only be submitted for Royal Assent if the Bill has been submitted to the Health Select Committee for public consultation and comment, prior to the Third Reading.” This is the first opportunity I have had to speak on this particular piece of legislation, and I am pleased to be doing it in the debate on the commencement clause, because it cuts to the heart of the issue I have with the process that the Government is going through at the moment.

Normally, a debate on a commencement clause is relatively non-controversial. The Government makes a decision about the timing by which it wants to put a bill through. It often, for instance, gives a little bit of time for processes to be worked through. Recently, when the marriage equality legislation was passed, the commencement date for that particular bill was pushed out 3 or 4 months to allow the Department of Internal Affairs to put in place the arrangements for changing forms and so on. That kind of thing is acceptable when we come to a commencement date clause. Sometimes there is a reason to make a commencement date immediate when there is an immediate issue in front of the House—perhaps a taxation issue or something like that that requires that.

This commencement clause comes as part of a bill that has not had the kind of scrutiny that we would expect a piece of legislation to have. This bill, as has been stated by my colleague Chris Hipkins, was effectively introduced today, for the purposes of this House. It is not a bill that was seen by other parties before it came to the House. Along with it, as we would expect, we have had provided to us a regulatory impact statement. As other colleagues have noted, this document illustrates the quality of the regulatory impact statement material that we are working with. It is another great example of work from “Transparent Tony”, well known for his ability to let the public in on things! I know there was a story about Tony Ryall when he was a Minister in the 1990s. He had a drawer full of Official Information Act releases. He waited until people complained about them before he actually released them, otherwise they just stayed in the bottom drawer, unable to be found. That is “Transparent Tony” for you.

This regulatory impact statement indicates, for those of us on this side of the House, that this bill needs select committee consideration, and that is the amendment that Ruth Dyson has put to the commencement clause. It is an amendment to push this bill to the Health Committee. So rather than a blacked-out document like this, we would actually have the opportunity for members of that committee to talk with officials, to question interested groups, to bring in the carers and talk to them, and to give them a chance to have their say here.

That is all the more important, and Ruth Dyson’s amendment is all the more important, when we look at the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report from the Attorney-General. What the Attorney-General is saying in that report at the end is: “On balance, I have concluded that the limitation to the right to a judicial review cannot be justified under section 5 of the Bill of Rights Act.” So what the Attorney-General is saying is that what this bill does—the limiting of people’s rights through the judicial process—cannot be justified under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Surely, that alone would be a justification for this bill to go to the Health Committee, as Ruth Dyson’s amendment to the commencement clause requests. When we get such a report from the Attorney-General—not a man loath to come to this House and throw New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vets around; he is a person who obviously has thought carefully about this, and, no doubt, has had strong advice given to him from the Crown Law Office and others that this bill does breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and it does breach people’s right to a full judicial process—that should be the subject of extensive debate in a select committee. Ruth Dyson is offering that with her amendment to the commencement clause.

Yes, it is unusual for a commencement clause to be amended in this way, but that is because the Government has undertaken a most unusual process by bringing up this particular bill in the way that it has. Normally, we would have seen a process whereby there were public submissions. We would have been able to look at the nature of a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet that says that this breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We have had a regulatory impact statement that has been largely withheld. All of those things would have been able to be considered by a select committee. So amending the commencement clause to now allow for a select committee process, although unusual, is appropriate in this case because of the actions that the Government has taken.

SUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair, for the ability to take a call on the commencement clause of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I think it is right and proper that the Opposition’s spokesperson on women’s affairs gets to comment on this bill, as it does have quite a disproportionate impact on women.

There are two primary issues that I wish to canvass in debating the commencement clause of this bill. The first one is an issue that some other colleagues made reference to when they were debating the title of this bill, but it is actually a commencement issue, and it is the fact that one of the impacts of this bill has already commenced. It has already commenced. It commenced yesterday, actually, and it is the part of the bill that takes away people’s right to go to the Human Rights Commission to get their case heard in terms of their human rights and in terms of whether they are being regarded in terms of their ability to look after their loved ones with disabilities and to be paid for that. That right was taken away by this Government yesterday.

Here we are today debating when this bill is going to come into effect. What the Government says is that even though it took away the right for people to actually lodge their case with the Human Rights Commission yesterday, the payment part of this bill will not commence until some other date, yet to be determined—the date on which it is going to be given Royal assent. We do not know when that date will be, but it will not be yesterday—it will not be yesterday. So here we have a situation where the payment part of the bill, the part that those seven families fought so long for, will not commence until a date yet to be determined. Can I just take a minute to acknowledge those families and congratulate them on their tenacity. It is certainly something I want to celebrate. New Zealanders actually do not lie down easily around this type of thing, and those seven families are certainly in that category.

So for 20 years this issue has been under debate, and the commencement is a date yet to be determined—it will be the date on which the Royal assent is given, but we do not know when that might be. The point I am trying to make here is that it seems that the payment part of it comes in some time after many, many families have had their right taken away. It is a right that even the Hon Christopher Finlayson, one of the Government Ministers, says should not happen under this bill. He has concerns about it, because it is a fundamental right to go to the Human Rights Commission that is being taken away from families who are looking after loved ones with disabilities. That right was extinguished yesterday by this bill. That is the first point I want to make.

The second point I wish to make is that I want to speak in favour of the Hon Ruth Dyson’s amendment. Ruth Dyson is a very wise and experienced member of Parliament, and she has put forward an amendment that would ensure that there was a select committee process and that this bill could not commence until the public had had their right to be heard on it. And there is no stronger reason for that than what we have got sitting in front of us—the regulatory impact statement.

I am holding up the regulatory impact statement, and for those who may be watching this debate on the television, I am not holding up a piece of abstract art. It looks like it might be, but it is actually supposed to be one of the pages of a document that is supposed to inform this Parliament about the impact of the law that we are debating right now. It tells us nothing. That is another reason, not just the main reason, why the select committee process is so important in this regard—we have had all of this information withheld from this debate.

I believe that the only way we will get to the bottom of what this information might be is to hear from the families concerned, not only the families who will be the recipients of the payment brought in by this bill but also those families who have been deliberately left out by this Government. In this paper we do read that the Government had several options, and it decided to go for a very narrow targeting with this bill. So we do need the bill to go to a select committee, and that is why the Labour Party, through the Hon Ruth Dyson, is insisting that the commencement date is not held until we actually get to the bottom of this. The page that I just held up might tell us what the impact is on women. We do not know. There is supposed to be a gender-impact analysis done on all of this.

CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): This is the first opportunity I have had to speak on this bill, and I am very pleased to be speaking on clause 2, the commencement clause of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I am going to be speaking in favour of an amendment put up by my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson about changing the commencement date. At the moment the clause says that the bill will come “into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” However, the amendment would see that this could not happen until the bill has been to the Health Committee before its third reading. I have to say that I think that is so important. We cannot, in all conscience, see this bill commence before there has been a select committee process. I urge National members to reconsider their position on this.

Caring is a critical issue. I do not think that anybody in this Committee would deny that. So many people of our population are involved in caring for family members. I guess that everybody sitting here can probably think of such instances within their own families. Certainly, in my case, my mother, who lives in the Minister of Health’s electorate, is a carer, and she cares for my stepfather. Without her, he would not be living at home. I want to acknowledge those carers, actually, because I think that their needs and concerns are the voices that should be heard.

That is why I think that the commencement date needs to be delayed until after a select committee process. Those carers, both unpaid and paid carers, need to be able to look at what has been proposed here and say what they think about this, and say whether or not they think, as I and my colleagues do, that the response of the Government to this particular matter is too limited. It is limited in a number of ways. It is limited in the payment that is going to be offered to carers. It is limited in terms of who can be paid—in particular, I note the exclusion of the right of a spouse or partner to be paid for caring for an adult. I think that it is really important that we have a genuine discussion about that, because often carers are, in fact, a spouse or partner.

The commencement clause needs to be changed, as is outlined in the amendment, so we can have a good look at those kinds of issues. For those listening to or watching this debate, we are having forced through here at the moment under urgency, through all stages, a bill that will take away people’s rights to challenge discrimination—a bill that is such a fundamentally important one about the rights of carers, who are playing such an important role. The process is just fundamentally flawed.

This does require more consideration. I am sure the Minister, if he actually was standing up and responding to any of this, might point out that there has been a consultation process, and therefore it is appropriate to have the commencement as it is in the bill. However, I would point out to the Minister that that consultation was at a very general level. It did not actually consult about the specific provisions of this bill and the conclusions that the Government has come to, which, as I say, limit the payment and limit who is eligible to receive that payment.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Order! It is the starting date—

CAROL BEAUMONT: And so it is important that we support—and, again, I urge members opposite to support—our amendment to clause 2, the commencement, which says “This Bill can only be submitted for Royal Assent if the Bill has been submitted to the Health Select Committee … prior to the Third Reading.” I just want to continue to justify that position. I think it is important when we put an amendment up around a clause like the commencement clause that we justify why we are doing that.

In addition to the reasons I have already said—and others have mentioned this—we have a regulatory impact statement that is an absolute outrage. It is a disgrace. I am showing people who can see this debate a page that I am particularly interested in. It is on the issue of why spouses and partners should not be eligible to be paid for caring. We need, I think, a select committee process to have a conversation about that. In the regulatory impact statement it says: “Spouses of adult disabled people, parents and other resident family members do not have the option of being paid family carers despite many having extensive”—and I would agree with that—“caring responsibilities.”

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

CAROL BEAUMONT: Well, I just say, Mr Chair, that we need to know what the information is here. Why is the response to that blanked out? If we extended the commencement date till after a select committee process—

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Motion agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): We first have Ruth Dyson’s typescript amendment to clause 2. This amendment is out of order as the amendment would make commencement reliant on an indeterminate event. This is Speaker’s ruling 117/2, if members wish to see what it says there.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 Principal Act

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): We now move to debate on clause 3. This is debate on the principal Act—once again, a very narrow debate.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much for letting me take a call on clause 3, which sets out the principal Act that this bill before us amends, and that is the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. The amendments that are set out in this bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill, are significant changes to the principal Act, and that is why on this side of the Chamber we would have preferred that this bill did not go through this House under urgency. This bill should have gone through the select committee process, and should have been referred to the Health Committee, because it is a significant change to the principal Act.

As was said in the debate on the previous clause, the commencement of this bill may be when the bill receives the Royal assent, but the effective change of the bill took place yesterday, on 16 May. That is significant because of the number of people who would have wanted to make submissions on this bill and who have been robbed of that opportunity, because this Government has decided to rush this piece of legislation through this House under urgency, with no select committee scrutiny at all. This does amend that principal Act. There would have been a lot of interest because this law change stems from a Human Rights Review Tribunal case. It is a case that also went through the High Court and, I understand, the Court of Appeal. So there has been significant public interest and a significant amount of time in the justice sector taken up by the events that took place to lead to this change in the law.

In terms of the changes that are being made in this bill to that principal Act, we would have preferred that there be the opportunity for select committee scrutiny. It would have given members of the public the opportunity to come and make submissions, as Chris Hipkins has said in the debate around clause 2. It would have given the Health Committee the potential opportunity to listen to those submissions and improve the bill, and improve the amendments that we are making to the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. We are rushing through this piece of legislation and we are opening ourselves up to the risk of making a huge mistake in the way that we are changing the principal Act. It would have been much better for the time of this House for us to go away and do a proper job of changing this principal Act, for us to go out there and listen to the opinions of those people who are looking after family members with disabilities, those in the organisations that are also looking after those with disabilities, and those with legal backgrounds who know the ins and outs of this area, and to give them a chance to talk and give their opinions and their concerns, and make some amendments to try to improve the amendments that we are making to the principal Act.

These are significant changes to the principal Act, and the select committee process would give us the opportunity to look through some of the things and some of the impacts that would have been part of this legislation. It is in black and white here in the regulatory impact statement what it all means—it is in black and white here what this means. No one knows! Maybe that is a question I can put to the Minister in chair, the Minister of Health: what is actually in here that you have blacked out?

Hon Tau Henare: Well, you could read between the lines.

KRIS FAAFOI: It has kept it all secret—I can read between the lines. This is the kind of bedtime reading that Tau Henare likes. Nice and easy, in black and white—nice and easy and in black in white.

But going back to the principal Act, though, this is a serious issue that affects thousands of Kiwi families who have been robbed of that chance to make some submissions to the principal Act—

Hon Tau Henare: What time are you going home tonight?

KRIS FAAFOI: Whenever you are ready. The changes to this principal Act, because of their significance, should have gone through due process. That due process would have been, as someone has said before, for this bill to be introduced to the House. I am sure the Minister in the chair would then have referred it to the Health Committee, chaired by the very able and well-respected Dr Paul Hutchison—and in that select committee process many, many people would come in because of the significance of the changes to the principal Act, and give their submissions, and those amendments would be tabled in this Committee.

There are some serious changes to the way in which people can launch an appeal if they feel they are hard done by, by the fact that the Government says it can pay those family members who are caring for family with disabilities. There are significant changes that the Government has put in this bill around the way in which they are paid, the level they are paid at, and one very—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! It is the principal Act, not the contents of what is in the amendments. It is the principal Act.

KRIS FAAFOI: Sorry, Mr Chairperson. But there is an amendment to the principal Act within this bill that allows those carers to be paid a much lower rate than those who are doing a similar job, who are being paid as employees, and who are not necessarily family members. That kind of change to the principal Act, I think, would be one of the issues that should have got very, very focused scrutiny by a select committee. I am sure that my friends in the press gallery or in the media would have loved the opportunity to listen to some of the submissions at a select committee hearing, given the significance of the amendments to the principal Act that we are talking about here.

I do want to stress again that this process does not seem right. This is a significant piece of principal legislation that we are changing. I just want to show you this regulatory impact statement again. We need to have a better process when we are changing major legislation, rather than just getting a complete page of blanked-out notes that show us—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

KRIS FAAFOI: —some of the changes to the principal Act. The principal Act is a major piece of legislation. We are looking for a select committee process. We are not sure whether we are going to get it, but maybe that is what the Government should have done.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I just want to clarify something around your ruling about Ruth Dyson’s amendment to clause 2. You ruled it out of order—[Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! There is a point of order on. I am trying to hear it.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: You ruled it out of order on the basis of Speaker’s ruling 117/2, which says “An amendment to a commencement date must provide certainty about when the Act is to come into force. An amendment that relies on an indeterminate event is not in order.” Thank you for directing me towards Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand by David McGee, page 315. McGee points out that one of the times at which an indeterminate event is acceptable is when an Act may be brought into force by Order in Council “when there are considered to be good reasons for doing so.” An Order in Council is a somewhat indeterminate event. Parliament cannot be sure when an Order in Council would be brought into force. I submit to you that a Parliament would be more certain about when a select committee process would be completed, the time frame for a select committee is clearly laid out in the Standing Orders, and the reasons for taking the bill to a select committee were clearly presented by members of the Opposition. So the case was made and the time frame is very clear. I submit to you that taking a bill to select committee is not an indeterminate event at all. In fact, it is a very clearly time-bound event that is laid out in the Standing Orders, and I would seek some clarification on your ruling.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Thank you to the member for those points. The commencement date is the date that needs to be not an indeterminate date. What the amendment did was to have something where there was no certainty about when that date may be, and that is why I quoted Speaker’s ruling 117/2: “An amendment to a commencement date must provide certainty”. It must provide certainty—[Interruption] Order! We are ruling on a matter here. In Standing Order 253/1 “A bill must include a distinct clause stating when the bill comes into force.” McGee, which I mentioned, and you mentioned as well, states: “The bill must set out precisely when it is proposed to come into force.” So on that basis I have ruled and we have already voted on it. So that ends the matter.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Speaking to that, briefly, Mr Chairperson—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, I have ruled, so there is nothing to add. So now, is anyone seeking the call? Are you seeking the call, Hon Ruth Dyson?

Hon Ruth Dyson: Yes, that is what I said.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): OK, we are on clause 3.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am definitely seeking a call on clause 3, which deals just with the fact that the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), which we are moving through under urgency at the moment, amends the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000, which is thereafter referred to as the “principal Act”. In speaking to this clause, I want to draw attention to two anomalies, two irregularities, two inconsistencies that, had this bill been a regulation, would have been drawn to the attention of the Regulations Review Committee and would have led to a disallowance motion. Unfortunately, it is not a regulation; it is an amendment to the legislation, but having an amendment that is completely at odds by its very nature with the principal Act is really a very strange thing for Parliament to be doing.

The first reason that I say that is outlined in the preliminary provisions of the principal Act in the purpose statement and it is in Part 1—in particular, in section 3. That particular part of the principal Act, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000, says this: “The purpose of this Act is for … the promotion of the inclusion and participation in society and independence of people with disabilities:”. This very amendment works in exactly the opposite direction. It excludes not only people with disabilities but their families and any other members of the public from discussion about the significant changes that are being introduced here.

Further on in the principal Act it goes on to say in the purpose statement, section 3, that the purpose is “the best care or support for those in need of services:”. Again, this amendment that we are debating works in exactly the opposite direction of the principal Act. As I said, if this was a regulation, we would be taking it to the Regulations Review Committee and it would be saying that we should have a disallowance motion attached to this because you cannot have a regulation that is contrary to the primary legislation. Here we have an amendment bill that is absolutely at odds with the primary legislation, as outlined in section 3.

Further on in the principal Act, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000, it outlines the responsibility of the Minister of Health. That is outlined in Part 2. It talks about the need for determining a health strategy. Slightly off the topic, but just when I was researching this, it does refer to annual reporting against the Disability Strategy, which, I note, has stopped. So that is another breach of the principal Act not dealt with by this amendment. Returning rapidly to section 3, it also talks about relevant consultation, which is described not as a “should be done”, not as a “nice to have if you can do it”, but outlined in Part 2 of the principal Act as the responsibility of the Minister. The Minister of Health, the Minister responsible for this amendment legislation, has, in the primary Act, the responsibility to consult. Again, we are seeing exactly the opposite of this.

This bill is not a Budget measure. This bill does not require any urgency. This bill does not actually come into effect for some time. The only part of this bill that is “required”—to abuse that term even more than the Minister has—is the extinguishing of the rights of family members to take a case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal. That is an abuse of the parliamentary process, as well as being completely at odds with the primary legislation. In Part 2 of the Act the responsibility of the Minister clearly outlines that in any change to the Health Strategy or health policies or the Disability Strategy there is a need for consultation. That is in the primary legislation that this bill amends, and there is nothing in this amendment to the primary legislation that allows, let alone entitles, consultation on these very matters.

So both the purpose statement of the primary legislation and the responsibilities of the Minister as outlined in Part 2 are actually being breached by the purpose and the process of this amendment. This bill is at odds with the primary legislation.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to take a call on clause 3 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), which simply says that this Act amends the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000, the principal Act. I wish it were that simple. I am deeply concerned, having listened to my colleague Ruth Dyson talking about those items in this bill that directly contradict the principal Act, that there were other alternatives given to the Minister of Health, rather than simply amending the principal Act, but we have not heard any explanation of why this option has been chosen.

One could argue perfectly well that this could have been a stand-alone piece of legislation, that it could have been something that required provisions unique to itself and of its own, and yet the Minister has chosen to tack it on as an amendment to the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. But we have not heard any rationale for that. In fact, quite persuasively in the last 5 minutes we have heard the opposite. This brings us back—although I am talking only about clause 3, Mr Chair, this point is still pertinent—to the fact that this bill is not going to a select committee. It could have been a stand-alone piece of legislation with all the names to it that my colleagues offered when we were discussing clause 1 of this piece of legislation.

When we were talking about the title a number of suggestions were made, such as the “Pull The Wool Over The Eyes Of People With Disabilities and Those Who Care For Them Bill”, and that could have been a possibility. But seriously, why was this seen as an amendment to the Public Health and Disability Act when it in fact contravenes it? As the chair of the Regulations Review Committee, I say that if this had been passed as a regulation the committee would have immediately sent it back to the ministry and the Minister, saying: “This is a ‘Henry VIII’ provision. It allows the principal Act to be amended by stealth, and it is not legitimate for those reasons.” But we have it here in the bill as an amendment to the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act. It could have had proper scrutiny if it were a separate piece of legislation with separate stand-alone provisions, a proper regulatory impact statement that was more white than black, and a proper debate at a select committee. In the end, the Minister of Health has chosen not to do any of this properly, but simply to add this as an amendment, as clause 3 says, to the principal Act.

Again, I do not wish to sound like a broken record, but the Minister compels me to do so. This is not good enough—this is not good enough. This is no way to introduce legislation of this sort, which has not nearly the major impact it could have had. If there had been a proper debate about it, this bill could affect 5,400 people with disabilities, and their families, instead of just over 1,000 as it is going to. It could have justified a stand-alone provision, but the Minister has chosen simply to amend the principal Act and slide it in in that way. Not only does it offend against the purpose of the principal Act—and, as I have said, if it were a regulation it would be sent back to the Minister—but it also offends, as we see from the Attorney-General’s report, against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Nothing about this bill has been done properly.

CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): I want to rise to make a few comments about how this bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), fits in with the principal Act, as outlined in clause 3: “This Act amends the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 (the principal Act).” My colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson made some points in relation to the purpose statement in that Act. Just to note, the principal Act is actually a very significant one. It is the one that covers all of the provisions around the responsibility of the Minister of Health, district health boards, and other publicly owned health and disability organisations, so it is a very large and important Act. My colleague Ruth Dyson referred us to subsection (1)(a)(ii) of the purpose section, section 3, of that Act, about “the promotion of the inclusion and participation in society and independence of people with disabilities:”. Her point was that this bill breaches those provisions. Again, this would be another reason for ensuring that we have far greater scrutiny on this bill than the way it is currently being pushed through under urgency, without adequate process and, indeed, without even suitable information for us through the regulatory impact statement.

I want to talk about a slightly different provision that is also in the purpose statement of the principal Act, which is section 3, as I said. I want to look at section 3(1)(a)(iii), which talks about “the best care or support for those in need of services:”. When I was speaking on this bill before, I did mention that one of the exclusions in the bill is around who can provide care and be paid for it. It specifically precludes spouses or partners from providing that care. When you look at the principal Act, the purpose section, which talks about the “best care or support for those in need of services:”, I have to say that I would imagine that in many, many cases the best care or support for those in need of services could be provided by their spouse or partner, yet this bill specifically precludes that. I am sure, as I said earlier, that many of us know how people are being cared for in their home by their spouse or partner, and I want to acknowledge those people, including my mother, who do such an amazing job of caring for their spouse or partner, often in very difficult circumstances. But my point is that this bill, by amending the principal Act, does not actually do what the purpose of the Act says. Maybe we would have a slightly different view on that if we knew what these blanked-out bits in the regulatory impact statement say.

One of the provisions of the regulatory impact statement, No. 43, is the one that talks about whether spouses of adult disabled people should be paid. My argument is that it could well be that spouses or partners are the best people to provide care or support for those in need of services, as outlined in the principal Act. It is a fundamental part of the principal Act that that is one of the purposes of that Act. But, in fact, where the regulatory impact statement on this bill, which amends the principal Act, starts to talk about spouses of adult disabled people, it says: “The views expressed through the consultation process indicate that, if Government excludes these groups from payment, it is highly likely that it will be faced with claims of unjustified discrimination under the [New Zealand Bill of Rights Act].” I want to know what is said after that. But when you look at the regulatory impact statement, people in the House and watching on television will see that there are just a whole lot of blanked-out parts.

Why is it that we are being told that spouses or partners should be excluded? How can we be confident that they are not the best people to care for and support those in need of services, as outlined in the purpose statement of the principal Act? I would like it if the Minister would actually answer some questions on this bill, because to date he has refused to do so. Yet we are expected to debate this bill and to have it pass through in urgency with a regulatory impact statement that is full of blanked-out pieces. It is an absolute outrage, and it is made even worse by the fact that the Minister will refuse to answer the questions. So I ask the Minister, specifically, whether the bill, which he is responsible for and which amends the principal Act—

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): I move, That the question be now put.

SUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) and the principal Act that it amends. I actually want to take a slightly different tack to what my colleagues have taken. I get that the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act does have a lot to do with this bill, because it is about the care of people, and, particularly, the care of people in the disability sector, and it might seem that that is very fitting. But, on the other hand, quite a number of the clauses that we are about to—well, in our case—vote against, but that the Government is attempting to pass through under urgency in this Committee actually have an impact on the Human Rights Act 1993. I wondered why there was not an attempt to either amend that as a principal Act or make any subsequent amendments to that Act. I really do want to ask the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Health, who has returned for the debate, to answer that question, because I am really quite alarmed at the fact that we are actually extinguishing the rights of a significant number of New Zealanders who, you could argue, have quite significant human rights issues, perhaps. We are extinguishing their rights to go the Human Rights Commission as of yesterday. That is quite a major part of what this amendment Act actually does, or this bill—it is still a bill at this stage—attempts to do. Yet we have nothing here that amends the Human Rights Act 1993 as the principal Act and nothing that subsequently amends that.

Why I raise that is because the Human Rights Act is the Act that actually says what is unlawful discrimination and who is eligible to go forward to have their cases heard. Here we are debating extinguishing those rights with no reference that I can see to amending the Human Rights Act in this piece of legislation. Perhaps I am wrong about that and the Minister may want to point me in the right direction. But in Part 2 of the Human Rights Act 1993 it actually defines what is unlawful discrimination and there is also a part of that Act that prohibits what is unlawful discrimination. Correct me if I am wrong, Minister, but I believe we are doing exactly that in this Act. We are prohibiting a group of people from actually taking a case to find out whether they have been unlawfully discriminated against. And yet there is no reference—no reference—to the Human Rights Act 1993. Here we are amending the principal Act as being the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. Yes, maybe it fits, but this is a substantial amendment that we are making—I would say an outrageous amendment actually, an outrageous amendment that actually extinguishes people’s rights under the Human Rights Act. Why are we not amending that as the principal piece of the legislation? Why are we not even making any consequential amendments to that piece of legislation in this debate?

That is the very thing that I think we would discover the answer to, perhaps, if we were allowed to have the normal democratic process of a select committee process. Or maybe the answer to my query is actually buried on this page. Perhaps it is, but we will never know because it is completely blanked out and we do not know. Maybe the explanation is all here. Maybe this explains why the Human Rights Act is left unamended by what we are debating today despite the fact that that Government is extinguishing the rights of people to access what the Human Rights Act 1993 says they have absolutely the right to do. I am, therefore, encouraged and persuaded by colleague Maryan Street’s suggestion that, perhaps, the best thing to do would have been to have a stand-alone Act in its own right, not to amend another Act that partially speaks to this issue but partially does not, but, perhaps, to have a stand-alone piece of legislation. The piece of legislation that really stands out in my mind that would have been really great to use in this instance was actually a piece of American legislation, which was around an equal pay Act. That was a stand-alone piece of legislation that was one of the first pieces of legislation that Barack Obama signed when he took over the presidency. He named that Act after the woman who took the equal pay case. He called it the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Would that not have been a magnificent thing to do in this instance?

Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): Namaste. I was enjoying the line of reasoning my colleague Sue Moroney, who has just sat down, was pursuing. I want to speak to clause 3 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) and about the principal Act. I want to hear from the Minister of Health and hear the Minister’s response to what I am going to raise, and what my colleague has just raised as well. Here we have a bill that is really setting down in stone a principle—I will have a lot more to say about this principle when we are debating clause 4—and that is the prime responsibility of the family for caring for each other. That is the principle that most of this amendment bill and its provisions are based on. I want to know from the Minister or from anybody else opposite what considerations were given to amend other Acts where this principle is either not stated or implied, and there are many. It would be useful to hear that, because that is the anchoring principle in this bill. I have worked with Acts that make this assumption, but have not seen this principle written down in this form.

Of course, if the bill had gone through a proper select committee process, we would have asked the officials to tell us what the other Acts were, how this principle was operating, and whether there was any need to amend those Acts as well. So it is an important and serious question that I am asking. Have those Acts been examined? Has the principle been debated by officials, by the Minister, and by others? And what are its implications further down the track? For example, let us take the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act, because here is an Act that is really based on this principle as to who has responsibility. Many of the provisions of that particular Act are about what to do when that principle is not delivered on, if you like, by family members.

The Minister can probably tell me what the implications of this principle will be for those particular Acts and, indeed, for the whole Whānau Ora programme. Is there anything in that programme that also needs to be amended, if you like, where there is a principal Act that actually states that particular principle as strongly as this bill takes it forward? As I said, I raise those questions quite seriously, because I have not seen this principle written in this particular form, and there will be others. The Care of Children Act is another one where this principle is embedded, assumed, etc. I ask whether or not the Minister would want to come back to have a look at those Acts and the family support Act as well. So maybe the Minister can take a call.

It is very difficult to debate this bill in this environment when the whole Government side, including the Minister, sits there like stunned mullets, not responding at all. This is, if you like, the select committee process, and yet I think what Government members are doing is taking this side of the Committee to be idiots—and you are probably entitled to do that—

Hon Simon Bridges: Well, you haven’t raised a good point yet.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: But, Mr Bridges, you look like an idiot too, when you sit there and do not actually answer the questions—a very senior member. If the member wants to, I invite him to please debate these particular questions, because they are important questions. Maybe that member has not heard of this principle. Maybe when he was arguing in the courts, he did not use it, but here we are and the principle is important.

What I am saying is that I would like to hear members opposite, including the Minister of Health, tell us where else this principle applies and whether or not consideration has been given to amending those Acts as well. That, at least, is what the select committee process would have done, and it would have done it very well. It is a travesty that that process has not been prevailed upon. If that is what the Government is going to do, then it is the responsibility of Government members to answer those questions now, and not sit there like stunned mullets and make inane interjections. The only time during the Committee stage of this bill when we have had any sense that they are even awake is when they make inane comments, as one was made just then. Thank you.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I have not heard from the Greens. I am going to—[Interruption] No, I am going to hear Catherine Delahunty.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair; I appreciate that. I would just like to hold up the picture of what it all means. As Kris Faafoi, my colleague, said, this is what it all means. If you want to understand clause 3 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), this is it. It is almost matching the suit of the Minister of Health. It is a great little diagram of what we are really trying to achieve here and what it all means.

I think it is really important to talk about the principal Act in relation to the amendment. That is what this clause is about. There is a fundamental issue here around what other Acts have or have not been considered in amending the principal Act. Others have referred to the Human Rights Act. I would also refer us back to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which has been breached in this case; Te Tiriti o Waitangi, given that Whānau Ora is about the principle of families being able to work together, and this bill attacks that when it limits who can actually receive this funding; and the Employment Relations Act, which maybe should have been amended to include a recognition of what is about to be done to people by giving them less than the minimum wage.

These are fundamental principles, but the real issue I just wanted to touch on is the problem that is built into the principal Act and that we are entrenching in this clause 3 and this amendment bill. That is the idea that disability is a health issue. That is a fundamental problem that both of these pieces of legislation are entrenching. My partner has a lifelong disability. He is not sick. He does not have a health issue. Many, many people affected by the carers’ issues are not sick. Making them sick and categorising them in the health budget means that they are treated as if they are sick and they might get better, instead of treating them as citizens with permanent conditions that are manageable providing they have their human rights. It is not the same as being sick. It is very discriminatory, what is happening in the clause and what is happening in the principle. For many people such as my partner, the lifelong categorisation of being invalid—invalid or “in-valid”—has been problematic.

What we need to do is recognise that an independent bill should have been created to recognise the rights of family members to choose carers, because this is an issue of rights. In amending the principal Act, what we have done is entrench the idea that it is about sick people being looked after. This is in many ways a disempowering model, both for the carer and for the person who has chosen the family member to care for them, because they are not sick; they are actually people who want full participation in every aspect of society. They perhaps have a lifelong condition that means they have particular challenges, but they are not ill. They are not necessarily ill and going to recover. So you get these limitations of caring packages and you get these misunderstandings about the nature of rights entrenched in this clause and entrenched in this relationship with the principal Act. What that does is undermine both the self-determination of the person living in a disabling society and the carer who is trying to support that person in their self-determination.

I know that is very complex for people who have avoided this issue and who just lump it all together into “health and disability”, a tidy little package: “People with something wrong with them. What can we do to fix them?”—a disempowering model, not a 21st century model, and not appropriate.

If I had spoken on the commencement, I would have talked about another name for the bill, which would have been “Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad, Shut Up”, because that is actually the real name of this bill. [Interruption] Shall I say that again: “Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad, Shut Up”. That is what this clause does when it does not recognise its impact on the Human Rights Act. It fixes itself in a bill, in a law, that has not been set up with the right order in terms of health and disability, which is what I am talking about. The principal Act is amended, and what it does is entrench a definition of people’s rights as carers and as people needing care that is problematic.

I would like to think about the dark room where all of these decisions got made, a dark room that has been dark since 2000-and-something, where they have been talking about amending the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act and they have come up with this clause. How did they do that? They did not do that by consulting with the people most affected, because otherwise we would not be here today with this mess in clause 3. We would actually be in a clear situation where we had a decent piece of legislation before us that was a facilitator of the rights-based approach that is necessary to empower people.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 54

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Motion agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 3 be agreed to.

Ayes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 54

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Clause 4 New Part 4A inserted

Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): It was clear in the court decisions with regard to the Atkinson case that the court believed that there had been a failure in the process that the Crown, since the court case was lodged in 2001, had undertaken in the development of the family care policies of the various institutions of the Crown that operated such policies, namely the Ministry of Health and the district health boards. So, as a result of the court decision and the Government’s decision not to appeal the Court of Appeal decision, it was very important that we undertook a publicly defensible process in respect of the development of the legislation. The core procedures of that are here in the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2).

That involved the Government setting up a technical advisory group in order to provide sector input into the development of the consultation process and the options for consultation. A very wide public consultation process was run in 2012, and feedback was incorporated into this policy. There were 12 regional workshops, two hui, and one Pacific focus group, with a total of 273 people attending these consultation meetings. There was also a meeting with the plaintiffs and with the Consumer Consortium. In addition to the face-to-face meetings, 619 written submissions were received, and the Ministry of Health worked closely with the other agencies in support of developing this policy.

Members have asked why the policy is aimed specifically at disabled people in high and very high needs situations. Well, the Government has to meet the costs of paying family carers of disabled people receiving health-funded support from within the existing health and disability funding. Targeting the policy to people in very high and high needs situations enables that funding to be targeted at those with greatest need. This is consistent with the views of the carer and disability communities, expressed through the consultation, with 68 percent of all submitters and 71 percent of family carers favouring the payment of family carers and disabled people with high or complex needs, if targeting is to be used. Further, the system that we propose for the payment of disabled people and their families is also a result of combining the various elements supported by people during the consultation.

Clause 4 is the operative clause. What it essentially does is indicate that the Ministry of Health and district health boards can have, and always have had, family care policies. Those family care policies are able to discriminate on the basis of a number of areas in order to facilitate the policy. Government social policy has always discriminated. Indeed, you get the unemployment benefit or the job seeker allowance only if you are unemployed or a job seeker. You get superannuation only if you are of the age of entitlement. You get the child care allowance only if you are of a certain age or are in a certain position. So discrimination has always been innate.

What is clear from the court case is that in order for the Government to be able to operate a fair and reasonable family care policy, we do need to have the ability to discriminate, and we believe that that is a fair basis on which this legislation is being provided. Coupled with that is $92 million over the next 4 years. That is a very significant and fair investment that we are making in the health and disability sector. I pick up on the point that Mrs Delahunty was making; it is a health and disability sector, and we think this will be a very significant investment.

This is the third time that any country in the world has agreed to pay family carers’ wages for caring for other family members. No countries in the world do what this Parliament is about to do, other than the Netherlands and Sweden. So this is a very significant move. Previous Governments have ruled this out—previous Governments have ruled this out—as recently as April 2008.

Clause 4 of the bill is the operative clause. It will enable the district health boards and the ministry to establish family care policies, as indeed they always have, and to have the ability to put in place what the Government wants to happen, in order to support the families of those caring for some of our most vulnerable in the community, with the very substantial investment of $92 million over the next 4 years.

I know that one member in this House described $17 million as minuscule. I have to say that in the tight financial times our country has had since the global financial crisis, the investment of $92 million is actually a pretty fair response, and is part of the Government’s solution to the Atkinson court case.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): Clause 4 is the major part of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). It is the part where we ought to have a lot of information, where we ought to be very clear in this Chamber as to what we are voting on and what the impact is going to be on the many disabled people whom this bill will affect. I was hoping that maybe the Minister of Health would have started to answer some of the questions that have been raised by this side of the Chamber.

We have had the usual speeches from the Government, such as “I move that the question be now put.” We have had very little contribution other than that. We have had one contribution from the Minister for the whole day. We started this debate at 9 o’clock this morning, or thereabouts. The Minister made the contribution that he has to make with the first and second readings, reading out his speech. He has sat mute in that chair until a few moments ago, and did not answer a single question raised by this side of the Chamber. This is our only opportunity to be able to find out how the bill will work. If the Minister cannot answer it—and obviously he is not in the chair any more, so he is not there to answer it—we are going to have to rely on the Minister in the chair, Mr Woodhouse, to answer the questions. Or maybe Dr Hutchison knows the answers to the questions, but I suspect that he is being kept in the dark as well.

Otherwise, tell me this: what are the operational details of this policy? Who does it affect? How do we define a person of “high need” and “very high need”? These are very important questions. Do you know why we cannot get the answers? Because the Minister informed the media yesterday—not Parliament—that they have not worked out the operational details of this bill, and that the operational details of this policy are still being finalised. Information on how and when people can be assessed for eligibility will be available when, do you think? Will it be this afternoon? Could it be on Monday? Could it be in the next month? No, it is in September this year. That is when the operational details of this very important policy, which has been rammed through Parliament with no scrutiny from the public, will be available.

So do we know who will be defined as having high and very high needs? Can the Minister please tell us today who these people are. Are they people with motor neurone disease? Are they people with muscular dystrophy? Are they people with severe physical and neurological disabilities? Are they people who have got a mental illness? Are they people who have got needs for palliative care, who are terminally ill? Who does this bill cover? Why do we not have that information? The operational details are absolutely crucial to knowing what we are passing. The sheep opposite are all going to vote yes, and not one of them can tell us the operational details of this policy. That is shameful—absolutely shameful. Why would we be rushing through a piece of legislation when the work has not been done?

I can tell you how we know the work was not done. The regulatory impact statement arrived on the table of this House today. Most of the important stuff was blanked out, which is very much a sign of a rushed piece of policy work and a rushed piece of legislation. The Minister did not want this part of the bill going out to the public because it is this part of the bill that people would have questioned. They would have asked: “How is it going to work? Which of our family members are affected by this?”. There would have been hard questions for the Minister to answer, and he did not want to face them. I think it is disgraceful that we do not have the operational details of this policy.

The Minister himself, in his very short contribution on the bill after the many hours we have been debating it, mentioned the technical advisory group. Well, the technical advisory group was a very narrow group indeed. In fact, we heard from the people who do the caring—people from Carers New Zealand. I raised earlier on, I think in my second reading speech, the question of whether any of the members opposite met with Carers New Zealand. Did they know Carers New Zealand? Had they met with Carers New Zealand? Did they know anything about the organisation, which works with thousands of carers across New Zealand and has got a very good handle on what is going on?

Well, you would have thought that it would have quite a major impact on the technical advisory group. In fact, it had very little—very little—impact at all, because the Government did not have any engagement with the carers in the policy design or the systems that were to be used. It got one person on the technical advisory group, and do you know what her role was? Her role was to respond to a series of questions from the Ministry of Health. That was her role. How could that be considered as input into policy development, to ring her up and say “What do you think about this?” Where is the real input that you would expect from carers in New Zealand? That is the sort of feedback that we have been getting since we started to debate this bill. The truth comes out eventually. Even when a Minister wants to ram through a piece of legislation, and wants to restrict debate to keep it tight so that people cannot really see what is going on—feed them manure—eventually, it comes out.

Members of this House have been receiving the same emails that I have been receiving, so we have moved a number of typescript amendments to this particular part of the bill, clause 4. I think some of them really go to the heart of what people have been saying. One in particular is—and my very good colleague Ruth Dyson has moved these amendments—that we amend clause 4 with a new section 70D(3)(c) and insert: “Any lower rates set may not be lower than the minimum adult rate of wages payable to workers set under section 4 the Minimum Wage Act 1983.”

I challenge any member there to stand up and tell this Committee, the people of New Zealand, and those who care for the most disabled people in our society, that they should not be paid a rate similar to other carers in New Zealand. Stand up and say that their worth, their work, is not valued enough to pay them a similar rate to other carers. The ministry, in its report, said that they ought to be paid around $16 an hour. This Government has said they will be paid $13.75. These people are not working just a 40-hour week—although that is what they are going to be paid for—they are working 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, except for the brief times that they get some respite care.

I say to the members opposite: do not vote to pay them only the minimum wage; vote to have them have a fair wage—a fair wage—for looking after their family members. I will be absolutely astounded if the members can go out of this House, go back to their constituencies, and say that the carers of the most disabled people in New Zealand are worth the minimum wage only—“Don’t worry that you do a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week job; you are worth only that, and you’re damn lucky to get it because we didn’t really want to give it to you anyway.”

If you read the Minister’s own press statement, you get the flavour of where he comes from. He says that most New Zealanders expect families to look after their children. Well, most New Zealanders do, but there are, Mrs Tolley, some children who are adults who do need more looking after because they have very high needs and they are disabled. Why would we treat them in this way? I would have to ask Mrs Tolley—who has been smirking and laughing over there because it is not very important to her; she is busy chasing police who are eating hamburgers at a cut price, rather than the real issues—why we would treat these people differently.

I say to the members opposite that there are a number of amendments. They should get out of their seats, get a copy of them, have a read, and maybe show some of their own internal fortitude and vote for what is right, not what they have written down on their research notes, and not what they have been told to say and vote for. This, I believe, has been a shameful process, and the Minister is not even in the chair now.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am pleased to be taking a call on Part 4, which is the substantive part of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I want to just start by looking at new section 70A(1), the new section that is being inserted after section 70 of the primary legislation. But before I do that, can I just say that I am really puzzled as to why on earth the Minister of Health has signed off on a proposal to insert family care policies as an amendment to this particular part of the primary legislation. If you look at the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act, which we certainly were doing in more detail in the last debate, section 70 is just further provisions. This has been an add-on—you know, just throw it in where we think we have got a bit of a space between two other provisions. I think it is a further undermining of the status of family caregivers that is being reflected in this amendment.

In the purpose of this part, where new Part 4A is being inserted, it does not say that the purpose of this Act is to ensure recognition for family caregivers who took a case to court and who won, not only at the Human Rights Review Tribunal but also at the High Court and then the Court of Appeal. It does not say anything about how they and other unpaid family caregivers can get proper recognition of the work that they do, instead of somebody else, a stranger, being paid to do it—no, it does not say that at all. I would have thought that would be the primary purpose of the legislation: to give a bit of justice to the people who are family caregivers, who currently are not getting paid but are doing the work. But, oh no, this is different. What it says is: “The purpose of this Part is to keep the funding of support services provided by persons to their family members within sustainable limits in order to give effect to the restraint imposed by section 3(2) and to affirm the principle that, in the context of funding of support services, families generally have primary responsibility for the well-being of their family members.” That is a bit of a “Listen, High Court and Court of Appeal, I am the ‘Minister of Everything’ and I can do what I like!”.

Leaving aside the fact that these families took that case through the Human Rights Review Tribunal to the High Court and won at the Court of Appeal, the Minister is saying “I don’t care.” The principle, in the context of the funding of the support services, is that families generally have primary responsibility for the well-being of their family members. Actually, the High Court and the Court of Appeal said that the family members should get paid for that part of their work. This does not reflect those findings at all, and I think it is a slap in the face to the judges, actually, and, more important, to the families, including the disabled people themselves.

As was alluded to by my colleague the Hon Annette King, I have moved a number of amendments to this section. I think there are 10 on the Table at the moment to this part, and I will be speaking to them at various stages of the debate, but I do not want to do that in the context of this presentation, because what I am more concerned about at the moment is the actual wording of the original legislation itself. I do not think that it is an indication at all of the importance of this issue, of the sensitivity of the issue, let alone of the fact that this policy issue has been heard by courts in this land. It does not recognise that at all. It excludes people under this family care policy. It excludes people for no good reason at all. It does not say that this is an incremental policy: we are doing it as funds allow, and we would like to look at the highest needs area first. There is no analysis at all, and I say to the Minister that he should be ashamed of himself.

There is no analysis at all of the link between the level of impairment of the individual person and the need of the family for additional support. That could be quite at odds. They could be quite unrelated to each other, actually. We are assuming that the need of the disabled person is reflected in the financial recognition that is deserved, in the Minister’s terminology, by the family. I do not see that automatic co-relationship at all; in fact, it could be quite the opposite. We could have some very, very, very high-income families who have very high-need family members, for whom this payment would make not a jot of difference. We could have very, very, very low-income families who have quite low-level needs, for whom this payment would make all the difference in terms of their ability to have a bit more security and opportunity in their lives. We could have very low-income families for whom this miserly payment could make a huge amount of difference between their ability to do things in their lives and their current inability to do that, but their family member might have quite low needs but still require quite a lot of support. So the link between the impairment of the disabled person and the ability of the family member to need or do better with this payment is not secured, at all.

I tried earlier to have some consultation injected into this policy, because for me it is quite an important principle that if you are making legislative change that has an impact on somebody, then that somebody should be involved in the preparation of that policy. The Minister tried to talk about how much consultation was done, but it is actually a lot of spin. When you talk to the family members involved, they say they had no idea at all not just that this policy would exclude large numbers of families who care for and support the disabled members of their own family but that such a massive exclusion would take place, let alone the fact that those families who are excluded from being paid for caring for their family member are also having extinguished their right to take a case of discrimination imposed by the Government to the Human Rights Review Tribunal so that they could have a fair hearing. That right is being extinguished by this legislation.

Why would the Minister do that? Why would the Minister pretend in his spin that this is looking at the families most in need to start with, and that of course this policy will be rolled out, while at the same time extinguishing those families’ rights to take this to the Human Rights Review Tribunal?

I am not surprised that the Attorney-General found that that extinguishment of rights was not appropriate. I am surprised that the Attorney-General has not taken a call so far in this debate. Generally, when you have a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act provisions, you would see the Attorney-General in the House making some explanation for it, or at least drawing it to the attention of the House in person, rather than just getting a very late report that was tabled without any explanation at all. Of course we all went to the Table and had a look at it, because it was fairly clear that these provisions do breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, but we have had no explanation of it, at all. We have heard nothing from the Minister to justify the fact that this legislation not only excludes those family members from getting payment for the work that they do, despite the case in both the High Court and the Court of Appeal saying that they should get paid for it, but also extinguishes their right to take further legal action.

As I indicated earlier, I have got a number of amendments. Some of them involve consultation, which I think is important. Some of them involve the rates of pay, because it is not at all clear to anyone in the Chamber from what the Minister has said, because it was such a pathetically lightweight contribution, why the Minister thinks that the work that a family member does is worth less financially than the work that a stranger or a person from down the road does.

The Minister has consistently refused to answer the questions, and I heard one of my colleagues say that, you know, the Minister might not know the answer. He might not know what the operational solutions are going to be to this legislation. What I think every single member of this Parliament will want to know, before we leave for home on Sunday morning, is when we go down to our electorate offices on Monday, what we are going to say to family members who ask: “Will I be getting paid for caring for my son”—or daughter or parent or spouse—“in October? Will I be paid for that?”, and we have no idea.

This legislation being rammed through all its stages, without any input from the public at all, has got as many unanswered questions as it has answered questions, and that is just not good enough. Families who have been waiting, as the Minister said, for two decades for an answer are now hearing in the media that this legislation is going to be passed. What is their expectation, Mr Chair? Well, I will tell you the answer to that, because I do not think, Mr Chair, that you are going to take a call and answer my question. I think that is about as likely, actually, as the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Immigration, taking a call and answering my question—no chance at all, you know, because the Minister is not up to it, frankly. It is tragic to have—

Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): Namaste, Mr Chairperson. This clause 4 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) is really where most of the substantive provisions are and there is lots of space for argument and—

Sue Moroney: Debate.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: —debate and, indeed, for change. Of course, I am always reminding myself that this, in effect, is the select committee process. So again we expect members opposite to get up and explain—to get up and explain—why they take this particular view and the Minister in the chair to take calls and answer questions. So far we have had nothing—absolutely nothing—which is a travesty.

We know that the Government has brought this bill before the House because of the Human Rights Tribunal decision. That is the only driving force. There is no principled position that the Government has taken—certainly, none that it has explained—as to why this is important and why this Parliament should consider this bill with these provisions at this time in this way. It is clearly borne out of necessity, sandwiched in the middle of a post-Budget parliamentary session in urgency, and that says something about the principles that members opposite and this Government take towards how they treat this particular area and, indeed, this House.

The fact is, as the provisions of new Part 4A in clause 4 show, that it is a complex area, and the problems are complex. But this House is quite smart. We have lovely select committee processes. We have very good advisers, we have very good officials, and Parliament has very good legal advisers, as well, and they are able to help us work through what it is. This problem has been over 20 years in the making, members opposite have been reminding us. They might say that Labour did nothing in 9 years, but for 11 of those 20 years they have been in power, and they have done nothing as well. I am not crowing about that, but the fact is that that demonstrates only the complexity of the problem. The real issue is that the time has come to solve this problem, and this Government’s process to do that is flawed, as I have been arguing. The provisions under Part 4A are flawed, because they have not had the advantage of a full and open debate. Indeed, we have not even had the advantage of seeing the regulatory impact statement unredacted—as written. Parliament ought to have the right to see the regulatory impact statement in its entirety, but that does not happen under this Government because it does not care about the democratic process, so we cannot fully debate it.

Let us go to section 70A(1). Here we have probably the most important principle that is identified and written out. As I said earlier, in my reading this is the first time it has been stated in this way. I may be wrong, but I said this to the Minister of Health when debating an earlier part of this bill. He did not take a call to say I was wrong, so I simply take that to be the case. Members opposite may have a different view or some other information. If they do, I would ask them to share it with us. But the principle in section 70A(1) says: “in the context of the funding of support services, families generally have primary responsibility for the well-being of their family members.” That is the principle. That is stated so boldly, and it is almost glib to mention it. When I practised as a practitioner in the field in the early years, there was a principle like this that every conservative held, and whenever you tried to do something as a practitioner that required State support for the most vulnerable, this is the principle that they would chuck out. We would fight with head office in those days, case after case, where sensible decisions could not be made about very vulnerable families because somebody in Wellington had adopted this principle and said: “No, the State cannot be helping people like this, because it is the families’ responsibility.”

But when a Government, as it does in this particular bill, takes the responsibility of writing that in a clause—in section 70A(1)—then it has the express responsibility to explain what it is, what it actually means, and it is not explained. And what is the context? How is anybody to interpret this? These things get interpreted by lawyers and judges in all kinds of ways. So what is the guidance that this debate is giving to anybody in the future who might look at Hansard to see what Parliament intended to do with this particular provision? There is no explanation. There is no context. There are no caveats—

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): This will no doubt be my last—the fourth—call. I want to bring the issue back to the silent heart of the issue: a group of people who sometimes have been ignored in the whole debate. We are now on to clause 4 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2).

I would like to quote from a young man who wrote to me during this long and painful saga over not just today but the last 17 to 18 years. He sent me his picture and he said he is an adolescent living at home with his parents, because that is where he wants to be, and he has multiple disabilities. He wrote: “I love being at home, and this is where I want to live. If my parents cannot look after me because they do not receive the appropriate support, it is pretty obvious that I would have to live at the [X] centre”—and I am not naming it—“and have no future. I don’t want to live there. I am so happy at home with my parents and helpers and my friends visiting me. It is not acceptable for me to be living at that centre. But I want to be independent. I enjoy music and acting and recording my own music. I want to get married and be a dad. If I continue to accept that things take time, I will have a lot of success in my life.”

He is a young man whose parents are really struggling because they cannot be paid. We are not at all sure that the bill will allow them to be, because they were not part of the original case. They have had great difficulty getting the Ministry of Health to recognise their issues. Despite the fact that he is in the group of highest need, he is not necessarily going to get accepted. That is why he wrote to me, because he wanted me to have this piece of paper when I went to work on this issue. He asked me to keep working on the issue for him.

For him, being put into respite care or into care to give his parents, who are exhausted and broke, a break means being with elderly people. He is a teenager. He was 14 when he first started writing to me. I do not know what active imagination it might take, but it is not very good for him to be there—it is not very good. I personally have spent quite a lot of time in elder-care homes with my mother, who had dementia. It is certainly a challenge, but it is certainly worse, I think, if you are young and have nowhere else to be, because you are at such a different stage of life. This young man’s parents are not able to be paid and are constantly in battles over the 24-hour care package whereby his mother has to teach all the carers how to care for him appropriately and they do not get respite, because they do not want him to go through this. I am bringing this young man into the room because he should have a future as a citizen under this bill, and I do not think this bill gives him and many others sufficient future.

You can say “$92 million” as many times as you like, but when you are talking about it over 4 years that breaks down to $23 million, and then when you are talking about 1,600 families that breaks down to $14,000 or less per household who might actually benefit from this. Again, what kind of active imagination does it take to think what it might be like to be living on that? When you read the frequently asked questions associated with this bill—about the bits that are not in black, that have not been blacked out—there are questions about how it may affect people’s benefits, if they actually get any financial help through this bill.

We are getting texts and email messages today from a lot of worried people. One that came was asking: “If you still haven’t got to the third reading, can’t we stop the Royal assent?”. Can we not stop this? This is what people on Facebook are talking about this afternoon. They are saying: “Please, Parliament, while you have got a chance, stop it now.” It is interesting because I do not think the Government might have anticipated that this bill would cause this kind of furore. After all, it is just a group of marginalised people who fought for 20 years and have been successfully blocked for 20 years. But they won in court and they forced the Government to do something. Now a lot of people around the country are saying: “Can’t we stop this, because it’s not right? We want something better for everybody.”

It is a very interesting issue when you receive messages from other people who work, for example, with people with Asperger’s syndrome and autism. They are thinking, listening to this, that there may well be a risk to their relationship with the Human Rights Commission. They are worried, after what has been done to the family carers in terms of the inability to complain being legislated for, who is next. Who else is going to be blocked? Who else is going to be told by the Minister of Health or anybody else that they cannot complain? Is this a new trend? Is this going to threaten the people who are the most vulnerable in their ability to go to the Human Rights Commission?

If you look at new section 70A and move right through new sections 70A to 70E, we have some very, very serious issues around this. Looking at new sections 70A to 70E, in new Part 4A, I just want to point out that the first sentence says: “The purpose of this Part is to keep the funding of support services provided … to their family members within sustainable limits …”. Sustainable to whom? [Bell rung]

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I call Catherine Delahunty.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: I will not take a full call, but I do want to finish my sentence. Sustainable to whom? Sustainable to the health budget, but not sustainable if you are the people on the receiving end. When we have got a problem like that, that is when we start a real negotiation with the people affected. That is when we do not do what we have done up till now. That is why the Green Party members in our third reading speeches will be talking about alternative solutions to this punitive and miserable and mean-spirited approach, which should be illegal because it is highly discriminatory. Thank you.

SUE MORONEY (Labour): Clause 4 is the part of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) that actually gets to the detail—or the part that we would hope would get to the detail—of what the changes actually are, and, of course, this will need some substantial level of debate. In lieu of a select committee process, due to the Government’s decision to rush all parts of this legislation through in urgency, new Part 4A in clause 4 is what we really need to understand the detail of. I think, as colleagues have already pointed out, that if we leave this parliamentary session and this bill is passed, what will members of Parliament be reporting to constituents? We really do not have the amount of detail that we need. The whole point of the Committee stage, with the officials in the room—particularly when there is not going to be a select committee process—is that the Minister in the chair would actually use the advice from the officials to answer the questions that are being raised by this side of the Committee. So far the questions that we have raised have not been answered. Many of them have not been answered.

I want to talk about new section 70D in clause 4—and, yes, as my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson pointed out, it is called 70D because it is the tail end of a very large Act, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act. It is getting towards the tail end of it, under something that is kind of loosely known as “miscellaneous provisions”—that is, we shove everything there that is not really substantive and is not really substantial. That is where these amendments are going. This substantial change is so important to those seven families who have been battling this issue for two decades. Again, I just want to take the opportunity to congratulate those families on their tenacity. It has not been easy. I know that at least one of those families is from Hamilton, because they have come to see me to talk about the issue. They have battled for this. Here we are, under urgency, going through all stages of the bill, without the completeness of the detail.

So we know that new section 70D is going to cancel arrangements that district health boards may already have in place in terms of paying family carers. That is what I believe new section 70D says—that some district health boards may already have these arrangements in place. I am not sure whether members opposite seem to think that any of them have, but why, then, would they have drafted this new section 70D that says if they have got them in place, then they are cancelled? We need to know the impact of that on the families who may currently have those arrangements in place through their district health board. There may be families who already receive this payment, or a different type of payment—a greater payment, in fact—for taking care of their family members with disabilities. New section 70D actually cancels that arrangement. So these are the reasons why we need if not a select committee process—and I would argue we absolutely need that select committee process so that those families who are having their arrangements cancelled could come and warn us about what that impact is going to be on them. In lieu of that, can we at least have the Minister of Health on his feet, consulting the officials, and answering the questions that have been raised?

I want to refer to Catherine Delahunty’s very good speech earlier, about the young man she was referring to. We do not know whether he will be included or not, whether his family will, in fact, receive a payment under these changes in this clause or not, because we do not know what the definition of “high needs” is. We know what the definition is of the various family members who will meet the criteria. That much is clear—at least, I think it is clear. We know what those definitions are, but we do not know who is defined as being of high need. We know what age group it is going to apply to: only those over 18. We have not had any explanation about why the age of 18 has been chosen or what is going to happen to those under the age of 18 who may already be getting these payments from district health boards under the arrangements that new section 70D cancels. But we do not know, even for those over the age of 18, who will actually qualify for this payment, and we do not know, actually, how much the payment will be. We do not know what the level of payment will be. We know that it will be lawful—it will be made legal—for it to be below what non - family members are paid for caring for exactly the same person, but we do not know how much lower that might be.

The Government has said it will not have the details available until September. That is when the Government says the details of how this will operate will be known. Well, if that is the case, why are we debating this in urgency now? The Government is not even planning to enact it until 1 October, it will not know the details until September, and it has the House in urgency today, going through all stages of the bill, without that level of detail. That is where this is going to go wrong. I think many of us have had experiences in this House where legislation has been rushed through and it has been poorly thought-out, and then we are back within a matter, sometimes, of months, or sometimes it takes a few years, taking up more parliamentary time, going through and fixing up the things that went wrong the first time.

I want to raise an issue that I raised earlier in the debate, because I still have not had an answer from the Minister. It is incredibly important, because this is a fundamental human right we are about to extinguish. This Parliament—well, more properly, that Government—is about to extinguish the right of a very important, quite vulnerable, group of people in our society to actually take a case through the Human Rights Commission about their ability to care for their loved ones. That is what one of the paragraphs of clause 4 is about to do, and yet we have no reference to the Human Rights Act in the legislation that is before us. There is not even a consequential amendment that is happening to the Human Rights Act 1993. Why is that? What is the impact of having the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act say one thing and the Human Rights Act 1993 say another?

As it stands at the moment, the Human Rights Act would allow all of those families to actually put their case before the Human Rights Commission. That is one of the problems that we have. If we were having a select committee process, then we would actually be able to get some official advice on that. We would be able to find out what the implications were of those two Acts saying something quite different from each other, and I think we would get to a logical conclusion. That is the point of having a select committee process.

But, instead, this document I am holding is what we have. It is not a piece of abstract art, as some might think it is on the TV screen—I am sure that it is what it looks like. This is designed to be the regulatory impact statement. It is supposed to tell us what the impact on regulation is of this piece of legislation. So not only have we not got a select committee process but we have a completely inadequate—I would say, actually, a disgraceful—regulatory impact statement, because most of the information is hidden. Some people thought “Oh, look, it’s a mistake. In their hurry, what’s happened is the Government’s used a highlighter, you know, to highlight some sections, and then they’ve photocopied it, and it’s come out black.” Well, that is not what has happened. It is a deliberate attempt to actually—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! We have had the debate on that. We are on clause 4.

SUE MORONEY: The detail of clause 4 might be here in this regulatory impact statement, for all we know. It might be here for all we know, but who will ever know?

As the Opposition spokesperson on women’s affairs, I am concerned to know what the impact is on women, because in this area it is mainly women who are providing this family care—not always, but in the main it is women. Yet we have not enough detail in clause 4 for us to actually even ascertain what that is going to mean. We do not know what the pay rate is going to be, for example. We just do not know what the pay rate is going to be. And because it is going to be mainly women to whom this pay rate actually applies, then that is a major issue that we need to know about. Is that Government even interested in knowing what the gender impact of this legislation is? It does not appear to be at all interested in that. Certainly, this regulatory impact statement tells us nothing about the impact on gender—well, it might, but who would know? It might be hidden under one of these—

CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): New Part 4A, in clause 4, is, of course, the substantial part of this bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), and it is the part where the new provisions are being inserted into the principal Act, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. I want to talk particularly in relation to the provisions in new section 70D(3)(c). They are to do with the provisions around payment for those providing services for those family members whom they are looking after.

In the regulatory impact statement—and this is one of the bits that is not blanked out, which is good—

Hon Ruth Dyson: And rare.

CAROL BEAUMONT: —and rare, indeed—there is quite a section about consideration about how people would be paid once this bill was passed. There was a debate about the two main options for how family carers could be paid: as employees or by allowance. I am going to be supporting the amendment to clause 4 in the name of my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson that replaces new section 70D(3)(c), which, I believe, will do a better job of looking at payment.

But just before I get into the specifics of that, in the regulatory impact statement, where consideration was made of how family carers could be paid, as I said, there was consideration of whether they should be paid as an employee, which would then potentially determine their pay rate, or by allowance. Thankfully—and it is potentially one of the few things in this that we could wholeheartedly agree with—it was agreed that, in fact, the appropriate way to go was to pay people as employees rather than to pay them an allowance or via section 88 notice. The regulatory impact statement does go through that whole debate and talks about why that conclusion was made and, quite rightly, says that “Paying family carers as employees recognises their contribution by giving them status as an employee.”—for example, enabling them to get a formal work record—“It also incorporates mechanisms for assuring service quality and safety ...”. I think that is sensible. But when you look further on at the analysis of that, in the table “Analysis of options for how family carers are paid to provide HCSS” there is a whole column that is blanked out. Of course, I would be very, very interested in knowing what that column contains, and whether it has anything to do with the actual rates of pay, which is the provision we are talking about here.

New section 70D(3)(c) is relating to the actual rates of pay for these family carers. What the bill provides is that “the rates, or ways of setting the rates, of payment for support services provided to family members, which may be”—and this is the important bit—“lower than the rates of payment for comparable support services”—and I underline the word “comparable”—“provided to persons who are not family members:”. In other words, and just to be clear to those listening, this is saying that these employees, these workers, would be paid less than others who are not family members. I think that is a really important point. Why should that be the case? Why should they be paid less for comparable work? By virtue of its being comparable, we can say that the value is the same. Certainly, I think all of us—on this side of the Chamber, anyway—would agree that equal work should receive equal pay. It is a concept that is foreign to members opposite, of course. It is a concept foreign to members of the National Government, because, of course, they have recently passed legislation ensuring that young people who do equal work are paid less, or potentially paid less. So perhaps they want to extend that principle into other provisions.

But for those of us who are looking at what is very, very hard work and very important work in our society—and, as my colleague Sue Moroney said, work that is often done by women—we see that it is already low-paid work. The work of carers in our society is vitally important. Carers are looking after people who, by definition, almost, are vulnerable in some way and who need somebody else to look after them and to help them. It is low paid already. What we are providing for in this bill, what the Government is trying to do, is to say that some carers, carers who are family members, could be paid less.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I move, That the question be now put.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I have to say that the people of Rangitīkei would be very disappointed to hear that Ian McKelvie’s only contribution to the debate this afternoon was to try to shut down that debate. I suppose that is a reflection of this Government’s attitude towards democracy and transparency. I am sure he will be pleased to go back to his electorate and talk to people about the way he voted today and his contribution to today’s debate.

I would like to refer to a couple of the amendments in the name of my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson. Both refer to new section 70D(3)(c), in clause 4, which refers, of course, to the rates of pay that the carers can receive. One of those amendments is to ensure that the rates of pay may not be lower than the minimum adult rate of wages payable to workers, set under section 4 of the Minimum Wage Act 1983. I think that is a reasonably important principle, actually. Just because people are caring for a member of their family, just because they are actually doing this because it is a 24/7 commitment that they have to someone who lives in their household or is another member of their family, does not mean that they do not get the same rights and privileges that everybody else in New Zealand should receive when they are at work.

An important concept that, I think, we have to ensure is clearly laid out in the legislation is that, at the very least, the minimum wage should be the minimum rate of pay that carers can receive. But I think that that really is not enough. Merely ensuring that they get the minimum wage should not even need to be reinforced by the Opposition. The Government should be making that statement clearly, without the Opposition having to make that point. But what is actually even more important is the other amendment, which also refers to new section 70D(3)(c) and would ensure that the rates, or ways of setting the rates, of payment for support services provided to family members are equal to the rates that they could expect if they were caring for someone who was not a member of their family.

I think the concept of equal pay for equal work is a good one. It is not one that National buys into, unfortunately, which is probably why it is missing from the original legislation. But I think that members should be happy to sign up to this because it is a solid concept that all members should be able to sign up to. I do not understand what it is about having a familial relationship with the person whom you are caring for that somehow changes the nature of the work. It is just as hard, and just as much commitment is required.

Tony Ryall is rolling his eyes and tut-tutting. He does not understand why it is that people who are caring for someone who is a member of their family should not have the ability to get the same rate of pay that they would get if they cared for someone else’s child. Tony Ryall does not understand that. Tony Ryall thinks that those carers should just work for whatever the minimum is that the Government is prepared to give them. He thinks they should be grateful that the Government is even prepared to cover them. In fact, of course, as we know, many people will not be covered by this. This is not the comprehensive response that people were expecting.

So I suppose, in Tony Ryall’s mind, if you are lucky enough to be one of the 1,600 who qualify for this—and goodness knows exactly how the Government is going to determine whether or not a person qualifies to be one of the 1,600—you ought to be grateful. Those people ought to be grateful if they are lucky enough to be one of the chosen 1,600. I suppose that is where Tony Ryall is coming from.

Well, we come from quite a different perspective on this side of the House. We believe that this should have been the comprehensive response. We believe that the approximately 5,400 people who could be covered by this legislation should be covered by this legislation, and we think that the rates of pay that are acceptable in the care sector ought to be given to these families, low as those rates are. I think we all accept that the rates of pay in the health and disability care sector are not what they ought to be, but let us start at least at that starting point.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): Continuing on from my last call, when I was rudely curtailed by the bell and I did not get a second call, I was talking then about a principle that really undergirds clause 4 of the bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), which is the one about the primary responsibility of the family to care for its own members. I was saying then that there is no context to it, there is no explanation of it, there are no caveats on it, and we do not even know where it comes from. What are the philosophical and ethical origins of that particular belief? We would have thought that the Government might explain it, the Ministers might explain it, and, certainly, at a select committee hearing we would have the opportunity to pursue that a little bit further.

But when that principle is applied in this way to the disability sector, we get the impression that it shows very little awareness of what family members actually go through to care for their seriously disabled family members. Often, families are the only ones who are committed philosophically to that person in that situation for a lifetime because of that familial relationship. They stay there day in and day out, providing enormous support. Members of the Committee debating this bill have given examples of such cases from their own family situations. But this particular new section 70A and what emerges from it show very little awareness of that.

I do not know what the Government is worried about. It is not as if we will now go and produce a whole lot more people with disabilities. These are situations that have occurred, and all that society is doing is responding to that. So, potentially, the principle is about our own responsibilities as a society to our most vulnerable. Somehow, the Government has weaselled out of this particular responsibility on the basis of figures—on the basis of what it will cost.

There have been discussions about unmanageable fiscal costs. What are those unmanageable fiscal costs? The figures we have seen are not unmanageable. The Government is of a mind to provide, hopefully, $1 billion of tax cuts and ACC cuts in the next Budget, we believe. That is manageable. Somehow for the most vulnerable it is their families’ responsibility, and the provisions of clause 4 really stand in the way. It actually does show the mean-spirited nature of these provisions. Perhaps the select committee process would have brought people out to actually argue those particular implications of the provisions of clause 4, but we are not able to do that. We live in an interdependent world. We are, as a society, our brother’s keepers, if you like. A decent society does that, and these are the kinds of provisions that do it. The costs are manageable. The numbers are not enormous. No matter how long it has taken, no matter what the history is, this is something we ought to be doing.

On a different point, new section 70A(2)(c) limits the rights of citizens to take complaints to the Human Rights Commission. That right is taken away. It is a very, very serious clause that takes away an important right from our citizens. But, of course, all of that would be obviated if we did indeed provide the kind of care that our most vulnerable required. If we did that, then there would be no need to take away their right to go to the Human Rights Commission. So, again, here we have a problem, and the solution is actually seriously flawed. Again, the provisions of clause 4 warrant that concern quite a bit.

I want to talk a little bit about new section 70B(2). Perhaps there is something quite monocultural about these particular provisions when we talk about the family and we talk about family responsibilities. I draw attention to the definition “aunt or uncle”. Who is an aunt and who is an uncle? The Minister in the chair, the Minister of Health, rolls his eyes, but the Minister will, I hope, take a call and explain the question I am about to ask him. In a Western, European context that is easy to define. But in an Indian context it is not. In a Chinese context it is not. And even in a Māori context it is not.

SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I move, That the question be now put.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): I was just contemplating the judgment that the Court of Appeal made in May last year. What I want to highlight is this definition of the plaintiffs. They are “either family with adult disabled family members or adults with disabilities. The disabled family members have been assessed by the Ministry of Health as requiring support services.” So that group was discriminated against, and we know that there are 5,400 people in that group. And what we now know through this bill is that it will, hopefully, help 1,600 family members. So basically 30 percent of the families that the Court of Appeal highlighted as requiring support are going to be supported.

I will read through clause 4, and just look at the principles that are ingrained in this bill. New section 70A(1) says: “families generally have primary responsibility for the well-being of their family members.” New section 70A(2) says: “permitted by an applicable family care policy or is expressly authorised by or under an enactment:”. And the third part of that, in new section 70A(2)(c), is that it “stops … any complaint to the Human Rights Commission and any proceeding in any court if the complaint or proceeding is, in whole or in part, based on an assertion that a person’s right to freedom from discrimination” has been breached.

The Court of Appeal assessed that 5,400 New Zealanders were being discriminated against. What this legislation is trying to address is 30 percent of those 5,400 New Zealand families. But in doing so the Government is going to say to the 70 percent of New Zealand families that will not be supported: “Hard luck. Sorry about that. In fact, we’re not going to let you use the tools that brought us to this place in the first place.”, which was to go through a court process that started in 2000. Really, that is what this bill is all about.

I guess what we on this side of the Chamber really care about is the 70 percent of New Zealand families who are being discriminated against in spite of the Court of Appeal decision. We on this side of the Chamber think that those 70 percent of New Zealand families have the right to be supported. I guess when you look at it within the context of overarching Government prioritisation, it will give a little bit of money to families and people with disabilities, and we all—the communities, and everyone else out there—should say: “Hey, thanks very much.” So actually, to the Minister in the chair, thank you very much for the 30 percent of New Zealand families of people with disabilities that this bill will assist.

But I guess the challenge is this: what about the other 70 percent? What are we going to do as a Government, as a society, about meeting the needs of the other 70 percent? I guess in meeting the needs of the 30 percent what we have said is we will give them a minimum wage. Is that sufficient? I think, you know, of when I hear the pleadings of my colleague Catherine Delahunty, particularly. She has been into these houses. She has worked with these families. She understands the circumstances that our most vulnerable members of our communities are living in. I think really that is the test of this House. That is the test of the tolerance that we have as a Government, as a society, in helping address the needs of one of our most vulnerable communities in New Zealand.

That is what I really wanted to highlight in my contribution, because I think the select committee process would have enabled a more thorough discussion and analysis about whether or not the needs of 30 percent of the families being met is sufficient. We could have talked about other things: not only giving them a minimum payment but actually, yes, valuing and acknowledging the work that our family members do. The alternative—institutionalised care—as we all know, is so much more expensive. But rather than support families to the degree that they need so that they can live in dignity, they can live with respect, and they can live and can be valued and cared-for members of our community, we think that they should be happy and satisfied.

So, Minister, thank you for going part-way to meeting this community’s needs, but I think we could have done better, and I think that the process of Government would have enabled our communities to have a say so that we could actually hear about the consequences of this bill for their lives. That is what really is a travesty, that we have not allowed the New Zealand people to have a say on this bill. Kia ora.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to clause 4 of this bill. As a number of speakers before me have noted, this is the major part of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). As some people would say, it is where the money is at—or, in this case, is not. The point has been made many, many times around the need for this bill to have gone through a select committee process. We know, hours into this debate, that it has not, and that is unfortunate because one of the things that the public of New Zealand could have given more scrutiny to was the rates at which family members who care for those who are disabled in their families are paid. That could have been looked at closer, because there seems to be an inequity in one of the parts of clause 4, and the Hon Ruth Dyson has put forward an amendment to that effect. It talks about new section 70D(3)(c). I think my colleague Carol Beaumont has already spoken about this.

Essentially, what this part of the bill says at the moment is that if you are a family member caring for someone who is disabled in your family, not only is the rate that you will get paid going to be the minimum wage but you can actually, through this paragraph, get paid less than the minimum wage. That is our understanding of the bill. That is something that would have been given some closer scrutiny if this bill had been put to a select committee. The Hon Ruth Dyson has studiously put in this amendment that would amend new section 70D(3)(c) to read “Any lower rates set may not be lower than the minimum adult rate of wages payable to workers set under section 4 of the Minimum Wage Act 1983”—that is to follow the words in new section 70D(3)(c) “persons who are not family members:”. That would make it fairer, we on this side of the Chamber believe, to those who have taken on the real commitment of looking after those people in their family who are disabled—as my colleague Louisa Wall said, fair is fair, to the Minister—and who have been recognised in this bill to get some form of payment, because previously they have not. But we do not believe that has been done in a fair way.

The Hon Annette King said in her first contribution on clause 4 that we will not see the operational details around the changes that are made in this bill until September. That is of great concern to us in the Committee and on this side of the Chamber, given that when this bill will come into effect is 1 October. That is when the Government wants this to start being effective. So we will find out how this works maybe late September, and then the next month things will get moving. That is another concern that we have on this side of the Chamber: that we will not find out how these changes are going to operationally work, how things are going to be done until September, and then a matter of weeks later it will be law and in place. That should have been looked at with closer scrutiny at the select committee. At that select committee I am sure Dr Paul Hutchison—a man who on this side of the Chamber is very well respected, someone who definitely during my time on the Health Committee looked at a whole raft of issues related to health in a thorough manner and in a fair manner—would look at this, and I think he would be concerned that there is a very short period of time between when we find out how this piece of legislation works and when it comes into effect.

I go back to new section 70D(3)(c) in clause 4. Because the regulatory impact statement has been referred to many, many times during this debate, I wanted to have a sift through the regulatory impact statement just to see what kind of impact new section 70D(3)(c), as it stands now, would have in terms of operational details. But, again, it is not pretty. We do not know what it would mean because it seems that the significant—

Hon Annette King: Read it out.

KRIS FAAFOI: Well, I would love to, but maybe the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Health, could tell us what some of the significant legal issues and risks are arising from the Government’s preferred response, which it has in this bill, especially around new section 70D(3)(c), because we have no idea—

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The question is that the question be now put. Those of that opinion will say “Aye”—

Iain Lees-Galloway: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Could you please explain to the Committee how it could possibly be in order to accept a closure motion at this point during the debate on clause 4 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), which is the substantive part of the bill. All of the substance of the bill is contained in clause 4. This bill is being passed under urgency. There has been no select committee consideration. There has been no opportunity for the public to have a say on this piece of legislation. The regulatory impact statement is one of the most redacted impact statements that this House has ever seen, which has limited the information that members of Parliament have had available to them. We have the Hon Ruth Dyson with 10 amendments. She has had only one call so far and has had a limited opportunity to speak to those amendments. This bill and this clause of this bill have not in any way had sufficient scrutiny by Parliament. I think it is completely out of order to accept a closure motion at this point.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The Committee will decide whether it accepts a closure motion. Just in regard to what the member has mentioned, this debate on clause 4 has gone on for an hour and a quarter. There have been 12 Labour calls. There has been one Government call. The Greens—[Interruption] I am on my feet. The Greens have taken two calls. When we started this debate, the debate on clause 1 was very wide ranging, and many of the points that were made in that debate are now being canvassed in debate on clause 4. On the basis of a debate that took an hour on clause 1—as I said earlier, because it was a wide-ranging debate there—many of the points are being canvassed in debate on clause 4, I have decided to accept the closure motion.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I accept the ruling—well, I understand your rationale that you have just outlined to the Committee, but I would stress to you the somewhat extraordinary nature of this debate, in the sense that it is under urgency, it is being pushed through as a Budget measure, it is going through all stages, and members of the Opposition have had this bill for only a very, very short period of time. We were given it literally an hour or two before urgency actually started, so people have not had a chance to go through it in detail. The fact is that there are a significant number of amendments, and the person who is sponsoring the amendments indicates that the Opposition has, to the best of our ability, engaged with the detail within the time that we have had. I am aware that there is a New Zealand First member who does want to have a call on them, who probably had not anticipated that the debate was going to be drawing to a close quite so quickly. We have no ability to vote down a closure motion, as you will be aware. The only protection the Opposition has in these matters is the protection of an impartial and neutral Chairperson. Once this question has been put to the Committee, if it is passed by the Committee, the rights of the minority will be overridden by a majority vote.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I hope the member is not implying that I am not an impartial Chair. That is what the member said, and I am sure he did not mean that. When I accepted the closure motion, everybody at that stage who had wanted a call had been given a call. All right? And there are members who have been sitting in the Chamber for some time who, during the course of the last hour that I have been sitting here, have not gone for a call. Those who wanted calls at the time were given calls. Everyone got a call. It was only when I accepted the closure motion at the end that other members got to their feet. On that basis, I think it has been a fair debate, so I am putting the question.

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

Ayes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 54

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:

in new section 70C, replace “unless the payment is—(a) permitted by an applicable family care policy; or (b) expressly authorised by or under an enactment.” with “if the payment is prohibited by an applicable family care policy or enactment.”

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

Ayes 54

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:

insert in new section 70D, after subclause (2):

“(2A) The Crown or DHB may not change, cancel, or replace an existing family care policy without first consulting the other affected parties.”

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

Ayes 54

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:

delete new section 70D(3)(a)(i).

A party votewas called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 54

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:

replace new section 70D(3)(c) with “(c) the rates, or ways of setting the rates, of payment for support services provided to family members:”

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

Ayes 54

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:

in new section 70D(3)(c), after “not family members”, insert “but any lower rates set may not be lower than the minimum adult rate of wages payable to workers set under section 4 of the Minimum Wage Act 1983:”

A party votewas called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 54

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:

delete new section 70E(1)(b).

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

Ayes 54

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:

replace new section 70E(3)(a) with “(a) was made after the day after the date on which this Act receives Royal assent; and”.

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

Ayes 54

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:

add the following new section 70E(8): “For the purposes of clarity, nothing in this Act prevents a person from making a personal grievance under the Employment Relations Act 2000 for a breach of the Human Rights Act 1993 or New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.”

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

Ayes 54

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:

delete new section 70E.

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

Ayes 54

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:

delete new section 70G(4)(b).

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

Ayes 54

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 4 be agreed to.

Ayes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 54

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Clause 4 agreed to.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I wanted to raise a point of order just before we leave the Committee of the whole House, to seek your guidance as we go on to the next couple of pieces of legislation that will come before the Committee, under the urgency motion, which are similar to this bill. They are pieces of legislation that will not be going to a select committee. They are bills that were provided to Opposition parties only moments before the urgency motion in one case, and after the urgency motion in the other case. I want to seek your guidance on the approach that Chairs of the Committee of the whole House will take when there is legislation of that nature. Is that something that is taken into account by a Chair, in terms of the length of time spent on particular parts? Is it something that the Chair will recognise?

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I thank the member for his comment. The Chair takes into account the range of debate that has happened over the course of the time, and at that stage the Chair will determine whether a question is put and for how long the debate will go. The Chairs realise that of course these bills have not been to a select committee and are being dealt with under urgency, but that is given consideration. I would hope that, overall, we have reflected that in the nature of the debates that we have had. That, I hope, will continue. It certainly will under my chairmanship. I will report this bill without amendment.

Bill reported without amendment.

Report adopted.

Third Reading

Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): I move, That the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time. I would like to start by thanking the members for their contributions today, even those who sought to rewrite history and demonstrated former ministerial amnesia. They all made a contribution. They are all people who I think genuinely want to do something to help those with very high and high needs. I think they may have, though, struggled during the best of times to give the priority to this issue that they now want to demonstrate they do have.

This bill is the Government’s solution to the Atkinson case. It does shift the boundary between family and taxpayer responsibility, but it has landed in a fair and reasonable place. Today New Zealand becomes only the third country in the world that will pay a wage to some family members for caring for other family members. Only Sweden and the Netherlands have done so before today. This bill makes it clear that it is the policy of this Government, as it was of the former Government, that families have primary responsibility for the well-being of each member within their families, and the Government should not interfere in that responsibility. The role of the Government is to support family members in their care and support role, assisting where families are not able to meet the needs of their loved ones.

Society expects that we care for and support our family members, society expects parents to support their non-adult children, and society expects spouses to care for and support each other. That is because of love, affection, and responsibility. However, the courts in Atkinson have found that it is beyond society’s usual expectations for family members to care for adult family members who are living with lifelong disabilities. So change is needed.

This bill allows the Ministry of Health and the district health boards to establish family care policies that allow them to choose on a number of bases how those supports will be provided, to adopt policies, and to make payments to specified family members. As I have said in this debate, it is not the intention of this bill to extend the Government’s responsibilities to support all family members in their caring roles. People will not generally be paid to provide health and disability services to family members. This is particularly so for parents who care for non-adult children and spouses who care for each other. Targeting for those most in need is the fairest approach.

In today’s Budget we announced $92 million over 4 years to implement the family carer policy. The ministry will allocate funding to disabled people in high and very high needs situations as assessed. Within the principles articulated here there will be some flexibility within the policy to consider in particular circumstances disabled people who do not meet the eligibility criteria but where payment is clearly desirable. The case that I gave during the first reading was of those who live in very remote rural areas where they are unable to get support.

This has been a very complex issue. Ministers have taken considerable legal advice. It is this legally privileged advice that caused so much of the debate and discussion in the House about the regulatory impact statement. In coming to this policy decision the Government has undertaken a very robust consultation process, which I outlined in the Committee stage. The Government has also considered very, very deliberately a whole range of matters that should have been taken into account when making this decision.

We know that other Governments have also considered these matters and chose not to change policy. That is a decision that they will have to defend to New Zealanders. It is also a decision that they will have to defend that they oppose the progress in this bill, because this does make New Zealand only the third country in the world to provide for paying for some family members to have a wage to care for others. This does not happen in Australia. This does not happen in Britain. This does not happen in Canada. It does happen in Sweden and in the Netherlands. New Zealand today will become the third country in the world to adopt that position.

I think all members of this House do feel and admire the huge contribution that family carers provide throughout our country. They have a huge responsibility, and so many of them undertake that responsibility quietly and are accepting of that and willing. Where those families cannot provide that support or need additional support, our welfare State provides that support. Not only may the adult disabled child be receiving income support but also the parents receive additional support in terms of home support workers, providing support to not only the disabled person but also the parents themselves. The Government does fund carer support and it does fund respite support for those carers. So supports are there.

The Government accepts its responsibility. Today we move that balance slightly in accepting that we will pay a wage to those family members assessed as being able to get that in the way that they support their disabled family member in the circumstances outlined in the family carer policies that the ministry and the district health boards will adopt.

Can I thank the members of the technical advisory group and the many hundreds of people who made submissions. Can I also thank the many officials who have worked so hard in the development of this policy. I want to thank my ministerial colleagues, particularly the Associate Ministers of Health, and Mrs Turia in particular, for the many hours of work that we have undertaken as we have sought to find a fair and reasonable balance, to make sure that we have protected the interests of the person who is being cared for, of the families who are doing the caring, and of the taxpayers.

I think today that this solution lands in a reasonable place, a fair place. It certainly is progress. The Government accepts the indications given by the courts about the need to change policy, and this bill is about that. I certainly commend this bill to the House. I hope that the many people who will benefit from this will recognise that the Government, and indeed the Parliament, is acting with the best intentions to balance the interests of so many involved in this matter.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): It is with considerable disappointment that I rise to continue to oppose this legislation, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). As the Minister of Health quite rightly said, parts of this legislation progress an issue that has been around for two decades. I want to put on record again the offer that Labour made some time ago to the Hon Tony Ryall, and that was to have an approach that ensured that this policy was sustainable—a policy that all parties signed up to, that we could get agreement on, and that we could have a lot of input into. Instead, the Minister, in an arrogant way and in a detached way, has ridden roughshod not only over the family members and people who wanted to have an input into the detail of the policy but also over all other political parties in this House and, indeed, proper process.

We have seen a process that is totally unacceptable as part of a Budget process. This is not a Budget confidence and supply move that required urgency. It did not require the urgent attention of the House. It did not need to be rammed through all stages under urgency. In my view the only reason that that was done was in order to secure the votes of the Māori Party. It has been covered up as a confidence and supply measure. It has been put through under urgency to avoid public scrutiny rather than to progress the substantive part of the legislation. I think that is something that the Hon Tony Ryall should be embarrassed about, as should the members of his party.

In terms of the substance of the bill, we have had a pretty abbreviated debate on it, frankly. It is very disappointing, for example, that I was not able to get a call on any one of my 10 typescript amendments to clause 4 because the Chairman of the Committee accepted a closure motion. That is very disappointing, given that they were quite substantial amendments, and it really reinforced the concerns that Labour had about this legislation.

My amendments talked about, for example, the need for district health boards or the Ministry of Health itself to always consult with affected parties in the future if there was going to be any change to agreed family care policy. We talked about the rates that family caregivers would be paid, and proposed that family caregivers be paid at the same rate as most other home support workers are paid. They are doing the same job and they should be paid at the same rate, rather than the minimum wage.

We talked about removing the extinguishing of rights that the Minister of Health has in the legislation so that the family members who are not covered by this legislation—the family members who care for disabled members of their own family who are not going to be paid—will now not be able to take a legal challenge to that continued discrimination. Labour wanted to have that extinguishing of rights removed from the legislation. There is no need for it.

We wanted to make sure that people were still able to take a personal grievance case under the employment relations legislation. That amendment was thrown out as well. In fact, I watched Tim Macindoe—I think he is the junior whip; one of the junior whips—rally his numbers to vote in opposition to my amendments, and it was clear that he had not read one of them. It was clear that he voted on behalf of the entire National Government without a blind clue as to what he was voting on. I think that should be an embarrassment to the current member of Parliament. He may always do it, but he should give his colleagues the credit of his position and read the matter on which he has been given the responsibility to vote. He is short-changing the position of junior whip.

Also, the Minister of Health refused to answer the many questions that we raised with him in the Committee stage of the bill. When we leave this place tomorrow night when we have finished urgency, we will go back to our home centres—

David Bennett: We’ll be here on Sunday.

Hon RUTH DYSON: On Sunday? The House does not sit on a Sunday, Mr Bennett. On Monday, I am sure, we will have approaches from families saying: “We heard that Parliament passed the family caregivers legislation. We want to know when we will be getting paid.” We will not be able to tell them not only when but whether, because we have no idea from this legislation whom this is going to apply to. All we have got is a random number and then information in the advice that was given in the regulatory impact statement and the options given to the Minister, which makes it clear that the Ministry of Health does not have a clue about the figures. They are a best guess. I am sure that the officials tried really hard, but there is no way that we could rely on their figures.

They are a darned sight better than what we got in the regulatory impact statement, though. In my few years in Parliament I have never seen a regulatory impact statement of this quality. Look at this, Mr Speaker. You missed some of the debate but, just in case you would like to see it, there are big areas blacked out. But wait, there is more. Look at this page. Fantastic! The whole page of the regulatory impact statement is blacked out. And here is another one—an entire column blacked out. Go over the page, and the entire section that would give this Parliament the information it needs is blacked out. On the next page the whole column is blacked out. On the next page the whole column is blacked out.

Ian McKelvie: No!

Hon RUTH DYSON: Page after page after page. The member of Parliament for Rangitīkei thinks it is funny. Well, I want to see that member front up to the families of disabled people in his electorate on Monday morning and say that this is good information—that this is good information. It is blacked out, the very information that members of Parliament need to determine whether or not this is a robust decision.

Dr Paul Hutchison—I have always thought more highly of that member, excepting this. That high expectation has now been shattered. National Party members one after the other after the other, like sheep going to the slaughter, are voting for legislation, refusing to look at amendments, and leaving family members who have been waiting for this decision, waiting for this legislation, in limbo yet again, because not one member of this House, including the Minister, will be able to tell anyone next week or the week after or the week after or the week after who will be getting the payment.

We know, from information from the Minister—the only bit of information that he has shared, and not directly to the House; we got it indirectly—that the operational decisions about who is going to get this money will not be made until September. Regardless of the fact that we have got the wrong day on the wall—because Parliament does that under urgency—I know it is May and I know there is a big space between May and September. That is another confirmation point that there is no justification for this legislation going through the House under urgency, let alone going through all stages under urgency and not being referred to a select committee at all.

So we have had a shonky process, a process that has completely ignored all the parties who deserve respect and who deserve to have a say in this legislation. They have been cut out. We have had National members who are so keen on getting out of this building that not one of them even bothered to read any of my 12 amendments—not one of them. I could have put anything in those amendments and National would have voted against it. I could have had an amendment proposing to double the salary of National members and they are so stupid and so lazy they still would have voted against it.

It is demeaning of the parliamentary process to have that sort of disregard, lack of integrity, and complete lack of respect for the families of disabled people. They are whom we are talking about. This is not a technical bill that fiddles around with some machinery; this is a bill that has a huge impact on New Zealand families who have disabled members, who went to the huge personal effort of taking their claim of discrimination through the Human Rights Review Tribunal, to the High Court—

Scott Simpson: Blocked at every step by Labour.

Hon RUTH DYSON: —and to the Court of Appeal, and won. That member should close his mouth, breathe through his nose, and wait till he gets a little more information about the truth, instead of repeating the spin. Spin does you no good. You can have a robust debate only if you bother to find out the facts yourself—

Scott Simpson: We don’t need that member pushing—

Hon RUTH DYSON: And it is quite clear that that member, who is another one who is going to be going to his home electorate, Coromandel, should be hiding his head in shame—should be hanging his head in embarrassment—because he knows zilch. He knows nothing about what has gone on in this process and has no ability to front up to families in his electorate and tell them the truth, because we had no truth from the Minister. We know that no determinations will be made—

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

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): Thank you for giving me the opportunity and privilege to speak on this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I too want to acknowledge all those family carers around New Zealand who for years have given themselves so selflessly for others.

Despite Opposition members saying that they did not want to talk politics, they have done directly the opposite over the last few hours, and I think that is a great shame. Fairly and squarely, the Human Rights Commission made its ruling back in 2001, and, in times of plenty, the Labour-Greens coalition had plenty of time, if those members had wanted to, if they had really wanted to—even though there was a court process going on—to come to an earlier solution. But they explicitly failed to in 2005, and they explicitly failed to in 2008.

Targeting high and very high needs people was supported by 68 percent of all submitters and 71 percent of family carers. This was a thorough consultation process. Changing the policy to pay all groups of family carers, rather than carers of high and very high needs people, would result in unmanageable spiralling costs, and I believe that the thoughtful contribution from the Attorney-General indeed explained that and explained that the courts often do not take into account the fiscal constraints of the time, which is absolutely what Labour and the Greens so flagrantly forget about.

This policy adds an extra $94 million over 4 years on top of the $100 million extra the Government is spending on disability support. This is a fair solution to a challenging and complex issue, and it makes New Zealand the third country in the world—no other countries have done this before—to achieve payments in such a way.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): We commenced debate on the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) at around 9.20 or 9.30 this morning. We have gone from an introduction of a bill right through to a third reading in 1 day. It has been a truncated debate by the Minister of Health. It has been truncated by the National Government, which voted for closure along the way, and truncated by the Chair, who took a closure motion on the most significant part of the bill, when there were a large number of amendments put forward by the Labour Party in the short time frame in which we had to examine this bill.

We have had little or no debate from the Government at all. There was a contribution from the Minister of Health on the first reading and the second reading and the third reading, and there was one contribution from him when he was in the chair. We had no contributions at all, to speak of, from the cannon fodder, muzzled backbenchers, who have sat there, sitting in their seats and keeping them warm for the day. They had read neither the regulatory impact statement nor the statement from the Attorney-General on this bill. They read none of the amendments. They just went along with whatever they were told, and voted when they were told to. What a mockery this has made of Parliament today. This is one of the worst processes on a bill, which has been 20 years in the making, as the Minister said. This is an incredibly complex issue, where it is hard to find the balance. It is an area where we ought to have taken the time to work across Parliament and have taken up the offers that were made by the parties in the Opposition to work together to get an enduring solution to this longstanding problem. That was ignored, and we had the bill introduced under urgency and debated and passed in 1 day.

The public of New Zealand who may have followed this debate today will have no say. They will not have any input at all. We were told that we should accept that there was a technical working group that looked at this bill, and that it came up with the ideas. Well, when we heard about the technical advisory group, we found that those who are the carers had very little input at all. Would you not have thought that you would involve in a very proactive way the very people who care for disabled adults in New Zealand? Would they not have had a lot of information? Would they not have had real, meaningful experience about what it means to care for a family member, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with brief periods of respite? What we found out was that the technical advisory group had one member from Carers New Zealand, but she did not get any say on the policy that was developed. The only input she had was when the Ministry of Health called her and asked her to answer some questions. That, to me, is not a technical advisory group—well, maybe it is technical, but it certainly is not advisory. So the input into making this policy was almost devoid of those whom it affected the most.

What I found interesting in the Minister’s third reading speech was what his expectations of New Zealanders are. That was very, very enlightening for me, and puts into perspective where the National Party comes from. His expectation, he said, is for New Zealanders to look after their own children, and that they should be expected to look after their own family. Well, in the main, New Zealanders do, but we have always been a society that has said that the most vulnerable, those who are at the most risk, those who need support in the society we have, would be picked up and looked after. That has been a fundamental principle of New Zealand for my lifetime, and well before my lifetime. But what we heard from the Minister today is that it is dog-eat-dog—you look after your own, and when we have to do something about it, and we are forced to, we will make a few concessions. That is not the New Zealand that I want to live in. That is not the New Zealand that most people expect. They expect us to look after the most vulnerable in our society, and the most vulnerable we could have at this stage are those who are so handicapped that they cannot look after themselves.

We closed the institutions around New Zealand, and it was a darned good thing we did, too. We closed them because we knew we could look after them better in the community. The closing of institutions was sold to the people of New Zealand that people would live better lives in the community and that they would be supported. Those were the principles that underpinned the closing of the large institutions in this country. But that is not what we heard from the Minister. Perhaps he does not know that actually we do pay grandparents to raise grandchildren now. But he said that we should not pay and help people look after other people’s children or their own children. ACC pays for carers to look after people, but we cannot pay these people who have not had an accident but who by some fate have ended up being disabled. I believe that we have finally seen the face of the National Party and the underpinning philosophy of the National Party, and it is not a pretty one at all.

There was insufficient time for consultation, and we have had to rely very heavily on the regulatory impact statement. It was not available until this morning, when we started this debate, and, as has already been said throughout the day, we were shocked at what we received. The regulatory impact statement—maybe this is an issue that you, Mr Speaker, might like to take up—is there to provide information to this House for us to be able to debate a bill with some knowledge and confidence that we know what we are talking about. It is a regulatory impact statement that the public can read. They can look online to see what the bill is about. Firstly, the regulatory impact statement was not online, and, secondly, it was so redacted that you could not read it. I called it the “blankety-blank-blank-blank-blank regulatory impact statement”—page after page after page of blacked-out information that may have helped this House. That was not good enough. I have not seen that before. I have never seen a regulatory impact statement of that order in my time in Parliament.

I often criticise the Hon Dr Nick Smith, but I will give him credit for this: when the regulatory impact statement came out on Better Local Government, he did not go through it and do this to it. He did not go through and cross out all the things he did not like. We at least had the information to be able to debate it.

We have heard today of the many people who care for families, and we know from the feedback that has been coming in to us as we debate it that there are many people who are disappointed. In fact, Mr Cliff Robinson, a 76-year-old man—

Ian McKelvie: This is the fourth time you’ve used the same man.

Hon ANNETTE KING: —is caring for two children—and I will say it again for the member for Manawatū. Mr Robinson is caring for two disabled children, a 43-year-old and a 40-year-old. A 76-year-old is looking after them. What did he say? He has waited for a half-decent scheme. What did he get today? A half-baked one. The feedback we have got has been disappointment. The feedback has been that they cannot believe, having made a decision, that the Government would pay only the minimum wage for these families who will be looking after disabled family members. The question we have asked all day is why. Why would we pay these people less money than we would pay other carers? The Ministry of Health recommended $16 an hour, and they are to be paid $13.75. They are not working a 40-hour week; they are working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and they are told by this Government that they are not worth the same as what other carers are paid. We cannot understand that.

We moved an amendment, and I put it to the members opposite to vote against it, and they did—and they did. Every one of them is culpable because they have said that those carers out there looking after family, with highly disabled family members, are not worth being paid the same as other carers in our society. This bill is a disgrace. The process is a disgrace. We could have done so much better but for the arrogance of this National Government.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. It has certainly been a long day, but it is nothing like as hard as it is to take care of a family member with complete absence of mobility, and nothing like as hard as it is to be that person trying to live a good, independent, and self-determining life without money coming into your family that actually reflects what you are needing. That is much, much harder than listening to this debate.

I just want to comment briefly on the Minister of Health’s speech, because it was very interesting, and one of his core points was that the State or the Government should not interfere in family life, and it was a definition of neglect. I would not call it benign neglect; I would call it discriminatory neglect, and, unfortunately, this bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), under the guise of improving things—because of the caps that it has set and because of its refusal to allow people to complain to the Human Rights Review Tribunal—is actually perpetuating a form of benign neglect. I hope that the families who are able to get that $14,000—the 1,600 families—will benefit from that $14,000 a year.

It certainly is not a living wage, but at least they might get some money. It is certainly not going to meet their needs, though, and it will be worrying if they then lose some other forms of support because they have been given this money. That is why this is a crazy mosaic. If you are involved with trying to patch together the funding to support a family who has disabled members, sometimes more than one—in the Robinson family there are two, and I know other families where there are at least two family members, because some of the disabilities come from inherited genetic conditions—the financial burden is phenomenal.

There is a research document by Auckland University that talks about the cost that family members with disabilities actually pay. It talks also about the contribution that, if supported, they actually make to our economy. But with what the costs are, they pay so much more for everything, and I think the rest of us are immune to that. We are immune in our privilege of being able to walk, talk, and access resources without the discrimination that we are currently actually increasing.

Let us go back to those people, because for me it is not about which party did what. Nobody did anything good enough—none of us. I do not think there is any point in pretending. I do think it is the responsibility of Parliament to take on complex issues. I do not think it should have taken us all these years. Whenever I talk to people like Cliff, what I hear in their voices is the bewilderment of being ignored. They want to know why we took so long, and I cannot answer that question. They do not understand why there have been so many barriers put in their way and why they had to go to court, and why they had to go to another court and another court because the Government kept appealing the decisions—that was clearly discriminatory.

They are bewildered that the package is so messy and unfinished and that we still cannot answer the question about who is going to get what, and yet time after time after time it was obvious that the Ministry of Health was going to lose in court. It was blatantly obvious. There were no arguments. If you read the judgments, you see that the judges in the High Court and the Court of Appeal said that the Government was not putting up arguments; it was reinforcing discrimination.

So it is not like there has been no time to prepare a package and no time to work through this issue with the sector; there just has not been the courage and political will. We will not pay the price, but the people out there who will not be part of the 1,600—it could have been 5,000—will pay the price. It is for them that I am standing here saying that we could have done better in the past and we should be doing better now.

Let us have another look at some of the aspects of the process and the bill. The Government is not doing this as an attempt to enter into international leadership on disability rights and carers’ rights issues. That is disingenuous in the extreme. The Government is doing this because it ran out of time and because the court ruled that it had to do something. If you look at the very first page of the bill—the explanatory note—it says very clearly that the Government had to do something. It says: “In the absence of legislation, the Government’s policy would be unlawful and the Government could face a very large number of claims. The only feasible way of managing these risks is through legislation.”

I am not sure that that is a heroic stance for human rights that will be regarded by the international community as a recognition of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I am not sure that we are going to be heralded as a country where the rights of people with disabilities and their nominated carers are being upheld in a magnificent way, in a way that we can be proud to show the world. Kicking and screaming, the Governments of the day have fought this issue until there were no more places to go. In order to shut down debate, the Government has capped it, and it has put the bill in Budget legislation to get it through the House under urgency, without a select committee process, so it did not have to hear unpalatable truths, and then it will become impossible—impossible—to complain.

I am not sure that that looks like a great international success in terms of human rights. The international community on disability rights, which is a strong community, is not really naive enough to imagine that allowing carers to be paid—some of them, but there is a definition in this law that they can be paid less than other people who are not family members—looks like human rights. I am not sure that looks like human rights, and I am not sure that those people who fought so very, very hard for disability rights to be centre stage in this nation are clapping for us tonight. In fact, I know they are not.

So let us have a look at the process that resulted in this bill. The technical advisory group was a very short-term group, and it was actually quite a limited number of people who were involved and most of them were from the Ministry of Health. I wrote to Mr Ryall in June 2012 and asked him to consider with urgency the need for genuine experts in that group who understood the family care issues, and to have a creative and innovative approach to developing a fair framework for payment. I asked him to appoint a representative of the Human Rights Commission, because it has demonstrated a strong understanding of the rights issues. I also asked him to offer a place to families who had been through this process, because I was trying to applaud him for recognising that “Nothing about us without us.” is the disability catchcry. So people with disabilities and their families should have been at the table.

I said to the Minister that there are vested interests who want to determine the policy framework, and that the voices of the disabled and the carer parents must be here if practical solutions are to be negotiated. It would not be useful if the panel was dominated by Ministry of Health officials, given their failure to find creative and cost-effective solutions that did not discriminate against families. The answer I got was four lines: “Thank you for your letter. Members of the claimant group are not on the group because they are still involved in a legal process which involves a remedy hearing. The remedy hearing will deal with the claimants’ issues.” That was 3 July 2012. The remedy hearing is yet to take place. So not only are the narrow issues in terms of one set of families not yet addressed, and they were not allowed to be part of the solution, but, in fact, everybody else is equally confused about where they are at as well.

I just want to step back and acknowledge a particular group, the organisations known as the disabled people’s organisations, the truly “Nothing about us without us.” people. They came to see me and talked about some of the complexities. Some of them were very concerned and very genuine about the power of people to choose who their carer was. I think that they had very good points to make. I said to them: “Rather than stopping this through the legal system, let’s have forums and debates where we, the disabled people, and their carers actually debate this issue and create a framework with the political parties.”

So if you are talking about solutions, what the Green Party wanted to see, and what we still want to see, is a cross-party approach to this. Having a war about who did nothing is not attractive to the people of New Zealand. They do not care that we have not done anything properly on this issue. What they care about is what we are doing now, and what they want us to do is to work constructively together to find a solution that is not just determined by the cheapest possible solution. “By all means,” the disabled persons organisations and carers groups have told me, “have some restrictions.” We need to negotiate fair restrictions, but you cannot do that in isolation in a dark room, and you cannot do it in a regulatory impact statement that is actually risible. It is completely risible. An example of a risible regulatory impact statement is what we saw today, and that is not what the people expected of us, nor what they wanted.

So there were solutions; there still are. We need to negotiate and set agreed boundaries, but like any issue of discrimination, negotiations should be with the most affected. Those are the people who know best what their needs are. So, unfortunately, justice delayed remains justice denied. I really do believe that the shocking discrimination in this bill is not just the cap on the money and the refusal to pay the minimum wage. The real disgrace is the attack on people’s right to complain.

Why do we have a Human Rights Commission if its status is going to be undermined in this way? It stood there, alongside the families, at every step of the way. That was its job. Its job is to be there when people are marginalised systematically and cannot get any form of help. It is no good being romantic about what the health system delivers and how contract caring works, because it does not. What we need to do is to give them justice, and now justice has been denied. I really believe that Parliament has failed these people and could do much better. Kia ora to the families. Kia kaha.

SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is a pleasure to rise in support of the third reading of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). The bill is in the name of the Hon Tony Ryall, and I commend him for his efforts in bringing it to the House as part of Budget 2013. The bill, of course, responds to the Court of Appeal’s decision in Atkinson, a case that was initially started in 2001 in the Human Rights Commission. That is where it had its genesis, and it was fought at every step of the way by the then Labour Government and its health Ministers.

Minister Ryall said in his third reading speech that we have landed in a reasonable place, a fair place, with this legislation, and on that I wholeheartedly agree with him. I said in my first reading speech on this bill that it was a proud day for the National Party and a proud day for the National Government. Well, actually, it is a proud day for New Zealand and all New Zealanders, because we are only the third country in the world to provide legislation of this sort, and as a National member in this Government, it makes me proud to be part of it.

So congratulations to Bill English and Tony Ryall, who have brought this measure in under the tight fiscal conditions that we are facing in the country. We have got the balance about right. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to oppose the third reading of this bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). It is with great disappointment that we do so. We had thought that there were some reasonable parts in this bill when we first saw it, but on closer inspection we found that there were not.

This bill in itself is a total contradiction. On the surface it looks good, but it is not even nearly right. It is not near enough; it is so far out that it is absolutely terrible. I feel very sorry for all of those people who had such high hopes. We all know that near enough is not good enough, and this bill shows that totally. New Zealand First has always said that we recognise the right of every New Zealander to equality of opportunity. We know that in many cases the real handicap to full participation in society for people with disabilities is not the disability itself but environmental barriers, ill-informed attitudes, and inadequate support services, and this bill smacks of all of the above.

The legislation is a lost opportunity. The fairness in this legislation is an illusion. It is a little bit like smoke and mirrors. Caring is a very important issue in the disability sector, and we were looking forward to seeing this issue finally settled. It has been around on the agenda for many, many years, and we wanted a fair solution. We think it is a sad day for families providing care for their loved ones. It is disrespectful to the carers and to our disabled community. I know of families who were initially quite excited when they heard about this bill, but it severely limits the rates that carers can be paid for the very important job they do. What they have ended up with, as the Dominion Post has said, is a “half-baked” scheme, with a start date in October, and there is nothing really specific to work out what families are going to get. The opportunity was there to do more, but, actually, nothing has been done, and now nothing can be done.

The bottom line is that the Government has not got this legislation right, and I think that was shown by the number of amendments that the Hon Ruth Dyson actually placed on the Table. Unfortunately, the Hon Ruth Dyson did not get the opportunity to even discuss those amendments, which is something that usually happens in this House. The fact that the regulatory impact statement had so many pages that were blanked or, in this case, blacked out is not the regular practice of this House, and definitely does not reassure anyone—especially not the Opposition—that what we are looking at is all of the facts on this particular issue. I know that the Government members themselves, if the same situation was presented to them when they were on this side of the House, would have screamed loud and long. This is not the usual practice we have to bring legislation into the House. It is just amazing to us on this side of the House that the regulatory impact statement was tabled only this morning, and basically it has been of little use to anyone—anyone at all.

The second issue that is very perturbing about this particular piece of legislation is that the democratic process has been totally ignored. The process for this legislation needed to be fair and just. The bill needed to go through all of the stages and have public input, and have consumer input as well—something that has not been done. We in New Zealand First would have liked to see the Parliament—all of the Parliament—support this particular bill.

Disability is an issue that we all feel very strongly about, and we want the best for carers and for their family members. It is a very complex issue, and the bill did not deserve to be pushed through this House under urgency. The bill needed to go to a select committee. The Health Committee is a good committee for a bill like this to go to, so that people who are affected by the bill could have actually had some input. We would have liked to hear from family carers. We would have liked to hear from people who are directly affected by this bill. We know that family carers play a very important role in caring for their disabled family members. The focus should have been on ensuring that the outcome was positive for carers and for their loved ones. The high threshold that is required for this payment is not really fair in this case.

The third big negative is that carers will be paid less than the minimum wage, when one works it out, which is totally unfair. We would always stand up for people who are paid less than the minimum wage. Spouses and their partners are excluded, which presents challenges. We know that people get very protective about the people whom they look after, and they do not like others to look after them. Those aspects of life that we all hold precious, such as privacy, do need to be respected. Will $14,365 per carer really meet their needs in today’s day and age? I do not really think so.

The measures that are actually proposed by this bill are totally inadequate. They are not enough. Carers are hard-working. They are compassionate people working in a very demanding role. Quite often—very often, in fact—they get no thanks for the roles that they are carrying out. It is not an easy role, to be a carer. You have to provide a great service 24/7. The carers actually give up every aspect of their lives. I know of one couple who have got a 24-year-old disabled daughter. The father works from home, has not got a job out in the community, and to survive the mother goes out at night and works during the night hours. It is not easy.

Then we read in the general policy statement that in amending the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 the bill allows the Government to “reduce the on-going litigation risks, while allowing the Government to implement policies of paying family carers …” where it wishes to do so—where it wishes to do so. I think that is a real cheek, a real hit in the face for those families who are working so hard and doing such a great job for their disabled family members.

New Zealand First cannot support this bill. We would have liked to, but we feel that disabled people and their families have been really short-changed in this instance.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): I want to emphasise that the National-led Government has been working extremely hard to provide better services to disabled people. The Ministry of Health spends over $1 billion a year on a wide range of disability support services. What is more, support and payments from a number of other agencies are available to disabled people. Thanks to our most capable Minister of Health, the Hon Tony Ryall, New Zealand is leading the world in looking after disabled people. Not only that but also we are leading the developed world in developing our economy. Only by developing our economy will we have more funding for public health and disability services. This New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) will provide better services to disabled people and help develop our economy. I commend the bill to the House.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Can I start my final contribution on this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) by acknowledging the families and the people with disabilities who have been fighting for so many years to get some progress in this area. I want to acknowledge those who will be better off—slightly—as a result of this legislation, and I want to acknowledge those who will be left out by this legislation. It will be a particularly sad day for them, because the Government gave them hope that finally the solution was going to be found, and then it pulled that hope away by bringing this bill to the House. Some people have called it half-baked. I think it does not even make it to being a third baked, actually. It is a very, very poor solution. It is not even a solution to the need to support families who are looking after people with disabilities, who make that commitment 24/7, 365 days a year for year after year after year. It is a commitment that those of us who do not experience that cannot possibly imagine. We cannot possibly fathom what it takes to look after with that degree of care someone with that level of need, and everything that goes with it.

The other aspect of this bill has been the astonishing way in which the Government has been prepared to trample on democracy and human rights. This regulatory impact statement is starting to become quite famous, actually. I think it is more famous than the bill.

Catherine Delahunty: The risible RIS.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: The risible RIS, as Catherine Delahunty said. There is a song related to The Wizard of Oz in there somewhere, which might be worked on later tonight. But this really is an astonishing display of how poorly this Government considers the need for openness, transparency, and democracy. The regulatory impact statement is supposed to be the advice that we MPs can receive—impartial advice so that we actually know what the bill is about. We can take that advice to the select committee, and submitters can have a look and they can come and tell us what they think about it. Well, of course, there has been no select committee process. That actually makes this document even more important, in the absence of a select committee process.

Members of Parliament need even more information than what we would ordinarily get, because we do not get the opportunity to hear from the people whom the bill will actually affect to hear what the impact will be on them. And this is what we get. This is what we get from this arrogant, arrogant Government, which thinks it knows best and that it has the right to trample on democracy and on people’s rights. It is bad enough that we have pages blanked out like this in the regulatory impact statement, but what is even worse is that the bit that is blanked out the most is the section titled “Risks arising from other agencies’ policies” about risks associated with enacting this legislation.

Surely members of Parliament, the only people in New Zealand who get an opportunity to vote yay or nay on a bill, should have a full understanding of what the risks associated with that legislation are, Mr Macindoe. Surely we, at least, should get a full understanding of what the risks are, but we do not even get that. That is just the approach that this Government takes. Who cares about democracy, as long as the Government can get the politics right and convince people that it has done the job and actually settled this issue.

The second bit, of course, is the human rights factor. What this bill does is it says that people can no longer take their concerns to the Human Rights Commission. They could up until yesterday, but from today onwards, no, it cannot be done. So people no longer have the right to actually refer cases to the Human Rights Commission to ensure that there is no continuing discrimination. But, of course, what we know is that this bill actually establishes a new discrimination by saying to people that if you were lucky enough—if you were smart enough, quick enough—to get a complaint in before 16 May, you are OK; after 16 May, that right has been taken away from you. I think these are aspects of the fact that it is not being extended to all the families and that there is some arbitrary measure of what “high need” actually is, and that has not been fully explained in this bill. That will be something that the Minister of Health, I suppose, will calculate at some point in time, and it will be calculated based on cost, not on need. The fact that these rights to refer to the Human Rights Commission have been taken away from people, and the fact that carers will be paid less for looking after a family member than they would if they were looking after someone who is not a family member, are more discriminations that are built into this legislation. It just makes it all the more disappointing.

It would be one thing if people’s immediate reaction to this bill was that it was a bad thing, that it was introducing something that was anathema to the Opposition, that it was something that people had not been seeking, but it is even worse that it purports to be a solution to a problem that has been around for 20 years and that it was introduced as something that should be hailed in the disability sector and that the families should be really pleased to see. We know that simply is not the case. The little bit of response that we have been able to have—because we have not had the select committee process, the only opportunity that people impacted by this bill have had to respond has been to email and call MPs through the day. The response we have had has been exactly that, that initially they thought this looked quite good, but then, as the hours went by, it just looked worse and worse and worse, as people started to grasp what the bill was actually about. I think that is sad and an absolute travesty, because people expected more. The worst bit about it is just how little—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The House is suspended for the dinner break. I will resume the Chair at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Let me just begin the final snippet of my contribution on the bill by saying to all those members opposite who have spent the day saying what a wonderful deal this is for the families of people with disabilities that I can highly recommend the item on 3 News this evening, where I think you will get the facts about how the families actually feel about this. I am afraid that for the Government it is all bad news, because, as we predicted, the families have seen right through the politics, they have seen right through the spin, and they are not happy with you, Mr Ryall.

I just want to finish up by saying that this is a really, really unfortunate day for those families. They have been waiting for so long for this to happen. They have been waiting for so long for justice. They have been waiting for so long for the Government to respond to the court case that occurred last year and to come up with a full solution. What the Government has actually done is thrown them a few crumbs and then blocked anybody—any of those families—from trying to pursue this any further in the future. It really is an insult to those families who have worked so hard. I just feel sorry for them. I want to say to them that we in the Labour Party thought that the Government had done the right thing. We heard, as everybody else had, that the Government was prepared to act and it was going to pass legislation. But just as everybody else has done today, as the day has gone on and we have looked at this closer and closer, we have realised that what has actually occurred today is a travesty. It is anti-democratic, it tramples on human rights, and it has taken away the opportunity for those families to actually pursue this issue further. It is a very, very sad day, and Tony Ryall should hang his head in shame.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): It is a shame the member Iain Lees-Galloway did not watch One News. It gives me great pleasure to speak for—[Interruption] Yes, that is quite understandable. It gives me great pleasure to speak on the third reading of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I hope everyone listened to Minister Ryall’s speech at the commencement of the third reading. It covered the intent of this bill perfectly.

I have listened with sadness to the criticism of this bill and the attack on the motives of the Government, and I can hold my head high knowing that this will make a difference, and that this groundbreaking bill will lead eventually to a new environment for disabled people and their loyal, caring families. Those who live with and who work with and for the disabled know that this is progress. I look forward to this bill becoming law shortly.

CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): I rise to make a final contribution on the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). This bill is a response to the Court of Appeal decision on Ministry of Health v Atkinson, which was essentially about family carers of disabled adults. I think something that we probably would agree across the House is that caring is a critical issue in our country, and that increasing numbers of us are caring for other New Zealanders.

I want to acknowledge tonight all the carers, paid and unpaid, in this country who do an amazing job in looking after somebody else. Caring is work; whether it is paid or unpaid it is work, and often very difficult work. It is often undertaken by women, in addition to everything else that they are doing. But I also want to acknowledge tonight the families who have worked so hard to get justice and to challenge discrimination. That has led to this bill, but, sadly, this response is flawed and limited.

It is a limited response because it limits who can access payment as a family carer. It talks about “very high need” and “high need”—the definitions are still unclear, and, apparently, to be further worked on. Looking at the bit of the regulatory impact statement that does have some information in it, it would seem that at least 3,800 families are excluded because of those definitions.

The extra cost of including those people, as my colleague the Hon Maryan Street indicated this morning, could be as little as $16 million. It is about priorities. It is about priorities. Do we want to put more money into private education, or do we want to fund people who care for their family members? It is also about the Government having the resources to do important social measures like this one. I recall—as do many others, I am sure—that this National Government deliberately reduced the ability of the Government to pay for initiatives like this by cutting tax rates for the wealthiest New Zealanders and reducing Government income as a consequence. So it is a limited response.

It is also limited because the payment that family members will get is potentially lower than that provided to comparable support service workers. I would acknowledge—one positive thing in this bill—that those workers have been deemed to be employees, versus a possibility of them being given an allowance or being employed under a section 88 notice under the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act. But these family employees can still be discriminated against. They can be paid less than other carers who are not family members and who are doing a comparable job.

People on this side of the House believe in equal pay for equal work, and this includes the situation we are talking about tonight. We know across the House that that concept is not one that the Government believes in. We have just recently seen youth rates introduced, which clearly indicates that it does not believe in equal pay for equal work. Why is work done by family members of less value? Why should it be paid less? If we had had a select committee process, that is one of the sorts of issues that could have been discussed and that the people doing the work could have had their say on.

The bill is a limited response, but it will also extinguish the right to challenge discrimination under the Human Rights Act, and that is a very serious loss indeed. There are many questions that this bill raises. We have tried to raise those questions today in this House, but the process is fundamentally flawed. Instead of a collaborative process, as was offered by Opposition parties, the Government has rammed this through urgency without full information. Everybody, I think, who is listening to Parliament now knows just how inadequate the regulatory impact statement is—it is full of pages like this with no information. That is disgusting. This should have gone to a select committee, where those questions could have been answered. We should have had the information. This has been rushed through under urgency without full disclosure. We got the regulatory impact statement only today, so it is not a surprise that people are questioning the Government’s motives.

JAN LOGIE (Green): I would like to start my final speech on this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) tonight by acknowledging the fourth respondent, Laurence Carter, and the first respondent, Susan Atkinson, who have both died in the process of this coming to Parliament. I want also to acknowledge those of you out there who have been fighting for your family and your home and also for the rights of so many others in this country. Your work is something that we should respect, and I share my colleague Catherine Delahunty’s sense of disappointment and shame in our system for not having acknowledged your need and acknowledged your rights under the law, which made you have to go through the Human Rights Review Tribunal, the High Court, and then the Court of Appeal to have it acknowledged that, actually, you had the right—you had the right—in our law to be paid and acknowledged for the caring work that you are doing, which is saving all of us in our society and is benefiting every one of us. I want to deeply acknowledge you here tonight in the face of this terrible bill, which is actually undermining that right that was existing in law.

This Government has stood up and told us that we should be proud of this bill and that we are the third country in the world to do this. Actually, no. Our law, our courts, told us we were doing that. Our law gave that right. Our policy was out of step with the law because that right existed in the law, and the legislation that is in front of this House tonight repeals those rights. There is nothing to be proud of in this piece of legislation.

This bill in its intent confirms that people will not generally be paid to provide health services and disability support to their families. That is what this bill does. Further, it goes on to say that the families who have lodged complaints to the Human Rights Review Tribunal already, who have those cases lodged with the Human Rights Review Tribunal, can now get only an acknowledgment. The only remedy that they will be entitled to for the discrimination they have experienced through policy is a declaration that the policy is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That is extraordinary. And the families who have not taken a case are now no longer able to take a case. Basically, we are saying that there is no right of redress in this country for this discrimination. That is a shameful, shameful act towards the people who are making so much difference, and towards the people living with the disabilities, who are fighting such barriers to get their ability to participate in this society—and that requires care for some people. The right to have choice over who is going to provide that care is surely a fundamental right.

In response to this legislation I have heard on Facebook from people with disabilities who are feeling devastated by this and who are feeling as if they are losing hope, because they had the convention, we had a sense of progress as a country in a commitment to human rights for people with disabilities, and we now have a disability commissioner. And now along comes this piece of legislation that undermines that very right and that tells them that, actually, our Government thinks its current accounts or its books matter more than their ability. The Government says this is too expensive, but those families cannot afford this burden. We as a country can. Those families cannot afford to carry this burden any longer, and they should not have to. It takes us nothing as a country to do it.

LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): I am really pleased, actually, to be the final speaker in the third reading of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), because there seems to be one fact that really has got lost in the Opposition’s argument. It is saying that parents who care for disabled adult children are out there losing hope, but the simple fact is that this is the very first time a Government is paying them—$23 million. This side of the House is going to pay those parents, when Labour and the Greens never paid a penny, and that is the guts of it—not one penny. So some time in the future, if you get to be in Government, then you make the commitment to pay every single parent to look after a child, an adult, a parent, a spouse—actually, every child full stop—and then we will see where the country is. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time.

Ayes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): I move, That the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill be now read a first time. The Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 established a new approach to the Crown’s management of the petroleum and minerals estate. It streamlined and simplified the regime where appropriate, bringing it into line with the regulatory reform agenda, and made it better able to deal with future developments. Regulatory attention has been focused on key industry work programme deliverables that have the potential to generate significant value to New Zealand. Equally, tighter controls have been introduced so that when non-compliance arises, swift and decisive action is possible.

It has been brought to my attention that there was a significant omission in the transitional provisions for the Crown Minerals Amendment Act. This meant that a small number of existing privileges in the form of licences to mine a range of minerals that were granted under Acts that have now been repealed, such as the Mining Act 1971, would not be covered by the Crown Minerals Amendment Act. In order to guarantee certainty for the operators affected and to ensure that the Crown can manage these resources effectively, I have decided to amend the Act at this time. I also propose a small number of other amendments. The amendments that I propose to make can be summarised in four categories: those resulting from a minor policy change, those that deal with transitional issues such as the one that I have just outlined, amendments to drafting to implement policy intent, and amendments clarifying drafting where necessary.

It has been brought to my attention by officials and by the industry that operators who seek to obtain a permit to begin to explore for petroleum with a view to bringing on board a joint-venture partner at a later stage to confirm the resource through drilling and to operate a subsequent mining permit, could be excluded from the current regime. This is because the initial operator would not be able to pass the increased financial, technical, and health and safety capability assessments that the new Act requires, as these currently apply to all activities up to and including drilling a well. In order to allow these operators to be awarded permits through a competitive bidding round, I propose to include an alternative option where the assessment can be applied to the initial elements of the exploration work programme. Any permit awarded through this process will contain additional conditions to ensure that the operator, including any operating partner that they bring in, is able to satisfy the financial, technical, and health and safety requirements for the later stages of the exploration work programme. This approach ensures that the newly strengthened capability assessment remains in place but is more responsive to the way in which parts of the industry operate.

Another newly identified issue relates to the tier status of permits for platinum group elements. Tier 1 permits are those that are subject to a high degree of regulatory oversight, and a mining permit’s tier status is determined based on the estimated annual production, with different thresholds for different minerals. The threshold for metallic minerals other than gold and silver is currently set too high, meaning that future platinum tier 1 mining permits would be unlikely. I propose to lower this threshold for platinum group elements to ensure that the definition of tier 1 permits captures permits for these high-value, complex operations, as is consistent with the policy intent of the two-tiered permit management regime that the Act introduced. The proposed change is to set the threshold for platinum group elements at the same level as that for gold and silver.

As I have already mentioned, there are elements of the transitional provisions for existing privilege holders that I propose to amend. I propose to amend the Act to ensure that it applies to licences applied for prior to the Crown Minerals Act but granted after the Act came into effect in 1991. These are the existing privileges that are currently omitted from the Act. I also intend to clarify how certain elements of the Act apply to existing privilege holders, including clarifying that if there is a change of operator, they must be approved and pass the health and safety capability assessment; that data can be shared between regulators and the management of these existing privileges; and that there is consistent treatment of conditions for holders of permits in existing privileges regarding data confidentiality, reporting requirements, and the treatment of pending applications.

There are some instances where I propose to amend the drafting of the Act to reflect the original policy intent. A new offence was included in the Act relating to interference with offshore petroleum and mineral activities. The offshore area to which the new offences apply was intended to include all of the continental shelf and exclusive economic zone. Parts of the exclusive economic zone that are not above the continental shelf have been inadvertently excluded, as are parts of the continental shelf that extend beyond the exclusive economic zone, and I propose to rectify this.

The Act refers to providing information on reserves. Reserves are mineral resources that are commercially recoverable. Resources are all quantities of minerals naturally occurring in the ground, including all reserves. It is important that the Crown is able to collect data on mineral resources in order to manage effectively New Zealand’s petroleum and minerals estate. I propose that all instances of “reserves” should be changed to “resources” to ensure that regulations under the Act can set out the information on mineral resources that is provided by permit holders. I also propose to make minor amendments to the definition of “underground gas storage facility” to clarify the confidentiality provisions of certain data classes and the treatment of a permit as property. Through this bill, 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. This bill also ensures that the changes to the regime can be implemented to their fullest extent in a consistent manner across the industry.

This bill is important for the future of responsible development of New Zealand’s oil, gas, and mineral resources, and will ensure the future contribution of these resources to the New Zealand economy. I commend this bill to the House.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I think the best response to that speech is “Really?”. Really, Minister? We passed this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, only weeks ago, it is not even in force yet, and already we are back here in the House having to clean up the mess because there were so many mistakes. That is a whole new level of incompetence that I do not think we have seen in Ministers so far. I mean, it is still warm, this piece of legislation. It is still warm. The body has not cooled down, and here we are having to pass an amendment bill under urgency to fix all the mistakes in it.

Unfortunately, the reality is that this amendment bill is so shabby—and is being rushed through all stages tonight and tomorrow, and not going to a select committee—that we are probably going to have to come back for another amendment bill to fix the mistakes in this amendment bill. Well, Simon Bridges has completely outdone himself. This is a whole new level of incompetence. He has set a new record, and I challenge any Minister over there to beat it. The talent is certainly there—the talent is certainly there. It is going to be a hard task to beat it, but I think they can.

This is not a minor, technical bill, as the Minister of Energy and Resources would have us believe. The original bill, as he pointed out, significantly changed the way the Crown minerals regime worked in New Zealand. There were elements of that bill that the Labour Party supported, which included the implementation of the recommendations of the Pike River inquiry. That was really good. Unfortunately, the rest of it was nothing more than a developer’s charter with scant regard for the environment, and, as the Labour Opposition, we were not able to support it.

I want to welcome the approaches that were made by the Hon Phil Heatley, when he held the portfolio, to try to come to some cross-party agreement on this very important piece of legislation. We welcome that. Unfortunately, he was turfed out of the portfolio. We now have Simon Bridges, and Simon Bridges does not seem to want to provide that security for industry. He is desperately looking like he is deep in conversation with Tim Groser at the moment so that he does not have to listen to what I am talking about. We know that is not real—we know that is not real.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: He’s “en-Groser-ed” in that conversation.

MOANA MACKEY: He is “en-Groser-ed” in conversation. But the reality is that this is important, and it is a shame that this is being rushed through the House under urgency, with no chance to actually discuss the amendments that are being made.

The Minister talked about this new permitting regime that he is introducing. It is a conditional permit, which will allow prospectors who are not going to carry out drilling to be held to only the health and safety environmental and financial standards that apply to the activities that they are actually carrying out. Well, on the surface of it, that seems perfectly reasonable. The problem is that we are not sure that that is actually what the drafting is going to achieve, and that is the value of a select committee process. This is an area where we are at risk of opening up enormous loopholes if we do not get it right. I am afraid that what is at stake is far too precious to take that risk. There is no reason why this could not have gone to a select committee just to have a look, even for a truncated period, given that that part is the bit that we are really looking at, so that we can get advice as Opposition members on what this clause actually does and when it will actually achieve the stated aims and outcomes that the Minister has indicated.

The wording actually says that “An applicant for a Tier 1 permit for exploration who does not have the expertise or financial ability to undertake exploration drilling activities will be able to be granted a permit on a conditional basis. If the permit is granted, the permit holder will be required to undertake the committed work … and must then,—based on the results of that work, negotiate to sell all or part of its permit …”—and this is the bit that I am concerned about—“or build its own capability to do the contingent work so that it can commit to do that further work itself.”

My question would be that if we are passing this because we are acknowledging that these companies that are going to be carrying out the seismic surveying—because that is largely what we are talking about—do not have the capability up front to carry out exploratory drilling, so, therefore, are not going to be held to that higher standard, then why would we expect that they are going to be able to go on and carry out that work after they have done the seismic surveying? Carrying out seismic surveying does not give you any experience in carrying out exploratory drilling, so why is that part of the clause even necessary? Why do you not just end it at saying that they have to onsell the permit, relinquish it to Government, and that is it? That is what I understood the amendment was trying to achieve, and what the Minister has said it is trying to achieve, but that is not what the legislation says. The legislation says that a company that the Government deemed unable to meet the standards required to carry out exploratory drilling could in fact go on to carry out that drilling. I wonder why that is there.

This is the kind of question that a select committee would ask of officials, and there may be a response to that. I look forward to Jonathan Young’s speech. Maybe he can provide an answer to that question. But if the expectation is that only companies that meet those environmental health and safety and financial standards can carry out this work, then why are we leaving open a loophole for them to carry out this work in the legislation? To me that is a real danger, and in this area, where there are literally millions of lawyers all around the world being paid literally billions of dollars to find these loopholes, I want to know that our law is as tight as possible and meets those high standards. I simply do not have that confidence based on what the Minister said, which does not match up with what the law says.

But I want to come back to the area that I am really concerned about in this legislation, and that is the extension of the incredibly Draconian and anti-democratic bans on protests beyond our exclusive economic zone and out into the continental shelf. The Minister has tried to say: “Oh, that’s what I meant to do in the first place and it’s not really a big deal.” Well, the Minister might think it is not a big deal, but what we are talking about is 1.7 million square kilometres of area in the ocean. That is a big deal. When the original amendment Act was passed, “offshore area” was defined as “any area within the territorial sea or exclusive economic zone that is on or above the continental shelf”. That quite clearly means that it is our territorial waters and it is the exclusive economic zone. That is it. That was what we understood when it went through the select committee process, that is what we passed in this House just weeks ago, and tonight we had the Minister amending that to say: “ ‘offshore area’ means any area that is—(a) within the territorial sea; or (b) within the exclusive economic zone; or (c) on or above the continental shelf”.

So we have now just included 1.7 million square kilometres of deep-sea area that was not included in the original legislation. I would seriously question whether or not we actually as a Parliament have the right to pass this legislation. What we know is that we do not have the right to fisheries in the continental shelf and we do not have the right to regulate other activities above the continental shelf, such as shipping. So if we do not have those rights to regulate those activities, what makes the Government believe we have the right to regulate protesting? I want to hear the answer from Jonathan Young to that question, because I know that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website makes it quite clear that we do not have the right to regulate activities in those areas.

This brings me back to another very important area, which is that, once again, we did not have a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vetting, or a legal opinion, in relation to our international obligations on the original Supplementary Order Paper that introduced the protesting ban in the exclusive economic zone. We had the Attorney-General coming down to the House and giving a speech, trying to insinuate that he had a legal opinion on its consistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. When he was actually pushed and asked to table it, it turned out he did not have a legal opinion on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which is highly unusual for something so controversial.

Hon Maryan Street: Just his own opinion.

MOANA MACKEY: Just his own opinion, which he might think is a legal opinion. It is not the one we wanted. We wanted one that was actually applicable to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and there was no legal opinion. Once again on this piece of legislation, there is no legal opinion on its consistency with New Zealand the Bill of Rights Act and no legal opinion on its consistency with our international obligations.

Equally disturbing, there is no regulatory impact statement on this piece of legislation. So the two regulatory impact statements we have are from the previous piece of legislation that we passed just weeks ago, which do not refer to the new matters raised in this bill at all.

I am a very helpful member of the House. I do not agree with this legislation—we will be voting against it—but I like to be as helpful as I can possibly be and aid the Government, so I have drafted my own regulatory impact statement on this piece of legislation in order to advise and inform and help members, because I want to be constructive, and this is it. I have drafted it myself, and it is very much in line with the other blanked out regulatory impact statements we have seen tonight in the House. I have copies for members if they think it would help inform their speeches, just as the other regulatory impact statements have! It is very informative and it took me quite a long time—quite a long time! A lot of Vivid pen was used in the making of this regulatory impact statement, but it really meets the quality of the other regulatory impact statements we have seen in the House tonight, and I think it will go a long way to inform the debate! I am trying to be constructive, Minister. I am interested in finding multi-party solutions to these multifaceted problems, and I am here to help—I am here to help. That is all I can say.

This is a dreadful attempt by the Government to fix up a mess of a bill—

Hon Lianne Dalziel: What does it say?

MOANA MACKEY: It says “and”—it says “and”. So make of that what you will. It says “and” and that is a legal opinion, and the rest of it is redacted—redacted for Government purposes. So we will be opposing this bill. It is a shameful attempt to extend a Draconian, anti-democratic law. Thank you. I seek leave to table the regulatory impact statement that I drafted—

Mr SPEAKER: No, I am not prepared to put that leave.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I guess it is a pity that the only word that the previous speaker, Moana Mackey, could put on a piece of paper was the word “and”, because I think that, you know, in terms of the select committee process, yes, she did participate, she did contribute, and she brought her point of view across. I think what we need to understand around the adjustments that we are now proposing here with this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill is how the oil industry operates, because there are very, very few operators around the world who would be able to supply every step, every facet of technology and implementation of their programme, within the scope of their own company.

If you go to Taranaki and you see a great New Zealand company like Todd Energy up there working away, if you go on-site and look at what they are doing there in north Taranaki, you will see on their site probably half a dozen companies. You will see Schlumberger. You will see other companies that do the cementing—Halliburton. You will see drill companies. You will see all of these different companies operating. What we are saying is that instead of having just a single health and safety plan for a permit, every single step of the process in this incredibly important and risky enterprise should have a health a safety plan that is submitted and ticked off, so that we see that every step along the chain in terms of exploration and production is going to be done in a very safe way for the sake of not only the workers but also the environment in which it happens. So this is very sensible stuff.

We know that in Taranaki oil exploration has been happening since 1865, with the Alpha well on Ngāmotu beach—probably before Texas, Taranaki was hard at work in this industry. We are a great industry up there and we serve the country very well. We want to see this industry expanded throughout the country. We know what it has done for Taranaki, and for the people there and for employment there, and we believe that this is going to be something that, if done wisely, done well, and done in a very proactive and a positive way, is going to be a great benefit to all New Zealand. Thank you.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to speak to the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. As my colleague Moana Mackey said, this legislation that we passed just a matter of weeks ago has now had to be resubmitted by the Minister of Energy and Resources because it was rushed through in a way that left it completely riddled with loopholes that the Minister had not spotted and had not been rigorous enough in his oversight of this bill to discern.

But I have a particular question relating to this issue, and it is whether this bill being so rushed—the members opposite wish it to pass through all its three stages under urgency—may mean, and it is a bit of a conundrum, that it might come into force prior to the legislation that it is designed to amend. The legislation that it is designed to amend takes effect, as I understand it and as I recall it, on 24 May. Today, in parliamentary terms, although not in real-world terms, it is 16 May, under urgency. What happens if the Royal assent is given to this amending legislation prior to the other legislation having been signed off—well, having reached its implementation date?

I do not even know whether the Minister has thought that far because, looking at the size of this amendment bill to the amendment Act, one can only assume that he hardly reads past page 1, because he believes then that the officials are right and everything he does is backed up by officials, and he can blame them later. Well, I am sorry, Minister. I know this Minister is a new Minister, and I understand that it takes a little while to get the hang of the job—it is a very big job—but in the end the policy and the legislation are the Minister’s responsibility. We have not yet had the primary legislation arrive at its implementation date and we are ramming through a bill to amend that legislation. Lesson No. 1 for new Ministers is that this is not good enough—this is not good enough.

The Minister has then compounded the errors by not producing a regulatory impact statement on the amendment bill. In fact, what we have tabled are the regulatory impact statements on the original bill, on the first amendment bill, which was passed a few weeks ago. So instead of taking a leaf out of Tony Ryall’s approach to ministerial responsibility and blacking out large portions of regulatory impact statements, the Minister has become so scared of making a mistake now that he has refused to give Parliament a regulatory impact statement. So it is even worse than having a completely redacted regulatory impact statement. We do not have one at all.

So now we are getting past the boundaries of the Minister’s competence. We can see that this is a chapter of errors, from which I can only hope the Minister will learn if he wishes to remain in such a job at any time in the future, because this clearly is not good enough. We will, on 16 May, pass, because of the attrition of time, an amendment bill to an amendment Act that has not even come into effect yet.

There are a couple of other things I want to talk about, and one is the impacts on health and safety, as well as environmental rules. The previous speaker, Jonathan Young, knows a little bit about this because it is happening just offshore from his electorate and onshore at the north end of his electorate, and he assured us about how they have health and safety rules and regulations and they have to have them signed off. I have been on those sites. Yes, they do have health and safety programmes. But this legislation says that under the conditional permits, which are the ones that this amendment bill is seeking to add to the amendment bill that we passed a few weeks ago, applicants no longer have to show that they have the ability to comply with health and safety or capability or environment tests associated with exploratory drilling if, at the time, they do not intend to carry it out. So they are required to meet the standards of health and safety and environment tests only if they are committed to carrying out those activities at the start of what they are doing. At the point of needing to conduct exploratory drilling they can either sell it to another company or try meeting the tests themselves, but the risks open up a huge loophole in the health and safety provisions, and in the environmental tests, if not given proper scrutiny.

The theme of today, under urgency, is not giving things proper scrutiny. If this bill went to a select committee, came into effect after the primary legislation had come into effect, but was properly scrutinised through a select committee process, we might end up with sensible amendments and better amendments to the primary legislation than the Minister has come up with.

At the moment, quite frankly, in looking at this bill as it stands, I do not know how these people who would apply for conditional permits would recruit to their companies and organisations. I do not know how the human resources manager would advertise positions—perhaps with a name like “a job to die for”. Perhaps that would be the tagline for the human resources manager. These protections that we require in other legislation are being waived in the case of these conditional permits, and that is not good enough.

The other thing that is of major concern to me is the extension of the ban on protesting. Not only does this Government wish to control all levers of power within New Zealand; it wishes to reach out beyond our jurisdiction and exercise power outside territories that are ours and in fact subject people to a stripping of human rights to lawfully protest way beyond the exclusive economic zone and to the continental shelf, where in fact international law would apply. This extension of something that already strips away the rights of legitimate protest now seeks to extend that beyond the bounds of this Government’s legitimate jurisdiction. Thank you.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. The National Party members are obviously asleep in Parliament tonight and are not taking their calls on this very important bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. This is an embarrassment—an embarrassment to the country—because what we are seeing is an amendment Act amendment bill being introduced to Parliament, under urgency, without—[Interruption] Mr Young, you want to go back to the people of Taranaki and say that you are doing your best to have a good, strong regulation of the oil industry, but you are quite comfortable with passing these amendment Act amendment bills to fix up the messes that the current Minister of Energy and Resources has made. You are comfortable with not having any regulatory impact statement, any select committee process, any real explanatory statement, or any New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vetting. Are you comfortable with that? Are you comfortable with such a laissez-faire approach to oil regulation in this country, when we are talking about our “100% Pure New Zealand” environment, our agriculture industries, our tourism industries, and our fisheries industries?

When we are talking about the future of our economy, we should be standing up and protecting it, and having the best regulations. But instead what we see are cowboy tactics from this Government. We heard the Prime Minister say: “We won’t allow cowboys in this industry.”, but what we are seeing is cowboy behaviour from the Government benches. It is an embarrassment.

I want to touch on four points. I want to talk on the Minister’s role in this fiasco in the House. I want to talk about the shoddy process we are seeing. I want to talk about the cowboys we are encouraging with this amendment Act amendment bill. Lastly, I want to talk about what we should really call this bill, which is the “China National Offshore Oil Corporation Law Bill”, because this is what I believe this is really about. This is not a minor, technical bill. This bill is making a significant number of changes to a very important piece of our legislation protecting our economy, protecting our environment, and protecting our workers’ health and safety.

I do not want to play personal politics, because I do not believe that is the right way to go, and I am not going to pit it against the Minister. But what I am going to say is that I think we are seeing an inexperienced Minister who is in over his head trying to fix the mistakes. It is an embarrassment for this Government that an amendment Act that still has not even come into effect needs to be amended under urgency in such fundamental and numerous ways.

We are seeing a Minister who is in over his head. The legislation originally was full of holes, but the Minister was quite happy—once again, I guess, like Jonathan Young was quite happy—to not have a select committee process, and to not have a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet for the fundamental Anadarko amendment, which a former Prime Minister and a prominent Queen’s Counsel said was a fundamental breach of human rights and could quite possibly breach international law. But National was quite happy to run ahead in cowboy fashion, and here we are, seeing the consequences.

I agree with Moana Mackey. How long will it be until we are back in this Chamber, fixing the holes in this rushed amendment Act amendment bill. It still sounds ridiculous, just saying it out loud—“amendment Act amendment bill”. The process is shocking. We are seeing Budget urgency being abused, I believe. We do not see any regulatory impact statement. I know it is not a Standing Order of our Parliament, but there is a convention that an explanatory statement will actually refer to what is in the legislation, particularly in important pieces of legislation.

What we know is that clause 14 of this new amendment Act amendment bill is extending the jurisdiction of this country an extra 1.7 million square kilometres over the continental shelf. This is the subject matter of huge international tension at the moment, as we see with China, North Korea, and South Korea. We see China debating these issues over the Spratly Islands. We see the Arctic nations of Canada, Russia, and the United States arguing about these issues. Who controls the continental shelf? National, though, unilaterally has decided, under Budget urgency, to go and decide what the jurisdictional issues are over the continental shelf.

I wish the Minister of Foreign Affairs would share his opinion on this legislation, because what we are doing is an unprecedented step, a unilateral step, on something that has vexed international scholars, international legal experts, and Governments for more than four decades. National has gone ahead and made the decision, under urgency. Again, what I think we are seeing is a Minister in over his head. We see no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet. The process is shocking.

There are going to be a number of calls, because we are looking at this legislation under all stages. I do want to very briefly touch on—I know there will be a lot more time to discuss it in detail—the substantial amendment in this amendment Act amendment bill, which is that the Government is easing up, liberalising, and taking a laissez-faire approach to who gets an oil permit in New Zealand.

I understand that 2 weeks ago the Government opened up 189,000 square kilometres of New Zealand’s water to deep-sea drilling. It said that we have got the best standards in the world, world-class regulations, and that we would have only the best for New Zealand, but what the Government is doing is relaxing and weakening the standards for those who get a permit. The Prime Minister said that we are not going to allow cowboys to get permits, but what the Government is doing is allowing companies without the financial backing, or without the expertise to do things they are applying for permits to do, to get permits. This is incredibly worrying, because what we are going to see is a posse of cowboys enter New Zealand to speculate in the oil market.

The background to this bill, of course, is that the Government’s oil strategy, the Minister’s oil strategy, has been such a woeful failure in its own terms. We have seen Petrobras go, we have seen Apache Corporation go, and we have seen Anadarko delay its activities. The strategy has been such a failure to attract the big players down to New Zealand that now, just to keep up appearances, the Government is trying to bring in all the small speculators around the world, trying to get them to come down to New Zealand and speculate. It is incredibly worrying, because we do not want cowboy activity in our oil sector.

Lastly, why is clause 14 amending section 55 by amending the definition of “offshore area”? It is important, because all the Government is adding in clause 14—and it was not until about 10 p.m. last night that I actually saw why the word “or” was so important. What the original Anadarko amendment said was that the provisions, the five new offences to criminalise protest activity at sea, apply only in the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone. By adding the word “or” to extend jurisdiction over the continental shelf, what this Government is doing is expanding its powers over another 1.7 million square kilometres. Why this is significant is that last week the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and Shell announced they would be applying for a permit—where? Over the continental shelf in between New Zealand and New Caledonia.

I would not be surprised if Official Information Act requests show that the Minister probably received a phone call from one of these players saying: “Hey, did you realise your amendment Act did not cover our activities, because we are worried about protesters. We are worried about New Zealanders standing up to our interests. We are worried about Kiwis who are looking out for the environment and economy. Do something about it.” So, of course, Minister Bridges said: “Well, how high would you like me to jump?”.

What we see is an embarrassing process and a shoddy process. We are encouraging cowboys. We are seeing benefits again to the big mates of the National Party. It is a bad day for Parliament. I do not think anyone is proud to see this legislation in front of the House, but I am sure there will be a lot more to say about it. Kia ora.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): It is a pleasure to take a call on this, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. This bill is really about New Zealand’s future. It is about building on the platform that this Government has created in order to provide jobs, opportunities, and economic growth for our nation going forward.

Due to some minor omissions in the transitional provisions of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act, which we passed last month, we have had to bring this bill into the House in order to correct some of those omissions. We are doing this because it is prudent. We are doing this because it is responsible. We are doing this because it is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do because this Government is continuing to work on all fronts to ensure that these industries—the oil and gas industry and the minerals industry—are able to thrive and prosper in this country.

Although members opposite will cry foul about what is going on in Australia and how its Crown minerals are being utilised to their fullest extent, they continue to vote against bills that create jobs and opportunities for all New Zealanders. They continue to vote against jobs that are created by the construction of a convention centre. They continue to vote against jobs provided in manufacturing. They continue to vote against jobs where the provision of infrastructure and broadband investment continue under this Government. They are against it all. It is quite sad.

But what this bill also creates is certainty for operators who obtained mining licences under earlier regimes and who are covered by these transitional arrangements. It provides certainty. Certainly when you go out and talk to manufacturers and producers out in the market—I know the Labour Party do not worry about talking to those who create jobs and growth. But when I go out there and I visit my manufacturers in Maungakiekie, what do they say to me? What do they say? They say they want lower taxes. They want less compliance and red tape. They want the Government to support business in order to support jobs and growth, and they support this Government’s Business Growth Agenda.

Although members opposite continue to rail against economic growth and rail against providing for our families, it is about families. It is about giving them the opportunities to look after themselves.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: What’s that got to do with this bill?

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: That is what this bill does—it supports that economic growth agenda. Miss Dalziel does not know what the economic growth agenda is, even though she was the Minister of Commerce for so long under that shabby Labour Government between 1999 and 2008. Although Labour prefers to legislate over tax and increase red tape and compliance, this Government with this bill and other bills like it continues to promote jobs in this country. That is why I commend this bill to the House.

ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on 16 May here in this Chamber, but outside it is 17 May, my son’s 28th birthday. Happy birthday, Sam. It is somewhat surreal to be here and, although we are in the same country, to think we are on a different date line and different time zone while others are enjoying a very nice birthday in Auckland. But, having said that, we also have another young man—who is a bit older than my son, who is 28—who is now the energy Minister, Simon Bridges. We are going to give Simon the benefit of the doubt because Simon came in as the new Minister of Energy and Resources in January, and I think he has actually been doing a pretty good job. I have had a bit to do with Simon. I have brought things to Simon’s attention, and he has responded. I have appreciated the fact that he has.

In this instance, everyone wants to try and pin it all on Simon that this amendment bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, is being required, but, at the end of the day, as we all know, legislation is drafted by legal minds and advisers within the Parliament. It is not always that every single loophole is picked up. It is not always that every contingency is included. In this respect, this was a pretty big bit of legislation in terms of the Crown Minerals Act in the first place. It does not surprise us in New Zealand First that there probably were a few things overlooked. We are actually very pleased that some of these small loopholes in it are being corrected so soon and now, so that it does not just drag on and on. There is nothing worse than having bad legislation on the books and finding that it does not work and it does not help.

We are particularly drawn to the regulatory impact statement. As New Zealanders well know, New Zealand First is very supportive of good policy that will see more employment, more jobs, more economic opportunity for this country, and more regional development, in particular. In this regard, in the regulatory impact statement says that there will be an increase in permitted activity, and this could in turn lead to increased economic activity, exports, royalties to the Crown, employment, and regional development. So, obviously, if you have an increase in permitted activity, it does stimulate greater economic activity as a result. We are very supportive of that. New Zealand First wants to see New Zealand improve its performance overall, and we do want to see good, sustainable, responsible use of the resources that our country has.

We do have to recall the fact that New Zealand has the fifth-largest exclusive economic zone in the world. It is vast; it is huge. I sat on the Local Government and Environment Committee, and I was most impressed with the information that came to that committee about just the potential that is out there in our economic zone, and what it would mean to a small country of 4.5 million people if we properly explored it and if we properly took care of it, bearing in mind that we have to be very mindful that we are the guardians of a very important part of the South Pacific. It has to be done in a proper manner, a safe manner, and a responsible manner, but there still is huge opportunity out there, which this country must be looking at. So in that respect, this is good legislation to sort this out, get it right, and get it improved so that that can occur.

In reading the explanatory note of the legislation, it says: “An applicant for a Tier 1 permit for exploration who does not have the expertise or financial ability to undertake exploration drilling activities will be able to be granted a permit on a conditional basis.”, and it goes on to give the reasons applying to that. There will be instances of some companies wanting to come and invest and look at opportunities, put their money on the line, and look at ways to contribute to our economy that may need to gear up, improve their capacity, and improve their knowledge in the area, and that will be bringing on other partners and other joint venture operators with them to do this. So this is a building programme, and you cannot necessarily have the full level of expertise and capacity from day one. Again, this legislation provides for that. We do not see that as necessarily being negative, but what it does mean is that there will be opportunities for investment in this country by those that otherwise might not have considered it in the first place.

So we will be supporting this, but what New Zealand First would like to remind New Zealanders of is the fact that, out of all the minerals and out of the taking of resources from our country, often the very places where those minerals and those resources are taken from do not necessarily get the full benefit of that extraction. Taranaki has done very well. Taranaki has been the jewel in the crown of the resources industry in this country, but often that is not the way. Around the world it is often the way that the people living where the resources are taken from do not necessarily benefit. Companies benefit, corporates benefit, the Government can benefit, but not necessarily the people.

So New Zealand First has a month or so ago put out a policy, our regional royalties policy. It is very clear what we say in New Zealand First: we would return 25 percent of all Crown royalties taken from any resources or minerals or extractions back to the region that they are removed from. We believe that is a very sound and sensible policy, and it would put money back into those areas to pay for necessary infrastructure to support roading, to support infrastructure, to support the necessary capacity in those regions, to help support those very same mining, minerals, or extraction industries that are going on. We believe that would be a very, very sensible thing, which we would like at some stage in the future to get through legislation to provide for. At the same time we believe that those minerals and the extractions should be paying higher Crown royalties as well. We believe the Crown royalties that are taken at the moment are too low. We think there should be a review of this, and we think New Zealand should undertake a full comparison with other countries and ensure that we really are getting a fair—what do they say—suck of the sav, as they say in Australia. We should be getting our fair whack from what is being taken.

So we are going to support this legislation, and we hope that this will now sort out the Crown Minerals Amendment Act, that we can take this on, and that New Zealand can continue to grow and prosper as a result of future opportunities with Crown minerals.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): It is my great pleasure to stand in support of this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. It is good to follow Andrew Williams from New Zealand First, which has supported this bill. Sometimes I feel that New Zealand First has got some common sense, and it supports this bill under consideration.

I would like to clarify something for the member from the Green Party, Gareth Hughes, who just mentioned that a lot of overseas companies are withdrawing from New Zealand. I had an opportunity to meet one of the investors from Canada recently who are investing millions of dollars in oil exploration in New Zealand. He was very excited by the opportunities available over here, and investors are ready to support the exploration of the mineral opportunities available over here and come and invest over here.

While I am talking about petroleum, petroleum is the fourth-largest export earner for New Zealand. It earns about $1.8 billion in revenue and employs about 7,000 New Zealanders. This bill ensures commercial certainty for the operators who have been granted permits and this amendment bill fixes some of the loopholes that were left in the Act earlier. So I hope these opportunities will bring more investment into New Zealand and create more jobs, which will help the economic growth in New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): The title of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill speaks for itself. This is a tidy-up bill, because the last bill—now the Crown Minerals Amendment Act—was such a mess because it did not have the requisite attention paid to it. We are now passing an amending, tidying-up, improving piece of legislation that will have very little scrutiny at all—certainly not the sort of scrutiny that ought to apply in a bill dealing with an issue that is so important.

The primary purpose of this bill is to split the approval process over the different stages of oil and gas exploration—and that is approval for the health and safety as well as the environmental aspects or measures to be taken—first of all for prospecting, the second stage for exploration, and then subsequently for production. It is about splitting up that process so we have the separate process after the first one for the prospecting part of it.

It deals with the regime that is set up in the new Crown Minerals Amendment Act, but the reality is that that regime is already pretty light. If you have a look at new section 29A in the Crown Minerals Amendment Act and look at what is required for the Minister to approve a permit in terms of health and safety, in subsection (2)(b) of new section 29A it says the Minister must be satisfied “that the applicant is likely to comply with,”—not “is required to”, not “will”, but “is likely to comply with,”—“and give proper effect to, the … work programme, taking into account—(i) the applicant’s technical capability;”. It is not as the Health and Safety in Employment Act would have it, which is the industry knowledge available at the time, but the very subjective test of “(i) the applicant’s technical capability; and (ii) the applicant’s financial capability;”—so if it is a small company, it gets let off the hook—and then “(iii) any relevant information …”. A later paragraph says that the Minister “is only required to undertake a high-level preliminary assessment;”. That is actually a pretty light approach to health and safety and environmental safeguards when it comes to this important economic activity. This bill now seeks to split that up, and effectively to make it even lighter.

There is another aspect to it too, which is that the whole workplace health and safety regime in this country is undergoing change—radical change, long-overdue change, but change that has been prompted, first of all, by the Pike River disaster, and, secondly, by the review that this Government under the previous Minister of Labour very sensibly initiated, of which we have now seen the report. Both the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy and the Government’s own health and safety advisory group have recommended radical change in health and safety. So that is all in play at the moment. Now we have this bill, which is seeking to weaken an already very light regime for this industry at the permit-setting process.

One thing was very clear that came out of the royal commission on Pike River, and that was that health and safety was an issue that had to be considered at the very beginning of mining prospecting and development, not as an afterthought once production got under way. I fear that the provision in this bill that softens an already pretty weak provision in the bill that we amended just months ago is going to make that worse. In that respect, this bill may be seen as being somewhat premature in relation to the other health and safety changes that this Government and this Minister, in fact, with his Minister of Labour hat on, are already meant to be managing through.

But there is another issue that I think is even more compelling—another reason that is even more compelling—to justify why we are opposed to this bill. It comes out of something that the honourable Jonathan Young said. Jonathan Young referred to some of the companies that are active, certainly in Taranaki: Schlumberger—and, with all due respect, Mr Young did not quite get the pronunciation right—Shell, and Halliburton, with that well-known international reputation for good faith and ethical conduct.

These are giant multinational corporations. Halliburton has a balance sheet that probably surpasses New Zealand’s. We are saying to these companies: “Come here. You can do your prospecting. We will give you a permit for that. But once you have done your prospecting, don’t expect to get your exploration permit. You have to come for a second process for that.” But the reality is that we know what this Government is like when large multinational corporates turn up at its door and want a special deal. It goes weak at the knees, it quivers, and it gives up, rolls over, and has its belly tickled, and before you know it the New Zealand taxpayer is shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars to prop up the multinational. That is the way the Government conducts itself. That is the legacy of this tawdry, grubby little National Government that we have at the moment.

I can imagine Halliburton turning up—probably Dick Cheney himself, an emeritus director of Halliburton, will turn up, have a cup of tea with John Key, and say: “Oh, you gave us the permit for this bit. Give us the permit for the next bit.” Somehow Simon Bridges, the neophyte Minister of Energy and Resources and Minister of Labour, is meant to stand up to Dick Cheney and Halliburton, or Schlumberger, or Shell, and say: “Oh no, we are tough here. We are tough with our regulatory regime, and we are going to say no. You can start all over again and prove that you have got in place the health and safety and the environmental safeguards that we demand.”

The problem with that is it just is not credible. It is not credible, given the track record of this Government. When Warner Bros came here wanting a law change sponsored by Sir Peter Jackson, what did this Government do? It laid on the limos. It put on the hospitality, took Warner Bros representatives up to Premier House, wined and dined them, and gave up everything. What did the Government do when Skycity Casino took the Prime Minister out to dinner? That was it—deal done, convention centre built, a 35-year licence, and an attempt to buy Parliament and its sovereign rights. That is how disgracefully low our ethical standards are now.

And now this party in Government comes to this Parliament, all in a heated rush as part of the Budget process, and says: “Listen, we got the last set of amendments so wrong we have to get the changes in now, and, by the way, we want to make this change, which gives these multinationals the opportunity to stand over us and to leverage the partial permission we have already given them in this very crucial and sensitive industry.” That is what this Government is asking us to do. That is what this Minister wants us to do. It is tragic, it is wrong, and it is the reason we are opposed to the bill.

The oil and gas industry is a very important industry to this country and, indeed, to the world, and what we do, the way we manage it, is given close scrutiny from all around the world, from the operators and from others too. It is an industry where the industry players now expect high standards of regulatory conduct. They expect it and are not fazed by it. But they will see an opportunity if they see weakness in a regulatory authority, and if they see a Government demonstrating weakness, they will be all over it. There is nothing to lose in having a Government that is prepared to set the highest standards of health and safety and the highest standards for environmental safeguards in this industry, but this Government is going in the opposite direction. It is a great disappointment, it is wrong, it should not be happening, and that is why we will be opposing this bill.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the first reading of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, in the name of the Minister of Energy and Resources, Simon Bridges. As my other colleagues have already stated, the purpose of this bill is to encourage the safe and sensible development of Crown-owned minerals so that they contribute more to New Zealand’s economic growth and standard of living. This will be achieved by streamlining and simplifying the Crown minerals regulatory regime and ensuring better coordination of regulatory agencies. This bill also makes minor changes that do not dilute the robust performance management provisions of the regime in any way, but are necessary to improve the alignment of the regime with current industry structures and future resource development.

The bill ensures that the changes to the regime can be implemented to their fullest extent in a consistent manner across the industry. The Government’s Business Growth Agenda supports New Zealand business to grow, in order to create jobs and improve New Zealand’s standard of living. Natural resource industries are an essential part of this. They are major export earners, they contribute significant royalty and tax revenue, and they create higher-paid jobs. However, there is huge untapped potential. Many, many New Zealanders are simply frustrated that we are doing nothing to tap the huge potential of our natural resource industries. This bill is good news for them. I support the bill. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): This is a split call. I call the Hon Ruth Dyson.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Correct. Can I say that of all the excuses that I have heard this evening, the ones I have just heard from the member Jian Yang, who has just resumed his seat, were the best. They were the most innovative and the least related to the research unit notes of the National Party, and I want to commend the member for that.

We have heard some extraordinary stories about why this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, is here. Jonathan Young stood up and said with an absolutely dead-straight face: “We now know more about the industry.” This bill is amending a bill that has not even come into force yet, Mr Young. We have not learnt a huge amount more about the industry in the last 3 weeks. Well, perhaps the member might have, but the rest of the world has not—certainly not enough to bring in an amendment to the legislation. Another one of the National Party said that this bill is to correct minor omissions in the transitional provisions, and that it was prudent, responsible, and the right thing to do. This is just amazing. That was clearly in the research unit notes. And somebody else said that it was a tidy-up. Well, it certainly is a tidy-up, and the reason that it is a tidy-up is that the Minister of Energy and Resources, Simon Bridges, made a mess of the last attempt at a bill.

It is quite clear that even though Jonathan Young has learnt a huge amount about the oil industry over the last 3 weeks, the Minister has not. If he had learnt anything about parliamentary process, he would know that ramming a bill through all stages with no scrutiny by a select committee and with no submissions from the public is begging for problems. I predict that we will have the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Act (Later On in 2013) Amendment Bill 2013” coming before the House before the end of the year, because the Minister just cannot help it. He is in such a desperate hurry to get his name on the statute records that he just makes a muck-up of it. He is going to be known as the Minister who has made more mistakes in his tenure as a Minister than any other in history.

We should not have to do this. We should send the bill to a select committee, where people like Jonathan Young, who is actually a competent and good chair—he is a competent chair—could make sure that submitters came in and told us about the issues of concern, could alert us to potential fish-hooks, and could explain to us that there could be unintended consequences from legislation, and the committee could say: “Well, we’re prepared to take the risk.” or “No, we want to avoid that and we’ll change it.” But, no, Minister Simon Bridges knows it all and barrels the whole lot through under urgency without any scrutiny. That is just a recipe for disaster.

What this actually is, is a developer’s charter. It is clear that the changes that separate the consideration of the standards from the granting of the application are going to be a problem, so with health and safety standards, with environmental standards, and with the financial standards that the Government itself has set, it does not matter whether the application says no, it does not meet any of those standards; it can still be granted a licence to go ahead. That is a major mistake. Those standards are there for a reason. The Government put them in place, and I think it should make sure that they are adhered to.

The final point I want to make is in relation to something that clearly is not a tidy-up or correcting some omission or sudden change because we have learnt so much more about the industry, and that is the extension of the no-protest zone to cover the continental shelf. What arrogance of the Government. Whose space is the continental shelf? Is it ours to suddenly say that this new no-protest regime will be in place there as well? Well, that is what this legislation does. I know that tomorrow the country will wake to news of this, that this provision—which was justifiably lambasted when it first came before the Parliament just a little while ago—is now being extended. It is being extended by a significant amount; I think it is 1.7 million square kilometres. That is a huge area of continental shelf outside the exclusive economic zone where this new no-protest regime will come into place. It is ruining New Zealand’s international reputation, it is ruining our own democratic rights and protections, and I think this bill should be opposed.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am not pleased to take a call on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, because I think it shows the contempt with which this Government treats the democratic process and this Parliament that it is introducing this bill and passing it through all of its stages under urgency with absolutely no opportunity for public submissions or scrutiny by a select committee.

The Minister of Energy and Resources talked about providing certainty for operators, and that is certainly a theme that you hear a lot from this Government—providing certainty for applicants and operators. It does that by weakening the regulatory regime, weakening our environmental laws, and making it much less certain for the environment. That is what we are seeing in this bill with these proposals for conditional permits, where the holders will not have to meet the same criteria and the same standards that the principal Act establishes. The Government sets up a regime in the Crown Minerals Amendment Act and then introduces legislation to apply a much weaker framework.

The Minister also said that the bill would fix a number of technical errors in the Act. It was given Royal assent only on 19 April. It has not come into force yet, and yet it is back before the House, needing to be fixed. If the Minister and the juggernaut of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment cannot even get the legislation right and have to come back to Parliament within the month, then how can anyone have any confidence that this Government can effectively manage risky activities such as offshore oil drilling? The answer is that we cannot have any confidence that it will get it right either in the law or across our oceans.

Other speakers have pointed to this noxious little clause, clause 14, which extends the “no protest” law much farther out to sea—out 350 nautical miles from our coastline, much farther out than the very controversial Anadarko amendment did. That, of course, was another change to the law that was dropped into the House at the Committee stage with a Supplementary Order Paper, with no chance for public submissions and no chance to go to a select committee. In the same way today, the Government is curtailing people’s democratic right to protest, but without allowing the public to have a say on that. When Greenpeace put up its petition, it got tens of thousands of people objecting. But, no, the Government did not want to allow people to make submissions along those lines to the select committee, so it smuggled it through at the Committee stage, just as it is smuggling through this change under urgency.

The bill raises questions about whether there are potential breaches of international conventions like the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which enshrines freedom of navigation. When you have a look at the Ministry for the Environment website, it says that in areas where the continental shelf extends beyond 200 nautical miles from the baseline, the water itself above the continental shelf is not within New Zealand’s jurisdiction and is part of the high seas. So why does the Minister think he has the jurisdiction to extend New Zealand law to create criminal offences on the high seas? What does he think gives him the right to do that? That is one of the reasons the Green Party is opposing the bill.

Another one is because it facilitates inexperienced prospectors and pushes them, potentially, to start drilling, because if they get a tender and then they do not have the capacity to exercise it, the bill is requiring them to surrender it or onsell it. If you have put that investment into doing the exploration, why would you surrender the permit? It is tempting those permit holders to engage in very risky activities.

We have not got a regulatory impact statement, as other speakers have noted; we have got to depend on the one that went with the original Act. I would like to just quote from the explanatory note, which says: “An applicant for a Tier 1 permit for exploration who does not have the expertise or financial ability to undertake exploration drilling activities will be able to be granted a permit on a conditional basis.” So the Government, in the principal Act, set up some conditions, weak though they are, and then in this bill is allowing people to go round those conditions. It is a very weak regime that the Government is introducing in this bill.

MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): I am very pleased to take a call on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I just wanted to talk about the delivery of our Budget yesterday by our Minister of Finance, Bill English, and that fact that it highlighted something. It is that not only are we building momentum in our economy but actually we are on track to return to surplus in 2014-15. When I was campaigning in 2011, all I heard from the Opposition parties was that it was impossible to return our country to surplus in 2014 or 2015. Well, I tell you what, look at the results. Look at the results that were presented yesterday. We are on track to return to surplus in 2014-15.

We have also got in Simon Bridges a Minister of Energy and Resources who has also carried on that momentum, and who will continue that momentum in our oil and gas sector. It is an oil and gas sector that is critically important to the future economic growth of New Zealand. We heard Jonathan Young stand up and speak about his electorate of Taranaki. I was fortunate enough to visit Taranaki myself last year. The place is buzzing. The oil and gas sector there contributes the same amount to the GDP as the dairy industry does. So it is a very, very important part of our economy. I know for a fact that Northland, Rodney, and Whangarei, and Phil Heatley and Mike Sabin, will welcome and look forward to this sector growing. This bill is making a big contribution towards making sure that happens. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 68

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

Noes 49

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a first time.

Second Reading

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): I move, That the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill be now read a second time. The Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill seeks to clarify elements of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 and to rectify omissions in the transitional provisions applied to existing privilege holders who were granted mining licences under regimes prior to the Crown Minerals Act 1991 coming into effect.

The responsible development of our petroleum and minerals resources is a key element of this Government’s Business Growth Agenda, which will improve employment opportunities and living standards for all New Zealanders. I have visited a number of petroleum and minerals operations and I can tell you that I have seen at first hand the high-quality opportunities that these businesses can bring to a region—not just the highly skilled, highly paid jobs in the industry itself but the flow-on employment that comes with the necessary support industries. These all add up to make a big difference. But it is not just regions such as Taranaki and the West Coast that benefit from increased activity in this sector. All New Zealanders benefit, as we collect billions of dollars in royalties, which will go to fund new schools and hospitals and the like.

By proposing these amendments I am seeking to ensure that the new regime for the improved management of the Crown’s petroleum and minerals resources is applied effectively in order to enable us to focus on attracting and retaining world-class operators who have committed to managing and reducing operational risk and to working with the communities in which they operate in a responsible manner. During the development of the Act extensive consultation was carried out with iwi, local communities, industry, and other regulators. I am confident that the intentions within the Act were clearly communicated. I consider the proposed amendments are necessary to ensure consistency and clarity of application. I commend this bill to the House.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour): This is the part of urgency when we pretend that a bill has just been to a select committee, because normally we would be doing the second reading speech after a select committee has been given the opportunity to actually scrutinise the bill, to make sure that it does what the Government intends it to do and to make sure there are not any unintended consequences. Instead, here we are, giving second reading speeches a matter of about 30 or 40 minutes after we gave the first reading speech. Unfortunately, such is the way with this Government; it does not really care about the unintended consequences. All it knows is that this is the only plan it has—this and asset sales and pokie machines. That is it for the economy. If this does not work, it is kind of screwed—it is kind of screwed. So it is going to do anything it can to grease the wheels and do everything possible to make sure this stuff happens, regardless of the risks to the environment—regardless of the risks to the environment—because it does not have a plan B. The Government talks about jobs. Does it realise that there are actually other industries in New Zealand that create jobs and that are desperate for Government assistance, like, say, the manufacturing industry, or like, say, the cleantech and renewable energy sectors? There are actually other industries that could be used to create jobs.

I want to comment on what Mark Mitchell and also Jonathan Young said, when they talked about Taranaki and about how great this industry has been for Taranaki. You do realise that that happened under the existing regime. All of that development happened under legislation that actually provided adequate environmental protection. It does not need this shabby, weak—weak—legislation in order for it to go ahead. If the existing legislation was so difficult that the oil and gas industry would never be able to operate, then how did the industry in Taranaki happen in the first place, Mr Young? I look forward to your speech answering that question, just like you answered all the other questions.

The reality is that it can go ahead under the legislation that is already there, and Mr Young knows it. It is just that those members want to make sure that stuff that perhaps might not have got through that legislation because it is too risky does go ahead. On that balance, it is too environmentally risky and risky with regard to health and safety, but they are quite happy for that stuff to go ahead because this is the only plan they have got, and that is the sad reality of what we are passing in the House today. As I said in my first reading speech, you know, the body is not even cold yet on the original bill, which we passed 3 weeks ago, and we are here having to clean up the mess that the Minister of Energy and Resources made and fix all the mistakes he made in that piece of legislation.

One of the things that the Minister is doing in this piece of legislation—and he is pretending that he meant to do it the first time round, but apparently he just accidentally left out 1.7 million square kilometres in the original bill, and there is a minor technical amendment to make sure it is included in this one. Well, the Minister might say that it is about ensuring health and safety, and ensuring safety on the high seas. Well, if that is the case—I asked this question all through the debate on the original bill and I would like an answer, please, from the Minister or anyone else—and if safety is the issue, then why does it not cover every vessel? Why is it only vessels that are protesting, and then only vessels that are protesting against oil and gas operations? If it is about safety, then surely that should apply to every vessel, in which case, instead of this bill, or maybe as well as this bill, why did we not have a bill extending the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act, which deal with the issue of dangerous behaviour in our territorial waters, into the exclusive economic zone and maybe the continental shelf—even though there are questions about our ability to do that? Why did we not have a bill in the urgency motion doing simply that?

I want to put on record my disappointment with the industry and how it has responded to this particular clause. I was really disappointed to see the Petroleum and Exploration and Production Association come out in support of it, because I have got a lot of time for that association. It is engaging, it is representing its industry—good on it. I was really disappointed to see it come out and support this, rather than saying “We think that the existing regime in the territorial waters should be extended out, so that everyone is subject to the same standards of behaviour and we are not just targeting one group.” It would have been a good response from the industry to say “Yes, we want this dealt with, because it does need to be dealt with, but we want it to apply to everyone and not just apply to only vessels protesting against deep-sea drilling.” That would have been a good response from the association and I have to put on record my disappointment at the position it took over that.

But I want to thank Dennis, who has Facebooked me since my first reading speech to point out something that I had not picked up on, which was, in fact, another change. It is not just extending it into the continental shelf; this same targeted regime now applies in our territorial waters, and our territorial waters are not all, actually, above the continental shelf. So this takes this protest ban right up to the beaches—right up to the beaches—in New Zealand, and that was not the case under the amendment that we passed 3 weeks ago. So I want to thank Dennis for Facebooking me to point out that I had missed that, because that is a very good point. This bill does not just extend it further out into the high seas, but it actually extends it right up to the beaches—right up to the beaches—and that simply is appalling. Not only that, but what it means is that in our territorial waters above the continental shelf we now have two regimes in place. Which one are the police going to prosecute under? Are they going to prosecute under the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act, which is what the position is currently, or are they going to prosecute under this new law that we are bringing in, which targets just protest vessels? Which one? Which one are the police going to use? That is just the most ridiculous situation to find ourselves in.

The final point that I want to make is that no member on that side of the House—no Minister, no National Party member who has spoken—and I am glad Tau Henare is here, because he will be able to inject a bit of clarity into the debate, and maybe answer these questions that his colleagues are refusing to answer. On the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website it makes it quite clear that New Zealand has no rights to legislate in the column of water above the continental shelf. We do not have any rights to manage the fisheries, and the ministry actually says that we do not have any rights to manage any activities, such as shipping. So if we are not allowed legally—and I am glad that Mr Tim Groser is in the House, because he is an international expert. He operates at the highest levels of international negotiations. This is a man who knows what he is talking about. We are so grateful to have this visiting international expert in the House tonight. I would hope that he would take a call—

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Oh, be kind.

MOANA MACKEY: I am being very kind. That is in all sincerity. I would hope that he would use—

Simon O’Connor: That’s not a word we use on Labour.

MOANA MACKEY: Mr Groser, it is your own members who are laughing, assuming that I am joking. I am not actually joking. I would hope that Mr Groser would be able to provide some clarity, because what we are being told by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Mr Groser, is, in fact, that we do not have any right to legislate this way in the waters above the continental shelf. If we cannot legislate to control shipping activities, how is it that apparently we are allowed to legislate to control shipping activities that are protesting? I really look forward to an answer to that question, because this is a serious issue for New Zealand’s reputation. I mean, we are going to look like idiots if we start passing laws in parts of the world that we do not have any right to pass laws in. That is embarrassing. Then we will be back here in another few weeks, passing the third Crown Minerals Amendment Act Amendment Act Amendment Bill in order to fix up all the mistakes from the last Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I mean, it just gets to be farcical.

This is why bills like this need to go to a select committee. Mr Lotu-Iiga might not think that it is a serious question, to know whether or not we are actually overstepping our jurisdiction as a Parliament in passing laws that actually might not be legally enforceable and might make us look completely idiotic on the world stage, but on this side of the House we take those things very seriously. Mr Lotu-Iiga might think that it is OK to have two completely separate regimes in place in our territorial waters so that police will not know which one they are meant to apply when dealing with a complaint—in fact, maybe he could tell me now. Which one would it be? Will it be the Maritime Transport Act, or will it be this bill? Nod and smile, Mr Lotu-Iiga, nod and smile. That is right. That is the National Party approach to everything—smile and wave, nod and smile. This is an utter mess. It really is. The more you look into it, the more you peel back the layers, the worse it is.

What makes this even worse is that the reasons we are doing this are not laudable at all. They are not because the Government wants to see safety and good practice. That is not why we are passing this. We are passing this because there is a current permit that the Government is considering between a Chinese company and Shell that is over the continental shelf between New Zealand and New Caledonia. That is why we are passing this. I would like the next National Party speaker to assure me that a deal was not done with those groups, that this is not being done because they asked for it in return—

Hon Chester Borrows: A deal, or a grubby little deal?

MOANA MACKEY: Well, you have to say it is a hell of a coincidence, Mr Borrows, that here we are passing a bill to ban protesting on the continental shelf, which we do not even have the power to do, right at the time when we have our first permit for prospecting on the continental shelf. That is a hell of a coincidence, Mr Borrows. I am afraid I am a lot more cynical than you are. I am afraid that I believe that where there is smoke there is fire, and in this case I definitely think it is not a coincidence. The sad thing is we are doing this because the Government has no plan B, and it wants to make sure its plan A goes ahead no matter what the risks are.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): The previous speaker, Moana Mackey, talked a lot about reputation and about people looking foolish and things like that. Let me tell you that I would have liked to see a particular bill go to a select committee; it was called the Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill, which passed under urgency in 2 days. It was to cover off $800,000 of spending that the previous Labour Government did on the pledge card. That lady was there and she voted for it. So all of this talk about reputation and looking like an idiot—come on! The pot is called black.

Coming back to this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, and what—

Moana Mackey: Is that the best you’ve got?

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Confess. Confess.

JONATHAN YOUNG: Come on! Come on! No, no, no—hey, hey, hey. Obviously, the member over there has had a brain fade and cannot remember about—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Order! Order! I do want to hear what the member is saying, so please quieten it down.

JONATHAN YOUNG: Thank you. I was saying that the member obviously has a brain fade and cannot remember what is happening. This bill touches on some important aspects of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act. One of the particular areas that I want to raise is this area regarding iwi engagement. During the select committee process this was very important. It was raised by a number of submitters, and is something that New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals is taking extremely seriously. We believe that, in going forward in terms of petroleum exploration and mining, iwi engagement is a very important part of that process.

We know in Taranaki that the companies that operate there have developed very good relationships with iwi, and this is setting a model for other parts of the country. We know that these aspects of inclusion in our society—

Andrew Little: How are the residents of Tikorangi feeling?

JONATHAN YOUNG: I would like to just remind Mr Little—thank you very much for your assistance in pronunciation—about a couple of your comments around Taranaki just last week. I think you really need to understand that crude is not carried across Mount Messenger as you stated. So if you do not mind, that is a reminder about some of those accuracies in terms of your knowledge of Taranaki. That is good to know. By the way, the 30 metres of bridge that we are fixing up there is actually 5.3 kilometres of road as well.

Andrew Little: There’s another 100 kilometres to go, Jonathan. That’s the problem.

JONATHAN YOUNG: Well, we are always working on that, let me tell you. We have to say that part of the answer—

Hon Chris Tremain: Does that member know where Taranaki is?

JONATHAN YOUNG: I do not think so. I do not think he does. Part of making this country prosperous and positive is legislation like this, and we are pleased and proud to make sure that every “t” is crossed and “i” is dotted. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call—[Interruption] Order! I am calling the Hon Maryan Street.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, and thank you for calling for order. It is obvious that when the party opposite gives the women the night off those members do not control themselves quite as well as they usually do.

Andrew Little: Bring back Jackie Blue.

Hon MARYAN STREET: Bring back Maggie Barry! Rising to speak to the second reading just a very few minutes after I have spoken to the first reading of this amendment Act amendment bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, I want to pick up on a few comments that have been made.

Although it was absolutely irrelevant to the debate in hand, I think it is only fair, because the previous speaker, Jonathan Young, introduced it, to give some rebuttal. Jonathan Young referred to a piece of validating legislation that he thought would cause us to cringe, but can I just say that we paid back that money, not like the National Party, which did not pay its GST on its expenditure. So let us just be clear about who is the greater sinner in this competition. Let us put the record straight. Labour paid the money back—Labour paid the money back—and the GST on the National Party’s bill in that election still has not been paid, to my knowledge. It forgot to calculate it, and then it did not cough up when it was told it should. However, that is the end of that irrelevant interjection from Jonathan Young, as far as I am concerned.

The only reason the Government is pushing through this amendment to an amendment to an Act is that it has very little in its tool box with which to energise—and I use the word advisedly—this economy. If it is going to pick up this economy, it has three strategies only. One is pokies. We can get money from pokies, says Mr Key, and that will be a fillip to the economy. Secondly, it can allow any multinational that wishes to, any multinational that is prepared to engage in extractive industry in this country and gives us a sideways glance, to come into this country and to take advantage of whatever laws have been sold most recently for the privilege of them to do so. The third strategy the Government has, of course, is asset sales. It is pretty impoverished when it comes to a plan to lift this economy: asset sales, pokie machines, and multinationals for whom we will prostitute our legislation at every turn, according to John Key, because a deal is a deal is a deal.

And so we have this tawdry little amendment bill coming in to amend an amendment Act, which was passed only a few weeks ago, which will facilitate all and any extractive industry, multinational, to come in and take as much as they can—in the course of which Jonathan Young assures us there will be lots of jobs created. Well, the jobs are going to be created on the basis of the risk to the environment that this shabby piece of legislation represents; or at the risk of infringing international law, which this shabby little bill also represents; or at the risk of watering down health and safety standards so there is no guarantee for workers who engage in the extractive activities, and particularly the ones that go on beforehand—surveying activities, seismic surveying, which goes on prior to any exploration.

This legislation that I mention risks breaching international law, and that is unacceptable. The Minister of Energy and Resources has, for much of this debate tonight, been in deep in conversation with the Hon Tim Groser, who, of course, is a great expert in international law, especially as it relates to trade. However, he is not such an expert, I think, in other international law. When the amendment bill was first introduced, a legal opinion provided by the international environmental lawyer Duncan Currie raised serious concerns about consistency with New Zealand’s international obligations and with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

What we had in that process, apart from the fact that any other or contradictory legal opinion is never taken into account by this Government, was again the Minister playing ducks and drakes with the process. That is a kind way of putting it, because what he was doing was basically covering his own incompetence. He did not mention the proposed changes that would violate international law—that is, the protesting ban—until the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill came into the House during the Committee stage. So this big abandonment of civil liberties and the right to protest peacefully was taken away by a Supplementary Order Paper, introduced by the Minister late in the piece.

Either the Minister does not know the rules, or he is deliberately flouting them, because now we have another process that says that this piece of legislation to amend the amendment Act has to go through under urgency and has to proceed in double quick time. That is evidenced by the shortness of the speeches that the National Party members opposite have been instructed to give.

The point about extending the ban to protest is the point about overreaching our jurisdiction—that suddenly we seem to be able to pass laws that cover not only our economic zone but an additional 1.7 million square kilometres. The Minister says that we are quite wrong about the denial of human rights. Well, I would like to say once more to the Minister that if, out in the waters over the continental shelf—which I think this Minister mistakenly thinks we can legislate about; however, I will leave that one there for now—there is a standoff between a drilling ship and a protest ship, and the protest ship stops at the requisite 500 metres from the drilling rig, and the exploratory or drilling vehicle ship moves towards the protest ship, then who is to be at fault? Who is infringing the 500 metres? Will they simply say: “The protest ship clearly is not staying 500 metres away from us, and we are going to keep advancing until we drive them back on to the shore.”? Who, then, is the culprit, and who infringes the 500 metres, Mr Bridges?

This is sloppy legislation. This will have to be corrected again when the Government wakes up and realises that there are people who know about international maritime law, even though our Minister does not. This will have to be amended again. So the amendment bill to the amendment Act will have to be amended further. Thank you.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to take a call in the second reading of this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. Obviously, we had the first reading wrapped up only about 20 minutes ago, so under urgency and under the auspices of the Budget this Government has decided to ram through the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill.

In this call in the second reading I want to talk about the lessons. Obviously we are not learning the lessons of why it is important to have a deliberative, considered approach to passing legislation, because we are going and fixing up the messes Mr Bridges saw in the original Crown Minerals Amendment Act. But I want to talk about the lessons we should learn from our petroleum and gas history in New Zealand.

Let us learn the lessons of McKee 13 and the well blowout we saw in Taranaki. Let us learn the lessons of the Kapuni soil and groundwater contamination we see affecting Taranaki right now because they decided back then, in good old Kiwi fashion, that when you have got produced water containing toxic chemicals and hydrocarbons, you do not need to store it in a metal drum or store it in a secure facility. They dug a hole—a blow-down pit, they call it, or a frack pit—and they just stored the produced water and the toxic chemicals in the pit. Surprise, surprise, now we have groundwater contamination that cannot be remediated, and literally hundreds of cubic metres of soil are being trucked to Wellington to be remediated.

Let us learn the lessons from the lack of inspectors, which has had tragic consequences in our country’s history. After the Pike River tragedy the Government announced it would be increasing the number of well and oil and gas facility inspectors. Up until then, when it comes to oil and gas, we had one inspector covering the entire country—one inspector covering all the onshore and all the offshore oil and gas facilities in this country. The Government, of course, raised it to three. I understand that this is still woefully inadequate. When you look across the world you see Australia has one inspector for every three installations, Britain has one for every two, and Norway has an inspector for every single facility.

So if we are going to learn the lessons of some of the bad and shoddy practices we have seen in this country and actually come together to have stronger regulations, stronger protections for our cities, our towns, our environment, our people, and our workers, let us have that conversation. Let us learn the lessons from when practices have been done badly.

And that is the tragedy, because under urgency this Parliament could be introducing legislation to make oil and gas activities in New Zealand safer. We could be passing legislation to be introducing relief wells, so that one was on hand if an accident happened. As we have seen in Australia, as we have seen in America, this is the only way a deep-sea well blowout or a well blowout has been contained. We could be talking about introducing liability, because although the Government put the liability bill on the operators, it requires them to carry only $30 million worth of insurance. When you look across the world, oil spills have cost tens of billions of dollars, yet the National Government says operators need to have only $30 million of insurance. We could be talking about increasing the penalties. Despite lobbying from the Green Party, we have seen the exclusive economic zone legislation penalties being increased to $10 million, which is still woefully inadequate when you talk about a potential $40 billion bill in the Gulf of Mexico. The Resource Management Act still has a maximum corporate penalty of only $600,000.

Why are we not talking about insurance? Why are we not talking about penalties? Why are we not talking about making sure that capping technology is on hand to New Zealand and that we have adequate oil pollution funds building up for when accidents happen? Why are we not talking about signing up to international conventions like the bunker convention and the new series of conventions we could be signing up to in order to protect the taxpayer from liability?

That is the ultimate tragedy: we are not talking about those things. We are talking about making it easy for cowboy speculators to come down to New Zealand and drill and risk our environment. This is why I am opposed to deep-sea drilling. I am not opposed to on-shore or shallow drilling. The Green Party is not opposed to that. It is not in our policy. We would obviously like to see a transition to real jobs for Kiwis and a transition strategy because we are concerned about the environment, but we are not opposed to those things. We want to see good regulations for those workers, who are mostly in Taranaki at the moment.

But when it comes to deep-sea drilling, when you are drilling past 200 metres, and maintenance and dealing with an accident can happen only when you have advanced robotics or submarines, we are talking about a different kettle of fish from what we have done in Taranaki over the last 100 years. When you are drilling past 200 metres, which is what Anadarko is going to be doing off the New Zealand coast this year—of course, the very same company that recently paid out $4 billion for its involvement in the Gulf of Mexico spill. Let us have a conversation about risk and whether we are prepared to deal with a spill.

The Government and the industry cannot guarantee we will not see a catastrophic well blowout in New Zealand’s waters. What we are talking about when you are drilling down as deep as 1,500 metres—which is what they want to do off my coast in Wellington, in the Pegasus Basin—is close to freezing conditions where the pressure would crush a person in an instant, where it is completely black. Yet this is where the oil is gushing out at close to boiling point, where the oil has to be heated across literally kilometres of hardened, strengthened cables—because, of course, otherwise the cables would snap under the fantastic pressures of that depth—and where you are having to heat the oil so the methane crystals do not crystallise and break the cables. We are talking about operating at the frontiers of technology, at the frontiers of geology, and at the frontiers of geography in some of the most hostile marine environments in this country.

So let us talk about what we are doing to prepare ourselves, to get ready if an accident happens, because when you look across the world, accidents have happened. As the presidential commission in the United States pointed out, it is akin to the nuclear industry when you are doing deep-sea drilling in the sense, of course, that not every well is going to have an accident, but when an accident happens, the consequences are catastrophic. What would a spill in New Zealand mean, when 65 percent of our population lives within, I understand, 5 kilometres of the coast and when our entire economy depends on the environment—our fishing, our tourism, and our aquaculture?

When we look across the Gulf of Mexico, the exclusion zone from their oil spill was almost as large as the entire North Island. Imagine that happening and oil washing up at Pīhā or the Bay of Plenty. Of course, they already know the effects. It is not academic to people in the Bay of Plenty. They have seen it, they have touched it, and they have smelt it, and that was only 300 tonnes of oil. What we have seen in the Gulf of Mexico was 600,000 tonnes of oil. What we saw in America was that they had more than 46,000 people working on the spill response. New Zealand has 400. They had 46,000; we have 400 trained responders.

When you look across at America, they had more than 1,000 vessels working on that spill. I am sure the Minister can tell us how many boats Maritime New Zealand has. It has got three skimmers the size of dinghies, and it refuses industry and union calls for a multi-purpose rapid response vessel. Look at the difficulty we had dealing with 350 tonnes of oil from the Rena and the requirement of flying in literally two aeroplanes full of extra equipment. The Gulf of Mexico spill saw 600,000 tonnes of oil, yet this Minister’s oil preparedness plans are prepared to deal with a spill of only 5,000 tonnes. That is the figure the Government has nominated to be prepared for. It is not on, because it cannot guarantee the risks when operating in hazardous environments, where every extra hundred metres you are going magnifies the consequences and the difficulty of dealing with a spill.

But let us talk about the economics, because this is what the Government likes to focus on, of course. Let us talk about the economics, because what we know is that under National we have got the fourth-lowest royalty plus tax rate in the world. Under National it will be easier to bring in foreign workers. We know the oil sector has got the lowest job-producing potential per percent of GDP of any sector of this country’s economy. What we know—and the Government’s own reports say this—is that it expects 90 percent of the profit to flow offshore. So for all that environmental risk threatening our economy and our environment, we are going to see hardly any jobs, hardly any taxes, and hardly any royalties, and most of the profit is going to flow offshore.

It is not a smart economic strategy, so let us talk abut how we can develop a smarter strategy. I am glad to see the Minister of Finance in the Chamber. I see him doing the numbers. Of course, the National bench is obviously a bit worried for his position after that dire Budget, because what the finance Minister said was that we are going to see our current account deficit blow out to 6.5 percent of GDP, second only to Turkey in terms of the lowest grade in the OECD, and we are predicted to be the worst. We see debt almost hitting—blowing out to a net level of more than $200 billion. That is $43,000 for every single New Zealander. We are seeing more debt, more assets being sold, and more deals for the mates. The only thing we are not seeing is more jobs.

So this is what we should be having a conversation about: how do we grow a prosperous economy? The answer is not looking to the past. The answer is not looking at the bottom of the ocean and hoping that someone from a foreign country will drill and not damage our environment. Let us look at the clean-energy potential we have got. I mean, this is what PricewaterhouseCoopers says is a $22 billion opportunity. This is what Pure Advantage says is a $6 trillion global industry that we can get a slice out of. This is an industry where we could be building tens of thousands of jobs—building exports and sustainable jobs. What we know is that clean-energy jobs have got four times the job creation potential of dirty old fossil fuels. We are going on the wrong path, and this bill is a huge step backward, a huge missed opportunity. Let us look to the future, not to the risky old, dirty past. Kia ora.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): We just spent the last 10 minutes listening to a Chicken Little speech that was bereft of ideas, bereft of vision, and bereft of any plan for this economy and the people of New Zealand. This gentleman who just sat down, Gareth Hughes, said: “Where are the jobs?”. Well, I called up Clint before I got here, and I asked him: “How many jobs are there in New Zealand?”. The answer is there are 2,300,000 jobs currently in New Zealand, the most people that have ever been employed in this country in our history—the most in our history. Gareth Hughes asked where the jobs are, and, if you look at the SEEK website, there are over 15,000 jobs available in this country. The unemployment rate has dropped from 6.6 percent to 6.2 percent. He talked about frontiers and how this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, needs to push the frontiers of oil and gas exploration. Well, let me share with that member some facts—a few simple facts.

Petroleum is the fourth-largest export earner in this country—the fourth-largest export earner. Of the $37 billion of exports every year—and that is the estimate for 2012—$1.8 billion in revenue comes from the oil and gas industry. It employs—and Mr Young here knows—over 7,000 people across this country. This Government is out there trying to create jobs through convention centres, through creative industries, through the dairy industry, and through wood, meat, fish, aquaculture, horticulture, and agriculture. There are many industries across this country that actually produce jobs and export revenues for New Zealanders—for New Zealanders. If he took the time out to get away from his sheltered chardonnay socialist habitat here in Wellington and came and visited the provinces, or if he came and visited the cities like Auckland, he would realise that there are people out there making things work, producing things, and earning a living for this country. This bill supports the Business Growth Agenda of this Government. This bill supports job opportunities and employment for our people to support their families and to support their kids. So I support this bill, and I commend it again to the House because it is an important bill going forward.

ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call in the second reading of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. This is becoming bigger than Texas, effectively. It has been blown out of all proportion, and all sorts of spurious arguments are being thrown in the mix when, basically, what we are talking about here is sorting out a piece of legislation that, unfortunately, was originally drafted with an oversight in it. That oversight now needs to be rectified so that the original legislation, which is to come into effect on 24 May—next week—can come into effect in the correct manner. If it is not, it impacts on the original legislation, and it means that the original legislation is left wanting. It means that New Zealand and our economy and the opportunities within it are left wanting, as well.

If we could just sort of simplify it down, what the original legislation overlooked was the fact that in exploration, in mining, in looking for resources, often, there is the equivalent of a rugby team or a soccer team or a football team in respect of talent scout - type organisations that are looking for the potential and the opportunities in this particular industry. They are the sort of scouts—the ones who are going out there in advance—who are looking at what is the potential of the minerals or of the resources. But they themselves do not necessarily have the full capacity, the full technical ability, or, indeed, the financial strength to undertake the actual mining, drilling, or exploration that subsequently ensues. What they do is they set the parameters, perhaps secure the permits, and do all the initial exploration, the initial findings, the research and geotechnical investigations, and all these various things to ascertain whether there is a future. If there is a future, things can then be escalated. Then, as it says here in this legislation, you have farminees and farm-outs. Then it might go to the next stage, where a much bigger operator will come in and take over and take it to the next stage.

Unfortunately, the original legislation did not allow for that exploration-type work to be approved under the original legislation. Effectively, therefore, on 24 May, in a week’s time, many of those exploratory companies will not be able to continue to operate in this manner, and it would be an impasse. That would not be good. That would put a great deal of uncertainty within the industry, and, indeed, it could pull the rug out from underneath some opportunities that are occurring, in terms of mineral exploration and research in this country.

So this amendment bill improves the legislation. It gets it right. It sorts out what was an error in terms of the original drafting. The original legislation was here in the House only 3 or 4 weeks ago. New Zealand First supported it at that time. We do believe in economic development in this country. We do believe in sustainable, responsible development of our resources. That would not be the case if this amendment bill was not passed, because it would simply kneecap the original legislation if this bill was not passed, and it would make it very difficult for the original legislation to proceed as it was intended by this House. So New Zealand First will support this bill. We do believe that it is in the interests of the New Zealand economy and New Zealanders that this bill does proceed, that this is sorted out and put on a correct footing, and that the interests of the overall economy are put first in this.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): The bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, which we are debating tonight is because of some of the omissions that were made in the transitional provisions of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act. This bill is another bill that is in line with National’s Business Growth Agenda. This will provide opportunities for New Zealanders, and we want to ensure that permit holders are confident that what they are doing is backed by the Government. We are in the early stages of development of our oil and gas natural resources, and I hope that this bill will ensure that confidence to the permit holders. I commend this bill.

ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): Again, I rise to take a call on this very important Crown Minerals—it has got so many different names and amendments to it that it is confusing. I take a call on this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. As my learned colleague Moana Mackey has pointed out, we are amending a piece of legislation that we passed barely 2 months ago, such is the nature of the management of legislation by this Government in this House. But what we have heard so far in this second reading debate are the trite, old National Party platforms that are vacuous rhetoric, ill-informed, with no evidential basis at all. Of course, it is compounded by the fact that we have a Government that is so terrified, so scared, of the citizens of this country that it is now routinely ramming important legislation through this House without any proper oversight from select committees, and without the ability of members of the New Zealand public to have their say. We should not be passing legislation on the oil and gas industry, on Crown minerals, and on the extractive industries without the assistance and the input of the industry and of those people affected by it.

Jonathan Young talks long and large about the good people of Taranaki. There are people in Taranaki who are starting to express concern—grave concern—about some of the oversight of the industry and the way it operates in Taranaki. The people of Tikorangi are expressing concern. Jonathan Young knows what the issue is with the Kōwhai C well, and he knows what the residents’ concerns are, but they do not get a fair hearing. Well, they do get a fair hearing from one person—the list MP who works in Taranaki, and that is me. At least Taranaki has the benefit of one MP who spends his time up there listening to the citizens and what the people have to say. I spend a lot more time in Taranaki than the Minister of Finance spends down in Dipton, I can tell you that much. I do not have multiple houses to show for it, either. The people in New Plymouth are lining up at my constituency office there in New Plymouth, ready to meet me and talk to me and tell me their concerns.

Most of those concerns are their anxieties about a Government they perceive as failing them—failing to provide them with the assurances and the oversight that they, as responsible citizens, are entitled to expect of a Government that is truly acting in their best interests. They have now realised—many New Plymouth residents, many Taranakians—that that is not the sort of Government that we have. If it was a Government that was genuinely interested in the public interest, we would not be having important legislation on important industries rammed through this House in a matter of hours, and without the benefit of the input of the citizens, and, indeed, of the industry. I would want to hear from Schlumberger and from Shell and from Halliburton and from Todd Energy. I would want to hear from them about the impact of this legislation, whether it is, in fact, any use to them to have a two-stage approval process for their permits, as they go from prospecting to exploration. Let us hear from them, because we certainly do not have a regulatory impact statement we can refer to, apart from Moana Mackey’s very helpful one. It is certainly more helpful than the one we saw earlier today.

I myself went looking for a regulatory impact statement on this bill earlier today, and I could not find one, but what I did find—and I cannot find it now; look at that. One comes to this House so well prepared! I went looking for a regulatory impact statement and I found this blank document. Then I realised, of course, that it is not the regulatory impact statement; it is the list of achievements of this Government over the last 4 years. That is what we are dealing with, because this Government does not care, and we have seen it so often. We saw it at the beginning of last week, we saw it last night, and we are seeing it again now. This Government does not care about due process.

We should not take lightly the issues that are in this bill. They are issues, firstly, of health and safety, and that is a matter that is very dear to my heart. I know that there are members in this Government, there are former members of Cabinet in this Government, who took the issue of health and safety very seriously. We are yet to see whether the present Cabinet, and whether other members of this Government, take health and safety seriously. But this bill, and the roughshod manner in which it is being rammed through this House, does not give me any comfort and will not give comfort to the many workers in the oil and gas industry, the many men—they are men—who work on the rigs and do the dangerous work at the top of the derricks and out on the high seas. They will not be reassured by the way this Government is handling this piece of legislation.

The best that Sam Lotu-Iiga could come up with, by way of comparison, was the wine industry—that somehow the oil and gas industry is comparable to the wine industry. Well, there is a big difference. When they talk about strings in the wine industry, they are talking about the things that prop up the grapes. In the oil and gas industry, the strings are the lines—the pipes that go down into the well as part of the drilling system. That is the difference. You know, we are not talking about winemaking here. This is tough work. It is hard work. It is complex technology. It is dangerous work, and the workers in that industry are entitled to know that the oversight of it and the oversight of health and safety in the industry are the best available as world’s best practice. The Government has set a standard, an ambition for itself, or at least the committees reporting to it have—the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy and the recent health and safety advisory group that reported, which was chaired by Rob Jager, the head of Shell New Zealand, who himself understood that health and safety in this country is not good. The industry is entitled to know that this Government genuinely wants world’s best practice when it comes to health and safety oversight. This bill does the opposite. This bill treats it shabbily. This bill treats health and safety cheaply. It is not a good sign. So we do not take comfort that this Government and this neophyte Minister of Labour, parading as a Minister of Energy and Resources tonight, understand the fundamentals of health and safety, either.

Of course, the other aspect of this bill is its extraordinary extension of jurisdiction across the continental shelf, as it relates to its previous anti-protest, anti-dissent law that now extends its coverage as well. And it just illustrates what this Government is all about. This is a Government that, sadly, has taken us back to 1951. It hates dissent, hates anybody with an alternative view, and cannot bring itself to collaborate with any other interests, because it thinks it knows best. So it comes up with laws that are badly drafted. It comes up with laws that are so badly drafted that 6 weeks later we have to amend them—yet again—before the original law has even been enacted, and it is so contemptuous of dissent that it does not want to hear alternative voices. Well, Mr Bridges and members of the National Government—that party over there—the modern world now depends on collaboration. We live in a world of modern relationships. There is a sense of mutual respect where it is OK to talk to others with whom we disagree, and to share ideas and to find the common ground. It is on that basis and only on that basis that we will come up with good quality legislation—not the roughshod stuff that we are being fed day in, day out under this Government. It is hastily managed and shabbily done, as it is all the time.

This bill gives us no comfort. It will give the industry no comfort, and it will do our international reputation no good in an industry upon which this Government is staking so much and banking so much for our economic future. For those members opposite who talk about the economic management of this country, I say that we know that this is just a small part of the economic management of this country. The real challenge is building our economic base for the next 20, the next 50 years, and this will not be it. This will not be it. We should get this right, but this is not the economic panacea that it has been played up to be by members opposite. We need an economic strategy that is about broadening our economic base and that is playing to our innovation advantages—our strategic advantages in manufacturing high-tech goods and supplying the rest of the world. That is where the future will lie. But if we have to rely for the medium term on the extractive industries, we want the best oversight and the best regimes governing those industries that we can possibly get. This bill could do a lot better. It does not. We will not have the chance to give it a proper debate in the select committee and have the benefit of the wisdom and insights of those in the industry, and that is why we will remain opposed to this bill.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): The previous speaker, Andrew Little, talked a lot about Taranaki, so let us talk about Taranaki. I visited Taranaki a few months ago, and it was absolutely clear that the people there overwhelmingly support the economic policy of the Government—

Hon Members: And Jonathan Young.

Dr JIAN YANG: —and Jonathan Young. Taranaki is a great example of how mineral exploration boosts the economy and creates jobs. Mineral exploration contributes $2 billion to the Taranaki economy, second only to agriculture at $4.6 billion. Exploration sustains 5,090 jobs in Taranaki alone, compared with 3,720 in agriculture. And the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research estimates Taranaki’s GDP per capita as $50,145 as at June 2012—well above the national average of $47,304 for the year ended December 2012.

Continuing world demand for oil and gas provides New Zealand with a major economic development opportunity, as they made a significant contribution to the New Zealand economy. Oil is our fourth-largest export after dairy, meat, and wood, and each year $400 million in royalties and $300 million in company tax is collected from oil and gas. Oil and gas industries sustain 7,700 jobs nationally, so I support this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill and commend it to the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand the next call is a split call.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Correct, Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch—a 5-minute call each. One of the questions that came to my mind when the member resumed his seat was why this bill is going through this process as part of the Budget. Why is this bill being taken through all stages without its normal referral to a select committee to listen to submissions, consider the bill properly, and report back to Parliament, and then take it through the next stages? Why is this bill going through all stages under urgency as part of the Budget? Well, I think that is a very good answer from the Government—absolute silence. There is no proper answer to that question. Nobody has bothered explaining it. The Minister is sitting so far down in his seat you can hardly even see the top of his head.

I would really like to have some better understanding so that when we finish here tomorrow night, fly back to our respective homes on Sunday, and on Monday morning turn up at the office and people say “What did you do after the Budget and why?”, we might have some explanation. Why are we putting this through this process? What is the Budget relationship? And what is the urgency? I think the answer is none, actually.

We have also heard a lot from National Ministers about how important the minerals industry is, how important the oil industry is, how important exploration is for jobs. I agree with that entirely, but I do not think the National members are serious about it. If they gave a toss about any of those players in the industry, this bill would have been referred to a select committee and the industry would have been given the respect it deserves and been given an opportunity to make a submission. We could have learnt from it. Members of Parliament do not know everything; often industry players know a lot more about what works and what does not than people in this building, who are a step removed. No matter how hard we try, we are not nearly as knowledgable as people within the industry itself.

By ramming this bill through all stages of the parliamentary process in one go, we are being quite insulting to the industry and saying that, actually, its opinion does not matter at all, and we know best in this Parliament. That is what Minister Bridges is saying: “I know better than anybody, and we are just going to go on ahead and pass this bill.” It is quite a different way from the way the former Minister of Energy and Resources acted. The Hon Phil Heatley actually approached Labour, and I am sure he approached the other parties as well, and talked about the original Crown Minerals Amendment Bill. He asked whether we would like to work on it together: we could tell him the things that we disagreed with or agreed with, and he would consider them. He did not give us any commitment to rectifying anything that we had concerns about, but he gave us an honest understanding that he would give them proper consideration.

So we supported that bill going to select committee, and the rest is history, of course. That Minister went elsewhere. Minister Bridges came in—boof! There goes the process—entirely gone. It was just foot down, flat on the accelerator, and away we go. So then we ended up with this bill that we did not support, even though we really would have liked to have support across different parties for the legislation. But it was not in a shape we could support. It was also in a mess, and we said that at the time. It was not corrected during the Committee of the whole House stage of the legislation, so we ended up with a bill riddled with mistakes, with a very narrow parliamentary majority, which is a very bad sign to the industry. And now, a matter of just a few weeks later, before the Act has even come into force, we have got amending legislation before us going through under urgency. I think it is quite a stunning process.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe. It feels very strange to be here at this time on a Friday night, which is actually Thursday in the parliamentary world. But it is more strange to be here speaking on a second reading without the benefit of having read submissions on the bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, without having had an opportunity to question and engage with submitters, and without having had an opportunity to ask questions of the officials to tease out some of the rationale for the bill. So it feels very strange indeed to be passing legislation like this without having had any public input, which always makes a bill better when Government members are prepared to take account of the concerns raised in submissions.

But it also feels very strange to be here, because of the damage that this Government is continuing to do to New Zealand’s international reputation. It has done that through its dismissive attitude to climate change and to the Kyoto Protocol, and now in this bill we are seeing similar disdain for international law. That is because of the way in which the bill purports to interfere with freedom of navigation on the high seas by applying this 500-metre exclusion zone around vessels, when the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea enables such zones only around oil well installations and expressly preserves the rights of navigation.

This bill potentially breaches international human rights by disallowing protests at sea, and purporting to prohibit that. I would just like to quote Duncan Currie in his legal opinion on the Anadarko amendment. There he went to some lengths to show how New Zealand had stood up, through the International Whaling Commission and at other forums, in advocating for resolutions to uphold the right to legitimate and peaceful forms of protest and demonstration at sea. As he says: “… New Zealand took an important and active role in preserving the right to peaceful protest in the resolutions.” at the International Whaling Commission.

It is worth noting that so many of our important environmental initiatives have come from protests at sea: the Mururoa protest, the boats going to sea against that; protests against commercial whaling, which achieved that moratorium; protests that ended the dumping of waste at sea; and the ban on the use of driftnets. Peaceful protest at sea is legitimate, and this bill, by the noxious clause 14 and its controls over the continental shelf on such protests, is interfering with that and with the freedom of navigation. It is cutting across the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The Government does not care about that, such is its disdain for due process in pushing this bill through under urgency, and such is its disdain for international law.

This bill is also about a “Drill, baby, drill!” approach to exploration because of this whole regime around conditional permits, so that means that in areas like the Great South Basin, where we have got extremely challenging marine environments, we would have operators without experience, without expertise, being encouraged to proceed with drilling. That sounds to me like the Government is encouraging cowboy operators to apply for and to be granted exploration permits. Do we really want operators learning on the job how to drill? The Deepwater Horizon was an exploration well and it highlighted just how wrong things can go.

This bill is really problematic because of that—this whole notion of inexperienced operators being pushed to drill or to sell off their permits. It is also going to make things very complicated legally, in terms of defining responsibility when things go wrong, as they will. The whole issue of sorting out liability issues around the Rena disaster will seem like a cakewalk when you have got operators having to onsell part of their permit or the whole of their permit for somebody else to actually go and do the drilling. Who then is responsible when an accident happens? That is this Government’s attitude—do the drilling as fast as you can, do not care about the environment, but have a regime that just weakens the protections for the environment and encourages exploitation as fast as possible.

MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): I am pleased to take a call in the second reading of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. The previous speaker, Eugenie Sage, spoke about accidents and safety issues, which are extremely important. I would just like to talk about some of the achievements that this Government has had in that area. We have established the High Hazards Unit within the Department of Labour, a dedicated unit of inspectors who oversee and regulate health and safety practices on oil and gas platforms, in geothermal installations, and in mines, tunnels, and quarries.

There has been a targeted review of health and safety regulations that apply to well-drilling operations, both onshore and offshore—the Government’s response to the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. There has been Maritime New Zealand’s recent review of oil spill preparedness, the Ministry of Transport’s proposed review of minimum insurance requirements for offshore oil installations in the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone, and the Inland Revenue Department’s review of the specified minerals tax regime. So it is very clear the amount of work this Government has been engaged in to make sure that we do develop an oil and gas industry where safety and health is a priority. I am very happy to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 68

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

Noes 50

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a second time.

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments concerning applications under public tender for conditional exploration permits

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): It is a privilege to take a call in the Committee stage, and to take a call from you, Mr Chair. It is, of course, in the real world, Friday night. I am here under some level of sufferance, although I have now learnt that the Chiefs, in fact, did beat the Hurricanes 17-12. I personally blame the National Government for that result. Had I been at the game I am quite sure there would have been a different result than that. That will make my contribution to this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill perhaps even longer than it might have been had the Hurricanes managed to win that particular game.

Mr Chair, as you noted this is a debate around Part 1: clauses 4, 5, and 6 of the bill. This is the bit that Simon Bridges tried to tell us was the original policy intent that just got missed out the first time around, 6 weeks ago when the Crown Minerals Amendment Act was going through the House. I think Simon Bridges should actually just keep amendments to the Crown Minerals Act as a standing item on the Order Paper. That will just make things easier. We will just come back to it once a month, correct all of the mistakes that Mr Bridges makes, and then he can just get on with making a few more, and we will come back and correct them as the Committee is now having to do here in Part 1 of this bill.

In all seriousness, it is concerning that on an issue of such importance to the Government—the Government puts a lot of store in the question of minerals extraction and what that will mean for New Zealand in the future—the Government is so sloppy in its lawmaking on that issue. But that is not just the end of the matter. The fact is that it is sloppy in an area where health and safety concerns are huge and where environmental impact is massive. This Government has been completely loose with its lawmaking. We saw it in the exclusive economic zone legislation, and we see it again here in the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. We need a proper regime around these matters. These are matters of great significance to our economic and environmental future. It simply is not good enough to have to be back in Parliament 6 weeks after the amendment Act went through making yet another amendment to it.

Part 1 of the bill, as the Minister of Energy and Resources has alluded to, changes the process for what happens with particular types of tier 1 permits. This is where there has been a permit granted for committed work, that committed work is undertaken, and a different company is now allowed to undertake the later work, the contingent work. I have some questions for the Minister in the chair that I would like him to answer around Part 1. In particular, I would like a further explanation about exactly why it is that this did not appear in the first version of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013, because it seems to me to be a fairly significant matter.

The fact is that the Government clearly intends it that under this legislation there can be new prospectors coming into the process of work at a later stage than what had been envisaged when the Act was passed. Looking through the material, the regulatory impact statement on the last version of this bill—we do not have one for this version of the bill—it was quite clear to me in reading that that, actually, this was not envisaged. This actually was not envisaged. There was a process that was gone through to talk about what would happen with permits, but when I actually read that original regulatory impact statement I cannot see that the Government did intend for this process to occur. I would like the Minister to take a call and answer to us how it is that it was missed out. If it was not just missed out, what has changed?

My second question for the Minister—it is a question that I think a lot of people will be asking—is: who has spoken to the Minister? Who has come to the Government in the last 6 weeks and said: “Guess what? You haven’t allowed for what we want to do.”? Gareth Hughes mentioned in the earlier readings of this bill that there are companies wanting to work, for instance, on the continental shelf, and the question of protesting, which we will come to in Part 2. But what happened here? Who was it who came to the Government and said that they wanted this permitting regime that has been changed here under clause 6 to be changed?

That is an important matter, because the track record of this Government is to kowtow to corporate interests and to vested interests when they come knocking. Be it Warner Bros or be it Skycity, the Government will bow down. It will say: “That’s all right; the laws are for sale.” Well, who was it in this case, Mr Bridges? Who was it who came to the Government and said: “We think we need your law changed.”? That is the question that Simon Bridges needs to answer. Why are we changing this today? What went wrong? And who was it who wanted it changed? Simon Bridges should take a call and tell New Zealanders the answers to those questions.

When we look at the changes that are suggested here I do have some significant concerns about the process. If we work through the process, an applicant for a tier 1 permit for exploration who does not have the expertise or financial ability to undertake the exploration drilling activities can be granted a permit on a conditional basis. The permit holder can undertake what is called “committed work”—it is essentially seismic surveys—and then after that they can, acting as the farminee, farm out their rights, effectively. This, as the Government would like to tell us, provides us with a different route for this exploration to take place.

The two key elements to making this work are whether or not this can be managed through tighter permit conditions. The tighter permit conditions have to be put in place and monitored by the Minister. That is the concern that I have: whether or not the management of these permit conditions can be undertaken, and whether we can have confidence that they will be undertaken by the Minister in the way that we want. Again, the track record of this Government is one where if corporate interests come into play, the Government will back down.

If we look at new section 29B(3) in clause 5, we see that “If a permit is granted in accordance with this section,—(a) work cannot be undertaken after the exploration drilling committal date unless, before that date,—(i) the Minister has, upon application by the permit holder, satisfied himself or herself of the matters set out in section 29A(2)(b) and (d) …” of the original Act. Those are the matters around health and safety. So what they are saying is the Minister has to satisfy himself—in this case, himself—around the matters of health and safety. Well, what confidence do we have in this Government to do that? I do not believe the track record of this Government is such that we can say we have confidence that the Minister’s satisfying himself, as he has to do under section 29B(3), would actually be in the interests—[Interruption]—I thank my colleague Megan Woods for that—of the New Zealand people. That is a problem.

The permit holder themselves then goes on to be able to do the drilling and so on that was originally envisaged in the initial permit. So at that point in time a new player has entered the New Zealand extractive industries, has gone into our pristine environment, and has decided that it would like to be involved in this. It has picked up a permit that somebody else has got. What confidence can we have as a Parliament passing this law under urgency that we have in place all of the rules and the regimes to ensure that if a new player comes in, we can have confidence in it? All we have got under this law is Simon Bridges to give us that assurance. That is all we have. Given his track record of coming to this House 6 weeks after he put up the last bit of legislation, to amend the mistakes he made then, does that give New Zealanders confidence when he is the one thing—the one thing—that stands between some kind of cowboy player entering the New Zealand extractive industry—

Hon Maryan Street: Sector.

GRANT ROBERTSON: —sector—thank you, it is very late. The one thing that says whether this new player is up to it is Simon Bridges, the Minister.

I simply do not believe that the new section 29B(3) provides us with the kind of assurance that New Zealanders would expect. In Part 1 of this bill that is the substantive matter that I want to raise. I simply do not believe that the Government has made the case for why this change has been made today. We need to hear from the Minister to tell us why this has happened now, who has come to him and asked him, and then we can actually start looking at the detail of whether or not we have sufficient rules and safeguards in place to ensure that any new player entering the extractive sector has the attributes that we would expect of them. This is sloppy lawmaking from the Government, and this part of the bill needs significant work.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I want to continue on from where my colleague Grant Robertson left off on Part 1 of this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill because there are some serious questions that do need to be answered. My colleague was talking about proposed new section 29B in clause 5. I want to talk about proposed new section 20A in clause 4, which amends the clause of the legislation that we passed a mere few weeks ago that amends section 24 of the Crown Minerals Act. What this new section 20A says is “that each tender must include an application that complies with section 29A(1) and be accompanied by sufficient information in relation to the permit offered for the Minister to satisfy himself or herself of the matters set out in section 29A(2) or the matters required under section 29B, as the case may be;”.

This raises the very serious question of where the accountability lies for ensuring that the very, very highest standards are met when issuing permits during the tender process, particularly for tier 1 applications. I question very much, on two levels, the ability of this Minister of Energy and Resources to carry out that function to the satisfaction of the people of New Zealand. This is the law that governs some very risky activity in some very sensitive areas of both the marine environment and onshore. So we need to make sure that we get this right.

I have two concerns about the test being that the Minister must satisfy himself. The first is that we have seen from this Minister and from the previous Minister that really they are just so desperate for this to go ahead that I do not think they are going to be applying the kinds of stringent standards the public would expect when determining whether or not they have satisfied themselves. We saw it with Minister Heatley, who during the course of the passage of the legislation that preceded this—which we have only just passed into law and are now amending here—was in the process of giving himself immense powers under the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill at that time, immense powers to take half the decision-making power on Department of Conservation land away from the Minister of Conservation. He came into this Chamber and he was publicly naming specific projects that he thought absolutely should go ahead, criticising the Green Party for saying that certain projects should not go ahead, and really opening the Government up to serious danger of judicial review and excessive litigation.

There is a reason why the Minister of Energy and Resources should not have the decision-making power in that area, and that is that he does have a conflict of interest—he does. So when we see here again that this is merely coming down to a Minister to apply standards that are crucial for the protection of our environment and crucial for the health and safety of our workforce in this area, the same conflict of interest applies. I would like to know how the Minister is going to manage that conflict of interest, how he is going to manage the fact that his Government is so desperate for this stuff to succeed that it is prepared to do anything to get this stuff going, regardless of the risk.

How is he going to manage that conflict of interest with now being the Minister who determines whether or not he is satisfied that conditions have been met? I do not think he can—I do not think he can. We have discussed already that this is it for the Government. This, pokie machines, and asset sales are it. If it does not work, we are kind of in trouble—kind of in trouble. That is why I question the ability of the Minister—I question the ability of the Minister—to manage that conflict of interest in proposed new section 20A when he is determining whether or not he is satisfied that the conditions have been met to ensure the safety of the environment and the health and safety of our workforce. I really do question it.

There is nothing in the legislation that indicates how that conflict of interest is to be managed. It would have been nice, Minister, to have a regulatory impact statement on this bill, because that is exactly the kind of thing that I would have been interested to know. I would be interested to know whether or not the officials had indicated that that was a risk. But we did not have a regulatory impact statement on this piece of legislation, at all. Why was that, Minister? That is my second question.

We are here, where you are basically introducing a test that you apply, Minister—that the Minister himself applies. How is that conflict of interest going to be managed? That is exactly the kind of thing that a regulatory impact statement would have addressed. This kind of document is what we get with regulatory impact statements from the Government, so maybe it would not have been that helpful to us after all. It would have been interesting to see how much of it was redacted—it is a great word, “redacted”, is it not? It is one that will for ever be associated with the National Party, the party of redaction. The reality is that we need the Minister to answer that question because he has not provided the information to allow us to determine that for ourselves. He has not allowed this to go to a select committee so that we could ask those questions. He has not allowed any analysis of this at all.

My other concern about the fact that this section relies on the Minister satisfying himself that certain conditions have been met and the test for that is up to him is that this is a Minister who is so incompetent that here we are, weeks after we passed the last amendment bill into law, having to fix the amendment bill with another amendment bill to the amendment bill. It has not even been enacted yet. Jonathan Young said earlier that we had learnt from the experience since the bill had been passed. Well, it has not been enacted yet. I mean, it has not even come into force, so I do not know what we have learnt, except that a company possibly came to the Minister and asked him to make certain changes or suggested that perhaps the legislation had not gone far enough.

I would like to know whether anyone asked for these particular changes. You know what, it might just be simpler if, instead of having an amendment bill to the amendment bill to the amendment bill, we just passed a new bill every time a permit is put up that the Government wants to pass. We could just be honest about it, and each new permit that the Government wanted to fast track would just get its own legislation, which could go through all stages under urgency. That would be easier and simpler. That is effectively what we are doing in Part 1, constantly amending legislation to fit in with what industry is demanding from the Government, when instead what we should be doing is putting in place legislation that ensures the highest environmental and health and safety standards are upheld, regardless of where the permit is, regardless of what it is for, and regardless of who is asking for it. But that is not what we have got.

So here we have the Minister being required to satisfy himself, and we do not have confidence in this Minister that he is going to be able to handle that conflict of interest, given that he could not even pass a piece of legislation that lasted more than a few weeks before it had to be fixed up. Maybe we could just take out the word “Minister” and put in the words “Steven Joyce”, because that is the reality. Wherever the word “Minister” appears, we will just replace it with the words “Steven Joyce” because—

Chris Hipkins: Or Gerry Brownlee.

MOANA MACKEY: Or Gerry Brownlee, because they are the ones who make all the decisions in the Government. That might be more honest as well.

The real problem with this Part 1 is that we were sold the original legislation on the basis that tier 1 applications were meant to be tough. This was going to be a tough, rigorous process that was gone through. And here we are in Part 1 already, before the legislation, the last amendment bill, has even come into force, undermining those tier 1 application processes—already, already. It was passed only a few weeks ago. It has not even come into law yet, and already we are undermining what the public were told were going to be very, very stringent and very, very tough conditions for those tier 1 projects. Well, the Government could not wait even a few weeks, until the law had come into force, to pass these amendments. It is so desperate for this stuff to go ahead that these changes in Part 1 to tier 1 application processes are already being put into place.

You know, the Minister is trying to say: “Oh, well, we just missed this in the original process.” Well, that was a process that actually went to a select committee. Can you imagine what he has missed in this bill, given it has not gone to a select committee at all, given how rushed it has been? I cannot even begin to imagine what other mistakes he has made in this legislation that we have not had time to pick up since it was tabled yesterday, late afternoon. Certainly, again, a select committee process would have allowed us to see whether what we are doing in Part 1 is actually what the Minister claims or whether, in fact, this is a quite deliberate undermining of those strict tier 1 conditions. This is an area where you do not want to have loopholes.

This is an area where internationally there is enormous litigation—enormous litigation. So when we start talking about arbitrary tests, like the Minister satisfying himself that this is being met or that is being met, with no information about how the very real conflicts of interest are going to be managed, that makes me very, very worried. I would hope that the Minister will take a call on this to tell us how he is going to manage those conflicts of interest to protect the New Zealand taxpayers—

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a brief call on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. Actually, hang on—let me just get this right: this is the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, so if I am correct, this is a bill amending an Act that has not yet come into force. How did we get to this state of being, where we are here, under urgency, amending a piece of legislation that has not even yet come into force? Could it be—

Hon Maryan Street: We could pass this one first.

CHRIS HIPKINS: Well, that is right. This one could be passed before the other one even comes into force. Could it be that the Government made a critical mistake when it introduced that last piece of legislation? It made the critical mistake of putting Simon Bridges as Minister of Energy and Resources in charge of it. It put Simon Bridges in charge of it, and he decided that he was going to make some changes and that he was not going to allow anyone to have a say on those changes that he was going to make. He was going to introduce them by way of a Supplementary Order Paper, after the bill had been through the select committee process, without any chance to give those changes adequate scrutiny. But that is OK because, according to the National Government, that is all a bit of an option these days—asking people whether they actually agree with anything or whether maybe they could improve legislation.

That is all just optional these days with the National Government. So it did not bother with that. And what do you know? Before the legislation is even in force, the Government is back here amending it because it stuffed it up. It completely stuffed it up. The Government left Simon Bridges in charge. It was his first piece of legislation in the House, I think, and he managed to completely stuff it up. I bet he is popular with his Cabinet colleagues. The very first thing he did was to introduce a piece of legislation, take it through the House, with amendments, and then within weeks he is taking up more House time to fix his stuff-ups. I bet that makes him really, really popular. Urgency on a Friday night—I bet that makes him really popular.

Oil and gas exploration is something that people do talk about in New Zealand. The first question that the people who come up to me in my electorate to talk about oil and gas exploration will ask—even those who are in favour of it—is whether it is safe. Even if they are in favour of it and they say: “Yes, we should go out there, and if we have got oil there, we should drill it.”—even people who are in favour of it—the first question they will ask is whether it is safe. They look at some of the experiences offshore, things like the Gulf of Mexico, which focused everybody’s minds on the risks involved in deep-sea oil drilling, so they want to know whether, if we are going to be doing it here, we have safeguards in place to ensure that that sort of thing would not happen in New Zealand.

I think New Zealanders’ minds were focused on that even more when a separate issue occurred with the Rena and with the clean-up that was required from the fraction of oil that came off the Rena compared with the amount that might come out of a deep-sea oil well if something went wrong. The amount of oil from the Rena was a fraction. We could have a lot more than that if something went wrong with deep-sea oil drilling. So people simply want to know whether, if we are going to do it, it is safe and that if, despite all of the safety precautions that might be put in place, something were to go wrong, we could remedy it quickly.

New Zealand’s worst nightmare—the worst nightmare of all New Zealanders—would be a Gulf of Mexico - like disaster, with oil continually gushing for weeks and weeks and weeks, without the ability to stop it. Think of the damage that would do to New Zealand. Our tourism industry would be down the drain overnight—one of the biggest industries in New Zealand and one that we rely on. It is our bread and butter. We rely on it to make our living as a country, and yet a massive oil spill would wipe out our tourism industry overnight because of the damage it would do to our clean, green economy. A lot of our primary exporting industries also rely on our clean, green image for their access to overseas markets.

So when people ask whether it is safe, they have got really, really good reasons for doing so because of the considerable damage it would do to New Zealanders, the New Zealand environment, the New Zealand economy, and New Zealanders’ way of life if something went wrong should deep-sea oil drilling happen in New Zealand in the future. So that is the first question that people ask, and it is the right question to ask.

Consider that now in the context of this particular piece of legislation and in the context in which it is brought into the House. The bill that we are now debating is fixing up mistakes that were made in the original piece of legislation that is yet to come into force, because it was rushed through and because it did not get appropriate scrutiny. I have said this once already in the House in this urgency debate, because this is not the first bill we are debating under urgency. This is not the first bill we are debating in this particular urgency motion that has not been referred to a select committee.

I said in the debate on the earlier bill, the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2), that I have not participated in any select committee hearing around a bill where the bill has not been improved in some way by comments made by counsel, by advisers, and often by the public, who pick things up that those who are dealing with the matter all day, every day, perhaps lose sight of. That is one of the reasons why we have a select committee process. This Parliament is made up of people who are lay people, I guess, in Parliament. We are not all subject matter experts in absolutely everything that goes on here. So we allow the people who are experts the chance to scrutinise what it is that we are doing in the House. It is a really critical part of our democratic process, and a part of our constitutional arrangements.

I do not know a heck of a lot about oil and gas exploration. I did work in the oil and gas industry for about a year and a half. I was not actually doing the practical, hands-on stuff; I was coordinating training for the people who were. It was a huge eye-opener for me. I learnt a lot about the oil and gas industry, but I would never for one second purport to be an expert on the matters that are covered by this bill and by this legislation. Therefore, as a parliamentarian, to do my job effectively I need the chance to hear from the people who are experts.

The other way we do that in this House is we have a thing called a regulatory impact statement, and that is where, again, independent experts check over legislation to make sure that the legislation before the House does what it says it is supposed to do and that the Government, in deciding what legislation to bring before members, has chosen the best of the options available to achieve the desired outcome. What is the regulatory impact statement for this bill? We do not have one. The regulatory impact statement that the Government is relying on for this piece of legislation is the same regulatory impact statement that it had for the first lot of legislation, which it completely stuffed up. So the advice, the best advice, that we have here under urgency is the advice we got when the House stuffed it up in the first place, because Simon Bridges is too lazy to make sure that we actually get better advice and that we are not going to be back here again in a few weeks because he has stuffed it up a second time.

It is vitally important that we work through these processes carefully, because there is a heck of a lot at stake. And every New Zealander is entitled to know that if we are going to be doing deep-sea drilling in New Zealand, it is going to be safe, there are appropriate checks and balances in place, and, yes, there are contingencies there so that should something go dramatically wrong, steps can be taken to address the damage, minimise the damage, before it gets completely out of hand. We have seen the Gulf of Mexico. We have seen what happens when things go wrong.

The Labour Party does, in fact, support exploration in New Zealand. We do see the value of the minerals we have here. I can see Gareth Hughes. I am sure Gareth has got something to say about that, and I am sure he will be speaking very shortly in the debate. We do see value, but we want to know that there are appropriate safety measures in place, and we want to know that decisions are being made judiciously and following appropriate processes. It may sound a bit bureaucratic to say “following appropriate processes”, but in a country like ours, a small country like ours, with a simple governing structure like ours, where there are not a huge number of checks and balances in our legislative processes, at least if we make sure that we are following a democratic process, we minimise the risk of things going wrong.

We do not have an Upper House. In many other countries, if a bill like this were introduced through Parliament and passed under urgency, it would then be subject to scrutiny by another legislative body. We do not have that in New Zealand. Once it gets passed by Parliament, it then gets the Royal assent, normally within a few days, and it is the law—that is it. It cannot be struck down via the court, because we do not have a written constitution that gives the court the powers to strike down laws in New Zealand, as many other countries do. Therefore, it is incumbent on all of us as parliamentarians to make sure that the decisions we make in the House are robust. And in order to do that we have got a series of processes that this Government, time and time again, has proven that it is willing to completely ignore and ride roughshod over. This, I am sad to say, is a return to the sort of practice we saw so much of in the last Parliament, when urgency was used to circumvent—

SUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you for allowing me to take a call on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. It is a bit of a mouthful because, as we have just heard, the Government, well, it stuffed up, basically, the first time around. The Minister Simon Bridges had the original amendment bill amending the Act before the House just a few weeks ago, and now here he is already, in urgency, on a Friday evening, bringing back an amendment to his amendment. We have talked about this a bit tonight already but this is the very reason why a bill should not be rushed through, because it will come back time and time again.

In Part 1 of this bill we are asking the public to put an awful lot of faith in that very same Minister—that very same Minister—who could not get it right 2 or 3 weeks ago. Part 1 says that the public of New Zealand should put absolute faith in that same Minister to simply satisfy himself that the application is all fine and dandy. The same Minister who actually screwed up this legislation just a few weeks ago is going to have the power to satisfy himself and go: “Oh yes, OK. That application looks fine to me.”

I think that is a real concern, because what we know about the exploration of Crown minerals is that actually safety should be the predominant measure. In the explanatory note of this bill there is an alarm bell that goes off for me because it talks about “An applicant for a Tier 1 permit for exploration who does not have the expertise or financial ability to undertake exploration drilling activities will be able to be granted a permit on a conditional basis.” I just want to read that out again for the public because I think this is alarming: “An applicant for a Tier 1 permit for exploration who does not have the expertise or financial ability to undertake exploration drilling activities will be able to be granted a permit on a conditional basis.” They will be able to be granted that permit by the very Minster who got this legislation wrong just a few weeks ago.

That is an awful lot of power to put in the hands of a Minister—particularly a Minister for whom this is probably, I think, one of his very first attempts at putting a piece of legislation through this House—who could not get it right the first time. That is not going to end up as a catastrophe here in the Chamber tonight. He did not get the legislation right the first time around, and it means, yes, we are sitting at this time on a Friday night to rectify his mistake, but it is not really the end of the world. But if he gets it wrong in satisfying himself about one of these applicants, and they do not have the expertise and something goes horribly wrong, then that is a whole different scenario for New Zealand. It is a whole different scenario for New Zealand.

Here in Part 1 we are asking the public of New Zealand to trust, I guess, the wisdom and the judgment of the very same Minister who could not even get this basic piece of legislation right, to make a decision that could actually impact on the environment and safety of New Zealand and New Zealanders. I think New Zealanders need to be very worried about that.

I think, actually, the contribution from my colleague Moana Mackey shed some light on this before. It seems obvious, now I have heard her contribution to this debate, that it is not because the legislation was passed in this House and then it was enacted, and the Government saw it in practice and thought: “Oh, gosh, we’ve got it a little wrong.” That is not what has occurred here. The original legislation has not even been enacted. So what could it be that could cause the Government to come back this quickly under urgency to fix something up? Well, it seems that it has been got to. Some company, one of these tier 1 applicants “who does not have the expertise or financial ability to undertake exploration drilling activities”, has obviously come back to the Government and asked it to weaken the legislation further. I can see no other explanation for why, before the original legislation has been enacted, we are suddenly back here.

ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): I am pleased to speak yet again on this very important bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, in the Committee stage. In Part 1 the critical issue is the change that it makes in terms of the existing Act, which has not yet come into force, in relation to the oversight that the Minister of Energy and Resources effectively provides to permit seekers when they are having their permit approved for—presently, it would be for both prospecting and exploration. What the change does is it splits that up and requires a separate approval, at least in terms of the health and safety and environmental measures. It splits it between the prospecting stage and then a separate approval of the health and safety and environmental measures for the exploration stage.

Our concern is simply this: we know—and I do not think there is too much disagreement, actually, between members in this Chamber, especially in light of the events of the last 2 or 3 years—that health and safety is absolutely paramount. It is absolutely paramount for those who work in the industry, and indeed for the communities they are part of. The other aspect is, of course, environmental, and the events of 2011 off the Bay of Plenty tell us that the public’s demand is that the most effective and world’s best-practice environmental safeguards are expected. The question we then ask is what it is about the measures that are in this bill and the splitting up of the approval process for the health and safety and environmental safeguard measures that is going to improve what is already there. The reality is that it will not.

The reason for that is twofold. First of all, the present law, which we passed only a short while ago and which is not yet in force, is reasonably light in terms of the standard the Minister is obliged to require when considering approval of a permit. That is simply that the Minister needs to be satisfied that the permit applicant is likely to have the appropriate technical capability and is likely to have the financial capability, and then any other relevant information. That is the Minister being satisfied that these criteria are likely to be met. It is a pretty low test. Not only that but it is a subjective test, because it is the applicant’s means—the potential permit holder’s means—that are relevant. So the Minister’s satisfaction is confined to the particular applicant. It is not about meeting an industry minimum standard or a world’s best-practice standard; it is what the particular permit applicant can do. So that is a low test. Presently, it says that when the Minister is giving the approval, the Minister has to be satisfied that the appropriate health and safety and environmental measures are in place for both prospecting and exploration.

By splitting it up, it means that the successful permit holder needs to provide satisfaction only in relation to their prospecting part, and at that point they have a foot in the door—have a foot in the door. So if, having prospected, they gather the data and they decide that this is worth taking to the next phase, the exploration stage, then it is incumbent upon the Minister of the day to deal with a permit holder who comes back and says: “Right, we’ve done the prospecting. We’re satisfied there’s enough there to move to the exploration stage, to start drilling, and to bring down our rig.”—and those rigs can cost up to $1 million a day. The Minister then must deal with the permit holder, and is expected to hold them to a further test about health and safety and environmental measures.

I am just saying that on the track record of this Government, which has shown no ability, no intestinal fortitude, to stand up to corporate heavyweights from around the world, why would we rely on the Government—this Government, or, frankly, any Government—to be able to withstand the sort of pressure that large multinational enterprises can bring to bear—

Dr CAM CALDER (National): I move, That the question be now put.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to speak in this Committee debate on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. There are several things wrong with Part 1. One is the process, one is the content, and one is the context in which this bill, and Part 1, sits. The particular concern about the process has been well traversed by members on this side of the House during the course of the first and second readings. It has been a shabby process. The first piece of legislation that the Minister of Energy and Resources brought in, which this bill is now seeking to amend, was not a stellar process either, in that one of the most significant changes to it—that is, the ban on protesting—was not brought in until after the bill had been reported back from the select committee. But in this part, the thing that gets my attention is that we do not have a regulatory impact statement here, and in the explanatory note of this amendment bill to the amendment Act, there is reference to the two previous regulatory impact statements. So I am forced back on to those two previous regulatory impact statements from which to draw my own suppositions and to apply them to the bill in front of us at the moment.

One of the things that struck me in one of the regulatory impact statements was that in one of the parts of the stocktake of schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act 1991—and that is one of the regulatory impact statements that has been tabled for us today—it said that given the public interest in this matter, full public consultation was undertaken, and there were three hui around the country, with iwi on Great Barrier Island, in Thames, and in Christchurch, in relation to areas of land that were proposed to be removed from schedule 4. In total, the regulatory impact statement says, there were 37,552 submissions—37,552 submissions. This goes to the process around this bill and Part 1 of this bill. Of those submissions, 32,000 were made by individuals using a standard submission form that had been supplied to them by groups that care and whose business it is to care about the environment. Even if you take those out, there were still 5,234 unique submissions made by individuals and organisations.

It becomes crystal clear now why the Minister has engaged in such a shabby process: he is afraid of public opinion. He is afraid that the people who care about the health and safety standards applying to the permits in respect of Part 1 of this bill, or the environmental standards, or the capability of organisations that are seeking to do exploratory or drilling work in our territory—he does not want submissions on those things. He does not want the weight of 37,000 submissions to come down on him, and because of that, because of the weight of those submissions, he has chosen—I can only assume he has done it deliberately. I do not assume the man to be a stupid man, so I can only assume he has done it deliberately in order to avoid the weight of public opinion.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Chair. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I just add to what the honourable member Maryan Street has said about the public opinion of New Zealand. When we looked at the regulations being developed by the Minister for the Environment, Amy Adams, we saw that 99 percent of thousands and thousands of submissions were not saying: “We want stronger rules.”; they actually said that deep-sea drilling should be prohibited, but she said her Government would not rule out making it permitted. This is a big worry, because the regulations of the new legal framework we have established over the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf and the regime we have through the Crown Minerals Act are such that, potentially, if the Government did go with making it a permitted activity, Kiwis would have to go and get a consent for a deck, but not to drill down kilometres under the sea.

That is why it is important we have good rules, strong rules, and that is why it is incredibly worrying that we are in the Committee stage of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill and we have not had, obviously, a select committee hearing. In fact, we have not had a single National member seek the call to actually make a contribution. Without a select committee hearing, without public input, without experts’ input, without the members of the committee being able to grill officials—I saw a member trying to talk to the officials before; obviously we cannot talk to officials, so we cannot get advice—this is not how good laws are passed. This is not how we get good regulations that protect our environment, protect our economy, and protect our people and our workers.

When we look at Part 1 of this legislation, this is the only scrutiny it is going to get—basically, the Opposition taking a few calls. Hopefully, the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Energy and Resources, will take a call, because there have been a number of questions raised of the Minister, and hopefully he can ask his officials if he needs advice.

So I guess the question is, what is wrong with a select committee? Why have we not had a select committee process? Was there consultation with the industry? Was there consultation with the experts, with NGOs, in formulating this amendment Act amendment bill?

Hon Christopher Finlayson: What does Clint say?

GARETH HUGHES: Did he have a casual chat to the member Chris Finlayson about the human rights implications? Was it a casual chat outside the Chamber or was it a proper New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet, as you would expect with such significant legislation? Why was there no regulatory impact statement? Who has been lobbying whom? And why are we are in this farcical process right now? So Part 1 deals with permits and with how the tender process is opened up.

I have been having a bit of a read of the Government’s 2013 block offer. It is quite a significant document, because what the Government has opened up is 189,000 square kilometres of New Zealand’s waters, mostly up on the west coast of the North Island and on the east coast of the South Island and over the Great South Basin—189,000 square kilometres. That is a significant increase over the other tender block processes that have been in the order of around 40,000 square kilometres, like the PEG1 and PEG2 basins, which were offered to Anadarko and which it successfully tendered for, despite Anadarko having a track record of being a 25 percent stakeholder and paying out $4 billion for its role in the Deepwater Horizon incident.

The tender process, as outlined in this document, which we are amending in Part 1 of this bill, through relaxing and weakening the provisions, is allowing a weaker, more liberal approach—not in a good sense, of course, because regulation, when you are talking about potentially causing a catastrophic oil spill, is good. So you see the incredible detail of how to apply for a bid. You have to put it in the red tender box. I do not know whether members have seen the red tender box. It is a special box that you put your bid in. It has to be delivered in three copies, double sided, and in an electronic copy on a CD-Rom. They have to be received before 5 p.m.

There is incredible detail outlined in this document, yet when it comes to the actual content of the bids, what the Minister is doing is incredibly weakening the process, because what we see in this part is, of course, not the need for the financial capability or the expertise. So what we are seeing is a weakening of the process, despite all the bureaucratic attention to which coloured box you put your bid into.

So I think the Minister should answer these questions. Why is he weakening the process? What is the rationale behind it? Why can Kiwis not have a stronger permitting regime? Why should the Minister be the one to have the ultimate decision, because what you see, I think, in new sections 29A and 29B in clause 5, is that the Minister has to be satisfied of the matters relating to the granting of a permit. I have got no confidence in the current Minister in the chair being the one to be satisfied with regard to health and safety. I think it is deeply worrying—

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

GARETH HUGHES (Green): I hope the National members will take a call on this important part, Part 1, of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. As I was talking about before, it is the Minister of Energy and Resources who has to be satisfied whether a permit will be achieved. It is incredibly worrying, because the Minister cannot do even basic legislation. We are here on a Friday night. I am sure he is not the most popular member in the National caucus at the moment, because all the National members have to stay here fixing up his mess on Friday night and under urgency. This is the Minister who is probably too busy having dinners with the oil companies to decide what is good for us. It is the Minister who is all behind the “Drill, baby, drill.” He cannot do even basic legislation.

While he is opening up 189,000 square kilometres of our waters, he is weakening the process. What he is allowing are cowboys to enter our market. The previous tender rules, as outlined in the Crown Minerals Act, allowed for people going for bids to comprise their committed work and then there was their contingent work. What you saw with the Petrobras example off the Raukūmara Basin was that it obviously outlined the planned work programme, which it had to put in its application in the red box in the foyer. It was not able to do it. We still have not received the answer as to why Petrobras pulled out, why it decided to surrender its permit at the point it did. Why did Petrobras surrender? Was there just not enough oil there? Was its seismic data not prospective enough? Was it scared of Te Whānau-a-Apanui and Greenpeace? Was that the reason why it left our country and surrendered our permit?

I believe that this is the rationale for amending the Anadarko amendment—sorry, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill—here, because what you are allowing now is for permits to be applied for without the financial backing or the expertise. It is incredibly worrying, because exploratory drilling, which is what we are dealing with, is the riskiest phase. It is the frontiers of technology, geology, and geography. It is the riskiest phase because, despite the 2-D and 3-D seismic data, you still do not know what is down there. With the considerable depth that operators are looking at in New Zealand, the risks are intensified, so we should not be releasing and weakening our tender permit rules when it comes to exploratory drilling, because this is the riskiest phase. We should not be playing fast and loose, but, sadly, this is exactly what the Minister is doing when you look at Part 1 of this legislation. I could talk all night about these important issues, but I think I will take my seat now. Kia ora.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): I move, That the question be now put.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): I want to return us to the important matter of the Minister of Energy and Resources satisfying himself on “the matters set out in section 29A(2)(b) and (d)”. This is the critical element of the decision that is being facilitated in Part 1 of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, to allow somebody to take on the contingent work that has been agreed to as part of a permit when a company decides that it does not have the capability or the resources to do that. As I was discussing in my earlier call, the matters that the Minister now has to satisfy himself on are serious matters, which I am concerned that we are putting in the powers, at this point, of a Minister who has shown himself incapable of actually controlling this legislation.

But let us have a look at what it is that he is having to satisfy himself on. New section 29A(2)(b), implemented by section 24 of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act, covers “that the applicant is likely to comply with, and give proper effect to, the proposed work programme, taking into account— … the applicant’s technical capability; … the applicant’s financial capability; and … any relevant information on the applicant’s failure to comply with permits or rights, or conditions in respect of those permits or rights, to prospect, explore, or mine in New Zealand or internationally;”. So that is actually the Minister, effectively, acting as our policeman, our protector, when it comes to the question of whether or not a permit has been fully looked after and properly looked after.

But then when we get to section 29A(2)(d), this is where the rubber hits the road in terms of what is concerning those of us on this side of the Chamber. New section 29A(2)(d) of the amendment Act says that “in the case of a Tier 1 permit for exploration or mining, that the proposed permit operator has, or is likely to have, by the time the relevant work in any granted permit is undertaken, the capability and systems that are likely to be required to meet the health and safety and environmental requirements of all specified Acts for the types of activities proposed under the permit.”

So bear in mind that in this instance that is being proposed in this law, a new player to the extractive industries is arriving and it is up to the Minister to satisfy himself that that company will “meet the health and safety and environmental requirements of all specified Acts for the types of activities proposed …”. That is a wide breadth. That is something that will require the Minister to make decisions about vital matters for our environmental future, vital matters for our economic future. We do not know today why it is this did not end up in the legislation originally. We do not know who it is who has come to the Minister to ask the Minister to take this law on. All we know is that we have to trust the Minister to ensure that this company, which has not necessarily ever been involved in the extractive industry in New Zealand—it has come in off the back of another company’s permit—is OK. Will the Minister be able to assure this House of that about a company that he, perhaps, has had no dealings with before and the officials have had no dealings with before? He is the one thing standing between us and that company being allowed to undertake the drilling that is the result of the seismic work of another company.

So new section 29A(2)(b) and (d) is about health and safety, and it is about the environmental requirements of the Acts that govern anyone who wants to undertake drilling in our waters. That is a significant change. It is not a change that I believe should be undertaken through an urgency process like this. It is not a change, under Part 1, that I believe the Government has thought through. It is most certainly a change that, had we had a select committee process, there would have been significant submission on. This is exactly the kind of matter that people would have been raising their concerns about. This is a different process from the one that was envisaged when the bill first came before the House.

I simply do not believe that the Government has made the case to us tonight for why it is that this change has been brought in. Mr Bridges tried to tell us at the start it was all technical, it was all matters of policy that were meant to have been put in place, but I simply do not buy that. I do not buy that because it was only 6 weeks ago. I do not buy that some person found a paragraph that was meant to have been put into the law and suddenly thought “Gosh! We forgot that.” Something occurred that made the Minister bring this change forward. I believe Parliament and the people of New Zealand deserve to know what that was. They deserve to know why it is that a process that is now laxer for a company coming in to do drilling than it was when the amendment Act was passed previously is being put in place. The Minister needs to answer those questions for us.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I have not heard from Carol Beaumont.

CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): How very kind of you, Mr Chair. Having sat through the previous bit of legislation and now the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, it does raise some very fundamental questions about why we are here in urgency. In this case, clearly, on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, it is because, as others have said, the Minister of Energy and Resources was so determined to push through the legislation that he left it riddled with mistakes, and now he has had to come to this House in urgency to fix up those mistakes.

In Part 1, which we are talking about now, we are looking at this concept of conditional exploration permits. Those proposed conditional exploration permits pose, we believe, a risk of creating a loophole in health and safety and environmental rules. These are serious matters, as others have commented. New Zealanders are concerned about these sorts of issues, as we should be. It seems that, under conditional permits, applicants no longer have to show that they have the ability to comply with health and safety, capability, or environment tests associated with exploratory drilling if, at the time, they do not intend to carry it out. So it is splitting the process in two. Others have been asking, and yet we have received no response from the Minister, why this change has come about. What is the need for this change? Who has lobbied the Minister? What is the purpose of this change? And what analysis of the risks has been made?

For the legislation that we had earlier in the day we had a regulatory impact statement that was absolutely blacked out most of the way through. You could not actually read the advice, but there was a regulatory impact statement none the less. In this case there is no regulatory impact statement. So under urgency we are being asked to push through legislation that initially we were told was merely technical changes, and yet it has this provision for conditional permits, which the Minister has failed to explain the purpose of. He seems unwilling to answer any questions, is sitting there reading magazines and other things, and is failing to follow this debate. Members on the other side of the Chamber have not taken a single call and have merely tried to close down this debate. What is going on here? Why are members opposite not taking calls? Why is the Minister not answering questions? Why is there no regulatory impact statement?

There is a substantial change being proposed here in Part 1, and we have the right, on behalf of the public, to ask what it is about, especially when it is being forced through under urgency here tonight. So I ask the Minister to actually get up on his feet and start to address the questions, if for no other reason than that New Zealanders have the right to expect that legislation is put to some scrutiny in this House. And we have a whole process for doing that, which includes the select committee process. The Minister in this case made mistakes after the select committee process, which was part of the reason we are here now, but then, furthermore, is trying to add in additional provisions to this amendment bill. There is no intention to take the bill through the select committee process, there is no regulatory impact statement, and nobody from the National Government is commenting on this bill at all. I say to people listening to this debate that surely that must raise alarm bells. What is going on here? There is the potential for huge vested interests in this area. We are talking about potentially very large sums of money involved, but we are also talking about very significant health and safety and environmental risks, and so it is incumbent on the Minister to address those questions.

We see that taking account of the environment and growing our economy are flip sides of the same coin. We need to be doing both, and the concern on this side of the Chamber is that members opposite are so focused on pushing through their mining and extractive industries at the expense of safety controls and environmental controls that we will see real risks for our environment. So, again, I urge the Minister to get up and answer those questions.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 70

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 46

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 11; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Motion agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 68

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

Noes 48

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 11; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Other amendments

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I call our spokesperson. I call the honourable member Moana Mackey.

Hon Simon Bridges: I thought you were impartial!

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am supposed to be. I had better explain myself!

MOANA MACKEY (Labour): By “our spokesperson”, clearly you mean Parliament’s spokesperson. It is a role that I am very humbled to hold. Part 2 of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill is where many of the substantive amendments are being made. This is the part of the bill that extends the Government’s anti-democratic and Draconian protest ban, which it passed into law a mere few weeks ago, and here we are, not 2 months later, extending it even further than the original bill suggested.

The original Crown Minerals Amendment Bill, which was passed a mere few weeks ago, had the definition of offshore area as “any area within the territorial sea or exclusive economic zone that is on or above the continental shelf”. What that means is that wherever the continental shelf exists, the area of the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone that sits above that is where this new, Draconian, anti-protest law applies. The change that is being made under clause 14 of Part 2 is that that is being amended so that the definition of offshore area now means “any area that is—(a) within the territorial sea; or (b) within the exclusive economic zone; or (c) on or above the continental shelf.” What we are seeing is a rapid expansion of this utterly, utterly repugnant law out into the high seas and right up to the beaches. So between the beaches of New Zealand and the high seas—where we do not actually have the ability to pass laws, but we are doing it anyway—we will see a ban on protest vessels protesting against deep-sea oil and gas exploration.

The Minister in the chair, the Minister of Energy and Resources, has never answered this question. He has been sitting there like a dried arrangement all night, so I would welcome him getting on his pins and actually taking a call. He never answered this question during the Committee stage of the last bill, when the original ban was passed, so maybe he is prepared to answer it tonight. If it is about safety, then why did he simply not introduce a bill that extends the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act, which deal with dangerous and reckless behaviour by vessels in our territorial waters, into the exclusive economic zone? Why did he not do it like that? At the moment anyone who behaves in a dangerous or reckless manner in our territorial waters is committing an offence, and it is quite appropriate that that offence be extended to the exclusive economic zone. So why, Minister, have you not done that? Why is it that instead of saying that anyone who behaves in a dangerous or reckless manner deserves to be held to account for that, you have said that it is only protest vessels, and it is only protest vessels that are protesting against oil and gas exploration? I welcome an answer to that question, Minister. I believe the fact that you cannot answer the question shows that you have no answer for it. There is no legitimate reason why one would not extend the existing law out into the exclusive economic zone.

So here we have a ridiculous law—and I am glad the Attorney-General has come down to the Chamber. He came down to the Chamber when we passed the original bill and tried to pretend that he had a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act opinion, which, it turned out, he did not have. When we asked him to table it, it turned out it was just his opinion, and it was not a particularly good one. I am disappointed the Hon Tim Groser is not still here—a man with an international reputation, a man who knows about international law. I mean, it would be good if Chris Finlayson could take a call. He is kind of the poor man’s Tim Groser, but he is the Attorney-General, and we would welcome hearing whether he has an actual legal opinion on this, because the issue that we have, Mr Attorney-General—who is meant to be the protector of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in this country—is that there has been no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet. We have had no legal opinion on whether this complies with international law and there is no regulatory impact statement, so how is Parliament supposed to be able to make a considered decision on whether or not this is good lawmaking?

I will point out a particular issue. According the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, we do not have the right to make laws in the waters above the continental shelf. That is the high seas. The ministry actually specifically says—and it refers to an example—that we do not have the right to make laws that regulate shipping activities. Well, what is a protest vessel protesting in the high seas if it is not a shipping activity? The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website clearly states that we do not have the jurisdiction in this Parliament to pass those kinds of laws in the waters above the continental shelf. So I would like to hear an answer to that from the Minister in the chair and from the Attorney-General as to how come the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is saying one thing, which is that we have do not have the right to make laws in this area, and the Minister is telling us another thing.

He is passing a law that opens us up to potential legal challenges. It actually makes us look like idiots if we think that we are passing—well, the Minister in the chair is shaking his head. Get up and take a call for once. That is what we pay you the big bucks for, Minister—get up and take a call. People deserve to have an answer to those questions, and if the Minister does not want to answer them, that is because he does not have the answers and that is because he does not know what he is doing. We know that; it is because of his incompetence that we have to pass this bill in the first place. The previous bill has not even come into force yet, and we are already having to fix it. That is extraordinary. But the Minister needs to answer the questions that he refused to answer on the original bill, and that he has not answered on clause 14 of this piece of legislation.

I have two amendments in my name on this part. One is to delete clause 14, because I do not believe that we should be extending what is a rotten, repugnant law out into the high seas, where we actually do not have the jurisdiction to do it, or right into the beaches of New Zealand, just because the Minister does not like the fact that a large number of New Zealanders disagree with the way his Government has handled the very sensitive issue of deep-sea drilling. Let us be clear. It is this Government’s handling of this issue that is the problem. It is because it has not listened to communities, it is because it has watered down legislation, and it is because it does not front up in those communities to answer questions about why communities are having this foisted upon them when they feel nervous about it and when they do not understand it. That is why there is so much concern. That is why people are taking to protest. It is because the Government will not listen to them. The Government will not talk to them, and the Government will not answer their questions.

That is why we are seeing clause 14 of this bill coming into force, which is saying: “You don’t like it? You’re protesting? Well, we’re just going to legislate away your right to do that.” That is utterly appalling—utterly appalling—and National should hang its head in shame, particularly the Attorney-General, who is meant to be the protector of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in this country. What a joke. What a joke. How can he even sit in this Chamber when such a repugnant piece of legislation that is so contrary to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is going through?

Chris Auchinvole: Oh, don’t you love the virtue of it all.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: The venom.

MOANA MACKEY: Venom? Oh, hello! Wafer-thin ice, Mr Finlayson—wafer-thin ice. Wow. Anyway, the second amendment in my name is actually to amend clause 14 so that the definition of “offshore area” is simply limited to within the territorial seas, so to reduce that area down there, as well. Although I hope the amendments are passed, the reality is that neither of them actually fixes the basic problem, which is that we need to get rid of the section that is in the original legislation.

What happens now—and again, the Attorney-General might have an opinion on this; the Minister in the chair is pretending to read something, so he is not listening. But another question is that we now have two separate offence regimes, penalty regimes, in our territorial waters. We now have two different regimes, one under the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act, and one under this section amended in clause 14. So which one are the police going to apply when someone makes a complaint or says that someone is breaking the law in terms of this right to protest? We now have two offence regimes in our territorial waters. Which one applies, Minister? Minister? Hello? There is only so long you can ignore me for. We are not going away, Minister. Which one applies? We now have the ridiculous position of having two completely different penalty and offence regimes in the same area of water. Why is that? Which one are the police supposed to apply? Do they just get to pick? Do we flip a coin? Is it a lottery? Is there some kind of algorithm the Minister has that can—

Grant Robertson: Skycity.

MOANA MACKEY: Skycity can sort it out. That is it. It is probably part of its deal. But how are we meant to know? How are the people who are operating meant to know which penalty regime is going to apply? Did the Minister even know that this was going to result in two completely separate offence and penalty regimes in the same part of the ocean? No, he did not. And we will be back here in another few weeks passing another amendment bill to the “Crown Minerals Amendment Bill Amendment Act Amendment Bill Amendment Bill” because the Minister has not done the work, and the Minister does not know the detail of this bill that we are passing, and that is why this should have gone to a select committee. Those are my questions to the Minister.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): The call I want to take on this particular part of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill will focus on clause 14. I want to be very clear what this clause is about. It is amending what is already a very bad part of the law, which was passed only 6 weeks ago, to restrict the rights of people to protest. John Key loves to go around on the world stage, shake hands with people like Barack Obama, and show up to events that are about opposing nuclear proliferation and about celebrating New Zealand’s place in the world as an antinuclear country. He has his photograph taken, and he says he supports this. Well, where do Mr Key and Mr Bridges think New Zealand’s status in the world as a country that stands up against nuclear weapons comes from? It comes from New Zealanders on boats and in dinghies getting out there in the 1970s and the 1980s and saying: “We’re not prepared to see the world go about destroying itself. We want to make sure that we stand up for people and the planet, and we’re going to get out and protest in those boats and in those dinghies.”

That is the kind of dissent that has led to good law in New Zealand. It is the kind of dissent that has led to New Zealand being respected on the world stage, and this Government is prepared to chuck that away because some corporate interests have asked it to do it. That is the bottom line here—corporate interests dictating New Zealand’s legislation again. We had it with Warner Bros, we had it with Skycity, and now we have it with companies that do not want to see protesters too close to them, and this Government is prepared to sacrifice all that history of protest in New Zealand, all that history of dissent in New Zealand, to appease these companies.

Chris Auchinvole: Not much history of oil protests.

GRANT ROBERTSON: It is as simple as that, Mr Auchinvole. That is what has happened with this law.

That is bad enough—trashing New Zealand’s reputation and selling off our laws one more time—but what is more, this Government cannot even make a case for why it is expanding the legislation and potentially doing something that actually goes against our international obligations. I am wondering whether the Minister has had the time to have a read of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s website, because what that says is: “States do not have any special rights to the water column above the continental shelf; so New Zealand does not have special rights to the fisheries above the continental shelf beyond the EEZ or to control other activities such as shipping.” That is an exact quote, Minister, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website.

The Minister could get on his feet and actually explain how it is that he is passing a law through this House tonight that appears to go against what New Zealand is actually allowed to do when it comes to the continental shelf. But the Minister does not seem to care about that. The Minister does not want to actually get up and explain whether he is even allowed to make this law. So he is selling the law off and he will not even explain how he can justify expanding that to a massive extra 1.7 million square kilometres—1.7 million square kilometres extra. We do not even, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, actually have the right to make any law in that area, and yet the Minister comes to this Chamber with this bill. As Moana Mackey says, we will be back here in a month with yet another amendment bill, after Mr Bridges makes the sensible decision to put it as a standing item on the Order Paper so we can just keep coming back to it, and he will have to correct another mistake.

There are other matters about the continental shelf that the Minister does not appear to have taken into account. The continental shelf overlaps with other countries’ jurisdictions. We actually have an agreement with the Australians around where the continental shelf overlaps with us. It is around Lord Howe Rise through to the Three Kings Ridge. We have that agreement. The problem for the Minister, and the problem for the Government, is that we do not have that agreement with other countries around where the continental shelf overlaps with their jurisdictions—Fiji and Tonga, for instance. We have not done anything about that when it comes to other areas, the Kermadec Ridge being one of those. So the Government has two areas where it appears to be actually breaching international law about whether it can even put this up.

These are the issues that would be discussed at a select committee. In fact, they would have already been discussed at a select committee and we would now, no doubt, not be looking at amendments to the law because the Government had stuffed up. But instead, at 11 o’clock on a Friday night, we have got a bill being shoved through the House not in the interests of New Zealanders, nor even of our Pacific neighbours whose territory this impinges upon, but in the interests of the corporate sector—in the vested interests of those for whom this Government, the National Government, seems to believe they are governing.

That is what we see time and time again. We saw it with Skycity, and what a shameful, shabby deal that was. We saw it with Warner Bros. Our laws are for sale under this Government. What is more, we are going to have to pay to change the law in the case of Skycity because of the compensation arrangements that have been put in place there. If we want to change the gambling laws, we will be paying for it. Now, under this law, we have a situation where we have been pushed into changing the law to ensure that the corporate interests are kept happy. We are not protecting New Zealanders’ rights to protest. [Interruption] The Attorney-General likes to interject on these matters. He is living in his own golden age over there—the Attorney-General, the saviour of the art scene, a legend in his own Twitterverse. But he is sitting there today as the right to protest is limited. He is sitting there today as the right to dissent is limited.

What kind of Attorney-General is that? Why do we not have an Attorney-General who stands up for the rights of New Zealanders to protest? Why do we not have an Attorney-General who actually comes to this Chamber and says to his Government: “No way, I am not accepting this. New Zealanders have the right to protest.”? Instead, we have an Attorney-General who sits on Twitter trying to come up with his own achievements in the arts sector, and he does not care about a bill before this Committee that severely limits what New Zealanders would see as their basic rights.

This bill is deeply flawed. This amendment bill to the Crown Minerals Amendment Act is deeply flawed. New Zealanders right across the country have expressed their concern about this, and they have been dismissed by people like Chris Finlayson and the Prime Minister. Geoffrey Palmer, Dame Ann Salmond, who is the New Zealander of the Year—John Key will have his photograph taken with Dame Ann Salmond, but when she signs a letter that says this kind of law change limiting the right to protest is wrong, suddenly she is dismissed. She is totally taken out of the picture.

This is absolutely poor lawmaking. It is shabby lawmaking. It is sloppy lawmaking. We are back in front of this Committee with an extension to this legislation, and, once again, the Minister needs to get up and answer the question that a lot of New Zealanders want to know: who is behind this? Who is behind this change? Which company has asked for it? Who has come to Simon Bridges and put the pressure on him? There are important aspects of this law, which Simon Bridges is responsible for, for protecting the rights of New Zealanders. It seems to us on this side of the Chamber that Simon Bridges has caved. He caved straight away. As soon as someone has come to him and asked “Can you please extend out this already bad law?”, he has caved. He has said: “Yes, I will take it out to the continental shelf. That is fine.” Even if New Zealand does not have a right to make a law in that place, he will take it out.

This bill and clause 14 of this bill are typical of this Government. They are typical of a Government that is no longer governing in the interests of New Zealanders. It is governing in corporate interests and overseas interests and in the interests of its mates, not in the interests of ordinary New Zealanders. This clause should not pass.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Clause 8 in Part 2 of this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, changes all references to mineral “reserves” in the Crown Minerals Act to mineral “resources”. That is very symbolic because this Government sees nature as a resource ripe for exploitation, rather than having values that deserve protection and keeping them in reserve for present and future generations.

What right do we have to try to access oil and coal and minerals that were put down millennia ago? It is almost as if this Government does not believe humans are going to exist in another 200 years, because it wants to exploit everything now, rather than recognising that in 200 years’ time we might have the technology whereby we can mine coal and burn it without getting the emissions that contribute to climate change. But, no, this Government wants it now. It never thinks of the future, and it does not think of the environmental debt that it is creating for our future generations.

Mr Bridges on Easter Monday, I think it was, introduced the Supplementary Order Paper that amended the principal Crown Minerals Amendment Act by putting in the Anadarko amendment—the no-protest amendment. The April issue of LawTalk, and I will just quote from it, described what the Government did: “The Government appears to be developing a practice of using post-Select Committee supplementary order papers (SOPs) as a portal through which to rush controversial law changes.” We are seeing the same thing happening tonight, not through a Supplementary Order Paper but through using urgency.

As LawTalk said further: “The introduction of significant law changes by way of SOP bypasses the normal vetting processes and increases the risk of sloppy lawmaking.” Well, we have certainly seen that with the previous legislation, because it is back here before it has even become law.

This Government should be ashamed of what it is doing tonight. It should be ashamed because of the way in which democracy is being undermined, not just by that noxious little clause 14, which creates that 500-metre no-go zone around vessels so that you cannot protest, and not just because the Government wants to shut down dissent, but because of the way this bill is going through under urgency with no opportunity for public comment.

That is typical, because we have seen a whole weakening of the regulatory regime in New Zealand under this Government. We have seen the exclusive economic zone legislation that we passed, which has yet to come into force, that had a bastardised version of sustainable management, and then we have seen regulations under that Act that make offshore deep-sea prospecting a permitted activity with no opportunity for the public to comment on it.

So what are New Zealanders able to do? If they cannot make submissions on legislation, if they cannot make submissions on applications to prospect offshore, of course they take to protest, because there is no legitimate forum to express their concerns and their dissent. So what does the Government do? It then seeks to shut down that dissent. That is why this bill is very troubling, because it potentially increases the level of disaffection with Government and with democracy in New Zealand. People are being denied their legitimate right to have a say. They cannot do it in this Parliament through submissions and by contributing to the lawmaking. They now cannot do it under this bill by protesting, because the Government wants to make that a criminal offence.

So where do people go when they see that they cannot have a say? They get disaffected. That is how revolutions start, because people cannot have a say through the normal processes. That is what this Government is doing. It is shutting down the right to have a say. It is totally undemocratic. Clause 14, at the heart of this bill, is about that. The Government wants to make it easy for the big corporates—the transnational oil companies, the Chinese State companies—to exploit nature, and make it easier for its mates, which, doubtless, contribute to the National Party coffers at election time. So that is what this bill is about: making it easier to exploit nature, and actually attacking the heart of democracy by riding roughshod over due process and then suppressing the right to protest.

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is my pleasure to take a call on Part 2 of this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I do want to just note that when there was a closure motion called for Part 1, and there were those of us who wanted to try to take a call and were disappointed that we did not have a chance to debate what is an incredibly important bill, the Attorney-General’s response to that denial of what I would call a basic element of a democratic procedure in this Committee was “Stiff bickies.” “Stiff bickies.” was the call.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: No, it wasn’t.

JACINDA ARDERN: What was it? Was it “Stiff cookies.”?

Hon Christopher Finlayson: No, “Stiff cheese.”

JACINDA ARDERN: “Stiff cheese.”—I stand corrected. I am glad that that will be on the record. It was “Stiff cheese.” I am glad we cleared that up.

Grant Robertson: Was it brie or camembert?

JACINDA ARDERN: The deputy leader asks a fine point. Does the Attorney-General wish to further define his type of cheese?

Chris Hipkins: Blue cheese.

JACINDA ARDERN: It was a blue cheese, of course.

It is important that we have the chance to fully debate particularly this section of the bill. One of my concerns is that even in Part 1 of this bill, which we have obviously already closed off our discussions on, there was a bit of discussion about the types of companies that might be drawn into our exploration regime in New Zealand via this bill. I spent a very small amount of time working for an Associate Minister of Energy—like Chris Hipkins said, this certainly does not make me an expert in the field—who, obviously, had the same portfolio that Mr Bridges, the Minister of Energy and Resources, now has, and that is around oil and gas exploration and mining. What I certainly learnt in that time was that this business is a high-stakes game. It is incredibly expensive to operate in this field, and yet we have discussion in this bill that uses language like that someone “who does not have the expertise or financial ability” to operate in this area having the use of conditional permits. If you do not have the expertise or the financial ability, then you will not last in this sector for a particularly long time. Nor will you potentially—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No.

JACINDA ARDERN: —have the success in what is obviously a high-stakes game. Sorry, Mr Chairperson, I am bringing you into the debate. So that was a point I just wanted to make before moving on—that this “give it a punt” mentality will bring in, I think, the kind of low-grade exploration and explorers that the Green Party has referenced. That is bad for everyone, particularly when the Labour Party’s views on these issues are that until we can give the absolute guarantees that we need and the protections that we need, particularly for deep-sea drilling, that is not a space we are willing to go into. If the Government, at the same time, is opening up for rogue explorers, then that is absolutely not a space we want to move into.

But moving on to Part 2, the amendment to section 55 in clause 14 is the area I want to talk about. As has been raised, this is the extension of that much-protested—ironically—provision that 79 percent of New Zealanders were opposed to, and that was the setting of limitations around the right to protest out on the seas and now out on the high seas. The change in definition that we have seen here in clause 14 is: “In section 55, new section 101A, replace the definition of offshore area with: offshore area means any area that is—(a) within the territorial sea; or (b) within the exclusive economic zone; or (c) on or above the continental shelf.” I wanted to do a little bit of reading about what the definition of the continental shelf is. There was a United Nations declaration signed on 29 August 1980. It was a statement of understanding. That makes this declaration, I think, about the same age as the Minister. That declaration set out a definition for the continental shelf—this is really interesting—“The continental shelf of a coastal State comprises the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas that extend beyond its territorial sea ...”. It is absolutely correct that we have mining rights over the continental shelf, according to this declaration, under article 76.

If we move on, though, to article 78, which sets out the legal status of the superjacent waters and airspace and the rights and freedoms of other States, it says—[Bell rung] Mr Chair—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Jacinda Ardern.

JACINDA ARDERN: Thank you. I did want to get through this UN declaration because, clearly, this has not been explored nearly enough, and I hope the Minister will respond to my questions here. Article 78 of this declaration, which, as I said, sets out the legal status of the superjacent waters and airspace and the rights and freedoms of other States, sets out in the first point that “The rights of the coastal State over the continental shelf do not affect the legal status of the superjacent waters or of the air space above those waters.”, and in point 2 that “The exercise of the rights of the coastal State over the continental shelf must not infringe or result in any unjustifiable interference with navigation and other rights and freedoms of other States as provided for in this Convention.”—of other States and probably of the citizens of those States, because, as this declaration clearly points out, yes, mining rights do exist over the continental shelf, but those rights are limited to activities in the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas. Above that continental shelf, those same rights do not extend. We are at the high seas point at that point, and, as article 78 points out, “The rights … over the continental shelf do not affect the legal status of the superjacent waters or of the air space …”.

So this Government does not have the right to extend this already much-disliked and hated provision to the continental shelf, but it is going to try, and if it is going to try that, then it might as well just go for the airspace as well. Why do we not just have protests banned from the air as well, anything above the continental shelf? It is just as ludicrous.

Grant Robertson: Don’t give them ideas.

JACINDA ARDERN: We could just claim as a territory all of Mars while we are at it, because it is actually about as legally possible.

This declaration goes down as far as article 85, to tunnelling: “This Part does not prejudice the right of the coastal State to exploit the subsoil by means of tunnelling, irrespective of the depth of water above the subsoil.” Again, it is reiterating that at sea level and at the subsoil level, you can go for gold, literally. It is the State’s patch. You can tunnel it, you can mine it, you can drill it—sorry, Mr Chairperson—according to this UN declaration. I am not advocating that this is what the Government should do. It should not take this as a challenge. So the Government can go in and tunnel. A protester could be banned from tunnelling, but they cannot be banned from doing anything at sea level. That is the distinction that we are trying to make here.

The point I wish to leave with the Minister is whether he can tell the Committee whether or not this declaration—which, as I pointed out, has been around on this Earth as long as he has been—was even looked at. Was there any consultation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in drafting these provisions? The Minister is doing a very good job of pretending that he is not registering any of these questions. Or was this simply something where the ministry determined we did not need to look at any of this? Did it just simply decide that what was signed at an international level did not matter? And is it possible for the UN to question these kinds of limitations that we are now legislating in an area where the UN has said that we cannot prevent other States? And that might mean a citizen from the United States who might want to come over and protest in our waters. We cannot set a limitation on them, so how can we set a limitation on our own citizens in that regard? I would ask the Minister to rise and speak to that very important question.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui. Kia ora. It is a bit late, Mr Chairperson. We are in the Committee stage of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, where we get the ability to drill down into the parts and clauses in detail, and have the ability to make amendments. I was thinking about writing some amendments, but actually we should just throw the whole bill out. This is an embarrassment for the Minister of Energy and Resources. It is a shoddy process, it is bad content, and I do not know why we are here in urgency doing it.

What I want to focus on in this call is clause 14—this egregious clause. I do not know whether the Minister thought he could get away with this, but, sneakily, under Budget urgency, he is trying to extend out these egregious powers, these anti-democratic powers, these anti - human rights powers. Clause 14 relates to new sections 101A and 101B in section 55 of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act—the so-called Anadarko amendment. It introduces five new criminal offences if protesters—and it is only protesters—protest against seabed mining or drilling, and it is only seabed mining or drilling. It is a ridiculous situation. You could commit the same offence on land and get about a third to a quarter of the same penalty, and we have the ridiculous scenario now where if you do something against one particular industry that has got Government friends in the Beehive, you will face higher penalties. In fact, I believe these are unconstitutional and unlawful laws.

This Anadarko amendment was lawmaking at its worst, and that is what clause 14 is amending. This was legislation that was introduced via a Supplementary Order Paper. We have heard mention in the LawTalk magazine that experts were critical, but I have also got a letter here from the New Zealand Law Society to the Attorney-General criticising the process and suggesting: “Why can’t we have a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act analysis for substantive Supplementary Order Papers?”. It is a good idea and I think we should look at that at the Standing Orders Committee. We saw no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act consideration, and no select committee process. It is a terrible process, and what the Government is now doing is trying to sneak in an abhorrent expansion of it.

Let us put it in context. Protesting at sea—which is what clause 14 is amending by amending the definition of offshore; that is all it is doing—is honourable. It has played an important role in our country’s history, and in our Government’s history when Norman Kirk sent that frigate to Mururoa. I note that Chris Hipkins and Jacinda Ardern have a background in the energy industry and some experience with petroleum. I have a bit of experience on the other side. I sailed on the Rainbow Warrior protesting at sea, and successfully, I might add, when the Labour Government worked to ban deep-sea bottom trawling in international waters between New Zealand and Chile. So it paid off. We saw some success.

What we are seeing here is all about supporting the mates. Clause 14 has dubious legality, and I hope the member Phil Goff will take a call, because by adding this word I believe we are making an unprecedented international move that I think, as a former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, he would have some experience with. If other States took a step like this, I think New Zealand would be critical. What New Zealand is doing is unilaterally extending its jurisdiction over the extended continental shelf. This has been the subject of huge international debates over the Spratly Islands between Japan, China, Sarawak, and Taiwan and huge debates up in the Arctic, and New Zealand—little old New Zealand—under urgency is deciding what it wants to do with jurisdiction. No country has been able to sort out all the vexed grey areas in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, but New Zealand is just racing ahead, deciding it, with this amendment in clause 14, passed under urgency.

I want to look at the detail. Clause 14 is interesting because there is only one word changed. It is the introduction of the word “or”. It was late last night when I picked up why this inclusion of the word “or” was so important. I have spent the day on the phone with legal professors from various universities, and international law experts who work in international forums, to see whether this was as big a deal as I suspected late last night, under urgency—the inclusion of the word “or”.

Let us go back in history, because in the Crown Minerals Amendment Act the new definition of “offshore area” was defined originally as meaning “any area within the territorial sea or exclusive economic zone that is on or above the continental shelf”. I missed the inclusion of the word “or” because what this reminded me of was how poor the drafting was with the Anadarko amendment. It is actually logically inconsistent. If you are in the territorial sea or the exclusive economic zone, of course you will automatically be on top of the continental shelf in New Zealand. It is inconsistent. I thought they were just fixing this schoolboy mistake of the Minister with his amendment, but actually what they have done is snuck in the word “or” in clause 14. It is the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone, or the continental shelf. What this is is a massive expansion, because now the five new criminal provisions are extending out over an additional—

MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): I move, That the question be now put.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to speak to Part 2 of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. In the explanatory note of this bill there are some bullet points that relate to “Matters in the Bill … to which errors or omissions will be corrected …”. In other words, we have an amendment bill to the amendment Act because there are errors or omissions that need to be corrected. As it happens, they all fall within Part 2. They start with the definition of “underground gas storage facility”; the definition of “offshore area”, which is in clause 14, which members have been discussing recently; references to “reserves” being changed to “resources”, which was a matter that the Minister of Energy and Resources referred to in his introductory speech; extensions to existing petroleum permits; addition of “platinum group metals” to the list of mineral types with the same tier 1 thresholds as for gold and silver; clarification of the application of the Crown Minerals Act 1991 to existing privileges, granted after that Act came into effect; clarification of the proprietary status of permits acquired by the Crown; and references to a “dwellinghouse”. That is eight items—eight items—that were errors or omissions in the bill that was passed a matter of just weeks ago—eight errors and omissions.

I am beginning to wonder whether the Minister has just about begun to understand the importance of the select committee process. With eight errors or omissions being corrected in this amendment bill, perhaps now, after hours and hours in the House under urgency on this, the Minister might be beginning to understand the importance of going to a select committee, where people with expertise can help MPs to get the law right.

We can argue about the policy position—and we are arguing about it, particularly with reference to clause 14—but it at least ought to be expressed accurately in the law. But for these eight points that are missing or are incorrect, all of which fall within Part 2, we are here under urgency, instead of observing the proper process, which might have rescued this Minister from these hours of purgatory, as he has had to listen to one speech after another berating him for his incompetence and his inadequate approach to the legislation. I would like to ask the Minister whether he prefers this kind of repeated drubbing in urgency, or whether he would rather have the legislation go to a select committee, where people can have some say and where, in fact, improved legislation may be the result.

I would like to focus a little bit on clause 13, which is unusual, because clause 14 is the lightning rod in this part. But clause 13(1) says: “In section 52, new section 99B(1), replace ‘dwelling house’ ”—spelt as two words—“with ‘dwellinghouse’ ”—spelt as one word. “Dwelling house” spelt as two words, “dwelling” and “house”, is to be replaced with one word, “dwellinghouse”. We are here at 11.30 on a Friday night to turn “dwelling house” into “dwellinghouse”. I wonder whether the Minister could clarify why that should be the case. Why are we here, taking a space out between two perfectly legible and understandable words, and making them into one word? I presume there is some significance in that, and it has a particular meaning. Had I been able to ask at a select committee I might have been able to find out. If this is bringing “dwellinghouse” into the same—

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): I move, That the question be now put.

Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I was not going to take a call on this but frankly I am outraged that tonight we have had a Minister in the chair, the Minister of Energy and Resources, who either is asleep, is too damn arrogant to respond to valid questions that are being asked of him, or is afraid and frozen to his seat because he cannot answer the questions that have been asked of him.

It is an absolute outrage that that Minister in his first piece of legislation stuffed up so much that we have a bill in front of us, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, that says that we are debating the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 amendment to the Crown Minerals Act. We were in this House 6 weeks ago, Minister. How was it that you were so ill prepared and so incompetent that you brought legislation into the House that has this many errors? Why is it that you brought in legislation that abridges the fundamental rights of people to freedom of expression, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly? You brought it in by a Supplementary Order Paper after the—no, I am sorry, Mr Chairperson. You did not bring it in; the Minister brought it in. You would never have done such a thing. The Minister brought in legislation that abridges the fundamental rights of New Zealanders, through a Supplementary Order Paper, after the Commerce Committee had met so he never had to front up. The Government members, trembling in their bloody seats, never had to front up at the select committee to answer the question of why they were doing things that are totally without justification.

The Attorney-General sits there and interjects from his seat, but he has never taken a call. What is the role of the Attorney-General if not the watchdog of the fundamental rights of New Zealanders: the right to freedom of speech, the right to assembly, and the right to protest? I think it was Grant Robertson who was speaking before about the proud tradition of New Zealand being nuclear-free. It was a proud tradition that I remember, when Norman Kirk farewelled the frigate Otago to go up to protest against French nuclear testing in Mururoa. And now the National Party would say: “Wasn’t that a wonderful thing?”. It was the right of protest—the right of protest—actually exercised by the Government of New Zealand.

Then I remember when I was a young member, like Mr Bridges in this House, and I was out on the harbour in Auckland and Wellington protesting about nuclear-armed submarines and ships coming into New Zealand. Now the National Party would want to claim credit for some of that policy. So why is it, given that New Zealanders are so proud about the way in which we have used the right of protest at sea to achieve our goals, that this Minister can bring back a bill into the House that abridges those fundamental rights?

But he does not stop there. Not only does he want to abridge the fundamental rights of protest in our territorial waters but he wants to extend that abridgment to our exclusive economic zone and on or above the continental shelf. My question to Mr Bridges is this, if he actually knows the answer to it, but I suspect that he has stuffed up yet again: how does he claim the right to legislate for the waters under and on the surface of the waters of our exclusive economic zone and above the continental shelf, when he does not have that right under law? How is he legislating to extend the outrage of stopping protest within New Zealand’s territorial waters to the waters that we do not even have the right to legislate over? That question has been asked time and again of the Minister in the chair.

How many times has the Minister got up to answer a question in the Committee? Is it not the role of the Committee of the whole House that members of the Committee ask questions of the Minister in the chair, and the Minister is sufficiently competent, courageous, and ready to get up and answer those questions? That Minister has not got out of his chair. We are debating this at 11.35 at night, and not one of the members of the Government has the guts to stand up and to defend the legislation that they have got—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I will ask the member just to withdraw that comment. It implies that the member does not have courage. So I ask the member to withdraw that comment.

Hon PHIL GOFF: I will withdraw that, Mr Chairman. They do not have the intestinal fortitude to get out of their seats and to debate legislation, to make excuses for their incompetence, or to defend what they are doing in the House tonight.

The first time they try to bring this in, they bring it in by a Supplementary Order Paper that does not go to a select committee. This time they do not even take that chance. They rush it through all its stages under urgency, late on a Friday night, when they hope no New Zealanders are listening to the outrage that they are perpetrating.

ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): We are in the position at the moment of debating late on a Friday night because we have not had the benefit of a proper, considered process to consider this legislation, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. The legislation that we are amending, which we considered only 6 weeks ago, now has to be corrected. But we are still dealing with issues that are significant and are important. We have not had the benefit of considered legal advice and other advice. In this particular part of the bill, and particularly clause 14, it is quite obvious now through the contributions of other members of the Committee tonight that there is some real doubt about the lawfulness and legality of this provision. We are in no better shape, because we simply have not had access to advice—the sort of professional advice that officials would give us if this had properly gone before a select committee. We have not had the benefit of that. We have not had the benefit of the Attorney-General and his good offices to give advice about the lawfulness of this particular provision.

It is a matter of the pride and reputation of this House that is now being put at stake. We—when I say “we”, I mean all members of this House, whichever party we are from, whichever side we are on—should never be put in the position where we have a law in front of us that is patently doubtful and questionable as to its legal correctness. That is an unconscionable position for the House to be put in. It is not much for this Committee and for members on this side of the Chamber to ask the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Energy and Resources, to at least respond to a perfectly reasonable and legitimate question about the correctness of this particular provision. There is ample room for doubt—ample room for doubt—of its integrity. What would be the point of passing a law, urgency or no, when we simply do not know whether it will survive the merest scrutiny once it is passed? Let us, for heaven’s sake, not put ourselves in that position.

There is real doubt about this particular provision, and the honourable member Gareth Hughes has pointed out the significant difference—the changing of the language, the ordering of the provision in clause 14—that means that we are now legislating for this whole area above the continental shelf, when there is real doubt about whether this House has the ability to do that, and whether in doing that we are compliant with our international obligations. That is a matter that this House has to be cognisant of, and has to take note of when we are passing legislation. It would be totally wrong if we—even in this truncated process, even in the absence of a select committee—now barged ahead without receiving some sort of assurance from those who are in a position to give that assurance: either the Minister in the chair, the Attorney-General, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, or even, indeed, the Minister of Justice when she has finished killing the turtles. Any of them ought to be able to give us an assurance about the integrity and the correctness of this provision, because it is not good. It is not good. It is not good for the turtles that live above the continental shelf. In fact, it will be the turtles that will be most affected because they live above the continental shelf and they will be on the foreshore and seabed. But it is not good. It is not good.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Let’s get on to the foreshore and seabed—Labour taking away the rights of people to go to court.

ANDREW LITTLE: That has got the Attorney-General up. The Attorney-General has woken up. If only we could have the benefit of his advice on this particular provision, because it is a serious matter. We can laugh about that. We can laugh at the Attorney-General, and we can laugh about the turtles, but it is a matter of the integrity of this House and every member in it that we are called upon to consider a piece of legislation under urgency. We ordinarily ought to expect the Minister to answer legitimate questions where there is doubt. He has not done that, and we are in no better position. It is wrong for us to be put in this position. We must continue to oppose this unless and until we have some sort of assurance from the Minister in the chair. We are being put in an impossible position. It must never happen. Hopefully, it will never happen again after this.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. What we are seeing is this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill being sneaked through under urgency. This egregious clause 14 is being sneaked through under urgency to amend the Anadarko amendment—also snuck through without any New Zealand Bill of Rights Act or select committee scrutiny, through a Supplementary Order Paper and amendment. This is terrible lawmaking. I believe it is lawmaking at its worst. That is what the Law Society LawTalk magazine is talking about.

But what we are doing right now with clause 14 is something we possibly do not even have the legal ability to do. We do not have the jurisdiction to enforce criminal provisions against protesters to protect one specific industry on the high sea. I am sure members know, and I am sure the Minister of Energy and Resources knows, because he is the lawyer in the Chamber, that the high sea is considered to be an inch above the seabed on the extended continental shelf, past our exclusive economic zone. This extends out to 350 nautical miles. The reason is that a country is given the rights, with the royalties paid to the International Seabed Authority, to exploit the minerals on the seabed. But the water column and the sea are not considered part of New Zealand’s jurisdiction.

We have heard numerous quotes from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website and from the Ministry for the Environment website showing it is clear that we do not have jurisdiction to control shipping. But this is exactly what this Government is trying to do, and to sneak it through under Budget urgency at a quarter to midnight. I think it is an outrage.

I think the question for the Minister is this: was he even aware he was doing this? It is not in the explanatory note of the bill. Did he even know he was taking this huge step to extend international jurisdiction unilaterally over 1.7 million square kilometres? I believe this is going to have international ramifications. You are going to see the North Koreans try this example, you are going to see Japan—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, no, I’m not. No, I’m not.

GARETH HUGHES: You are right, Mr Chair. We are going to see countries like Japan and North Korea trying this on. The world is going to see Japan trying to enforce non-interference zones around its ships trying to do its whaling. North Korea is going to do it. I think this is going to be an internationally significant precedent, and I do not think the Minister is even aware he is doing it.

Did he get a legal opinion from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade? Is the Minister of Foreign Affairs even aware that Simon Bridges, the Minister, under urgency is sneaking through a massive jurisdictional grab to extend New Zealand’s rights over it? This is likely going to be challenged, I believe, at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea at Hamburg. It could be challenged in New Zealand’s courts, and, again, we are doing it all without select committee scrutiny. It is an absolute outrage.

But why are we doing it? What happened last week? Which is the first oil company wanting to apply for a permit over the continental shelf? Of course, it is the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, which last week with Shell announced it wanted to get a permit. This is a company that on its own website describes itself as a mega State asset of the Chinese Government. This company wants to get a permit from Mr Bridges over the continental shelf. I want Mr Bridges to tell this Parliament whether he got a call from either Shell or the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, the State-owned oil driller of the Chinese Communist Government. Did he get a call from them, saying “Hey, Mr Bridges, I’m sorry, but with your Anadarko amendment you covered only the territories in the EEZ. The poor drafting used didn’t cover the continental shelf where we want to go prospect for oil with Shell.”?

Mr Bridges, you have not answered a single question. My question to the Minister is this: were you aware, and had your office been contacted? What we are seeing is a travesty of justice, with a poor, egregious clause 14 being rushed through under Budget urgency. This ain’t a good look for this Government.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 52

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 11; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Moana Mackey to clause 14 be agreed to:

delete clause 14.

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

Ayes 52

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 11; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Moana Mackey to clause 14 be agreed to:

replace this clause with the following clause:

14 Section 55 amended (New sections 101A to 101C inserted)

In section 55, new section 101A, replace the definition of offshore area with:

“offshore area means any area that is within the territorial sea”.

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

Ayes 52

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 11; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 63

New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 61

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

Noes 54

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 11; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Part 2 agreed to.

Clauses 1 to 3

MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I am very pleased to take a call on the title and commencement clauses of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I will come to the title soon, but I think the commencement is a good place to start. Clause 2 says: “Commencement—This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” My question would be this: will it? Will it, or will it be something else that we have had to pass in the meantime because of all the mistakes in this piece of legislation? I do not think we can have any confidence that this legislation will, in fact, come into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent, because I suspect we may have to pass yet another amendment bill before the original amendment Act comes into force, because, of course, we passed the original amendment Act only 6 weeks ago. The body is not yet cold, it is still warm, and here we are having to amend it substantially again.

This is a record for National Government Ministers, I think. I do not think we have ever had to see a bill come back to Parliament so quickly to be amended under urgency through all stages because there were so many mistakes and errors in the original bill, including a significant error where the Minister of Energy and Resources forgot 1.7 million square kilometres of water—1.7 million square kilometres of water he just forgot to include in the original bill. That was, of course, in a Supplementary Order Paper that did not go to a select committee. It did not go to a select committee at all, and no member of the public got to submit on it. There was no chance for public scrutiny, no chance for select committee scrutiny, and no chance for officials to give us the information that we need. So we are here passing this amendment bill to the amendment Act. When it comes to the commencement, I do not think that the Minister can have any faith that this is the actual legislation that will come into law, and that is an indictment upon him as a Minister.

When it comes to the title, I could suggest that perhaps—pre-empting what is certainly likely to happen in the next few months—instead of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, we could just call it the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment to the Amendment to the Amendment to the Amendment Bill”, and that might be somewhat closer to what we are actually going to end up with, thanks to the absolutely shambolic process that this has gone through.

There are more questions than answers—in fact, no answers have been provided. The Minister sits there on a quarter-million-dollar salary and will not even do his job, which is answering very basic questions—and very serious questions—about the legality of the law he is passing and about the rights of New Zealanders that are being taken away, stripped away, under this legislation. The Minister sits there like a dried arrangement, pretending to read his magazine because he does not know the answers or he is too arrogant to provide the answers. Frankly, it is an absolute outrage. The Minister is simply not up to it. That is what has become quite clear from this process tonight.

Maybe another potential title for the bill could be the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 (Passing Laws in Jurisdictions We Have No Right to Pass Laws in) Amendment Bill”, because there was a very serious question raised with the Minister in Part 2 of this debate—a question that he has refused to answer, and that is absolutely extraordinary. I know he is trying very hard to pretend that he is reading right now, but I know that he is listening. He should feel ashamed of himself. The question was, Mr Bridges, why the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is telling us on its website—confirming what happens under the Continental Shelf Act, the relevant provisions of which my colleague Jacinda Ardern read out in full—that international law states quite clearly that New Zealand has no right to pass laws in the water column above the continental shelf in the high seas. It has no right. Why, when the example that the ministry gives is that we have no right to regulate activities like shipping, is it that the Minister is telling us that we are able to pass laws that restrict the activities of vessels above the continental shelf? Those two things do not match up.

Either we do have the right to pass laws in the water column above the continental shelf or we do not. The United Nations and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade tell us that we do not. Minister Bridges, in this legislation, tells us that we do. He has not actually said it in person, because he has been too busy pretending to read and trying to avoid answering questions. So which of those two is correct, Minister? Is it the United Nations and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, or is it you? It is simple. Is there any acknowledgment? No. Take a drink of water, that will chew up some time. It is simply—

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): There are two matters to deal with here: the title and, obviously, the commencement date of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I shall begin with the title, because it really does sum up what an absolute shambles of a portfolio Simon Bridges has: the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. The Act is not even in force yet, and my colleague Maryan Street will tell me—24 May, is that right—that 24 May is when the Crown Minerals Amendment Act will come into force. We now have an amendment bill. As has been noted, despite the fact that the rest of the world has moved on to Friday, 17 May, in this Chamber it is still 16 May. It is still possible for the Hurricanes to beat the Chiefs, because it is still Thursday and not Friday, which is when they lose—that is for Sue Moroney. It is possible that this bill will, in fact, manage to pass before the bill that it amends actually comes into force. That is an extraordinary stuff-up. So if I was giving this bill a title, it would actually be called the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Simon Bridges’ Stuff-up Amendment Bill”, because that is the honest truth. We do not want to have a go at Simon Bridges. He is such a friendly chap. He is always saying nice things about the Labour Party. But today is the opportunity to tell the truth, and the truth is that Simon Bridges has stuffed up, and that should be included in the title. Simon Bridges should actually take some responsibility for the fact that this legislation has gone wrong.

There is an alternative title for it here. That could be the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Golden Age of Government Amendment Bill”, in honour of the Attorney-General, because it is the golden age of Government to come to this House and push legislation through. That is this Government’s golden age—pushing legislation through under urgency, selling off laws to corporates. That is the golden age of this Government, the golden age of democracy, brought to you by an Attorney-General who will not even stand up in this Chamber and take a call about a bill that limits the right of New Zealanders to protest. That is the Attorney-General’s responsibility to this House. It is to come to this House and actually defend the rights of New Zealanders, but he fails—he fails. Chris Finlayson has failed, and we could include Simon Bridges’ and Chris Finlayson’s failure in the title of this bill.

But if we look at the commencement issue, we really do have a major issue—[Interruption] Sorry? What was that?

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Grow up. Don’t be such a juvenile.

GRANT ROBERTSON: A juvenile. Right, apparently, I am a juvenile. That is an interesting statement to come from a man who spent all day on Twitter making ridiculous comments, trying to match Judith Collins for the verbosity and irrelevance of his tweets. He calls me juvenile. He should actually take a look at the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Energy and Resources—a boy doing a woman’s job, as Maryan Street said before—because if it was being done by this side, the Minister of Energy and Resources would be Moana Mackey and we would not have these problems. Instead, we have the boy wonder in the chair unable to speak, it would seem, this evening. He has lost the power of speech. He has to turn it over to Chris Finlayson to talk about stiff cheese for the evening. That is the best we have had from the National Party tonight. The only intervention on the Hansard tonight on this bill from the National Party is Mr Finlayson saying “Stiff cheese.” He has not even identified what kind of cheese yet—that is all it is.

This bill is an absolute disaster for democracy. That could be in the title as well. We could call it the “Disaster for Democracy Bill”. We could certainly call it the “Simon Bridges’ Stuff-up Bill”. We could certainly call it the “Chris Finlayson’s Golden Age of Democracy Bill”. But what it should not be called is a bill that amends an Act that has not even come into force yet. [Interruption] Sorry, Mr Coleman—a contribution?

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: I said it’s 3 minutes till your midnight feast.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Jonathan Coleman makes it. The National Party now has two contributions. He will be able to blow cigar smoke into someone’s face in 3 minutes’ time. That is what we will get from Jonathan Coleman. His greatest contribution to New Zealand politics is to stand up there, “The Maestro”, the man who delivered Mt Albert to Labour with every single thing he did—

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It is now 2 minutes until his midnight feast.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Jonathan Coleman thinks that if he tells a joke again, it will be funny, but it is not. He is the man who led Melissa Lee on her triumphant march through Mt Albert—magnificent strategist that Jonathan Coleman is for the National Party. He has got himself on the Hansard tonight, along with Chris Finlayson, and still no member of the National Party has got up—

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): The commencement date is one of the two clauses under discussion right now for this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. Anybody could be forgiven for thinking that the title of it is, in fact, a misprint, but, no, it is just a mistake. It is not a misprint; it is a ministerial mistake.

Can I just ask that the Minister of Energy and Resources, if he wishes the commencement clause to mean what it says, to take away this piece of legislation after the requisite period of time—and it gets passed tomorrow—and if he is going to stuff it under his mattress, could he please put a sticky note on it to say “Bring up for 25 May.”, because the other bill is not going to be law. The other Act will not be in force until 24 May, so the Minister has to take this amendment bill away and put a little sticky note on it, or please—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. I was waiting for someone to call me juvenile, but it did not happen.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 12 midnight to 9 a.m. (Saturday)

Thursday, 16 May 2013

(continued on Saturday, 18 May 2013)

Bills

Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed.

Clauses 1 to 3 (continued)

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): Good morning to the Committee on this Thursday, 16 May. I am interested to see that we have a different Minister in the chair this morning, the Minister for Primary Industries. Perhaps the Minister responsible for this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, Simon Bridges, has gone home to the Bay of Plenty to take care of really important issues. Clearly, there are important things going on in the Bay of Plenty, as you can tell from—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: That’s out of order.

Hon MARYAN STREET: Well, get up and raise a point of order. Raise a point of order. There are obviously important things going on in the Bay of Plenty. One of the top stories in the Bay of Plenty Times this morning was the fact that a woman was fined $150 for driving through a red light while flossing her teeth. Perhaps the Minister of Energy and Resources has gone to take care of that.

We are talking about clauses 1 to 3 of the bill, which include the title and the commencement clauses. Last night when I was interrupted by midnight, I was talking about the fact that the Minister needs to be careful about the implementation date of this bill. If he is not careful—if he does not give it to a competent staffer, in other words—he could have the amendment coming into effect before the bill that it amends comes into effect. So the date of implementation of this bill is to be the day after the Royal assent, and if he is not careful and does not look after it, and if he does not have somebody with a little, yellow sticky label to bring it up for him on 25 May, he could find himself in an even more bizarre situation than he currently is.

Part of the debate this morning is about the title of the bill. We could call this the “My First Effort (Epic Fail) Bill”, because this has been a chapter of errors from the beginning, and it is the Minister’s first attempt to bring legislation to the House. So within 6 weeks, even before the Crown Minerals Amendment Act, which we passed a few weeks ago, has been implemented, we are here amending it.

We could call it the “Nobody Told Me I Had to Earn My Salary Bill”, because the level of incompetence around this procedure has been extraordinary. We could call it the “Contempt for Democracy Bill”, because it does not allow in this rushed process any due consideration by a select committee. We could call it the “Contempt for Parliament Bill”, because the disdain with which the Minister has held Parliament is of epic proportions. We could call it the “Contempt for Due Process Bill”, because it has, in fact, denied people who know more than the Minister—that is not hard—about maritime and international law, for example, the chance to submit on it. It could be called the “New Levels of Ministerial Incompetence Bill”, because of the ineptitude demonstrated from beginning to end.

But, probably, National members would like to call it the “How to Lose Friends and Aggravate People Bill”, because they are not keen to be here on a Saturday morning, even if the Minister should really go back to watching out for women drivers who drive through red lights while flossing their teeth. It could be called the “Strip New Zealanders of Their Right to Protest Bill”. It could be called—

ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): The title and commencement are two very important aspects of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. My colleague Maryan Street was talking about the commencement issue, and there is a real issue about the potential for this bill to come into force to amend another bill that will not yet have entered into force as an Act. So it will create this dreadful situation where the original Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 is waiting in the queue to come into force on 24 May or 25 May, and this bill gets signed off this weekend, goes off to the Governor-General for the Royal assent, and is, in effect, in force but amending nothing. That just demonstrates the horrific position that the House has been put in with rushed legislation, without any sense of the issue having been properly managed. That is an issue.

The title of the bill is very concerning, because when the bill is passed it will then be known as the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Act 2013. I think we need to be more clever about how to abbreviate that. We could call it the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Squared”, because we have both the word “Amendment” and the year “2013” together.

Hon Maryan Street: This is not a typo.

ANDREW LITTLE: It could have in brackets “(This is Not a Typographical Error)”. It could be called the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 (Times Two) Amendment Bill”, or the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 (Mark II) Amendment Bill”. We could, of course, call it the “Crown Minerals (Barbarised Information) Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill”, because if there is one thing that has characterised the debate on this bill, as, indeed, characterised the last one this House considered, it is the total lack of regulatory impact information that we have had. That is another unfortunate position that this House has yet again been put into, which we should not be put into. In this particular bill, as we know, there was a very important issue—a genuine doubt over the efficacy of one of the provisions in it, clause 14. So it might be appropriate to reflect that in the title of the bill.

Alternatively, to reflect another deep-seated concern about this bill, it might be called the “Crown Minerals (Not Taking Health and Safety or the Environment Seriously) Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill”. That goes to the heart of the issue that we have in this piece of legislation. It is already a pretty light-handed approach to health and safety oversight and environmental oversight when it comes to prospecting and the exploration of oil and gas, and this makes it even lighter. It underscores the very deep-seated concern we have that it simply does not take that issue seriously, at a time in this country’s history when workplace health and safety in particular is at the forefront of everybody’s minds. We have a disastrous record when it comes to that, and this industry, as much as it has come a long way in the last 20 or 30 years, still has issues about health and safety. In a former capacity I have represented the families of workers at coroners’ inquests in relation to deaths that have been caused in this industry because of issues largely about fatigue and the organisation of work.

So when the bill says that the Minister needs to provide some sort of oversight, in this day and age we should be expecting the best possible oversight and insistence that the Minister demands world’s best practice in health and safety and world’s best practice in environmental standards. But this bill does not do that. So inserting in brackets within the title “(Not Taking Health and Safety or the Environment Seriously)” would be an apposite reflection of what in fact this bill does—or, more accurately, what it does not do.

Another title might be the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 (Denial of Democracy in Parliament) Amendment Bill”, because that is also what we have had. Yet again, another piece of legislation is being rushed through the House under urgency, when actually taking a bit of time to consider it would not have caused any harm or damage to those who have an immediate stake in it. Those are issues that ought to be given very close and serious consideration in both the title and the commencement of this bill.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Colleagues have suggested a number of other titles for the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I think it should be called the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act (Ignore International Conventions, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) Bill”.

Here is a very interesting parallel with another piece of legislation that the House has passed, the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act. On that bill, we had a similar debate about insufficient account being taken of our responsibilities under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and there it was about preserving and protecting the marine environment. Certainly, there are a number of matters in the exclusive economic zone Act that decision makers such as the Environmental Protection Authority have to take into account, and they include the protection of biological diversity, but that has got to be balanced off against economic benefits to New Zealand. Of course, these two pieces of legislation are parallel, because the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, which we are debating today, is all about the allocation of block offers and space, whereas the exclusive economic zone Act is all about the applications for marine consents to actually do the extraction.

It is interesting that in both of them we have had this major issue with the Government failing to take account of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Here in this bill that is because of clause 14, the extension of the no-protest clause, which the Minister introduced with his late Supplementary Order Paper into the principal Act. It is interesting that the Australian legislation has no equivalent. Certainly, there is a 500-metre safety zone around an oil installation—a well—but there is no provision of any safety zone around a vessel and there is a very good reason for that, which is that the convention does not allow for safety zones around vessels. That is in complete contrast to the provisions around oil rigs, where those are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of States. But, as Duncan Currie noted in his opinion on the Supplementary Order Paper to the principal Act, if you have safety zones around vessels, that creates very confusing zones of coastal State jurisdiction around foreign-flag vessels.

So this Government, in this bill, is overriding the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and it shows the contempt with which the Government views international conventions. It is potentially passing legislation that it has no jurisdiction to do, yet this bill is being pushed through the House, and we have not had the benefit of the Law Society or of other submitters who could provide their informed opinion on the impacts of the bill.

So I think the bill should be called the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 (Take No Notice of the International Conventions like the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) Amendment Bill”. That is quite a distressing step, because it is showing that New Zealand is risking being a pariah on the international stage, that the Government thinks it can pass legislation that applies on the high seas, and that it thinks it can ignore conventions that have been carefully negotiated, taking into account all of the interests of the parties. And why? To suppress the right to protest. That is despite the International Maritime Organization and others, and a whole raft of international treaties, recognising the right to freedom of association, the right to protest at sea, and despite the tradition that we have in this country of taking to sea to express our wish to protect our oceans against the dumping of waste, against drift-netting, and against nuclear testing. This bill is overriding that by extending the provisions in the principal Act to make it an offence to be within 500 metres of an oil exploration vessel and to impose the potentially quite stiff penalties of imprisonment and very severe fines.

Because it goes in breach of international law, this bill is a bad bill. It is undermining New Zealand’s reputation, as well as our protection of our oceans.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I move, That the question be now put.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): It is a pleasure to be able to take my first call on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I am particularly interested in the commencement clause of this legislation, because we are in—I do not know whether it is a unique situation, but it is certainly an extremely rare situation to be debating an amendment bill that amends an amendment Act that has not yet come into force. Obviously, there are questions about exactly how the commencement arrangements for this bill should work. As some of us are inclined to do, I delved into McGee to see whether there were any precedents for this situation, and I could not find anything. In the little time I had to have a look through it, I could not find anything, which suggests to me that it is an extremely rare situation for a Minister to get it so badly wrong the first time around that we find ourselves back here amending an Act that has not even been implemented yet.

There are a couple of issues that I think are worth having a look at. Yesterday we traversed the issue of a precise commencement date for the bill that we were debating, and the need for a bill to have a precise commencement date in it. You ruled, Mr Chairperson, that, say, for instance, taking it to a select committee was not precise enough to establish exactly what the commencement date would be for a bill. That leaves us in an interesting situation here where this bill, as most bills do, says that it commences on the day after it receives Royal assent. But exactly when should a bill that is amending an Act that has not yet come into force receive Royal assent? I think that is a fair question. That seems to me to be quite undetermined. It might be possible that the commencement date set out in this bill is out of order. I think it is difficult to determine exactly what the commencement date for this bill ought to be, because we are in this highly unusual situation where the principal Act—and I have no doubt that there will be plenty of calls on the principal Act clause—has not actually yet come into force. So I would be interested in your ruling on that, Mr Chairperson.

Of course, there is one possible option, and that is for the Governor-General to refuse to give Royal assent. That is an option that has never been used. It would be absolutely unprecedented for the Governor-General to refuse to give Royal assent, but it could be an option if the Governor-General looked at what the Government was doing and thought to himself: “Look, you’ve got this a bit out of order here. You need to have the principal Act actually in force before you can amend that Act.” Then it would be an option for the Governor-General to consider refusing to give Royal assent. It would be, as McGee says, “a remarkable—indeed a unique—event in New Zealand. No bill presented to a Governor or a Governor-General has ever been refused the Royal assent in New Zealand ...”. I wonder whether Simon Bridges’ stuff-up is really the time to be creating precedent in New Zealand. If a Minister who is so inept and so incapable of getting something as simple as this legislation right has made such a huge mistake, is that the time for the Governor-General to step in and do something that has never been done before in New Zealand? Maybe it is. I think it probably is not, but I think we have ourselves a very difficult situation here where we have no precedent around how you deal with the commencement of a bill that amends an Act that has not yet come into force.

We are also debating the title of the bill. Again, this title does not tell us very much. It tells us that it is the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill.

It tells us something—

Moana Mackey: You couldn’t make that name up.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: You could not make that name up, no. It does tell us something. It tells us that this is a highly unusual situation, and that Simon Bridges is an incompetent Minister. But I think that, you know, we really should have in the bill there the fact that, as it says in the general policy statement, some areas and omissions in the original Act have been identified. So it should be called the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 (Simon Bridges’ Eight Errors and Omissions) Amendment Bill”. I think that that would be a title that much more closely reflects what it is that Parliament is having to do here, which is essentially to walk around behind Simon Bridges and clean up his messes before the original Act, which he passed through Parliament, can even come into force.

Of course, what we know is that this is a bizarre extension of the anti-protesting regulations in international waters. I think there are numerous titles for this bill that could be considered—

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Generally, when we get to this stage of a Committee debate, when we are talking about the title and the commencement and the principal Act, it is a very narrow debate, and it is generally a bit of a laugh. There is a bit of humour at some of the alternative titles that might be given to particular bill. I have heard a bit of that this morning. Some people have referred to this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, perhaps more appropriately being called the “Total Disregard for Health, Safety, and the Environment Bill”, and that certainly is a very valid description. Some people have referred to it as the “Minister’s First Bill (Biggest Mistake in Parliament) Bill”. That is certainly an appropriate title. Others in the debate last evening referred to the possibility of it being called the “Who Came Knocking at the Minister’s Door Bill”, given that it is a huge puzzle to us not only why we are debating this bill at 9.20 on a Saturday morning, even though the calendar on the wall tells us it is Thursday night, but what the need is for this bill to have gone through all stages under urgency.

Well, the title does not give us any hint to that at all, as it is, except it is a very puzzling title. “The Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Act 2013.”—it looks like someone got their finger stuck on a button on the computer and just did a repeat in error, or did a cut and paste, but it is not. If only that were the case.

This bill that we are debating now amends an Act that is yet to come into force. Like my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway, I looked through McGee to see whether there was any precedent for this. I had perhaps less time than he had—he had thought of the idea a lot earlier than I did—but I cannot find anything in the history of our Parliament that has an amendment to an Act coming into this Parliament and being debated before the primary Act has even been brought into force. It is absolutely unheard of.

If it was a genuine technical mistake or if it was a genuine error, then I think we might be a bit more lenient on the Minister Simon Bridges, but, actually, what he has done is chosen, in my view, to abuse the parliamentary process. He has not reflected it in the title and not reflected it in the commencement date of this legislation. He has abused the process of this Parliament because not only is he doing a couple of small, technical amendments that may well have been needed and may have been agreed to by all members of the House but also he has chosen to do wholesale changes to the primary legislation.

This brings him into a very difficult situation. It is specifically reflected in the commencement of the bill, clause 2: “This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” Well, generally the Royal assent is straight after the bill has gone through the third reading. It gets shipped out through the appropriate processes and gets signed off—gets the Royal assent. Well, what happens if the Royal assent on the amending legislation occurs—and, therefore, this bill that we are debating now, comes into force—before the primary legislation comes into force? What position does that put Parliament in?

Of course people will say: “Oh, well, it may be just a matter of a few days.”, but, actually, in a matter of the law, and in a matter of big issues like health and safety responsibilities, like environmental considerations and responsibilities, or like financial liability, if there is a major spill—if there is some disaster that is impacted on by this Crown minerals Act—where would the liability lie? I think we would have a huge legal debate. I think this bill could be called the “Crown Minerals (Let’s Get Every International Lawyer Excited) Bill”, because this leaves itself wide open to some sort of challenge.

This is the area where we should be working in exactly the opposite direction. We should be giving security to the industry—that is clear. We should be making sure that the highest possible health and safety and environmental regimes are in place. This works in the opposite direction. We discussed last night in an earlier discussion about how the permit applicant does not even have to be able to prove that they have the health and safety, environmental, or financial ability to deal with the requirements of the legislation. This is bizarre.

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

CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): This bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, has, as others have said, been a highly questionable bill, and I want to touch on all three of clauses 1, 2, and 3 in my contribution now. First of all, I want to look at clause 3 and the amendments to the principal Act, because part of the reason we are here is to fix up a whole lot of mistakes that were made in the original bill when it was forced through. As others have so eloquently outlined to the Committee, we are in a very odd situation of having to amend a bill that has not yet come into effect, which is a very strange situation. But I just thought it was worth putting on the record what those mistakes are—what we are amending in clause 3.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, we’re talking about the title.

CAROL BEAUMONT: Clause 3 is about amending the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013. We are talking about clauses 1 to 3. The mistakes made in the original bill relate to the definition of “underground gas storage facility”; references to “reserves” being changed to “resources”; extensions to existing petroleum permits; the addition of platinum to tier 1 permits, to make it the same as gold and silver; clarification of the application of the Crown Minerals Act 1991 to existing privileges; clarification of the proprietary status of permits acquired by the Crown; references to a dwelling change, because, as was so eloquently explained last night, we are going from a “dwelling house” as two words to “dwellinghouse” as one word—or the other way round, I cannot quite remember—and other “minor changes consequential” to the above. So those are all the mistakes.

But if I look at some of the more serious matters in this bill, I think I want to look at the possibility of changing the title and making a suggestion for that. Some of those things are perhaps about sloppiness, and about a Minister and a Government that just force through legislation without adequate scrutiny. But there are some changes in this bill that are very, very serious, and we talked about those last night at the relevant parts of the bill. They are making significant changes to permit processes—creating conditional permits, running real risks around health and safety and environmental matters—and, in Part 2, they are around covering the whole continental shelf area, which is an extra 1.7 million square kilometres. So these are serious matters; they are not just sloppiness.

Andrew Geddis in an article last night talked about sloppy and highly questionable lawmaking, so I would like to suggest that this bill be amended to be called the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act (Sloppy and Highly Questionable Lawmaking) 2013 Amendment Bill”, because it has both elements in this. It has both sloppiness and it has some very serious and highly questionable matters in this bill. Or perhaps, in more kind of day-to-day language, we could call it the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act (Sinister or Stuff-up or Both?) 2013 Amendment Bill”, because there are those two elements. So I think that people listening to this debate will be very concerned about this whole process.

I want to perhaps suggest another amendment to the name. We sat last night and went through the specifics of this legislation with a Minister in the chair who sat there and failed to answer one single question—not one—and they were serious questions. They were questions about the legality of what was happening here—questions about whether we were breaching international law, for example—but still the Minister of Energy and Resources sat there and he read his magazines, or at least he pretended to. So I would like to suggest another one, which is the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act (Refusal to Answer Questions) 2013 Amendment Bill”. I have never ever seen such a disgraceful performance by a Minister in the face of very serious questioning about important matters that relate to environmental standards, that relate to health and safety, and that relate to the legality of legislation that we are having to deal with in this House as part of this Government’s push-through of legislation following the Budget.

Again, I just want to put it in context. A very good piece by Andrew Geddis was entitled “I think National just broke our constitution”, and I think that this legislation is part of that process. He refers to the Government pushing through—

TIM MACINDOE (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): When we look at the title, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, we see that it is clearly inappropriate. A better title might be the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act (Failure of the Responsible Minister to Ensure that Legislation is Free of Mistakes) Amendment Bill”, or the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act (Failure of Simon Bridges) Amendment Bill”. Or we could have the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act (Failure to Look at Environmental Impacts) Amendment Bill”, or the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act (Failure to Look at Ecosystems Vital to New Zealand) Amendment Bill”. The title could be the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act (Failure to Consult with Fisheries to See What Impact This Will Have) Amendment Bill”. Or we could have the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act (What Goes Under the Water—Take A Look at Open-cast Mining) Amendment Bill”. There are many titles that would be far more suitable for this bill.

I cannot believe that this bill is actually coming into force on 24 May. This is a bill that would be better served in Cold War Russia under a totalitarian regime. Where is the democratic process? The Government is amending an Act due to come in on 24 May—that is next Friday. We can have no confidence at all that it is accurate. I mean, this bill could be the “Amendment Act (Write It As I, Simon Bridges, Speak) Amendment Bill”. We may arrive back on the Tuesday after to find yet another amendment bill is to be debated. There is no point in attempting to pass the blame to Parliamentary Counsel Office staff and Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment staff, as National is trying to do, because the Government has ministerial responsibility. As Mr Speaker pointed out in his ruling on written questions as recently as Thursday, Ministers have responsibility, and it was Cabinet that signed off on the original, totally messed up bill, which is actually an insult to the English language.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: The member shouldn’t be talking about anyone else messing up.

BRENDAN HORAN: Really? Really? Am I supposed to have messed up, Mr Brownlee?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: You got sacked.

BRENDAN HORAN: I prefer to think of it as being given a totally new perspective on life.

Tim Macindoe: It certainly wasn’t a promotion.

BRENDAN HORAN: If we are talking about messing up, one may look at and address his own sartorial mistakes.

Tim Macindoe: The tie isn’t that bad.

BRENDAN HORAN: That means comb your hair, Mr Macindoe. But if we have a look at the principal Act—

Chris Hipkins: He hasn’t got enough.

BRENDAN HORAN: —no—we might be better replacing this clause with the Civil List Act, which governs ministerial salaries, because Mr Bridges is obviously not worth the quarter of a million dollars a year. In the 32 days since the Act was passed that this bill amends, Simon has been paid $25,000. That is around $1,200 for every clause of this bill that needs to be corrected. It is unbelievable.

The other day Mr Macindoe stood up and interrupted the process. I cannot believe that Mr Macindoe would get up and say that I was out of order and that I was not following the rules when that side never follows the rules—never mind about democracy, never mind about the democratic process.

Tim Macindoe: That’s only because your speech was totally irrelevant. You didn’t know that the question was.

BRENDAN HORAN: I must say it is very nice to be here on a Saturday morning and see you looking so chipper. This whole bill is a stuff-up—absolutely a stuff-up.

Tim Macindoe: You kept getting the forecast wrong.

BRENDAN HORAN: But, worse than that, I would ask some of those members—because, for all of his chirping over there, Mr Macindoe is a good man. He is an intelligent man. I would ask him to look inside and find that conscience. I know it is there somewhere. There are some very good people over there.

SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 68

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

Noes 46

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 11; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Motion agreed to.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 70, Noes 46.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 68

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

Noes 46

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 11; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Clause 1 agreed to.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 68, Noes 48.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 68

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

Noes 46

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 11; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Clause 2 agreed to.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 68, Noes 48.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 3 be agreed to.

Ayes 68

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

Noes 46

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 11; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Clause 3 agreed to.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 68, Noes 48.

Bill reported without amendment.

Report adopted.

Third Reading

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Conservation) on behalf of the Minister of Energy and Resources: I move, That the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill be now read a third time. The petroleum minerals sector is already an important contributor to the New Zealand economy. Mining is the backbone of many local communities. For example, on the West Coast the mining sector employs over 4,000 people, generates about one-third of household incomes, and contributes $550 million a year to local GDP. The petroleum industry in Taranaki directly employs almost 4,000 people, with another 4,000 in supporting industries, and contributes around $2 billion a year in local GDP.

Crude oil is New Zealand’s fourth-largest commodity export, worth now over $2 billion per year. But the potential for growth is even greater. New Zealand has an extensive untapped wealth of minerals and petroleum resources. The Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 sent 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.

This bill provides commercial certainty to operators who obtained their mining licences under earlier regimes and who are covered by transitional arrangements. It also clarifies how data confidentiality and reporting requirements will apply to all existing privileges. The bill also makes minor changes to the application of operator capability assessments and to the threshold for platinum group elements. These changes do not dilute the robust performance management provisions of the regime in any way, but are necessary to improve the alignment of the regime with industry structures and future resource development.

The bill also makes minor drafting changes, which again are within the scope of the Act itself. Much has been made by the Opposition of the bill correcting errors in the previous Act that was passed. I would note that over two dozen bills in the previous Parliament contained such errors that required correction. The only people in this Parliament who have not made mistakes are those who have not done anything. I also note criticism that these amendments have been picked up before the Act took effect, and the Minister has received criticism for that. I take the opposite view. For the Minister to get on and fix these errors before the Act comes into effect ensures that the public is not adversely affected by any such errors.

In the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 this Government has established a robust, modern, and futureproof regime to allow continued responsible development of New Zealand’s petroleum and mineral resources, for the benefit of all New Zealanders. I commend the bill to the House.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour): Well, the National Party sent the Hon Dr Nick Smith down to do the spin, because the incompetent Minister of Energy and Resources, Simon Bridges—who passed the original bill into law a mere 4 weeks ago, and we are already back having to fix it—is such an embarrassment to the National Party that it has sent down its once-proud Bluegreen champion to set the spin for Simon Bridges and for the Government. Dr Nick Smith should hang his head in shame because he has been shown as the charlatan that he is. Bluegreen—what a joke. This bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, is absolutely appalling for the environment. Dr Nick Smith said that it sends a message to industry that this is a “supportive regime”. Well, that is the understatement of the year. It is more than supportive; it is a developer’s charter. Actually, what it is is a litigator’s dream. That is the reality, because it is so full of errors, it is so full of loopholes, that it leaves the Minister wide open to judicial review. So although the Government wants this to be a developer’s charter, in fact I suspect that it is going to find that it is somewhat of a false economy in that regard.

There has been much mention of the Taranaki District throughout this debate, and, certainly, the oil and gas industry has been very, very good for that district. But do you know what? It is doing just fine under the existing regime. Taranaki did not require complete destruction of laws protecting our environment for it to do as well as it has done. So why do we require this legislation and previous legislation that completely undermines the protection of our environment, unless it is because we want to start carrying out activities that previously would not have been allowed because they are too risky, they are too dangerous, and they do provide too much of a risk to the environment? That is why we are doing it. It is because the Government has no plan B. This is it. This, pokies, and assets sales—that is it. So if this does not deliver the benefits promised, then the Government is kind of screwed. That is why it is deciding that it would rather screw the environment, and that is an absolute shame.

The incompetence of Minister Simon Bridges is incredible. Not only are we back, having to pass an amendment bill weeks after we passed the original amendment bill, before that bill has even come into force, but he sat there in the chair during the Committee stage, like a dried arrangement, and did not take a single call to answer very, very serious questions that the Opposition was putting to him. I do not know whether he does not know the answers, whether he is just too arrogant to think that he should have to give answers on his quarter-of-a-million-dollar salary, or whether, actually, he has no answer. I suspect that it is the latter—that, actually, he has no adequate answers to the questions that we were putting, because this is a seriously flawed piece of legislation.

What this bill does is it extends the protest ban that was introduced by amendment late in the piece—it did not go to a select committee in the original amendment bill—to ban protesting against deep-sea oil drilling in our exclusive economic zone. The Minister said at the time that it was about safety. Maybe the Hon Dr Nick Smith can answer this. If it is about safety, then why is every vessel that engages in dangerous and reckless behaviour not covered by it? Why is it only protest vessels, and only protest vessels that are protesting against deep-sea oil drilling? Dr Smith? Yes, exactly—exactly. Because if that is what it is about, we could be here in urgency passing a bill that extends the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act, which cover dangerous and reckless behaviour by vessels in our territorial waters into the exclusive economic zone. Why did we not do that? That would have covered everyone. That would have meant that no matter who you are, no matter what reason you are doing it for, if you behave in a dangerous way that puts lives at risk, you will be held accountable. Well, under this Government’s law, they are not. In the exclusive economic zone you can threaten people’s lives and it is legal. An activity that would be illegal in our territorial waters is legal in our exclusive economic zone because the Government cares about dangerous and reckless behaviour only if it is opposing deep-sea oil drilling. How completely, completely repugnant is that? Why are we not passing a law that covers everyone? I would like one National Party member to actually answer that question. This is nothing more—nothing more—than an anti-democratic, Draconian piece of legislation that we should all be ashamed of.

What it does, this amendment bill, is it extends that ban out into the continental shelf, into the waters above the continental shelf, and, for the first time, right up to the beaches. So protest activity is banned from the beaches out into the high seas. The problem that we have, and the second question I would like an answer to—and maybe the Hon Dr Nick Smith can answer this one—is that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade tells us, and the United Nations convention on the continental shelf tells us, that we do not have the right to pass legislation on the water column above the continental shelf. We have the right to exploit minerals in the continental shelf, we can drill into it, and we can tunnel into it, but in the water we have no jurisdiction. The example the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade gives is shipping activity. It says that New Zealand has no right to pass laws regulating shipping activity in the water above the continental shelf. So here is my question. How is it, then, that we have the right to regulate shipping activity that is protesting in the water above the continental shelf? We do not. It is humiliating that the Government is sitting here passing law that we have no right to pass. You might as well pass a law on Mars, because you do not have jurisdiction there, either.

So here we are, putting the Government at risk, because if it decides, under this law it is passing, which we actually have no right to pass, that it is going to take criminal action against a vessel that is operating out there in the high seas, and that vessel then turns round and challenges that because New Zealand has no right to pass those laws—those laws have no legal enforcement—then we leave taxpayers open. Actually, it is just really bloody embarrassing, quite frankly, that the Government cannot even work that out. This is why the bill should have gone to a select committee. We would have got answers to these very, very important questions.

My third question to which there was no answer is about the fact that we now, currently, have two criminal offence and penalty regimes operating in our territorial waters for vessels that are protesting. We have the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act, which are already in place, and now we have this new protest ban. Mr Brownlee, maybe you can answer this question. When the police are called out to arrest someone for dangerous activity in our territorial waters, under which regime do they operate? Do they flip a coin? Which one gets precedence? It is a very simple question. Do you have an answer? No, I did not think so. No, I did not think so. I did not think so, because this is such a shambles, such—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: What a load of grandstanding rubbish.

MOANA MACKEY: Oh, Mr Brownlee is very, very grumpy that he has to be here on a Saturday morning. Well, he should not have put such shoddy legislation into the urgency motion, then. This is just so utterly ridiculous and embarrassing that it defies belief. I want to know where the Attorney-General is on this. Where is Chris Finlayson? We have had no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet on this legislation. We have had no regulatory impact statement. We have had no ability to scrutinise the legislation at a select committee to see whether or not it is consistent with international law. Where is our Attorney-General? He is meant to be the protector of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in this country, and he is derelict in, and absent from, his duty. We even had to be subjected to the spectacle of our Attorney-General coming down in the second reading debate, giving a speech defending this legislation, and insinuating, trying to give the pretence, that actually it had had a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet. When we asked him to actually table it, it transpired that there was not one. It was all just a show to try to make it look like the Government had done the work it should have done, when it had not.

On top of that we do not have any regulatory impact statement for this piece of legislation. All we got was a regulatory impact statement for the previous bill. We do not know what the risks are, so I took it upon myself to draft a regulatory impact statement on behalf of the Government. It reaches the standard of quality that we have seen in the other statements in this urgency motion. This is it—this blanked-out document is what I think the regulatory impact statement on this piece of legislation would have looked like. It is very informative—very informative. It took me a long time to draft it. It is an official legal opinion. It is of far higher quality than any information any Government member has brought into the House during this debate. It is of far higher quality than any information our Attorney-General has brought into the House on this debate and the debate on the previous amendment bill. This is about the same level of information that we have had. This is about the same level of quality of information we have had on this piece of legislation. This is a shameful, shameful day for the House, and the Government should hang its head in shame.

TIM MACINDOE (Junior Whip—National): I seek leave to correct a vote that I cast on behalf of the Māori Party on, in fact, all of the clauses during the Committee stage. I exercised two proxy votes in good faith, but no vote should have been cast.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to correct the vote. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. Could the whip now just deliver the result of the changed vote? He is not now voting for the Māori Party?

TIM MACINDOE: The Māori Party votes were cast against each of the clauses. I should not have cast those votes, and I am afraid I was made aware of that only after I had done so.

Mr SPEAKER: On that basis, the correct result for each of those votes was Ayes 68, Noes 46.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am pleased to stand in the third reading debate on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I am not quite sure whether New Zealanders would understand why the previous speaker, Moana Mackey, was holding up a picture of a barcode, but good on her, anyway. I thought it was her speech notes.

I would like to just raise a point, because the previous speaker has harped on in this debate a number of times about why we are even having an amendment bill and why we cannot just stay with what we used to have. She was part of the select committee process when we took on board the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy, and we added into the bill matters around health and safety. We know that the industry of mining, whether it is under the ground, in open mines, or petroleum, is a very dangerous industry, and, obviously, history has shown that to us. We also know, of course, that the report of the team, the working group that Rob Jager from Shell New Zealand chaired, said that there were areas where we could see improvements take place.

So it is absolutely essential that we have revised legislation around these matters. It is responsible for us to do it; it is irresponsible for us not to. Let us make it very clear on that matter. We want men and women who go to our workplaces every day to come home safe at night, and that is through every industry, every sector, whether that is mining or whether that is agriculture. We know that a large number of people, sadly, are injured and, even worse, lose their lives in workplace accidents in this country. We, as a Government, are determined to reduce that so that we can have families that are united and do not lose loved ones.

The Government’s Business Growth Agenda supports New Zealand businesses to grow in order to create jobs. This piece of legislation is about that. It has incorporated in it very strong measures around how we interact with our environment. We know that in order for New Zealand to grow and prosper, for its economic activity to be lifted, and for New Zealanders to have what they want, we must engage, utilise, and exploit our natural resources in this country in an appropriate and a responsible way. I believe that this bill covers those areas and gets the balance right. I know there are all sorts of debates about where the point lies in that balance, but we believe, on this side of the House, that the Kiwi way of life is not just about enjoying our environment but about being able to afford to enjoy it. So we must have strong incomes and we must create jobs.

Moana Mackey: Answer the questions we actually asked.

JONATHAN YOUNG: You know that, up in your neck of the woods, up there in Poverty Bay, you have potential and you have opportunity—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Do not bring the Speaker into the debate.

JONATHAN YOUNG: The member understands what I have said. I believe also that she has been on the record as saying that she looks forward to the opportunities that exist through this. I am very pleased to stand in support of this legislation.

I say, on behalf of the Minister of Energy and Resources, that when omissions were noted and seen, he worked quickly to bring these to our attention and have them rectified. You know, we would certainly hear howls of derision and anger from the other side of the House if we knew and did nothing about them. I am sure that, as the member Andrew Williams has stated a number of times in his speeches, this is actually a good, responsible response to those issues. Thank you.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): It is entirely possible to be tolerant of mistakes that people make for the first time in a new job, and often there is leeway given to people who do make mistakes as they get to grips with a new job. But the stakes are very high when it comes to this House. The stakes are very high when it comes to the legislation governing activities in this country.

This legislation, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, has been a complete debacle from beginning to end. The spin that the National Government is trying to put on this amendment bill to an amendment Act is just farcical. The spin now says: “Well, isn’t the Minister good that he spotted the mistakes?”, which he clearly did not; otherwise he would not have brought in an amendment bill in the parlous state that it was. The spin is: “Isn’t it good that he spotted those mistakes and he’s moved to correct them?”. In fact, he has moved so quickly to correct them that it is quite possible that this piece of legislation will come into effect before the amendment Act that it seeks to amend. He is so speedy about addressing these errors that he may find himself tripping up on the dates if he is not careful.

This is the modus operandi of this Government. The modus operandi of this Government is to sell our laws to allow big business to come in and exploit our resources without care about health and safety, because those provisions are weakened, and without care about our environment, because those provisions are weakened, and to say to everybody who looks like a company that will invest in oil and gas: “Come here. Our laws can be altered for you.” But this particular Minister has excelled even that modus operandi. He is now offering to oil and gas companies laws that we do not even have the right to make. He is offering to amend laws that we do not have the jurisdiction to make, in order to make it easy for oil and gas exploration companies to come and wreak havoc on our resources. In this respect not only is it a contempt of Parliament and a contempt of the democratic process, but it is a contempt of the rights of people to submit and have their views heard on this legislation.

The bill has been rammed through the House under urgency, for no particularly good reason. But what it shows is that this Government works for the benefit of vested interests, and works for the benefit of big business in the hope that it can find 170,000 jobs, which it promised some years ago and which it is failing—failing—to come anywhere near. In order to do that it will sell its mother to bring big business to this country and allow it complete free reign over our environment, over our health and safety standards, and now over the waters above the continental shelf, which we do not have jurisdiction to legislate over. So it is not only the laws that we make that are ours to make, but the laws that we are making that are not ours to make.

I want to go to the question about protests—the curtailing of people’s legitimate right to protest. Through this whole debate we have not had the privilege of an answer to any question we have raised. We have not had any member opposite get up and justify this Minister’s bill, because, first of all, it is not justifiable, but, secondly, they are so contemptuous of the process in this House that the only chance they give for this bill to be scrutinised is in this Chamber, and never mind that 35,000 people submitted on the previous legislation, which was then amended by an amendment Act, which we are now amending—if people can keep up with that.

I am concerned that they are vesting democratic rights to protest in big business, because it seems to me that the 500-metre exclusion zone that any protest vessel must have from an exploratory vessel, or an oil and gas vessel—let us just put it that way—means it must stay 500 metres from the corporate-interest vessel. We can only assume that as the corporate-interest vessel moves around, the 500-metre zone goes with it. So it could push protest vessels back on to shore. Is there no way in which people can ever get closer than 500 metres, even if the corporate vessel breaches the 500-metre limit?

We can have people protesting, but not within 500 metres. I presume that means that the democratic right to protest has now been lodged with corporate interests. So it is corporate interests that now have the benefit of dictating where New Zealanders might protest, because as they move around they have this protection zone of 500 metres, within which no one can protest.

This is shabby law. It is offensive law. It is sloppy law. It has been a chapter of errors from the beginning, and the Minister seems to be incompetent and inadequate to the task. This really does lay down a new level of ministerial incompetence, the likes of which we have not seen before. It is a shame, because the National Party does have a proud heritage of its own, which it can defend. In fact it was 77 years ago this week that the National Party was first founded—77 years ago the National Party was founded. The leader at the time was, of course—who was the leader of the National Party at the time? Who was the first leader?

Tim Macindoe: Adam Hamilton.

Hon MARYAN STREET: Excellent—you pass. Adam Hamilton was the first leader of the party. He is described by the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography as lacking charisma. However, he was a Southland farmer. He moved a motion of no confidence in Michael Joseph Savage at the time. Well, that was an epic fail. That is the only thing that this Minister has in common with what has been, up until now, a proud history for the National Party, in its own terms.

This bill is a travesty. This Minister is incompetent. This Minister does the National Party’s reputation no good, even in its own terms. He does it no good. But worse than that—and I am not here to defend the National Party’s heritage, but, you know, somebody has to; this Minister clearly is not—this is an offence against democratic rights to protest, which are now being vested in corporate interests. So as long as the Shell ship, or whatever it is, is cruising around, everybody has to stay 500 metres away. Why is there not a provision that makes the corporate ship liable if it gets within 500 metres of a protest ship—

Moana Mackey: And acts dangerously.

Hon MARYAN STREET: —and behaves dangerously? If this is about safety at sea, why does it not apply to all ships? This is not about safety at sea; this is about selling our legislation to corporate interests, it is about selling legislation that we are not even entitled to make to corporate interests, and it is an affront to the democratic process and the rights of citizens in New Zealand. This bill is a travesty from beginning to end, and the National Party members opposite are just sitting there, riding out the time for this bill. We have not had the courtesy of any answers, and that goes to how they treat the process in this House. Thank you.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to oppose the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. Because we are sitting under urgency on a Saturday, I have got babysitting duties and had to bring my kids to Parliament. They are in the parents’ room at the moment. Coming down to the Chamber I was thinking about why it is important to oppose this bill going through under urgency. It is not a cliché, but it is because of my kids.

As a parent, the best moments I believe you can have as a Kiwi parent are playing with your kids on the beach. It is such an iconic Kiwi experience, and, by George, we have got some amazing beaches around this country, and I do not want to see that special experience destroyed for New Zealanders. I know that this afternoon thousands of Kiwis are going to the beaches to draw a line in the sand against this Government’s deep-sea drilling agenda. Hundreds of New Zealanders are joining hands across the beach, in about a dozen cities, I understand. I am going to be there with my children. We are drawing a line in the sand. We are saying that if the Government cannot guarantee that it can deal with a spill, if the Government cannot guarantee that it can avoid a catastrophic deep-sea spill, we should not be doing it.

What we know is that this Government is opening up huge acreage, with 189,000 square kilometres opened up a fortnight ago for tender mostly for deep-sea oil drilling permits. What we know is that the deeper you go and the deeper you drill, the more the risks are magnified. The industry itself says that it operates at the frontiers of technology, geology, and geography. Just last week Lord Browne, the former chair of BP, said that the risks for deep-sea oil drilling are too high.

That is why I am opposing this bill, because what this bill is doing, through a bad, ridiculous, embarrassing process, and through a shocking, shoddy parliamentary process, is just encouraging greater speculation in the industry. It is inviting cowboys to come down to New Zealand and be a risk to our environment and our beaches. The risks are too high, yet the Government is trying to clamp down on protests.

A couple of years ago when the Rena spill occurred, with those 350 tonnes of oil, what we saw was New Zealand woefully unprepared to deal with a spill. Yet the Government still nominated its oil spill capacity to be only 5,500 tonnes. What we know is that a deep-sea well blowout could release 600,000 tonnes. In America they had 40,000 people working on a spill. We have got 400 trained responders. In America they had 1,000 vessels. In New Zealand we have got three dinghies. In America they had everything in place, but it was still catastrophic and cost $40 billion. Yet this Government says that the maximum penalties are only $10 million and a company has to have insurance of only $30 million.

The Government cannot guarantee that we will not see a spill. The Government is not prepared; it is not protecting the taxpayer from liability. That is why we are opposing this bill—this ridiculous bill that just shows the incompetence of the Minister of Energy and Resources. Here we are, a matter of weeks after the Crown Minerals Amendment Act was passed. Before it has even come into effect, the Government is having to modify it to fix up the mistakes. But it is worse than that because, through urgency, it is trying to slip in some sneaky changes to benefit its mates in the oil industry.

The Government has no vision for this economy. It would rather gamble with our environment, gamble with our fishing industry, gamble with our tourism industry, and gamble with that important Kiwi experience of enjoying a beach with your kids. It is going to gamble with that to support its mates, because it has got no vision. But there is a better way. We should be encouraging clean energy, manufacturing jobs, and a smart, innovative economy, but the Government is not doing that. It is putting all the eggs in this basket. What you see is the Government cutting special deals. That is why under urgency it is passing amending legislation to amend legislation that still has not come into effect, with no select committee process, no regulatory impact statement, and, in fact, no actual answers in the Committee stage.

The only parliamentary scrutiny our country has is the ability to question the Minister and his officials. Yet the Minister refused to take a single call, and neither did any National member take a call, in the Committee stage. This is, quite simply, lawmaking at its worst. But what we are gambling with is our environment and our economy. What the substantive amendments contained in this amendment bill do is encourage speculation. Once this bill is passed and signed into law, to apply successfully for a permit companies do not have to have the financial capability to be able to do the work they are promising to do. Let us say that again: you do not have to have the financial capability to do the work you are promising to do—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Not the Speaker.

GARETH HUGHES: Apologies, Mr Assistant Speaker. This is deeply worrying because what we are doing is encouraging speculation in the industry. The Government’s oil drilling agenda has been so woefully unsuccessful. With Petrobras leaving, Apache Corporation leaving, and Anadarko delaying all its work, the Government is trying to look as though it is busy by encouraging a proliferation of small players to speculate in the industry, because the plan has been just so unsuccessful. The second point is that what we are seeing—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Ha! The member has scared them off.

GARETH HUGHES: Well, Mr Brownlee, I am quite happy to have taken a strong stance, along with the majority of New Zealanders. Remember that 99 percent of Kiwis in the regulations submissions said it should be a prohibited activity because you cannot guarantee it.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Order!

GARETH HUGHES: And, Mr Assistant Speaker, what we are seeing is this Government making it easier to get a deep-sea oil permit without the technical capability. Let us say that again. You do not have to have experience of knowing how to drill a well to get a deep-sea drill permit under National. What we see this Government saying—and we saw John Key a month ago saying—is that it is not going to invite cowboys down to New Zealand, but this is exactly what this legislation rammed through under urgency does. It is about getting cowboys to come down to New Zealand to speculate. We do not want people learning how to drill on the job—we do not want people learning how to drill on the job. The Government is gambling with our economy and gambling with our environment. It is not on because there are better ways forward.

Just lastly, what we see is clause 14 being sneaked through by Minister Bridges. Originally, Parliament saw the traditional New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and select committee processes bypassed through the introduction of a Supplementary Order Paper. Now the Government is using urgency to amend something—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I have members who do not have the floor interjecting on each other. If they want a call, that is fine. They can do it later on. But they know it is out of order and it is discourteous to the member who is trying to speak. Courtesy is contagious, members.

GARETH HUGHES: Let us hope the National members can take a call and talk about the substance, so that they can talk about why they are weakening our permit rules, why they are weakening our regulations, and why they are risking and gambling with our environment.

The important breach of human rights and, I believe, international law is in clause 14, which they are sneaking through. They are sneaking through under urgency something that had no scrutiny because they snuck it through in an amendment to the previous legislation. This is not on. Eminent legal professors have said that. What they are doing is extending their five new criminal provisions, the so-called Anadarko amendment introduced through a Supplementary Order Paper, out into the continental shelf.

This is interesting because New Zealand does not actually have jurisdiction over the continental shelf—if you look at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website, look at the Ministry for the Environment website, and look at the conflicts wracking China, Japan, and the Arctic countries that are debating this very issue at the moment—but the Government is quite prepared to unilaterally run ahead and say: “Oh, sure we don’t have jurisdiction, but we’re going to apply laws that relate only to the oil industry, that relate only to protest.” It is so scared of protest—it is sending the message that protest is effective and it is laying down a challenge to protestors that the industry is scared of the work they are doing—that it is prepared to run roughshod over New Zealanders’ human rights. It is an honourable tradition, which the former Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, Peter Williams QC, and Dame Anne Salmond, New Zealander of the Year, have said is such a fundamental part of New Zealand and such an honourable tradition.

The Government is ramming through and extending these egregious powers over an extended 1.7 million square kilometres of the continental shelf. It is deeply worrying because it is a breach of human rights. It is deeply worrying because it is going to have international geopolitical ramifications. New Zealand is unilaterally running ahead, extending its jurisdiction. What we are seeing is all in support of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, which only a fortnight ago said it is going to be applying for a permit—where else but the continental shelf.

This is a worrying precedent we are seeing from this Government. We are seeing laws being made for Hollywood. We are seeing laws being made for casinos. We are seeing laws being made for the industry by the industry. This is not on. It is not what Kiwis expect. This Government has got tens of millions of dollars in subsidies, pages and pages of tax exemptions, free research support, free support from officials, and legislation being passed for the industry. It even calls out the navy to support Petrobras in the oil industry. This Government is sending out a very important message: “Drill, baby, drill!”. New Zealand is open if you are a foreign offshore oil company.

What about the wind industry? What about the manufacturing industry? What about the geothermal industry? This Government is sending the message that this is not a level playing field. It is going to subsidise, support, and do anything it can to support one particular industry, because it has got no vision. It would rather risk our environment and gamble that someone will find something somewhere, and that will be our path to prosperity. It is not, because we have got the fourth-lowest royalty rate in the world. We know from Taranaki that we are going to see hardly any jobs.

What we know is we are going to see all the profits flow offshore. The Government’s own report says 90 percent of the profits are going to flow offshore. That means hardly any jobs, hardly any taxes, hardly any royalties, and profits flowing offshore, yet risking our environment. Why does the Government not listen to the PricewaterhouseCoopers report that said there is a $22 billion clean-energy opportunity? Why does it not listen to the Pure Advantage report that says there is a $6 trillion clean-tech industry that we could be getting a slice of? But no, this Government would rather keep its head in the sand and bend over backwards to follow this disturbing trend.

This is lawmaking at its worst. There is a better way. The Green Party is offering solutions to make New Zealand a richer place and to enhance those beautiful beach experiences for Kiwi families.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): I rise to take a quick call on the third reading of this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. This National Government was elected to provide an environment where jobs and opportunities for all New Zealanders would be created. When you talk to people out in the communities, out in the streets of Auckland, in the provinces and rural communities, what do they want? They want jobs. They want opportunities. They want independence for their families.

What we have just heard from Gareth Hughes and Clint and his mates is that they do not want jobs. They do not want to create opportunities for people out in our communities. I challenge Clint and Gareth Hughes to come out and talk to people out in the communities that I represent. What they want is jobs. They want to feed their families. They want to clothe their families. They want to educate their kids, to live a Kiwi lifestyle that they have been used to. I challenge Gareth Hughes to do that. This petroleum and minerals industry employs 7,000 people—$1.8 billion. It has the potential to create 40,000 more jobs and $12 billion a year for our country. That is what it has the potential to do, and this Government supports that notion that we should be providing jobs for those people in our communities. I support this bill because it is our future. It is about our families, our communities, and their independence, and, particularly, it is about our children. I commend this bill to the House.

ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I will take a call on behalf of New Zealand First. We have been looking at this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, last night and now again today, on Saturday, and we are coming to the end. I would like to add the views of New Zealand First, which, as always, are the common-sense views, the level-headed views, and the views that I believe the majority of New Zealanders would wish to see in this House.

We have heard opinions and viewpoints from all extremities, but at the end of the day a great deal of it is a lot of red herrings and a lot of diversions away from the fact that New Zealand is fortunate to be sitting on a very significant resource. For a population of 4.5 million people we are in a very, very fortunate place in the world to have an enormous resource and an enormous potential that, if you ask most New Zealanders, we certainly cannot just ignore. We must take the opportunities we are given and look at those opportunities in a very sensible, sustainable, and responsible way. It must be done, and we all agree—every New Zealander—that we would not wish for the environment to be in any way damaged and we would not wish for us to put our jewel in the Crown, our wonderful environment, at risk. At the same time, if it is done sensibly and responsibly, there is enormous potential to improve the wealth, the prosperity, and the well-being of all New Zealanders as a result.

In this regard New Zealand First has supported this bill in most areas, but we did, you will note, vote against one aspect, and that was the aspect in relation to protests on the high seas. That is one area where New Zealand First cannot agree with the Government, because we do believe still in the freedom to protest. We could not, in our own conscience, vote for something that would take away that right of New Zealanders. I have mentioned in this House in the past that we can recall the frigates the Otago and the Taranaki going off to Mururoa Atoll, being sent by our Government to protest on the high seas about atmospheric testing in French Polynesia. Our Government sent those vessels. Likewise, I can remember when the Haddo was coming up the harbour in Auckland, and New Zealanders were out there protesting. So we are a nation of free protest, and we do respect that. New Zealand First could not go along with that part of this bill, because we still believe in the right of New Zealanders to protest anywhere, as long as they are keeping a lawful manner. To protest is their inherent right. That is why we have plaques on the walls of this Chamber representing the many great battles that New Zealanders have given their lives for, such as Passchendaele, Messines, Egypt, and Gallipoli. Therefore we do uphold the right of people to defend the rights of their country, but also to defend the rights of freedom of speech.

Back on to the Crown minerals. We do agree that there were some significant errors in the original Crown Minerals Amendment Act that needed rectifying. This legislation was put down to be enacted next week on 24 May. It was then found that there were some errors in the original drafting, which, if they were not sorted out with this amendment bill, in fact by next week, would cause some real complications in terms of the original Crown Minerals Act.

It was simple. The main premise, the big one, of this whole bill was the fact that the tier 1 applicants potentially would not be able to operate after 24 May if this amendment bill was not put through, because they are not always necessarily the final company that does the exploration, the drilling, the actual mining, or whatever it is. Often they are scout companies. As I mentioned in the House last night, they are the forerunners that go out, look at the opportunities, look at the potential of the resource, do the research, do the initial exploration, and do the initial fact-finding to see whether there is something actually there to take forward. If they do establish that, then often that is when other major international investors, and indeed New Zealand investors, would get involved and perhaps take it to the next stage. They were going to be excluded under the original amendment Act, and it could have meant that many, many operators in New Zealand could literally have had to cease operations because they would have found that they were not compliant with the original Act.

That would have been an unacceptable situation. That would have potentially cost jobs in this country. That would have potentially cost investment in this country, and that would not be a good thing. New Zealand First would not condone doing something that would result in New Zealanders potentially losing work, losing opportunities, and losing jobs. That would not be a good thing. We do support the bill in that respect.

But as I mentioned in the House last night, our support is contingent also on, hopefully, in the future there being a review in other areas of this whole minerals and resource taking within New Zealand. We in New Zealand First firmly believe that for the country to truly prosper from the taking of minerals, both onshore and offshore, all New Zealanders must benefit from it. In particular, we believe that where New Zealanders and where regions and where provinces are affected by the taking of those resources and the taking of those minerals, they, in turn, should receive a significant amount of the benefit back. The Crown should not just take the royalties, and they should not just disappear into a big black hole in Wellington, just to be used to pay for other activities of Government and to prop up other areas of Government. They should be returned to where the minerals were taken from.

In that respect, New Zealand First has put out a policy in the last month or so where we would, if we had the opportunity to have influence over this, ensure that 25 percent of the royalties taken by the Crown for the minerals would be returned back to the region and back to the province from where they were taken.

That would help those regions to underwrite and pay for some of the infrastructure—such as roading, such as local infrastructure, and such as good facilities for their communities and amenities for their communities—to, in some way, offset their own costs but also to compensate them for some of the downside of the effects of mining or minerals extraction or exploration or drilling in their particular regions. We think it is a win-win. We have had extremely good feedback from around New Zealand on this. We think it is a positive thing. We think New Zealanders would get on board. We actually think that in order to take New Zealanders with us, to take New Zealanders forward and see a benefit in exploration, to see a benefit in mining, and to see a benefit in taking mineral resources from our wonderful country, all New Zealanders should benefit, and New Zealand First would certainly ensure that that was the case.

Just in closing, New Zealand First will be supporting this bill. We do believe in jobs, we do believe in employment, and we do believe in taking this country forward.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Sat sri akaal. Thank you for the opportunity to stand and support this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill at its third reading. This Government has got a very focused growth agenda. It is ensuring that this economy grows and jobs are created for New Zealanders. I agree with Andrew Williams that we need infrastructure. We need schools, roads—all those things. This Government has been working on this for the last 4 years or 5 years. I can assure you that this will continue, and it will support all the job opportunities being created. I commend this bill to the House.

ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): I once again rise to speak on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I would like to invoke our good and well-loved late friend Parekura Horomia, who, when asked early in his political career in the House about a particular piece of legislation on a very important and topical issue of the day, responded in terms that were regarded then as parliamentary, so, hopefully, they will be regarded as parliamentary today. He said that he wanted a piece of legislation that could not be frigged around with. What has happened with this legislation is completely the opposite. We have not had a good quality piece of legislation, and it has been frigged around with. Yet again we are asked to do exactly that today because this Government cannot and will not get it right. We are in the extraordinary situation of having a reasonably comprehensive amendment bill to an amendment Act that has itself not yet taken effect. If that does not tell you about the quality of the management of legislation through this House, then I am not quite sure what will.

Earlier in this third reading debate Jonathan Young said that the changes in this bill were necessary for health and safety in the industry. Well, that is just patently not correct. The thing about that is that this Government has finally started to take health and safety seriously. It could not do anything other than that. It had the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy saying that things were in a parlous state and something had to change. It had its own committee chaired by the very good, the very great Rob Jager, himself the head of an oil company in this country, Shell Todd Oil Services, who recommended radical change to our health and safety approach. Nothing in this bill is going to make a single bit of difference to health and safety. We need a comprehensive approach, and, if anything, what this bill will do is make it worse, because the health and safety oversight required under—I have to get this right—not the primary legislation, but the amendment Act that we are now amending, is itself pretty weak. It is pretty light. It simply requires the Minister to be satisfied that it is likely that a permit applicant has the technical capability and the financial means to do the job. There is no objective standard to it, and it, of course, requires the Minister merely to be satisfied. That is a pretty low standard. With all due respect to the members in this House, that is a pretty low standard, in reality.

What this bill then does is split that up. It says that whereas before the Minister had to be satisfied about technical capability and financial means throughout the entire process up to exploration drilling, now we will split that up, and we will say: “Listen, if you have got the technical capability and the financial means for the prospecting aspect of it, we will just let you go then and come back to us for the next bit.” And then all of a sudden what apparently this bill contemplates is that if, when the Halliburtons, the Schlumbergers, and the Shells have got their initial permit and the Minister’s satisfaction as to technical and financial capability, they come back and say: “That’s it. There are barrels under there. The black gold is going to flow. We want to come back for the rest of it.”, now the Minister is going to be able to stand up and say: “Uh-uh, you’ve now got to show me a second round of technical and financial capability.” There is just no way, on the track record of this Government, that we can be sure that any Minister in this Government is going to be able to stand up to a Schlumberger, a Shell, or a Halliburton and say: “Oh no, you’ve got to stop what you’re doing now because you’ve got to have better than what you’ve got now, even though I approved it last time.” That is incredible. So what this bill does is it weakens that level of oversight at a time when we are meant to be being convinced that this Government is taking health and safety seriously. This goes in totally the opposite direction, and that is why it is wrong. That is why we are opposing it.

Mr Lotu-Iiga in his speech said that it is all about providing jobs. He trotted out the old repeated assertion that the parties in Opposition do not want jobs for people, which is completely ridiculous. He might want to know—and Jonathan Young knows this as well as I do—that we have had probably the best summer of oil exploration and oil industry activity in many years in Taranaki in the summer just gone, and you know what the most recent employment statistics show? Unemployment in Taranaki went up by 500. In the last—

Su’a William Sio: How much?

ANDREW LITTLE: Five hundred. Five hundred more jobless in Taranaki in the last year after the best summer season of oil industry activity we have seen in many years. This is not the panacea. This is not the gold at the end of the rainbow that this Government trots out. Let us do this activity because, yes, there is the possibility of generating some value. But this is not the answer to New Zealand’s long-term economic structural problems. We have got to get past that. Until we have people in office in Government and on the Treasury benches who understand that New Zealand has deep-seated, long-term structural economic problems, and are prepared to do something about it, then life ain’t going to be too good for us in 5 years’ or 10 years’ time. This is not going to cure it. This is not the cure. But while we have an oil and gas industry and while we have Ministers who have responsibility for providing oversight, then the least, I think, New Zealand expects is that we will operate to world’s best practice. This bill will not do that. It does the opposite. It is a highly subjective approach, a highly subjective test that will not ensure that we have the best possible not only health and safety but also environmental standards operating when it comes to oil and gas, both prospecting and exploration.

And then the other insidious aspect of this bill is the conceit in it. It is this attempt to legislate for something that we simply do not know we have the power to legislate for, and that is control or management of all the water above the continental shelf. We have had evidence before this House in this urgent procedure that suggests that it is hugely doubtful whether we can even pass this law, or at least pass a law and hope that it has meaningful effect. We do not have a response from the Minister of Energy and Resources. The Minister sat in the chair all through the Committee stage and did not respond to a single point that was raised—legitimate points backed up by evidence. We have not had the benefit of a select committee process where we can call upon the officials, professionals, and independent advisers. We have not had the benefit of that, and we are ramming this through roughshod, as Mr Henare was concerned to hear earlier in this debate. It is being rammed through roughshod, and he knows what that is. He would have seen that a few times in his time as a union official, I know, because in his day, when he was a union official, ramming things through roughshod was the only way they did things. I was a union official in the democratic days of the union movement. Things were all sweetness and light—

Hon Tau Henare: When was that?

ANDREW LITTLE: —and it was good. And we did good things.

Hon Members: Just after he left.

ANDREW LITTLE: Just after Tau Henare left—that is right. So it is not possible—[Interruption] That is right—wore the leather jackets up to the Marsden Point oil refinery. We know how it operated. That was just for the clerical workers. We know how it worked. We are concerned. We did good things and the union members of Taranaki, including the bits of Taranaki that fall in the electorate of the member opposite, Shane Ardern—they were happy people and good people, people who worked at Motunui and the Waitara Valley plant in the days when it fell in a different electorate. But it is in New Plymouth now, in its rightful place, and things are going well.

We are opposed to this legislation because it treats with contempt the people in the oil and gas industry, particularly those who are working at the coalface and doing the dangerous work. It treats with contempt those who wish to exercise their right to dissent to activities that are happening and raise a voice of protest. It treats with contempt the very members of this House and the lawmaking procedures that we are elected to do and to fulfil in good faith and with proper information and good process. It treats all of that with contempt. It is a bad bill. It is a wrong bill. And this will be a day of shame for this House when this bill goes through.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): Wo hen hao, xiexie. I believe that my colleague Jonathan Young knows Taranaki much, much better than the previous speaker, Mr Andrew Little. So when Jonathan says that Mr Little is wrong, Mr Little must be wrong.

As I said at the first reading, the aim of this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, is to encourage the safe and sensible development of Crown-owned minerals by streamlining and simplifying the Crown minerals regulatory regime, and by ensuring better coordination of regulatory agencies. This bill provides commercial certainty to operators who obtained their mining licences under earlier regimes and who are covered by transitional arrangements. It also clarifies how data confidentiality and reporting requirements will apply to all existing privilege holders. Under Labour, no real action was taken to regulate offshore extraction of oil, gas, and mineral resources, and/or to protect our seas.

This bill shows that the National-led Government is developing our resources in a responsible manner. It will create higher-paid jobs, raise our standards of living, and build a more productive economy for all New Zealanders. So I support this bill and commend it to the House. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I advise the House that this is a split call. [Interruption] Have we finished? Good. I call the Hon Ruth Dyson.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): There is no rush, Mr Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): It is all right, is it? I cannot hear you.

Hon RUTH DYSON: You are quite correct, it is a split call. Could I just commend the member who has just resumed his seat, Dr Jian Yang, and say that he made a more valuable contribution to the debate than has the Minister of Energy and Resources throughout these entire proceedings. Throughout the first reading, the second reading, the Committee stage, and now the third reading the Minister has not made a single contribution of any value at all to this debate. I think that is really doing a disservice not only to the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill but actually to his colleagues and to the House. I think that Parliament should be treated in a better way, in a more respectful way than that. The Hon Simon Bridges has, I think, let the National Party team down in this great week of its 77th anniversary as a political party in New Zealand.

In terms of both the process of this bill and the content, I am very pleased to be joining my Labour colleagues in opposing it. When looking first of all at the process, members have been quite puzzled by the name of this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, which will become the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Act 2013. It sounds like someone did a cut and paste and made an error in the name of it, but the reason it is called such an unusual name is that this bill, which we have debated now through all stages under urgency, amends mistakes—fixes mistakes—in legislation that has not even come into force yet.

We warned the Government at the time to take care with the detail. Oh no, the Hon Simon Bridges was so keen to get his name on a bit of law that was passed through its third reading that he totally ignored all the consideration of the House, and made a whole lot of mistakes, and now he has suddenly come back to Parliament and said: “I’ve got to fix them under urgency.” Well, that would not be so bad. He is new at the job and he is human, he can make mistakes, and we would be happy to fix them up. But he did not do just that. He then took the opportunity of a Budget measure being put through under urgency to make significant changes to the substantive legislation.

The first one is of huge concern, and that is that it reduces the health and safety, the environmental, and the financial security considerations around oil and gas exploration. That is a step in the wrong direction, after the Commerce Committee took such care over the health and safety considerations in the previous legislation. It is insulting to the select committee, which worked so hard. The select committee reconvened to look at the outcomes from the Pike River inquiry, and ensured that they were incorporated into the legislation on a pretty across-all-parties basis, actually, and in a very open way. I commend Jonathan Young, the chair, for his leading of that process. And then Simon Bridges just biffs it all out. Those considerations are a bit hard for the industry, so he reduces them all.

The second part of what this bill does—other than fixing up the mistakes of Simon Bridges—is it extends the protest ban. The most controversial part of the last legislation was that this new protest ban was introduced, but not for health and safety—not for health and safety. That was what the Minister said at the time: “Oh, we care so much about health and safety, we’re going to introduce this protest ban.” If that were the case, it would have been exactly the same health and safety ban on all vessels, but it is not, it is just on protest vessels, and it covered the exclusive economic zone. That has now been extended to cover the continental shelf—the water above the continental shelf. That is extraordinary.

It is very clear from Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade advice on its website that New Zealand does not have jurisdiction over that water. We do not have the right to pass laws in relation to activity in that water. But, oh no, Simon Bridges, mastermind of this Parliament, has decided he knows better than the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, he knows better than all the advice. So now we have a reduction in the health and safety, the environmental, and the financial security considerations in regard to exploration and we have an extension of a protest ban into an area that we do not have jurisdiction over, and that is why this bill should be thrown out.

ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wish to draw a matter to your attention to do with standard of dress in the Chamber. I see there is a member opposite who has graced the Chamber with his presence this morning wearing a jersey. It is correct that he is also wearing a jacket over the top of it, but I understood the required standard of dress was business attire. I have had a lot of dealings in business settings over many years. I have not yet seen a business person, man or woman, wearing a jersey in a business setting. I just wonder whether you might consider whether or not the member is suitably dressed for this Chamber.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I think that is a most frivolous contribution from the member, and not one that you should give any time to whatsoever. I notice members—[Interruption] I am speaking to the point of order.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! We have a point of order.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I notice members in the Chamber—there was one member in the Chamber today dressed in a denim suit. Apparently that works.

Brendan Horan: Who’s that?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well, if you look around—looking over there at one of our colleagues—it is somewhat sartorial. But, none the less, if we are going to start doing these things, there are other members—I have always thought that there is a huge gap between the dress standards for male and female members in here, but this is not a way to raise it—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: It is not an appropriate time to raise it, and I would ask you to please ignore it.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Speaking to the point of order, Mr Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Well, I guess it is Saturday morning. I call the Hon Trevor Mallard.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I would like, sort of unusually, to join with Gerry Brownlee, not in his negative comments about my colleague Andrew Little but on the substance of the point of order. I think you will be aware, because you were here when urgency used to be a regular feature of Saturdays, that the Saturday business dress tended to be slightly less formal—as it is in most businesses—than it might be Monday to Thursday or, in some cases, on Friday. I think Speakers have taken a more relaxed attitude on a Friday. I can remember Roger Douglas here in a jacket and a jersey. He apparently had a collar and tie underneath but the jersey was polo neck so you could not even tell.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you.

Brendan Horan: Point of order.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): No, I do not need any more help. I have listened to the contributions from all sides. I realise it is Saturday morning and we would probably rather be somewhere else. [Interruption] Order! I am on feet. Recognising that the member might be cold, I accept that sometimes we do need to wear a jersey under a suit.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: It’s top-class merino.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I am not going to get into what class it is. Who was on their feet? I call the honourable member Eugenie Sage.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Speaking to the third reading of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, I say that the Green Party opposes this bill. It is a very troubling bill, and there are a number of reasons for that. One of them is that it is being pushed through under urgency, with no scrutiny—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Where’s the member’s tie? Coming into the House in an open-neck shirt.

EUGENIE SAGE: —and no ability for the public to comment. Yes, I am wearing a pink shirt. It was Pink Shirt Day yesterday. I am a day late, and that is because we are still on Thursday.

When we are dealing with bills under urgency, when there is no opportunity for the public to comment or for a select committee to engage with a bill, we have only the collective intelligence of members of Parliament in this Chamber. So it has been particularly disturbing that during the Committee stage of the bill we have had no Government members standing up to defend the bill and to engage with the issues that the Opposition has raised. What is even more disturbing is that the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Energy and Resources, never answered any of the questions that the Opposition was asking. So when it is down to us—because the Government has excluded others from engaging with this bill—we should engage. The Opposition has engaged, and has flagged some very troubling aspects of the bill, but Government members have not engaged during the Committee stage. That is very disturbing.

It is also disturbing that we did not have a regulatory impact statement, apart from the one that Moana Mackey produced and held up, with a series of black lines on it. Without a regulatory impact statement, there has not been an honest effort to explain the implications of the bill. So it has been left to the Opposition to highlight the problems caused by clause 14 and the way in which it extends to the high seas the five criminal offences that were created by the Anadarko Supplementary Order Paper to the principal Act.

Without a regulatory impact statement there has been no examination of how this clashes with our responsibilities under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which New Zealand has signed up to, nor on what basis the Government is purporting to establish new criminal offences in an area where we do not have the jurisdiction to do so. But because the bill has not gone to a select committee, we have not been able to engage with officials.

This law that we are passing today is potentially null and void if it overrides and does not implement our international obligations. Yet at no point did the Minister rise to explain what he thought was the jurisdictional basis for doing that. It is interesting that when you look at the comparable Australian legislation, which is the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006, that legislation provides for a 500-metre no-go zone around oil rigs and similar structures, but there is no provision in the Australian legislation for a no-go zone for vessels. That is obviously because Australia understands the requirement of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the fact that that preserves freedom of navigation on the high seas.

So why does the Government feel that it has to go so far and potentially breach our international obligations, when there are already numerous international instruments, and the Maritime Transport Act, that address this whole issue of safety of navigation and vessels? Why? It is because under this Government we have a Government that has morphed from being nanny State, as it accused the former Labour Government of being, to being strong-arm State—one that is intolerant of dissent, that is contemptuous of the democratic process, and that wants to ensure that people have no opportunity or minimal opportunity to disagree with it. It is prepared to criminalise legitimate protest on the high seas against the Government’s flawed economic agenda, which relies so heavily on the exploitation of resources. It is prepared to cut across the whole tradition of dissent and protest on the high seas that is upheld in other international treaties. This is a bad bill. The Green Party is opposing it.

BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): I rise to oppose this third reading of the “Crown Minerals Amendment to the Amendment to the Amendment to the Amendment Bill”. I do so because this is a DIY job. It is a fix-up job, and not a very good one at that. The same thing is actually happening outside the front of Parliament as is happening here in the debating chamber. [Interruption] We can wait for this member to be told off. I do not mind waiting for a few seconds. But—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: That member has certainly been told off.

BRENDAN HORAN: Outside—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: He sleeps in a dogbox. He lives at the back of the House, under a rock, where he belongs.

BRENDAN HORAN: Mr Brownlee, that is the trouble with your side of the House. There are too many lips flapping. You cannot learn anything while your lips are flapping. You need to have those ears opening. Too bad “Big Ears” is not here.

Outside, the Beehive roof is being replaced because the current roof is not fit for purpose, just like that side of the House. The roof is being replaced in copper. How much is that costing—$3 million? Well, there you go. That is how much minerals cost, because that is Crown mineral copper. It is a Crown mineral, but this Government would just give it away to anybody who comes along. Who is out there? Who is going to be mining? Trans-Tasman Resources. Can somebody help me? Who is on the board of Trans-Tasman Resources? Who is that woman? Is it not Ms Shipley? Could that be right? Ms Shipley? I am just pulling out splinters again, wondering how many boards that woman is on. But here we are on a Saturday morning because the Minister’s performance is not fit for purpose either.

What I wonder—and as I said earlier, there are some members over on that side whom I greatly respect—is how those members could possibly support overseas interests, foreigners, coming in and plundering our natural resources. These minerals have taken millions of years to accumulate. There are no regulatory impact reports, and the fisheries have not been consulted. We do not know what effect it is going to have. If we have a look at open mining on land we may get an idea, because this Government is used to subterfuge. Can you imagine the effect on our ecological systems when all of that iron ore and sand is removed? And I have not even begun to touch on mining.

This Government has proven that it cannot remove oil from a ship on a rock, so how is it going to remove oil that is leaking from the seabed, at 1,500 metres under the seabed, or even if it is 400 metres under? How long is it going to take rescue teams to get there? Where is the infrastructure for us to support this? But, most important, what is going to be the impact, and what are we getting out of it anyway? One to 2 percent profit, about which some foreign company will come and say: “This is what we made.” In the case of Trans-Tasman Resources, where it brings in the big Chinese ship and it takes out as much iron ore as it wants, what else is it taking out, and, again, what is the effect on our ecosystems? Ecosystems are very fragile, and we wonder what is going to happen.

This is an appalling bill. It is a sell-out. It is a sell-out for New Zealand. It is a sell-out of our children’s future, of our heritage. Some of these members may not know what it is like under the water. I do not know when they were last in the surf. But when you dive under a wave—and I can tell you this actually—if you dive under a big wave, you can see the water swirling. As it swirls, you see the sand moving, and within that sand are crustaceans. There is all sorts of sea life. And as those crustaceans are floating around and the shellfish are floating around, in come the fish and that is how they feed.

Grant Robertson: Why isn’t Mark Mitchell speaking right now?

BRENDAN HORAN: Well, I am just giving a little basic demonstration of how an ecosystem works in the ocean. Have members on that side even considered the impact on our fisheries? [Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!

BRENDAN HORAN: Thank you. I fail to understand how those members who have a conscience can possibly support this bill. You have seen what happened in the Rena case. There is oil still floating up, and when the wind is in a north-easterly direction, as it is today at Mount Maunganui, and the surf is up, I can go out there and I will still come in with specks of oil on my board. The shellfish off Tauranga have not been fit to eat since the Rena disaster. The shellfish have not been fit to eat since the Rena disaster, but you do not see that in the papers. Why not? Why do you not see it?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: It’s largely not true, that’s why.

BRENDAN HORAN: There are a number of reasons why you cannot. Actually, Mr Brownlee, go and see the local doctors. Go and see Dr Tingey. He will tell you about all the gastro cases that he has seen, where people have been eating shellfish and have gotten food poisoning. In Mount Maunganui it is tragic what the Rena has done, and the ongoing effects.

What is going to happen if we get a disaster with oil leaking out to sea? This Government cannot fix it up. Where are the booms to protect? Where are the rescue teams to clean up the mess? This mess will be cleaned up after the next election, when a new Government comes in—one with a social conscience, one with an environmental conscience, and one with—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: And one without Brendan Horan.

BRENDAN HORAN: I will be here. Do not worry, Mr Brownlee. I will be here, because I have got an environmental conscience. You would be surprised that there are a lot of people in New Zealand who support my being here.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Name 28 of them.

BRENDAN HORAN: Ha, ha! But I digress. I would like to again explain what is happening to our environment, and what is happening to New Zealand when good people have to go along and follow a bill that is clearly wrong. It is clearly wrong, and it has not even come into effect. Here we are, rushing through the night, trying to pass amendments to the legislation. It is not well worked. It is not very well organised. That is why one of the National members departed. It was not because of a glass of wine; it was because somebody showed their office, their electorate office, on television and exposed this Government as being totally disorganised, just as this bill, the writing of this bill, shows that this Government cannot do one thing right. Do not let me even start on housing. How are you going to build 39,000 houses in Auckland? How are you going to do that? You are completely disorganised.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Irrelevancy.

BRENDAN HORAN: Well, it is relevant because some of those roofs will have copper spouting, which is a Crown mineral—they will. This Government says there are going to be 39,000 houses, and there are a lot of Crown minerals in that. But, guess what—we will be buying them from overseas interests. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 68

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

Noes 46

New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 11; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill

First Reading

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I am waiting for the Minister. [Interruption] I can see this is a popular call, Mr Brownlee.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Transport): I am sorry, but the previous speaker, Brendan Horan, was a cure for insomnia. He certainly had me in a deep trance. I move, That the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. The bill is a very straightforward response to the pressing need for additional investment in the land transport network. Part 1 amends the Customs and Excise Act 1996 to give effect to the decision to increase the excise and excise-equivalent duty on motor spirits—petrol—by 3c a litre on 1 July 2013, 1 July 2014, and 1 July 2015. These increases will provide additional revenue that allows the Government to continue its significant and much-needed investment in the land transport network.

Part 2 of the bill makes consequential amendments to the regulations to increase the rate at which duties are refunded to people using petrol for off-road, commercial, or other purposes that entitle them to a refund. That would particularly apply to the agricultural sector and also some parts of the tourism sector. Road-user charges, or RUC, will also increase on these dates by an equivalent amount. The mechanism for increasing road-user charges is by Order in Council, so it will be done separately from this bill. The increase in excise duty on petrol will raise approximately $90 million in the year 2013-14, and road-user charge increases will raise around $70 million. This will mean an additional $500 million will be spent on the current National Land Transport Programme 2012-15.

All the money collected from these revenue sources is spent on the roads. In particular, the increase will assist in developing the State highway network, which is crucial in assisting economic growth and enabling greater productivity from the transport network. Specifically, the increases will allow the New Zealand Transport Agency to begin work on four projects in the 2013-14 financial year: the Rangiriri Tamahere-Cambridge sections of the Waikato Expressway, the MacKays to Peka Peka section of the Wellington Northern Corridor, and the four-laning of The Groynes to Sawyers Arms Road and the Johns Road section of the Christchurch Western Corridor. All of these are subject, of course, to regulatory consents.

The Government is committed to delivering the roads of national significance programme in a timely fashion, without placing excessive costs on motorists. By announcing these cost increases, as we did in December of last year, we have given time for motorists to prepare for the increases. The additional cost of travelling 14,000 kilometres per year, which is the average annual distance that is travelled by a New Zealand petrol vehicle with average fuel efficiency of 10 litres per 100 kilometres, is around $45 a year.

Duties on petrol can sometimes be changed by Order in Council, as we did with the increase last year. However, the legislation that allows this does not permit the mechanism to be used to increase duty in three consecutive years. Given the huge benefits that New Zealanders will gain from the increase in land transport expenditure, it is important that this bill is passed before 1 July 2013. In addition, the increases in duties are relatively small in the context of the price of petrol and other vehicle costs. The Automobile Association estimates that the average annual cost of running a compact petrol vehicle is about $3,300 per year. The excise increase in this bill, proposed from 1 July 2013, will increase that amount by 1.4 percent. As I said before, I also signalled these increases in December 2012 to give motorists advance warning that costs would increase.

It is worth noting two things. Firstly, these increases mean that in the time of this Government the increases overall have been comparable to, if not slightly less than, the previous Government’s record over the same period of time. It is worth noting that the time savings that thousands of motorists are making in their journeys, often daily, does add to the fuel efficiency bonus that comes from having good roads.

In closing, by passing this bill Parliament will ensure that Government can respond to the pressing need to progress significant investments in New Zealand’s transport network. I commend the bill to the House.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Back before the 2008 election, when John Key and other National candidates and MPs went around the country campaigning to form the next Government, they told New Zealanders that they were going to bring down taxes. That is what they said. They were going to bring down taxes, they were going to lower costs for New Zealanders, and the Labour Government was taking far too much tax off them. Of course, what they meant—what they really meant—was that they were going to reduce personal tax rates for their mates, and put up costs for everybody else.

Of course, what they did not tell New Zealanders was the whole range of ways that they were going to increase taxes and increase costs for New Zealanders. They did not tell them that early childhood education fees were going to increase by nearly 20 percent under the National-led Government. They did not tell New Zealand families that the so-called voluntary donations to primary schools and secondary schools were going to increase by 31 percent under the National-led Government. They did not tell students and graduates that they were going to put a $50 to $60 levy on all student loans. No, they did not tell them about that tax increase.

They certainly did not tell New Zealanders that the ACC work account was going to be increased by 67 percent, or that the earners account was going to be increased by 23 percent, or that the motor vehicle account was going to be increased by 31 percent. They did not tell New Zealanders that they were going to take away their KiwiSaver tax credit, which is effectively a tax increase. They certainly did not tell New Zealanders that they were going to allow general practitioners’ fees to increase—actually, hang on, they did kind of signal that one. They did signal that one, because remember John Key’s idea about the primary health sector: it is a market. “Frankly, it’s a market.”, he said. So they did kind of signal that they were going to allow costs for people to go and see their doctor to increase. They did not tell New Zealanders that they were going to increase prescription fees from $3 to $5 per prescription, and they did not tell New Zealanders that—

David Bennett: Stick to the bill.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —there was going to be an overall increase in fuel excise tax, David Bennett, of 18.8 percent over the period of time that this Government has been in power.

What are all those tax increases and cost increases all about? They are about getting this Government just squeaking over the line to surplus in 2014-15. That is what this tax increase is really about. It is about the fact that the Government made a promise that it would get New Zealand back into surplus, and, because of its failure to get the economy working again, it has had to go and find every single little penny down the back of the couch to try to get New Zealand back into surplus. That is what this tax increase that this Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill—

Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I noticed the honourable David Bennett masticating what appears to be gum, with his mouth wide open—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): That is irrelevant. The member will sit down. That is just interrupting the flow of the debate and it is unacceptable. We will not have any of that.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Look, this is what John Key said. He said: “National is not going to be raising GST.”—not going to be raising GST. “National wants to cut taxes, not raise taxes.” John Key said that back in 2008. Well, it has been proven to be patently untrue.

But what is this all about? The Minister of Transport would have us believe that what this is about is making sure there is enough money to build his roads of national significance. We do know that National is absolutely obsessed not with roads—not with roads, because local roads suffer under a National Government—but with its gigantic holiday highways. That is what National is obsessed with. Actually, if there was some truth to what the Minister said about what this bill is for, that is what it is for.

Why is it that National is so obsessed with these massive, giant, gold-plated holiday highways? Well, there is actually a good book about what this is all about, and it is called The Hollow Men. All we have to do is refer to some of those well-known emails—Don Brash’s email loop—and some of the ideas behind what this focus on highways is all about. An email was sent to Dr Brash and Maurice Williamson from a long-time supporter of ACT and now of National, who thought that a National Party policy to dedicate all revenue from taxes at the petrol pump to roading would be a great platform for getting the support of the country: “I actually think the surpluses should be returned to those who pay them, but the policy outlined above will get the support of the masses and that is the first priority.” So it was not about building an integrated, growth-focused transport network across the country—no, that is not what it is about. It is all about politics—it is all about politics. That is why National is obsessed with these highways.

Again, in another email, Bryan Sinclair forwarded the letter to Brash and others, saying: “I hate to revisit this issue, and I know the fiscal and political issue surrounding this sort of commitment, but I really do agree with the substance ... in terms of vote winning.”—in terms of vote winning or, another way of putting it, vote buying. “He proposed they have a policy saying ‘National will, within 5 years of becoming Government, apply all petrol tax revenue raised ٭solely٭ to roading and transport infrastructure across New Zealand.’ ” So this is all about politics. I get it—I get it. That is why National likes these highways so much—because an integrated transport network that is focused on growth is not exactly the best way to buy votes. What people like to see are nice, tangible pieces of infrastructure that they can see and that they can use. That is what makes people feel good. That is what makes people like David Bennett feel good and what makes Mike Sabin feel good, because they can point to it and they can say: “We did that. We did that.” That is what this is all about.

Compare that with coastal shipping. The benefits of investing in coastal shipping are that you get better allocation of capital, because you can make better use of the capital investment in roads and rail by taking some of the congestion off roads and rail and putting it on coasting shipping. Coastal shipping is far more environmentally positive, because the emissions from coastal shipping per tonne per kilometre are far lower than they are from road or rail. That is actually a more effective use of taxpayers’ money, but you cannot see it, you cannot feel it. Voters do not see the ships going up and down the coastline in the same way that they see highways being built, so National does not like it. It might make economic sense, it might be growth-focused, it might be environmentally focused, it might be the best use of the resources we have in our transport budget, and it might be a more sensible allocation of capital, but National does not like it because the politics do not stack up, even if the economic argument stacks up.

This National Government is very, very good at saying no. It has said no to Auckland, which has come up with a positive, integrated plan for its transport network. Instead of working with the Auckland Council, the Government has decided to go war with the Auckland Council. Before they had even had a conversation about what is the right mix of infrastructure to build and the right mix of revenue to raise the money needed to build that infrastructure, the Government has just said “No, no, no.”, and ruled it all out, without even having a conversation with Len Brown or his team.

It is very good at saying no to rail. It just does not believe in it. It does not want to see rail being used as an important part of an integrated transport structure.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: We’re spending a fortune on it. What a silly statement.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: The truth is, Gerry Brownlee, that 90 percent of the transport budget is spent on roads and 7 percent is spent on rail. This Government does not believe in rail, it is not supporting rail, and it never will support rail, because the backers of rail are not the financial backers of the National Party in the same way that road transport users are.

National is very good at saying no to anything in the transport network that reduces emissions and improves New Zealand’s impact on the environment. That is what this Government is about. It is about saying no to an integrated transport network, it is about saying no to proper capital allocation, and it is about saying no to a growth agenda. It is about saying yes to political expediency and the transport infrastructure that is most likely to buy votes. That is why New Zealanders’ taxes are going up under National and that is why the costs to New Zealand families are going up under National. That is not what it promised, but, of course, broken promises are exactly what we have come to expect from this National Government.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): That was the worst speech I have ever heard from a Labour Party spokesperson on transport. You know they are in trouble when they talk about The Hollow Men, and then they have to refer to their notes for 7 minutes out of the 10. I was actually very disappointed that Julie Anne Genter was not in the Chamber for the start of that speech, but then she came in. I knew when she came in that the real spokesperson on transport for the left had come in. Julie Anne Genter should be leading off this debate for the left, not Iain Lees-Galloway. Iain Lees-Galloway does not know what he is talking about. What money comes into transport goes out, so this money is being spent on transport initiatives, and it is not all about roads. Look at the KiwiRail Turnaround Plan; there is money in the Budget for that. Those members are being disingenuous and—

Denise Roche: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I was just wondering whether the person who is speaking at the moment would get to the point about the bill. We have not heard it yet.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Look, that is another example of interrupting the flow of the debate. I am the judge of that.

DAVID BENNETT: I do not actually mind being interrupted by Denise Roche, because Denise Roche knows that the Labour Party is in trouble. Julie Anne Genter will not interrupt, because it is about her taking over from Iain Lees-Galloway on these issues. She will be taking over from Iain Lees-Galloway, because he is just another example of the weak, meek Labour Party, which sits across from us here today, and it is wrong. It is absolutely wrong. The money that has been coming into transport is being spent on transport, and it goes to rail as well as roads, and it goes to local roads as well as State highways. There is money for all in there.

I want to see Mr Iain Lees-Galloway come to Hamilton. In the next year he will be summoned to Hamilton with his leader, Mr Shearer, if Mr Shearer is still the leader then. They will have to meet the mayor, Mr Gallagher, one of their ex-colleagues, and they will have to explain their lack of funding for the Waikato Expressway. And I bet you—I bet you—they will come to Hamilton and they will have all the fanfare. They will come up there and they will meet with those people. They will go into the room and they will say: “Look, we can’t say anything in public. We just can’t say it in public, but we will actually do it. We will actually do it, but we can’t say it in public.”

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Julie Anne won’t let them.

DAVID BENNETT: But Julie Anne will not let them. That is right. And that is the problem that they are going to have. Once they say that one new road of national significance—which the Waikato Expressway is, and it is a good road—is right, the whole thing falls over. Their arguments fall over and Julie Anne Genter will have you for dinner.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Point of order—

DAVID BENNETT: That is—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Point of order. [Interruption] Sit down. Point of order, Brendon Horan.

Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I understand that it is a little informal, but is it the practice of this House to call members by their first name when that member never interjected?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Look, if the member brings frivolous points of order, I will be asking him to leave. I am the judge of that. I am calling David Bennett.

DAVID BENNETT: I have said enough.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): Well, here we are. It is just after 20 past 11 on Saturday morning, and—

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Just after morning tea time.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Oh, Jonathan Coleman is back on it again. Talk to Gerry Brownlee, the man next to you, Jonathan; do not talk to me. It is 20 past 11—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No, full name.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Sorry. Jonathan Coleman, talk to the man next to you; do not talk to me. It is just after 20 past 11 on a Saturday morning, and we finally get to some actual Budget legislation from this Government, as opposed to its shoving bills through under urgency to make up for the mistakes it has made. Just briefly, I refer members on the other side of the House to Professor Andrew Geddis’ blog, which was written last night, entitled “I think National just broke our constitution”. That is what we have been through over the last few nights in this House.

This bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, is about one thing, and one thing only. It is about raising taxes this year, next year, and the year after, in order to do a fiddle and a fudge, to get the Government to its wafer-thin surplus—that is it. It is nothing more than politics. It is nothing more than taking money out of the pockets of New Zealanders so that National can achieve its political goal of getting to that wafer-thin surplus. There is so much contortion in this Budget for the Government to find its way to its surplus, you know, that the Barnum and Bailey circus is on the phone—it wants Bill English in there. That is what the Government is doing. It is shifting the money around to make it look like there is a surplus, and the reality is that it is doing that by fudging this particular bill.

It is very important, I think, to make sure that we echo the point that has been made earlier by Iain Lees-Galloway. This bill, and the other Budget legislation, is about shifting the burden of debt away from the Government and on to ordinary New Zealanders. That is what this Budget is about. The Government can try to claim this surplus—a surplus, I might add, that will disappear into thin air with one back-down. We saw it last year with the class sizes. It had to back down and that was it—the surplus was gone. It is that wafer-thin that it could go with one Hekia Parata back-down. A brain fade from John Key and it is all over—there is no more surplus—and the Government has got there only off the backs of ordinary New Zealanders. Once again, this is the pattern of this Government. It is fiddling and fudging the books to make it look like it is delivering its political goal of a surplus and, in reality, taking that money away from New Zealanders.

This Government’s record on tax legislation deserves some analysis. Iain Lees-Galloway has already talked about the promises that were made up and down the country by John Key and other National MPs about the fact that they would not be raising taxes; they would be cutting taxes. Well, National came in and it cut some taxes. That is absolutely true—40 percent of those tax cuts went to the top 10 percent of New Zealanders. That is the first fudge. That is the first broken promise. The broken promise—apparently, the tax cuts, John Key said, were going to be all about the middle class. No, they were not; they were about John Key’s mates. That was the first problem.

But what followed from there—what followed from there—was a pattern of consistent tax increases that affected ordinary New Zealanders. GST—up, under this Government. Who is affected the most by an increase in GST? People on low and modest incomes, who spend a higher percentage of their income on the basics of life. They are the people who are affected. That was a tax increase from this Government. Then we have seen, consistently, overcharging on ACC. Time after time, ACC has been used in classic Nick Smith fashion, to manufacture a crisis, ramp up the levies, use that to fudge the books, and then he will bring them down and say that he has saved everything—a classic Nick Smith response. Then, as Iain Lees-Galloway has said, we have seen a 20 percent increase in early childhood education costs, prescription fees going up, repayment rates on student loans—all of these are tax increases, just as this bill is today. And just as this bill does today, it shifts the burden on to ordinary, hard-working New Zealanders, who are already stretched.

But one thing that has come out of the last few days too is the way in which National is starting to manipulate this Budget around to try to shift a bit of blame. I have had people from Christchurch calling through to me, disgusted by the comments they have seen from both Gerry Brownlee and John Key about shifting the burden. John Key went on television and said: “New Zealanders right across the country actually [have] to go without so that money can go into Christchurch as a priority.” That is what John Key said to New Zealanders. That is a disgraceful way to treat the people of Canterbury, who have been through so much, to suddenly use them as a pawn in the Government’s game about getting back to this wafer-thin surplus. And I am also told that Gerry Brownlee went on the radio in Christchurch and said that State-owned enterprise sales were needed to fund the rebuild of Christchurch. So, once again, Christchurch gets the blame because this Government is so bereft of ideas that all it can come up with is to sell off the assets and hike up taxes and ACC levies to get itself to its wafer-thin political surplus. That is not good enough. The people of Christchurch deserve far, far better than to be used as a pawn in the National Government’s political game. Gerry Brownlee and John Key need to know that the people of Christchurch are disgusted and appalled by that kind of treatment.

But if we look at this bill in the context of this overall Budget, it is definitely a fudge and a fix to get into surplus. Also in the Budget are massive contingencies—contingencies in the education budget that we have not seen for a very, very long time. Once again, the Government is manipulating the money. I think of that, actually, as a failure of leadership by the Minister of Education. She should be laying out a clear plan on education spending, but, instead, that education budget is being used, along with this petrol tax hike, to give the impression that this Government is doing something about getting New Zealand’s books in order. The way that this Government has gone about this Budget, in my view, is a hoax on New Zealanders. It is a sham of a surplus. This is not the kind of bill that should be coming to this House in this way in a Budget setting, because this Government told New Zealanders time and time again that it would not be increasing their taxes, and yet this year, next year, and the year after, this bill will increase petrol taxes.

It is useful to refer to the regulatory impact statement, because what that tells us is that the—[Interruption] See, there is a regulatory impact statement for this one. The Minister is to be credited for doing better than his colleagues in the National Government who have failed to produce a regulatory impact statement. But when you actually look at the regulatory impact statement, yes, it is a 3c a litre increase over those years. That represents the best part of a 6 percent increase every year in the price of petrol caused by this Government. This Government did not talk about this. When Bill English stood up, he did not talk about this. He did not say: “I am acknowledging I am doing this. I am putting up taxes. I am breaking the promises that John Key has made to New Zealanders.” Instead, here we are on a Saturday morning, with National shoving this bill through under urgency. Well, it is time New Zealanders heard the truth about this. This Government has fudged and fiddled with the numbers in this Budget to give the impression that it is getting back to surplus. That is being done off the back of hard-working New Zealanders.

This bill is a continuation of this Government’s approach: to tinker with the economy to get short-term gain. We will come back in later calls to the question of the transport funding, but let us not be under any illusion. This is a Government that is prepared to see a two-speed economy, where vested interests and speculators get ahead, and where exporters and manufacturers and ordinary New Zealanders are left behind. That is the lesson of this Budget. We will have a two-speed economy where National’s mates get ahead, and ordinary New Zealanders are taxed more, have to pay more, and get worse services. This bill is an emblem of this Government’s failure to grow a sustainable economy and a failure to create jobs. It has to put up petrol taxes just to get to its wafer-thin surplus.

JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I rise to take a call on the—

Hon Member: What’s it called?

JULIE ANNE GENTER: —bill that raises petrol taxes, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. This bill raises petrol taxes. Why does National need to put up the petrol tax? It is essentially for two reasons. The first reason, and I think this is a reason—[Interruption] Oh, I have got a copy, thank you, Minister Brownlee—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I would actually like to hear what the member is saying, so please give her that courtesy.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We just want to know whether she knows which bill she is talking about.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sure she does.

JULIE ANNE GENTER: Actually, I was very busy reading the regulatory impact statement, which we just got on this bill, so I did not have the title right in front of me, but it is very clear what this bill does. What it does is put up the petrol tax. So why does National need to put up the petrol tax? Firstly, it is because people are driving less. They have been driving less since before 2006, and this is very clear in New Zealand Transport Agency data. It shows that the number of vehicles on State highways are down. Vehicle volumes on State highways have been declining and the population has been increasing, so that means per capita vehicle kilometres travelled are way down. This is a trend that we have seen all around OECD countries. It is not that surprising. But, unfortunately, it has not yet been reflected in the Government’s transport funding priorities.

The second reason the Government has to put up the petrol tax is that it has mismanaged the transport budget. This is really clear in the regulatory impact statement, which says that the priorities that the Government has set specifically for the roads of so-called national significance, which are really just three very big, very expensive motorway projects that all have benefit to cost ratios of around 1 or less than 1—really only 1, if you exaggerate the benefits. So it has got this huge commitment to building motorways at a time when traffic is declining and people are driving less.

This pie chart shows the Government’s budget for new capital investment in infrastructure over the next 3 years. The purple bit is all on new State highways—and, of course, it is on only the three new State highways, which are extremely expensive and have a low benefit to cost ratio. There is a tiny little slice going into local roads, so who is going to pick up the tab for local roads? Well, it is not road users; it is ratepayers. Road users do not pay directly for capital investment in new roads. If they did, we would not be able to fund them. If users of Transmission Gully or the Waikato Expressway were asked to pay directly for the billions of dollars that are going to be put into those projects, it would never cover the cost of building those projects. That is why the Government has had to put up the petrol tax.

Essentially, although we hear it a lot from the Government that roads are user-pays, that is not the reality. The reality is that new capital expenditure is funded by users of roads everywhere in the country through marginal increases in petrol tax. That means that the use of the road does not necessarily reflect the cost of it because people do not pay for it directly. Secondly, more than 50 percent of all vehicle trips travelled are on local roads. This is data that came through in an Official Information Act request to the Minister of Transport. The Government should know that more than half of all vehicle trips are happening on local roads, and local roads are half-funded by ratepayers, not directly by road users.

So at the moment what we have is a highly vehicle-dependent transport system. That transport system forces us to spend billions of dollars actually increasing our current account deficit because we are importing oil, which has become much more expensive. Over the last 10 years oil prices have doubled—they have doubled in the last decade—and for that reason, even though we are not importing any more oil and people are driving less, we are paying twice as much for it.

You would think that if the National Government was concerned about “New Zealand Inc.”, it would care about reducing our current account deficit and would see that there is an opportunity to reduce our current account deficit by reducing our reliance on very expensive imported oil. But obviously it does not, because what it is doing is prioritising all of the spending in the transport budget on projects that do not give New Zealanders choices. They do not give New Zealanders the choice to save money on oil by taking public transport, by walking or cycling, or by letting their kids walk and cycle safely to school. That is a very cost-effective opportunity not only to reduce congestion but to allow people to get around to the places they need to go without having to fork out for expensive imported oil and also having to pay more on petrol taxes.

Saying that you have to spend all of the petrol tax or road-user charges on new roads is like saying that the alcohol tax should be used to build new bars. It is ridiculous. What we need to do is balance—rebalance—our transport system.

What the Green Party would say is that not all taxes are bad. It is important to distinguish between two types of taxes. There are taxes that are just for raising revenue. You can tax employment, you can tax income, but those are good things. Why would we want to tax good things? We do not want to tax good things just for the purpose of raising revenue. The Green Party’s tax policies would like to see a shift—and this is best-practice economics, which I know no one in the National Party has ever been exposed to. If you read The Economist, for example, it was saying that higher petrol taxes are a great way to tax away vulnerability. Basically, we know petrol is going to be getting more expensive. We know that it is polluting. We know that we have passed 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that that is a major problem for humanity—and, you know, you would hope that those members would care about the future of humanity.

So there is an imperative that we reduce our consumption of fossil fuel, and transport is a real opportunity to do that in a win-win way so people can spend less money on getting around. That is good for the economy. We would have less carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere, which is good because it means humanity can continue to survive for generations into the future and have a high quality of life. So it is imperative that we reduce our dependence on fossil fuels for economic reasons and so that we can survive as a species. Transport offers us this great opportunity.

So the Green Party can support a slow, moderated increase to the petrol tax as part of a way of enabling our transport system and our economy to become more resilient and less dependent on fossil fuels. Unfortunately, the projects that the National Government is prioritising are simply the worst way you could possibly invest in the future of transport right now, in 2013. I cannot think of a worse way.

We have got all the data that shows us that new roads have diminishing marginal returns. They are not opening up new links to new areas; they are in places where we already have road links. The best use of our money is going to be using our existing road network smarter, using it better. Part of that is investing in the complementary alternatives to the road—which are our rail network, which has been severely underinvested in for many, many years; coastal shipping; and, in our towns and cities, safe walking and cycling for children and adults who would like to be able to get around without having to jump in their car and spend a ton of money on petrol—and investing in public transport, where it makes sense. It does make a lot of economic sense once you take a broader perspective on the benefits.

It is really essential that New Zealanders have choice, and this Government is not giving them choice. What it is doing is putting up the petrol tax and then putting all of the money into projects many of them will not even use on a daily basis. You know, the percentage of vehicle trips on Transmission Gully will be less than on many arterial roads in Auckland, so it will be the Aucklanders who are sitting in traffic because the Government has refused to fund the city rail link and other smart options who will be paying the fuel taxes that will be paying back the loan on Transmission Gully, which is going to serve only about 10,000 people a day. The rail network in Auckland currently carries 45,000 people a day on weekdays and, with the city rail link, it could carry twice that many people. It could take the equivalent of 12 motorway lanes of traffic off the roads, and certainly that is a good use of road users’ money if ever there was one.

So what this Government is doing is extremely short-sighted and irresponsible. It is not going to give us a resilient transport system. It is not going to protect the economy from high oil prices. It leaves us in an oil-dependent situation, which is going to worsen our current account deficit, which is bad for the economy. Thank you.

MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): I would like to acknowledge and thank the member from the Green Party Julie Anne Genter, who has just resumed her seat—the member who can see Russia from her kitchen window. It is ironic that she comes from a country that has more roads than just about anywhere else, but comes here and says we should all hop on a loopedy-loop rail loop—

Simon O’Connor: Fruit loop.

MIKE SABIN: —or fruit loop, yes, or fruit loop—and ride unicycles, and carry logs to market on unicycles. What we have heard is another good example of the loony left, and what it does is it helps to provide contrast to the sensible work that this Government is doing. What we have here is a Minister, Gerry Brownlee, who is not only rebuilding Christchurch but is rebuilding New Zealand’s roading network. Parties like that like to talk about it but actually put no investment into it. This bill goes to the heart of making sure that that can be achieved.

Iain Lees-Galloway—I picked up on his speech—

David Bennett: Who?

MIKE SABIN: Iain Lees-Galloway.

David Bennett: Who’s he?

MIKE SABIN: Well, I am not sure, but I think that was his name. He was talking about that State highway, the Pūhoi motorway. This is the favourite of the left, the poverty whipping boy of Northland. Those members go up there, have fish and chips at the Mangonui fish and chip shop, have a few photo shots, and then come back down here and talk about getting rid of that road—the road that they call the “Holiday Highway”, which infuriates everyone in Northland. Sure, some holidaymakers do use that road, but so does $800 million of the Northland economy making its way through to Auckland. So whenever the Labour Party makes mention of that—and maybe it is not popular with everybody. I think there are actually three people in Auckland who do not think that the Pūhoi to Wellsford motorway is a good idea: the three Labour Party supporters in Auckland. Actually, to be fair, I think one of them may be a Mana Party supporter. I am not too sure; they sort of cross over a little bit. This is a sensible bill and it provides for the financial infrastructure that will help us build our roading infrastructure. I commend it to the House.

ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. In so doing I send greetings to people around New Zealand. In particular, I send greetings to the people of Dipton, where Bill English’s holiday home is located. I send greetings to you in the knowledge that on 1 July in Dipton you will be paying another 3c a litre to pay for the roads of national significance—most of which are north of Taupō. I send greetings to the people of Bluff, to the people of Hokitika, to the people of Nelson. I send greetings to the people of Waipukurau, my old home town, and to the people of Gisborne, who do not have a rail connection any more. I send greetings to the people of the East Coast, who no longer have a rail connection.

I also particularly send greetings to the people of Pipiwai up in Northland, who have experienced dust problems on their local roads. The people of Pipiwai have suffered incredible dust problems up there, because this Government sees more importance in its select few roads of national significance. It sees more importance in its select few roads of national significance than in the people of Pipiwai, who have to put up with dust, day in, day out, year in, year out, because this Government has cut the subsidies to rural regional New Zealand. Rural regional New Zealand is the area that is suffering from this Government. I am the spokesman for local government for New Zealand First. We are hearing constantly from local authorities and from people around New Zealand that their local roads, their local rural roads, their local regional roads are going backwards because this Government is putting all the focus on its select few roads of national significance.

I would like to draw everyone’s attention to the statement made by Gerry Brownlee in his press statement on 18 December 2012 when it was first announced that these 3c per litre excise tax increases would be starting as of 1 July this year, with another 3c increase on 1 July 2014, and another 3c increase on 1 July 2015. Gerry Brownlee, Minister of Transport, said: “The series of July increases will also ready the [National Land Transport] Fund for investment in upper North Island transport projects beyond the RoNS programme.” So Mr Brownlee stated in December that these increases starting this coming month are basically to provide for the investment in the upper North Island transport projects beyond the roads of national significance.

Again, I say to the people of Dipton, to the people of Bluff, to the people of Hokitika, to the people of Nelson, to the people of Waipukurau, and to the people up in Pipiwai that I hope that they are happy that in a month’s time, when their fuel goes up by 3c a litre, they will be paying for the benefit of a select area of New Zealand, the upper North Island, while the rest of New Zealand basically suffers. That is not good enough. That is not good enough. We all live in one country. We are all New Zealanders. We all deserve to have a fair share of what is available and we all deserve to be treated fairly. What this Government is doing is selecting specific areas where it sees the most votes, where it sees the most opportunities, and where it sees the best return for itself.

Why is it that we are having to have these 3c increases this year, next year, and the year after? Well, partly, it is because a couple of years ago this same Government slashed nearly $2 billion off the income taxes of the top 10 percent of earners in this country. The top 10 percent of earners in this country received significant income tax cuts. Mr John Key himself got $1,000 extra back as a result of the tax cuts. The big, tall Scotsman who was running Telecom, Paul Reynolds, who was on many millions of dollars per year, received $5,000 a week of tax cuts—$5,000 a week of tax cuts—from those tax cuts that National put through a couple of years ago.

So all the high rollers, all the wealthy people, have all seen some very significant improvements in their own personal wealth—including all the Ministers on a quarter of a million dollars a year—with a significant reduction in their tax. Meanwhile everyday, good, honest, hard-working New Zealanders are going to be asked to spend as of 1 July this year another 3c a litre to fill up their tanks, as of next year another 3c, and the year after another 3c. So, basically, while the likes of the Hon John Banks cruises around in his Bentley in Auckland, while the Ministers cruise around in their big Crown BMW 7 Series and take their tax cuts, and while Mr Key is taking his $1,000 a week, good New Zealanders will be paying for the pleasure of that.

It is very interesting that the current excise tax on fuel, according to the Automobile Association, is 61.129c per litre of fuel—that is the amount of tax: 61.129c on every litre of fuel. The Government is already getting a pretty jolly good share. When you are paying, say, $2.10 a litre, you take off 61c. You already know that 61c of that is going to the Government. It is getting a fair amount of money, and now it is going to add another 9c a litre—by the end of another 3 years, another 9c a litre. It is incredible.

Is it not interesting that it has to do this to help balance its Budget, to help try to find some sort of margin-of-error surplus in 2014-15, which is going to be only in the order of something around $100 million? Imagine if the Government did not have this—and it says it is going to get an extra $90 million a year from these 3c increases to start with. Basically, it would be in the red. It would be in the red. So, basically, you have to be a little bit sceptical and say: “Well, did they do their budgets? Did they do all their figuring? Did they do all their sums? Did they work out all the various things?”. Then you would go: “My goodness! We’re going to be in the red if we don’t find some more money.” The Government said: “Where do we find some more money from the good, average, everyday, hard-working New Zealanders? Ah! Let’s get it from their pockets. Let’s put it through the petrol bowser. Let’s take another 9c a litre by 2015-16, and let’s try to balance the books with some more money out of petrol.”

This is a very disappointing thing for the average New Zealander. Average New Zealanders are being stung at the moment with higher electricity prices, and they will see even higher electricity prices as a result of the sale of Mighty River Power. When Meridian Energy is put on the block and is sold off, average New Zealanders are going to be paying more for their everyday, vital necessities of life. They are paying far more in Auckland for their water as a result of this Government creating a super-city. New Zealanders are paying far more for their electricity, and they are going to be paying far more for their petrol. Basically, this is a miserable Budget, which, once again, the good, average, everyday New Zealander suffers from.

But, meanwhile, the fat cats—and we saw the Rt Hon Winston Peters here the other day with the mouse. The mouse might come out again this afternoon if this keeps going—it might come out again. The Rt Hon Winston Peters said the poor, average New Zealander is on the treadmill trying to make things better, but every time he goes forward, the treadmill keeps coming back at him. He cannot ever make any progress, because under this Government, the good, average New Zealander continues to have his everyday wage taken away from him. This latest fuel tax is just the latest poor, poor effort by this Government to try to balance the books. New Zealand First will not be supporting this.

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): Well, goodness me! One would have thought that Andrew Williams, the member who has just sat down, could probably have done a little bit better. It happens on a Saturday in urgency that people start to filibuster. Normally filibuster is amusing, or has some point, or does not pretend to be anything other than that, so I was not quite sure what the point of his speech was. Is he in favour of this transport bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, or not? Is he in favour of transport being developed? I suggest the general public would be far more impressed if we gave this type of legislation the significance in our speeches that it deserves. Transport is crucial to building our economic momentum. It is important, it is significant, and, indeed, it is vital. We should pass this bill.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): Here we are in the dead of morning, and it may be that there are only about five New Zealanders outside the people in this Chamber listening to this debate, but, for the record, that is deliberate on the part of this Government. An interesting thing, colleagues, is that this debate was originally to be scheduled by the Government for the start of the urgency motion. At the last minute the order was changed because some genius in the Government whips’ office worked out the truth, which is that if the public hears this debate, they will work out that the Government has staked its political reputation on one of the most monumental lies in political history, which is getting back to surplus. How often have we heard that? “We are going to get back to surplus. We are going to get the Government’s books in the black.” Well, that is the colossal lie about this Budget: there is no surplus. The Government called it wafer-thin—$75 million in 2014 off a Budget of $84 billion. That is a margin of 1/1000th of the total spend.

And do you know what? By a rough, back-of-the-envelope calculation, I am going to point to $3 billion worth of porkies, bulldust, and blather that get the Government to that line—$3 billion. Here is the list. We are here to talk about an excise bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. This excise bill puts petrol taxes up for hard-pressed New Zealand families by 9c a litre. That is 9c a litre that ordinary Kiwis can barely afford, and that rakes in—wait for it—$7 billion extra over 10 years. That is $7 billion out of Kiwis’ pockets to try to help the Government balance its bogus Budget.

But, you see, it does not get there without a whole lot of other things. Regarding ACC, officials told the Government to give back to hard-working New Zealanders in 2014-15 $700 million worth of overcharges. Did it do that? No. It is not doing that. It has put that off until the following year, and it is banking the $700 million of New Zealanders’ money so that it can get its wafer-thin, bogus Budget over the line. It does not get there without cutting the forecast expenditure track by $200 million in that year. It does not get there without an extraordinary bunch of tax fiddles.

I want to just draw the House’s attention to this worthy document. It is called the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update, or the BEFU—a lovely name. On page 30 of it are the tax-flow assumptions. Guess what happens in the forecast 2014 year? A magic $400 million worth of tax credits occurs out of nowhere for that year only—$400 million is magicked as if by fairy dust. There is $1.1 billion worth of extra corporate tax that magics its way into the Budget for that year only, before falling to $200 million the year after. And $1.1 billion of extra PAYE and employee tax falls from the sky in that year only, before falling away again. It is an extraordinary conjuring trick. This Budget is not worth the paper it is printed on. There is no surplus. What there is is $3 billion worth of bogus numbers that are a conjuring trick that this Government should be ashamed of.

The Budget does not get there without, for example, promising business research and development tax cuts. Well, that is playing catch-up with Labour. We promised that in the last election. We costed ours. From memory, it was about $300 million. The Government has put it in the Budget, but there is nothing in the books. There is not one cent in the forward expenditure track for its research and development tax cut promise—not one cent. Mr Dunne a couple of weeks ago announced $1.5 billion for the research and development computer system. I do not know how you spend $1.5 billion on a computer system, but guess what? Not one dollar is in this Budget for a $1.5 billion computer system—not one dollar, colleagues.

This Budget is a sham. There is no surplus, because in about 7 minutes I have been able to reel off over $3 billion worth of porkies, misprints, favourable assumptions, and money spreading. Those backbenchers did not get told that in caucus, you can bet that. They are lambs to the slaughter in the National Government, and there is a very large shepherd right out in front.

Let us just suppose that the Budget did balance. Let us just suppose it really did get into the black. Would that be the be-all and end-all for New Zealanders? Would that make a million flowers bloom? Would that get 270,000 children out of poverty? Would that get our inflation rate down? Would that get our unemployment rate down? The answer is no, because guess what? Nobody has told Bill English it is not his job just to balance the Government’s books; it is to balance the country’s books. These people are balancing their books at the expense of your books, New Zealanders—not you, Mr Assistant Speaker, but their books. The Government is taking money out of the wallets of Kiwis, putting it in the Treasury coffers, and calling it a surplus when it is not—when it is not.

Mike Sabin: “I have a dream.”

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Oh, Brook Sabin’s been having dreams. I wonder what kind of dreams—Mike Sabin, sorry. He is almost as good-looking as his son, but not quite. All I am hoping is that it proves that there are enough synapses between his ears to actually fire up and create a dream, and that is very good.

But coming back to the point, if this Budget did balance and if the Government had a strategy to grow the economy, which it does not, then we would still be left with a third question: is it putting people first? Does this economy serve New Zealanders or do Government members see New Zealanders as pawns and peons to serve a magic economy? They have got it the wrong way round. They trumpeted this Budget as a social equity Budget. How ironic is that? They said: “Oh, this won’t be a typical, dry National Party Budget. We’re going to have food in schools. We’re going to have a landlord retail warrant of fitness.”, and do you know what? That was absolute window dressing, New Zealanders—absolute window dressing. This Budget is as dry as dust. It is a miserly, mingy Budget. It is a visionless bore. But the key point today is to remember that there is no surplus. This is a bogus document.

It has got $3 billion worth of sham, worth of lost money, worth of what we can only call porkies. This bill adds 9c over 3 years to ordinary New Zealanders’ petrol bills for every litre that they use. It is part of a series of measures that try to get these clowns to balance their books at the expense of New Zealanders’ books. The saddest part about it is that after all they are putting New Zealanders through, they still do not get there. They have to claw away $200 million worth of expenditure from next year. They have to magic up $4.1 billion worth of extra tax flows. They have to hold back $700 million worth of ACC levies that belong to New Zealanders. They have to penny pinch, lie, and scrounge, and they still do not get there. This is a sham. It is a bogus Budget. It is a Budget to be ashamed of, and when those backbenchers go and have a thumb through it—of course they never will, because they probably cannot read at that level of detail. But if they ever did—[Interruption] David Bennett is happy in his ignorance. You have got to give him that. Some people are ignorant and miserable; David Bennett is happy to be ignorant. He knows he is ignorant. It is like Chris Auchinvole, right? He is a man happy in his work. He knows the Budget is a waste of time. He knows—

David Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think the member was using the wrong surname. Were you meaning David Shearer, or—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not a point of order and will lead to disorder.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: That one has hair—that one has hair.

Hon Member: Sensitive flower.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: He is a sensitive flower. The reason that we are here in the dead of morning on a Saturday sharing a few jokes amongst colleagues is that this is a debate that the Government does not want the public to hear. They do not want—

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

Dr CAM CALDER (National): He was going quite well until that ad hominem attack at the end, mate. David Cunliffe is a man whom I will remember by his rising-from-the-crypt speech—brilliantly delivered, theatrical, a joy to listen to, but all rubbish. It was as rubbish as many of the previous contributions were from the Opposition. Let me just encapsulate the fundamental thought there. This is an excellent Budget. This is an outstanding Budget. We have increased spending in health and education. Let me speak about health. We have increased spending in more heart health checks. The relevance of this is that if the arteries or the vessels of the heart block up, the heart stops functioning well, and what happens? The body dies. The person dies.

Think about the roads. If there are actually blockages in our roads, we cannot have the movement of goods and services around the country get to our export markets quickly, and the economy slows. This is an intervention. This increase in petrol excise tax and road-user charges will assist with building a better transport system. This is a vital part of the Government’s plan to build a more competitive and productive economy, an economy where growth would be stuttering, slowing, and finally stopped should the crypto-“renationalists” of the Labour Party get into bed with the money printers of the reds and the Greens in the Opposition. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): This is a Government that seeps hypocrisy at every step of the move. It came in promising New Zealanders that it would reduce taxation. Well, it did. It did for the wealthy, and it did take off the regional petrol tax on Auckland. Now, in urgency, this National Government is increasing taxation on every single New Zealander. Why? To pay for the benefits of a few people living north of the Bombay Hills.

Auckland is not a bad place if you visit and stay for a short period of time. But can I give a few quotes from Ministers across the other side. “New Zealanders should not be forced to pay twice for road networks given they have already forked out for excise duty on road user charges.”—that was a statement from Gerry Brownlee when he was trying to justify the removal of a regional petrol tax on Auckland. Then we had from Mr Joyce a statement that said that “regional fuel taxes are expensive and inefficient … ”.

Well, I will tell you what you should do. I want Mr Auchinvole to go to Fox Glacier and tell the people at Fox Glacier that this tax is efficient and beneficial to them, and that it is not expensive. I have to say that everywhere outside Auckland will consider that this tax is inefficient, unfair, hypocritical, and, in fact, unproductive. If we are to listen to the Government’s rhetoric around taxation, that any increase in taxation causes a loss of productivity, what are we getting from this? Well, silence. That is exactly right. We are getting a pay-off and payment for a few infrastructural assets in Auckland, and we know Aucklanders need them.

But there was a consensus building group that came out with a list of recommendations, one of which was a regional petrol tax—no. “No, we cannot have a regional petrol tax.”, said Mr Joyce. So what we have to do is spread that tax across each and every single New Zealander. What about the people in rural New Zealand? These are the people who have to travel, these are the people who do not have any public transport system, and these are the people whom that member from Whangarei might remember. The people up there in Whangarei will not be too happy about paying a tax to pay for the infrastructural assets of Aucklanders—I say with all due respect to my colleagues—that should have been paid for by Aucklanders. The people in the regions, the rural New Zealanders, who produce the wealth in this country, are being forced to pay 9c for every litre of petrol over 3 years—9c. And for what? To pay for “holiday highways” and infrastructural assets.

Even a consensus group—this was a group of Aucklanders who came together to say: “How should we pay for our infrastructural assets and our roading?”—arrived at a number of options such as a regional fuel tax, higher rates, which are not terribly desirable, or charging for motorway use. The vast majority of New Zealanders living outside Auckland would say that that is a reasonable challenge, and one that should be put up. Well, the Government said: “No, no, no, we can’t have people up there paying for their own infrastructure. We will impose a petrol tax of 9c across each and every New Zealander”—the same 9c that was rejected by that Government when it came into office—“for every litre of fuel.”

I know what people in Fox Glacier, in Collingwood, in Fairlie, and in Invercargill think about this. Off the back of statements by Mr Brownlee and Mr Joyce about the inefficiency and the expense of this, they understand the hypocrisy of what is going on in this House today. This Government removed the tax when it came in, to satisfy its mates in Auckland, and it now imposes this tax across each and every New Zealander to try to justify, as my colleagues say, this paper-thin, so-called balance in the Crown accounts.

This is an outrage and I urge New Zealanders, the few who might be watching, to go and tell their people—all the people, the two-thirds of the population who live outside Auckland—that this National Government is increasing taxes. It is doing it on each and every New Zealander—the vast majority of whom have no alternative other than to pay it. This is unfair. It is inefficient and it is expensive, and that is to use the Minister’s—

Mr SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. Surprisingly, I rise to support this bill—the only bill the Green Party will be supporting under urgency—the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. The interesting thing about this bill is that it is quite possibly the only bill that actually is Budget-related, as part of this tranche of Budget urgency this Parliament is considering on Saturday morning.

I rise to support this bill, but I want to note the strong reservations the Green Party has, because although we agree we should have increased transport funding and we think increasing the petrol excise levy is a good signal that is going to help give the Government money to help spend on the right solutions, the problem is that what we are not going to see is the right solutions being picked by this Government. What we are going to see is this money being spent on more low-value motorways. In terms of cars, they are often described as a dog or a lemon. What we see under this Government is a whole bunch of motorway projects that are both dogs and lemons because they do not even make economic sense—not even to the Government’s own analysis. What we know is that the so-called roads of national significance did not go through any Treasury analysis. They were an election pledge—election bribe. Despite all the expert analysis, despite the independent consultant saying that some of these projects had a woeful, negative benefit-cost ratio, the Government is still ploughing ahead, and you can see that head-in-the-sand approach in the regulatory impact statement that says that the objectives of keeping the roads of national significance should be kept.

What we are seeing with this legislation is fuel excise taxes going up by 3c over the next 3 years—a 9c increase over 3 years—to carry the declining National Land Transport Fund. I feel sorry for the Minister of Transport, Gerry Brownlee, because what has happened is that the original minister, Steven Joyce, had a $20 billion National Land Transport Fund, which he allocated through the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport Funding. He had the pleasure of going around the country talking about launching motorways, starting the ball rolling, and what he has left Gerry Brownlee with is a dog and a lemon, because what he has left him with is not enough money to finish the job. The cupboard is bare because of the $12 billion this Government is wasting on uneconomic motorways, which do not even have a strong business case.

The Green Party supports spending on infrastructure investment. The Green Party even supports borrowing for infrastructure investment when there is a good business case. But these seven so-called roads of national significance do not even have a strong business case. What we see is the National Land Transport Fund down over $1.6 billion over the next 5 years, so now Gerry Brownlee has to go and put nearly $1 billion in extra borrowing on the credit card for these motorways of National Party significance. The problem is, of course, that over the last 5 years, what we have seen is petrol prices up, we have seen road volumes down, and we have seen public transport patronage growing spectacularly, yet the Government still does not give Kiwis options to get around. All it is offering is motorways to get out of Wellington faster and motorways to get north of Auckland faster. There is not that critical investment in our cities where our prosperity and our economic development options are going to be. There is no money in the Budget, despite some speculation on The Standard blog that the Government would launch a funding announcement for the central business district rail loop in Auckland. There is no funding for light rail for Wellington. There is no funding for our cities. It is just for the roads of National Party significance, roads of trucking significance, because trucking is the real beneficiary of these motorways—roads of trucking significance!

What we see is bad policy set by the Government and a Minister who has got no money left in the cupboard because Steven Joyce has spent it all. So Gerry Brownlee now has to run off to Parliament to raise the taxes, and put it on the credit card, but the problem is we are still going to be stuck with these seven motorways. There is a better way, and that is what the Green Party is advocating for, which is investing in smart transport and a balanced approach. If we actually had a balanced approach to the transport budget, there would still be money for the roads. There would still be money for road safety upgrades, which we know are being delayed as a result of all the money being poured into these seven roads of National Party significance. We could be spending money on roads. We could be spending money on road safety. We could be spending more money on road policing. All these budget lines have been raided by both Steven Joyce and Gerry Brownlee to pour into these political roads.

I think New Zealanders want a smarter option. That is what all the polls are indicating. They want to a central business district rail link for Auckland. They want to have funding powers and regional autonomy to make some of these decisions. They want better buses, better trains, better walking and cycling, and that is what the Green Party is going to keep advocating for. Kia ora.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Look, I think the Opposition must still be asleep, going by the level of rhetoric and ideology we are hearing. Smart transport, I think, is sort of walking barefoot uphill both ways. This Government is actually committed to doing what Kiwis want. We know that the spending across a whole range of areas—in road, in public transport, in trains—is significant and it costs money. So this bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, is a prudent attempt by the Government, through this piece of legislation, to increase the amount of money that we have to invest in roads and across public transport.

We have heard all this talk around Auckland—$1.6 billion on the train system, $1 billion a year around subsidies for public transport in Auckland, $750 million for KiwiRail over 3 years. This—

Dr Cam Calder: How much?

SIMON O’CONNOR: $750 million over 3 years. This is a Government that is committed to transport, and it is a Government committed to transport that Kiwis want. In this way we are prepared to see a small increase over the next 3 years through the use of motor spirits, in order to continue ring-fenced funding, if you like, and, basically, to continue what we need to do in the roading sphere. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 73

New Zealand National 59; Green Party 11; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.

Noes 41

New Zealand Labour 33; New Zealand First 7; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a first time.

Second Reading

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Transport): I move, That the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This bill will enable the Government to respond to the pressing need for additional investment in the land transport system programme. Excise duty on petrol applied at a national level is an efficient way of raising revenue without imposing additional compliance costs on users. Steady increases announced well in advance are a much fairer and more efficient way of increasing revenue for the National Land Transport Fund than alternative methods that the Government has considered, such as tolling existing routes or regional fuel tax. In other words, what we are saying is that you are far better off having a system that collects the money from the petrol sold and then choosing to spend it appropriately across the roading network. All the money collected from this proposal will be spent on the road network.

The three increases of 3c per litre in 2013, 2014, and 2015 will generate over $500 million within the current period—2012-15—of the National Land Transport Programme. Over this period the Government will invest a total of $9.5 billion in the land transport network, including over $3 billion in the State highway network. Once the current programme is finished, the increases will allow further investment beyond the roads of national significance. Local government’s needs for land transport are much greater than ever before, and, regardless of the particular transport solution, those needs will require further expenditure.

I would like to point out that the increases as proposed in this bill are in line with past increases. A 3c per litre increase equates to a 5.9 percent rise in the total rate of petrol excise. Previous increases have exceeded that significantly. The previous Government oversaw an 8.5 percent increase in 2002 and a 13.8 percent increase in 2005, with single-digit increases in each of the other years that it was in Government. By proposing three moderate increases of less than 6 percent, this Government is ensuring that increasing the moderate payments made by motorists will be affordable, while providing enough revenue to complete essential improvements to the national road network.

It is worth noting that motorists are already reporting that on some of the roads that have been constructed under the roads of national significance they are saving many minutes, often daily, and that is a direct benefit not only to motorists but also to the wider economy.

I commend this bill to the House.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I hope that the National Party backbenchers were listening closely to their Minister of Transport in that speech, and, indeed, he made the same comments in his first reading speech. Some of those members seemed to be labouring under the misapprehension that the money raised from these extra taxes that will be levied against low and middle income New Zealanders will be used across the transport network. That is absolutely untrue, and the Minister has made that clear. This is for roads. In fact, it is not even just for roads, or for roads broadly; it is specifically for their uneconomic roads of national significance—roads of political significance, and roads of vote-buying significance, as we found out by referencing The Hollow Men in the first reading. What is going on here is that the National Party is putting on new taxes and raising taxes on low and middle income New Zealanders.

Frankly, I am surprised that the Green Party and the Mana party are voting to increase taxes, to increase costs, for low and middle income New Zealanders. That, I think, is outrageous. Over here in the Labour Party we just will not wear that. We refuse to support an increase in taxes on low and middle income New Zealanders for transport infrastructure that simply does not stack up economically. There is a range of different—[Interruption] I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have a point of order, which will be heard in silence.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I can barely hear myself, over David Bennett. I do not mind if he wants to interject on me. He is quite fond of it. But if he could just calm down a little bit, that would be helpful.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The point is well made. The noise was coming from both sides of the House. Would the member please continue.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. The fact is that there are a number of different aspects to a growth-focused transport network in New Zealand. Local roads are important. Highways in some places, where appropriate, are important. Rail is important. Public transport, whether it be urban rail or buses, is important too, and so is active transport. Cycling and walking are both important as well. We need infrastructure to support all those modes of transport, but all this Government is focused on is the roads of national significance.

What we know is that when a Government builds more roads in order to relieve congestion, that is simply buying time. It is not a solution. It might last a few years, but in time all we will get is more cars on those roads and in fact we will end up exactly where we started from, with the congestion that we had before. An investment in a diverse and integrated transport network would see people moving from being single occupants in cars, travelling to work and back home again, to using public transport, if the investment was there to make sure the public transport available was reliable, regular, and fitted in with people’s lives. But this Government is not interested in investing in that type of public transport.

We would see freight taken off the road and relieving congestion, both for freight carriers and for car drivers, if we saw more freight moving on to rail and on to coastal shipping. These are appropriate methods of moving freight around the country. Sometimes freight needs to be moved on a road. Sometimes freight needs to be moved on rail. Sometimes freight needs to be moved by coastal shipping. There are different time-dependencies, and there are different types of freight. What this Government is not doing is building a transport network that responds to the different needs of different users, different types of freight, and different time-dependencies. It is investing everything into roads. Actually, what it is doing is overcapitalising in the roading network, when what would be a smarter use of capital would be to have a broader transport network so that the peak times on the roads were relieved a little bit and that we were not investing loads of capital in having empty roads most of the time.

I appreciate that congestion is appalling in Auckland, but most of the time those motorways are empty. So why spend billions of dollars on building roads that are going to be empty most of the time? There is a smarter, more sustainable, more strategic way of using transport money and investing in transport infrastructure.

Simon O’Connor: What about buses and trains?

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Absolutely! Buses and trains need to be used. They relieve peak congestion—they relieve peak congestion. It is a smarter use of capital. Actually, I would like to hear—[Interruption] The National Party backbenchers are quite keen to interject, but they are not at all keen to offer a substantive argument when they get their calls. I would be quite keen to hear a little bit more than just the one-liners that they have been provided with by their research team. I would like to hear them provide a more sensible, substantive argument than what they have given so far. So if they want to argue in favour of pouring all the money into uneconomic roads, they should get up and argue for that. Let us hear the case for it. But they know there is no case for it—they know there is no case for it.

What this bill actually does is it continues National’s legacy of shifting the burden of tax from those who have the most ability to pay for it, on to those who have the least ability to pay for it. It comes from a misguided belief that reducing taxes on those who can afford to pay tax somehow creates jobs. It is an absolute fallacy that reducing tax on the extremely wealthy creates jobs. How many jobs did the $5,000-a-week tax cut given to the chief executive officer of Telecom create? None—absolutely none. On the other hand—

Grant Robertson: Cut 1,500 jobs.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Indeed, Telecom cut 1,500 jobs, probably to pay for the chief executive officer’s salary. On the other hand, giving tax relief to low and middle income earners is a job creation strategy, because it is the consumers who create jobs—it is the consumers who create jobs. Businesses create jobs when there is demand for their products and the demand is high enough that they need to take on additional labour to meet that demand. The demand comes from people having enough money in their back pockets to be able to go to the supermarket, to the shops, to the computer store, to wherever, and purchase products. That is where job creation comes from.

This Government is labouring again under a complete fallacy. That is why its taxation and economic policies are absolutely wrong, and that is why we are not seeing job growth. We are not seeing the 170,000 promised jobs—just another broken promise from the National Party. We are not seeing the economic growth that would get the books back into surplus without having to increase taxes and dive down the back of the couch to find every single little penny that can be found, to try to get the Government’s books back into that tiniest of tiny surpluses, 1/1000th of the overall Government books. That is well within anyone’s margin of error. The slightest little hiccup between now and next financial year and that surplus is completely gone. But the Government could be getting there if it had policy settings that encouraged job growth, like the kind of policy settings that the Labour Party has: a capital gains tax to shift investment away from speculative investment in property towards the productive sector, which creates jobs; a procurement policy that supports New Zealand businesses and New Zealand jobs; and, research and development tax credits, which, again, support the productive sector, the sector that creates jobs. Those policies and others are the kinds of things that New Zealanders need to see from this Government, not penny-pinching increases to their fuel excise tax just to make up for the fact that this Government has had unaffordable tax cuts for the wealthy, and has an unaffordable programme of road building for roads that are completely uneconomic.

I suggest that the National Party members, who reckon they represent the provinces, go and speak to some of the mayors and the councillors in those provinces and talk to them about their concerns about local roads. This Government is reviewing the way it funds local roads. I suggest that the member for Wairarapa go and talk to Roly Ellis at the Tararua District Council, who is deeply concerned that the productivity of the forestry that is about to come online in his region is not going to be as high as it could be because of the lack of investment in their local roads. The Government will not support them to upgrade their local roads, because all the money is going to the roads of national significance. That is the truth here—that is the truth. This Government does not support the regions. This Government does not actually support roads, and it does not support an integrated transport network. It supports buying votes by building uneconomic, gold-plated, silly roads that are significant to the National Party only, and not to the hard-working people of New Zealand.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): I think the Labour Party needs to take stock of that member Iain Lees-Galloway. I think that an experienced member sitting beside him, like Mr Cunliffe, who had a high ranking within the Labour Party until recent times, should really talk to that member because the comments he is making around the roads of national significance will come back to bite him if he ever, ever has to do any policy.

The member cannot say that billions of dollars are being spent on empty roads. That member obviously has never been in Auckland. He is from an area outside of Auckland and is making policy and judgments around some of our busiest roads. He has no idea what he is talking about. He deliberately misled this House in talking about how this Parliament was saying that all this money was going on to the roads of national significance. That is not true. The fact is that we pay for half of the roads that are local roads.

When they are talking about relieving peak congestion, and my colleague made a very good point about trains and buses and so on, the member opposite has no idea about the way that public transport works, how much it costs, and the effectiveness of it at certain periods of time. He finished with the quote of “going to your local communities”.

In my first reading speech I made it clear to Mr Iain Lees-Galloway that we welcome his visit to Hamilton—we welcome him to Hamilton. I want to see the day that Mr Iain Lees-Galloway says the words like: “These are monster motorways that serve no real purpose.” I want to see him come to Hamilton and say that to his party’s former member Mr Gallagher, to our mayor, and to our people. I want to see Mr Iain Lees-Galloway repeat the rhetoric that he has been saying in this House, because those words will come back to haunt him.

The people of Hamilton, the Waikato, Northland, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Tauranga know that these roads are important for their communities. They make a big difference to economic growth. They make a huge difference to those communities. I want to see that member come to Hamilton and say what he has been saying outside this House, because he is going to be the biggest vote winner that National can get. He is going to be the biggest vote loser that Labour can get at the next election. So thank you, Mr Iain Lees-Galloway, and just a bit of advice: do not make such statements about roading in the future. Think about what you are saying, because it is going to hurt you in the end. Thank you.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): David Bennett is very conscious of words, the importance of words that people might say, and how they will come back to haunt him. But there was one word he did not want to utter in his speech—well, two words—

Iain Lees-Galloway: “Tax”.

GRANT ROBERTSON: —“tax” and “petrol tax”—because that is actually what this Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill is about.

Hon Hekia Parata: That’s two words.

GRANT ROBERTSON: I said it was two. I did correct myself. Thank goodness the Minister of Education is here to keep us on track.

Hon David Cunliffe: What about the contingencies?

GRANT ROBERTSON: We will come to the contingencies, but the words that Mr Bennett does not want to say are “petrol tax” and “raising petrol tax”. He did not mention that once, and that is exactly what this bill does. But I am not surprised that he did not mention that, because he would not want to get offside with his leader, John Key, who, of course, also does not want to mention that what this bill does is put up petrol taxes to ensure that the National Government can create its wafer-thin surplus.

The whole notion of what was going to happen with taxation under this Government is something that John Key does not want to talk about. In 2005 this is what he said. He was talking about taxation, and he said that what we have to avoid is the indifference to the burden that taxation heaps on middle-income families. Well, what does this do? What does this legislation do? What this legislation does is exactly that. It heaps the burden on middle-income families. These are the same families who missed out on a tax cut when the National Party came into office. These are the same families who looked on while the top 10 percent of taxpayers got 40 percent of the benefits. That is what happened. That is the squeeze that was put on the middle-income families that John Key suddenly said he felt for.

But then when National got into Government, Bill English said: “We don’t want to go down the route of raising taxes.” That is what Bill English said. What did he do? He put GST up. Who did that put the squeeze on? Low and middle income families, the people who spend more of their income on the basics. Not the National Party’s mates, who can take that money and go away on their overseas trips, but the middle and low - income families who got squeezed by a tax increase that National said it would not do. They are the same people who are being squeezed by a 20 percent increase in early childhood education costs and by an increase in prescription charges.

This Government likes to say that we are getting into surplus, wafer-thin as it may be. Well, it is off the backs of hard-working New Zealanders, who have not had a break from this Government, and it is shifting the burden. The Government is shifting the burden from its debt to New Zealanders’ bank accounts. That is what this bill does. That is why the Labour Party is strongly opposed to this bill. I am very surprised that there are parties in this House who oppose the Government’s Budget but think that they can vote for this legislation. I think it is naive to lift this bill out and say: “Oh, well, it puts petrol taxes up. We might think that’s a good idea in principle.” This bill is a hoax. It is not about the petrol taxes really, is it, Mr Brownlee? It is about the political surplus. It is about trying to make sure that a wafer-thin surplus is provided in order to meet a political commitment that this Government has made.

The reality is that this bill has to be seen in the context of the rest of the Budget. It has to be seen in the context of a Budget that delivers to National’s vested interests rather than ordinary New Zealanders’. That further creates the two-speed economy where the speculators and the vested interests benefit, and where the exporters and the manufacturers and the ordinary New Zealanders go in the slow lane. That is what this is about. This is about a Budget where there was an absolute failure to create policies for affordable housing—an absolute failure. The Government promised big and delivered very, very little. This is a Budget where there was an absolute failure to address issues of poverty. Great claims were made about food in schools, and nothing shows up on Budget day about that. Great claims were made about what would be done to get warrants of fitness for rental housing. The Government is considering a pilot—a consideration of a pilot. That is the context of this bill. That is what members in this House should be thinking about as to whether they vote for this bill.

To focus on and accept the Government’s fiddle and fudge and to say that this is about making sure that we get money for these roads of significance to National—or roads of national significance, whichever way around you want to put it—yes, that is what it wants to claim of it, but the reality is that this is a taxation bill that is part of this Government’s Budget. It is vital to its ability to drive its agenda through. Parties on this side of the House should think very carefully about whether they want to support National’s Budget, because that is what they will be doing if they vote for this legislation. They will not be voting just to increase petrol taxes—mind you, they will be doing that, which will put further pressure on middle-income families—but they will be voting for a Budget that is utterly bereft of ideas to create jobs.

The two-speed economy I mentioned earlier is relevant to this legislation. As has been discussed before, it is the people in regional New Zealand who miss out on the transport policies of this Government. It is the people in regional New Zealand whom this Government is ignoring. And my colleague Phil Twyford, when he was Labour’s transport spokesperson, and Iain Lees-Galloway now have been going around the country talking to the local authorities in the regions and talking to the businesses in the regions of New Zealand, and they are saying a consistent thing, the same thing that I have been told when going around talking to polytechs, talking to chambers of commerce, and talking to businesses about skills and training—that this Government is ignoring them. This Government is ignoring the regions. It is interested only in working with its vested interest mates. Those regions also are not benefiting from this transport policy.

As my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has said before, a transport policy needs to be a balanced policy. Yes, there needs to be some funding for roads, but there needs to be support for public transport, and there needs to be support for walking and cycling. That is absent from this Government’s plan. It is so limited. There is no—

David Bennett: That’s not true.

GRANT ROBERTSON: David Bennett says that that is not true. What is the percentage out of the transport budget that is spent on rail?

Iain Lees-Galloway: Seven.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Seven percent of the transport budget is spent on rail. This is not a balanced policy. The balance that is really missing here is the balance that would give ordinary middle-income and low-income families a fair go, and give regional New Zealand a fair go. David Bennett, for all of his bluff and bluster, cannot make the case for the fact that this bill is good for his constituents. People in Hamilton and people in the Waikato are asking where this National Government is. This National Government is far more focused on deals with Skycity, selling off laws to Warner Bros, and selling off to international companies the right to protest, as we have seen in the last few days. That is the focus of the National Government. It has ignored the regions of New Zealand, and this piece of legislation is one more example of that. So I strongly urge parties in this House to oppose this legislation. This is not legislation that will deliver for New Zealanders, and it cannot be isolated out from the rest of this Government’s programme and the rest of what it is doing.

This Government has a record of broken promises when it comes to taxation. It has come to this House today with a bill that increases taxes on petrol this year, next year, and the year after. That will result in pressure on middle-income households, and there is nothing else in this Budget that New Zealanders could look at and say “OK, maybe they’re putting my petrol tax up here, but I’m going to see some delivery. I’m going to see some new jobs created. That means I can support a petrol tax going up.” But that is not there. On the jobs front this Budget is hilarious. If it were not so serious, it would be absolutely hilarious. We have discovered in the Budget figures that the National Government will pull up 60,000 jobs short of its target of 170,000 new jobs. That is bad enough, but then it has recommitted to a new target for 4 years with 170,000 jobs again. It will not do it. It does not have the policies to create jobs. It does not have the ideas and the innovation to turn this economy around, to make the changes to monetary policy, or to change procurement policy so that it focuses on New Zealand jobs. It is not prepared to tax capital through the capital gains tax. All it is prepared to do is tinker around at the edges and benefit vested interests. This bill is critical to that Budget. It should be opposed because it does not deliver to ordinary New Zealanders the kinds of benefits they should expect from a Budget like this.

JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): There are two very different reasons for raising a tax. One might be just to raise revenue, which the Government then uses to deliver public services. But there is another way of using tax: as an economic instrument that encourages behaviour that we would like to see more of. The Green Party does support the use of economic instruments to reduce carbon emissions and to reduce pollution. That is a smart way of using tax to reflect the full external costs of what is going on, and that can raise revenue. Then we can put that revenue into smart alternatives that enable households and businesses to do more of the activities that they do with less pollution and less cost. So the Green Party can support a moderate, steady increase in petrol excise duty, because what that signals to households and businesses is that actually it would be quite a good thing if they were using less petrol, because petrol is polluting. It is also very, very good to support the economy of New Zealand in a transition to being less reliant on fossil fuels. That is really important to recognise.

Unfortunately, the Government is not taking this smart approach to raising the petrol tax. What it is doing is increasing its revenue so it can spend more money on projects that increase the vehicle dependency of New Zealand and do not provide smart alternatives so that businesses and households can get around with less petrol. It is really unfortunate that the Government is not taking this opportunity to invest the increased revenue that it is going to get from petrol tax in the types of transport that have historically been under-invested in; therefore, New Zealanders have not had the choice.

I think a lot of the time the Government confuses or conflates our high vehicle dependence with the preferences of New Zealanders. It is true that most New Zealanders have to use a car to get most places. This is not because that is what they want to do; it is the direct result of Government policy, successive Government policy, that has not given New Zealanders the choices that they would like. And, hey, that has happened all over the world in rich countries—the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. We are all in this position. But most other countries have realised that we have this opportunity right now to get better economic outcomes, better health outcomes, and better environmental outcomes, and reduce our vulnerability to spikes in the oil price by investing in smart alternatives as a priority. That means making people the priority, rather than vehicles, in our towns and cities, in our traffic engineering, planning, and funding. That means putting in a lot more money than we are currently into making it safe for kids to walk and cycle to school, and giving people the opportunity to live closer to where they work by reducing some of the barriers to intensification that currently exist in district council plans.

So there are many opportunities to reduce regulation, reduce the amount of money that the Government is spending, and get outcomes that New Zealand households and businesses would actually prefer. Of course, the National Government is entirely ideological about this. It does not have a balanced approach to transport spending. I love raising this graph. This is the new infrastructure spending in the transport budget for the next 3 years. It is not balanced. All of this purple is on a few expensive new State highways that will carry only 4 percent of daily vehicle trips. So most of the budget for new infrastructure is going on a very small percentage of vehicle trips, and freight on almost all of these routes is less than 10 percent of the vehicle trips. These roads already exist. We already have State highways. So duplicating an existing link is going to have very marginal benefits. You could improve the travel time and the safety on these routes for less than a quarter of the cost of the new roads. So it is a bit ridiculous to say that this is going to have any economic benefit at all for New Zealand as a whole.

What we have to consider is the opportunity cost. Of course people in Hamilton, people in Rodney, and people in Wellington will have the perception, if they drive on the motorway, that it is a good thing, right? Because they are not paying for it directly.

David Bennett: Yes, they are.

JULIE ANNE GENTER: No, all New Zealanders are paying for it, and a small number of people are using it.

David Bennett: They buy petrol.

JULIE ANNE GENTER: Government members do not understand the difference between direct pricing and indirect pricing, and marginal costs and average costs. What the petrol tax is is an average cost pricing, and it means that the marginal cost of building the new road is not paid for by the people directly using that road. So of course they are going to say “Oh yeah, this is a great thing”, but the truth is that if they had to pay for it directly, they would not. They would choose not to. They would say “You know what, I’d rather spend my money doing something else, and going about this another way.” That is what we have seen in Australia. That is why there has been this failure in the roading public-private partnerships in Australia, because the traffic models overestimated the demand that people would have for a new tunnel under Brisbane—the new airport link in Brisbane. The traffic model just overestimated demand. When people had to pay tolls, guess what? They were not willing to pay the tolls. So it is unfortunate that National is not taking an economically rational approach to its infrastructure investment.

What is happening is that it is spending a large amount of money on a few projects that are going to deliver very small, if any, benefits. Very little money is going to local roads and almost no money is going to new transport infrastructure, walking, and cycling. Those are the areas that have been systemically under-invested in for the better part of a century. They are very cost-effective. They are much more cost-effective. The truth is that there is nothing evil about cars, but they are a very expensive way to try to move a large number of people around urban areas. Government members would like to portray my comments as being ideologically anti-car, but they are not anti-car at all. The best thing for people using the roads—particularly for freight—is that more commuters have the opportunity to not take their car and to not clog up the roads at peak time. That is a more cost-effective use of our next dollar in transport infrastructure and investment.

So although it is fine for the member for Hamilton East to say that people in Hamilton love this road and that it is going to be good for the economy, the objective analysis does not stack up. The Government announced this project before a business case had been undertaken. I have read the business case, and it does not stack up.

David Bennett: You weren’t there. You weren’t even in Parliament then.

JULIE ANNE GENTER: Actually, I was a consultant and I worked for Hamilton City Council as a transport planner and policy adviser. So I was there. I was in the New Zealand Transport Agency in 2008 after the new Government was elected, working as a consultant for the agency and working on a report called Managing transport challenges when oil prices rise. The officials in the New Zealand Transport Agency were saying “What a disaster. The National Party has come in with these crazy motorways, and the business cases do not stack up, and it wants to move them right up the priority chain.” There was an opportunity cost because that was billions of dollars not going on projects that would benefit more New Zealand households and more New Zealand businesses. You do not see the opportunity cost of the money that is not spent on smarter, better projects that would have a better outcome.

The National Government is putting up the petrol tax and is spending all of the money on projects that give New Zealanders no opportunity to avoid higher oil prices. This is directly related to our current account deficit. There has been a lot of talk about the current account deficit and how the Budget that was presented this week is actually forecasting a worsening of the current account deficit. It is the current account deficit that reflects how much New Zealand is earning relative to how much it is spending on a national level. It is really that that tells us about the health of our economy. The Government Budget is only one tiny part of it. Even if the Government Budget can cobble together some optimistic surplus in a couple of years, if New Zealand is spending more money overall offshore, and is earning less by selling our goods overseas, then we are in a worse economic position, and it will be felt by New Zealand households and businesses.

Our oil bill went from about $3.5 billion at the beginning of the decade to $8 billion last year. We are importing the same amount of oil, but it is worth twice as much. So our current account deficit is worse because New Zealand households and businesses do not have the opportunity to get around in a more energy-efficient way. That is only going to get worse as time goes by, so it is right now that we critically need to be investing in those alternatives. Oil prices are not going down any time in the future. Even if we drill it here, we are still going to pay the international price of oil. Even if we drill it here, we do not use it here. It does not go in the tanks of our cars or trucks; it goes straight overseas, because it is not that type of oil that we produce here in New Zealand.

So we need to futureproof our transport system. We have the opportunity to futureproof our transport system. The National Government is not taking that opportunity, and it is going to have dire economic consequences for the country. Thank you.

MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): Was that not a cute contribution from Julie Anne Genter, the “member for nowhere”? Outstanding. The member—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That level of interjection is too loud. Would the member Mike Sabin—

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I was waiting for you to interrupt the member after his gross breach of the Standing Orders.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Would the member please resume his seat. I call Mike Sabin.

MIKE SABIN: I heard the contribution from David Shearer’s speech writer, Grant Robertson, talking about how nothing in this bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, is dealing with poverty, which is rubbish, first and foremost. Secondly, this is another good example of a party that votes against everything that is actually about building the economy, that is actually about giving some of the infrastructure that provides productivity. The benefits to Northland alone from the Pūhoi to Wellsford motorway are in the vicinity of $45 million per annum. That is a province that deserves to be invested in, and this Government and this Minister of Transport are doing that.

ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): Was that not a short call from Mike Sabin, the member from somewhere up in the far north—a very short call—and symptomatic of the amount of input that most of the Government members have had in most of the debates over the last 2 days? I want to tell a small story here about—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Nothing new in that.

ANDREW WILLIAMS: No, but this is a small story about one Mr Steven Joyce, who happened to be—

Hon Trevor Mallard: The member for nowhere.

ANDREW WILLIAMS: —yes, he is a member for nowhere as well—one Mr Steven Joyce, who was the Minister of Transport at the time, back in about 2008-09. We on the North Shore invited him to come to see us and explain why the incoming National Government had just cancelled the regional fuel tax in Auckland. This was a regional fuel tax that was proposed in Auckland, which had taken 3 years for the local authorities in Auckland—all the local authorities, which National said could not work together—to negotiate with the former Labour Government to come up with a solution to help fund the major roading and public transport initiatives in the Greater Auckland region. And what it was going to be was that it was going to be a tax along the lines of the one in the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, starting at 2c a litre and rising to about 9c a litre over a period of 5 years. It was going to help Aucklanders self-fund their roading and transport problems and issues over that period of time.

But the National Government got into power and immediately cancelled it—just cancelled it outright. This is after 3 years of extensive negotiations by local and central government coming up with a solution so that Aucklanders could be self-sufficient in terms of providing for their future needs in this funding area, and one Mr Steven Joyce cancelled it. He was issued three invitations, I think it was, by me when I was Mayor of North Shore to come to the North Shore and talk to us about why he did it. That same Minister of Transport, that same Minister of Transport, who lived just north of Albany, just over the border in the Rodney area, was driving through our city of North Shore half a dozen times a week, but he could not find the time to come to explain why he was cancelling the regional fuel tax, and, at the same time, why there were cutbacks to funding on things like walking school buses. On the North Shore we had over 100 walking school buses. In fact, I launched the 100th walking school bus on the North Shore when I was mayor. And yet this National Government was cutting back funding for the likes of walking school buses, which were encouraging parents to get out of their cars and get their kids to walk to school, and to stop thousands and thousands of mothers and fathers in the morning hiving all around the school gates and clogging up the streets while people were trying to get to work.

It was a great initiative, but Steven Joyce knew better—he knew better. He did not want to have any discussions on that. He did not want to come to see what we were doing in terms of public transport on the North Shore to get people on to buses, to get people on to the new Northern Busway—

Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The first point of order is one that I would like to take slightly more seriously than I did earlier when I raised it. I think it is fair that you dismissed it because of the tone of my point of order, but it did go to the importance of longstanding Speakers’ rulings—since 1996, or probably 1997; post the 1996 election—as to the method of addressing list members. I think that members who are list members are to be addressed either by their names, or, in this particular case, as the Green list member. To refer to honourable members of this House as being members from nowhere or members for nowhere, as Mr Sabin did is, I think, a long-term breach of Speakers’ rulings, and I think it is important that we have it on the record that that has not become acceptable.

Mr SPEAKER: I thank the member for his point. He is right: it will lead to disorder if members do refer to other members as members from nowhere. But that interjection was then being thrown around from both sides of the House.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My second point of order is to ask you whether the rules have changed as to photography within the Chamber. I thought it was the practice that photographs were not to be take in here, including in the lunch break, unless by an accredited member of the media, and I thought they were not allowed to do it in the interval, either. It appears that at least one individual has been on the floor of the House taking photographs—

Hon Ruth Dyson: Standing.

Hon Trevor Mallard: —standing on the floor of the House.

Hon Tau Henare: Name him!

Hon Trevor Mallard: Well, if the member Mr Henare wants—

Mr SPEAKER: Could the member just finish his point of order.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Well, the question I am asking is whether you, Mr Speaker, have changed the rules and have given permission for photographs of members to be taken during the luncheon break.

Mr SPEAKER: I have not changed any rules, at all, and if photographs were taken during the luncheon break, that is not a matter of order.

ANDREW WILLIAMS: It was a very nice Saturday lunch here in Wellington, I can assure you. It is not often that we have a Saturday lunch in Wellington, but it was most pleasant. It did rob me of the chance, when I was in full flight, of telling the story of one Mr Steven Joyce, who, at the time, was a member of the Opposition, and then he became the Minister of Transport. Then—

Tracey Martin: What electorate does he represent?

ANDREW WILLIAMS: He represents the National Party. He has never been elected to anything himself. He has actually never ever stood in an election himself, but he does have a huge amount of influence in the National Party. And that one Mr Steven Joyce lives in the area of Rodney, just north of the North Shore, and he was the Minister of Transport at the time when he cancelled a proposed regional fuel tax in Auckland, which was going to help to provide a huge amount of self-sufficiency for Auckland in its transport woes in terms of not only its roading but also its public transport.

It is somewhat ironic that something like 4 or 5 years later, the National Government is now saying that it needs more money for roads of National Party political significance. That is what they are called now—roads of National Party political significance. It is now putting in place an excise tax on fuel, starting on 1 July, of 3c a litre, going up every 1 July—next year, another 3c a litre, and the year after that, another 3c a litre. It now sees fit to charge every single New Zealander all over this country another 9c a litre, but the Hon Steven Joyce, when he was the Minister of Transport, could not see any merit in Aucklanders having a regional fuel tax of their own to help pay for their own. It is ironic that on 18 December 2012, Gerry Brownlee, the current Minister of Transport, said the series of July increases will also ready the National Land Transport Fund for investment in upper North Island transport projects, beyond the roads of national significance programme. Basically, most of this money will be going into roads north of Hamilton. Hamilton and north is where the money is mainly going. There is a little bit in Wellington. There is a little bit down in Christchurch—a token amount in Christchurch. But the bulk of it is going north of Hamilton.

So, as I said earlier, every single person in the small population of Dipton, in Mr English’s area—down there where he has his holiday home, where he visits occasionally, and where maybe during this adjournment he might perhaps be visiting—will, as of 1 July, be paying another 3c a litre for their fuel in Dipton, to help pay for roads in Hamilton and north, and in Auckland, and north of Auckland. I am sure that the people in the electorate of Bill English, the Minister of Finance, must be thrilled with that. They must be absolutely chuffed. They must be chuffed to think that in 12 months’ time, they can look forward to another 3c a litre increase on top of that. And in 2 years’ time, they can look to another 3c a litre increase. They must be chuffed because down in Dipton they must be thinking: “Boy, we must be going to get some really good roads in Dipton out of all these extra taxes that our member of Parliament, Bill English, is going to charge us. We must be going to get some super highways in Dipton. We must be going to get some wide arterials. We must be going to get some four-lane highways in Dipton.” Not on your life, Dipton. You are not going to get a single thing out of this Minister of Finance or out of this Minister of Transport. All you are going to get, Dipton, is another 9c a litre. So when you travel and drive down to Invercargill, when you travel and go up to Queenstown, and when you go over to Dunedin, every time you take a car journey, you, the people of Dipton, should remember that you are paying more money to get there and more money to get back to Dipton, because this Minister of Finance and this Minister of Transport determined that you would help pay for the roads north of Hamilton.

But what I would encourage you to do, if you are in Dipton, is maybe take a drive up to the North Island. Drive up to the North Island, get to Hamilton, and, when you finally get to Hamilton and you get on to some of these roads of National Party political significance, make the most of it. I would probably suggest you drive between Hamilton and Auckland and around, and do it four or five or six or seven times while you are up there. It is a long way to drive from Dipton up to north of Hamilton. When you get there, make the most of it, because you might do it only once in a lifetime, when you have taken your car all the way from Dipton to go up there to pay for those roads. So, when you get there, “Diptonites”—are they called “Diptonites”?

Hon Trevor Mallard: “Dipsticks”.

ANDREW WILLIAMS: They are not called “dipsticks”; they are “Diptonites”. That is most appalling. There is only one “dipstick” from Dipton. So, “Diptonites”, go up to the North Island, and enjoy those roads of National Party significance. Drive up and down them. Make the most of them, and know that every time you are putting the petrol in your car at the pump, holding the handle, pressing the button, putting petrol into your car, you are paying for all those roads that the National Party wants north of Hamilton.

That is not fair on New Zealanders all over this country. It is not fair on the whole country. This is a tax and it is a hidden tax. It is a tax on the whole country, and everyone is going to be paying to help balance the National Party’s Budget. That is what it is. It is balancing the National Party’s Budget so it can, hopefully, in 2014-15 come up with a tiny little minute surplus—a tiny little minute surplus. That is what it is all about. It is trying to balance the books. New Zealand First does not go along with it. It is unfair.

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): I commend the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill to the House.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I rise to oppose the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, recalling, first off, what it does to petrol prices. When the Labour-led Government left office the total petrol excise duty was 42.5c a litre. It has already gone up by one-fifth; it is 50.5c a litre. And this bill will put it up another 9c to 59.5c a litre, raking another $7 billion over 10 years out of the pockets of middle and lower-income New Zealanders.

That is not enough to fund the roads of no surplus, because it has to be done in conjunction, as we said in the first reading, with a number of other measures that are required to contrive what has been repeatedly described as a wafer-thin surplus, but which the Labour Opposition argues is actually a bogus surplus because you do not get there without having to simultaneously manipulate about $3 billion worth of revenue and spending measures. The Government is taking $200 million out of the 2014-15 operating allowance. It is refusing to give back $700 million worth of ACC levies, against the advice of officials. It is magicking $400 million of tax credit offsets in one year only—the year that it needs to hit surplus. It is contriving a $1.1 billion increase in corporate tax receipts for that year only, and a $1.1 billion increase in PAYE and employee tax as well. With all of those things, this adds up to a Budget that really is not a surplus.

I want to examine two other aspects of this today in this part of the debate, the second reading. The first is what the impact is on the economy and on the Government’s other objectives of passing this measure and the other fiscal measures that it is part of. There is a thing in the economic jargon called a “fiscal impulse”, and, for the folks listening in at home, that is what the net effect is, if you like, of all the things that the Government is doing here—all the taxes it takes out and the spending that it puts in. Is it putting your foot on the accelerator to make your car go faster, or is it putting your foot on the brake to slow it down? If you put money in, you make it go faster; if you take money out, it slows the economy down.

The highest application of the brakes, the biggest negative fiscal impulse, is in the magic year where it supposedly hits surplus, and that is because the Government is having to hold back on spending and amp up the tax it is taking and stop giving stuff like ACC levies back in order to get to the wafer-thin magic line. The net effect of that is a minus 1.2 percent fiscal impulse. That means GDP growth is about 1 percent lower than it would be if that had been neutral—all right?

So the Government is shrinking the size of the Budget, shrinking the size of the State relative to the economy, taking energy out of the economy. In so doing, what happens? Our unemployment rate is staying up at 6 percent, not the 5.2 percent it was forecast to fall to in last year’s Budget—that is, more people, by the decision of this Government, are going to be out of jobs than need to be, and, indeed, more people are going to be out of jobs than it said would be just a year ago. Those are real people, real families, who have lost hope, who have lost self-esteem, and who have lost income. Of course, for other taxpayers, that means they are having to pay for those families to live through the unemployment benefit when they do not need to be. That is the aggregate effect of a 1.2 percent slow-down in GDP growth as a result of the Government trying all these tricks to get to a surplus that does not really exist. We agree with the idea of getting to surplus. We would do it too, but we would do it in a much more genuine way, without these negative side effects on the economy.

The third thing that I want to reflect on today, given the enormous amount of money that we are watching the Government clawing out of the pockets of ordinary Kiwis through this bill—$7 billion over 10 years—is to ask that age-old question about fiscal and revenue policy: who gets what and who pays what? Because, at the end of the day, politics and the arguments around this Chamber are very much about who is getting and who is paying. What New Zealanders are now crystal clear about is that who is getting, under this Government, is the top few percent, and who is paying is everybody else.

If we needed to refresh our minds with a little bit of history back to 2010, we look at the famous tax switch, where the Government put up GST 2.5 percent for everybody and then gave the top tax rate a massive tax cut. What was the effect of that? It was to raise $14.3 billion in tax out of everybody else. Average income earners got $12 a week; someone on John Key’s salary got $243 a week—Joe Average: $12; John Key: $243. The upper income tax cuts were not neutral. The Government would not have to do all this smoke and mirrors and raise your petrol tax if it had kept the promise to make this tax neutral. In giving more to the rich and taking it off the poor, the Government was under by $1 billion over 4 years. It was $1 billion short, according to its own Treasury documents.

It does not stop there. This debate gives us an opportunity to run through the list, just to call to mind all the other sneaky little taxes that National has been up to. We caught it out twice in the last few months: the car-park tax, which it has rolled back off, and the famous iPad tax—the famous iPad tax. You know, the Government thinks it is good enough to charge ordinary workers, office workers, fringe benefit tax for the private use of their work iPad or computer. You are supposed to go through and work out how much of your use of your computer is private, and then pay the fringe benefit tax on that. What a ridiculous idea. The Government, however, did not have the courage to take on the guys who make the iPads, like Apple and the other big IT companies, and make them pay a fair share of cross-border tax. They can just shift their costs, and they pay almost no tax at all.

The Government has forced people to pay 20 percent higher early childhood education costs, a 31 percent average increase in school donations, and 22.5 percent higher tertiary and post-school fees. Student loan repayment rates have gone up, and ACC charges have gone up—get this—67 percent on the work account, 23 percent on the earners account, and 31 percent on the motor vehicle account. Workers’ ACC costs have gone up 67 percent in the life of this Government. Officials told the Government it was going to be charging $1 billion too much in 2014-15. You know what? It said: “Forget it—we’re not giving it back because we won’t hit surplus.” I call that being unfair and not straight up with New Zealanders.

What about KiwiSaver? The Government has put up the compulsory payment on KiwiSaver and reduced the tax credits. Prescriptions charges—just lots of nasty little things—have gone up from $3 to $5. Fuel excise has already gone up one-fifth, or 20 percent, under this Government, and it is going to put it up another 9c a litre through this bill. Tobacco charges have gone up. Road user charges have gone up. Local government rates have gone up. Alcohol excise has gone up. Aviation fees have gone up. Company filing fees have gone up.

The point is that this is a Government that came in and gave massive tax cuts to the top 1 or 2 percent, and then it has spent the last 5 years getting everybody else to pay for them. This is not good enough. This is not what New Zealanders want to see. This is not the New Zealand that we grew up to believe we had a right to live in. We thought we were going to grow up in a country where everybody got a fair shake of the sav—where the kid of a doctor and the kid of a driver could aspire to the same success in life; where it did not matter what the size of your parents’ wallet was, or what your skin colour was, or what your gender or your orientation was, everybody got a shot.

That is not National’s vision of New Zealand, and this bill is yet another bill, like all the other rubbish we have seen come through on this Budget, where you, New Zealanders, are paying too much, and the rich are getting away with too little. We need a vision, we need a positive future, we need everybody to have a stake in this country—to be proud of being New Zealanders again. We want a bit of positive national identity, and we are not getting it from this Government, which is disappointing, overtaxing, and dismally failing New Zealanders.

Dr CAM CALDER (National): I commend this bill to the House.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): It is very disappointing, and really a slap in the face for democracy and for the public, that the National Government would come to the House pushing through this obnoxious legislation and those members are not even prepared to stand up and justify it, make the case, and argue for this law. Well, on this side of the House, we are prepared to stand up and oppose it. There are two reasons that we oppose this bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. The first is that it is an illegitimate tax grab. It is a politically motivated attempt to conjure up a surplus when one really does not exist, so—

Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s a lie.

PHIL TWYFORD: It is a lie. It is a political lie for John Key to try to convince the public that he has got the books back in balance. The Government is doing it at the expense of ordinary New Zealanders and the motoring public.

We want to talk about tax and put this tax in the context of this Government’s record on taxation. So let us talk about tax. The crowning glory of the John Key Government was to distribute massive tax cuts that transferred wealth from the poorest sections of society to the top.

Chris Auchinvole: Ordinary New Zealanders are motorists

PHIL TWYFORD: We know—we know, Mr Auchinvole—that 40 percent of the benefit of those tax cuts went to the top 10 percent of New Zealand income earners. That is an outrage, and then this Government has spent the remaining few years shovelling home the cost of those tax cuts to ordinary New Zealanders.

Chris Auchinvole: “Shovelling, shovelling!”

PHIL TWYFORD: Yes, it has. It has increased GST, a flat tax that added to the burden of already stressed low-income earners. It has refused the entreaties of every economist in this country, almost without exception—every academic, the IMF, the OECD, Treasury, and everybody who says that the Government should institute a capital gains tax, that it is the missing link in our taxation system, and that not only would it be just to tax people who make their living from the earnings off assets but also it would channel investment into the productive economy. But, no, National is right and everybody else is wrong on that, apparently. And now we see this stealth tax, by pumping up the petrol excise by 9c over a period of time—3c every year for the next 3 years. That is an illegitimate tax grab.

I also want to make the point in the few minutes I have that the other reason that Labour opposes this tax grab is that the purpose of it, other than creating an illusionary surplus for the Government, is to fund Gerry Brownlee’s wasteful, economically damaging, white elephant motorway projects. These so-called roads of National Party significance are the defining feature of this National Government’s transport policy. Labour is not opposed to all of the roads of national significance. We are not opposed to all motorways, we are not opposed to all infrastructure, but let me give you a couple of examples of why we oppose this transport policy and this particular bill. The “Holiday Highway”, which National wants to build between Pūhoi and Wellsford—the Government claims it is an economic lifeline for the north. Well, let me tell you—let me tell the members who do not like it being described as the “Holiday Highway”—that there are approximately 9,000 vehicles on the road every day between Warkworth and Wellsford. Do you know how many vehicles are on the Te Atatū Road in my electorate? Four times that many—36,000 cars a day on a normal Auckland arterial road, and this Government wants to blow $1.7 billion on a gold-plated, four-lane, dual-carriage expressway on a road that carries only 9,000 vehicles a day. It beggars belief.

Mike Sabin got up in this House and said that this was the economic lifeline for Northland and that people desperately needed this road, but he will not support a policy that we have got that would spend $400 million right now on eliminating the accident black spots, eliminating the traffic bottlenecks. We would fix that road right now by spending $400 million. That member and the National Government want to blow $1.7 billion of this country’s taxes on a gold-plated “Holiday Highway”. That is completely unjustifiable.

The other example that I want to put to the House of a wasteful—

Hon Tau Henare: It’ll save lives. That’s what it’ll do—save lives.

PHIL TWYFORD: Oh, my God! The “brains trust” of Te Atatū has finally woken up. I am surprised that he is in the House. Did you not know, Mr Henare, that there is a football game on television at the moment? I am surprised that you are not in your office with your feet up on the couch watching the football, because it is on right now. Frankly, I am surprised to see the member—

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

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to support this bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, and to offer a positive transport vision for Aotearoa New Zealand, in contrast to the National Government. We support a modest increase in the fuel excise levy, signalled well in advance. We think that 3c a year over 3 years is realistic, given that we are in the lower half of the OECD fuel excise levels.

Andrew Williams: Selling out.

GARETH HUGHES: Selling out? What we are talking about is giving New Zealanders a clear signal, which is to invest in efficient vehicles, invest in innovation like electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles, and invest in better public transport. The problem is, of course, that the Government is not backing this up, because the Government is still stuck in the 1960s. Gerry Brownlee still has a 1960s approach to transport. Gerry Brownlee—or, as I call him, New Zealand’s “Colossus of Roads”—is spending the lion’s share of the transport budget on just seven new motorways. It is unbalanced, it is ideological, and it is fiscally reckless.

What the Government wants to do is borrow to build $12 billion worth of only seven roads. It has got poor business cases. Half of them have got negative benefit-cost ratios. There has been no Treasury analysis. What it is doing is not spending any extra money on public transport infrastructure investment. It is closing the regional rail lines, and this is the problem that has led to the situation of why we are having this bill passed under urgency now. Because fewer people are driving, we have got traffic down, petrol up, and public transport going through the roof. Fewer people are driving, and fewer people are paying the fuel taxes. So the Government has to keep on borrowing an extra $1 billion and keep putting up the fuel taxes to keep spending money on the roads, which we know Kiwis are driving on less.

So I have got this vision of Gerry Brownlee with his arm out of the window, screaming down the road to nowhere, pedal to the metal. He does not know where he is going. He is too embarrassed to ask for directions. Bill English in the back seat should speak up, because New Zealand cannot afford to be making decisions like this. Mr Brownlee, you should ask for advice and get a map to a better future. Bill English should speak up about this. The Government has made a big deal of the surplus, but what we really should be looking at is the current account deficit. It is 5 percent of GDP, and it is going to be 6.5 percent soon. We are second to only Turkey at the moment in terms of the OECD. We are on track to have the worst-performing current account deficit in the OECD by 2017. We are going to be borrowing $17 billion in deficit, which requires settling off the assets and borrowing more. We have got the second-largest current account deficit in the OECD. So if New Zealand was a household or a business, what we are doing at the moment is losing $10 billion a year. We are on track to hit a $208 billion net overseas debt by 2017.

The problem, of course, is that more motorways—especially the ones where half of them had negative benefit-cost ratios—are not going to help with these significant structural economic problems. What we should be doing is focusing on the tradable sector, focusing on innovation, and focusing on competition. You know, we should be focusing on reducing electricity prices through things like NZ Power. We should be looking at helping our businesses—supporting Kiwibank and the finance sector costs. We should be supporting the manufacturers, which are haemorrhaging jobs at the moment, yet what we know from the Government’s $12 billion spend on just seven roads is that its jobs estimate is that each job is going to cost between $500,000 and $1 million. Jobs are an important question, and roads and motorways are not the answer to that question.

We should invest in the right infrastructure, in things like a second internet cable, things like better public transport, and not these uneconomic motorways, which the Government has to borrow to build. The Government is borrowing billions to pick winners in the motorways. This is like Julius Vogel in the 1880s, borrowing millions of pounds offshore to build bullock tracks. It is looking to the 1960s. It is not what smart economies are doing at the moment. That is where the Greens are offering a positive alternative, a positive solution.

We want to give Kiwis choice—things like a central business district rail link for Auckland. Auckland is expected to grow by an extra million people—75 percent of the country’s growth will be in Auckland over the next 30 years—and what we know is that the central business district rail link is going to transform the public transport infrastructure in Auckland. It is going to unlock the potential of the central business district. It is going to massively help the development of the inner city, where we know most of the productivity gains are. This is going to unlock the city of Auckland. It is going to take 15 million kilometres of vehicle trips off the road by 2040, according to the Auckland Council. It is a great plan. It is a positive plan. This is where we should be investing—in smart infrastructure. So although we support the modest fuel excise levies increase contained in this bill, what we do not support is what the money is going to be spent on. We have got a smarter vision for this country, and I believe that New Zealanders stand behind us in it. Kia ora.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I commend this bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 73

New Zealand National 59; Green Party 11; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.

Noes 39

New Zealand Labour 31; New Zealand First 7; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a second time.

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to Customs and Excise Act 1996

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): It is a pleasure to rise in the debate on Part 1 of this bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. I just want to note before we get into the detail of Part 1 of this bill that in the explanatory note of the bill there is the suggestion that the increases in petrol tax being proposed here “are to provide additional funding to the national land transport fund”—

Hon Tau Henare: They’ve all been told to stand up.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Mr Henare can stand up any time he likes. Mr Henare can stand up any time he likes and give a speech in this Chamber to justify this increase in petrol tax, because we have not heard that.

Hon Tau Henare: OK, sit down and I’ll take a call.

GRANT ROBERTSON: No, I am not sitting down. I am not sitting down until Mr Henare tells me that it will be a substantive call—that he will use his full 5 minutes and he will justify to this Committee—

Hon Tau Henare: Right, you’re on. You’re on—sit down.

GRANT ROBERTSON: —why National is putting petrol tax up by 3c a litre this year, 3c a litre next year—

Hon Tau Henare: Yep.

GRANT ROBERTSON: —when I have finished, when I have finished—3c a year in the third year. Then we can hear—Mr Henare has got plenty to say now, but when I sit down he will not be seeking the call, because those National Government members do not want to stand up in this Chamber and justify to New Zealanders, whose budgets are already squeezed, why they will be paying more in petrol tax this year, next year, and the year after. We have already heard today that petrol tax will be 59c a litre. To the taxpayer, it will be 59c a litre after this budgetary increase, up from 42c a litre when National came into office. So Mr Henare and all of the rest of his National colleagues could get up and justify to this Committee why they are doing this.

But to return to the point that I was making, the explanatory note says that “The increases are to provide additional funding to the national land transport fund”. My concern is that that really is not the reason. Yes, the money will—in the sense of the way that National likes to describe these things—be going to the roads of national significance under the National Land Transport Fund, but the reason that Part 1 of this bill is here is, in fact, not that. The reason is in order for National to put over a hoax on the public that there is in fact a surplus—that there is in fact a surplus. Jonathan Coleman raises his eyebrow, but that is the truth. That is the truth.

If we go through the Budget and we look at the situation heading towards 2014-15, when the National Government says it thinks it will be in surplus, it does this by a series of fixes and fiddles of which this bill, including Part 1, is part. Those other fixes and fiddles include overcharging New Zealanders on their ACC levies—a magic $400 million worth of tax credit offsets that happen only in the year in which the Government says it will get into surplus. They also include an additional $1.1 billion in corporate tax that comes in only in the year in which the Government says it is going to get into surplus—

Hon Trevor Mallard: How much extra?

GRANT ROBERTSON: $1.1 billion.

Hon Trevor Mallard: For $75 million?

GRANT ROBERTSON: Yeah, that is right.

Hon Trevor Mallard: A bit margin of error, really, isn’t it?

GRANT ROBERTSON: It is, and this is the problem. It is giving itself a buffer, Mr Mallard, to make sure—for all the other things that will go wrong for this Government—that it will get there. But the truth is that this Part 1, and the explanatory note of this bill, is, I think, actually misleading. It is misleading to the people of New Zealand, because the real reason for this is to try to make the political promise that National made of getting into surplus somehow real. It is a marginal surplus. It is wafer-thin. It could be wiped out with one Hekia Parata stuff-up and then it will be gone, like the class size—

Iain Lees-Galloway: It’s probably Simon Bridges now.

GRANT ROBERTSON: —or Simon Bridges. In fact, the cost of coming back every month to amend the Crown Minerals Act will probably wipe that out in itself. So I think that is misleading.

What Part 1 does, as we have noted before, is increase petrol tax—or motor spirits tax, as it is written in the bill—on 1 July 2013, 1 July 2014, and 1 July 2015. It is 3c a litre. That equates to around a 5 percent or nearly 6 percent increase each year in that rate. The National Party has gone to the public at the last two elections saying: “We are not about increasing taxes. We are not about increasing taxes. That terrible Labour Government—that is what it did.”, except that the record of the National Government is that there is one group in society who get their taxes decreased. They are the well-off. We know that from the 2010 tax package, where 40 percent of the benefit of those tax cuts went to the top 10 percent. So National fulfilled its promise for the top 10 percent, but what the other 90 percent have seen are tax increases just like the ones contained in Part 1, and, in addition, they have seen GST going up. That GST increase, we know, detrimentally affects people in the lower and middle-income brackets, because—[Bell rung]

Hon Member: Thank you, Mr Chair—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Grant Robertson. Oh, sorry—I call Grant Robertson.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Thank you, Mr Chair—a bit slow. That detrimentally affects the 90 percent of people who do not fall in the National Party’s target market. We have also seen massive increases in ACC levies, and we know that this is a classic Nick Smith trick. You bump up the levies. You push the levies up more and more and more, you create the crisis, and then you get the great credit in a few years’ time when the ACC levies come down. There has been a 67 percent increase in those ACC levies in the time of this Government.

So this is a Government that has promised New Zealanders that their taxes would not go up, but, in actual fact, what it has done is transferred the burden of debt away from itself as a Government on to households. It is a transfer of the debt and the problems that New Zealand has on to households so the Government can make its books look good. In the Budget, of which this bill is a core part, it sits alongside a transfer of wealth, as well. What we have seen if we look, for instance, just at the asset sales programme, is a transfer of wealth where half of our energy companies, which were 100 percent owned by New Zealanders, go to a 2.5 percent ownership. That is a massive transfer of wealth away from New Zealanders, who are also at the same time having a burden of debt transferred on to them.

Part 1 of this bill sits in the middle of the National Government’s budgetary strategy. That is why the Labour Party is opposing this. Not only will this bill, and this part, put enormous pressure on middle and low-income families, who are trying to fill up their cars each week, trying to make sure that they can get through the gridlock in Auckland transport that the Government has created—so it puts pressure on them—but, more than that, we are opposing this bill because it is part of the Government’s strategy in this Budget to pretend that it can get into surplus. That, as I said, is a hoax on New Zealanders, because that surplus is created by burdening New Zealanders for a short-term political goal for National.

The total impact on the National Land Transport Fund would actually put it $17 billion into surplus. Mr Brownlee might like to tell me whether that is true. It goes well beyond what is absolutely needed in order to keep the National Land Transport Fund operating. That is because its purpose is actually much wider than the one that Mr Brownlee has looked at.

I think my colleague Phil Twyford made an extremely good point in the second reading about where this money is allegedly going. As I say, I believe the purpose is actually a political one, but the stated purpose is for the National Land Transport Fund. The National Land Transport Fund is focused on the roads of national significance. The important thing to note about the roads of national significance is that National has chosen these for its political purpose. I recommend to everybody who has not seen it to have a good look at the documentary The Hollow Men—it is available on DVD—and they will be able to see in that documentary how National planned it out to make political decisions about roading—political decisions about roading—which have now turned into this programme of roads of national significance. So it is not just a political matter of getting into surplus; it is a political matter of where the funding for roading goes.

Phil Twyford made the point: if these decisions were being made on what is in the best interests of all New Zealanders, why would you be funding a road with 9,000 cars a day on it and not funding a road with 36,000 cars a day on it? Why would you not fund an inner-city rail link, which would actually reduce congestion, and which would actually have a much higher level of benefit to New Zealand, and instead decide to fund unnecessary highways in other parts of that area? It is because it is purely political. It is because this is a political statement by the National Party, not a statement in terms of building a sustainable transport policy that has got investment across different modes.

I reiterate what Phil Twyford has said: the Labour Party is not opposed to investment in roading projects where that makes sense. It is important that we have a good roading network right across New Zealand, not just in the electorates that the National Government picks off, but it is equally important that we invest in other types of transport, as well. The taxation that is being generated in this bill will go into the National Land Transport Fund to fund politically motivated projects by the National Government, not projects that are in the best interests of developing a sustainable transport network across New Zealand. That is a significant reason to oppose the bill.

Whatever some parties in the Chamber might feel in principle about the fact that petrol tax should rise, they need to look at this bill in the context of a National Budget that is not about sustainable transport solutions. If you are increasing petrol tax in order to create a more sustainable transport network, all well and good. That is not what this Government is doing. This Government is putting a hoax on New Zealanders.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Transport): I am taking a call because I think the proposals that are being put by the Labour Party, not so much by the Green Party, and by the New Zealand First Party through the first two readings and now through the start of the Committee stage are completely wrong—

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The rules around the Committee stage of debate are very clear and they are that it is a debate on that particular part of the bill. There have been no proposals put by New Zealand First or by the Green Party in the Committee stage, because they have not even had a call yet.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am listening very carefully and if there is any rebuttal the Minister can bring up those points. I am listening very carefully. He has just moved into the first few seconds of his speech, and we will see what develops from there.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Are you ruling that a Minister in the chair can rebut the second reading and first reading debate during the Committee stage?

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No. I am saying here that the Minister is making some initial comments, and that is where we are taking it from.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: It is fascinating that the Labour Party thinks you can have a debate without a proposition. Grant Robertson is completely wrong in asserting that this move is all about the Budget and how it looks in years ahead. I want to take members back to the regulatory impact statement that they have all been provided with and I want them to look at their own history.

From 1 January 2002 there were rate increases from Labour on both the petrol excise levy and the road-user charges. Labour had this sort of lumpy approach where it would simply put the rates up when it thought it could get away with it. So it would have a 2.8 percent increase, followed by no increase for 2 years, then whack the public about with a 13.8 percent increase. That was on top of the 2 years before, where it was 8.4 percent. Then it sneaked around and let the fund run down to the bottom, so that you could not do anything with it, with 1.7 percent and 1.5 percent increases.

What we have tried to do is to get over this sort of lumpiness. Labour went from 1.5 percent to 7.1 percent, then to 6.6 percent, and then to nothing. What we have tried to do is say to New Zealanders right up front that the cost of the roading network is one that is borne by the people who are actually using the roads—actually using the roads.

Hon Trevor Mallard: 6.6 was National. That was National, not Labour. Come on, read it.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Now he wants to deny that the 2008 Budget had anything to do with Labour. That is not the case, Mr Mallard. No wonder they are in trouble. They cannot even read the Crown accounts.

I think that this mock outrage from Labour is exactly what it is—mock outrage. The idea that they are going to somehow sail into Government and then not put on road-user charges, not put on excise tax, is utter rubbish. What we have honestly said to New Zealanders is that here is a programme, we are getting it done, and these are the costs that are involved in it—right up front, not this sneaky year-by-year thing, getting away with what you think you can. It is a whole programme that runs out for 3 years.

This idea too that it is all going into these roads of national significance—great that they are—is wrong. There is a lot of money going into public transport, a lot of money going into local roads—all of those things are happening. [Interruption] It does not suit Phil Twyford’s rhetoric when he is talking to people in Auckland. He has actually bought into the idea that there is somehow a massive business case acceptable for the Auckland rail loop right now. What we have said to Aucklanders is that we want to consider the transport plan for Auckland, and we want to work with them about the timings for the transport plan in Auckland. The member knows that because Len Brown has told him. Len Brown has told him that.

We need to say, we need to make it very clear, that Auckland is the most important city in New Zealand. There is no doubt about that; it is an important place. But it is not the only city, and we do need to spend in other parts.

Phil Twyford: John Campbell got your number! He nailed you!

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The member can sit there saying that his good friend John Campbell, that well-known acolyte of the Labour Party, has somehow got me into a tricky position. I am not aware of that. I find him an absolutely fair man, to be honest—absolutely fair. The fact that he mixes with people like Phil Twyford is something that worries me, but I am not going to make too many more comments about that as I want to come back to this Part 1.

What Part 1 does is effectively say to New Zealanders that the roads they run on are becoming more efficient, the vehicles they run are becoming more efficient, we do need to fund these roads, and here is a proposal for doing it. The cost of this will raise the price for motorists by about $45 a year in the first year. You have got up there in Auckland the Victoria Park Tunnel, you have got the Newmarket Viaduct, you have got the Waterview Connection coming soon, which people are very, very keen on, plus the other roading networks to be done up there.

I am told by many people who use the new roads in Auckland that they are saving up to 20 minutes a day on their land transport journey. That is 20 minutes. If you price that out, looking at what those savings mean, they are extraordinarily large. Those savings are in excess of $250 a year for some of those people. When it comes to issues like the Christchurch Southern Motorway, people tell me it is saving at least 10 minutes a day on their trip. That is having a very big financial impact on that city. You say to yourself: “Well, what do we do if we take the horse-and-cart approach? What if we say we are going to put out just rail networks for ever?” We are already putting $1 billion into KiwiRail. Thank you for the glass of water, Mr Mallard, it is very kind of you. I do appreciate it. You may have found your station in life. You may have found your station in life. In fact, with that jacket on, you look a bit like a messenger.

We are putting all of this money into the recapitalisation of rail because we know it is important. We are investigating Clifford Bay, because we know it is important. We are funding, with Auckland Transport, all those new trains that are going in the urban network there. Yes, there is a place for rail, but there will always be a point where it is at its most optimum, and there is not a business case that says it is a good idea for this current Budget cycle. But I want to tell you, we are looking at all of those options with Auckland and there is plenty of time for things to be considered before we reach those peak, difficult points. One thing I would ask is—

Phil Twyford: Take 20 years, Gerry. Take 20 years.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well, why would it take 20 years? Why is the Labour Party putting up a 20-year plan for Auckland and pretending that that is going to solve their problems overnight? It is not. It is a big, big issue, and everyone knows that Auckland is going to get bigger. It is going to grow by 600 more people a week over the next decade or two and we are going to have to have the roads that those people expect to run on. You can rail against that with your rail proposals as much as you like. The fact is that we are not seeing the trends that we need.

The reality is that in 1944, when petrol rationing was at its peak, during the Second World War, New Zealand in real terms had its highest patronage of public transport, and it has been falling off ever since. The tunnel loop is actually predicated on that number being reached again and then expanded several times over. So it is not a simple matter of just saying: “Let’s magic up $3 billion and build this tunnel, and the problems are over.”—far from it. Frankly, politicians on the left have got to stop trying to tell people that that is the case, because it is not a deliverable.

Part 1 is a very, very clear attempt—in fact, it is a very, very clear message to New Zealanders that the Government wants to be up front about these charges. We are not hiding them. We are saying, as has always been the case, that the users of the roads pay for the roads. We actually told New Zealanders in December 2012 that we were going to do this.

Phil Twyford: During the Christmas lull.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: And where was Phil Twyford? He had already gone on holiday.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I am going to do something relatively unusual. I am sure my colleagues will come back and rebut the comments made by the Hon Gerry Brownlee. I want to thank you, Mr Chairman, for letting him run on and, effectively, do the second reading rebuttal as part of the Committee stage, because the debate is now so broad that all our members will want to have a go at least twice, and possibly up to four times, as they are allowed to do. I would like, though, to do something slightly unusual, and that is to focus on the detail of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill and in particular the detail of the Customs and Excise Act, which it is proposed to amend.

I will start, as the Minister briefly referred to the regulatory impact statement, by informing him that the 6.6 percentage increase in petrol excise duty to which he referred was on 1 October 2010. In case the member does not remember, that was when he was the Minister of Transport and in charge of the area. To blame the Labour Government and say it was a Labour Government increase is just clearly wrong, but it shows the grip on detail that occurs when you put either Steven Joyce or Gerry Brownlee in charge of these areas.

It is interesting to note that the proposed increases are at about double the rate of inflation. So what we are doing over the period of this Government is a transfer of the effect of taxation from those on high incomes to those who are on low incomes. There is no doubt that this is a regressive tax, something that is pushed on to people, especially poorer people in rural areas, people in cities who do not have public transport alternatives, and people who are forced to use their cars. I think in particular of my constituency of Wainuiōmata. Although in some places and at some times the public transport is relatively good, in other parts and at certain times at the weekend and in the evenings, people are forced to use their cars because public transport is not properly available. What this bill does is push it back on to them.

The question I want to get to, though—and I apologise that I was unable to be in the House for the Minister’s speech on the first or second readings—and what I am slightly surprised about when I look carefully at this bill, is an indication of whether it is necessary. My reading of section 79A of the Customs and Excise Act as it was amended in the latest set of amendments, is that there is already a regulation-making power sitting there for the Minister to increase excise rates in this particular way. I am left with a dilemma here as to the reasoning on the part of the National Government for taking this approach. One reason could be—and it is fair to say that this is slightly cynical—that it is doing this now, rather than passing a regulation later on at the appropriate point in time, in order to make its Budget figures look good. We do not need to be here. According to the calendar on the wall, today is, theoretically, Thursday, but actually it is Saturday afternoon. We are debating legislation, but the Government already has the power to do these sorts of changes under regulation. The Government does not need this legislation to do it, but methinks one of the reasons the Government is doing it is in order to gerrymander its Budget figures. It is to get into the Budget, to do it as part of the Budget legislation, and to create an illusionary surplus through this method rather than using the regulation-making powers that already sit within the Act. I am going to be even slightly more cynical still and ask the question—

Chris Hipkins: For one so young.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well, I like the compliment from my teenage friend Mr Hipkins, but at this mid-point of my career I accept that I am not that young.

The point that I would now like to make in a slightly more cynical way—although nothing would surprise me about Steven Joyce and his cynical approach—is that by passing this bill in this way, the Government leaves open the option of also regulating for more. The question I am asking is whether we are having this change now so that the National Government at some stage later on can again hit motorists up for yet another increase. I would not have said that even about Bill Birch, because Bill tended to be pretty transparent. Muldoon would just tell you if he was going to do something like this; there would no surprises from Sir Robert. But I am not sure, with Mr Joyce in charge of this part of the finances, whether in fact what he is doing in using the powers that are available under 79A(1), the power to alter “rates of excise duty and excise-equivalent duty on motor spirits … by Order in Council,”—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Annually.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Annually—that is right. So what the Government can do is implement this 3c increase in July, and it can do an annual change in January as well. So, in fact, instead of having one set of 3c increases a year, it could have two.

I know that there are some people, who may well be future colleagues, who think that that is a good thing, and some people will want to keep increasing the rate of excise in that way. What I want to say to my Green colleagues is thank you for your transparency. Thank you for your honesty, much unlike Gerry Brownlee, who appears to be taking this approach for two reasons: firstly, to gerrymander the Budget figures, but, secondly, under sections which are—it says B48S; it does not say “BS48”. It is B48S. This amendment to the 1996 Act has the power that appears to be reserved and preserved—preserved and reserved by this amendment—to have increases in excise tax on an annual basis other than that which we are addressing now. Maybe the Government is going for two hits a year. If it is, I would be interested to hear from the Minister, who says he has not yet decided the level of the next increase. He is shaking his head. Has he decided the level of the next increase? He shakes his head. Well, that is fair enough if the—

Hon Ruth Dyson: When is it going to be?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well, I tell you what, I think it has got only one more chance at it—1 January 2014 will be its last chance. It will probably do it on a holiday. It will be the last Order in Council of the year, the one that has the Christmas cake with the Governor-General. It will be Christmas cake for the Governor-General and Mr Brownlee, and at the same time the Governor-General will be signing off yet another increase in excise taxes, excise duties, Budget measures—no, it will not be Budget measures, because that is a different set of amendments.

The other area, which I think I will get on to in my next call, relates to the main method, which is in clause 5. Clause 5 is very important. It really is the operative clause. To be absolutely fair, I am sure that it was Mr Joyce, not Mr Brownlee, who said this made it clearer. We know what Mr Joyce is up to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I call Julie Anne Genter.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Sorry, I was just making sure you had a Minister in the chair.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I do. Thank you.

JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I rise to speak on Part 1 of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. What clause 4 of Part 1 of this bill does is it says that petrol tax will be going up 3c a litre every year for the next 3 years, starting this year. Essentially, what I would like to focus on in this part of the bill are the reasons why the Government has to put up the petrol tax.

It is very clear from the regulatory impact statement that the Government has to put up the petrol tax because people are driving less. They have not been driving as much for over 5 years now, and that is due to a number of factors. It is due to oil prices being much higher. It is due to the fact that we have not seen the anticipated level of economic growth. It is due to the demographic factors, like younger generations who are waiting longer to get their driver’s licence and who are less interested in owning a car. They are much more interested in owning a smartphone, connecting with people in other ways, living in vibrant towns and cities and urban areas where they can walk and cycle and take public transport, and not being forced into spending thousands of dollars a year on owning a car, maintaining it, and taking it in for a WOF. They would like smarter transport options.

What has been happening over the past few years, we know from data from the Ministry of Transport, is that public transport boardings are up. So I would like to explain to the Minister of Transport, based on his comments earlier, how it is that an economic instrument works. What the Minister said during his speech was that back when petrol was very expensive, lots of people took public transport. So would we not expect that, given that petrol has become much more expensive—the price of it has doubled in the last decade, and the International Monetary Fund has said that we can quite realistically expect it to double again in the next 10 years—even more New Zealanders are going to want to take public transport, and are going to want to walk and cycle and leave the car at home if they can? Would we not want to put most of the transport budget into infrastructure that gives New Zealanders the choice—that gives them the ability to avoid paying huge amounts of money on petrol? Would we not want to give them those choices?

That is not what the Government is doing. What it is doing is putting up the petrol tax and then saying it is going to put the vast majority of this money that it raises—the revenue that it raises through the petrol tax—into a few motorways that carry a relatively small percentage of vehicle trips, about 4 percent of daily vehicle trips collectively on all the roads of national significance that remain to be built. We are putting all that money into a few, very expensive solutions that do not actually solve a problem, because vehicle trips are down. There are smarter ways to deal with congestion, and part of the way that we deal with congestion and safety is actually investing in alternatives so that New Zealanders can take public transport—and walk, and cycle—which is a safer way of getting around. It reduces road accidents, it reduces the cost of road maintenance, and it reduces the need to expand road capacity because it moves more people at peak time for a lower cost. Would that not be a rational economic approach to the future of our transport investment for New Zealand?

There are lots of good things about putting up petrol tax. You see, the great thing about an economic instrument is that it encourages efficiency. So we could expect, if New Zealanders get enough advanced warning that petrol is going to be more expensive in the future, and that petrol tax is going to be higher, that, therefore, when they look at buying a new car, they will consider that, and they might buy more fuel-efficient cars. But the other behaviour that we can expect them to respond with is to drive even less. So why would we be spending the vast majority of the money on a few new motorways when we know that putting up the price of the petrol tax, and the oil price increasing anyway, is going to lead to fewer people using the road and more people wanting to use public transport?

The Minister claims that his Government is spending money on new infrastructure for public transport, but, if you look at the Government policy statement for that budget, it is very, very clear. All of the money—85 percent of the money on new infrastructure—is going on a few new motorways. There is a tiny percentage going on local roads. Local roads, by the way, carry more than 50 percent of all the vehicle trips. It concerns me that the Minister of Transport does not know how money is raised to spend on the transport network—that 50 percent of all the funding that goes to local roads, to walking and cycling, and to public transport is paid for by ratepayers. So we have got over 50 percent of the traffic going on local roads, which are half paid for by ratepayers. There are ratepayers who might decide, if they were not going to pay directly, that they would rather walk and cycle and take public transport. But they do not have that option because central government is controlling the way all of the money is spent. It is saying to local councils: “We don’t want you to spend money on walking and cycling, even though it’s cost-effective. We don’t want you to spend money on local roads because we don’t want you to raise rates, but we’re going to put all this money into a few new roads.”, which do not go, by the way, from the farm gate to the port. It is a very, very bad analogy to say that somehow because you are spending all of the money on a few new motorways that that is going to help freight. Actually, a lot of our exporters are moving their freight by rail already, and they could do so even more. A lot of freight is on local roads, and, yet, the money available to local roads has been reduced because all of the money is being put into three, very expensive, duplications of existing motorways that are going to have a very limited marginal return.

What we see is the Government putting up the petrol tax and then not providing New Zealanders with options. Normally, when you are going to approach a tax like an economic instrument, you would say: “OK, well, we want to encourage efficiency in our oil use. We want to future-proof our economy and our transport system against higher oil prices, so we’re going to slowly but steadily increase the petrol tax, and we’re going to put all of that money, or most of it, into alternatives so that people have the option to leave their car at home.” That is going to cost New Zealand Inc a whole lot less money. Although I often hear that roads are paid for by users and, therefore, it is OK to be spending most of the petrol tax on a few motorways, they are not the projects that are going to benefit most road users. They are not the projects that are going to benefit New Zealand’s economy. We know this from the economic studies that have been done on them, which were completed nearly a year after the projects were announced. All of the roads of national significance have never been subjected to Treasury’s Better Business Cases for Capital Proposals guidelines. Why is that? Because if they were, it would become very obvious that you could achieve 90 percent of the benefits at a tiny fraction of the cost of building a flash, new motorway rather than by just upgrading the existing road and getting some of the commuters off the roads.

What National is doing is akin to putting up the tobacco excise tax and then spending all of that money on advertising for cigarettes and cigarette stores. What it is doing is, instead of giving people the option to avoid taking the car and to reduce their oil use, it is putting up the petrol tax and spending all of the money on projects that increase New Zealand’s oil dependence. It is not a smart approach, particularly given our current account deficit problem. Last year New Zealand spent $8 billion importing oil to put in our cars and trucks. New Zealand households and businesses spent over $3 billion on vehicles. We are still importing the same quantity of oil we were importing 10 years ago, but we are paying twice as much for it. Our current account deficit, which is somewhere around $10 billion, is actually quite close to the amount—it is slightly less than the amount—that we are spending importing vehicles and oil, which is about $11 billion last year. That amount could increase rapidly if we see another oil price spike. The National Government is really missing an opportunity to reduce the oil dependence of our transport sector, by investing in smart alternatives that would have longer-lasting benefits.

The Minister put out a press release yesterday, I think it was, saying that some of the new investment in roads is resulting in travel time savings. Well, that is a very short-term approach to it. I mean, yes, of course, as soon you initially build the road, it seems like people are able to get there faster. What happens after 3 or 4 years? As the Minister said, if you build it, they will come. So more people are going to move further away and put more pressure on those roads. Their travel time savings are not there 3 or 4 years after the project is built, and it remains to be seen whether or not that traffic would have even happened, if you had not built the road. Of course, if you make it cheaper and easier to drive, more people will drive. That does not mean it is an economically efficient outcome for the economy as a whole. Interestingly, there are centrist Governments across the world, even right-wing Governments, which see the economic opportunity of smart transport, and that is what they are investing in. There are cities all over the United States that are investing in walking and cycling because it is good for business and it is good for the economy.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): You would think, from listening to the last contribution from Gerry Brownlee, that this is a bill that is all about fiscal rectitude, that is sensible, and that is making just the right amount of money necessary to continue the Government’s sensible programme of road building. Well, nothing—nothing—could be further from the truth, because this is not only an illegitimate tax grab, as we have already said, but it is only one of a suite of greedy, voracious, money-grubbing efforts that this Government and this Minister are making to fund the Government’s out-of-control and bloated motorway building programme.

We are talking today about a tax that is going to raise the petrol excise, as it says in Part 1, by 3c every year for the next 3 years. If members have got the regulatory impact statement in front of them, they will see on page 4 quite an interesting outline of alternative funding options that officials recommended the Minister and Cabinet consider. It sets out a number of possible ways that the New Zealand Transport Agency could get the funding it needs to continue this out-of-control motorway funding programme that we have been talking about. It includes tolling and it includes long-term borrowing. Of course, we know it includes public-private partnerships, which is how the Government is going to do the Transmission Gully project, at the cost of an extra $2.3 billion to the taxpayer. That is $2.3 billion on top of the project cost, just so that Gerry Brownlee can try to get Transmission Gully up and running before the Government changes.

The Government not only chose the option of this tax grab through the petrol excise but chose half a dozen other options, as well, to throw more and more taxpayer cash at this motorway building programme. Gerry Brownlee walks into a pie shop and he sees a smoked fish pie, a kumara pie, a meat pie, and a cheese pie. He does not choose just the smoked fish pie because he likes that one the best; he chooses all the pies in the shop. Every single option has been chosen by this Government to throw more and more taxpayer cash at this out-of-control motorway building programme.

We have seen public-private partnerships. The Minister asked the officials to go away and come back with a project that could experiment with the public-private partnership model. The Government decided to go ahead with it at the cost of an additional $2.3 billion. What an extraordinary waste. The Land Transport Management Amendment Bill is going to clear the way for more public-private partnerships and more tolling, and the Government is giving itself the power, which it has never had before, to do long-term borrowing for these kinds of motorway transport projects.

We are talking about the petrol excise tax and the fact that the Government has chosen one particular way, in this bill, to refill the coffers that have been so depleted by this motorway building programme, but it is not the only way. We need to be aware that the Government is getting extra money from all over the place in order to front-load the motorway building programme, to get as many of these gold-plated projects up and running, like the Pūhoi to Wellsford “Holiday Highway” and the Kapiti Expressway. It is desperate to get all these projects up and running, to rev up the bulldozers, and sign the contracts before a Labour-Green Government comes to office at the end of 2014.

We are not against all these funding options. We are not against the idea of, for instance, long-term borrowing. It makes sense to borrow long term to fund major infrastructure projects that will benefit future generations. But we are utterly opposed to a measure like this bill, which is pouring taxpayer cash into a transport programme that is unbalanced and unwise. It is going to saddle future generations with more and more debt, simply in order to fund the building of white elephant motorway projects that were hand-picked by this Government, as colleagues have previously said, as part of a political strategy to get National elected in 2008. These projects have never been subjected to Treasury’s Better Business Cases for Capital Proposals guidelines. Under this Minister and his predecessor, the transport sector has been some kind of financial Bermuda Triangle. Vast wheelbarrow-loads of cash have been poured into it, with not the slightest bit of the financial accountability that we would expect from every other part of the public sector.

RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I am pleased to rise to take a call in the Committee stage of this Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, which, as my most erstwhile colleague from the Greens, Julie Anne Genter, referred to, is the bill that will raise petrol taxes. I am ecstatic, actually, to be here on a Saturday. I am over the moon—overjoyed at having to be here on a Saturday because this Government has no other way of ramming through all the unnecessary and unwarranted legislation that it needs to in order to enact this latest diabolically awful Budget. This Government is so disorganised, and it is such a poor manager of the business of the House, just as it is of the economy in general, that we are here on a Saturday. We were here until midnight last night, and we are here today under urgency, cleaning up the National Government’s mess. And for what? So that the Government can put petrol up again, so it can bleed the motorists yet again. The poor downtrodden, long-suffering motorist is to be the Government’s economic whipping boy yet again. The Government has stuffed up its sums, and yet again it is coming to bleed the motorist to make up for its failings.

What are we going to get for it? What is the south going to get? What are the provinces going to get? Will we get roads? Will we get new roads? Will we get better roads? Will the parts of the country that actually generate the wealth get to see any of it? Will we see new roads, better roads, between our farms and our freezing works, and between our freezing works and our ports? Or will we be sidelined yet again while the National Government builds roads so that its mates in Auckland can get to their baches more easily on the long weekends?

I ask where the Government’s priorities are. Where is the new spending for rural New Zealand? Will we have the South Island loop road completed, finally? How many in the Government actually know about the South Island loop road and the plans for it? Will we see a dual carriageway between Christchurch and Dunedin? Will we see an end to one-lane bridges on the West Coast? Or do we not matter? Does the south not matter to this Government ? Do the provinces, the regions—do we not matter? The provinces generate the wealth, and we would like to see some return from it. The provinces, the regions, and the scenery in the regions are what attract tourists to this country. We bring tourists to this country in their millions, and we make them drive on Third World goat tracks with one-lane bridges.

The truth is that this tax is an excuse to cover up the loss of revenue that this Government is going to experience from selling off State assets, because this is the flip side to the mixed-ownership model. We talk about 49 percent ownership and 51 percent ownership—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

RICHARD PROSSER: —thank you, Mr Chairperson—but what we do not talk about is the revenue that the Government is going to lose by flicking off half of these wealth-generating assets. This tax is an excuse, just an excuse, to cover up that loss. It is a bad tax, part of a bad Budget from a bad Government. Thank you.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Part 1 of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill raises taxes on lower and middle income New Zealanders. It is a direct contradiction of what the National Party said it was going to do before it came into Government. John Key went up and down the country telling anybody who would listen that he would bring taxes down. He would bring taxes down for everybody. He even promised that he was not going to put GST up. That is what John Key said. He promised that he was not going to put GST up and that taxes were going to come down. Well, GST went up. It is one of the most regressive taxes that we have. It was put up.

Then a whole range of other costs were put up, such as ACC. We know that early childhood education costs have gone up. The cost of prescriptions has gone up. The cost of going to the general practitioner has gone up. And, of course, over time, the fuel tax has gone up, and once again here we have the fuel tax going up. As Trevor Mallard pointed out in his Committee stage contribution, we are not absolutely certain that this increase was required under legislation. In fact, the principal Act, which is amended by Part 1 of this bill, allows for regulations to be made by Order in Council to increase the excise tax on fuels.

So why are we here, on a Saturday afternoon, debating this bill? Well, the only logical answer can possibly be that the Government desperately needed these fuel taxes to be considered as part of the Budget, to get the Government to that wafer-thin $75 million Budget surplus that we know is 0.1 percent of the total revenue. That is well within any margin of error. At any point in time that surplus could be lost by any one of the errors that could be caused by any one of the Ministers over there. Simon Bridges—

Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s smaller than 0.1 percent—much, much smaller.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: It is much smaller than 0.1 percent. Well, maybe that will be a debating point—that we can figure out exactly how small the margin of error is for this. But that is why the Government is increasing taxes on fuel and increasing them by legislation here in Part 1 of this bill.

The Government had other options. It could have done it by regulation, but it needed this increase to be part of this year’s Budget so that the Government could account for it as part of its surplus, which we know it will barely meet and only by searching around for every single possible little cent, by increasing costs. The poor old paper boys got it last year. The Government was looking at the car-parks, and it was looking at a fringe benefit tax on laptops and iPads. The Government has looked for every possible way to shake middle-income New Zealanders down for every penny they have got, because of its unaffordable tax cuts. That is why the Government cannot get to surplus. One of the first things the Government did when it came in was to cut taxes like it promised it was going to, but who did it cut taxes for? The Government cut taxes for its mates, the people at the top. That is who the Government cut taxes for, and then it loads all these extra charges on to people, like the increase in the fuel excise tax, which is included in Part 1 of this bill. That is what this is all about. It is about making up for those unaffordable tax cuts.

Even if the Minister is right and this is genuinely about putting more money into the National Land Transport Fund, the reason for that is this Government’s profligacy when it comes to the roads of significance to National—the roads of political significance. They do nothing for growth. It is not about growth. It is not about a growth agenda, because a growth agenda would be about an integrated transport network. This is about roads of political significance to the National Party. As we saw from The Hollow Men, we know that National’s internal emails have been about making sure that all the money that it raises from fuel excise taxes and road-user charges goes into super-highways. National has talked about actually making that part of its policy. Of course, it has realised that it cannot quite go that far, so what we get is a bill like this that the Minister himself said, in his first reading speech—

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

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): Mr Chairman—

Hon Trevor Mallard: That’s an outrage. Toss him out. It’s disorderly.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: It is an outrage. However, for the public out there, the Committee stage is the part of the debate where we go through the bill clause by clause and we dig down into the detail. I just want to recognise the contributions that some of my colleagues have made, such as Trevor Mallard rightly pointing out that this bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, is not even necessary. The Government has a thing called a regulation-making power in the main Act. It does not need to pass this amendment. It can do this by a Cabinet decision, an Order in Council, in January. So why are we here? We are doing this simply and only because the Government wants to be able to claim a wafer-thin surplus in the Budget. This is a political tool, because this is one card of the house of cards that is propping up that wafer-thin line. Without this one, without the $600 million extra tax that the Government is magicking in that year, without the $1.1 billion corporate tax, the $400 million tax receipts, and without all of the other “Shon-key” funny money manipulations of the Budget documents, none of that would have got there if it had not put this petrol tax rise in as well.

I want to acknowledge my colleague Phil Twyford, who has quite rightly gone through the list of some of those roads of national significance and made the crystal clear point that they just do not stack up on the traditional benefit-cost ratio. The “Holiday Highway” has got a benefit-cost ratio that is about 1.0. That means they get a dollar back, at best, for every dollar they put in, and that is a complete waste of money. It would be so much better to cut that back to about $300 million, not $1.2 billion, and spend the $800 million difference on getting that city rail loop in Auckland so that Britomart was not a one-way street that you have to back the trains out of, after you have put them there. You could actually run them around in a circle and have a decent commuter system, which would make the whole Auckland rail network more efficient. The Government could do that in partnership with the Auckland Council if it could discover the meaning of that word.

What about the Kapiti Expressway? I see we have got my colleague Kris Faafoi from Mana here. He has led the charge on that issue. Not even the locals want it. The Government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars that it does not need to spend, because it could simply improve the existing arterial road. It is cheaper, and it is what the locals want—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Nearly as bad as Transmission Gully.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Mr Mallard said it is nearly as bad as Transmission Gully, and who would disagree? My colleagues are almost—almost—unanimous on this point.

Grant Robertson: Almost.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: So we will leave it to the deputy leader to sort out the Wellington colleagues on that matter.

I want to come back to the point that my excellent colleague Iain Lees-Galloway made about the unaffordable tax grab that this measure is part of. This is what they call trickle-up economics, right? The money is trickling up from every Kiwi family to the Government’s coffers. It is trickling up, not trickling down. The Government is taking from the many and giving to the few. As Mr Lees-Galloway has pointed out, the reason that the Government is in this predicament is that one of the first things it did when it came into office was to reward its rich mates by giving unaffordable tax cuts, as 40 percent of the money went to the top 10 percent of income earners—40 percent went to the top 10 percent. It was ridiculous. The Government enriched the rich and impoverished the poor, and, worse, it created a billion-dollar fiscal hole that these tax increases are having to make up for.

In my earlier contributions to the first and second readings, I went through in more detail the other cards that are required to prop up this bogus surplus in this Budget, and they are extensive. It is the cuts of new operating spending in 2014, it is the artificial tax flows, and it is the fact that the Government has not declared the cost of the research and development tax credits, and there is probably a couple of hundred million in that. Mr Chairperson, you are quite rightly drawing me back to the substance of this part of the bill, Part 1, but it is gobsmacking that we are here raising everybody’s petrol prices by 9c a litre in a bill that we do not need to be here for, because the Government—even if you agree with the idea—has already got the power to do it. So why are we here in a parallel universe? According to our calendar it is still Thursday, but for everybody else it is Saturday. Why are we here to pass a bill that does not need to be passed? The answer is that it is only to make the Budget look like it balances. It does not, anyway. But if anybody out there in New Zealand wanted proof positive that this Government’s whole Budget is a complete sham, this is it. We are here in the weekend, passing a bill that is not legally needed.

TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora, Mr Chairman. I rise to speak predominantly around new section 79AC in clause 4 of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. I will just pick up on a couple of points that have been made by other speakers, predominantly the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Transport.

The Hon Gerry Brownlee said that this measure was a case of being upfront—upfront—with the taxpayers of New Zealand. All I can say is that for the people of the Rodney Local Board there is nothing upfront about this at all. I would also just point out to Mr Twyford that there is no better way to annoy 54,000 voters than to continue to call what is actually an important route into their area a “Holiday Highway”. That road is not going to be paid for by this petrol tax. This petrol tax—3.45c, to be exact—is not a 3c increase in the first year, and then the next year and the next year. When you put GST on top of it, it is 3.45c, and that adds up to 10.35c at the end of 2015. All our communities can hope for is that the supermarkets keep owning something to do with the petrol stations because we will need to use our petrol vouchers that we get when we go to New World to be able to afford to get to New World the next time.

The interesting thing about the road of national significance, which is the extension of the Northern Gateway, is this, and as much as I admire Ms Genter—and I would like to ask the 52 percent of the voters in New Zealand to have a look at the first comment, the condescending, chauvinistic comment, that Mr Sabin made with regard to Ms Genter’s speech at the second reading—and with all due respect to Ms Genter’s qualifications and her abilities in this area, she does not seem to understand that the extension of the Northern Gateway is the only way that the people of the Rodney Local Board area will ever see public transport. It is the only way that there will be any electrified cars going into the Rodney Local Board area. The Wellsford Library has just had electric charge points put in there.

But for Mr Brownlee to suggest that this is upfront, when you are talking to the people of the Rodney Local Board area, is erroneous. This 3c rise for the next 3 years is actually just increasing—[Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member. These exchanges across the cross benches make it very difficult to be able to hear the speaker, so please cut them down.

TRACEY MARTIN: Kia ora, Mr Chair. So this 3c rise every year for the next 3 years is actually just the fourth way that the people of Rodney are going to have to pay for any road they get, to get them any public transport. It is the fourth way that the people of Rodney are going to be able to transport their young people out to tertiary institutions. It is the fourth way that the people of Rodney are going to be able to actually live and work in the same place. There seems to be some misunderstanding here. The Rodney Local Board area is in Auckland. So when parties continue to talk about investing in Auckland infrastructure, do not forget that Rodney was dragged into it. This is part of that infrastructure improvement. There are 20,000 more houses going to be placed inside the Warkworth rural-urban boundary in the next 30 years, and those people need to access employment, access tertiary education, and get themselves out of there. But this 3c will not go anywhere near it. These people already pay an extra $20 a week to get on to what is the Pūhoi to Ōrewa Northern Gateway.

Let us get real—let us get real—I say to the Minister in the chair. The largest argument about not having an on and off-ramp at Pūhoi was the fact that it broke the tolling. So there will be another toll on the Pūhoi to Warkworth motorway. My community will pay not only through their normal taxes, not only through the current taxes on petrol, not only through the toll that they currently pay—

David Bennett: Not your community; you’re one of those member-less MPs.

TRACEY MARTIN: —at an extra $20 a week to get to work, Mr Bennett, they will now pay an extra 10.35c by 2015. So this is my community. We will vote against—

David Bennett: No, it’s not.

TRACEY MARTIN: Yes, it is, Mr Bennett. And you have three members of Parliament—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order!

TRACEY MARTIN: I beg your pardon. There are three members of Parliament sitting in this House who represent these people, who are going to vote for them to have this fourth increase in respect of the way that they can get on to their State roads. Their roads are not sealed. Their sealing has been pulled from other areas, and there is no way that this 3c will do anything—there is no obligation here. The Government has made no commitment to actually increasing the sealing subsidy towards Auckland so that some of our rural roads can be sealed. Mr Sabin might like to go and talk to his Cabinet about that.

This 3c will do nothing. It will merely go into a general pool. It will do nothing.

ALFRED NGARO (National): I move, That the question be now put.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): No surprise there—no surprise there. One of the justifications that the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Transport, gave for this 3c per litre increase over the next 3 years is that he announced it early. He announced it a week before Christmas last year. Gerry Brownlee, acting as Santa Claus, gave the people of New Zealand a 9c increase on their petrol tax over the next 3 years.

Those people who are going to be paying around $45 more per year for their petrol are hard-working—

John Hayes: Wow!

KRIS FAAFOI: Wow—he does not think it is much. There he goes, John Hayes across the Chamber. The MP for Wairarapa does not think that is much. Well, he might not think it is much, but, Mr Hayes, when you add that on to—

Hon Trevor Mallard: They do in Dannevirke.

KRIS FAAFOI: They do in Dannevirke—they do. The people of Wairarapa do—Mr Hayes is not one of them; $45 is nothing to Mr Hayes. But if you add on the $40 more for prescription charges that each Kiwi has to pay, and if you add on the increase in GST that the Government brought in, Mr Hayes, it is a lot of money. So here you go—John Hayes is probably the most out of touch member of Parliament in this House. He thinks that putting up the petrol taxes by $45 a year is just a little bit of cash. It might be a little bit of cash to him, but to a lot of Kiwis out there, who have been watching this Budget very closely, it is a lot of money. I am quite happy for Mr John Hayes to put on the record here in this Parliament that $45 more a year to pay for their petrol is not a lot of money. Mr Hayes, you are so, so out of touch.

Getting back to the clause in Part 1 of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): That would be a good idea.

KRIS FAAFOI: —that I was referring to, I want to look directly at new section 79AC(3), which does set out the yearly 3c increase per litre in petrol excise over the next 3 years. As a number of speakers have said, this is all part of an illusion that the Government is trying to create that its books are well in order, but the reality is completely the opposite. I think one of the Kiwi traits—a good Kiwi trait—is that when you are trying to spend money or buy something, you make sure that you have got the money to pay for it. One of the promises that this Government made around the roads of national significance is that it could afford to pay for it. But by bringing in this petrol tax, 3c more per litre for each year over 3 years, as it says in Part 1, it is clear to see that this Government did not have a plan to pay for it—it did not have a plan to pay for it at all. So it has been forced to come to this House and bring in a petrol tax of 3c more per litre, as it says in Part 1, to help pay for it. But, again, as many other speakers have said, this is all part of the illusion.

I just want to put that in the context of the Kapiti Expressway because the Government thinks that the roads of national significance are a good investment for Kiwis. If $45 for each Kiwi motorist is not a lot for Mr Hayes, let us see just what kind of return on investment Kiwis are going to get. In terms of the Kapiti Expressway, a leaked report by the Beca Group showed that the half a billion dollars spent on the Kapiti Expressway was going to have a benefit-cost ratio of 0.2—0.2. So for every $1 spent, the economic benefit to New Zealand is 20c—20c. That is not a lot of money to Mr Hayes. That is a drop in the bucket to Mr Hayes. But that shows just how stupid some of these roads of national significance are. If the National Government thinks that spending $1 on a motorway and getting 20c back for it is a good investment, well, I hope that quite a few people at home are watching this debate because that is a complete dog of an investment.

Going back to that 3c increase per litre, and back to the Kapiti Expressway, how much money are we talking about? Well, we are talking about $515 million. I think that even Mr Hayes would agree that that is quite a lot of money. The return over a 30-year period is just $118 million. In an economic sense that does not make sense.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I think there is a need to focus heavily on this part, Part 1 of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. I think it is fair to say that it will be important to focus even more heavily on the next part of the bill because that is the grubby bit where the Government gives even more money that it is taking off hard-working, hard-taxed New Zealanders back to its mates. That is in the next part, and I will get on to that after we have had the division on this one.

But I cannot go any further talking about this part of the bill without absolutely refuting the comments made by way of interjection by the person who purports to represent the Wairarapa electorate, John Hayes. I am stimulated by that comment to go to Dannevirke on Monday and tell the people that he thinks that $45 extra tax for the average person, the average motorist, in the Wairarapa is nothing—that to the average motorist in Wairarapa it is nothing.

John Hayes: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I did not make any of these comments at all.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Speaking to the point of order—[Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Order! I think we could just calm it down a little bit. The reality is that whatever Mr Mallard says is a debatable issue anyway. I call the Hon Trevor Mallard.

Hon Member: Stick to the part.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Stick to the part.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Forty-five dollars in the first year, $90 in the second year, and $135 in the third year, and the member who represents one of the biggest rural electorates says that is nothing. He says that is nothing. That is John Hayes.

Why does he say it? Because his fuel is paid for—his fuel is paid for. His constituents are not paid for their fuel. It comes out of their income—it comes out of their tax-paid income. It is an outrage—it is an outrage—that the 3c plus GST, the 6c plus GST, and the 9c plus GST that is to be paid by his constituents he regards as nothing. That is just nonsense. I am going to spend some time in Dannevirke on Monday. I will go to Dannevirke and I will talk to the people in Dannevirke about how their local member says that charging them an extra $45, nearly $1 a week—nearly $1 a week—

John Hayes: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I must insist that you ask that speaker to withdraw those comments. I have not made them.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): No, there is no need for a point of order. This is a debatable issue, and the member has put on Hansard where he stands.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The point that I wish to raise with you is that these are indeed debatable points and it is open to any member to take a call and elaborate if they think—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you.

Chris Hipkins: You have not heard my point of order yet, Mr Chair. [Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Order! There is a point of order on the floor. Silence.

Chris Hipkins: The point that I am raising is that Mr Hayes has interrupted Mr Mallard twice in order to make points that he could make in a debate. You as the Chair making a judgment on how long this debate will go for have to weigh up as one of your considerations contributions from both sides. I want an assurance from you that you will regard Mr Hayes’ contributions as being contributions to the debate. The National members are contributing by way of points of order, even if they are not taking a call.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): No, that is not classified—no.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: John Hayes indicated that he thought that these increases were nothing, or not much, or something like that. [Interruption] “Not much”—I apologise. It was not “nothing”; it was “not much”. Well, it might be not much to someone whose travel costs are paid, who runs up and down with his massive Volvo and the taxpayer pays for him. The taxpayer pays for him, but most of the people who run around Dannevirke, Eketāhuna, Tīnui, Masterton, Featherston, Pahīatua—it does not go to Wairoa—and Waipukurau, all those people who pay for their petrol, know that it is significant paying an extra $1 a week per car in their family. And they have got to have a car. Many of them, because of the very poor public transport, have to have more than one car. It cannot and should not be described as “not much”—it should not be described as that.

Getting back to the detail in this particular amendment, what this allows for is an increase in the first year of 5.9 percent. But the 5.9 percent does not include the GST. Is this honesty? Is this honesty in a regulatory impact statement? Is this honesty in a regulatory impact statement? To be fair to the Government, because of its massive upward track in percentage terms in the impact it is only 5.3 percent in the third year, but that is, as we have heard, over a 10 percent increase over the period of time.

But I will go back to a point that I think needs to be focused on by the Committee. That is—and I do not want to sound like Sir Geoffrey Palmer, but still—we are the fastest lawmakers in the West. We have only —

Dr CAM CALDER (National): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 61

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

Noes 51

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 10; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Motion agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 72

New Zealand National 59; Green Party 10; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.

Noes 40

New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 7; Independent: Horan.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Consequential amendments

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): This particular part of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill refers mainly but not only to the question of refunds. What it does is increase the rate of refunds to people who are entitled to them. The regulation refers to section 41 of the principal Act, which in this case is the Land Transport Management Act. There is a group of individuals and companies that is exempt from paying the taxation that other people pay in this area.

The first point that I want to question the Minister of Transport on is the rate. I see that the rate of refund is 3.45c, which is a 3c increase in the goods and services tax. That is the amount that is refunded. The question that I want to ask the Minister is whether this is a deliberate over-refunding. Someone who pays the extra 3c and GST, and gets the GST as a deduction, are they not double-dipping?

What this does is exempt people. We will use the example of the few people in the electorate of Mr Hayes who do get a refund in the area. There are a number of his wealthy National Party colleagues, National Party members, who do get a refund by way of using the farm vehicles—or, more likely, the farm trust vehicles—for transport. These people will have an increase of 3c plus GST, and 6c plus GST, and 9c plus GST, under the part of the bill that has just been passed. What happens is that they will be able to apply for a refund if they are in the exempt group. I think there is debate about whether they should be in the exempt group or not—and I will say just by way of an aside that the exempt group is sometimes quite broad. For example, there are an unusual number of what are known as “Queen Street tractors” that spend their time around the halls of residence of Dunedin students. These are trust-owned vehicles. The cards that are used to drive them belong to trusts that are associated with farms or with other companies. It is a clear tax rort. It is a matter of keeping the general rate of tax, and sometimes—and it is a particular outrage—these students are entitled to student allowances because of the trust arrangements of the family finances, whereas people from normal working class families are not, because they happen to declare their income and pay their tax in an appropriate way.

The point that I want to get back to, and the question that I want to ask the Minister, is why it is 3c in the first part of the bill and then 3.45c in Part 2. I can accept that people pay the 3.45c extra. They pay at the bowser, or, generally, actually, more often, what happens is that there is a delivery for the farm vehicles, which then gets hosed into the family car. That is the approach that tends to happen. I have spent quite a bit of time in rural areas. Once or twice I might have been paid in petrol myself, but I would never confirm that. It was a long time ago, when I was young.

Grant Robertson: That was a long time ago.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: That is right. We used to have to crank the cars at that particular stage, to get them started.

Carol Beaumont: Ha, ha!

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Do not laugh, Carol Beaumont. I have cranked a few cars in my time to get them going.

Grant Robertson: Move on.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Behave yourself. The important point, and the one that I want to focus on in this call and the next one—but there is a further point to make in my following calls—is that people pay 3.45c a litre including the GST. They get a 3.45c refund, but that is not GST-inclusive. So people pay 3c plus GST and get a 3.45c refund, but the GST that they have paid is deductible against their GST liability.

The question that I have is whether or not we have a case of Bill English, whether we have “Double Dipton”—“Double Dipton”—being reinforced as part of this bill. I would be interested in the learned—no, sorry; he is not a lawyer—the honourable Minister’s view on this matter as to whether in fact we are getting any double-dipping here.

There are some areas that we will not argue with, as far as this part is concerned. Overall, it is a mixture. For example, it does include a refund for search and rescue vehicles, including boats. Well, I think that if a vehicle is genuinely used only for that purpose, or if petrol is put into it for search and rescue purposes, then that is something that is acceptable. One of the questions I have is whether foreign fishing boats come into this category or not.

Grant Robertson: I think they do.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well, I am not sure. I am not sure of the exact fuel that they use. Part of the question is whether it is appropriate to exempt fuel that is used for commercial purposes other than fuel in a motor vehicle. I think there is a dilemma here. I think that if the Government is genuine about closing the loopholes, then, in fact, it would be better to look at some of these uses under section 5(2) of the Land Transport Management (Apportionment and Refund of Excise Duty and Excise-Equivalent Duty) Regulations 2004. The other point is that it says in section 5(3) that “Nothing in this regulation applies to any motor spirits, compressed natural gas, or liquefied petroleum gas”—does anyone use liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) any more? Is LPG still—

Iain Lees-Galloway: A few taxis.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: A few taxis still use it—“used as fuel for a motor vehicle that is mainly used in vehicle races or trials or other sporting events.” Well, is that fair? I mean, why can the farmer get a refund but the professional racing driver cannot get one? Either it is part of your business or it is not.

I think what we are in danger of here is reinforcing some inequities in this legislation. I think we do need to look at the amendments that were made on 29 March 2007 and their relevance in this particular case. I think that one of the dangers we have when we have this sort of approach to decision making is that we get the danger of inconsistencies. The point I was making earlier is that we have been described in the past as the fastest lawmakers in the West. We are unicameral. We do not have a second Chamber, and that is why we should be really careful when we do anything that affects ordinary Kiwis, either by way of regulation or under urgency. And the trouble with this is that it appears to be doing both.

We appear to be passing legislation in this House that affects regulations, that overrides and changes regulations, and we are doing it under urgency. And with all due respect to members opposite, I am not sure that we have had any evidence, during this extended sitting day, of a level of competence on the part of the Government to get the legislation right. It is something that is pretty basic. Thank you, Mr Sabin, the former policeman, for nodding and agreeing with me. I hope he is not going to sleep.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): I want to pick up—

Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. As an independent MP, I am permitted to speaking only during—[Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! While there is a point of order on the floor, it is to be heard in silence.

Brendan Horan: I am permitted to speak in only the Committee stage. I was denied the opportunity to speak on Part 1 earlier in the Committee stage. I would ask you to consider that, in the interests of democracy, New Zealand actually hears an independent voice, and that I get an opportunity to speak in this Committee stage.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you for drawing that to my attention, Mr Horan.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Although the member has a valid point, I think that it has generally been regarded as disorderly to disagree with the Chair in that way, and especially to interrupt the contribution of another member, as Mr Horan did. I think—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): He is new.

Hon Trevor Mallard: —that if he called out a little bit louder when members are going for the call, someone might hear him.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you.

GRANT ROBERTSON: I want to pick up where my colleague Mr Mallard left off. We are debating Part 2, and in particular I am looking at clause 7, which institutes new regulation 6A—and now I am just checking on the Attorney-General’s well-being over there, which is perhaps not so great just at the moment.

Dr Rajen Prasad: He’s gone. He’s gone.

GRANT ROBERTSON: He is gone—he is completely gone. That is terrific—[Interruption] Oh, there he is. Very good. So, just for Mr Finlayson’s benefit, I say that we are looking at clause 7, which institutes the new regulation 6A into the Land Transport Management (Apportionment and Refund of Excise Duty and Excise-Equivalent Duty) Regulations 2004. As Mr Mallard said, we are looking at who can get a refund under section 6A. I think the Minister in the chair may need some assistance now, as well. [Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Have we finished?

GRANT ROBERTSON: Thank you, Mr Chair. The Minister appears to need some assistance at the moment. What we are looking at here is who can get a refund and what those refunds are. I think it is worthwhile—given that the many members of the public who will be glued to their televisions and radios listening to this debate will not be aware of exactly how this process works—

Hon Trevor Mallard: No, you’re not allowed to refer to them—that’s a point of order.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Ha, ha! People who are interested in this debate will not necessarily be aware of how the excise duty refund works. In this new regulation 6A, there will be a rate of refund of 3.45c on 1 July in 2013, 2014, and 2015. Mr Mallard has already explained that that 3.45c effectively equates to the 3c that is being increased plus GST, and we have the open question of whether or not there is double-dipping here if these same people will be claiming GST back at the same time as having that included in their refund. We have not heard from the Minister of Transport an answer to that, but it is important to know who is actually entitled to this refund, because that goes to the Labour Party’s major concern about this whole bill.

So who is entitled to a refund? Generally speaking, according to the New Zealand Transport Agency fact sheet on these matters, it is vehicles that are used mainly for commercial purposes, particularly agricultural vehicles and some mobile machinery. So, as Mr Mallard has already made the point, once again what we see here is further benefit for those at the upper end of the income spectrum—further benefit for those more politically aligned to the National Party.

We go right back to the beginning of the whole way in which National ended up with the roads of national significance. We know, from the emails helpfully released as part of The Hollow Men book and documentary, that the National Party, then in Opposition, made a political decision to create the roads of national significance, not because they were the best transport solutions for New Zealand but because, politically, that would work for it. Maurice Williamson, Don Brash, and John Key—they were all involved in that email exchange, and that is how National ended up with this policy. So, once again, here in Part 2 we see the next stage of the politicisation of this point, with the next stage being that those who generally benefit from these refunds are those using commercial vehicles.

Mr Mallard made a very good point, because the exclusions that the New Zealand Transport Agency lists are any motor vehicle that is principally used in vehicle races, trials, or other sporting events. That seems overly harsh on the rally drivers of New Zealand and those who are working to earn a living from using their vehicle—

Hon Trevor Mallard: On the track.

GRANT ROBERTSON: —on the track—in a commercial way. So I do not think that the Government can necessarily sit here comfortably and say that this is a fair exclusion and a fair refund process. It is a refund process that goes directly towards the very people who have benefited from the rest of this Budget from the National Government.

Seeing this come back in the way that it does in Part 2 reinforces for us that this legislation is not really about how we fund transport in New Zealand; it is about the overall picture that this Government is trying to paint when it comes to its supposed economic management. It is about the Government trying to cover over the fact that we have an economy that is not growing, that we have jobs promises that are not being met by this Government, and that the only way that it can get itself to its political surplus is to ensure that it puts up petrol tax, which, as we know, will be borne fundamentally by those people on modest incomes—the people who are already struggling. If you are on an income where you can throw it through a trust, then you will be able to get the refund, but if you keeping going this way—

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I would like to acknowledge both of our colleagues who have contributed here. Mr Chairman, you are ruling with an iron rod in this debate, and we hope that there will be sufficient—[Interruption] That, too. I need not come back on Tuesday, perhaps. But it is an adjournment week, so hopefully he will forget if you do not write too much in the Hansard, Mr Mallard.

It is interesting how the most arcane details of legislation often provide the greatest insight. Colleagues have rightly pointed out that the refunds here, the entitlements, apply to agricultural and commercial vehicles. It is a bit like what they used to say: “Cut out the middle man; vote for Treasury.” Under this National Government, it is “Cut out the middle man; vote for the other English guy, vote for Federated Farmers.” This is really a Federated Farmers set of exemptions.

The other exemption that is particularly important is the exemption for commercial vessels. Of course, we have got a problem at the moment, and I want to commend the Government for seeking to extend New Zealand flagging to foreign charter vessels in the New Zealand exclusive economic zone. At the moment, those vessels are not subject to fuel excise at all. They are not even subject to GST. Their crews are not subject to PAYE, and, as many New Zealanders will know by the horrendous reports of abuse in parts of the industry—in parts of it; by no means in all of it—they are not subject to New Zealand labour law, either. So I commend the Government for trying to fix that up, and, hopefully, that will bring all of those vessels, and therefore their fuel, within the tax net.

Mr Mallard raised an important technical point, which was around the quantum of the exemptions and the refunds. In doing a quick scan for other precedents, we have also picked up another similar example where it may well be that the Government needs to take remedial action. That is in respect of KiwiSaver for non-residents. Under the Income Tax Act, that can be clawed back if someone has received a tax credit while overseas and failed to notify. But what is not clawed back is the interest or use of money or any capital appreciation based on those tax credits. It is a very similar situation to this one.

I think the lesson here is that here is a Government that is passing legislation for the sole and utter purpose of trying to make its Budget appear balanced, because without the $700 million - odd that this will deliver by 2015 it would not be within a bull’s roar of a so-called balanced Budget. It is not anyway, because earlier in this debate we have illustrated some $3 billion worth of shystership, of shonkiness, of—well, there are lots of other technical terms that spring to mind, but let us just say that the numbers do not add up. They do not come close to adding up. But the Government needs this Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill even though it has the power to do the same job by regulation, without detaining Parliament at $10,000 an hour, or whatever it is. We are here on a Saturday in New Zealand time trying to pass legislation that is unnecessary.

In Part 2 of the bill we are further complicating life by creating a possible interaction between regulations that do not need to be there. We have asked the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Transport, to take a call and explain if he can, which is by no means certain, whether the clawback refund provisions apply appropriately. If he can address himself to the commercial vessels issue, if he is able to also tell us whether the precedent around the KiwiSaver tax credits is an appropriate analogy, and if he can tell us whether the Government intends to take remedial action on that matter as well, that would be extremely useful.

It may be that in doing so he could come up with some other reason why we are here on a Saturday afternoon passing legislation that is legally unnecessary. There may be something, although I cannot think of anything, that the Opposition has overlooked. There may be a legitimate reason why the Government is doing it; it is just that none of us can see it, because, as my colleague Mr Mallard has pointed out, there is a regulation-making power that could have achieved exactly the same outcome on 1 July. The Minister is, I think, shaking his head; he may be breathing, but I think he is shaking his head. If he is, I would invite him to tell the Committee and the country why that is not the case, because that is what the country believes, Minister. The country believes that you are passing this for what Mr Joyce would call optic reasons—to make a balanced Budget appear when otherwise it would not.

BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): Part 2 of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill deals with refunds, and I would like for us to consider why there should be refunds and who gets the refunds. For the many New Zealanders who are watching today, and also for those New Zealanders who are overseas, and also other people who are watching on, I would just like to go through the main drivers of petrol and diesel prices so they get an idea. One, we have the cost of oil and then the refined product. Two, we have the exchange rate, which also affects the price of petrol and diesel; however, it seems to go up quickly, but when our exchange rate is high, it always seems to come down very slowly at the pump. Three, we have Government taxes and levies. Currently, around 62c per litre is made up of this Government’s taxes and levies, and that is exclusive of GST. Diesel uses the very unfair road-user charges that we saw rushed through last year. If we have a look at some of the price rises, I believe, in April of this year, we see that unleaded 96 cost around $2.13 a litre, and in May it was $2.17 a litre. We have these price rises that are separate from the taxes that this Government is putting on.

What does that mean to the person in the province, or, actually, the average, ordinary person at home who is trying to feed their family? It puts extreme strain on that family, because everything goes up. Food prices go up. How are the normal mums and dads who are on the minimum wage—and I might say that it is disgraceful for any person who has worked in a job for more than 2 years to be on the minimum wage—going to be able to afford the other increases that occur when petrol goes up? Perhaps we could consider giving refunds to every mother in New Zealand, or every father in New Zealand, for those school lunches that are going to cost more, and for the food in the supermarket that is going to cost more.

This week the Prime Minister stood up and instead of saying that 39,000 houses would be consented in Auckland in the next 3 years, he said that 39,000 houses will be built. Well, with the increase in taxes, those houses are going to cost much more, and I would make the prediction that by this time next year, the average price of a house in Auckland will be $1 million, not $750,000. So whom do we give the refunds to? Do we give them to sports teams? One of the great things about New Zealand is the ability for our children to be able to play sport and to see New Zealand. But with these increases, how are the parents of those children going to be able to afford to get them to the sports grounds? Perhaps we could give refunds to sporting teams. Perhaps we could give refunds to coaches, because coaches need to get to training. They need to train the young ones.

This is all part of the New Zealand psyche, and one small increase has massive long-term ramifications for the average New Zealander. I would ask that this Committee consider giving refunds to sports teams, to sports coaches, and to parents of children, because what we need to do is be fair in this country. We have a situation where farmers may get a refund, and so they should, or orchardists may get a refund, and so they should too, but we as average New Zealanders have to pay that cost at the shop front.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I move, That the question be now put.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very appreciative of my first call, in fact, of what I suspect will be many on the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. I suspect I have got a few other names for that—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Part 2.

CHRIS HIPKINS: —which we are going to talk about in a moment. I am aware that we are talking about Part 2, Mr Mallard—just hold your horses; we will get to that. We are talking about Part 2 at the moment, the refund provision that exists within this legislation, otherwise known as, once again, National looking after its mates—looking after the people who can get the refund—while other people, such as the regular hard-working New Zealanders who pay the extra fuel tax, who were promised that life would get better under National and that they would pay less tax under National, do not have the access, probably, to the provisions in this particular part. They are going to end up paying the extra tax and they are going to feel disappointed and let down.

Before the 2008 general election Maurice Williamson, the National Party’s then transport spokesperson, went around the country telling New Zealanders that if the National Party did a good job, it would not need to put up fuel taxes. The levies would not need to go up. Maurice Williamson was busy saying that to New Zealanders before the 2008 general election. How many times has this levy gone up since National came into Government? That means that Gerry Brownlee has been a spectacular failure as a Minister of Transport, just like Steven Joyce was before him.

It just shows whom the National Party is interested in looking after. It is not interested in looking after the ordinary hard-working New Zealanders, who are going to have, what is it, $45 extra a year—

Iain Lees-Galloway: Yes, after year 1.

CHRIS HIPKINS: —in year 1 on their motoring bill—

Hon Trevor Mallard: $90 in year 2.

CHRIS HIPKINS: —$90 extra in year 2—

Hon Trevor Mallard: $135.

CHRIS HIPKINS: —and $135 extra in year 3.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Plus compounding.

CHRIS HIPKINS: That is right; it is compounding. These costs will continue to go up for ordinary, everyday families, who are already struggling to meet rising costs under this National Government because, despite promising New Zealanders that the tax burden on them was going to decrease, in fact, ordinary, everyday working New Zealanders are saying that the tax burden on them has gone up under National—increased GST, increased fuel tax, increased student loan repayments if they have got a student loan, and many other increases that they are facing. So many other costs and expenses have gone up for ordinary, everyday Kiwis under this National Government. They will not benefit from the refunds that are available in this particular part of the bill, which we are debating before Parliament—Part 2 of the debate, the consequential amendments that we are talking about.

This is yet again another bill that is going through all stages of Parliament under urgency. I suspect, given our previous experience of the earlier bills that we have been debating under this urgency motion, that there will be some future amendment to it when National realises it has completely stuffed it up. There is probably a drafting error or some other mistake in it, because there has been a mistake in just about every other bill that the House has been debating under this urgency motion. I think New Zealanders are going to want to know why they are paying this extra fuel tax and why they are not getting the ability to access refunds under Part 2 of this.

I am looking at what this extra money is going to be funding—the roads of significance to National. That is what these levies are going to be going towards. I know, for example, regarding the Kapiti Expressway that there is huge debate about exactly whether or not that is good value for money. Many people do not think it is, and, in fact, a huge group of residents on the Kapiti coast think that it is going to split the community in half by driving a massive four-lane highway between Coastlands, the main shopping area of Paraparaumu, and the beach and the shopping area. It is basically going to drive a massive four-lane highway between those parts of the community, on what was always designed to be a local road. It has been on the books for many, many years, and the community expectation in Kapiti was always that that road, the Kapiti Expressway, was going to be a two-lane local road. And, yes, there would be upgrades to State Highway 1, but they were not expecting that the Government would go and co-opt what was going to be a local road and whack a massive four-lane highway right through the heart of that community, which is what this Government is proposing to do.

Of course, the road will not be designed to benefit local motorists, because there will be very few on-ramps and off-ramps off it; it is designed, basically, to move traffic through that area without having to stop and without the trucks having to slow down. It is not designed, in any way, with the local residents of the Kapiti coast in mind, and that is the sort of project that all New Zealand motorists are now going to be paying more for. I think that there are some real questions the Government has got to answer. But, of course, we are not hearing anything from the Government.

All those National backbenchers over there have absolutely nothing to say on that. When they were in Opposition, the National backbench had a lot to say about transport—

Dr CAM CALDER (National): I move, That the question be now put.

SUE MORONEY (Labour): It is a pleasure to take a call on Part 2 of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, because this is where we find out who gets away with it. Who by way of a refund does not have to pay the tax that is propping up the National Government’s supposed surplus? Well, here is the part where it panders to its mates, of course. Part 2 is where it is pandering to its mates. While I am talking about panders, that is actually what Gerry Brownlee resembled when my colleague Trevor Mallard asked him a question about why the Government was not doing this by regulation, and he actually put it to Mr Brownlee that later on the Government would bring in regulations to take the taxes up even higher. Mr Brownlee sat there like a giant panda and did not respond. I have seen giant pandas that have been more communicative than the Minister of Transport was when that issue was put to him by Mr Mallard.

But back to Part 2—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Hey, have we got our panda yet?

SUE MORONEY: Yes, well—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Has John Key’s panda delivered yet?

SUE MORONEY: I think we have got the panda bit well and truly in Hansard now. So Part 2 tells us that it is people who have agricultural equipment and commercial vehicles who are going to escape paying for this illusion of a Budget surplus from the National Government. Of course, that is National pandering to its mates, but it does not get away with it completely.

The other part that is propping up this illusion of a Budget surplus for the National Government is its keeping ACC levies higher than they need to be. Of course, one of the ACC levies that is higher than it needs to be at the moment—and will remain so for 2 more years under this Budget from National—is the one on the motor vehicle account. So that is the registration that everyone pays on their ACC levy. Even though some people will get a refund on their petrol tax in Part 2, they will still be paying, on average, up to $134 more a year on the registration for their motor vehicle. Not only are they going to be paying for the National Government’s promise of a Budget surplus every time they go and fill up at the gas station—every time New Zealanders fill up at the petrol station, I want them to stop and remember that they are paying through their pockets for that Government’s promise of a Budget surplus, because that is clearly what is happening in this bill. In Part 2 some of them get it refunded, but it is not the ordinary New Zealander who gets that refund; it is people who own agricultural or commercial vehicles. I think that tells us just exactly where the priorities of this National Government lie.

The Government is, of course, charging every business and every worker in this country more than it needs to in ACC levies every week through their pay packets, as well. That is the other way it is propping up its Budget surplus. Up to $2 billion more a year than ACC said that it needed in order to keep its scheme going is being charged by that Government to every single worker and business in New Zealand. But, of course, Part 2 of this bill tells us that although that is happening for every worker and every business in New Zealand, when it comes to petrol tax, some of those businesses—not the workers but some of the business owners—will be getting a refund under Part 2 of this bill. They are people who operate agricultural and commercial vehicles. They are going to get—well, actually, we think they might be double-dipping, because not only will they get the 3c and then the 6c and then the 9c back for every year but also, under Part 2, they are going to get the GST back on that.

I think it is a very salient point that has been raised by this side of the House about whether that is double-dipping or not. I would ask the Minister in the chair to get to his feet and clarify that issue. No more giant panda impersonations, Mr Brownlee—up on your feet. Tell us about the GST in Part 2. Is it double-dipping or not? That is important, because you are pandering—sorry, not you, Mr Chair, of course. You are not pandering, but Mr Brownlee is pandering to his mates in this part. We need to know whether he is pandering to them in a way where they are able to double-dip on the GST refund or not. This is important, because it is only a small number of New Zealanders who get to use the refund in Part 2. It is not your everyday New Zealander. It is not the families whom we on this side of the House are concerned about, who are using their private vehicles, day in and day out, taking children to school, taking them to sports events, and getting to work. All of those everyday uses of vehicles are not going to actually get this refund under that part.

MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am going to call Mr Lees-Galloway.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): That is an excellent choice. I think that is a fantastic choice. Given that there are more senior members than me seeking the call, maybe they will get the call at the next opportunity. Part 2 of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill lays out the consequential amendments to the Land Transport Management (Apportionment and Refund of Excise Duty and Excise-Equivalent Duty) Regulations 2004. Essentially, what this does is it gives a refund predominantly to farmers but also to other particular vehicle users who use their vehicles off-road. It seems a little bit anachronistic, actually, because in the schedule we have a detail of all the vehicles that are exempt vehicles. Motor vehicles used only on roads solely in connection with agricultural operations, farmers’ vehicles used solely in connection with agricultural operations, tractors or traction engines, farmers’ tractors, agricultural contractors’ tractors—so lots of talk about tractors there. The principle here is that if a vehicle is used principally off-road, then it should not be paying fuel excise tax, because fuel excise tax is used to pay for roads and public transport and other transport initiatives. These off-road vehicles are not using transport infrastructure, because they are predominantly on the farm.

I think it is strange that some are missing here. Vehicles that are predominantly used in forestry that do not go on public roads, and maybe vehicles that are used predominantly in mining that do not go on public roads, as well, I would have thought would be covered by these types of exemptions, and yet they are missing. What appears to have happened at some point in history is that probably Federated Farmers has got in the ear of the National Party and said: “Hey, we need these exemptions.”, so we have got these really specific exemptions when the principle here is quite sound.

Hon Trevor Mallard: They’ve always been exempt.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: From tax in general? The principle here is a strong one, though, which is that vehicles that are used predominantly off-road should not have to pay fuel excise tax. That is how road-user charges work. So the diesel does not carry the road-user charge and, therefore, tractors that are fuelled by diesel predominantly work off-road—

Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s inconsistent.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Well, that may be. I mean, there is inconsistency here, Mr Mallard; you are absolutely right. Maybe there would be room for consistency by moving in one direction or the other. But it just seems bizarre that it is specifically about farmers, and I do not know whether that is the relationship with the National Party or not. You know, we have perhaps raised whether these exemptions can be rorted, but all the people who are using this exemption are working hard on their farms to produce the produce that goes to market for sale. It is still, of course, the backbone of our economy—our agricultural sector—and these people are working really, really hard. What they want, of course, is a decent roading infrastructure that can actually get those products from the farm to the market. It is all well and good—

Hon Trevor Mallard: A decent railway interchange.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: And a decent railway interchange, as well, Mr Mallard. It is all well and good to have roads of national significance running up and down the spine of New Zealand, but if we have not got decent roads going from the farm or the forest or the mine to those roads of national significance, then what is the point of having these gold-plated, unaffordable roads up and down the middle of the country if the local roads are not up to scratch? I suggest that John Hayes go and talk to the Mayor of Tararua District Council, Roly Hayes. He is in Dannevirke, interestingly enough. He might want to go and see—

John Hayes: Ellis.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Roly Ellis, sorry. You are absolutely right—Roly Ellis. He wants to go and talk to him. I suggest that he go and talk to Roly Ellis about his concerns about the fact that his local roads are predominantly gravel roads. They are not sealed. What Tararua is really looking forward to is when a considerable amount of forestry matures and comes on stream for logging, and that will be a significant source of revenue for that district. But the roads are predominantly gravel roads. They are not decent roads prepared to carry the trucks that will carry that important produce—the logs—from the forest to the Port of Napier or to the roads of national significance or to the railway line that will get them to market.

So it is all well and good for the National Party to focus on its political roads, but as for the people who are working hard and getting the exemptions laid out here in Part 2, they can work as hard as they like, but this Government is not working for them. This Government is not working for them, because what this bill does is tax New Zealanders to pay for those roads of political significance. Try as they might, even if they get these exemptions laid out in Part 2—and they are significant exemptions, at 3.45c per litre—

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 73

New Zealand National 59; Green Party 11; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.

Noes 40

New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 7; Independent: Horan.

Motion agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 73

New Zealand National 59; Green Party 11; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.

Noes 40

New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 7; Independent: Horan.

Part 2 agreed to.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I deliberately waited until you had put the vote in order not to be sort of disorderly, but I do want to ask you whether you can explain your reasoning with regard to the latest set of calls. I think we all know that it is the discretion of the Chairman as to who is called. I am not going to argue with that. But it does seem to me to be particularly surprising that the normal rules of seniority within a party were not used on this particular occasion. My colleague who is the fourth-ranked member of the Labour caucus and sits on the front bench made repeated attempts to get the call, but a number of us more junior members—as far as the current seniority arrangements are concerned—were called, including, right at the end, I think, the youngest member of the Labour Party caucus, Mr Lees-Galloway.

Hon Member: He’s the spokesperson.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: It might be the fact that he is the spokesperson and you are recognising that, Mr Chairman. But I would like an explanation as to the criteria that you are now using, because, at first glance, it does look a bit awful.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour): My question will be very brief in regard to this. I wonder whether you could elucidate for us, in fact, that somebody being the primary spokesperson on an issue for a party is one of the factors that you consider in making a decision around who you call in a debate such as this. I am aware, for example, that Mr Lees-Galloway was seeking the call for quite some time before he got one on the debate on this particular part. He is the Labour Party’s primary spokesperson on the matter.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Can I just point the member to Speaker’s ruling 25/5: “How a party utilises its speaking and questions rights is an internal matter for that party to determine.” I can say that in recognising Mr Iain Lees-Galloway, he is the spokesperson for the Labour Party, and so he took precedence in that particular instance. I am quite happy with the decision I made. Also, of course, the Chairperson is the sole judge.

Clauses 1 and 2

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Where were we? The question is that clauses 1 and 2 stand part. I call the honourable member Grant Robertson, the deputy leader of the Labour Party.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you for recognising and remembering that. I am currently looking, in this contribution, at clause 1 of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, which is the title clause. I intend to come back and perhaps make a further contribution on the commencement date because there is a lot to say about that.

The question of the title goes to an important matter around this bill that the Labour Party has been raising during this debate. It is currently called the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. That simply will not do, because it does not accurately describe the purpose of this bill. There is one thing in here that is accurate, and that is the word “Budget”. This is about the Budget for the National Party. It is about trying to justify or trying to make claim to getting the books into surplus. As has been established in earlier stages of this debate, we have not heard from the Government a true justification of its surplus, beyond how it has fiddled with and fudged the books.

I would argue that a more accurate title for this bill would be the “Customs and Excise (Fake Surplus) Bill”, because that is actually what it is. It is about a piece of legislation that contributes—along with raising petrol taxes in this bill, there are the ACC levies, and the other tax changes that have been made by this Government that have benefited the top 10 percent of income earners; all of those things have contributed—to the fact that this Government is now claiming a surplus, a wafer-thin, margin of error - level surplus, which it will get as a result of increasing petrol taxes, increasing ACC levies, and some magic numbers that will appear in the Budget in the 2014-15 and 2015-16 years. There are magic figures of $400 million here—$1.1 billion from corporate tax, which suddenly disappears again a year or so later. This is a fake surplus. That is why this bill should be called the “Customs and Excise (Fake Surplus) Bill”.

It could also be called the “Customs and Excise (Bogus Budget Balance) Bill”. I like that—alliteration is good. I think it makes law interesting if we can have alliteration. It is a bogus Budget balance, when one has to take into account this range of other things that are contributing to the surplus other than actually growing the economy, creating jobs, and doing the kinds of things that we would like to see in a Budget, and it is bogus to see it here.

I do also want to refer to another title that could be put in place for this bill that would actually argue that this is the “Customs and Excise …”—and there are a number of options here, but I think the “Customs and Excise (Roads of Political Significance) Bill” is probably the most accurate. If we are to take the Government at its word that this bill is about the National Land Transport Fund and getting the money there—

Hon Trevor Mallard: You’d be stupid. You’d be stupid.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, you would be stupid, Mr Mallard, but, for now, let us pretend we are stupid. That may not be too difficult for you, so we will see how we go! But let us pretend that we are stupid, and say that actually this is a time in which the Government says that, yes, it needs this money for the National Land Transport Fund. But what is that for? It is quite simply for the Government’s political choices about where it believes roading should go.

We have established already on this side of the Chamber—without any response from the other side, I might add—that this is the end result of the National Party’s decision when in Opposition to adopt a roading policy that was not about what was best for the transport infrastructure of New Zealand but was simply about what was best for the party, electorally. That is what Don Brash and Maurice Williamson cooked up. That is what John Key took on from that. Maurice Williamson paraded it around the country and promoted it, as well. That is what Gerry Brownlee has accepted now.

These roads of significance to National, or roads of political significance, should be mentioned in the title, because that would be a more accurate reflection of what is actually being put in front of this Committee today. To simply call it something benign, like the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, does not actually capture what this is. In fact, if they really just wanted to go down that path, it should be called the “Raising Petrol Taxes Bill”. We have not heard throughout this debate an honest contribution from the National Party members to say: “Actually, we are raising taxes. That is what we are doing.” There is a reason for that. We could also call it the “Customs and Excise (Breaking National’s Promises Again) Bill”, because it promised not to raise taxes. It went around the country promising not to raise taxes, and yet that is precisely what this bill does.

We have been through a lot of legislation over the last few days in this House, and the contributions of National MPs have been non-existent. National MPs have simply not got up and been prepared to justify to their constituents and prepared to say to their constituents: “Yes, we’re raising taxes. We are putting taxes up. We are taking money out of your pockets because we want to come up with a bogus surplus.” That would be honest, if the National Party MPs stood up and said that. That would be an honest title for this bill.

ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): It is a pleasure to take a call. I have been struggling throughout to get a call on this bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill.

Louise Upston: Diddums!

ANDREW LITTLE: Well, wait until you hear what I have got to say, because I think you will find it very interesting.

We know what this bill does. It artificially inflates the duties now collected off petrol, and that is in the context of a Government that is spending billions upon billions upon billions of dollars on a small number of roads. It has chosen the roads of National Party significance—the roads of national significance—and the problem with that is, of course, that provincial roads, roads in the regions, are being absolutely starved of any attention at all. So when it comes to the title of this bill, it might more accurately be called the “Customs and Excise (Deprivation of Regional Roads) Bill”.

I want to relay one particularly important example, and that is State Highway 3 in Taranaki. You do not hear much of it in Parliament these days, but I think it is very important to raise it. State Highway 3 in Taranaki is in an increasingly parlous state. In the mid, almost south, Taranaki area is a stretch of State Highway 3 encompassing a bridge called the Normanby Bridge. It is arguably one of the most dangerous stretches of road—it is only a 50 metre or so stretch—in the country. It has had four fatalities in about 2 years. There have been repeated accidents on that stretch of road, and the local regional council is struggling to get the New Zealand Transport Agency interested in it. It cannot get funding to operate that piece of road and make it safer. The best the New Zealand Transport Agency can do is put up a couple of signs either side of the bridge saying “Slow down”. But it is a dog-leg of a bridge, it is a dog-leg piece of road, and it needs to be realigned.

Then comes the real kicker, and that is the road north out of New Plymouth. The New Zealand Transport Agency, at the behest of this Government to save its political skin in the last election, allocated $15 million to fix a bridge—yet another bridge—just north of New Plymouth. It is another stretch of road of about 50 metres. There is another 100 kilometres of road that is highly problematic, dangerous, and the bane of truck drivers in and out of north Taranaki, and has been for a long time. It is at the point now where all that the New Zealand Transport Agency will do is fund resealing the bits of the road between the fog lines. It does not fund the upgrading and the repair and maintenance of the shoulders of the road, and it is becoming more and more dangerous. Two particular stretches—the Awakino Gorge and Mount Messenger—have both had report after report after report prepared on them, and we cannot get any money spent on them.

You do not hear anything about it from any other member who comes to this House who represents or has a connection with that area. There is only one member in this House who comes and talks about that stretch of road and those issues—the issues affecting Taranaki—and that is me. This bill, and raising the excise on petrol yet again without any commitment to fixing this very important piece of road, just demonstrates the short-sighted nature of this Government and its so-called traffic and transport plan. It is a very sensitive issue—a growingly sensitive issue, you might say—in Taranaki, and this bill will do nothing for it. The title of the bill should properly reflect the negligence and the abdication of responsibility that this bill, along with this Government’s total traffic and transport plan, actually represents. It is a denial of attention, proper attention, to regional roads and to the provinces, which are screaming out for attention.

The last major piece of road upgrading that was done in Taranaki was the famed Bell Block Bypass known as “Harry’s diversion”, promoted and encouraged by Harry Duynhoven, a former member for New Plymouth, now the current mayor. It is a highly successful stretch of road, but it was only ever one part of a long-term jigsaw that had to be put together, and this Government has abandoned the jigsaw. The people of Taranaki are crying out for it. They are crying out even louder than the people of Wairarapa, who feel that $45 a year, $90 a year, and $135 a year are a major pinch in their pocket, but their local member does not recognise and respect that. The people of Taranaki are crying out for attention and for action. This bill will not even help them, and the title of the bill should properly reflect the failures in it—the failure to give due care and due attention to the real needs of people in the provinces and the regions, the good people of Taranaki foremost amongst them.

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is my pleasure to be able to take a call—[Interruption] Thank you, I think that was Trevor Mallard’s attempt to give me props, maybe, or perhaps—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! It was just that Mr Little had been here a long time and I knew he desperately needed a call, so that is why I took him before you.

JACINDA ARDERN: Mr Chair, as one who well understands the frustration of the continual attempt to take a call, I really applaud the democratic way in which these calls have been awarded. I feel that there is no favour expressed and I am not still reeling from my massive defeat in the Waikato at your hands, Mr Chair. I know that you have been giving me sympathy calls ever since.

I think it is important when we debate the title and commencement clauses that we take them in context, and we are debating whether or not the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill should remain as such. I agree with the deputy leader that to a certain extent the use of the words “Budget Measures” does give an indication as to what this bill is attempting to achieve, so I want to acknowledge that up front; there is a little bit of transparency in this title. By using the reference to Budget measures it is very clear that this is one of the Government’s primary ways of getting this country back into surplus. I think it was pointed out by our leader in his Budget speech that people should remember, when they are at the petrol pump, what has got this Government over the line when it comes to its much-trumpeted surplus in the future Budget. I think we need to take that all with a grain of salt and with a bit of context, that that is what it has taken to get us over the line. In that regard, the title has reflected something that I think is accurate.

But in many ways, actually, other elements of the bill have tried to ignore that. You need only to look at the regulatory impact statement to get a hint of what the rest of the bill claims that it is trying to do. I do want to add that I am pleased that we have in this case a regulatory impact statement, although I would have liked to see a little bit more detail in that. But this is a good place to look for some other ideas for what this bill perhaps should have been called in its title. It states in the regulatory impact statement that forecasts of revenue and expenditure for the National Land Transport Fund in November 2012 indicated a total revenue shortfall of around $1.6 billion over the next few years. That indicates, obviously, that things are going terribly wrong in the way the Government is prioritising its spend within the National Land Transport Fund, or it is simply ignoring that people are choosing to travel and transport themselves differently—not least because of the rising cost of living and of transport generally.

So you could, in that sense, call this the “Spending More Than We Have on Poorly Planned Projects Bill”, or you could, in that sense, call it the “This is the Plugging the Gap for the Roads of National Significance Bill”, because that is exactly what this bill does. In that sense, it is also, as I said before, very important that we look at a bill in its totality before we vote for it.

We have in the past, of course, used things like regional fuel taxes to make sure that we cover our transport needs for a region—Auckland being amongst those high on the list when we think about the needs for those kinds of measures. But, for Labour, that has always been about trying to cover the costs of all transport options, not simply saying that the land transport pot of money needs to go simply to building more and more highways, because that is not futureproofing our transport needs.

This bill is very explicitly about trying to plug a gap for building those roads of national significance. So although, of course, in the past we have used those measures, we have always been clear that they are for a range of projects, and I would highlight that for the Greens. Why would they want to vote for a bill that is so explicitly going to end up funding projects that I know they do not support? That is something that, I think, contextually we must be very clear about when we vote for measures like this. It is not just about the measure but about where it ends up. So that is why I would almost, as I say again, call it the “Customs and Excise (For the Roads of National Significance) Bill”, just to be very clear about what will be happening with this extra revenue. As the title implies, this bill is for the Budget, but it is also trying to go towards plugging that roads of national significance gap, so you could almost call it the “Sell It, Tax It, Spend It 12 Times Over Bill”, because that is exactly what we have seen as well with the way this Government has behaved with assets.

As I have mentioned, the Government did get rid of the regional fuel tax some time ago now—

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I have been looking forward to having an opportunity to speak on the title and commencement clauses of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. The first alternative title that I would like to offer is the “Fuel Tax for Funding a Fanciful Surplus Bill”. As members have said a number of times, essentially what this bill is about is making sure that the Government can just squeak past its plans to make a surplus. Really, I think it is entirely disingenuous of the Government to try to suggest to New Zealanders, through the title that we have, that this is somehow about funding transport infrastructure—even to suggest that it is about funding broad transport infrastructure. What we know is that on current projections, a simple fuel tax increase aligned to CPI would be enough to do all that this Government wants to do. It could build all the roads that it wanted to without having to bring this fuel tax increase in, but what it needs, of course, is money right now so that it can meet its Budget surplus.

You might have noticed there is a little bit of alliteration in that title. I know that another fan of alliteration is Dr Cam Calder. It is good to see Cam Calder in the Chamber now. He told medical students today that he could not be at a symposium that they were holding, because he had an important speech to make to the House on the fuel excise tax bill, and he would have to make that speech at 2 o’clock. The sum total of Cam Calder’s contribution to debate on this bill was at about quarter past 4, when he said: “I move that the question be now put.” That is the entire total contribution that Cam Calder made to this. But I know that Cam Calder would love an alliterative title to this bill, like the “Fuel Tax for Funding a Fanciful Surplus Amendment Bill”.

Another good name for this would be the “Taxing Middle New Zealand Bill”, because that is what this bill actually does. It is part of the Government’s suite of measures to make up for its unaffordable income tax cuts that it gave to its mates, because, again, it needs to get the country back into surplus. And because it gave away those unaffordable tax cuts for the rich—let us be honest; they were tax cuts for the rich—now the rest of New Zealand, particularly middle New Zealand, is having to make up for that by paying for these fuel tax increases.

Another good title for this would be the “Fuel Tax (Leaving Out the Regions) Bill”, because the Minister has said at every opportunity that what this bill is about is funding the Government’s roads of national significance—those roads of political significance that are all about the highways that run up the middle of the country. They are not about the regions. The National Government is not working for the regions. If it was, it would have an integrated approach to its transport network, and it would be funding those local roads like State Highway 3, for which Andrew Little has been advocating for so long; like the gravel roads in the Tararua District, which the locals have told me personally they want to see upgraded so that they can get better productivity out of the logging that is about to come on stream; and like the alternative to the gold-plated highway—the Western Link Road—that could have been built on the Kāpiti coast. That is what the locals actually wanted, but because this Government is not interested in what the regions want—because this Government is not at all interested in what the regions want—it is putting up taxes on everybody so that it can build its monuments to its 1950s approach to transport infrastructure.

We could call this the “Plugging the Gap that Steven Joyce Created Bill”, because what we know from reading through documents containing advice that the Minister of Transport has received is that Steven Joyce told the New Zealand Transport Agency to overspend. He deliberately told it to overspend on its roading budget so that there was pressure on the roading budget, so that there was a call for additional funding, and so that then the Government would have an excuse to bring in this extra tax. Why did it need an excuse to bring in this extra tax? So that it could get the Budget back into surplus. So this is plugging the gap that Steven Joyce created; that is what this bill is all about.

Finally, I would call this the “Taxing the Regions to Pay for Auckland Bill”, because the Government has said “No, no, no.” to all the options for getting Auckland working and all the possible revenue options so that Aucklanders could pay their fair share of transport infrastructure in Auckland. If this Government does plan to do anything, if this Government does plan to do anything at all in Auckland, who is going to pay for it? It is going to be the people of Southland, it is going to be the people of Hawke’s Bay, and it is going to be the people of Manawatū.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I move, That the Committee report progress.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Committee report progress.

Ayes 49

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 9; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1.

Noes 62

New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.

Motion not agreed to.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): It is a pity the Attorney-General has left the chair. If he is available, it would be good if he could help with some of the interpretation that I think needs to occur. I have before me the Interpretation Act—in fact, in the old days it used to be called the Acts Interpretation Act—and I want to refer to section 8(1), which refers to the commencement of legislation. I am referring, of course, to the commencement clause, clause 2, of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. Section 8(1) of the Interpretation Act says: “An Act or an enactment in an Act comes into force on the date stated or provided in the Act for the commencement of the Act or for the commencement of the enactment.” I think it is fair to say that subsection (2) is not relevant for this particular point.

But the question that I have for the Minister or, if he needs help, for the Attorney-General, who is the Minister responsible for the Interpretation Act, is whether it comes into force at the beginning of the day or at midday or at the end of the day. I do not know whether I should say that I am from the Opposition and I am here to help. But I think that if the Government wants something to come into effect from 1 July, by way of amendment to regulations, it is my understanding that it has to get it in place before then so that it takes effect on that particular day. We know that the Government’s attempt is to commence to get the petrol tax—and for a whole pile of reasons we think it is wrong—to go up all day on 1 July this year. I do not think there are any debates about 1 July 2014 and 1 July 2015—that is relatively clear.

But the question I have got is whether, by having the bill come into force on 1 July this year, the Government is allowed, under the Interpretation Act, to get the money from—I used to work night shift at what used to be called The Ferry. I do not know what it is called now—the big Shell service station down there. It was back in the days when you had two standard pumps—one super pump and one diesel pump; there was a little thing on the triangle. There were petrol price changes, and they were relatively frequent. There were carless days, and there was a whole pile of different arrangements back in the time of a very good Labour Government sometimes going bad. There were price adjustments. But we always had notice, and they always came in at midnight. They came in at midnight, at the beginning of the day, but that was because the enactments had been done, effectively, beforehand with notice for a particular day. But in this case the enactment comes into force only on the day when we expect the Government wants to lift the price of petrol. The question there is whether the commencement date is accurate.

The other question in regard to dates that I want to ask the Minister about is how the commencement clause interplays with clause 7(2) of Part 2. Because what happens there is that regulation 6A of the principal regulations, as inserted by clause 7(1), is revoked on 1 July 2015. What they—the dates as set out—appear to have the effect of doing, and this is not clear, is undoing the farmers’ exemption. If it is the Government’s intention to undo the farmers’ exemption and other people’s exemptions as at 1 July 2015—not for the whole lot, but just for this extra 10c and GST—would it not be better for it to say something about that in the explanatory note? It is a relatively simple matter. I would appreciate—I know we are relatively early in this debate—

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

MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I am happy that I am finally able to take a call in this debate, after seeking the call for a long time, because this is a very important piece of legislation.

Hon Member: You didn’t have a chance.

MOANA MACKEY: Actually, that is true, unfortunately. I think that the title of this bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, does not accurately represent what this bill actually means for the people of New Zealand. I think a more accurate title would be the “Customs and Excise (So That’s How They Manufactured a Surplus) Amendment Bill”, because the extraordinary thing about this piece of legislation that we have learnt through this Committee stage is that this is how Government members are getting the books back into surplus. They said they were going to do it, they were desperate to meet it, and this is how they are going to do it, by artificially pushing up petrol taxes.

When you look at National Government members, this is really all they have done. All they have done in their time in Government, when they have tried to make the books look good, is increase taxes. They increased GST, when they said they would not. John Key stared down the barrel of the TV camera and promised the voters he would not, but he did anyway. They have been overcharging people for their ACC levies. And now, lo and behold, here we have another petrol tax. So instead of actually structurally getting our economy back into the black, instead of actually structurally doing it in a way that means it is sustainable, it is real, and it is based on real economic activity, we are whacking up petrol tax, which is going to hit the lowest-income households the hardest again—again. This is another regressive tax from the National Government to try to make itself look good.

Given that income from this tax is also going to pay for the Government’s ridiculous roads of national significance, these gold-plated holiday highways, perhaps we could rename this bill the “Customs and Excise (Peace of Mind for Low and Middle Income Families) Amendment Bill”. I am going to explain myself on that. This bill gives peace of mind for low and middle income families, who will now have the satisfaction of knowing that Ministers will be able to get to their holiday homes 7 minutes faster at peak holiday times. So those low-income families will be able to sleep easy, knowing that when the ministerial vehicles are heading up to Northland to the holiday homes at Christmas, they will get there 7 minutes faster. That is fantastic news for low and middle income households in this country.

I am interested in, once again, this Government’s complete obsession with roads, over every other form of transport in this country. I think we could also call this bill the “Customs and Excise (Gisborne Still Doesn’t Have a Rail Line) Amendment Bill”, because it would have been nice to see some of this money go into the rail line between Gisborne and Napier, which was damaged in a weather event last year and would cost a couple of million dollars to fix. All the businesses in Gisborne and Napier and Wairoa want it. We need that rail line. If you actually want real economic activity, then you support transport corridors like rail and like coastal shipping. It would have been nice to see some of the money being sucked out of the pockets of people in Gisborne and Wairoa and Napier go into funding their rail line—an absolutely vital piece of infrastructure. I hear Mr Auchinvole interjecting on me. Would he be happy if his rail line on the West Coast closed? No. It is all right because it is not his rail line—not his rail line. Well, we have a “wall of wood” coming down on the East Coast in the next few years—that “wall of wood” starts to come down. The only way it has to get out of our district is by road and by coastal shipping. People would love to be able to use that rail line.

We have a lot of container transport out of Gisborne, as well. In fact, a big bulk of our produce out of Gisborne goes on containers. The only way they have to get out is by road because we do not have the container capacity at the Gisborne port. There is a mill that is closing down in Wairoa because of the Government’s refusal to fund our rail line. So this should be the “Customs and Excise (Shame on the National Government for Not Supporting the Provinces) Amendment Bill”, or perhaps the “Customs and Excise (More Transport Taxation Not Going to the Provinces) Amendment Bill”, because that party, the great party of provincial New Zealand, has been sucking money out of the provinces from the day it came into Government. It takes them for granted. It figures they are going to vote for it anyway so it will just treat them really badly.

Hon Trevor Mallard: John Hayes says it’s not much.

MOANA MACKEY: Well, that is right. John Hayes says there is not much of that in this bill. John Hayes says that, you know, this bill puts up taxation for people in the provinces for absolutely no reward in return, and that is fine. He says that because he can afford it on his MP’s salary, everyone else in his electorate should be able to afford it.

Hon Trevor Mallard: He has his transport paid for.

MOANA MACKEY: Oh, of course, that is right. MPs’ transport costs are paid for. We can claim them back. I am sure Mr Hayes does. Well, unfortunately, his constituents do not have that ability, and here he is—

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): I move, That the question be now put.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): I have sat here listening to this debate with some astonishment. First of all, there is the lack of debate from the Government in defending its tax increase. But then I was disturbed by the fact that this bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, really needs to change its title. I think the best title that could be given is the “National Party U-turn Bill”. That should be the name of this bill, because I was the Minister of Transport who brought in—[Interruption] Yes, you can moan over there, but at least we had a transport policy, I say to the member. We had a policy that took account of roads and rail and coastal shipping. It was not all about one part of transport, so maybe that member ought to get up to date about what transport is about. I was a Minister of Transport who brought in a regional fuel tax that was permissive, that was allowed to be used by different regions for different projects. It was phased in over a number of years and was to be used only if a local region wanted it, if a region had a particular roading, transport, rail, or shipping project that it wanted to use the regional fuel tax for.

Let us go back to the 2008 election and the campaigning by the National Party against a regional fuel tax. National said it was a terrible thing, because the only place that wanted it—we worked in conjunction with the Auckland Regional Council, not needing an accord, not needing all these meetings and legislation that we have to bring in on housing; it was worked through with the council—wanted a regional fuel tax because it wanted to invest in rail, local rail, in Auckland. You know, we are now looking at 5 years on and that could have been started—well started. It was to be used for rail and some of it was to be used for public transport, other public transport. It was also to be used for a piece of road called the Penlink Toll Road, which was going to help open up the Whangaparāoa Harbour into Silverdale so businesses could develop. It was agreed, it was wanted, and what did the National Party do? It campaigned against it, and then, when it became the Government, the first move by Steven Joyce was to repeal the regional fuel tax, a permissive tax based on local people identifying local needs.

And what do we have here? We have a regional fuel tax that covers the whole of New Zealand. It is based not on what local transport needs are but on what the Government wants the money for. So we now have 9c going right across New Zealand regardless of whether anyone is going to win out of this. I agree with Moana Mackey. Anyone who represents a rural area, a provincial area, will be saying: “Hang on a minute, this money is going for some roads to serve the cities, but what about our road maintenance? What about our public transport? We don’t have any.” This money is going to go across the whole of New Zealand. This bill should be called the “National Party U-turn Bill”. It is such cant that National is putting this bill in the House today, passing it through all its stages when National opposed it so much when it was in Opposition.

You know, National opposed things like the hypothecation of all the money that is taken in from road users to go into transport. National opposed that for a long time, but now it makes out it was one of its policies. You see, Government members are so unsure of themselves when it comes to transport. What we do know is we need to protect our rural and provincial area so that they get a fair suck of the sav. We need to ensure that we invest in rail and that we invest in roads and coastal shipping. What has this Government done? It has put its money into roads and it has now brought in a regional fuel tax across New Zealand. Well, I have to say that this is the “U-turn Bill”. That is what its title ought to be, and the National Party has not got the bottle to stand up and defend this tax, which it opposed only 5 years ago.

MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 61

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

Noes 50

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 9; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Motion agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 71

New Zealand National 59; Green Party 9; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.

Noes 29

New Zealand Labour 21; New Zealand First 7; Independent: Horan.

Clause 1 agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 71

New Zealand National 59; Green Party 9; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.

Noes 29

New Zealand Labour 21; New Zealand First 7; Independent: Horan.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill reported without amendment.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I move, That the report be adopted.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the report be adopted.

Ayes 71

New Zealand National 59; Green Party 9; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.

Noes 29

New Zealand Labour 21; New Zealand First 7; Independent: Horan.

Report adopted.

Third Reading

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Transport): I move, That the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. Increases in petrol excise, combined with the increases in road-user charges, will provide the revenue this country needs to deliver long-overdue improvements to the land transport network. The increases will lift the rate of excise duty on petrol to about 59.5c per litre in 2015. Compared with other developed countries, this rate is low. In fact, even following these increases, New Zealand will have the fifth-lowest rate of petrol tax in the OECD. New Zealand also has one of the few hypothecated schemes in the OECD. In other words, all the money that is taken off the road users is spent on the roads. Maintaining this system ensures that road users throughout the country continue to be the ones who are funding investment and maintenance in the roading network. These increases will allow significant investment in the country’s many important transport projects. I commend this bill to the House.

LOUISE UPSTON (Senior Whip—National): I seek the leave of the House to adjourn at the conclusion of this third reading of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, and forgo the dinner break.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that. Is there any objection? There is objection.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): It has been a long day of debate, but here we are in the third reading of the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. We are very close to the point at which the National Government, supported by the Greens and the Mana Party, will be increasing taxes on hard-working low and middle income New Zealanders. That is an outrage, because it is an absolute contradiction to what the National Party said it was going to do before it came into Government. John Key went up and down New Zealand. He went to every single region. He went to every single city. He stared down the barrel of every single camera he could get in front of, and he told New Zealanders that he was going to bring down taxes, that he was going to bring down costs for everyday, hard-working New Zealanders, but that is not what happened at all.

What happened is that the National Party came into Government and immediately cut taxes for its mates. It immediately cut taxes for its mates. Then it realised that, no, it probably could not do that, so then it immediately reversed the tax cuts for its mates. But then the next year the Government had another go at it, and it cut taxes. It cut the top tax rate—the tax rate that its mates pay, that the wealthy pay.

What the Government has done subsequent to that is that it has found every single possible way of putting up taxes on low and middle income New Zealanders. It started with GST. Remember, before the election—again, does everybody remember before the election—

Hon Trevor Mallard: No ifs, no buts, no maybes.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: No ifs, no buts, no maybes—John Key’s absolute cast-iron guaranteed promise to New Zealand was that National would not be raising GST. He said: “National is not going to be raising GST. National wants to cut taxes, not raise taxes.” He said that the fastest way to eliminate deficits was to get New Zealand back into surplus and get New Zealand growing again.

That surplus is, of course, what this is all about. So what has John Key had to do to get the Government’s books back into surplus? Well, it certainly has not been anything to do with growing the economy. If the economy was growing, if this Government was doing its job, if it was actually working for New Zealanders—if it was not too busy working for Skycity, if it was not too busy working for Warner Bros, if it was not too busy working for anybody else except the New Zealand taxpayer—then this country would be growing again. The Government would not have to resort to putting up GST, increasing the cost of early childhood education, increasing ACC, and increasing fuel excise taxes, just so that it can squeak in that $75 billion Budget surplus that it is predicting. That is what this is about.

Hon Trevor Mallard: $75 billion?

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: It is $75 million.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Only $75 million. What?

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: It is $75 million. Is that 0.1 percent?

Hon Trevor Mallard: No.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: No, no. It is less than that. It is such a tiny, insignificant proportion of the Government’s total revenue that if the Government sneezes out of turn, it could lose that surplus in a moment. It takes just one cock-up from Simon Bridges and it is all over. That is all it would take. That is the real reason why this National Government has put up taxes again for hard-working New Zealanders.

And, of course, we know that the Government is all about the surplus because it has been overcharging Kiwis for ACC for so long that it has finally accepted that it is time to reduce the ACC charges. But did the Government do it a year ago, when its officials told it that it was time to do it? No. Will the Government do it this year? No. When will the Government do it? The Government will do it after it gets to that surplus. It has not even factored it in. It has sort of promised it, hinted at it. Well, maybe that will be another broken promise, if the Government cannot get its books back into shape. If we are not quite at the surplus, maybe those ACC cuts just will not happen, even though New Zealanders are being overcharged for ACC, just like they are now being overcharged for their fuel excise taxes.

If, for a moment, we actually believe the Minister of Transport and say that this is about building transport infrastructure, we know, from his first reading speech and his second reading speech, that this is all about the roads of political significance. He tried to U-turn a bit on that in the Committee stage. He tried to say it was about the whole transport network. But the Minister’s own words in his first reading and second reading speeches were that this was all about funding the roading network, and that, of course, is what the hollow men want. They want all that money that is raised by fuel excise taxes to go into the roads of political significance.

If this has got anything to do with transport infrastructure, that is what it is about. The National Party does not believe in an integrated transport system—

Hon Annette King: Or the provinces.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —or the provinces, as my colleague Annette King says. Our national transport infrastructure involves local roads, it involves railway lines like the Napier to Gisborne railway line, it involves roads like State Highway 3 in Taranaki—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Cycleways.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —it involves cycleways, it involves active transport like walking and cycling in urban areas, it involves public transport like urban rail and buses, and it involves motorways. Motorways are important. Coastal shipping is highly important. Coastal shipping will never be backed by the National Party, because it cannot stick coastal shipping in front of the voters and say: “Look what we did.” Most of the voters do not reside a couple of miles off the coast, so they cannot see that.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Protesters.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Well, the protesters cannot go out there either, Mr Mallard, because National got rid of the protesters too.

What National has done is put all of it into the highways. Look, sometimes highways are the answer. Sometimes you do the analysis of what the need is and what the solution is, and sometimes highways are the answer. It is important to complete the roading networks in Auckland that both the Labour Party and the National Party have supported in the past, but it cannot all be about highways. It is absolutely disingenuous for the Minister to stand up and say that he supports a diverse transport network—a diverse range of infrastructure for the transport network. He has said himself that this is all about the “Holiday Highway”. That is what National’s flagship transport infrastructure programme is all about. That is all it ever wants to talk about.

National members said no when Len Brown came to them with a package for Auckland that included the central city rail link. I wish National members would get it through their heads that it is not a loop; it is a link. It is about opening up the entire rail network in Auckland and making it more effective and more efficient. But the National members say no because they hate rail. They will never support rail, because rail might get in the way of the roads of political significance. That is what National’s modus operandi is when it comes to transport infrastructure.

Voters can rely on the Labour Party to take a sensible, sustainable approach to building an integrated transport network. The resources that we have in the transport budget are limited. We have to be wise about how we use them. We cannot hurl everything at projects that are purely for political gain. We have to do what is right for growth. We have to do what is right to make sure that our communities are connected. We have to do what is right to make sure that our transport infrastructure is environmentally sustainable and that we work towards reducing emissions, not only to ensure that we have less of an impact on our environment but also to improve public health, because that is important. It is a very important component of making sure that New Zealanders are healthy and have a good standard of life, that public health considerations are taken into account when building transport infrastructure.

But the Government has got rid of all of those things. We used to have legislation that said that transport infrastructure had to be affordable, that it had to be effective, that it had to be efficient, that it had to take into account public health, and that it had to take into account the environment, but the Government got rid of all of that. It got rid of the legislation that gets in the way of its roads of political significance. That is what the Government has done.

That was the first aspect, and this bill just backs that up. It got rid of the roadblocks that might somehow get in the way of its road-building programme, and now it is raising taxes on middle and low income New Zealanders to pay for a funding gap that was created by Steven Joyce. He deliberately told the New Zealand Transport Agency to overspend on roads. That is where the funding gap came from. I find it outrageous that this National Government, which tells New Zealand that it is all about lowering taxes, takes a tax and spend approach and a profligate approach to roading, and that it is doing that off the backs of hard-working New Zealanders.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): I move that the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill progress. It is good for the Waikato Expressway. Thank you.

Grant Robertson: Well, Mr Speaker, I presume—

Mr SPEAKER: You are seeking the call, are you not?

Grant Robertson: —I am now speaking to the amended motion that Mr Bennett has put up.

Mr SPEAKER: No, no. The man—[Interruption] Order! Does the member want the call or not?

Grant Robertson: Yes, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: The member has the call.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): It was a very confusing contribution there from a confused member, David Bennett. That is actually the most substantive contribution made by a National backbencher in this debate. I want to start by looking at a process issue that we have. This has been a long session of urgency that has culminated in this particular bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. Most of the legislation that we debated over the last few days before we got to this bill actually did not have much to do with the Budget, at all. The Government was trying to correct mistakes that it had made, and it chucked them into an urgency motion like this. Government members who would rather be somewhere else on a Saturday evening than here might want to reflect on the way in which they are going about making law. If they are going to shove laws through in haste, there will be mistakes. We had the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill before this one, which amends a bill that has not even come into force yet. Then we have the other bill that we passed, which was around carers, which is causing a great deal of consternation in the community. It is a bill that should have gone to a select committee. So here we are at the end of the urgency motion with this bill. I do think Government members need to reflect upon the kind of legislation and the kind of lawmaking that they are going into.

This bill is being opposed by Labour because we believe that it is a core element of the Government’s Budget, which we strongly oppose. I do want to note at this stage our surprise that there are parties that will be voting against the Budget overall but have chosen to vote in favour of this bill. I respect the Green Party’s and Mana party’s principled position around supporting petrol tax increases on the grounds that that should be part of moving towards a different kind of mix of transport solutions in New Zealand. The problem for parties such as the Greens and Mana, which are voting for this, is that that is not what is happening under this bill. If it was, maybe there could be a conversation to be had about whether it is a good idea to support a petrol tax increase as part of moving towards a more sustainable transport programme with different modes of transport, like rail and coastal shipping, being supported. But that is not what is happening in this bill.

This bill is simply, if the Government is to be believed, about funding the National Land Transport Fund, and in particular the roads of national significance. So it is disappointing, I have to say, from a Labour point of view that others who will oppose the Budget as a whole do not realise that this is a clear Budget measure that actually does not contribute to sustainable transport, but in fact simply contributes to the roads of national significance.

It has been quite clear, despite National’s lack of contribution to this debate over the last day or so, that this bill is actually about creating the fiction of a surplus in the Government accounts. That is quite simple. It is quite clear that a petrol tax increase such as this forms part of that strategy. Gerry Brownlee and others have told us too today that that is not true, that we are wrong, but the reality is that if you look at the Budget documents, you will see that the National Government has manufactured that surplus off the back of this petrol tax increase, off the back of ACC levies that are jacked up, and then magically brought down off the back of $1.1 billion worth of corporate tax revenue that just materialises in the Government’s books in the year that it happened to want to get into surplus. We do not believe that that is right. If the Government really thinks it can get a surplus, it needs to be able to justify that on a growing economy, on an economy that is generating jobs, on an economy that is actually going to get people paying more income tax, and therefore giving the Government more revenue. Instead, the Government is relying on a wafer-thin surplus of $75 million based upon overcharging New Zealanders, overtaxing New Zealanders, and not giving New Zealanders a fair go.

As part of this Budget, I do urge those parties that want to oppose the Budget to have a think about where this fits in the overall scope of National’s tax policy. National’s tax policy consistently, since National came in in 2008, has gone against the promises that were made to New Zealanders. John Key made specific promises about the tax burden on middle-class New Zealanders. The reality is that the only tax burden that has been relieved since National came into office is for the top 10 percent of earners. Once again, we see—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Got $1 million.

GRANT ROBERTSON: The calculation that Trevor Mallard and others have made is that John Key managed to get $1 million a year out of this when we looked at his total income. Do you know what the average wage earner got out of that? Twelve bucks a week—$12 a week. That is what the average wage earner in New Zealand got out of the tax cuts that National did in 2010. But beyond those tax cuts, all we have seen are tax increases and increases in charges on ordinary working New Zealanders. The GST increase: no ifs, no buts, no maybes. GST was not going up under National, and then it did.

Then the Government followed that up with ratcheting up ACC charges. We have seen early childhood education fees go up by up to 20 percent for many families. We have seen additional cost of living pressures piling on to New Zealanders, and prescription charges going up. That may seem like a small increase to members on the opposite benches. We heard during the Committee stage debate on this bill that John Hayes said that an average increase of $45 a year as a result of this petrol tax was not much, and did not mean much—was not much. Well, that simply is out of touch. That is out of touch because New Zealanders who are struggling to make ends meet will be sitting there tonight saying: “So this Government says my bill to fill up my car will go up by 3c a litre this year, next year, and the year after.” And that is what this Government is doing, plus the GST. Some people will be lucky enough to claim that back if they can get that out as being a commercial use. But most ordinary New Zealanders will be facing that bill. So if we put all of those things together, there is not a brighter future coming out of this Government; there is a bleaker future for most New Zealanders because they are facing these increased costs from this Government.

I want to return to another matter relating to this as a budgetary measure, and that is to raise the concerns again that have been raised with me by people from Christchurch and the Canterbury region about comments made in recent days by both the Prime Minister and Gerry Brownlee about what is going on in this Budget in relation to Christchurch. It was the Prime Minister who said on television on Campbell Live that New Zealanders across the country will need to go without for Christchurch. Playing that kind of blame game with Christchurch is unacceptable. It is not on for the people of Christchurch—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: It’s not what he said.

GRANT ROBERTSON: It is exactly what he said, Mr Brownlee.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, it’s not what he said.

GRANT ROBERTSON: It is exactly what he said, Mr Brownlee. He went on television and said that. I am more than happy to say this. This is it. It is right here. I have got the article right here. He said that New Zealanders right across the country have to go without so that money can go into Christchurch as a priority. It is right there in black and white, Mr Brownlee. He is very quiet now. Right there. John Key said that in black and white on Campbell Live. Actually, Mr Brownlee, because he has interjected on me, might care to learn that we have Christchurch city councillors saying that they were staggered by that. Another person who lost their home said that she was incensed by Mr Key’s comments—she was incensed by them. Perhaps this was another occasion where he should pick his words more carefully.

Louise Upston: This is relevant how?

GRANT ROBERTSON: Louise Upston says: “Is this relevant now?”. Well, the people of Christchurch and the people of Canterbury say that this is very, very relevant now, Louise Upston—this is very relevant now.

This bill is being opposed by the Labour Opposition. It is part of a Budget that has entirely failed to address what New Zealanders would expect a Budget to address: to actually help grow a strong economy, to actually support exporters and manufacturers, to back people who create jobs, and to actually help create jobs. It has failed to create a fairer society. Promises were made about food in schools, and not kept. Band-aid solutions to poverty were put up. This Budget has completely failed to address the economic and social issues that are facing New Zealanders today. It has been put forward by a Government distracted by its own scandals, focused on vested interests, focused on deals with Skycity and Warner Bros, and not focused on giving a fair deal for New Zealanders. We end this debate with the National Government putting up petrol taxes on hard-working New Zealanders, which is the very thing it said it would not do. It is the very broken promise that it has come to this House time and again and broken—broken once, broken twice, broken three times, and now in its fifth Budget breaking it again. This Government could have come to this House today with a package around increasing petrol taxes that would have gone towards sustainable transport solutions. It has not done that. Parties that are supporting this bill need to think very carefully about where this fits inside the priorities of this Government, which are not for—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Come on, windbag, wind up.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Pardon? Oh, Mr Brownlee’s bored. Mr Brownlee is saying—well, I am sorry to Mr Brownlee, but I have taken calls in this debate because this bill is flawed. This bill is flawed, and it should not pass.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. After Mr Bennett spoke, he appeared to move an amendment. He certainly moved something—

David Bennett: I never did that.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: It was not absolutely clear. It is the normal practice for the Speaker to—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat—[Interruption] Order! The member will resume his seat if he expects to stay for the rest of the debate.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. I am pleased to be the last Green Party speaker on this Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. The Green Party is supporting the bill. Obviously, we have got a different transport vision from the Government’s. We have got concerns about how the fuel excise levy is going to be spent. We think it is logically inconsistent. The declining road transport revenue is going to be fixed by increasing the fuel excise levy and increased borrowing to spend on the roads. Obviously, fewer people are going to be driving. Over numerous calls we have critiqued the Government’s 1960s transport vision. We have proposed our positive solution. But we are not going to belabour the point tonight. Kia ora.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. David Bennett earlier on appeared to move a motion, and it was not entirely—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have ruled on that, and if the member—[Interruption] Order! Would the member resume his seat.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: If the member intends to relitigate the same issue, I will take it very seriously.

Hon ANNETTE KING: I am asking the Speaker a question. Could you please inform the House what your ruling was?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member clearly stumbled on his words. I have accepted that, and we moved on quite some time ago.

MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): I support this bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, and commend it to the House.

Mr SPEAKER: Denis O’Rourke. [Interruption] Order! I have called Denis O’Rourke. [Interruption] Order! Order! It is the members’ own time they are wasting.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): People are getting sick and tired of having petrol tax increases of the size and frequency that this Government has imposed and will impose further by this Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. The effect is that since National took office, the petrol tax will have gone from 42c per litre to 59c per litre, an increase of over 40 percent. That is a massive increase for the people of this country to bear. The magnitude of the proposed increases, to add 9c per litre over 3 years, would need, I believe, much better justification than the Government has so far given, and I am dismayed that so few of the members opposite me have chosen to rise and speak to give that justification. I listened to what the Minister of Transport said, and also did not find anything like adequate justification for the sheer magnitude of the increases that are being proposed. That is the first issue: large fuel tax increases with no real justification, although I suppose we know what the real reason is, and that is to make the Government’s books look good for election purposes next year.

Another issue—why by this time New Zealand has not developed other funding sources—is something that we should really think about much more. Just recently I was interested to read the Auckland transport funding plan. It sets out two options. Both have baskets of different funding sources. One requires more funding from rates, and the other suggests that road pricing systems be introduced. Both, of course, require regional fuel taxes. Stupidly, I think, this Government is now abolishing the legislation allowing regional fuel taxes to be established. I think that is a very serious mistake.

Hon Member: Different bill.

DENIS O’ROURKE: It is a different bill, but that legislation is also going through the House at this time. So the Government’s moves to impose these much larger fuel tax increases are not appropriate, when our largest city is currently looking at the best funding sources for land transport purposes right through to the year 2030 and beyond. The point here is that that city is not just looking at funding for transport initiatives but also wishes to begin to introduce demand management measures, especially to suppress demand at peak times, and we all know what Auckland can get like at peak times.

In Christchurch, of course, where I come from, there were no motorways allowed by successive councils through the built-up area of the central city. That is a debate we had a decade or so ago. The only motorways that we want to see in that city are those that give access to the city from the rest of the country, so that is the motorway to the south, which has just been expanded, and that to the north. I myself was involved, as a member of the city council there, in trying to move the city towards a more sustainable transport system by improving public transport, establishing a bus exchange, encouraging cycling, and all those things. It is sad that this Government does not seem to understand the need for us to move more strongly in that area.

But another issue is that any increased funding should be applied towards a more sustainable transport system, and this country needs substantial measures aimed at just that. It is short-sighted to simply increase fuel taxes at the proposed rate in order to mindlessly build more motorways, only some of which are actually required. The real issue is the need for road pricing and other measures aimed, firstly, at a more sustainable land transport system and, secondly, at a system that incentivises other modes, especially at peak time. I do not see any proposal that the Government has put before us at any time during this term of Parliament that would give me any confidence that that will be done. We should really learn the lessons of other countries where the headlong race to build more road capacity has resulted only in more demand, especially at peak times. The effect is a vicious circle, which costs vast sums in capital and increased maintenance costs as well, not to mention the costs of many externalities.

I also would have to agree with another speaker and express my dismay that the Greens are voting for this bill—voting for huge fuel tax increases that will burden the ordinary people of this country, without any assurance that it will move us towards a more sustainable transport system. I might have it wrong, but I thought the Greens were in favour of a more sustainable transport system. I have not heard them say anything so far to give me any understanding of why they would support this particular increase in fuel taxes, when it will not do anything to move us towards a more sustainable transport system.

New Zealand First is focused on a more sustainable transport system. We want more from the system than just roads. We accept that there are road improvements that are needed, but we want much more than that. We want a fair, well-thought-out funding system, and we want a modern rail system integrated with good road, shipping, and other transport systems. We want to develop these with Kiwi expertise rather than buying it from overseas. We want to see the electrification of the New Zealand rail system using New Zealand workers, providing jobs in this country. We do not want to see Hillside railway workshops close. They would be able to provide us with rolling stock, providing more jobs for people in this country. We want more economic and environmentally sustainable transport systems.

We will vote against this bill, fundamentally because it is just a money-grab and is not part of a genuine move towards the modern transport system that this country needs. It is really sad to hear the members opposite whose only contribution has been caterwauling from the backbenches, and none of whom have bothered to rise and take a genuine part in this debate. That, I think, not just is very sad but actually means that the National Party simply does not care about the welfare of the people in this country who will have to pay those fuel taxes without getting in return any genuine move towards a sustainable transport system for New Zealand. That is pretty pathetic. New Zealand First will certainly vote against the bill, and we will be very saddened if it proceeds any further.

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): We should pass this bill, the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. Thank you.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I think the thing that I can say for that last speech from Chris Auchinvole is that it was more consistent and coherent than David Bennett’s speech before, and did not attempt to move an amendment in the way that Mr Bennett’s did. It is not exactly high praise, but the fact that the member did better than David Bennett is noted by all other members in the House.

Being a Wellington member is sometimes a disadvantage. When international visitors are coming into town, we are the ones, especially Ministers, who are called to go to the airport and do various things. But being a Wellington member and having a very good chance of getting home to Wainuiōmata after the dinner break, in time to see Piri Weepu playing for the Blues—a 7.35 start—is something that is good. At least I will be doing it with the excise rates and the duty on motor spirits being at the level they are now.

Hon Tau Henare: It’s all about Trevor.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: There goes Tau Henare again. He appears to be able to speak or stand, but not both at the same time. He appears to be able to speak and stand, but he cannot take up his role as a member of Parliament and get on his hind legs and make a speech. He makes a lot of racket.

I do want to get back to the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, and I want to make a comment to the Greens. I want to make a comment to the Greens and say to them that if there had been a decent transport package coming out of this, then the Labour Party would have contemplated supporting it. But if there was a decent transport package coming out of this, the National Party would not have got its surplus. That is the point. If there had been spending measures on public transport or on cycleways or on railways or on coastal shipping coming from this bill, then the National Government would have failed to achieve the surplus that it has been trumpeting. So the Greens, in supporting this—[Interruption]—are part of a rort. I agree with the National member opposite. They are part of a rort whereby they are pretending that there is a surplus, when, in fact, we know there is not a surplus at all.

Members opposite appear to be under instructions from people. They are under instructions from some of their funders, in order to put this—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No. The member cannot—

Hon Annette King: Point of order—

Mr SPEAKER: No, I am on my feet. Thank you. The member cannot allude to members being under instructions to do something, suggesting that they are receiving money for that. If the member would just tidy up his speech, I would be grateful for it.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I was not suggesting that they are receiving money; they are puppets on strings without the money.

Dr Cam Calder: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would like to draw to the attention of Mr Mallard that he raised a point of order some years ago when I referred to Geppetto being behind the Labour Party—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not a helpful point of order.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I think the point of order at the time, going back, referred to the increasing size of the nose of the Prime Minister, if the member was getting that right. That is something that is now often reflected in the angle of the collar of the Minister of Finance. Every time the Minister of Finance tells a whopper, his collar pops out from underneath his jacket. It is something that we have been noticing from this side of the House over a period of time, and to say that this money is for roading is a whopper. It is a whopper. It is not going to be spent on roading. If it was going to be spent on roading, that would be budgeted for in the estimates. It is not budgeted for in the estimates. If it was budgeted for in the estimates, what would be happening is that the surplus, which the Prime Minister claims is a real one, would disappear. So what is happening? The Government is collecting money that it knows it cannot spend if there is to be a surplus.

I think the third reading is a time when we reflect back on the debate, and we reflect back on the contributions, or lack of contributions on the part of the members of the National Party. There are a number of questions—a number of questions—that were asked but not answered. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member is a very robust debater, but he should not have to put up with that level of interjection.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Thank you for your protection—not that I am commenting on your ruling, of course. I would not comment on your ruling.

I want to refer in particular to the unanswered question relating to the very last clause, clause 7(2), which revokes new regulation 6A. Regulation 6A comes in. It is revoked in 2015 as part of the bill. The question I ask is whether—

Iain Lees-Galloway: Mike, do you want fries with that?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Mike Sabin, I am told, has got a very prized police officers’ card, which gets him discounts at KFC. Apparently—

Hon Annette King: What?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I think it is an outrage that any police officer, but especially a retired police officer, should attempt to get—

Mike Sabin: Say it outside of the House, Trevor.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I do not believe what Tau Henare says about the member. I do not believe what Tau Henare says about the member, but if what Tau Henare says is true, it would be an absolute outrage for any member of Parliament to impersonate a police officer in order to get a discount in a KFC. We see the effects of it on the member, but I believe the member. I think he probably does pay full price, but—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member. The time has come for the dinner break. The House is suspended until I resume the Chair at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Mr SPEAKER: Prior to the dinner break the Hon Trevor Mallard was speaking, and he has 2 minutes remaining if he desires to use it.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Only 2 minutes? That is outrageous, after I was so badly interrupted by those points of order.

We are speaking to the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill. This is a bill that taxes poor people in order to support rich people. It is a bill that involves a wealth transfer from provincial New Zealand to Auckland. It is something that the Labour Party is very concerned about. We are very surprised at the Green Party’s decision to vote for it. As we have said previously, if there had been a decent transport package that involved funding going to public transport, with this level of excise increase, we would have supported it. But what the Green Party has ended up doing is voting for the Government on a Budget measure, and I am very, very surprised.

Dr CAM CALDER (National): I commend the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill to the House.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Welcome back from the dinner break, everybody. The cutaways on Parliament TV may show faces on the other side of the House being a little bit forlorn and a bit angry about being here, but I think they secretly want to be here. Secretly they are quite thankful that they are here at Parliament, because they are the ones who have not gone back to their communities yet. Instead, they are going to stick their motorists with a 9c increase on their petrol excise. They are the ones who would basically prefer—[Interruption] It is 10.5c, sorry, because of the GST. I stand corrected. It is not a 9c increase at all; it is 10.5c. These are the members who are quite happy that they are here and not having to front up to the people in their communities to say that when they fill up their petrol tanks as of 1 July this year, it will be another 3c per litre, and on 1 July next year it will be another 3c, and another 3c in the year beyond that. These members might think that they are the unlucky ones, but these are very happy MPs because they are not going back to their home electorates and having to front up to their constituents. They may look unhappy about being here—they are the last ones left, the ones who may have missed their flights for the night—but they are actually very happy to be here. They are happy to be here because they are not having to front up to their constituents to tell them that this is a Budget measure of broken promises.

I just want to remind the party over there of what its leader, John Key, said in 2008. He said that National was not going to be raising GST—wrong. It did. He said that National wanted to cut taxes, not raise taxes—wrong. This is a measure that will increase taxes by 3c per litre each year over the next 3 years for every Kiwi who is using their car or their truck. What have we heard about this? We have heard one member, the MP from Wairarapa, John Hayes, say that the $45 more that taxpayers will have to pay to fill up their cars is not much money—it is not much money. Well, it may not be much money to Mr Hayes, but it certainly is a lot of money to his constituents. A lot of those people will be filling up their tanks and paying $45 more a year, on top of the $40 more in prescription charges that this Government has lumped on them, and also the GST that this Government has lumped on them. This has been a Budget measure of broken promises.

I did not really get a chance to speak in the title and commencement clauses debate on this Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill, and I just want to offer something up. I want to offer up an alternative title, and that is the “Customs and Excise (Budget Advice Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill”. When people out in our communities are struggling to pay something, this is a Government that makes them go out and get budget advice. They have to go and get budget advice before the Government will help them. I would suggest that this Government—which has set out on a blind mission to try to build these roads of national significance, and has realised that it cannot afford it—get some budget advice, then the people of New Zealand would not have to pay an extra 3c a litre for their petrol each year over the next 3 years.

Of all the bills that we have seen in relation to the Budget under this urgency motion, we have actually had a decent regulatory impact statement for this bill. In it, very helpfully, it points out why the Government has had to do this. I will quote from this document: “Forecasts of revenue and expenditure for the National Land Transport Fund in November 2012 indicated a total revenue shortfall of around $1.6 billion over the next five years. The shortfall is due to the timing of the Roads of National Significance programme, which is identified as a key priority in the [Government policy statement] 2012.” In English, for those people who are watching—and I am sure they are thrilled to be watching Parliament TV at this time of the night—that means that the Government promised something, could not afford it, and is now asking the people of New Zealand to stump up the cash to make sure it can do it.

I want to give you one example of a road of national significance that the Government is pushing in my area, and that is the Kapiti Expressway. Let us look at the value for money of that expressway. Last year there was a leaked report, and there have been quite a few leaks—quite a few leaks—out of this Government. That report said that the engineering consultants thought that the half-billion-dollar motorway project had a benefit-cost ratio of 0.2—0.2. So for every dollar the Government spent, the economic benefit of that is 20c. I am sure there are a few people over there who can count beans, but in my very simple maths that is not a very good investment. In fact, that would be an awful investment. To make it even worse, this Government is spending $515 million on this expressway—

Andrew Little: How much?

KRIS FAAFOI: —$515 million—and the return on that investment that it will generate over the next 30 years is $118 million. We could have saved the Government a considerable amount of money if it had just stuck to the plan that the people of Kāpiti and the Labour Government had implemented at the end of its term.

Interestingly enough, so did Mr Nathan Guy, the MP for Ōtaki. Late in 2009 he was all go for the Western Link Road, which was the original plan for the Kāpiti coast. The locals were on board, the mayor was on board, Nathan Guy was on board—we were loving it. The Kāpiti coast was looking forward to it, until Steven Joyce turned up—until Steven Joyce turned up. I would like to read a press release from the Hon Mr Nathan Guy, because he was delighted to see the Western Link Road get started. He said: “This is fantastic news for Kapiti because it will connect up our communities. This new road and bridge will significantly ease traffic congestion on the existing State Highway”. [Interruption] Here he is—here he is. I have got your press release here, Nathan. I am just reading it out for the benefit of you: “This is a fantastic”—just so I can be more precise, it is actually dated 20 February 2009—“news for Kapiti because it will connect up our communities. This new road and bridge will significantly ease traffic congestion on the existing State Highway where we have about 24,000 vehicles movements a day.” Then it goes on to say: “The Transport Minister Mr Steve Joyce will be briefed on this project when he visits the Otaki electorate next month to understand how important it is.”

Well, when Steven Joyce arrived, Nathan Guy got rolled. He got rolled, and in comes the Kapiti Expressway. Instead of a local link road that all the residents of Kāpiti want, Nathan Guy got rolled, and what the Kāpiti coast gets is a four-lane motorway through the beautiful and picturesque Kāpiti coast. I will look to table that press release if Mr Guy has forgotten what his position was in February 2009. [Interruption] If they do not like it, the truth hurts. They are quite happy about that at 7.10 on a Saturday night.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Would the National members please give Mr Faafoi a reasonable chance. [Interruption] Order!

KRIS FAAFOI: This was going to be a split call, but I think I will take the whole 10 minutes.

Where was I before I was so rudely interrupted? This Budget measure is all about creating the illusion that this Government has a surplus. It is only a wafer-thin surplus. It is only a wafer-thin surplus of $75 million in 2 years’ time. So when this Government says it is balancing the books, it is balancing the books by a thousand cuts—nipping and tucking. It is not enough to have a bit of a nip and tuck when people go to the petrol station and fill up with petrol; they are having a nip and tuck at the Ministry for the Environment and they are having a nip and tuck at the police.

Actually, I will spend a couple of minutes on the police, because what is this Government doing to the police? It is running them into the ground. There have been huge budget cuts—especially around traffic cops; huge budget cuts—to run our police force into the ground, and this is a Government that said it backs our police on law and order. It absolutely is doing the opposite. In the last 8 months, the budget pressure that the Government has put our police force under has seen 219 front-line police officers leave their jobs. If anyone wants to see the latest Ten One, have a look at it: 56 front-line police officers resigned in the last month—56. That figure is only going to get worse.

This is an awful Budget measure. It is there to try to create the illusion that the Government has got a surplus—a wafer-thin surplus at that. It is an awful Budget measure of breaking promises around lifting GST and saying that it will lower taxes. Instead, it increased taxes. With that, I wish the members opposite a very lovely evening in Wellington.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): We have had 2 days of debate and not one constructive argument from the Opposition. This has been a good couple of days for the Government. In the immortal words of Frodo Baggins, here we are at the end of all things. I look forward to returning to Auckland tonight—tonight—with my colleagues. Here we are at the end of all things. I commend the Customs and Excise (Budget Measures—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Customs and Excise (Budget Measure—Motor Spirits) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 67

New Zealand National 59; Green Party 5; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1.

Noes 26

New Zealand Labour 19; New Zealand First 6; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a third time.

The House adjourned at 7.14 p.m. (Saturday)