Tuesday, 3 September 2013

Tuesday, 3 September 2013

Tuesday, 3 September 2013

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Citizens Initiated Referenda

Sales of State-owned Assets

Mr SPEAKER: Pursuant to section 21 of the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act 1993, I hereby inform the House that a petition has been received from Roy Reid seeking a referendum on the question: “Do you support the Government selling up to 49 percent of Meridian Energy, Mighty River Power, Genesis Power, Solid Energy, and Air New Zealand?”. The petition has been certified as correct by the Clerk of the House under section 18 of the Act.

Motions

Syria, Internal Conflict—Use of Chemical Weapons

Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I seek leave of the House to move without notice and without debate a motion condemning the use of poisonous gas in Syria, contrary to international law.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is none.

Hon PHIL GOFF: I move, That this House condemns the use of poisonous gas in Syria in contravention of international law, which has resulted in the indiscriminate and horrific deaths of hundreds of civilians, including children, and calls on all members of the United Nations Security Council to agree on action that will bring those responsible to account, result in a United Nations - supervised destruction of all chemical weapons in that country, and stop the supply to the warring parties of weapons that are fuelling that conflict.

Motion agreed to.

Questions for Oral Answer

Questions to Ministers

State-owned Assets, Sales—Estimated Revenue, Costs, and Public Support

1. Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement regarding the estimated proceeds of asset sales that “I just want to emphasise that it is not our best guess; it’s just a guess”?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Yes. I think the member is referring to a discussion over Treasury estimates required by law of the proceeds of the Government’s share offer programme, where it picked the mid-point in a range of $5 billion to $7 billion, and it picked that mid-point simply because it was the mid-point. That is what I was referring to. It was not possible then to be more precise, because there were so many variables—for instance, how much of the companies would be sold, how much people would be willing to pay for them, and, potentially, variable market conditions several years ahead of when that estimate was made.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Why is he still using his “guess” of $5 billion to $7 billion to be raised from asset sales, as noted in Budget 2013, given that since the estimate for his “guess” was made, his Government has driven Solid Energy into the ground, rendering it unfit for sale, and many analysts say that the value of Meridian Energy could be up to $2 billion less than it was a couple of years ago, when he made his “guess”?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: A couple of years ago there was an estimate made of $5 billion to $7 billion, and, as I pointed out before, the reason for that range was the unpredictability of the market interest in the shares and commercial risks to the companies, because since that time, for instance, there is now a clear understanding that electricity demand in New Zealand has stopped rising and may well be falling at a time when supply generation is growing. That is why we have stuck with that estimate. If and when there is better information, then Treasury will be required by statute to take that information into account in the half-year update due in December.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Given that, by his own admission, he is guessing how much money will be raised from asset sales, and given that 2 weeks ago he said he did not know how much it would cost to sell Meridian Energy assets through the buy now, pay later scheme, does he understand why 86 percent of the public has absolutely no interest in purchasing Meridian Energy shares?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I simply disagree with the member’s assertions. One thing we do know is that when we sold Mighty River Power, the proceeds to the Crown were $1.7 billion. That money is now safely in the Crown bank account, and the Government is pursuing its plan to invest that cash in other public assets. The Government does not apologise for banking significant proceeds from the sale of these companies. If the member disagrees with the policy, he should promise to buy them back. The money is in the bank; he can promise to buy the shares back.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Does he agree with the Prime Minister that the assets sales petition of 327,224 signatures that was certified by the Clerk of the House today is “dodgy” and was “signed by children and tourists”; if so, why does he think attacking the democratic rights and integrity of 327,000-plus New Zealanders is acceptable or appropriate for him and his Government?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think the Prime Minister was attacking the reliability of the Greens’ signature-gathering process, which was financed by taxpayers’ money. In terms of democratic rights, this Government showed full respect for New Zealanders’ democratic rights by campaigning all election year in 2011 on this policy, and we have followed that policy precisely. As the Leader of the Opposition at the time said, the 2011 election was a referendum on asset sales. This Government was elected and we proceeded with the policy.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Will his Government accept the Labour Party’s offer to hold the asset sales referendum alongside the next general election, thereby substantially reducing the cost, with one condition: that he immediately halt the asset sales programme?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is not untypical of the Labour Party to offer something that is not within its power; its potential leaders are doing that all over the country right now. I understand the Greens want the referendum petition acted on much more quickly than that, and I suggest the Greens and Labour try to sort out just when they do want that referendum to happen.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Why has his Government criticised the estimated $9 million cost of the referendum, which amounts to roughly 6 percent of the $150 million he and his Government have spent on asset sales to date, including on such items as brokerage fees, advertising, consultancy costs, bonus shares, legal aid, court costs, interest-free loans to investors, and increased director fees and chief executive officer salaries, or is it because once the referendum votes are counted, he and his Government will have lost any moral authority they believed they had in respect of the sale of State-owned assets?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: No, we do not agree with that. The Government’s moral authority to move on with the asset sales hinged on the fact that even the Opposition said that the 2011 election was a referendum on asset sales. We outlined our policies in detail and campaigned on them transparently. It was the dominant issue of that election campaign, and we have proceeded with the sales. At the end of the sales process, tens of thousands of New Zealanders will have had the opportunity to invest in quality assets, the Government will have billions of dollars less debt, and we will have better-performing companies as a result of it.

Question No. 2 to Minister

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would like to refer you and question No. 2 to Standing Order 377(1)(b). I ask you to rule that the tail part of this question is an argument or an expression of opinion and, therefore, should not be allowed.

Mr SPEAKER: I thank the member for his point. The question has been accepted. The question was authenticated at the time that it was accepted. I will be watching carefully the answers that flow from the question to make sure that the Minister responds in a way for which he has ministerial responsibility.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Given that ruling, I would now like to refer you to Standing Order 377(1)(a) and ask you—as you have ruled that this has been authenticated and is, therefore, a statement of fact—whether, in fact, it is necessary in order to render the question intelligible, and I ask you to rule that it is certainly not.

Mr SPEAKER: Well, I have ruled that the question is in order. The member can refer to any number of Standing Orders that he wants to. The question has been authenticated. The question has been accepted. The question is, therefore, ruled in order. I will wait now, carefully listening to the answers.

Economic Programme—Policies, Results, and Alternative Approaches

2. JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany) to the Minister of Finance: What steps is the Government taking to responsibly manage its finances and deliver better public services, following fast-rising government spending of the mid-2000s?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): We have followed some fairly basic rules that any prudent household or organisation would follow. We make sure that spending commitments are costed and that there are funds available to pay for those spending commitments, at the same time as balancing the need to support New Zealand families through uncertain times. The Government is on track for surplus next year. We have been able to deliver better results in health, education, welfare, and justice at the same time as reducing a very large surplus due in part to the Christchurch earthquake but also due in part to the policies of the previous Government. We intend to continue to deliver better results, in many cases for less funding.

Jami-Lee Ross: What are the benefits for New Zealand families of the Government’s responsible economic and fiscal management?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The main benefit for New Zealand families has been that they have had a degree of security about their income support and their jobs through some of the more difficult times that this economy has endured in the last 30 years. The cost of living is rising at less than 1 percent a year—a 14-year low. The export sector has been growing in the last 2 or 3 years, despite a high dollar. New Zealand’s 2.5 percent growth in the last year puts us among the faster-growing economies in the Western World. Business and consumer confidence is at, or near, a multi-year high. The Government’s disciplined spending is taking pressure off exchange rates and interest rates.

Jami-Lee Ross: How does New Zealand’s current economic performance compare with the position that the Government inherited in 2008?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government inherited the triple problems of domestic recession, which began early in 2008; the global financial crisis; and the unfunded spending commitments of the previous Government, which saw public spending increase by 50 percent between 2003 and 2008. The New Zealand public is being treated to a display of all the attitudes that led to that, in listening to the Labour leadership contest—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order!

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think you may have come to the same conclusion that I had, and that is that the member is offending under Speaker’s ruling 176/1.

Mr SPEAKER: Sorry, could the member repeat which—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Speaker’s ruling 176/1.

Mr SPEAKER: I thank the member for referring to a very helpful Speaker’s ruling. The Minister, at the very tail end of his answer, was moving into an area that I do not accept was his responsibility, and I certainly called him to order at that stage.

Jami-Lee Ross: I will try this one, Mr Speaker. What alternative policies has he seen, and what are the differences between those alternatives and the approach being taken by this Government?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government has set out on a plan to protect the most vulnerable through difficult times, to return to surplus, and to build a more competitive economy. Our policies have been directed at enabling businesses, in particular, to make the decision to invest another dollar, employ another person, and pay a better wage. There are alternative approaches that involve reckless spending promises with no credible plan to fund them, and policy proposals where the Government uses its regulatory powers as well as its cheque book to buy votes. That is the approach we saw through the mid-2000s. But to give credit where it is due, the Labour leadership candidates are promising to spend—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The Minister has no responsibility for that.

Hon David Parker: After Labour ran nine Budget surpluses and reduced net Government debt from 18 percent of GDP to zero, did he say in 2008, when the global financial crisis and recession hit: “This is the rainy day that Government has been saving up for.”?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I did say that because we were presented with a pre-election update showing 10 years of deficits ahead of us and ever-rising public debt—that is, public debt that never stopped increasing—in those forecasts. I am pleased to say that we have turned it round, but I am worried to think that the Labour leadership candidates think that they could do it all again.

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Hon David Parker: Why does he repeatedly blame the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes for his record borrowing of more than $50 billion in the last 5 years, and if the Government’s spending track was left in such bad shape, how was it that he could responsibly cut taxes?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, it is just hard to know where to start there. The fact is that the tax packages were revenue-neutral—

Hon David Parker: 40 percent to the top 10 percent.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: No, they were revenue-neutral, and I am proud to say that we are the only developed country that has been able to increase GST and cut income taxes. No one else has actually been able to pull that off. In respect of the Government finances, well, as I said to the member, we were presented with 10 years of ever-growing deficits and ever-growing debt and with public services that were a complete shambles. We are proud to have been able to fix up that mess and do better.

Hon David Parker: Why is it that he finds corporate welfare so easy to justify, yet the idea of supporting the working New Zealanders, who keep this country going, through decent labour laws and fair wages seems to get him into a cold sweat and in need of a lie-down?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member is simply wrong. This Government has ensured, with regard to the people whom he is referring to—the people who go to work every day, work hard, and pay their taxes—first, that they get taxed at a fair rate, not a ridiculously high rate; secondly, that when they pay their tax, they actually get public services that work; and, thirdly, that they get an economy managed in a way that they can have some security that when they go back to work the next day, they will still have a job. We are very proud of our record in supporting working people in New Zealand through tough times.

Businesses—Financial Support from Government

3. Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) to the Minister of Finance: What is the difference between a “one-off incentive payment” and a subsidy?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): One of the differences is that a one-off incentive payment happens once. I think the member is referring to a payment made to New Zealand Aluminium Smelters, and, as I have suggested to him before, he should go to Invercargill and tell the 800 people directly employed and the 3,000 people depending on it that the Government made a mistake.

Hon David Parker: Why does he not realise that he undermines his own credibility as Minister of Finance when he stands up and he pretends that the $30 million payment was not a subsidy?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: We have not pretended that it is anything other than what it was, and that was a payment to New Zealand Aluminium Smelters to ensure that the contract was signed. What I cannot understand is that Labour is in Northland promising subsidies to everybody, and in Southland saying that keeping the smelter open is a bad idea.

Hon David Parker: Does he believe that the electricity market is competitive; if so, did his Government’s interference by providing a $30 million taxpayer subsidy to the smelter have the effect of holding up power prices for other consumers?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: In answer to the first question, yes. New Zealand would be the only country in the world retreating from a competitive market if it followed Labour’s policy. The answer to the second question is that no one can quite tell.

Hon David Parker: Why is his Government interfering in the broadband market for the benefit of Chorus at the cost of its competitors and Kiwi consumers, or does he think that corporate welfare to Chorus, Skycity, and the smelter does not need to be justified; it just needs a cute name?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: No, I do not agree with the member. The reason that the Government is in the broadband market—and it does have its challenges, that is for sure—is that we formed the view, and, actually, I think the Labour Party formed the same view, that ultra-fast broadband infrastructure would not arrive in New Zealand for every household for about 10 years. So we took action, which we believe has been effective and focused, to bring forward the roll-out and implementation of ultra-fast broadband. If the member disagrees with that, then he is free to go out and rip it up, in the same way that he is free to buy back the assets that the Government sold, but I notice he is not promising that.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Was it part of the Skycity deal that Skycity would be protected from appearing before a select committee to give its version of the development of the contract?

Mr SPEAKER: The Hon Bill English, in as far as he has ministerial responsibility.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I do not know what the member is talking about.

Security Intelligence Service—Legality of Operations

4. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Is he satisfied that the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service has always operated lawfully under his leadership?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister) on behalf of the Prime Minister: As far as I am aware, yes.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If that is the case, why was there a raid in July of last year on the Fiji Democracy and Freedom Movement in New Zealand, an organisation promoting, by lawful and peaceful means, the restoration of democracy in Fiji?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member is referring to an operational matter, and, consistent with the practice of all New Zealand Prime Ministers, on the Prime Minister’s behalf I am not going to answer that question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: As the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service, is it not a fact that the SIS acted on the pretext of a fictitious assassination plot against the Fiji military regime, yet claimed there was credible evidence of the plot?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I do not intend to answer that question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: As the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service, and as the Prime Minister, can he let us know why the SIS claimed credible evidence of an assassination plot when the New Zealand Government later backed down when sued in the High Court for matters arising from the raid?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: In respect of SIS operations, I will not answer that question, and any issues related to the court will be a matter of public record.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: As the Prime Minister and Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service, why, a week before the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Murray McCully, visited Fiji, did his Government engage in an illegal raid at the behest of the dictatorial regime in Fiji, if it was not an attempt to ingratiate itself with the Fiji military regime?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I will not be answering a question on any operational matter, but—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am not asking about what happened; I am asking “Did it happen?”. I have sat here for three supplementary questions, and he has been allowed to get away with saying he is not going to answer to this Parliament or the country. It is the nature of the question that either affords him shelter or not, and I do not believe that I have couched those questions in such a way that he can escape by saying “I refuse to answer anybody.”

Mr SPEAKER: It is indeed the nature of the question, and the issue is around the New Zealand SIS, and the Minister, in this case answering on behalf of the Prime Minister, has said that he does not think it is in the public interest to answer that question. That is a satisfactory answer as far as I am concerned. I certainly accept it is not a satisfactory answer from the member’s point of view, but if that is the way the Minister chooses to answer the question, that is his choice.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Are you seriously telling the House and the country that if there is an illegal raid by an agency of the State, then a Minister can get up and say—and I can prove that it was an illegal raid—“Well, I’m not answering at all.”? That cannot be the way this democracy has been conducted in the past, and I hope it is not the way it is going to be done in the future.

Mr SPEAKER: That is exactly what I am saying to the member. In this particular case it is for the Minister to accept responsibility for the answer that he or she wants to give, and in this case the Minister has chosen to say it is not in the public interest to talk about an operational matter concerning the New Zealand SIS.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Well, is it a fresh point of order?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Yes, it is a fresh point of order, because the essence of the matter is that I am not asking how the operation was conducted—who did it, when it happened, and on what day, and in what form. I am asking “Did it happen?”. That is not an operational matter—it goes to the fact.

Mr SPEAKER: For the final time—because that is not a fresh point of order; that is simply relitigating the earlier points of order, which I have answered—the Minister can choose how he decides to answer the question. In this case the Minister has, on all occasions, said he does not want to answer any further detail, because he does not consider it to be in the public interest. That is the prerogative of the Minister, and that is the course he has taken.

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

Mr SPEAKER: Before I start, can I also clarify that this is, again, a fresh point of order and not any attempt to relitigate the point of order I have just ruled on.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Well, it goes back, I think, three supplementary—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Is it a fresh point of order or not?

Hon Trevor Mallard: It does ask you to look at your ruling in the context of the answer that was given by the Minister acting on behalf of the Prime Minister to, I think, the second supplementary question from the Rt Hon Winston Peters.

Mr SPEAKER: Well, I will accept that point of order. It is, in fact, asking me to reconsider an earlier ruling. I will certainly be looking very, very closely at the questions that were asked and the answers that were given, but at this stage I am not changing my ruling.

Business Research and Development—Internships and Funding

5. Dr CAM CALDER (National) to the Minister of Science and Innovation: What progress has been made in the Government’s plan to provide internships for students in New Zealand’s research and development intensive industries?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Science and Innovation): In Budget 2013 the Government provided funding for the research and development student grants scheme to give science, technology, engineering, and design students the opportunity to work with some of New Zealand’s top commercial research and development facilities. Today I am pleased to announce to the House that $3.5 million has been allocated by Callaghan Innovation to successful research and development - active businesses, enabling them to employ nearly 300 undergraduate and postgraduate students. The student grants will give New Zealand’s future innovators a head start in their careers by enabling them to develop their technical skills working in a commercial research environment. It will also be beneficial for industry by helping to speed up businesses’ research and development work, thanks to the contribution of bright young minds with the latest knowledge and a fresh perspective.

Dr Cam Calder: What are some of the projects that have been funded through the student research and development grants scheme?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: High-calibre proposals were submitted by some of our most innovative high-tech companies, as well as a great number of ambitious new start-ups. One hundred and fifty companies will benefit from the programme this year. It is great to see those companies recognising the value of innovation and the need to provide career development opportunities for our future innovators. Some of the funded projects include developing a pest control tool kit and applying biodegradable plastics to advanced trapping systems, market-driven product development for the health sector, and improving road surfaces through the application of novel materials.

Dr Cam Calder: What other steps is the Government taking to boost science and innovation in New Zealand?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: This Government recognises that science and innovation are the key drivers of economic growth and are making New Zealand businesses more internationally competitive. We have increased total funding for science, innovation, and research across government to $1.36 billion in the current financial year, after $1.24 billion last year and just over $1 billion 4 years ago. In Budget 2013 we allocated an additional $75 million over 4 years for business research and development grants, and $31 million over 4 years for repayable grants for start-up businesses. And, of course, we have established Callaghan Innovation, our new high-tech headquarters for business research and development.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Does the funding for the internships include funding for air travel for interns who will work on projects previously done at Ruakura Research Centre or at KiwiStar Optics, which are now going to be done in Melbourne and Sydney?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I think the member does not understand the way the research and development student grants work, so let me take him through it. The students are working in private sector companies that are already established and operating their own businesses, doing research and development. You get a young undergraduate or postgraduate at a university—let us say for example, at the University of Auckland’s engineering school—who wants to get out and actually do some work in a business environment before they qualify and before they graduate. They can go along and work at this business and build business relationships, and get an understanding of what it is like to work in the real world. I think all of those are great things.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It was a very specific question about whether there would be airfares available for interns to work with companies—KiwiStar Optics being an example—that were previously based—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! It sort of was, but if the Minister could help by focusing on the essence of the question, which was whether the funding includes airfares.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I do not believe that the funding does include airfares, and I would point out again to the member that I thought he already understood that KiwiStar Optics was not a private sector firm in that regard, and, therefore, it answered the question. I think the premise of his question is simply incorrect as well.

State-owned Assets, Sales—Public Support and Purpose

6. Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) to the Minister for State Owned Enterprises: Will the Government suspend its asset sales programme until a referendum on the issue has been held, given the Clerk of the House has certified that 327,000 New Zealanders, or more than 10 percent of voters, have signed a petition triggering that referendum?

Hon TONY RYALL (Minister for State Owned Enterprises): No.

Dr Russel Norman: Does he agree with John Key’s comments of 25 June 2008 in support of the public’s right to have citizens initiated referenda like this one, where John Key said: “I actually have respect for the New Zealand public’s right to express their views …”, and went on to say that a Prime Minister who opposes that is “arrogantly out of touch with New Zealanders”?

Hon TONY RYALL: Of course I would have to agree with the Prime Minister.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: You always do.

Hon TONY RYALL: I always do. But I am not able to necessarily confirm the quote that the member has given to the House.

Dr Russel Norman: Can he confirm that if the Government proceeds with its privatisation programme before the referendum is held, this will mark the first time a Government has actively implemented a policy that is the subject of a valid citizens initiated referendum petition without giving the public a chance to vote in the referendum?

Hon TONY RYALL: The Government has already begun to implement its policy in respect of the mixed-ownership model. We have already sold 49 percent of Mighty River Power. As a result of that, we have $1.7 billion of cash, which is earmarked for important public services like Christchurch Hospital. I would draw the member’s attention to the fact that even though 87 percent of New Zealanders who voted in the anti-smacking referendum opposed that legislation, that member opposite said that people should ignore that referendum.

Dr Russel Norman: Is he aware that contrary to that referendum, which actually happened after the policy was implemented, this Government has an opportunity to suspend the sale of Meridian Energy and the other energy companies while waiting for the people of New Zealand to give their opinion on the issue of asset sales through a referendum, which has now been initiated?

Hon TONY RYALL: I do not agree with that member’s statements, because this Government announced in January 2011 its proposals around the mixed-ownership model. They were then detailed in the Budget of 2011, which I think was in May. The model was then the centrepiece of the 2011 general election. The Leader of the Opposition at the time described the election as a referendum on asset sales in New Zealand, and the National Party received by far the largest number of votes of any party. The Labour Party received the lowest number of votes that it had ever received in a general election in recent times. It is clear from that election that this Government has the support to implement its policy. If we were not implementing our promises, the Opposition would be complaining.

Dr Russel Norman: Well, with regard to the Minister’s answer, which addresses the question of mandate, I believe, is he aware that 51 percent of voters in the last election voted for parties that are opposed to the asset sales programme, and that on every poll that has been done on the issue since, more than 60 percent of New Zealand voters have opposed the asset—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am going to ask the member to repeat that question, because I had trouble hearing it.

Dr Russel Norman: In light of the Minister’s answer, which goes to the question of mandate, is the Minister aware that at the last election 51 percent of votes cast were cast in favour of parties that opposed asset sales, and that since that election every poll has shown that more than 60 percent of New Zealanders are opposed to his asset sales programme; hence, why will he not test his mandate by putting it to a referendum?

Hon TONY RYALL: Actually, what matters is that more people voted to enable National to form a Government than to enable any other single party to form a Government. What the member needs to know is that once you are in Government, you are expected to honour the pledges of your campaign. We had one of the highest results in our party’s history, and we are proceeding to implement our policies. They are important because we need that money in order to invest in important social assets like the Christchurch Hospital rebuild, and important schools through the 21st century schooling project. The money is vital to that social investment and is, actually, of greater benefit to New Zealanders.

Dr Russel Norman: Will the Government accept the Green Party’s offer, along with Labour’s from earlier in question time, to allow the referendum to be delayed until the next election in exchange for the Government suspending the asset sales until we have that debate at the next election, alongside the referendum, where the people of New Zealand will get to decide whether the asset sales proceed?

Hon TONY RYALL: No, because the Government wants to proceed with its programme. It is fundamental to two important areas. One is that it helps New Zealand control debt, and the second is that it provides us with the resources to invest in important social infrastructure: Christchurch Hospital, roading projects, the 21st century schools project, and the justice precinct in Christchurch. They are important investments that will benefit New Zealanders, and that is why we are determined to keep on with our programme.

Dr Russel Norman: Is the Minister aware of Treasury’s projection that the Government’s operating balance is worse off by about $100 million a year as a result of asset sales; and, hence, why is the Government determined to go ahead with these asset sales in spite of the blowout in the cost—well over $100 million—the ongoing loss of net profits, overwhelming public opposition to it, and the failure of the Mighty River Power float, which attracted fewer than half of the Minister’s predicted retail investors?

Hon TONY RYALL: I really would dismiss that member’s characterisation of a number of issues. The Mighty River Power sale has actually been quite successful. The Government has $1.7 billion in cash and 113,000 shareholders, despite the economic sabotage of the members opposite. The important reason why we are doing this is that it not only helps control debt but it provides us with the resources to invest in important social infrastructure like Christchurch Hospital. If that member is opposed to the Christchurch Hospital rebuild, I invite him to go to Christchurch and tell them that. I invite him to also say why he is opposed to investing $1 billion in 21st century schools. That is of real benefit to New Zealand families.

Aged Care, Residential—Malvina Major Retirement Village

7. Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) to the Associate Minister of Health: What specific “corrective actions” will the Malvina Major Retirement Village be required to undertake, following the recent Ministry of Health spot audit?

Hon JO GOODHEW (Associate Minister of Health): Ryman Healthcare Ltd, the owner of the Malvina Major Retirement Village, is required, after an unannounced inspection on 30 July this year, to undertake corrective actions to ensure improvement and compliance with the Health and disability services (general) Standards in the following areas: management and documentation of complaints, quality and risk management, processes for infection prevention and control, assessment of residents, care planning specific to individual residents, and the overall standard of care provided to residents. These corrective actions must be achieved within the specified time frames set out in the provider’s certification schedule. The first due date for corrective actions is 5 September 2013, but the provider may implement corrective actions ahead of the required time frame. The Ministry of Health and the Capital and Coast District Health Board are monitoring progress. The full list and detail of corrective actions are contained in a six-page document, which can be found on the Ministry of Health’s website.

Hon Peter Dunne: How will the actions that have been agreed to be monitored to ensure that they are actually achieved within the time frames that have been specified in the audit that the Minister referred to?

Hon JO GOODHEW: The Ministry of Health will be closely involved in monitoring the changes required of Ryman Healthcare in light of this distressing case. The distressing events were found by inspection to have been substantiated. Steps to ensure improvements and a time frame for change have been made clear, and the district health board will work with Ryman Healthcare to ensure their implementation. The ministry also keeps a close eye on progress. If the corrective actions are not achieved, the ministry may take action under the Health and Disability Services (Safety) Act 2001.

Hon Peter Dunne: In light of this distressing case, will the Ministry of Health be making any changes to its overall auditing procedures to ensure that these types of situations can be prevented from recurring in future instances?

Hon JO GOODHEW: Since National came to Government back in 2008, we have taken a number of initiatives, including the publication of audit summaries online, introduction of spot audits, and third-party accreditation of auditors. We are also rolling out a comprehensive assessment tool. It would be fair to say that despite all of that, when a certification audit happens, and midway between that—the audits can in fact be given a 1-year certification, right up to a 4-year certification; that will give you an idea of how many actions need to be changed—there is a spot audit as well. Despite that, things can still go wrong in rest homes. Therefore, we very much rely on the public to contact the Ministry of Health or their district health board if they are concerned about anything, because something could go wrong the day after an audit is conducted. So this is very much a partnership between the public and the audit and regulatory environment.

Primary Industries, Ministry—Response to Incidents and Performance

8. Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman) to the Minister for Primary Industries: Does he stand by all his statements?

Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries): Yes.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Does he stand by his statement on Television New Zealand’s Q+A on Sunday that “the budget is up this year by $35 million for MPI. At the end of the day, the merger has helped the MPI to respond in this particular situation, because you’ve got a lot more technical resources there available, whether it’s scientists, whether it’s compliance officers, whether it’s policy guys.”?

Hon NATHAN GUY: Yes.

Hon Damien O’Connor: I seek leave to table a paper from the Parliamentary Library that outlines departmental output expenses from 2008-09 to 2013-14. It identifies a $26 million cut to the budget.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that table prepared by the library. Is there any objection to that course of action? There is objection.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My colleague Dr Nick Smith said that the member was misrepresenting the Parliamentary Library. He is not allowed to accuse a member of the House of misrepresenting anyone.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not a point of order.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Point of order—sorry. Supplementary question, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Supplementary question, the Hon Damien O’Connor.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I apologise. I sometimes cannot hear the member over there. Thank God. Why did the Minister choose to caution me last week when he must have known full well that his ministry had failed to certify meat from the Alliance Group meatworks in Pukeuri for export to China?

Hon NATHAN GUY: To put the record straight, the Alliance Group plant in Pukeuri had two separate problems. The first in early July related to it incorrectly exporting a small part of consignment to China from facilities that were not listed by the Chinese authorities. That is the first point. The second, later problem arose due to Alliance Group not labelling product in accordance with Chinese requirements. In both cases the Ministry for Primary Industries had to suspend certification. The plant has now been processed through an audit, and the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Chinese authorities are now working on lifting the export listing suspension. I fully appreciate the difficult situation the workers have found themselves in.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Will workers from Alliance Group’s Pukeuri plant be able to claim compensation for lost wages from his ministry stuff-up and the 3½ weeks it took the company and his ministry to sort it out?

Hon NATHAN GUY: If the member was listening, I have just told him that this was an error as a result of the Alliance Group plant.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Has the merger at the Ministry for Primary Industries led to confusion as to what is fish and what is livestock, or might it, in fact, be that either the samples provided to EcoGene were incorrect or that the technology available to it to correctly differentiate sheep DNA from fish DNA was simply not adequate?

Hon NATHAN GUY: The DNA testing was conclusive: three out of four samples conclusively indicated that the material was from a sheep leg. The fourth test was done using poor quality material and came up with a false result. If the member wants to walk outside and tell everyone that fish have legs, I welcome him doing that.

Hon Damien O’Connor: I seek leave to table two reports. The first from EcoGene identified that five—not four—samples were actually provided to it and that it identified four of them—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Leave is sought to table the EcoGene report. Is there any objection? There is none.

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

Hon Damien O’Connor: I seek leave to table another report from the Ministry for Primary Industries that is an assessment of the limb found in palm kernel expeller—

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that Ministry for Primary Industries report. Is there any objection? [Interruption] Order! I am putting the leave as to whether people want that document tabled. It is a Ministry for Primary Industries analysis. Is there any objection to that being tabled? No, there is not.

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

Hon Damien O’Connor: Has the failure of his ministry to differentiate between—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! A bit of silence from both sides of the House would be helpful to the Hon Damien O’Connor to—[Interruption] Order!

Hon Damien O’Connor: Has the failure—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have just cautioned members to be quiet and that includes the Hon Clayton Cosgrove, who continues to interject. If he does that again, I will be asking him to leave the Chamber for the rest of the day.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My colleague responded to Anne Tolley and you did not admonish her.

Mr SPEAKER: I did not hear that, but I heard Clayton Cosgrove and—[Interruption] Well, I can tell the member now that his interjecting while I am on my feet will get the same sort of reaction that the Hon Clayton Cosgrove has lined himself up for.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Has the failure of his ministry to differentiate between a sheep and a fish led to his new-found oversight by the Hon Steven Joyce MP, BSc in zoology, or is this oversight, in fact, a result of his incompetence in growing and protecting New Zealand’s primary industries?

Hon NATHAN GUY: If the member wants to argue with independent science from EcoGene—DNA science—well, I welcome him to step out there and do that, because he is wrong.

Education System—Public Achievement Information and Other Data

9. SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki) to the Minister of Education: What recent announcements has she made on how the education system is performing at a local level?

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): New Zealand has a world-class education system, and one of the ingredients to keep it that way is a data-rich environment that enables parents and communities to work with their schools to ensure all our children succeed. It is important to make public achievement information as meaningful and as helpful as possible. For that reason, we have already released national and regional education profiles, and, today, school-by-school data, which is being released for a second time. In addition, I am releasing for the first time education profiles at territorial authority level. Together, this data tells us how our education system is performing at national, regional, and local levels. This information allows parents and communities to have a fuller picture of how their children are doing at school and provides valuable data that helps to engage the entire community in how to support our early childhood educators and schools to be effective in raising achievement. Five out of five children and young people succeeding in education is in the interests of all New Zealanders, and we can all work together to ensure that.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The question that was asked by Mr Simon O’Connor was: “What recent announcements …”. The Minister has had tons of time to announce whatever those announcements were or to repeat them, but not to go on and on, trying to sell them, which was not part of the question. That is the issue here.

Mr SPEAKER: The member makes a reasonable point. It was a very long answer. I was about to get to my feet, as the member did, to say that it was long enough.

Simon O’Connor: How does the education data at the regional council and territorial authority level contribute to lifting achievement in education?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: This Government has an unrelenting focus on raising achievement for all children and young people. Making public achievement information available at different levels is about rallying people around a focus on raising achievement. Lifting this achievement must not be left as the sole responsibility of individual teachers in schools; we must all make a contribution.

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

Hon HEKIA PARATA: That includes—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I apologise to the Minister. There is a point of order from the Hon Trevor Mallard.

Hon Trevor Mallard: The question was about data. We have now gone, I think, about half a minute into an answer, and data has not been mentioned.

Mr SPEAKER: I am certainly hopeful that the question is about to be answered. Would the Hon Hekia Parata please continue with her answer.

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Yes. Public achievement information includes a range of data at local, regional, and national level, and it is important that that is available so that schools alone are not left with the responsibility, but so that community leaders, business owners, and parents can also help. For some this will be challenging, as our pictures of achievement do not show uniform success everywhere. The driver for providing this information is to empower all of us to take action to raise achievement for five out of five of our children and young people.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I know I complained about the answer to the question sort of going on at the beginning, but I am now going to ask whether the Minister can answer the question again so that there is actually an answer to the question that was asked. I know—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have heard enough from the member. I am calling for a supplementary question from Simon O’Connor. But in the meantime, the point has some validity, so if the member wants to sharpen up and think of a supplementary question, I am going to give him one.

Hon Trevor Mallard: A spare one?

Mr SPEAKER: Yes, a spare one.

Simon O’Connor: Why is the ministry releasing financial information about individual schools?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: This Government has increased its investment in Vote Education every year for the past 5 years. Schools received $5.8 billion this year—

Hon Annette King: That’s not the question asked.

Hon HEKIA PARATA: —an increase of 30 percent, which is financial information. Parents also contribute further to the education of their children and young people through donations. In 2010 and 2011, the amount schools—

Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Hon HEKIA PARATA: —received in donations—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I have a point of order. I am sorry to interrupt the Minister.

Hon David Parker: It is a very similar one to those raised by the Rt Hon Winston Peters and the Hon Trevor Mallard. The answer is not addressing the question that was asked by her member of her.

Mr SPEAKER: Well, to be honest, I think that as the member rose to his feet we were starting to get an answer to the question. Could the Minister please continue with the last part of her answer.

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Yes. I wanted to confirm to the House that the Government is releasing financial information about schools because it reflects the overall investment this Government has made—including, in this year, $5.8 billion—and, in addition, from parents and donations, about 1.8 percent of that total amount.

Hon Trevor Mallard: What is the difference between data and information?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Data is individual bytes that when put together create an information picture. Data and information can be used in different ways in different contexts, but unless the person receiving them understands them, it is quite difficult to make that distinction.

District Health Boards—Resourcing and Service Delivery, and Hawke’s Bay District Health Board

10. Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by all his promises in health?

Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): Within contexts, and this includes providing more front-line staff, including 2,500 more nurses across our district health boards compared with 2008, and investing an average extra $500 million a year over the past 5 years into the New Zealand public health service.

Hon Annette King: Does he recall saying just a few minutes ago that in Government you are expected to honour the pledges of your campaign; if so, why has he not honoured the pledge to continue Labour’s health spending growth track made by him after the global financial crisis had started and after the pre-election fiscal update, and does his broken pledge account for district health boards now cutting important health services?

Hon TONY RYALL: I think the member will find that Labour’s spending path was certainly replicated in the 2009 Budget, when we had a $750 million increase. But what the member has to remember is that this party pledged to continue investing strongly in the New Zealand public health service and, we have had $500 million a year, on average, during the most difficult economic times.

Hon Annette King: I seek leave to table health policy part 1, which says that they will continue funding the current health spending—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The source of the document?

Hon Annette King: This is the National Party’s pledge that the Minister seems to have forgotten.

Mr SPEAKER: No. No, if members want to look that up, they can certainly find it.

Hon Annette King: Is he aware that the chief executive officer of Hawke’s Bay District Health Board said last week that his board is getting its lowest funding for “many years”, it is going to be “a tough year”, and the standard of some services will have to be adjusted, and access to some modified, with $16 million to be shaved off this year’s budget to meet the Minister’s expectations; and is that what he promised the people of Hawke’s Bay in 2008 and 2011?

Hon TONY RYALL: What I promised the people of Hawke’s Bay in 2008 is that I would restore their democratically elected health board that was summarily dismissed by the Labour Party health spokesman whom that member is actively campaigning against presently.

Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question had nothing to do with sacking a district health board in 2008.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I invite the member to go back. She asked a long question and the Minister has chosen to quite adequately address the second part of the question that was asked.

Hon Annette King: Is he aware that the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board intends to cut nearly $700,000 in funding for Māori health over the next financial year in a region where Māori have the lowest life expectancy at birth of any health districts, where the prevalence of diabetes is twice that of all New Zealand enrolees, where the Māori mortality rate is twice that of non-Māori, and serious mental health illness is 25 percent higher than the national average; and is that what he promised his coalition party the Māori Party?

Hon TONY RYALL: What I know is that the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board has received an extra $9 million in this year’s Budget; that is, $73 million under this Government. And what I can say is that the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board’s Māori immunisation rate is now, I think, the same as the Pākehā immunisation rate. That was something that that member could never achieve. The work that they are doing on heart and diabetes checks is a significant lift in the level of service being provided to Māori there, and there is a very significant improvement in smoking cessation rates amongst Māori in Hawke’s Bay. So we are putting more money in. We are delivering better services for Māori and all other New Zealanders, and in particular the people of Hawke’s Bay.

Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. If you were listening carefully to the question, I asked whether he was aware that nearly $700,000 was being cut out—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will resume her seat. It was a very long-winded question and I think the member adequately addressed parts of it.

Hon Annette King: Is he aware that Hawke’s—

Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would ask the Speaker to reflect on his tone when he dresses down an Opposition member—he calls them long-winded. When the Minister of Education gave repeatedly long answers, he did not use language that was nearly as critical of Government members. I would ask that there be a bit of equality shown across the sides.

Mr SPEAKER: I will certainly endeavour to do that, but I remind members, and I have attempted on many occasions to assist members, that, when they ask supplementary questions, if they make them short and pithy, then they and I can assist to get them a far better quality answer.

Hon Annette King: I seek leave to table a fact sheet from Ngati Porou Hauora 2013 that sets out all the appalling health statistics that I have just said in a question that the Minister then went on to totally ignore in his answer.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that Ngati Porou health facts sheet. Is there any objection to that being tabled? It can be so tabled.

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

Hon Annette King: Is he aware that the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board intends to cut over $1 million from mental health funding this financial year to local service providers and out-of-region services, and $795,000 from the disability support budget, which is funding that is provided to community organisations?

Hon TONY RYALL: The information that I have been provided about mental health spending in the Hawke’s Bay is, in fact, that the district health board does expect to spend more in terms of the mental health ring fence this year compared with the previous year. Of course, it will be moving its funding within its various spending priorities, but what I can assure the member of is that we have given it more money this year. The Hawke’s Bay District Health Board’s budget is the highest it has ever been, and I have got to say that I think it is providing very good services for the people of Hawke’s Bay. It has been backed up by significant capital investments that we are making in terms of improved mental health services and the Wairoa integrated family health centre.

Hon Annette King: I seek leave to table page 35 of the district annual plan of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board showing that $1 million is to be cut from mental health funding.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that particular page, page 35. Is there any objection to it being tabled? There appears to be none. It can be tabled.

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

Television, Switch-over to Digital—Progress

11. KATRINA SHANKS (National) to the Minister of Broadcasting: What progress has been made on the regional rollout of the digital switchover for New Zealand television viewers?

Hon CRAIG FOSS (Minister of Broadcasting): Excellent progress has been made on the digital switch-over, which is a key part of the innovation work stream of our Business Growth Agenda. Hawke’s Bay and the West Coast were the first regions to go digital in September 2012, and the rest of the South Island followed in April this year. The lower North Island, including Taranaki and the Gisborne district, goes digital on 29 September 2013—just 26 days away—and the rest of the North Island follows on 1 December. Out of the 1.2 million homes in the North Island with TVs, it looks like there are about only 87,000 homes that are yet to go digital.

Katrina Shanks: How can people find out more information on whether they need to go digital?

Hon CRAIG FOSS: The good news is that—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption]

Hon CRAIG FOSS: May I start again, Mr Speaker?

Mr SPEAKER: You may.

Hon CRAIG FOSS: The good news is that viewers watching this programme right now, live, have already gone digital, but I urge people to check that their friends, families, and neighbours are sorted also. Anyone needing information about going digital, go check out and talk to some of the representatives in the community, or go to goingdigital.co.nz or call 0800 838 800.

Syria, Internal Conflict—Government Response

12. Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) to the Prime Minister: Will he support a parliamentary debate and vote on any Government decision to give moral support for a United States - led military strike on Syria; if not, why not?

Hon TIM GROSER (Minister of Trade) on behalf of the Prime Minister: I will repeat what the Prime Minister said yesterday. Should action be taken against Syria, it is the intention of the Government that a ministerial statement will be given to the House at the appropriate time. As the member knows, that would then allow the House and the member to make any statement that they wish to make.

Dr Kennedy Graham: What issue would justify a democratic parliamentary vote, if not one in which New Zealand gives support to an unauthorised military strike by the US?

Hon TIM GROSER: In this evolving situation I would not wish to speculate on what kind of action might or might not be justified.

Dr Kennedy Graham: Does the Prime Minister agree that it is essential to wait for the evidence supplied to the United Nations Security Council by the UN weapons inspectors on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, given the debacle over evidence supplied by the US back in 2003 over Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction?

Hon TIM GROSER: Clearly, the weapons inspectors’ reports will be a crucial ingredient in the matter. All of our focus at the moment is to try to work with the Security Council to try to get the Security Council to come together and take decisive action. That is the immediate focus.

Dr Kennedy Graham: Does the Prime Minister recognise that the legal justification that the US is preparing for a strike, pertaining to the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, is designed to apply only to the protection of civilians, not for punitive strikes?

Hon TIM GROSER: All of our attention is on trying to ensure that the UN Security Council comes together at this hour of great need. There are a number of legal questions, about which I think it would be highly irresponsible to enter into speculative discussion.

Urgent Debates Declined

Dairy Products, Whey Protein—Contamination Incident and Test Results

Mr SPEAKER: I have received a letter from the Hon Damien O’Connor seeking to debate under Standing Order 386 the incorrect finding from AgResearch that indicated that Clostridium botulinum was found in whey protein concentrate shipments manufactured by Fonterra. This is a particular case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility. The Ministry for Primary Industries provided the results of additional testing it had commissioned last Wednesday. A debate on the initial finding was held on 6 August. A number of inquiries are under way and the announcement that the bacteria found in the whey protein concentrate was not Clostridium botulinum will not affect them. There will be other opportunities to consider the matter when the results of the inquiries are known. I do not consider I would be justified in setting aside the business of the House again today. The application is therefore declined.

Appointments

Representation Commission

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): I move, That, pursuant to section 28(2)(e) of the Electoral Act 1993, this House nominate Hon Roger Morrison Sowry, of Paraparaumu, to represent the Government, and Hon Peter Colin Hodgson, of Port Chalmers, to represent the Opposition, to be appointed as members of the Representation Commission.

Further, I move, That, pursuant to section 28(3)(b) of the Electoral Act 1993, for the purposes of determining the boundaries of the Maori electoral districts, this House nominate Daniel Takutaimoana Te Kanawa, of Hamilton, to represent the Government, and Whetūmārama Weratā, of Lower Hutt, to represent the Opposition, to be appointed as members of the Representation Commission.

The Representation Commission is the body charged under the Electoral Act 1993 with determining the number of electoral districts in New Zealand and fixing the boundaries for those electorates. Section 28(2)(e) of the Electoral Act requires two persons to be nominated as members of the commission. These persons are appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council on the nomination of the House of Representatives to represent the Government and the parliamentary Opposition respectively. Section 28(3)(b) of the Electoral Act requires that for the purposes of determining the boundaries of the Māori electoral districts, two additional persons are to be appointed as members of the commission. These persons are appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council on the nomination of the House of Representatives to represent the Government and the parliamentary Opposition.

Mr Roger Sowry has been nominated to represent the Government. He was a member of Parliament from 1990 to 2005. He was chief whip from 1994 to 1996, and he chaired the Health Committee from 1993 to 1996. Following the 1996 election, he was appointed to Cabinet as the Minister of Social Welfare, a position he held for 3 years. He also served as Associate Minister of Health from 1996 to 1998, and was Leader of the House from 1998 to 1999. He retired from Parliament in 2005 and took up a position of chief executive of Arthritis New Zealand. In 2008 he joined the Government relations consultancy firm Saunders Unsworth.

Mr Pete Hodgson has been nominated to represent the Opposition parties represented in the House. Mr Hodgson retired from Parliament in 2011, after 21 years as the member of Parliament for Dunedin North. At various times within that period, he held the ministerial portfolios of economic development, tertiary education, research, science and technology, health, transport, commerce, land information, statistics, energy, and fisheries and forestry. He is currently an associate at Tuia Group, and is the chairperson of the Australian and New Zealand Council for the Care of Animals in Research and Teaching.

Mr Daniel Te Kanawa has been nominated to represent the Government for the purposes of determining the boundaries of the Māori electoral districts. He is the chief executive of Te Tuhono Māori Affiliation Service and has been a trustee of the Ngāti Maniapoto Marae Pact Trust, representing the Ōpārure Marae, since 1981. He is also a current trustee of the Ngāti Maniapoto Māori Trust Board and the Pūniu Land Trust. Mr Te Kanawa holds a New Zealand Certificate in Draughting (Civil Engineering). His tribal affiliations are Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Kinohaku, Ngāti Rōrā, Ngāti Uekaha, Ngāti Paretekawa, and Ngāti Apakura.

Mrs Whetū Weretā has been nominated to represent the Opposition parties represented in the House for the purposes of determining the boundaries of the Māori electoral districts. Mrs Weretā has served four previous terms on the Representation Commission. She has been a consultant since 1995 and has a background in research. Mrs Weretā was a member of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System that recommended New Zealand adopt mixed-member proportional representation, or MMP, for elections. In 1994 she was appointed to the four-person Māori Committee to the Law Commission, which was set up to review, reform, and develop the law of New Zealand. Mrs Weretā has served four previous terms on the commission. She belongs to the Ngāi Te Rangi and Ngāti Ranginui iwi.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East): On behalf of the Labour Opposition, I would like to support the motions that the Hon Judith Collins has moved in the House, to support the nominations, as outlined by her, for the Representation Commission. The Hon Roger Sowry and the Hon Pete Hodgson have something in common with each other: they were both elected to Parliament the same year that I was, in 1990. In fact, my former colleague Pete Hodgson was previously one of the last remaining members of the “Backbench Seven”, which, of course, I am now the last remaining member of. I will be leaving Parliament in the next 3 weeks, after my valedictory, when I will be retiring from Parliament altogether.

It is actually quite nice to be able to stand in this House, in one of the few remaining contributions that I will be making, to congratulate both Roger Sowry and Pete Hodgson on their appointment to the commission and to express my confidence in their ability to undertake what is a very important role. Of course, it is made more important in my home town of Christchurch because of the significant movements in population. That will impact on the boundaries, but it may not impact, actually, on the number of seats in this House as it might otherwise do, because, of course, it is the total population of the South Island, not just those as represented in the cluster of seats that sit around Christchurch. I know of my own experience of running into former constituents and them starting off a conversation by saying: “Thank you so much for how much help your office has given us, as we have resolved all of our issues with the Earthquake Commission and the insurance.” Then I go on to say: “Oh, that’s fine. Where are you settled now?”. They say Rolleston, which is in the Selwyn electorate, and—

Hon Ruth Dyson: Rangiora.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL: —and Rangiora, which is in the Waimakariri electorate, and, in actual fact, is in two different council boundaries as well, so that is going to have an impact on a certain rating base that I might have an interest in at some stage in the near future.

The work—and I am not making light of the work—is really, really important, because establishing boundaries is not just about looking for those natural boundaries or strong boundaries like streets, rivers, and things that separate communities, but it is actually looking for the separation between what are collective communities of interest. Our own councils will be going through that process through our own version of a representation review that we will undertake in the next 3 years ourselves. I certainly am very pleased to be able to support Roger Sowry, who I also enjoyed spending time on select committees with, and I know that he will add his weight of knowledge and experience to this role, along with Pete Hodgson.

I acknowledge too the need to have separate appointees to the Representation Commission to look at the Māori electoral districts and speak in favour of the nomination of Daniel Te Kanawa, of Hamilton, and Whetū Weretā, of Lower Hutt, as members of the Representation Commission. I certainly wish them well in their deliberations. It will be very interesting when the first results of the census become available and we get those actual numbers, which will be the basis for establishing what those new boundaries will be.

HOLLY WALKER (Green): As we have heard, the task facing the Representation Commission, which is to confirm the names and boundaries of the electorates, is a very important one for our democracy because it will determine exactly which electorates are available for candidates to stand for in the 2014 general election and, indeed, for the next 5 years or until the next census is held. Perhaps more important, in doing so it will determine whether the lines that are drawn around the electorates—which will always, to a certain extent, be arbitrary lines—are drawn around natural constituencies and communities of interest or whether they artificially bisect those natural groupings. It is very important that the Representation Commission is adequately informed and experienced to go about this task sensitively and carefully; otherwise, the result could well be unfavourable.

The task facing the Representation Commission is particularly important, as we have heard, because this will be the first time the boundaries have been reviewed since the devastating Canterbury earthquakes. It is likely that this will result in significant boundary change in Christchurch. As my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel has said, communities have changed markedly in Christchurch since the quakes, so it will be vital that the current distribution of communities of interest in Christchurch is understood and taken into account by the commission while it makes its decisions. And with this in mind it is somewhat concerning to the Green Party that none of the nominees are residents of Christchurch who could bring that most important local knowledge and perspective to the deliberations. We must therefore simply hope that the commission procures this important local perspective and advice from elsewhere.

This particular commission also faces an important task because of the delay of the census following the quakes, which has pushed the time line for determining the names and boundaries of the electorates out further than would ideally have been desirable. We know that the commission is expected to release the draft boundary changes in November of this year, but they will not be confirmed until April of next year, which is only 6 months or so before the likely date of the next election. So it does not leave a lot of time for parties to do their selection processes. It is very important that the commission works in a timely manner and communicates early with the public and with political parties about the likely changes, so that these can be planned for.

Having noted, therefore, the importance of the task that they face, the Green Party expects that the candidates put forward in these motions, Roger Sowry, Pete Hodgson, Daniel Te Kanawa, and Whetūmārama Weretā, will take the task seriously and go about it diligently. They certainly appear to be experienced and well qualified for the task. However, the Green Party will be opposing these motions, as we have done in the past, not because of any objection to these particular nominees but because of the outdated model that sits behind their appointment. It is a very first-past-the-post model, which requires appointees to represent the Government or the Opposition. It is a very two party - orientated model and it does not take into account the realities of our multiparty MMP system. We have eight parties and one independent member represented in the 50th Parliament, all of whom are key stakeholders in any decision about this matter—about the number, nature, and boundaries of the electorates they will contest. It is an outmoded model for the political appointees to the commission to come only from the two so-called major parties. Parliament has changed and become more representative since the introduction of MMP, and we in the Green Party consider that a body called the Representation Commission should, at the very least, in itself be representative. Thank you.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): Nothing that I wish to say on behalf of New Zealand First is going to be, I hope, interpreted as a reflection on the current nominations, but the public of this country must have confidence that the procedures by which the Representation Commission is put together are fully representative. Two decades after, or 20 years after, a referendum in this country to decide that we would move to a new political system called MMP, you have got some people in this House who think we are still there, under the first-past-the-post system. Twenty years on, they have not learnt a thing. I know some of them look like they have been here for two decades or more, but the fact is their thinking—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Look in the mirror.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh really? Ha, ha! Listen, grandad, I would not shout to somebody, if I were you, to look in the mirror. That is not a very smart thing to say, at all—not if your name is Nick Smith, anyway. But back to my points. I have been unfairly detoured here. The fact is that two decades on we have a Minister of Justice, who is a member of the Law Society, who walks into this House and says: “I’ve got a great idea. We’ve got a nomination and so has the Labour Party, and that’s it.”—“We have a nomination and so has the Labour Party, and that’s it.” All the rest of the other parties do not matter at all.

It gets even worse. I can recall when New Zealand First had all of the Māori seats—not just some of them; all of them—and the National Party nominated the person to go as the Māori representative on the commission. Do you remember that? You have got to be pretty arrogant when one party has got all the Māori seats and you have got none, and yet you put up your own friendly Māori on the Electoral Commission.

Here we are, in September 2013, and the Minister of Justice, who has painted herself as a new-age and modern lady, comes in with this dusted-off model from the last century. I know it is like her ideology, but it is a dusty old, off-the-back-of-the-van model that is not democratic at all. We want to know why it is that the Government has not had the decency to ask other parties for their views. At least the Labour Party had the decency to say: “We’ve got our own nominees. What do you think?”. I mean, it is not total consultation, is it? But at least it is a start—at least it is a start. Those members even wrote to us, but not the National Party—the born to rulers; those who think that they have got a right to rule but do not know what noblesse oblige means. They have got no understanding of culture and taste and history. They are still back doing it.

So I say to the Minister, why not now withdraw this, start the process over again, and properly consult all the political parties in this country? Imagine that it is 7.30 on election night, and you are strung out to dry because some other party holds the political power and the balance of the future. Imagine, then, what you would think. Well, I know what those members would do. They would be all cosy, saying: “Can we help? What would you like to know? Can we help? Do you want to be consulted?”. Oh yes, there would be an outflow of friendship and cooperation, the likes of which you see only when they realise how desperate their position is.

Denis O’Rourke: They’re going to get desperate.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well, doing this is just putting off the inevitable. It just means that other parties find it an absolute affront, when this could be a mutual choice of people. So, rather than have a “Judith-mander”, why do we not have some democracy?

A party vote was called for on the question, That, pursuant to section 28(2)(e) of the Electoral Act 1993, this House nominate Hon Roger Morrison Sowry, of Paraparaumu, to represent the Government, and Hon Peter Colin Hodgson, of Port Chalmers, to represent the Opposition, to be appointed as members of the Representation Commission, and, That, pursuant to section 28(3)(b) of the Electoral Act 1993, for the purposes of determining the boundaries of the Maori electoral districts, this House nominate Daniel Takutaimoana Te Kanawa, of Hamilton, to represent the Government, and Whetūmārama Weratā, of Lower Hutt to represent the Opposition, to be appointed as members of the Representation Commission.

Ayes 99

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.

Noes 21

Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7.

Motions agreed to.

Bills

Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Preliminary provisions, housing accords, and special housing areas

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Tēnā koe, Mr Chairman. Let me make some opening comments as we set off on Part 1 of this bill, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. I want to make it very clear from the beginning that Labour supports the notion of housing accords. We support the idea of special housing areas. There is a housing affordability crisis, not only in Auckland but in many of our other bigger cities, particularly the high-growth parts of the country. It is a crisis that is having huge economic and social effects on the people of New Zealand. The Kiwi dream of homeownership is slipping further and further out of reach under this Government. A generation of New Zealanders now finds it nigh on impossible to purchase their own home. A generation ago, that was considered to be part of the Kiwi birthright. Now the numbers, the very high rate of homeownership, which we treasured for so long and were so proud of, are plummeting. In the last 5 years we have seen precious little action or seriousness by this Government in addressing that problem.

As well as the dream of homeownership slipping further out of reach, the housing crisis has had a massive negative effect on the health and well-being of the poorest and the most vulnerable New Zealanders, who are driven into the private rental market in huge numbers, where they live, more often than not, crowded into substandard housing. It is not uncommon, particularly in the centres where housing is at its most unaffordable, for families to be living cheek by jowl, squashed into the spare rooms of their friends, neighbours, and relations, and for people to be living in caravan parks in a quality of accommodation that no one in this country in this day and age should have to inhabit. Children—too many of them—are being hospitalised for preventable respiratory diseases because they are living in cold and damp homes. A major factor for that relative social hardship is an overall housing crisis that has driven prices up beyond the reach of ordinary Kiwis, that has denied so many people a shot at homeownership, and that has had the knock-on effect of pushing New Zealanders further and further down the chain to face often substandard, inadequate housing. It is high time that the Government did something serious about this housing crisis.

But I am sorry to say that this bill, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, does not measure up to any kind of benchmark for a serious, concerted, well-thought-through response to the housing crisis. What it is is the fast tracking of the elements of the Auckland Unitary Plan that will bring in more greenfield land than would otherwise be the case, and some fast-track consenting to deliver special housing areas. As I said, Labour is not against the idea. There is a housing crisis. In Auckland, because of the historical legacy of the old metropolitan urban limits that are now about to be replaced by the rural urban boundary in the Auckland Unitary Plan, there is a land supply problem that has been responsible for driving up land prices and, as a knock-on effect, driving up residential property prices. This bill is premised on the notion that if you open up extra greenfield land, somehow it will magically flow through into affordability. In the course of this debate, we will unpick the shonky thinking and poor logic that underpins this bill.

As my colleague Jacinda Ardern commented in the Social Services Committee when the Hon Nick Smith came along as part of the estimates and was quizzed about his housing policies, the Minister explained his thinking that underpins this bill, and it is essentially that—

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Housing): Let us firstly get some facts about housing affordability on the record at the beginning of this Committee stage debate. The first thing we know is that during Labour’s 9 years, house prices went up by 100 percent and incomes went up by 40 percent. So housing affordability went backwards by 60 percent under Labour’s reign.

Phil Twyford: Five long years.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Let us look at the figures under our 5 years. Under our 5 years, average house prices in New Zealand have gone up by 14 percent and household incomes have gone up by 19 percent. So I say to Labour members, and challenge them at the very beginning: when are we going to hear an apology from the likes of Phil Goff and Phil Twyford for their appalling record on housing affordability during their 9 years in office—

Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I rise to correct the Minister’s pronunciation. It is Phil Twyford, not “Triffid”.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you for that. I think that is most appropriate. The Minister will make sure that in future he tries to use the correct pronunciation for the member’s name. All members are honourable.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The second point I want to make is that the member Phil Twyford highlighted the case of cold, damp homes causing disease. How many homes has this Government gone in and insulated? The answer is 326,000—326,000. How many times more is that the number than what the previous Labour Government did? It is 10 times the number—10 times the number. So I am not going to take a lecture from Labour members on the issue of home insulation and making our homes safer, drier, and warmer.

The Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill is about addressing the issue of land supply, but never has this Government said that the issue of land supply alone is a solution to housing affordability. We have announced initiatives around getting the development costs, which went up by threefold during Labour’s time, under control. We have announced initiatives around materials costs, around apprenticeships, around expanding KiwiSaver first-home deposit grants, around Welcome Home Loans. We have announced initiatives around keeping interest rates low—all are factors.

Phil Twyford: Tinkering—it’s tinkering.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member has just said that it is tinkering. Well, I will check the record. What did Labour do during its 9 years? How many bills did we have before this Parliament that would make houses more affordable? The answer is absolutely zero, diddly squat, zip.

Then let us look at the substance of this bill. This bill is about increasing land supply and doing so quickly. Who confirms that we need to do that? The Productivity Commission. What did the Labour Party say when the Productivity Commission report came out? It said that it was an ideological burp and it opposed it—an ideological burp and it opposed it. On people like Murray Sherwin, one of our most respected public servants, the Labour Party says: “Forget it. We don’t believe it.” When the IMF says it, when the OECD says it, and when the Reserve Bank says it, Labour rejects it all. The reality is that increasing land supply is critical to housing affordability, and unless we address it nobody in this Parliament can pretend they are serious about dealing with the issues of housing affordability. That is why this afternoon is an afternoon of shame for the Labour Party—shame—shame that it has gone out and pretended that it was about housing affordability, and then wasted the time of this Parliament by opposing the very bill and the very agreement with the Auckland Council that will actually make progress.

The last point I wish to make is this. The member mentioned the issue of affordability. Affordability is specifically addressed in the accord and specifically addressed in the bill. It is specifically addressed in both. You cannot address affordability unless you address land supply. What we know—

Dr Rajen Prasad: Oh!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —for the members who reject it—is this. The average price of a section in Auckland has gone up from $100,000 to the latest average of $325,000. So my challenge to members of Labour is this. They say they are going to build 10,000 homes at $300,000 each. What sort of home is it going to be when the section costs $325,000? I tell you what it is. It is a hole.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I wanted to continue with my recounting of Nick Smith’s appearance at the Social Services Committee. He came along and he was asked how the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill would result in improvement in housing affordability, given that it only allows for an immediate increase in the supply of greenfield land and some fast-track consenting. It was pointed out to him that, given the state of the Auckland property market and given the strong market incentives, it is very likely that builders will build expensive houses—houses, for instance, that are being sold for $700,000 or $800,000 or more in Auckland—bearing in mind that only 5 percent of houses that are currently being built are in the affordable range. Mr Smith came along to the select committee, and when this was pointed out to him he agreed that, yes, it is quite possible that this bill would result in expensive houses being built.

When he was asked how this would help the stated objectives of the bill, his explanation was: “Well, if builders build expensive houses, as they may well do, then someone is going to buy those expensive houses, and when they buy those expensive houses, they will move out of their existing houses, thereby freeing up some houses.” We do not know how expensive the houses that they were living in before were, but this is, as my colleague Jacinda Ardern pointed out, pure trickle-down housing economics. What we will go to debate in this Committee stage is that there is nothing in this bill that provides any assurance—and I will quote Auckland Council’s own public statements to the Minister about this—or will guarantee the building of any more affordable housing.

The Property Council came along to the select committee, as did the Salvation Army, Todd Property, Tauranga City Council, and Auckland Council, and they all told the select committee, under direct questioning, that this bill would not necessarily result in any more affordable housing being built. All we have is Nick Smith’s fairytale economics that if some more expensive houses are built, somehow that increase in the supply—no matter how expensive those houses will be, no matter how intractable the cost drivers of housing are in the Auckland market, and no matter how powerful the market incentives are for builders and property developers to build $800,000 houses—and somehow this bill, by bringing a little bit more greenfield land into the system, are going to result in an improvement in housing affordability or affordable housing. It is nonsense, it is a hoax, and, unfortunately, it fits within the tinkering approach that this Minister has made his hallmark in this portfolio.

It would not be such a bone of contention that this bill was inadequate in this way if the Government had a comprehensive package on housing, but it does not. It does nothing to deal with the problem of speculation in Auckland. It refuses to take the advice of Treasury, of the OECD, of the IMF, and of virtually every mainstream economist in this country who says that there should be a capital gains tax in order to take the speculative heat out of the housing market. For some reason, the Government has made a decision and John Key has made a promise that they are not willing to step away from. No matter how sound that proposition is, they are not willing to consider a capital gains tax. They are not willing to go along with the two-thirds of New Zealanders who believe that offshore speculators should not be able to buy housing in New Zealand, that New Zealanders should have first crack at buying a house, and that it is unacceptable for real estate agencies to be going to Hong Kong and Singapore and marketing New Zealand residential property as some kind of international bargain-basement offer because there is no capital gains tax, no stamp duty, and no restrictions on offshore speculators. In fact, the Government actively encourages offshore speculators to come into this market and bid up the prices of New Zealand houses and outbid Kiwi first-home buyers at auction.

The Government is not willing to build affordable houses, it is not willing to crack down on speculators, and it is not willing to comprehensively reform the Resource Management Act to facilitate affordable housing. All we have is this tinkering, inadequate bill, which is a short-term measure, and even then—even then—there is no assurance that it will result in any more affordable housing or any better affordability in the housing market. So this bill is a great disappointment.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): When the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill was originally introduced in the House, we in New Zealand First thought: “Thank goodness! Finally, the Government is moving on the housing crisis.” We thought it was high time that it did, because it had waited at least 5 years, doing absolutely nothing while a housing crisis developed in New Zealand. So we thought: “Thank goodness! Something is going to be done.” Then, as we began to study the bill and understand it, we realised that, actually, not very much was going to be done at all, especially for low-income people seeking their first homes, and especially in terms of addressing the issue of affordability. So now New Zealand First is, regretfully, going to vote against the bill.

We are not going to now vote against the bill because we are opposed to the concept of housing accords with local government—we welcome that; we think it is appropriate that central government and local government should work together on addressing the housing crisis in New Zealand—and neither are we voting against it because we are against the concept of special housing areas, as we think that that is also a good concept and is one good way of moving forward and making sure that adequate land is made available for housing in New Zealand. Those are not the reasons we are voting against it. The reason is that this Government is actually not doing nearly enough about the housing crisis that has developed.

It is not doing nearly enough about affordability. I heard what the Minister of Housing just said about affordability, but I am one of those New Zealanders who are totally unconvinced by what the Minister says and who see what this Government is failing to do, in fact, about the problem of affordability of housing in New Zealand. We do not accept that simply flooding the market with land available for housing will actually solve anything very much at all, especially affordability and especially making it possible for first-home owners to achieve their first home in this country, which is now something that is so far beyond possibility for those people that you could call it virtually impossible.

There are additional problems. Planning instruments are to be compromised by this legislation, and local democracy will be sidelined as well because of some of the particular provisions in the bill.

I want to specifically refer to Phil Twyford’s Supplementary Order Papers 342, 343, and 344. Supplementary Order Paper 342 has a provision that provides that “No plan change or variation to a proposed plan” would be able to be permitted that is “inconsistent with the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act 2008.” In fact, it is a much wider issue than that. It is a wider issue of consistency with plan changes altogether. This highlights how the bill would compromise district and city planning instruments and set local democracy aside. The bill is a pretty blunt instrument when you look at it. It is something of a panic measure. It is a measure that is unbalanced and in favour of a quick-fix attempt for a problem that has been years in the making, and we are very concerned that some of the good work done in planning by many local authorities will, in fact, be compromised by the bill.

Moving on to Supplementary Order Paper 343, New Zealand First will support that as well. It would seek to “remove the override provisions in the Bill …”. We in New Zealand First believe that that is appropriate. The amendment requires that there must be a housing accord if an order for a special housing area is to be made. We in New Zealand First believe that the Government should negotiate and negotiate and negotiate until, in fact, it reaches an agreement, and there should not be the ability to set that process aside and to simply impose an accord on a local district or city. That is not appropriate, and that should not be happening.

We do not believe that if the provision for the override were not there, that would unduly constrain the Government. That is simply because local governments are just as keen as central government is to reach agreement on special housing areas and to make sure that, in fact, those local councils can act to ensure, through the negotiating process, that their good work and planning processes are not compromised and set aside. The problem with that override provision is just this: the Government, if it is just tired of the process or does not believe in the sincerity of the local government, or simply does not agree with it, can just brush it aside and impose a special housing area or an accord of its own—or, rather, do what it likes, effectively—and that is simply not appropriate in the circumstances. That is the reason why we will support Supplementary Order Paper 343.

Turning to Supplementary Order Paper 344, it would enable housing accords to require a minimum proportion of housing that is affordable. That, as I have already said, is a very important issue for New Zealand First. We think that provisions along these lines are very, very much needed indeed. In fact, we think that that is one of the most important issues of all. You see, the profit motive for developers causes them to favour large sections and large houses, to make larger profits. I have looked around Christchurch with a friend looking for a smaller home on a smaller section. Do you think we could find one in all those subdivisions that are happening now around Christchurch? It is very, very difficult indeed to find a smaller home on a smaller subdivision, and that is a significant problem because those properties are very expensive—much too expensive for too many people, especially first-home seekers.

So if there is to be a Government lead in terms of special housing areas, then the Government also needs to lead to make sure that people needing smaller homes on smaller sections are catered for. We do not believe that the current provisions of the bill and the current intentions of the Government are actually to address the needs of those people at all. We believe that there needs to be a good mix of smaller homes on smaller sections as a mandatory requirement of all developments taking place as a result of special housing areas under this bill. In that way we can make sure that at least some of the properties that will be made available will be more affordable, and in that way we can indirectly start to address the issue of affordability.

But affordability, of course, is a much wider issue than that. In fact, we in New Zealand First think that the Government should be making assistance directly available to first-home seekers in terms of ways to assist them to find the deposit that they are now going to need—20 percent—for a first home. The Government is not doing that. That is a glaring omission, and we think that that is something that it needs to do. Just fiddling with retirement savings—KiwiSaver—is not going to address that problem. We all know that. The Government seems to think it will; it will not. Much, much more needs to be done.

Governments of the past have done much more. I bought my first section many decades ago now, admittedly with a homeownership account—a very good system for assisting people to save for their first home by giving tax refunds to help them to do that. That is the sort of thing that New Zealand First adopts as its policy approach, and we would like to see the Government consider it, as well.

So for those reasons New Zealand First will be supporting Phil Twyford’s Supplementary Order Papers. But in the end, with regret, we will be voting against this bill.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to speak to the second reading of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: It’s the Committee stage.

Hon MARYAN STREET: Sorry, the Committee stage is what I meant. Thank you. I quite agree with the Minister of Housing that affordability is not a new problem. It was a problem when we were in Government between 1999 and 2008. It was indeed a problem, but I have to say that since December 2008 the average residential property price in Auckland has gone up, from $496,000 to about $645,000 in July of this year. So it has increased by about 30 percent in the time since the Government has been in office. The average residential property price in Christchurch has increased by 25.6 percent since December 2008, when it was about $345,000, to $433,000 in July of this year. And on we go. We can see that although it is not a new problem, it is a worse problem.

We spent much of our 9 years in office—and, again, I agree with the Minister that this is not a single-solution problem—devising a menu of options that we could put together that would address housing affordability. I would not for a moment say that the Minister was lying, but I will say that the Minister was profoundly mistaken when he said that there had not been any other legislation addressing housing affordability. I remember it well. I was the Minister of Housing who introduced it. I was the Minister who ushered it through the House against the protestations of the people who are now in Government. It was called the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act, or some other difficult name. That is what it was designed to do. It was called the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act, and it was one of the first pieces of legislation that this Government repealed on coming into office, which was rapidly followed by abolishing our shared equity scheme. That was another way in the menu of things—the menu of solutions—that we had devised to help particularly young people get into their first home.

The Minister said in his peroration earlier that there had been no previous legislation. Because he said it loudly and got red in the face about it does not make the Minister right. He was completely wrong on that score. So I just want to set that record straight to begin with.

Secondly, I would be inclined to support this bill if it did anything. Our Act, our law, by contrast, actually gave local authorities the legislative ability to require that 10 percent of any residential development be set aside for affordable housing—10 percent. So what does this bill do? The bill says in clause 4 that ‘The purpose of this Act is to enhance housing affordability by facilitating an increase in land and housing supply in certain regions or districts, listed in Schedule 1,”. Well, the only one listed in schedule 1 is Auckland, and I will come back to that shortly. So this is the intention and purpose of this bill, and at clause 11 we get to the guts of it. That is about the form and content of a housing accord. What does it say? I go to look for something concrete like “10 percent of a residential development must be put aside, or may be by legal means put aside, for affordable housing”, and what do I see? I see that “A housing accord must—(a) be in writing;”—whoopee—and must “(b) set out the parties’ agreement about how they will work together to achieve the purpose of this Act …”—mmm, getting warm. It has got to “(c) set out agreed targets for residential development …”—talk about lacking ambition. It does not even say “10 percent”. It does not even suggest an amount of any residential development that should be set aside for affordable housing.

In fact, under that clause, it talks more about how to dissolve a housing accord and how to resolve disputes around a housing accord than it does about housing affordability. In fact, housing affordability is not mentioned—not mentioned. There is a reference to the purpose of the bill, but it does not say that there must be affordable houses. It just says that there must be more—there must be more—and, you know, we will work that out between us. This is more flimflam than you can—

Hon Annette King: Shake a stick at.

Hon MARYAN STREET: I was going to say “shake a stick at”, but it sounded a bit colloquial for the Committee. It is more flimflam than you can shake a stick at, as my colleague Annette King says. The point about this is that this Government has done nothing on affordable housing in 5 years. If this is one of its great pieces of strategy to address housing affordability, which is chronic and has become worse under this Government, then I am sorry about it. It is pathetic. It does not specify housing affordability in any of the housing accord clauses.

The things that our Government did—just to refresh the Minister’s memory—were that we brought in the Welcome Home Loans, which this Government has chosen to keep. Yes, because it was very difficult for it to repeal it. Secondly, we brought in KiwiSaver deposit-matching, where the Government would incentivise new homeowners by matching what they could save if they saved a certain amount over 5 years. That is now coming to maturity. The shared equity scheme is the one where I think the Minister misses the boat entirely. Land supply, of course, is important, but what about Crown-owned land? This is what Hobsonville was about and the Whenuapai Air Base was about. The Crown land was set aside by a Labour Government for 3,000 houses—500 of them to be social housing, 500 to be affordable houses, and the other 2,000 the Minister and his mates could buy at market rates. That was not ghettoising anybody. It was not going to pull down the values in John Key’s electorate. It was going to address housing supply by freeing up Crown land.

One of the other things that was important was that in freeing up Crown land—by a Government that cared enough to do it—we could couple that with a shared equity arrangement, and say that the Government can own the land and the new homebuyer can buy the house, and then it becomes entirely possible for young first-home buyers to get a foot on the ladder. They can buy the house and the Crown keeps the value of the land. They can either buy the Crown out over time—this was our plan—or they can onsell the house, and whatever profit they make from that can then go into buying their next property. Freeing up Crown land is not something we hear this Minister talk about. He talks a lot about land supply. In the National Government’s terms, that simply means urban sprawl. Urban sprawl is not the only way to address housing affordability. In fact, it is the least efficient way to deal with housing affordability. Higher density is much more sensible than moving metropolitan urban limits and just creating sprawl and setting people up in houses where they have no access to amenities or transport nodes or anything of that kind.

The other thing I want to say very briefly is that schedule 1 applies only to Auckland. People in Wellington, Christchurch, the Minister’s own electorate of Nelson, and Queenstown live in the most unaffordable parts of the country. In fact, Tauranga is now up there amongst the top half-dozen least affordable places to buy a house. So if this is going to be one of the panaceas for housing affordability that the Minister says it should be, it should be expanded. Not only should it have some real teeth to it but it should be expanded to all of those areas that have high housing costs. This does not even touch the surface. Thank you.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Housing): I am just going to cover very quickly a few points where that member, Maryan Street, was just so wrong. No. 1: does this bill, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, cover only Auckland? Of course not. Anybody who has read it knows, and members on the Social Services Committee will know, that other districts and regions can be added. No. 2: the member said that this Government has done nothing of substance to help housing affordability. Well, let me give you an issue of substance. When we came into Government, interest rates were 9 percent. Today they are 5 percent, the lowest ever. What does that mean? That means that New Zealand households, this year, will pay $7 billion less in interest payments.

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: How much?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: $7 billion. The member said that that is insignificant. She said that $7 billion in costs for households is insignificant. I say she is wrong, she is out of touch, and what worries me is that if you have got three contestants for the Labour leadership going down the track of spending money wildly, it will only drive interest rates back up again.

This is the funniest point that I found in the contributions from the Opposition. Some have said that this bill is Draconian.

Hon Member: That’s right.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Others have said—and the member says that is right—is it tinkering. Well, can a bill really be “Draconian” in one breath and “tinkering” in the next? Perhaps they are arguing that it is Draconian tinkering.

Actually, this is a really balanced bill. Yes, it does go quite a long way. Yes, it will increase the supply of housing, by tens of thousands of additional houses.

This is the very last point, and when they hear this last point it should send shivers down the spines of young people aspiring for a new house: the Opposition says that supply makes no difference to the price of housing. Did you hear that? Was that not extraordinary? It said that supply makes no difference to the affordability of housing. If that is really the Opposition’s point, it knows absolutely nothing about how markets operate and it knows nothing about what this bill will achieve, which just reinforces the view that we need to get this bill through to increase the supply of those houses, to get those 39,000 new houses built in Auckland, and to make sure that Kiwi families can get their homes soon.

HOLLY WALKER (Green): I am pleased to take a call straight after the Minister of Housing to talk about the issues of supply and how they relate to affordable housing. But to situate my comments, first of all, I say—and I think it is agreed probably across the Chamber—that we do have a crisis of housing affordability in New Zealand, and also a crisis of housing quality. There are three statistics that I like to quote, and they all involve the number seven. First of all, over $700,000 is the average house price in Auckland, which is completely unaffordable for your average first-home buyer. Secondly, it takes 70 percent of the average income in Auckland to service the mortgage on a lower-quartile house. On a lower-quartile house—that is, the cheapest quarter—it takes 70 percent of the average income in Auckland to service that mortgage. And, finally, 70 percent of the children living in poverty in New Zealand are living in poor-quality, private rental houses. These are three statistics that clearly illustrate the crisis of affordability and quality in our housing in New Zealand.

If we turn to Part 1 of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, we look first at the purpose. Clause 4 says that the purpose of the bill is “to enhance housing affordability” and it does that by increasing “land and housing supply” in those areas “identified as having housing supply and affordability issues.” Well, so far so good. I agree with the Minister that supply is very important in the question of housing affordability—that is, the supply of affordable houses is very important in the question of housing affordability. But I am not convinced by the Minister that land supply is actually the primary problem in the provision of affordable houses, and that is the first problem with this bill. There is a fundamental mismatch between the problem it sets out to solve, which is housing affordability—it says “enhance housing affordability” right there in the purpose clause—and the solution that it prescribes, which is about increasing land supply.

Land supply and affordable housing supply are not the same thing, and that is a very important distinction to get clear in this debate, because apart from Auckland, which is the only region in the schedule currently, land supply is primarily not the issue in housing affordability. We heard that at the Social Services Committee time and time again as submitters came before us from other parts of the country to say that this might be a good prescription for Auckland, though there are some issues with it, but in their part of the country where, yes, they have a housing affordability problem, the problem is not caused by a lack of supply of land; it is caused by other factors, and, therefore, this bill will not address the housing affordability problems in those other regions. So the prescription in the bill does not work to solve the problems that it sets out to solve. The select committee had to amend clause 9(3) to insert land supply as one of the criteria for deciding whether to put a region in the schedule, in recognition of the embarrassing fact that it actually was a mismatch. So it is very important that the House in Committee understands that crucial distinction and the fact that the bill is setting out a prescription that does not solve the problem that the bill tries to solve.

I want to look at the specifics in Part 1, and they are set out in Subpart 2. There are three areas I want to look at—first of all, housing accords and how they will be arrived at; second of all, what is the definition of a “qualifying development” and what should be the definition of a “qualifying development”; and, finally, the provisions around the actual conduct and the establishment of special housing areas. First of all, I will look at the housing accords. This part of the bill sets out how the Minister and the territorial authority may enter an agreement to work together to address housing supply and affordability issues. That is great. It sounds really good. It is absolutely right that local government and central government should work together on housing affordability issues. It sounds very good, until you read the fine print. The problem with this whole provision, as my colleague the Hon Maryan Street set out in her last contribution around what can go into a housing accord, is that it does not actually address the fundamental issues of affordability, but, worse than that, it gives a huge amount of power to the Minister to override the work that local councils are doing on this issue and to come in over the top of them and set up a special housing area without their consent and without a housing accord.

It gives the Minister the power to terminate an accord. That has been agreed. So they can sit down and negotiate one and work it out, but if there is something about that accord that is not working for the Minister, he can terminate that and go ahead anyway under the conditions that he would like to see. It means that, effectively, it is impossible for councils to enter into good-faith negotiations with the Government to set up housing accords, because all of the power resides in the Minister and in central government. They have the ability, if the negotiations for the accord break down, to just go ahead and set up a special housing area and set up the commissioners to make the decisions about resource consents without any recourse to the territorial authority.

So if one was part of that territorial authority sitting down to negotiate with the Minister, there is a fundamental power imbalance before the negotiations have even begun. That was a point made to the select committee by countless submitters and many, many councils from around the country, including the Auckland Council, with which an accord has already been negotiated, but which is very worried about what this legislation will mean for that accord, and including from Local Government New Zealand, the umbrella group for local councils, and including many members of the public who are very concerned about the heavy-handed power that is accorded to central government in these housing accords in the way that they are negotiated, which effectively makes good-faith negotiation impossible.

Secondly, I want to speak about the conditions for a qualifying development, because there are a lot of very technical conditions set out in the bill about what a qualifying development has to do. We spent a lot of time in the select committee talking about what the definition of “predominantly residential” was for a qualifying development, which is absolutely important to get correct. But it is bit like not being able to see the forest for the trees when we are bogged down in details about the height of the storey of a building and what it means to be predominantly residential as we talk about what is a qualifying development or a housing accord. There is nothing in the bill about the requirement for affordability or to require a percentage of affordable housing in a special housing area, yet that is the problem that the whole bill has set out to solve. Again, it is a fundamental mismatch between what the bill says it is out to do and what it actually does. So it is a major problem. It was pointed out by numerous, numerous submitters that there is no requirement for affordability to be one of the criteria for a qualifying development in a special housing area, and you would think it would be when that is the whole purpose of the bill.

When we had the second reading, the Minister addressed this point and he said: “Well, look at the Auckland Housing Accord. There is a minimum requirement for affordable housing in there. So it’s all good.” And I imagine if he gets up to take another call, he will probably say the same thing. But the only reason that that minimum requirement is in the Auckland Housing Accord is that the Auckland Council pushed very hard for it. If it was up to the Minister, it would not be there at all, and the provision is not there in this bill for future housing accords in other areas. It is not enough for the Minister to say that Auckland Council managed to get it in there. There is no guarantee that it will be in any other housing accords negotiated under this bill.

This issue of having a minimum requirement for affordable housing in a special housing area is addressed by my colleague Phil Twyford’s Supplementary Order Paper 344. The Green Party will absolutely be supporting that Supplementary Order Paper, because we think that, at the very least, the first criterion you should set out for a special housing area under this bill, which seeks to address housing affordability, should be that there is a requirement of affordable housing in that area.

Finally, I want to look at the special housing areas and the rules that are going to be created for them. This is where the override powers that are given in the bill to the Minister really kick in and where there was a lot of the concern from submitters at the select committee. In a special housing area, once it is established, if a housing accord is not negotiated or if one breaks down, this part of the bill gives the Minister a huge amount of power to appoint the commissioners who make decisions under the Resource Management Act, to set the terms of those decisions, and to approve and fast track consents that override the provisions of the Resource Management Act. I imagine that my colleague Eugenie Sage, when she takes a call later on, will talk a lot about the provisions of the Resource Management Act and how this bill undermines them.

But suffice for me to say at this point that some of the concerns about the override provision for councils are addressed in another Supplementary Order Paper in the name of Phil Twyford, Supplementary Order Paper 343. The Green Party will also be supporting that, because this is a fundamental overriding—it is indeed an override provision—of local democracy, and it is entirely consistent with moves that we have seen from this Government in terms of local government on a number of fronts, beginning back with the sacking of the Environment Canterbury councillors. But evident in this bill as well is a lack of respect for the authority and the autonomy of local government, where if central government does not like what local government thinks, says, or does, it will just come in and override it, and that—

Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): Just a short while ago the Hon Maryan Street gave the Minister of Housing, Nick Smith, a lesson in history and in honesty, because the Minister, in what he thinks was an attack on Labour, really gave us more sound and fury than a substitute for real policy. You see, some of us remember the Minister’s track record in the last Government and the Government we are in now. First of all, he became the Minister for ACC. He said there was a crisis. He cut the funding for women who had been sexually abused, so women did not get the services they needed.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Come on.

Hon ANNETTE KING: No, Mr Chair.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Those claims are incorrect, but, more important, they are outside the scope of the part that we are discussing, which is Part 1 of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill.

Hon ANNETTE KING: Speaking to the point of order, if you had been listening to the debate, the first contribution—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! I take exception to the way in which the member started that. I will give the member another opportunity.

Hon ANNETTE KING: Earlier in the debate, in the first call the Minister took, he made a very wide-ranging contribution around the previous Labour Government’s role in housing—what the previous Labour Government had done. It was way outside this bill. He was not called up on that, and I am just setting the scene for this Minister, having taken over housing in this Government.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: My comments were directly in response to the claims of the very first speaker on the part, and were entirely on housing. They were about the history of housing and why this bill was needed. In my contribution I never strayed away from the core issues and the purpose of Part 1.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I understand what the member is attempting to do, but this debate should be confined to issues of housing and in relation to this bill.

Hon ANNETTE KING: Just speaking to that—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): No, I have made the ruling now.

Hon ANNETTE KING: Normally you have about 30 seconds to be able to set the scene, and I had 10, so I would just like to say—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy):1 minute.

Hon ANNETTE KING: —to the Minister that his history that he gave of housing and what had gone before was totally wrong, and he misused facts. He gave up-to-date facts, he said, of the increase in the cost of housing under Labour, and then forgot to mention that the cost of housing under National has gone up by 30 percent in Auckland alone. The cost of housing under National in Christchurch has gone up by 25 percent. I think it is important to get it on record that he was wrong about legislation. He said that no legislation had been passed by Labour when it was in Government. Maryan Street set out the legislation that had been passed, including a clause that put aside 10 percent for affordable housing. He said that nothing had been done by Labour. In fact, we brought in the Welcome Home Loan, and funding for the Welcome Home Loan was cut in the Budget this year. We also brought in a shared equity scheme, which has been cut by this National Government. So let us put on record that Labour in Government did a lot about housing, because one of the things we understood was that there was a need for more housing in New Zealand.

Now we have had 5 years of a National Government. Do you know that until very recently we were told over and over and over again that there was no crisis in housing? Bill English stood in this House and told New Zealand that there was no crisis in housing because of low interest rates, which meant that New Zealanders were getting into affordable housing. He could not be further from the truth. There may well be low interest rates, and they are certainly very beneficial for those who own their own homes, who see their interest rates drop and their ability to pay off their houses faster, but they have done nothing—absolutely nothing—for first home owners. The unfortunate thing about this bill is that it does nothing for first home owners wanting to buy an affordable house.

I have no problem with the Minister’s housing accord. I do not have a problem with his special housing zones. They sound very sensible. But, unfortunately, they do not follow through and produce the outcome he wants. In fact, he addresses only two factors out of the many factors that go to the heart of housing. He picks out the crisis in the supply of land. I ask the Minister how this bill releases land that is locked-up land owned by private developers. How does it make them put land out for affordable houses to be built on?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: It removes the MUL.

Hon ANNETTE KING: It does not make them do anything but hold on to it till they can get the best possible price. There is nothing in this bill for those banking land in the hope that they can get an even bigger price for their land to say: “Oh, that sounds like a great idea. Let us get it at a cheaper price.” I mean, the Minister is kidding New Zealanders by saying that this bill does that. That is not true.

He also talks about planning regulations. Of course we need to streamline planning regulations, but they are not going to build a single house unless you address some of the other factors, which this Minister has failed to do. Those factors include the lack of scale in the building industry, the lack of competition in the supply of building materials, and the uncertain access to capital. Where in this bill and where in the Government’s policy does it help in terms of access to capital? After all, for first-home buyers—for those who want to own their first home—they have just had the tightening of access to finance for them. They are going to have less access. It is not just the Opposition that is saying that. Our bankers and commentators, those who are professionals, are saying that there is less access for people who want to buy their own homes.

Then the Minister said in his contribution that there were those who were saying that the bill is Draconian. Minister, did you read what the Regulations Review Committee wrote? It is a committee of Parliament. This committee, I believe, has a majority of National members on it. That is unusual, because usually there are equal numbers of members on the Regulations Review Committee, but, in this case, it actually has a majority of National members on it. What did it say about this bill? It said, first of all, that there have been only 2 weeks for public submissions on this bill. That is a very short time in which to hear submissions on any bill. In addition, the committee raised concerns about the bill containing excessive regulation-making powers, which reflects a poor legislative approach. That is not any old person saying that it is Draconian; those are the words of the Regulations Review Committee. Is it credible, or is it not? As I have pointed out, the majority on this committee are National members.

I say to the Minister that this bill is too little, it is too late, and it is self-serving for political gain, because in 5 years, if this Government really cared about affordable housing, it would have done something about it. It would have brought in measures. To give him credit, it was not until this Minister came in that we actually saw some action. As nice as Phil Heatley is, he was unable to make any traction. However, Minister, your idea of affordable housing can be seen in Hobsonville. That was an area of Government land where you could have had the land at an affordable cost. In the programme for Hobsonville, the housing accord would not even have been needed. You would not have had to have a special housing zone, as you have in this bill. You could have built affordable housing. Do you know the size of the so-called affordable housing being built at Hobsonville? Sixty square metres up to 80 square metres—in other words, a shoebox. In other words, it is not affordable housing for a family. Does the Minister know how few houses are being built? It is a token gesture to affordable housing. He is shaking his head. Those are the facts, Minister.

You talk about land being released. If the Government wanted to release land in Auckland, for example, it could do that tomorrow. Who owns most of the land that could be used in Auckland? The Government. You do not need a housing accord. You do not need to have a special housing zone. You can release land. You can release Government land. And you can do it at an affordable cost. You could look at a range of ways of doing it.

Hon Maurice Williamson: What about the Treaty of Waitangi?

Hon ANNETTE KING: You could look at shared equity. You could look at whether the land is actually owned or not. Of course there are Treaty claims, and we have that on many, many occasions, Mr Williamson. But we got through it at Hobsonville, did we not? We have got through it in other areas. Look, the truth is that you do not actually need an accord. You actually do not need a special housing zone if the Government seriously wants to address these issues.

There have been 5 long years, no progress has been made, and, nationally, only 5 percent of new residential construction is affordable. This bill will not give us one more affordable home. So the only conclusion that you can make—to those who are listening—is that that is not the aim of this bill at all. That is not the aim. You can certainly build very big houses. You can build ones with en suites and many bedrooms, and they cost between $800,000 and $1 million. You can build those. People are buying them. But this bill will not provide a single affordable home to New Zealanders.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Of course it will.

Hon ANNETTE KING: “Of course.”, he says. Name how many. Tell us, once and for all—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Thousands.

Hon ANNETTE KING: —because this has been asked in this Parliament week after week. How many affordable homes will be built? I do not want to hear this “Thousands.” and “Heaps.” That is what the Minister is saying. This is our Minister, paid the salary, saying “Heaps.” and “Thousands.” Tell us how many houses that are affordable will be built—

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): It is an honour to speak in this debate this afternoon. We have heard so much misinformation from across the aisle that we have got to set the record straight. Members opposite ask “How many affordable homes?”, and they have not yet defined what “affordable” means. What does “affordable” mean? Miss King, what does it mean? Tell us right now what “affordable” means. No answer—no answer.

Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Do I get another call to answer that? He is asking me a question.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: That is not a point of order. [Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! I think we will put that down as a rhetorical question.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: I ask Miss King, what does “affordable” mean, because in the 10 minutes that she stood up—

Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It cannot be rhetorical when he is saying it for the fourth time. It has to be a serious question.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I have ruled it a rhetorical question.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: Cannot handle the truth—cannot handle the truth. Let me give some facts. On TradeMe this afternoon, the biggest property website in the country, there are 4,699 homes that are $500,000 or less—4,699 homes, I say to members opposite. What I do not understand is how they can come in here and say that every new home should be affordable. Well, when I grew up in South Auckland, people went into old homes. They did not go to new homes. They went into flats in Mount Wellington. So I say to members opposite that in Mount Wellington, in my electorate, there are 34 homes under $500,000. In Onehunga there are 26. In One Tree Hill there are eight. I can go right across my electorate and say that there are numbers of affordable homes in my electorate.

But what the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill does is breach the problem of housing supply in Auckland as well as around the country. Over the next 3 years 39,000 homes are required to meet demand—39,000. How many sections are available for development right now? I ask members opposite how many. Silence—silence. Well, I have got 1,900. That is not going to quite cut the mustard is it? So land supply, as has been recognised by the Minister, as has been recognised by Treasury, and as has been recognised by the Productivity Commission—

Phil Twyford: And me.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: —is one of the biggest factors in bringing about—no, not you—a solution to some of the issues around affordable homes in Auckland. But what is Labour’s solution? Mr Twyford says: “What about me? What about me?”. Well, I will tell you what they want to do. They want to ban foreigners from purchasing homes in New Zealand. What are the facts around that? The facts say that foreigners are only 4 percent of those purchasing homes. So they want to attack 4 percent. But in Auckland—

Dr Rajen Prasad: Four percent is a lot.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: Mr Prasad, you should know as well as I know that 40 percent of Aucklanders were born overseas, like me. So when I go to an auction, under the Labour regime, they are going to ask me for a passport. The xenophobic tendencies of that Labour Opposition sadly have come to the fore. Because when it comes to winning votes, they will play the race card. I and 40 percent of other Aucklanders who look like foreigners might turn up to an auction, and we will be asked for passports. So I ask members opposite how they are going to implement that. Mr Jones is saying one thing—

Phil Twyford: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I am worried that Sam Lotu-Iiga believes that he would be affected by the proposed ban on overseas speculators.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): What is the point of order? That is a debating point.

Phil Twyford: If he is a non-resident, he cannot be a member of Parliament.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! That is hardly a point of order. I am not the Electoral Commission. We have had some reasonably florid examples from either side, and that is a debating point.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: I will take it as a badge of honour that there have been three points of order. They are attacking me because they do not know the truth. Coming back, I say that members opposite do not understand. They should talk to developers, talk to those on the front line, talk to nurses, talk to educators, but in the housing sphere talk to those who actually do the building. When I spoke to two developers who want to build affordable homes in Manukau and in Māngere, and—

Hon Annette King: You said we don’t need them.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: —I asked them: “What are the issues?”—Miss King should come and I will introduce her to them. They said to me that the delays around the Resource Management Act, and the costs of council around delays, are factors in terms of getting more houses built. These are not small developments. One is a 1,500 house development in Māngere. I challenge members opposite to come and have a look at these developments.

What I object to as well is that we heard the former Minister of Housing and the list MP in Nelson, Annette King, talk about freeing up of Crown land.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: She’s not from Nelson.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: Well, she lives in Nelson, but she is a list MP down there. She is freeing up land. Well, I ask her because she was the Minister who came to Tāmaki and I thought she understood at the time what that development was about. It was about using Crown land and getting in more social housing as well as community housing and private development. It is about leveraging the Crown land that we have in our possession. I ask members opposite what is going on at Maria Street and Yates Street in Onehunga. That is another development where there is pepper-potting of mixed housing, of social housing, of community housing, and private developments. So when the member opposite asks the question: “What are we doing with Crown land?”, I say that we are developing it in order to house more people.

I seriously object to the notion that those homes are not warm and dry. As the Minister has quite clearly laid out, over 300,000 homes have been insulated by this Government. That is one of the proudest achievements that we have done as a Government, and there have been many, by my own admission, but that is one of our proudest achievements. I am proud that people, particularly in my community whom I have seen across Maungakiekie, are now living in warmer, drier homes. For that they are thankful and for that I am thankful for what the Government has done.

But the Minister also said that one of the biggest costs when purchasing a home is interest rates. Unlike under the Labour Government, when tax and spend policies led to some of the highest interest rates in the Western World and one of the highest interest rates in New Zealand’s history—9 percent—now the interest rates are at around 5 percent for a mortgage. What does that equate to? I think the people of New Zealand want to know what that equates to.

Phil Twyford: LVRs have just gone up.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: For Mr Twyford, that equates to $300 a week on a $400,000 mortgage—$300 a week on a $400,000 mortgage.

Hon Annette King: That’s if you’ve got a house.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: Sadly, Opposition members scoff at it. Mr Twyford laughs and Miss King jokes around about those people who do not have houses. Well, I empathise with those people.

Hon Annette King: You talk rubbish.

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: I side with those people, Miss King. You might laugh at those people, but I actually want to see those people in homes. I come back to the bill. This is about one of the measures that this Government is putting in place to bring about more affordable housing in this country. It is about opening up land supply, because we know that the evidence, the research, supports the fact that land supply is one of the critical things when going about addressing the housing shortage in our country. For that I think New Zealanders are happy that we are making these moves.

It saddens me today that members opposite, right across this Chamber, choose not to house more Aucklanders and more New Zealanders, because across the Chamber it is about political ideologies. I commend the Minister. I commend those in our Government who are prepared to reach out to our local councils to work together, to unite, and to bring about solutions that are going to be workable for New Zealanders in the future. This bill is certainly to be commended.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): I have never heard so much rubbish as I heard from that particular member there, Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga. For 5 years that Government there has sat on its hands and has made things difficult for New Zealanders trying to get a home. He asked a question that I am going to pose to the Minister of Housing, the Hon Dr Nick Smith. Minister, what is the price of an affordable home under your Government? Will somebody who is on the individual median income of $20,000 be able to afford a house to be built, based on the measures in this particular bill, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill? Will a family with a combined household median income of $40,000, the likes of which we have in Manukau City, be able to afford a home under the bill that you have here? Minister, those are the questions that, rightfully, you should be answering.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Happy to.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO: I hope you do. I hope you do take a call, Minister, to answer that, because that is particularly important.

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): No, that is exactly what we had over there before. It is a rhetorical question.

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: He brought the Chairman into it. That member has been around long enough—to bring you into the debate.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): No, hang on. The member objected when he got a similar response from the Opposition over here. There will be other calls.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO: Can the Minister guarantee that someone in Manukau earning a median income of $20,000 will be able to buy an affordable house under this bill? Can the Minister guarantee that a household on a median income of $40,000 will be able to afford a house? And how many will be able to buy a house, based on the measures in this particular bill?

For 5 years the Government did nothing, but when Labour started announcing our policy that we would address the problem and that we would build 100,000 houses over 10 years, and when we started talking to the industry to ensure that the price would be affordable, all of a sudden in this Budget the Government came up with this particular bill. The shame of it is that it did not even have the decency to talk to the Auckland Council—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! Would the member Brendan Horan please leave and get properly dressed. Sorry, Su’a William Sio.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO: It did not even have the decency to negotiate in good faith and to give the Auckland Council a heads-up. The introduction of this bill was a surprise—guaranteeing powers by this Government to simply override local councils and the ability to make decisions on behalf of their particular communities.

There is a housing crisis in New Zealand. There is a housing crisis because there is a shortage of rental property. The quality of the rental property in the private sector is appalling in some instances. There is a housing crisis because it is becoming very, very difficult for first-time homeowners to get into a home. So if we come to an agreement that there is a housing crisis, then we should also be prepared for the Government side to accept some of the sage advice that people like Maryan Street and Annette King are offering that particular Minister. I think that unless this Government recognises that that is a real problem, then it is not going to be able to solve it.

Look at the bill and look at what we have in this bill. Clause 4 says that “The purpose of this Act is to enhance housing affordability”—enhance housing affordability! All it offers up is “facilitating an increase in land and housing supply”. That does not guarantee it. If the Minister is so confident that this bill is going to guarantee that, then I would like him to state that he can guarantee that there will be more people getting into affordable houses. Recognising that in the community that I represent the median income is $20,000 for an individual and $40,000 for a household, I asked the Minister the other day whether there was any consideration given to what income levels a first-time homeowner should be earning in order for them to be eligible for a mortgage to buy one of his so-called affordable houses. Here is the answer: “The accord is about increasing supply of homes. It does not determine the criteria for eligibility for a mortgage. This is an issue for the banks.” So guess what, folks? The banks have turned round and made it really, really difficult—under the Government’s watch, extremely difficult—for the 70 percent of New Zealanders who do not own their own home.

I want to point out also the reason why it is important to highlight the median income for individuals and the $40,000 median income for households. If you look at clause 9, it states that before the Minister makes a recommendation to insert the name of a region or district in Schedule 1, “the Minister, in determining whether a region or district experiencing significant housing supply and affordability issues” in clause 3(a)(i) must have regard to whether “the weekly mortgage payment on a median-priced house as a percentage of the median weekly take-home pay for an individual exceeds 50%,”. Well, I put it to this Committee that with an individual median income of $20,000, when you consider the current prices at the moment in Māngere of $300,000—I think that last week houses that were normally $300,000 were going for $500,000 or $700,000, and this is no BS, Minister. It also says “based on a 20% deposit”. May I ask the Minister how his bill guarantees that somebody on a median income of $20,000 is going to be able to raise a 20 percent deposit on a house that is either $300,000, or $500,000, or $700,000? Those are the kinds of prices, Minister, in the South Auckland region.

I have to say that, given the context from which this bill springs, I do not have confidence that this bill addresses affordability issues. I do not have confidence at all in simply enabling greater supply, if you are not going to also attack the issues around those who speculate on houses and the issues around those who bring in foreign capital and are speculating on houses, unless the Minister is prepared to address that and include that particular package in this bill. I can tell you now that nobody in South Auckland believes that this bill is a guarantee for those who want to own their own home—first-time homeowners. Nobody in South Auckland believes, when the Minister says that this is going to provide a certain number of thousands of houses, that they will be able to get a house, simply because under your watch the banks have made it virtually impossible for many workers to raise 20 percent as a deposit. Unless you are going to provide much more than simply saying the supply of land and the supply of houses is going to ensure that there is affordability of houses, I can tell you now that that is just pie in the sky. That is pie in the sky—pie in the sky.

I think that it is an appallingly bad kind of politics where you have raised this issue just because your polling would have shown that the rest of New Zealand and the rest of Auckland were captivated by the policy that we in Labour announced: the need to build 100,000 houses to address the housing supply, the need to address the way that house prices have been inflated by speculators, the need to try to move that kind of investment into more productive investment, and the need to be able to stop overseas speculators coming in and inflating the prices of houses. How on earth can somebody earning $20,000 median income be able to get a 20 percent deposit on a $300,000 house? There is no answer.

I rest my case that despite the rhetoric and despite the spin around this particular bill, this bill is not going to provide affordable housing. This is spin to try to interfere with the captivation of the rest of New Zealand when my colleague here Phil Twyford stands up and talks about 100,000 houses, the need to build more houses, the need to reduce the prices, and the need to be able to exempt first-time homeowners from the loan-to-value ratios that the banks have now imposed. That is what is needed. That is the kind of leadership that is needed. That is the kind of leadership that we need as a country if we are going to address the issue of ensuring that people who want to own their own home are able to get into a home.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): I move, That the question be now put.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Even though the Minister of Housing thundered from the chair that the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill is going to be the solution to housing affordability, this bill is not that at all. It is all about the Government being seen to be doing something about our housing affordability crisis. It is a bill to get media headlines, but it is not about tackling the substantive issue in a comprehensive policy way that is based on good evidence. That has been obvious by the fact of the very short time that was allowed for submissions and because it is a very short-term measure.

Clause 19 of the bill, I think it is, provides that the Order in Council that establishes special housing areas will be revoked 3 years after the bill becomes an Act and receives the Royal assent. That shows that the Government is not interested in working with local authorities to develop a solution that endures. It is more interested in just the short-term hit that this bill will provide by freeing up the process and making it easier for urban sprawl by allowing property developers to get consent for applications that are outside urban limits. That is because the Government sees the problem of housing affordability largely as one of land supply and says that that is the major influence on house prices. The Government is all about providing a charter for property developers, through this bill and also through the changes that it is making, or is proposing to make, to the Resource Management Act, where it will reverse the presumption on subdivision by permitting it unless a plan specifically provides otherwise.

It is a complex set of factors that influence housing affordability. It is not just land supply; it is about building materials. It is about the cost of finance, which the Minister did refer to. It is about the cost of insurance. If we were really looking a comprehensive package, we would have measures that address that—things like a capital gains tax on homes other than the family home to make it much less attractive to have residential homes as an investment. We would have things like shared equity schemes. We would have the Government working with councils—working on a genuine accord—rather than what this bill provides.

The Wellington City Council, for example, had a very detailed submission and it set out the other factors that apply to housing affordability. It is things like geography and employment patterns, and how they influence the price of houses. That is why, because you have got a lot of high-paying jobs in the centre of Wellington, you get house prices in central Wellington that are over $500,000, whereas ones in Porirua are around $370,000. It is issues like that, and the cost of building materials, that influence affordability, not just land supply.

This bill also will not work because of the standover tactics that the Minister proposes to employ through the special housing areas and his override powers. Local Government New Zealand said on behalf of all of the councils in New Zealand that it wanted to work with central government to address the issue of housing affordability, but the override provisions cut across that whole spirit of partnership. They cut across any genuine accord because they take the power away from councils to make decisions about new development and to control the pace and the location of residential development, and they give that power to the Minister. The override provisions mean that there is not a good-faith basis for working on housing affordability, because if the Minister cannot negotiate an agreement with the relevant district or regional council, he can then designate a special housing area.

Then we have the chief executive of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment making decisions about where development will occur. What capacity, what authority, and what experience does a central government agency—the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—have to do this, rather than councils?

If the Minister was genuinely interested in partnership, then these override provisions would have been removed from the bill. Again, the Wellington City Council said that it would not enter into any negotiations on a Wellington housing accord unless those powers of ministerial intervention were removed. It is those powers that cut right across the Resource Management Act and the Local Government Act, whereas decisions on how and where residential development should occur should be made by territorial local authorities.

My colleague Denis O’Rourke called the bill a panic measure, and we certainly agree. If you look at what is happening where councils are doing good planning—and, again, at Wellington, where the council changed the Wellington City plan in 2009—

MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): I move, That the question be now put.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): It is a pleasure to take a call on Part 1 of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. Really, the clause that tells us what this bill is about is very clearly stated. It says it is about housing affordability. The rest of the bill is not about that. In fact, I would have thought that the two members of the Government who have taken calls so far, which includes the Minister of Housing, would have justified these provisions and explained to us how they are going to achieve the objectives of this bill. The Minister has not done that, and neither has the chairperson of the Social Services Committee. In fact, what we have heard, really, is filibustering. Not filibustering, but really—

Darien Fenton: Blustering.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: —blustering. It is blustering. The Minister understands perfectly. The Minister is doing what he has done in his other portfolios, to wit ACC: create such a sense of crisis with the figures and expect everybody to believe it. Then in a very short period of time, like in ACC, there is not really a problem, but the damage had been done. It is the same kind of approach here. Other Ministers have used it in social development as well. But we know that what is being designed here is the very thing that has failed. It is the housing market that has failed. It has not worked. It has not produced the number of houses required. The Minister can say as much as he likes about the previous Government, etc., but I am not particularly interested in that, Minister. I am interested in your performance, Minister, over the last 5 years in this particular area. No affordable housing has been built. What the Minister has done is preside over a crisis. So the housing market is failing.

There are only two things that the Minister has addressed—the availability of land, and regulations around buildings. There are only two things. But the Minister ought to know, and I am sure he does, that there are a whole bunch of other things that actually contribute to making housing affordable, and they have not been addressed. How do loan-to-value ratios address housing affordability? The Minister has not answered the questions posed by the member for Māngere, in terms of what is affordability and whether that family from his electorate, on $20,000 a year, will be able to afford a house. These things will not work, and the Minister knows they will not work.

So here we are, presiding over a time when house prices in Auckland have gone to $700,000 and upwards—a 30 percent increase. The Minister’s rather cynical explanation during the first reading of this bill around affordability was that, of course, the new developers will build the $700,000 houses so that people in the $300,000 houses can move into them. Well, that is what the Minister said. I think that is a cynical approach to take. But what should be happening here is addressing the whole range of things that contribute to housing development, and that is not happening. This is failing Kiwis, I say to the Minister, in terms of getting them into houses, which is the very thing that contributes, as we know, to their well-being. So here we are.

The housing shortage is rife, affordability is a problem, and costs are high, but those things are not being addressed here. How is it, Minister, that by making land available at the periphery of Auckland, which is what the provisions will provide for—that is, actually, in the short period of time that people need houses—those houses will be built? They will not be built. The reason why the Minister has addressed this problem in this way is that that approach favours the developers. It favours those who want to build expensive houses in those subdivisions, in those areas outside, like Hobsonville. That member was part of a Government that would not let affordable housing be built in Hobsonville. I remember very well the Prime Minister saying: “Not in my backyard”—not in his electorate. That is still the context within which these provisions are built. I do not live very far from Hobsonville. Every now and again I have gone and seen the little ones that have been built.

Hon Maryan Street: All seven?

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Is it that many? On that note, I think some very, very good Supplementary Order Papers have been put up by my colleague Phil Twyford. He is beginning to address the notion of affordability. In these particular areas there ought to be—

BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): Thank you, Mr Chairman.

Mike Sabin: Nice tie.

BRENDAN HORAN: Thank you. It is nice to be able to show some sartorial elegance. I am speaking to the Supplementary Order Papers on the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. I wonder how this Government can build affordable houses when it cannot even build a decent bill. If we look at Part 1 and at all the changes in this bill, it is like all the other bills that this Government seems to be putting forward. It is full of changes. There are changes to 90 percent of this bill. How can anybody have any faith in it?

Let us talk about affordable housing and how we are going to achieve that. Developers look at a ratio of 2.5 people to 2.6 people per dwelling. There are approximately 500,000 dwellings in Auckland, and there are 1.5 million people. The shortage is actually 100,000 dwellings. How, then, is this Government going to build affordable houses? We have heard Government members speaking about building 39,000 houses. Well, who is going to fund that? Who is going to develop it? But, most important, how many town planners have been employed? How many advertisements have gone out for town planners? Because to build one house you need a town planner, and all the Auckland town planners are up to here with what they are doing at the moment with consents.

This bill works on the mushroom principle, where you keep people in the dark and you tell them a whole lot of manure. It is unbelievable. Here we have the super-city that this Government gave us. This Government wants to take over the super-city and tell it how to build its own houses. Why not leave it to the super-city to do that?

But what this Government should do is create an infrastructure so that we can have affordable housing. I would suggest that, with the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, this Government invest in fast rail from Auckland—the beautiful city of Auckland—through to Tauranga, through Hamilton, and then we will have affordable housing areas all the way along that line, if we could get a line. It is 1¼ hours from Tauranga to Auckland. That would solve the housing problem. That is a very doable solution. But for this Government to come up and say “We’re going to give affordable houses.”, when the housing shortage is so drastic—it is just not going to happen.

I am taking just this very short call. I cannot support this bill. It is rubbish. Look at the changes in it. The last bill I spoke to had spelling mistakes in it from 5 years ago. I would suggest this Government do its homework and put forward a bill that does not have changes to 90 percent of it so that the rest of us in Parliament can actually read a proper bill, and then we can vote accordingly. Thank you very much.

MELISSA LEE (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 57

New Zealand Labour 34; 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 Dr Nick Smith to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 351 in his name to clause 6 be agreed to:

replace in new subclause (1A) “unless otherwise prescribed” with “unless otherwise provided in regulations made under section 88”.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Amendment to the amendment agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments as amended set out on Supplementary Order Paper 351 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to Part 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Amendments as amended agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): We move to Phil Twyford’s amendment, as set out on Supplementary Order Paper 344. This is now out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the Committee.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 343 in the name of Phil Twyford to clause 16 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 34; 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 Part 1 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Resource consents, plan changes, and variations to proposed plans relating to qualifying developments in special housing areas

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Housing): This is the really grunty part of this Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. It is a real test for this Committee as to whether it is serious about increasing housing supply. [Interruption] Members may laugh, but let us hear what it does. At the moment it takes between 3 and 4 years to get consent for a subdivision and to bring in new land to supply. This bill will reduce that period to just 6 months. At the moment, if you want to do a brownfield development, it takes over a year to get through the process. This bill will enable it to be done within 3 months.

I challenge members of this Committee who beat their chests around housing supply and affordability as to why they would oppose measures and provisions that will make it easier for those who actually build the houses and provide the sections.

Andrew Little: Welcome to Abbotsford. We’ll have another Abbotsford within the year, you watch. Poor geotechnical engineering.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I put it to you, Mr Little, that it is solely politics. Those who are opposing this part of the bill cannot look in the mirror and pretend they are serious about helping Kiwi families get a home. I have been aghast at how all over the paddock the Opposition is around housing affordability. I listened to the speeches on Part 1 from members of Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens, who pretend that they are an alternative Government, taking completely opposite positions about what the solution is to housing affordability.

I also want to challenge members on bad faith—bad faith. I will tell you why. When I became the Minister of Housing, members of the Opposition said that they wanted action on housing. When we get action on housing, they oppose it. They said they wanted agreement with councils. We deliver agreement with councils, and they still oppose it. In the first reading I heard speeches about Hobsonville.

Hon Annette King: Yes, let’s hear the facts.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Let me give you the facts on Hobsonville, Ms King. Labour announced 1,000 houses at Hobsonville—and Hobsonville will be affected by Part 2, and I will come to that—in 2002. How many houses had been built in Hobsonville by November 2008? How many had been built, Annette King? How many had been built, Maryan Street? How many houses of the 1,000 that you had announced in 2002 had you built? Not one. Not one. How many houses have been built by this Government on that land at Hobsonville? Answer: over 400—over 400.

Why is it relevant to this part? Let me tell you why. Let me tell you why. The chairman of the Hobsonville Land Co. has put on record that if Parliament passes Part 2, the company will be able to bring 1,000—

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: How many?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: One thousand more houses to market next year—1,000 more houses to market next year. So I challenge, again, members opposite that they need to look in the mirror. They need to ask whether they are serious about improving housing supply, because any member of this Committee who is serious about housing supply and serious about housing affordability will support this part.

The last point that I make is this. Members from Labour have challenged me with the question of what price the houses will be. What price will the houses be? I have a very simple response. Any member of this House who claims that they are going to set the price of housing fails to get to first base on understanding the housing market.

Dr Rajen Prasad: He’s given up. He’s given up.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member interjects. Can I say to this member is Mr Choudhary telling me that a Labour Government will set the house prices?

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Prasad.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Is Mr Prasad telling the Committee that a Labour Government will set the house price?

Dr Rajen Prasad: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I would not ordinarily stop the Minister, but after I have been here for almost 5 years, he might have known that Mr Choudhary is somebody else.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): He did correct it.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: My simple challenge to the member: are members of Labour seriously suggesting that this Parliament sets the house price? Do they really believe that if we just pass a bill—because they have challenged me and asked where in Part 2 is the price of the house. Do members of this Parliament seriously believe that all we need to do to make houses affordable is to put in a provision of this bill that says: “House prices will be $300,000.” and, magically, that will be the case? Well, I am concerned that members opposite believe that. I have heard Labour members out on the hustings saying that, magically, if you just pass a law that says the wage is going to be $20 an hour—or why stop there?

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: $30.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Let us make it $30 an hour. Let us just pass a bill and say: “Wages in New Zealand are going to be $30,000 a year, and house prices are going to be $20,000.” That would be a good bill. Is that seriously what Labour members actually believe—actually believe?

The answer is this. House prices are determined by a market. What we need to do is get the materials price more competitive. We need to get the section price more competitive. We need to get the infrastructure price more competitive. We need to deal with the issue of compliance costs. We need to do the work that Maurice Williamson is doing to improve the competitiveness and productivity of the building sector. We need the 1,000 more apprentices that we are getting. They are the things that will make a material difference.

I go back and challenge the Labour spokesperson on housing to answer the challenge that was given by Su’a William Sio. He said this: how many houses, and at what price, are you going to build for people on $20,000 a year? Well, I have not heard that answer from the Labour Party, because, actually, members of this House do not set the house price. They never have, and they never will. What we have to do is get the market conditions right.

Kris Faafoi: Oh!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: That is right. The member interjects. Does the member think this is acceptable? We have got a block of land in Flat Bush that is zoned for housing. It was purchased for $800,000—$800,000. It is now on the market for $113 million—$113 million.

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Disgraceful.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: That is disgraceful. But that is the product if you put in a very tight metropolitan urban limit. If we want to stop that sort of land banking, and if we actually want to get sections at an affordable value, they are the differences that we in this Committee need to mark, and that is what this part is about.

The last point I wish to make is this. If we are serious about addressing house price, section price is critical. I will tell you why. If a section price, as it averages in Auckland, is $325,000, you are not going to build an affordable house on that section. If it is a $325,000 section, the incentive is actually to build a very expensive house on that. This Government is saying that, actually, getting the section price down is really critical to making it affordable for us to be able to build a house in the range that average Kiwi families can afford. And I say to members opposite that if you block this bill and block this part, you are voting against land supply and greenfields being consented in 6 months. That is what this part will do. And they are proposing against brownfield developments being consented within 3 months. I say to them again look in the mirror. You are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Just before the member starts, we are having some problems. You just have to give me some flexibility. We are having a problem with the timing.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): A longer call is fine, Mr Chairman—it is fine.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I have got my watch.

PHIL TWYFORD: OK. Now we are getting to the nub of the problem. Now we are getting down to brass tacks, because on that side of the Chamber, the view represented by the Hon Nick Smith is basically to trust a failed market and blame the councils. That is the National Government’s housing policy: trust a failed and failing market and blame the council. That is all—that is all—that the National Government is willing to do. It washes its hands of any responsibility, any obligation to actually roll up its sleeves like previous Governments have done over the decades and do something substantial to build affordable houses. As far as Nick Smith is concerned, no, the Government has no control whatsoever about the price of houses. The Government has no ability to deliver affordable housing to the people of New Zealand. The Government has washed its hands, it is putting all its faith in a failed market, and it is not prepared to intervene to fix a failed market. That is the difference.

We on this side of the Chamber will not stand by while speculators outbid first-home buyers. We will not stand by and watch a failed market drive first-home buyers out of the market. We will not stand by as another generation of New Zealanders is denied the dream of homeownership because all that the National Government is willing to do is tinker with the Resource Management Act and blame local government for a problem that is largely the fault of the economic settings that this Government has refused to tackle. That is hands-off government from National.

We do not subscribe to that philosophy. We are willing to use all the powers available to us when we are in Government to build 100,000 affordable homes. We will reform the Resource Management Act by producing a national policy statement on affordable housing. We will intervene in the market. We will use Crown land, as we would have at Hobsonville, to deliver a high-quality, new urban development that includes social housing, affordable housing for first home owners, and open market housing.

Minister, you and your Prime Minister chose to drive out social housing and affordable housing from the biggest, finest opportunity for urban development in decades, in Hobsonville, Auckland, and you bear responsibility for that. It will always be the Minister of Housing and the Prime Minister who will bear the shame of having said that it would be economic vandalism to allow State housing or affordable housing in Hobsonville. Low to middle income New Zealanders, according to this National Government, should never have houses on land that has a view of the sea. That is the operating principle of the National Party. Well, we do not subscribe to that.

We believe that it is the role of the Government to improve people’s lives, and we will intervene in the housing market. We will use the balance sheet of the Crown, which will be fiscally neutral over 10 years, to stimulate the building of 100,000 affordable homes. We will break the cartel. We will use procurement arrangements to drive down the cost of building supplies. We will use all the powers available to us to do that. Mr Smith, people believe us. The public believes us. By two to one they do not believe in the Government’s policies. They understand that this bill, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, is tinkering with local government and the Resource Management Act.

I want to go back to the issue of affordability and the failure in this bill to actually deliver any affordability. Mr Smith’s view on this issue, and what he told this House, is that he notes the complaint that the bill does not specifically refer to the building of affordable houses. He says we are being too cute. His reply is: “The bill specifically mentions the Auckland Housing Accord. The Auckland Housing Accord, very specifically,”—and I am quoting the Minister—“has provisions for ensuring that the houses that are built include a portion that are in the affordable range.” Let us be very clear about what the Minister told this House. He said that the Auckland Housing Accord has provisions for ensuring that the houses that are built under this accord include a portion built in the affordable range.

Well, let us talk about the wording that is in the Auckland Housing Accord. This is the best it gets. This is Nick Smith’s idea of requiring affordable housing. The Auckland Housing Accord says: “All Qualifying Developments are … required to give consideration to the provision of affordable housing …”—all qualifying developments are required to give consideration to the provision of affordable housing. That does not mean that they are required to build a share of affordable housing. It says: “Conditions of consent may include requirements for a proportion of the development to include affordable housing ...”—conditions of consent may include requirements for a proportion to include affordable housing. That is the best the Government can do, and we know from the reported comments from Auckland Council and from the mayor and the deputy mayor that they tried to negotiate with Nick Smith holding a gun to their heads. They asked for stronger language allowing a proportion of affordable housing to be included in qualifying developments. That Minister and his officials stonewalled and blocked it. They would not allow affordable housing.

The Minister is shaking his head, but that does not tally with all the reported commentary on this issue, and that is why the very party the Minister negotiated the first housing accord with, Auckland Council, is on record in a news report from Radio New Zealand National from 1 August saying: “Auckland Council says it’s not yet clear that new housing accord legislation will require genuinely affordable homes to be built.” That, Minister, is from your partner, the party you negotiated with for 6 weeks to produce the Auckland Housing Accord, and it says that it is not yet clear that the new legislation will require genuinely affordable homes to be built. The council says further that the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill “shows nothing to support the affordability focus.” That Minister is being utterly misleading in this House.

There is nothing in this bill, and the language in the Auckland Housing Accord is weak. It is diluted from what Auckland Council required, and, Minister, if you were honest and candid with this Committee, you would admit to this Committee that you blocked stronger language requiring affordable houses in the negotiation of the Auckland Housing Accord. The Minister cannot come to the House and pretend that his bill includes any kind of requirement for affordable housing, because it does not, and it would be misleading to suggest otherwise.

After 6 weeks of negotiations and in the last 2 months of this bill being before Parliament, Auckland Council, which was party to the very first housing accord, came along to the Social Services Committee and, under questioning, told the members of the committee that it did not believe that any more affordable housing would be built as a result of this bill. And in only the last 3 weeks it told Radio New Zealand National that it is not clear that this legislation will require genuinely affordable homes to be built. So, Minister, I invite you to get up and tell us what language there is in the bill and what language there is in the housing accord. Unless I have missed something, Minister, and unless you have got something better than the language that says that they are required to give consideration to, and that qualifying developments may include a share of, affordable housing, then I challenge you to withdraw the comments that you have made before this House that have given the clear suggestion that this bill could require affordable housing. I do not believe that that is the case.

It is a hoax to bring this legislation to the Committee pretending that this Government is doing something substantial about affordable housing when all this Government is doing is bringing in some extra greenfields land and fast tracking consenting—stuff that could have been achieved by fast tracking the Auckland Unitary Plan and giving it legal weight on notification, as Auckland Council requested. That could have been achieved, and much more. All of the other provisions on affordable housing in the unitary plan could have had legal weight from now, but, Minister, you refused to do that. For some weird political reason, because of some hang-up that you and your colleagues, Minister, have with Auckland Council, you refused to do that. You have brought this tinkering bill to the Committee.

Let us clarify something else. The Minister asked before how it could be both tinkering and Draconian. Well, I will tell you that it can be tinkering and Draconian. It is tinkering in that it achieves very, very little to give Aucklanders any assurance that it will increase the supply of affordable housing or make housing generally more affordable. It is Draconian in that it takes democratic rights and freedoms away from local government.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Housing): The member Phil Twyford has challenged me and said there is absolutely nothing in the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill referring to affordable housing. He is letting his side down quite seriously. Let me read it, and I quote it very specifically: “one of the criteria that must be prescribed is the percentage of dwellings that must be affordable dwellings, according to the affordability criteria specified in the Order in Council for the special housing area or part of the special housing area.” Labour members, you are being badly let down by your housing spokesperson.

Phil Twyford: How many affordable houses?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No, no. See? He has changed his tone now. The simple point is this: why is it—

Phil Twyford: There is no requirement to provide affordable housing.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, let me just—well, no, he is wrong. I have quoted specifically from the bill. But let me go just one step further. Does this bill require that every single qualifying development include a proportion of affordable homes? The answer is no, it does not. Let me explain to the member why.

Phil Twyford: So why does Auckland Council say that?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No, hang on a second. I am giving the member the courtesy of debating with him. I could just sit in the chair and ignore him. I would rather have an intelligent debate if that is what he is interested in.

Why do we not require an affordable home criterion for every single development? Well, let us say that in one of these special housing areas somebody comes along with a development of just four houses—quite possible, quite right. So how do you get 10 percent of four? It is a nonsense. Is the member really suggesting—is this where the Labour Party is at—that every single development has to include a share of affordable housing? Is that the Labour Party position? Is that the Labour Party position?

Phil Twyford: These are weasel words.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I see the member interjecting. Is that the Labour Party’s position—that every single qualifying development has to include a proportion of houses within the affordable price range?

Phil Twyford: No. We are saying there should be a mechanism—

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Oh! See? When you test Labour members, they are all over the paddock, and that just exposes that the Labour spokesperson on housing is not doing his job. What he said about the bill is wrong, and it is not practical to require affordable housing in every single development.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I feel that I must rise to respond to some of those points that the Minister of Housing has just raised. First of all, about the latter point, if we work backwards through his speech, our position in 2008 was, as it is now, that there should be legislation that legislates for affordable housing. We are opposing this Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill because it does not. It simply sets up accords that are ill-defined, that have no particular target, and that, judging by the words on these pages, will not advance affordable housing one jot in New Zealand, or at least in Auckland, which is the only part that this bill applies to at the moment, despite the fact that there are housing affordability pressures in many other parts of New Zealand, including the Minister’s own electorate.

Just to correct the Minister again—although I am getting a bit tired of having to get up and correct him—the law that we passed on affordable housing was not mandatory. It was voluntary, and it did allow councils to take up a legal option that was not previously available to them. We did not mandate it. This is nonsense, this kind of approach that the Minister takes where he says: “Oh, well, does the Labour Party want us to legislate for house prices and legislate for affordable housing or not?”. Well, we did that, and we did it in a way that was much more effective and worked in concert with other measures such as shared equity in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Nelson, and Queenstown, which were at that time the top five most expensive places to live in.

So there is no ambiguity about our position at all, Minister. The position in our legislation had been that here was a tool that was available to local authorities to use.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: And none of them used it.

Hon MARYAN STREET: Queenstown did. Queenstown—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: No, Queenstown didn’t.

Hon MARYAN STREET: The member opposite says nobody took it up. Well, in fact, Clive Geddes, who was the Mayor of Queenstown Lakes District at the time, did take up the use of that legislation. So it is not true to say that nobody took up that legislation. Certainly that far-sighted mayor at the time in Queenstown did.

The other thing relating to this that I want to pick up on is that the Minister says this is—what did he say? Grunty. He said it is the grunty part of this legislation. I wish it were. I just wish it were, and I wish that it did something that was a bit more detailed than it is. We had the usual complaints about the Resource Management Act. The Minister does what he does really well, and that is isolate one example and talk about it as if it is the norm. He takes one example of a consent difficulty—and I must say that he has managed to pass this disease on to the Minister for the Environment as well, who tends to take the exception and project it as the norm for consenting.

This is relevant to Part 2 because speeding up consents to 6 months may not be in anybody’s best interests. When consents under the Resource Management Act take a long time, they usually take a long time for a good reason. It is possible to get past objections that are frivolous and vexatious. It is entirely possible to get past those, and the Environment Court has now set down 22 years’ worth of case law to avoid those objections happening. What we have got here is something that risks consents being so rushed at 6 months that they will deliver an imperfect result. I do not want to see another Abbotsford, as the people from Dunedin will know well, occur because this Minister has decided that we need to speed up the process. Never mind if the engineering reports have not been done accurately. Never mind if the geological reports have not been done adequately, or if the right people have not been consulted, or if the nature of the soil or the rock bed or the susceptibility to natural disaster have not been sufficiently gauged. Never mind that—what we will do is say that we delivered consents in 6 months. I would rather the Minister delivered safe, affordable housing than consents in 6 months.

One further point I wish to make relates to a point the Minister made earlier where he took sole and personal responsibility, as far as I could tell, for the drop in interest rates, for the lowering of interest rates. Never mind that there has been a global financial crisis and a period of reasonably prolonged recession around the world, never mind that the United States is printing money to keep down interest rates artificially, and never mind that there is cheap money available around the world; the Minister says that it is he and his Government that have caused interest rates to drop.

I just wanted to give one story. I bought my first house in 1985. I was a young teacher and I had two mortgages. The house cost $66,000. It was half a house. It was a terraced house in Auckland Central and it cost me $66,000. I had a $20,000 deposit because my parents had died and I borrowed the money my sisters got. We clubbed together and put down a deposit. Can I just say that I had to get two mortgages. First of all, the banks were not that keen on lending to women alone. Never mind, we got over that hurdle. My first mortgage was on an 18 percent interest rate and my second mortgage was on 23 percent. I remember it vividly. I remember it vividly because it took every part of my $35,000 or whatever I was earning as a young teacher at that time, and it was difficult. It was really difficult. Interest rates are all relative. If the prices of houses are out of the reach of anybody who is on a median income or below, then it does not really matter what the interest rates are if they do not have the income to sustain borrowings of $360,000 or $380,000. It is all relative.

So for the Minister to get up and crow about low interest rates as if it was all his own work—I think that if it was all his own work, there are things we should be a bit cross with him about. If that is the case, then what the Government is failing to recognise is that it is low incomes that prevent young families from being able to finance the prices of houses these days. My first house was $66,000, and it was still hard work because of the interest rates. Now the interest rates are low but the house prices are hugely high. So we are, in fact, worse off now, Minister, even with low interest rates, than we were years ago. Thank you.

HOLLY WALKER (Green): I just want to take a short call in the debate on Part 2 of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. I want to address one of the key issues in the debate so far about this idea of having a minimum prescription of affordable housing as a criterion for a qualifying development. Then I also want to talk about the regulation-making powers and the transitional powers that are set out both in Part 2 and in schedule 2 of the bill, which we are also debating this afternoon. First of all, can I thank the Minister of Housing for being here and for being in the chair and taking some calls on this. It is good to have the Minister responsible for the legislation present through the Committee stage and actually engaging with the debate. I wish we saw it happen more in this Chamber. I want to address what he spoke about when he got up most recently and quoted from the bill, looking at the minimum provision of affordable housing.

To give some credit to the Minister, it is true—and I can see here in Supplementary Order Paper 351, the tracked changes version of which has been put on the Table of the House—that there is now an ability through Order in Council for one of the qualifying development criteria to be a minimum provision of affordable housing or a percentage of affordable housing. So that is good to see. But my question for the Minister is this: why not go the whole hog? Why not put it in the legislation as a requirement for a qualifying development, rather than putting it in as something that can be done through an Order in Council? If the purpose of the bill is to increase the supply of affordable housing—and we have established in earlier debates on earlier parts of the bill that it is—then why would you create a special housing area if not to improve the supply of affordable housing? If you want to improve the supply of affordable housing, why would you not include a minimum percentage in that special housing area? If you can, if the powers are going to be inserted into the bill, why not make it a standard criteria that applies to all special housing areas, if, indeed, the purpose is to increase the supply of affordable housing?

I want to use the example of Hobsonville, because Hobsonville is really what this bill could have enabled. Under the previous Government, as we have heard from other speakers, it was a very good model of using Crown land to establish a new housing development that was a mixed development with a proportion of affordable housing and a proportion of social housing. In fact, that is another question that perhaps this bill fails to address—that there is no requirement for any minimum provision of social housing in any special housing areas. That is also a very important part of the housing affordability question—social housing. There is no provision for that either. What Hobsonville could have been and was intended to be when it was set up was, indeed, a special housing area of a sort, with a mixed provision of housing, with a provision of affordable, social, and private housing.

What happened with the change of Government was that we had a Prime Minister, who happens to be the local MP, who said it would be “economic vandalism” to have State houses in his nice, comfortable electorate. So those provisions were removed from the requirement for the development at Hobsonville. It is a good development. I have been and had a look at it. It is exciting. There could be great prospects for other such developments, but it is a great shame that we allowed a Prime Minister to say that it would be economic vandalism to have social housing in that area, and that we allowed the provision of the Gateway Housing Assistance loans to be reduced so that only 17 families got to use one to purchase a house in that development. If we put into this bill a qualifying criterion for qualifying developments so that there had to be a minimum percentage of affordable housing in new special housing areas, then what we could see are a lot more areas like what Hobsonville was supposed to be when it was first mooted. It is a great shame that we have not done that. I do not think that putting it in as a possibility for an Order in Council, as this Supplementary Order Paper does, is enough.

I want to turn my attention to the regulation-making powers and the transitional provisions in the bill, because we heard from a number of submitters at the Social Services Committee and, indeed, from the Regulations Review Committee that in addition to the unpopular override provisions in the bill, the bill delegates a high level of regulation-making powers to Ministers that may not be justified. We in the Green Party very much share those concerns, although it is true that the select committee did, to the best of its ability, take the concerns of the Regulations Review Committee into account, and did take them seriously. There are some changes recommended by the select committee to modify those regulation-making powers and those transitional provisions. Yet we remain concerned at the level of power that this bill concentrates in central government over local decision-making.

It is something that we have seen only in recent years in emergency legislation, and the model, of course, is the legislation around the Christchurch earthquake recovery. I have been concerned for some time—and this legislation plays out that concern—that having established that precedent through the Christchurch earthquake recovery legislation for that extensive use of regulation-making power, that extensive use of Order in Council, and that extensive use of transitional provisions, we would begin to see it creep into other legislation in non-emergency situations. Indeed, I believe that we have in this Chamber seen the increasing use of those kinds of provisions by this Government in various types of legislation, and this is another example.

Although New Zealand is absolutely experiencing a housing crisis—and many speakers have spoken about that in the debate so far this afternoon, and I would concur with all of those who have done so—it is not yet a national emergency. We could get there, and I doubt that this bill will help to prevent that coming catastrophe, but we are not yet at the point where we can call the housing crisis a national emergency. Therefore, that high level of ministerial power and intervention, that high level of delegated regulation-making power, and that excessive reliance on transitional provisions are not justifiable, in our view.

Instead, what the Green Party believes is that we need a more considered national plan to tackle housing affordability. Such a plan would treat housing as core national infrastructure. It is a debate that I think we need to have as a country to actually turn our way of thinking about housing away from it as a solely private and personal asset and good to national infrastructure, because it has some of the most significant bearing on the health and well-being of our population, much more so than roads or other things that we currently consider core national infrastructure. Our housing stock has a huge bearing on the health and well-being of our population. So we need to start seeing it as core national infrastructure and develop a concerted plan to treat it as such. That would focus on the increase in supply of affordable housing, both social housing and affordable rental housing and housing to buy, and it would need to be developed in true partnership with relevant territorial authorities, not with the kinds of provisions in this bill that override them. The Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, unfortunately, is no such plan.

What we would like to see is a national housing infrastructure plan that looks at things like a capital gains tax exempting the family home; a systematic Government build programme that is not just building and knocking down Housing New Zealand Corporation houses at the same rate that they get built, which is what the Government is doing at the moment; a progressive ownership or shared equity scheme that helps families into their own home without having to go through the conventional route of a deposit and a mortgage; secure tenure for renters; a rental warrant of fitness; and restrictions for non-residents and non-citizens for purchasing homes in New Zealand. Those are the kinds of measures that we could put into a national housing infrastructure plan, which would truly tackle the crisis of housing affordability and housing quality that we have in this country before it gets to national emergency status.

As it stands, we cannot support this bill. We are not convinced that the regulation-making powers and transitional provisions are warranted at the present time, and we cannot understand why, if you think that affordable housing is an important criterion and if you think that a minimum percentage of affordable housing is an important criterion, those criteria have not been written into the bill. Thank you.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): I think it is obvious that the parties on this side of the Chamber believe that there is a problem with the lack of affordable housing, but I am unsure as to whether the Government believes that there is a lack of affordable housing, because what we have had today is a whole lot of conflicting statements and contradictions in terms. We have actually had that for the last 5 years, because we were told year in, year out that we did not have a housing problem. And then when the Labour Party came out with a very popular housing policy, and more to come, suddenly the poor old Minister of Housing Phil Heatley got the heave-ho, and the Government brought in the new Minister of Housing with a flurry of activity and bills that were going to fix the problem—only they do not.

What I cannot get to the bottom of is what the Minister is saying when he says that you cannot set the price of affordable homes. We know from announcements by Government members and things that they have said about Hobsonville that they are telling New Zealanders that the Government is building affordable homes, and then it sets the price at between $400,000 and $480,000 for around a 60-square-metre box. So, on one hand, the Government says that you cannot set the price for an affordable home, and then tells people: “Yes, yes, we are building affordable homes at Hobsonville. This is the price of them.” So what is it, Minister? Can you say what an affordable home is? Can you say that you can set the price? Because that is exactly what the Government is doing with its so-called affordable homes in Hobsonville, which is to tell us that they are affordable homes and then set the price of those affordable homes.

The Minister also said that the cost of land is over $300,000 for a section in Auckland. What is the cost of the land for the affordable houses at Hobsonville? What is the cost of each of those sections? If the Minister was being upfront with this Committee, he would tell this Committee—as we learnt from the Social Services Committee—that the land at Hobsonville for the so-called affordable homes is being subsidised. It is being subsidised from the unaffordable homes that most New Zealanders cannot buy. So if it is possible to have cheaper land prices subsidised, even though that is hidden by this Government, then it is possible for any Government to put up Government land and say that it is affordable and to have prices on that land that are affordable. That is the truth, but that is not what we are hearing from this Government about Hobsonville.

This Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill does not provide a direct way of providing affordable houses. The Minister stood up and said: “Oh yes, it does. There is an Order in Council.” What will that Order in Council say? Tell this Committee tonight. Tell New Zealanders who are listening what the wording of that Order in Council will be. You see, the sneaky thing to do is to put in legislation that you are going to have an Order in Council to achieve something that everybody says we need. The poor people of South Auckland, whom you heard about from Su’a William Sio, said: “We can’t afford houses at the moment, but we are hoping we can.” And the Minister said: “Yes, yes, there will be affordable housing. I am going to have an Order in Council in this bill.” So tell the people what the wording of that will be. How will it be defined? What will it say? Otherwise, it is hot air and false promises. The Minister has stuck in an Order in Council, which does not have a date, and we do not know when it will be done—this year, next year, 10 years, never. You see, it is just a ploy, an underhand ploy, because that Minister knows that there is real concern about affordable housing in New Zealand. Be upfront, Minister. Get to your feet and tell us what that Order in Council will say, when it will be brought in, how long it will be in place for, and how many affordable houses will be arising from your Order in Council, which you told us about today. The Minister did not answer one of those questions.

You see, I find this whole bill rather shonky because I have always been a strong believer in regulatory impact statements. We saw the regulatory impact statement that came out of the last bill the Minister had when he was Minister of Local Government. It was the most appalling regulatory impact statement I have seen, because it challenged all the assumptions the Minister had made about local government. There has been only one worse, and that was the redacted one that went with the bill for those parents who were trying to look after disabled adults, where the Government actually took out most of the information. But let us look at the regulatory impact statement on this Minister’s bill. I read it and I thought: “Wow! The Minister has not mentioned this.” It says: “Insufficient information on land supply restrictions across local authorities to allow precise views to be formed on the urgency of the problem or the extent to which land supply is a problem outside of Auckland”—insufficient information—“Insufficient information on the specific detail and operation of each of the options to allow for a more precise analysis of how each option might impact on the behaviours of commercial decisions of land owners and property developers”.

In my last contribution, I asked the Minister how he was going to make private landowners and property developers give up their land at an affordable price for houses to be built on it right now, because of this bill. They are the ones who have land banked their land, waiting for a good deal when it is the right time to put it on the market. The Minister’s own regulatory impact statement says that there is insufficient information on the specific detail and operation for each option to allow precise analysis of how each option might impact on behaviour. So if the Minister knows something more than those from the housing affordability programme and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, he should get to his feet and tell us why this regulatory impact statement, where it says that the ministry never got sufficient information, is wrong. He did it on the local government one, of course, and then was shot down in flames by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, which came out and showed that all his assumptions were based on false assumptions. He made an absolute fool of himself.

This regulatory impact also says: “The development of the option under budget secrecy rules, which has meant that options have not been consulted on with stakeholders and affected parties outside of government”. That, Minister, is from your own regulatory impact statement. When he put his bill together, he put it together before he spoke to the Auckland Council, and he had it set in place in his mind before he ever went to talk to the council. So Auckland Council actually did not really get a fair go at all, and that is why it came to the select committee and why it said that it could not see anything in this bill that was going to make housing affordable. That is why it was worried that it was not going to do what the Minister said.

So, Minister, there are some questions that I believe that you must answer in this Committee tonight. He is saying he will not answer them. Did you see that? He said he will not answer them. I give him credit for sitting in the chair, which is more than some of his colleagues do. But tell us about the Order in Council, Minister. Do not sit there smiling like a crocodile. Tell the people what will be in the Order in Council. When will it be introduced? How long will it be in place? Come on, Minister. That is your responsibility. This is the only chance this Parliament has to debate these issues, and for the public of New Zealand to know—

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 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Well, it was pretty extraordinary, listening to the debate this afternoon, and before dinner particularly, as more was being revealed about this bill that is called the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, which purports to be about affordable housing. We have got to the bit where there has been an extra clause added in right at the end, which is trying to give a justification for, and putting in a way of providing, so-called affordable housing. This bit is going to be in clause 15. It was referred to by the Minister of Housing in his speech in this last part of this debate on Part 2. It is clause 15(2A) in Supplementary Order Paper 351, where an Order in Council gets to declare a special housing area and prescribes as one of the criteria for qualifying developments in the special housing area or part of it “the percentage of dwellings [in the development] that must be affordable dwellings, according to the affordability criteria specified in the Order in Council”. What does that mean? What does that mean? It is like a circular sentence. I have read that about five times. I think it was debated by Annette King before the break, and before her the Green member Holly Walker debated it as well. It is actually an extraordinary sentence. It looks like a load of bunkum, which is ultimately what this bill is.

I would like the Minister, if he is willing to take another call tonight, to actually get up and tell us what an affordable house is, what affordable housing is, and what sort of percentages we are going to be looking at for this Order in Council that is going to prescribe the percentage of dwellings in a development. Are we going to be looking at the sorts of percentages that were called for by a number of submissions? For example, I would like to refer to the submission by the University of Otago’s department of public health, which specifically asked for the bill to “direct decision-makers to grant consents for housing developments with a minimum of 20-30% social and/or affordable housing.” Well, at least it mentions a percentage of dwellings in a development in this particular add-on Order in Council circular clause, which has been a last-minute tack-on. But it would seem to me that if you are going to actually have a bill that is devoted to the principle of affordable housing, then you would actually have a definition of affordable housing and you would have an explanation of how much affordable housing in the body of the bill. This seems to me to be an enormous gap.

This whole bill is what you could describe as being a classic Orwellian bill, because it is a bill that says it is about affordable housing but is not, actually. It uses the term “accord”, which in my book means partnership or more than one body working together in an equal manner. But when you actually read the bill and you debate the bill, it is actually a power-grab by the Minister, taking power and using that power in an inappropriate way with local authorities. We have heard earlier tonight the rather—and I hope you will excuse the Chaucerian reference—choleric contribution from the Minister. He really had a go at this side of the Chamber for what he saw was a discrepancy because we describe the bill on one hand as Draconian because it is around that power-grab and the local authorities really get to have very little say, but on the other hand there is a tinkering around the edges of this so-called problem of affordable housing, which this Government has not defined. It cannot define in the bill what is actually meant by “affordable housing”, how many people will be able to get affordable housing, or what percentage of an accord or special housing zone would actually need to have affordable housing.

There have been numerous submissions, as I understand it, during the process—the very short process—of this bill going through the House. Submitters were not able to be given the time to properly consult and provide submissions and have the discussions that needed to be had. Instead, there was a very short consultation period. During that time, as I understand it, most submitters asked for there to be an assurance that developments within this bill would be affordable, or that there would at least be a percentage of affordable housing. Unfortunately, what we have ended up with is this last-minute, tack-on clause in Supplementary Order Paper 351 that says that a “percentage of dwellings [in the development] that must be affordable dwellings, according to the affordability criteria specified in the Order in Council”. What are the affordability criteria? I think that probably one of the most important questions to be asked during the debate on this bill is what the affordability criteria are.

The other issue that I just want to point to is the establishment of a procedure that gives some sort of cover: a dispute resolution process that must be followed before the housing accord may be terminated, which is also specified in the bill. Again, we go back to what this bill must do and what this bill may do. I think that it is really important that people listening to the debate tonight know, again, that many of the submitters argued very strongly that there needed to be some sort of mitigation between the power-grab of the Minister, who is able to determine and make all these decisions, and the ability of local authorities to have some sort of say in the process. Again, it seems as if there has been a late change that institutes a dispute resolution process. But it is not something that must happen; it is something that may happen. It is very clear. People must realise that around these housing accords, these so-called partnerships that, in my mind, should be equal, because that is what the word “accord” means, as far as I am aware. It is not an imbalance; it is actually more of a balance between parties. Instead of it saying that there must be a dispute resolution process, what this bill does is say that there may be a dispute resolution process—so there only “may be”. As to who determines whether there is a dispute resolution process, well, it appears that under this bill that is really ultimately up to the Minister. Yes, if there is a dispute resolution process, then that must be followed before the housing accord may be terminated, but the fact that there is one is not actually a true mitigation if there is a problem between the parties. I think what it highlights is that ultimately there is a true imbalance.

There are many imbalances in this bill. The major thing that must be done tonight before the debate concludes on this is to determine just what the criteria of affordability are that have been inserted so late in this process. We have seen 5 years of inaction by this Government on housing affordability and the housing crisis in this country—5 years under this Government. What we have ended up with is a bill that tinkers around the edges in terms of addressing the real, substantive issues, and, as we are seeing with so many other bills in this House—

MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): I move, That the question be now put.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I certainly agree with the Minister of Housing that Part 2 of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill is the grunty part of the bill. That is because it deals with the planning process, resource consents, plan changes, and variations for qualifying development in these special housing areas that have been identified by the Minister or by the Minister and the relevant council through the housing accord. I join with Holly Walker in expressing the Green Party’s appreciation for the Minister in the chair being active in that role and for taking a number of calls on the bill.

But although the Minister is proud of the fact that this bill fast tracks consent processes and promises a 6-month time frame for greenfield developments and a 3-month one for brownfields development, that comes at quite a high cost. The costs are to local democracy—the cost of development not necessarily being well planned and integrated with the council’s district plans, and the cost of reduced public participation and reduced appeal rights to the Environment Court. I would like to comment briefly on each of these issues.

As Holly Walker also noted, we have a crisis in terms of housing affordability, but I do not believe we have a national emergency that justifies that ability of the executive, through the Minister, to override the decision-making powers of councils and to cut across how they have planned where development should occur through their district and city plans, working with their communities. So we strongly object to the provisions in the bill that would remove territorial local authorities as the consent authority for these qualifying developments in special housing areas where there has not been an accord agreed and where the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has that role. We think that if we want sound planning that looks to the future—not just the next 3 years—we need to have councils retain their role in regulating land use and making decisions on these planning consents. The Minister and the bill are silent on how councils are going to have to deal with the extra costs of allowing development that is not well integrated with existing infrastructure.

The problem that this part of the bill creates is that because the Minister and the Government are wanting to speed up decision making, the bill is ostensibly establishing an alternative planning regime to what exists in the Resource Management Act. Although it takes ingredients of the Resource Management Act, it also changes some of the criteria for making decisions that would exist under the Resource Management Act and the processes for making those decisions. As a number of submitters on the bill said, creating this alternative system may result in unnecessary duplication and costs. There is also a very real risk that it will lead to decisions around the location, the scale, and the design of new subdivisions and new residential developments that have not been anticipated, planned for, and agreed to by the local community in conjunction with their council, as would normally occur through the district plan process.

When you read through Part 2 and you try to consider how the provisions here work, how the ones in the Resource Management Act work, and how they mesh, it is very complicated. So you would certainly need to be a planner or a lawyer to understand them. But my particular concern, in terms of this lack of meshing with council plans, is in clause 14, which is in Part 1. Those criteria there for special housing areas are very narrow because they do not include factors such as the proximity of the area where special housing developments are going to occur to existing retail, employment, and social services. They do not include proximity to public transport, and they do not include any relationship to urban design so that we get good-quality development. Certainly the Social Services Committee has included an extra provision around infrastructure, but the whole issue of where development is located has a major impact on what our communities look like and the whole built form.

So where there is a reliance on the market and on a private developer coming to the council and saying that it wants to do a plan change and to have fewer planning constraints applying, you potentially get situations as happened in Northwood in Christchurch, where you get roads in the subdivision that are too narrow to accommodate buses easily. So that is not sound development, and it is the sort of speedy development that the bill promotes at the cost of sound development.

The bill is also going to encourage sporadic, ad hoc development because of clause 32. That outlines the matters that a decision maker must take into account when assessing a qualifying development. The problem here is that the matters are ranked and the bill’s purpose of housing affordability is ranked first. So that means that decision makers must give greater weight to housing affordability and promoting that than to the usual matters in the Resource Management Act. As the Hamilton City Council said: “This in effect raises and prioritises undefined residential development as being of greater significance than other forms of development in New Zealand and undermines the intent and effectiveness of the RMA 1991 and consent authorities ability to make informed, balanced and sensible decision on development matters.”

The last matter that I want to comment about is the other cost of fast tracking, which is the reduced ability for the public and councils to participate in the planning process. That is because my understanding of the provisions in Supplementary Order Paper 351 and the bill itself is that they are going to provide a form of limited notification where the decision maker has to consult the local authority, the adjacent landowners, any infrastructure providers, and anybody who has authorised a designation. But if those parties are consulted and agree, there is no need for it to go out to the public for submissions. So that means that if this is not consistent with a plan, the public does not get a right to say: “Well, we do not like this because it is going to allow development in an area where we would prefer to see it provided as open space, for example, or where we think it has impacts on amenity or landscape issues.”

We want compact, liveable cities where people can connect with each other and with good public transport. If we get ad hoc, sporadic development, we are not going to get the good planning that you would normally get through city and district plans and metropolitan urban limits. If we have development occurring outside of those urban limits, it is a recipe for sprawl. It may be more affordable because land prices are cheaper, but it is not affordable to the people who live in those houses, because they will have much higher transport costs. That is what we have seen in Melbourne, where a lot of the houses further out are not selling. There has been a glut of them. They are not affordable for the people who live in them, because of the very high transport costs. So we need integrated development, and this bill does not promote that.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (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 57

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

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendments in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to the proposed amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 351 in his name to Part 2 be agreed to:

in clause 22, delete subclause (1A);

in clause 23(2A), replace “agencies) and Schedule 2” with “agencies), and Schedule 2”;

in clause 27(1)(b), replace “sections 78(1)(c), and” with “sections 78(1)(c) and”;

in clause 28(ab), replace “were a reference to” with “were references to”;

in clause 42(2), replace “an authorised agency may only notify” with “an authorised agency may notify”;

in clause 42(2), after “1991” insert “only”;

in clause 50(a)(iv), replace “sections 78(1)(e), and” with “sections 78(1)(e) and”;

in clause 51(1), replace “(b)” with “(c)” and replace “(c)” with “(d)”;

in clause 51(1)(b), replace “were replaced with a reference to sections 24, 27 to 40” with “were a reference to sections 24, and 27 to 40”;

in clause 51(2), replace “may only notify” with “may notify”, and after “section 127(1) of the Resource Management Act 1991”, insert “(as applied by subsection (1)), only” ;

replace clause 53 with the following new clause:

53 Matters to be considered in review

Section 131 of the Resource Management Act 1991 applies to a resource consent granted under this Act as if—

(a) every reference to the consent authority were a reference to the authorised agency; and

(b) in section 131(1)(a), the reference to section 104 of that Act were replaced with a reference to section 32 of this Act; and

(c) with all other necessary modifications.

in clause 54, replace “as follows—” with “as follows:”

in clause 54(a), replace “an authorised agency,” with “an authorised agency; and”

in clause 64(aaa), replace “of this Act; and,” with “of this Act; and”;

in clause 66A(3), replace “sections 66(2) to (3) apply” with “section 66(2) to (3) applies”;

in the heading to clause 69, replace “notice of acceptance” with “making”;

in clause 69(1), replace “from the date of notification of acceptance of the request or part of the request” with “after a request is made”;

in clause 72(2)(b)(i), replace “or made the request and” with “or made the request, and”;

in clause 73(2)(d), replace “section 87(4) with “section 87(2A)”; and

in clause 78(1), replace paragraph (a) with:

(a) a person whose application for a resource consent is not granted by the authorised agency, in the circumstances described in subsection (1A) if the decision not to grant the consent was made by an employee of the authorised agency under delegation:”.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Amendments to the amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments as amended set out on Supplementary Order Paper 351 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to Part 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Amendments as amended agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 342 in the name of Phil Twyford to Part 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 34; 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.

Amendments not agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Phil Twyford’s amendment to replace clause 23 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 343 is out of order. It is inconsistent with the decision the Committee has just made.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 343 in the name of Phil Twyford to clauses 82 to 84 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 34; 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.

Amendments not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment in the name of Phil Twyford to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 344 in his name to clause 35 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 34; 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 to the amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 344 in the name of Phil Twyford to Part 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 34; 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.

Amendments not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Schedule 1

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 351 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to schedule 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That schedule 1 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Schedule 1 as amended agreed to.

New schedule 1A

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 351 in the name of Hon Dr Nick Smith to insert new schedule 1A be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

New schedule 1A agreed to.

Schedule 2

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 351 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to schedule 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That schedule 2 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Schedule 2 as amended agreed to.

Clauses 1 and 2

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to make some comments about the title clause and I have three suggestions for the Committee to consider in respect of alternative titles for the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. The first, coined by my colleague Jacinda Ardern, is the “Trickle-down Housing Bill”. I want to say how unconvinced we are by the last-minute desperate effort by the Minister of Housing to defend himself from accusations and pressure about the fact that this bill does not contain any real mechanism to deliver affordable housing. By inserting at the last minute a provision that gives the Government the power to issue, by Order in Council, some requirements for a certain proportion of affordable housing units in a qualifying development gives us no confidence at all. I want to tell the Committee why.

The first reason is that requiring a proportion of affordable housing units is what is known as inclusionary zoning. This Government, within a month of being elected after the 2008 election, repealed the inclusionary zoning provisions that the former Labour Government had passed. This Government did away with all of the intentions of including State housing and affordable housing in Hobsonville, the biggest, most promising urban development opportunity in Auckland. We have heard from the Minister on numerous occasions at the select committee and in this Chamber that he does not believe in inclusionary zoning. He does not believe that it works. He does not believe that it is a good thing. So giving the Government the power to require inclusionary zoning by Order in Council gives us no confidence at all that it will actually happen, for those reasons.

The second title that we think is worthy of consideration is the “Poor Quality Housing Bill”. I just want to point to some aspects of the bill that do give cause for alarm. Clauses 32 and 61 of the bill, for example, have the effect of essentially taking the Resource Management Act out of consideration when considering qualifying developments in special housing areas. They strip the Resource Management Act out of the decision-making process for special housing areas. It is pretty clear, when you think about the reported comments of the Minister where he told the New Zealand Herald on 25 May that Aucklanders need to get over their nimbyism and accept lower quality developments if they want affordable housing. The Minister said: “Higher quality equates to high price.” and that Aucklanders need to accept lower quality developments.

This is one of the really disturbing things about this bill—that it seeks to speed up the provision of affordable housing by reducing the quality protections and the environmental protections that we would normally apply to housing developments. That, I think, is a real concern to Aucklanders. They do not want slums, but it is clearly the view of Nick Smith that if Aucklanders want affordable housing, they have to accept lower standards.

The third title that I want to suggest and that I think would be a much more suitable title for this bill is the “Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater Housing Bill”. There are three things that National wants to trade off in order to deliver more housing development in Auckland. The first is democracy, and we know from the override clauses in this bill that it is willing to take, yet again, more powers away from local government. The Human Rights Commission expressed concern about this in its submission on the bill and talked about the constant centralising of powers and taking away from local government.

The quality protections and the environmental protections I have already mentioned. The last point I want to make is that this bill thoughtlessly undermines the protection that certain special areas, like the Waitakere Ranges, enjoy by dint of the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act. That Act, until the passing of this bill, has enjoyed primacy over other district and regional plans. Those other plans are required to be consistent with the provisions of the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act. But, unfortunately, this bill dilutes those protections and it requires only the provisions of the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act to be considered. They do not have to be consistent with those provisions.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): I want to carry on in the same vein that my colleague has been—suggesting alternative titles for the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill that will really reflect its true intent, or the intent of the policy that this Minister of Housing is following. Let us look at the history of this. It was only when the Labour Party came up with a very popular housing policy that, all of a sudden, this became urgent. Perhaps we should call it the “Let’s Take the Focus off Labour’s Housing Policy Bill” because, indeed, prior to that, the Government was not particularly interested in this area. The way in which the provisions of this bill have been spelt out gives the lie to the fact that this is not all that genuine in terms of a real response to what this side of the Chamber has said all along, that the focus needs to be on affordable housing. That is where the big problem is, but, somehow, the Minister has his own ideas as to how that is to be fixed.

The second title, which I think my colleague has already taken, is what Jacinda Ardern coined—the “Trickle-down Process Bill”. It is as if that will work it out, but that has already been taken now. The other point is that this bill has a provision that states that when it becomes an Act, it will be repealed in 5 years’ time. So it could be something like the “Housing (We Will Fix it in 5 Years’ Time) Bill”.

Think about it for a moment, because that is about the time that this Government has been in power. It intends, in the same length of time, to fix the housing problems of New Zealand. It is not credible to believe that by creating some special housing areas through the provisions that are here, we will have fixed the housing problem and we will have moved on. We do not think that will happen, indeed.

The driver of this particular policy that the Minister has taken is the use of the market—that the market, really, is the only mechanism by which our housing problems will be fixed. Nobody believes that, except the Minister. So maybe it should be called the “Housing (Leave it to the Market) Bill”. This is a failed market, yet the Minister has so much confidence that the bill will fix it up. Perhaps all that the bill will achieve, when you think about it, is it will enable more land to be made available to the developers who want to build big houses. They will build them through a faster process, through the planning process that is in Part 2 of this bill. It will be a faster process to get land available and thereby it will make—[Interruption] Sorry, Minister?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: It’s a short title debate.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Well, a faster process is what the Minister is proposing here. That is not credible. It is not credible that it can be done in that period of time. But maybe it does belie the true agenda of this Minister: to advantage one side. The other area that we have constantly talked about on this side is the override provisions, which we find entirely objectionable, despite the fact that there is now a mediation clause in the bill. Another name could actually be—and this should generally be in there—the “Housing Accords and Overrides Bill”, because the override provision is objectionable. It is hidden there somewhere. There is a little change in there around mediation, and that fixes it! It does not.

Perhaps the other one that we object to is this notion that there are provisions hidden somewhere, introduced at the last minute and hidden in the amendments, that state that by Order in Council the affordability question will be answered. We notice the Minister has taken no calls on that at all to explain how the Order in Council would work. We all appreciate the Minister being in the Chamber and engaging with us, but on that point, Minister, you have not. Perhaps you ought to have, and maybe you can still do that. It needs an explanation as to how that is going to work. It is the Minister’s own answer to our requirement and our objection to there not being a process of the type that addresses affordable housing.

In the end, the bill is suboptimal in terms of what it can achieve. We will not be supporting it. Thank you.

CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): I actually find it sad to be rising to speak on this bill, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, when there is such a genuine need to have something done to deal with the issue of affordable housing. During the course of this debate the Minister of Housing has finally said something about an Order in Council, as my colleagues Rajen Prasad and Phil Twyford have alluded to tonight. But when you look at this bill, it is not a bill about affordable housing, and that is what we need.

We oppose this bill, but I actually say there is no pleasure in doing so because we are genuinely committed to seeing effective changes in the area of housing. For Labour, housing is a huge and important policy area. It is going to make a difference to people’s quality of life and a difference to children’s health and education. Accessing housing at a price that people can afford and being able to own their own house are part of being part of a community and feeling like a person has a place in their community.

In terms of this Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, others have talked about renaming it. Well, I thought you could keep that name, except perhaps add on to the end the phrase “(But Not Affordable Housing)” so that the title would be the “Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas (But Not Affordable Housing) Bill”.

We do see the need for bold action to address the housing affordability crisis, and we support the idea of a short-term mechanism to stimulate the building of affordable housing through accords with councils in special housing areas and fast-track consenting. We do not actually have a problem with that. During the course of this debate—and I have tried a couple of times previously to have a say on this—we have heard all sorts of comments made by the Minister, which are actually not true, about what our motivation is and what our housing spokesperson is and is not saying. We do actually agree that there needs to be land supply and that planning regulations do need to be looked at in terms of housing.

The Minister is looking at me, so I think maybe I could help him out on this and quote from Phil Twyford on the matter of land availability, because I want to set the record straight. It was said earlier today that we did not think that land supply was an issue. This is a direct quote from Phil Twyford in the second reading of this bill: “There is no doubt—and I want to put to rest any suggestion by the Minister of Housing in his last speech—that this party does not accept that land supply is a problem in Auckland. It is clearly not a problem in Tauranga and other regional centres that suffer extreme housing unaffordability. But for the sake of this argument let us be very clear and put on record that there is no doubt—the data makes it crystal clear—that constraints on land supply in Auckland and the failure to intensify is behind an increase in the price in land that has flowed on to the price of housing. But land supply is only one factor in the housing crisis, and the National Party has a fixation with it.” I just wanted to set the record straight on that. I think it is pretty important.

We supported this bill going to the Social Services Committee because we were interested in seeing whether there was some value in this bill. However, we are not going to support this bill, because we believe it is flawed in its design and it will not achieve its stated aim of more affordable housing. The mechanism is not there in the bill. The Minister is now talking about what he may do by Order in Council, but in this bill there is nothing that ensures that of the new houses that are built in special housing areas, a portion of them will be affordable to low and middle income earners.

At the moment there is something like 5 percent of new residential construction that is affordable. That is just meaning that so many New Zealanders see no hope of owning their own home. I want to particularly note young New Zealanders, like my niece who is currently finishing her university education with a large student loan. I do not believe she sees that at any time in the foreseeable future she will be able to pay off that debt and save enough money to buy her own home in this country.

Andrew Little: She’ll be overseas by that time.

CAROL BEAUMONT: That is right. In all probability, as my colleague Andrew Little says, a bright young woman like her will probably end up going overseas for a better income and a better future. That is not what we want and what we need in this country. So, again, I say that this bill picks up only a couple of factors underlying the crisis—

HOLLY WALKER (Green): I do not often take calls on the title and commencement clauses in the Committee stage because, to be honest, sometimes it feels a little bit silly, making up new titles for a bill. But I did want to take a call tonight on the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill and propose four alternative titles. They are four alternative titles that speak to serious issues, both of process and content, with this bill.

The first alternative title I would like to propose is the “Quick, Let’s Cobble Something Together to Announce in the Budget Bill” because that is indeed what this bill is. I have had a look at the Budget papers that were released in association with this bill. What is very clear from those papers is that this is not a bill that has been a long time in production, in policy development, in consideration, in consultation with departments and related Government agencies, or in consultation with affected local authorities. In fact, it was cobbled together very quickly so that the Minister of Finance could make housing a centrepiece of Budget 2013.

In fact, what this Minister wanted to announce was an urban development agency, right up until as recently as March of this year. That is what he was hoping to announce to be the big centrepiece of housing in the Budget. I am disappointed he did not get to do that, because I think it is a very interesting idea and one that has a lot more potential, depending on how it is designed, to address the crisis of housing affordability than what we ended up with in this bill. But evidently he was not able to get that over the line, so something was drawn up very quickly instead and that was this bill that we are debating in the Chamber tonight, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. But it could equally have been called the “Let’s Cobble Together Something to Announce in the Budget Bill”.

That poor process that was followed for the development of this bill has followed through with other stages of the bill. We have heard speakers on other parts of the bill talking about the very limited time that was allocated for submitters to make their views known on the bill, and the very limited notification of affected territorial authorities and potential stakeholders about the opportunity to make those submissions. Many of the submitters who came before us at the Social Services Committee spoke of their concern about the process—that it is a very substantive bill, making very substantive changes that had a big effect on them, but they did not have a lot of time to progress. Indeed, in the select committee it was very pressured for officials, for members of the committee, and for the Parliamentary Counsel Office to draft and make the changes to the bill that were required in the time that was allocated for the committee to consider it. That, again, is a reflection of the rushed way in which the bill was put together. The fact that such substantial changes were required after the select committee process speaks to the fact that the bill was drafted in rather a hurry and needed to be clarified and significantly amended at the select committee. It is not an ideal process.

The second title I would like to suggest for the bill is the “Housing Accords and Urban Sprawl Areas Bill”. As my colleague Eugenie Sage set out in her contribution a few moments ago on Part 2, that is, in fact, what the special housing areas are likely to create, particularly because there is no requirement that they include a particular percentage of affordable housing, and that is what we have largely been debating in the Chamber tonight.

What is likely to happen is that housing developers and property investors will build large McMansion-style houses, just as they do currently in greenfield developments on the urban fringes, because that is what is profitable for developers. We heard from a number of submitters that to make a profit in the construction industry you need to build large houses with large footprints, so that you can recover all those variable costs of building and make a profit. Because there is no requirement that those developers build affordable houses, they will not. They came to the Social Services Committee and, in fact, they told us that themselves. They do not expect to see any increase in the provision of affordable housing, and the bill is likely to result in more of the kinds of development that we are seeing already. As we have heard, they are likely to be in greenfield areas on the urban fringes.

As my colleague Eugenie Sage has pointed out, there are a number of hidden costs associated with those types of development, which actually mean that, yes, although the cost of land, perhaps on face value, may seem lower—

Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): I move, That the question be now put.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): In the debate on this part of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, there have been several attempts to give it a correct title. I opened up the Dominion Post this afternoon and found the perfect title for this bill on page 2: the “First Rung of the Property Ladder (Tough Climb) Bill.” What we do know is that this bill has very little to do with people who want to buy their first home getting into a home. So let us try the “First Rung of the Ladder (Tough Climb) Bill”, because, Minister, it is going to be an awfully tough climb to get into a house as a first home owner under this Government. This bill is nothing more than flimflam when it comes to affordable housing. We have found that out as we have debated this today.

Then I look further on page 2 of the Dominion Post and I find a headline that says: “Buying a home with a low deposit gets even harder.” It is interesting, is it not, that commentators—not Labour politicians, or the Greens, or New Zealand First—writing stories about housing are telling New Zealanders that nothing this Government is doing is helping them to get into a home.

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: You’ve had a shot, Annette. You’ve had your shot.

Hon ANNETTE KING: Low deposits are getting even harder—for the member from Maungakiekie who is interjecting. Getting on the property ladder has just become harder, with banks nudging up fees charged to borrowers with small deposits.

What we are finding out is that this bill ought to have a title that reflects what is happening. I think it was the Law Commission that said that we often have bills that have grand titles that do not relate to what the bills actually mean. I think we need to have a title so that people are not misled about what this grand bill that the Minister of Housing has introduced in a flurry of activity, with only 2 weeks of submissions for people to look at it—

Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Not true.

Hon ANNETTE KING: “Not true.”, said the chair of the Social Services Committee. Have I got something wrong? Have I got something wrong, Mr Chair? He walked to the Table, and said, when I said it was 2 weeks for submissions, that it was not true. Would the member like to correct me if I am not correct? Well, I believe those on the Social Services Committee would know. Perhaps the chair of the select committee was not there? Well, if he was there, his mind was not there. So I believe that we ought to have a bill that is correctly named, as the Law Commission often said. Perhaps the Minister is going to take a call, because one of the things that he did not do before dinner was take a call and answer some of the questions that could have helped give this bill a proper title.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Because the member didn’t bother to read the bill. It’s in the bill.

Hon ANNETTE KING: He has got his opportunity, instead of just sitting there flapping his lips. He could stand up and he could answer some of those questions that would maybe give us the correct title. One of them is about affordable housing and his—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: The lazy member should read the bill.

Hon ANNETTE KING: Oh! I am certainly not lazy, but I do not make things up, like that Minister. He has got a record of making things up, and of creating figures and facts to suit himself. So I think perhaps that he might like to get to his feet and tell us about the Order in Council. Tell us about the Order—

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Lazy and embittered.

Hon ANNETTE KING: I see my cousin over there, up to his usual tricks—a few nasty jabs and gibes. He can never debate a single issue without throwing in some nastiness. I do not know how it is I ever got related to him. It is not in our side of the family. So I have to say to the Minister: get to your feet, Minister. Get to your feet and answer the questions about when the Order in Council will be introduced, what will be in that Order in Council, and then maybe—just maybe—this bill could have its correct title.

MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): 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 57

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; 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 63

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

Noes 57

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

Clause 1 agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 351 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to clause 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Amendment agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Clause 2 as amended agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to Care of Children Act 2004

ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): It is a pleasure to take a call on this very important piece of legislation, the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill, which has its origins in the longstanding concerns over the operation of the Family Court and the Family Court jurisdiction.

I think it is timely to point out that this bill had its genesis in, I think, a very well-intentioned and a very noble action on the part of the Government. It started off with the Government hearing the concern about the need for the Family Court to modernise and, especially, to reduce delay and anxiety about the way it was resolving or dealing with some family disputes. That was in an environment that was changing too, for families, where the demand—particularly from men—to play a greater role in their children’s lives after separation was putting more pressure on the court in terms of time and claims for legal aid.

The previous Minister of Justice did the sensible thing of calling together all parties who had a stake in this matter for a consultation session here at Parliament, as it turned out, and took time to hear people, hear what the concerns were, and hear about suggestions for reform. Following that, that Minister then set up a couple of processes. They got around the legal profession but also set up an external working group to assist that Minister to come up with some solutions. There was a process of putting together a paper. That then drew on public submissions. And all of that was then meant to lead to a set of reforms that reflected the actual concerns that people felt.

Sadly, by that time, a different Minister—in fact, it turns out that it was the Minister who is now in the chair, the Hon Judith Collins—took over the management of the procedure, of the reform process. What emerged—and I really now take my lead at this point from the external reference group itself—was a bill that bore little relation to what came out of the consultation that had led up to that very point. What we ended up with is a bill that is much less about the effective and efficacious disposal of family disputes and more about saving money by reducing legal aid and reducing court time.

I think it is timely, as we think about these changes, to just reflect back. There is an article in the New Zealand Lawyer online on 20 May 2011 that was a retrospective about the Family Court. It is interesting. It gave an account of the original intentions and origins of the Family Court. The royal commission had been set up to deal with and to look at the court system and, in particular, to make recommendations about the Family Court. What the author of that 2011 article said was this: “The Royal Commission noted … that the ‘aim of the Court’ ”—that is to say, the Family Court—“ ‘should be to help resolve problems with the co-operation of the parties, wherever that is possible, with the minimum of disruption in all cases’.” The author goes on to say: “This focus on conciliation put the spotlight on providing services which assisted families to cooperatively resolve disputes. The Royal Commission recognised that self-determination, rather than judicial determination, often required expert assistance. That expertise was counselling and mediation.”

You could take those words, which were a summary of the royal commission’s report 33 years ago, and they resonate very closely with the very words that sit behind, or at least are provided in, the summary of this bill. It is all about an emphasis on resolving disputes between the parties. The difference is that 33 years ago they recognised that, actually, couples who separate sometimes need professional assistance to arrive at that point. They need assistance to understand their legal rights, and they need assistance to get through the emotional and difficult time that it is for the couple and any children who might be involved as well.

The Royal Commission on the Courts described the Family Court as having a twofold function, judicial and therapeutic, and it described the court’s therapeutic jurisdiction as being defined by the fact that there were clinical services that were required—social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists. And so it is against that background that we consider this bill on this occasion.

Just going through some of the relevant parts of Part 1, which deals with the amendments to the Care of Children Act, it is a very crucial part of much of the work of the Family Court. In fact, 40 percent of the applications that go to the Family Court deal with care of children matters, so it is a very significant part of the Family Court business. Clause 4 of the bill replaces sections 4 and 5 of the Care of Children Act, and the question that arises is really how meaningful, in the light of the later provisions of the Act—the family dispute resolution provisions, which we will come to in Part 3—those particular changes are, because those changes talk about appointing the lawyer to represent children. The proposed new section 4 talks about promoting the paramount welfare and best interests of the child in the proceedings, and all the way through the new proposed section 4 in clause 4 is the constant reference to the welfare and best interests of the child in any proceedings before the court.

But, of course, the reality is that going through the family dispute resolution process, unless it is accompanied by an application that alleges violence in the relationship, is not a proceeding for the purposes of the bill. So there is a real question about just exactly who will be promoting the welfare and best interests of the child, because it is not going to be any officer of the court and it is not going to be lawyers and counsel. The reference particularly in subsection (2) of the proposed new section 4 says that “Any person considering the welfare and best interests of a child” has to take a number of steps. Well, that has got to be the parents who are separating, who are bound up in the emotional turmoil, and any facilitator involved. I just think that there is now an air of unreality that that part of the bill will begin to represent.

The proposed new section 5 in clause 4 of the bill sets out a series of principles relating to the child’s welfare and best interests, but it is really problematic to know exactly who is going to be taking responsibility for that.

There is a new section 7 of the Act under clause 5, relating to a lawyer for the child, and that is a very significant change because it goes from the present wording, which says that unless the court is satisfied that the appointment would serve no useful purpose the court must make an appointment or a direction under the previous subsection to appoint a lawyer for the child, particularly where there is an issue about the day-to-day care of the child. That wording, which heavily emphasises presumption in favour of appointing a lawyer for the child, now becomes that the judge must be satisfied that appointing a lawyer is going to be worthwhile, or relates to any concerns for the safety or well-being of the child or as the judge otherwise considers necessary, with no guidance as to how that discretion might otherwise be exercised.

This is a significant change, and this goes back to the point that has been made previously in debates in this House on this bill, and that is that this very much raises the issue of whether this bill will allow New Zealand to comply with its obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, where children, under that convention, are guaranteed the right to be heard in matters that affect them, and where they are of sufficient age to instruct counsel to ensure that their views and their voice can be heard.

That remains a very serious issue, and the Minister in the chair might simply want to answer the question of how the Government expects to meet its obligations under that convention, given the provisions of this bill that will change the presumption in favour of the appointment of a lawyer for the child to a presumption against that, leaving the parents, in their very emotional state, to be the ones who, together somehow—notwithstanding their differences—are meant to be determining the best interests of the child. That is an impossibility. That is simply just not a realistic prospect, so we have very real concerns about the extent to which there will be compliance with those convention requirements.

Then there is the issue about lawyers for parties under the new section 7A in clause 5. That fundamentally changes the role of lawyers. There is no question—and I think the Minister has basically admitted that she wants to see a much lesser—

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): I would like, first off, to acknowledge the work of the Justice and Electoral Committee on this matter. It has been a very good select committee, and it worked very hard on this Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill. We have had tremendous work, as well, from the Ministry of Justice. It has worked right across all the stakeholders in this area.

I make no apologies for believing that it is time to reform the Family Court. I speak as somebody with experience—around 22 years’ experience as a practising lawyer, and quite a lot of it in the Family Court area and the family law area. What I know is that couples break up all the time. They split up all the time, and they make sensible arrangements for their children all the time, except if they get into a situation where they are encouraged to not make sensible arrangements or where they are encouraged to take legal action. In court we are talking about what happens to a child from day to day, where they go for Christmas, where they go to school. In fact, it is quite normal, it is quite average, it is quite usual for couples to split up, even when they have children.

What is not normal or usual is for a child to be asked to have a lawyer to be able to say what they want. Most children can speak to their parents. Most parents can speak to their children. This is not to say that a lawyer is not someone who should be available when needed, but the fact is that over the last few years what used to be an unusual occurrence—a lawyer being appointed for a child—has become the norm. That is not usual, and it should not be.

The member who has just resumed his seat, Andrew Little, has talked about the UN. Well, actually, I am really quite a fan of the UN, but I would also say this: it does not bring up children. Those of us who do bring up children know that a parent’s first responsibility is to their child. It is absolutely the No. 1 responsibility before anything else. A lot of parents I have seen—

Sue Moroney: The ones that go wrong so often. Why does it go wrong so often?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: That member may want to take a call herself. I can certainly say from experience that I have seen plenty of people who have gone through the Family Court system come out the end of it and say: “Well, we were told we had to go through this, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get what we needed.” Actually, if only they had sat down and had a chat, they would have sorted it out.

I make no apology to this Committee or to anybody else for supporting a family dispute resolution service to try to keep families out of court and to keep mums and dads away from court unless they simply cannot reach an agreement, in which case the court should be involved. But let us give people as many opportunities as we can to resolve their differences around their children, because ultimately they are their children, and they have a responsibility to them.

Part 1 deals with amendments to the Care of Children Act 2004. Yes, people may be personally upset that their partner has decided to leave them or to go with someone else, but there is no need to use their children to get back at each other. Many of us who have any experience in the legal profession know that time and time again we come across people whose entire lives have been destroyed by being pulled through the Family Court year after year after year. There are matters that have come to my attention as Minister of Justice where people spent hundreds of thousands of dollars around access to their own children. These are not people who are paedophiles. These are not people who abuse their children. These are people who simply wanted to have access to their own children and who were being denied it through a system of abuse of the legal aid system and of the Family Court. That is simply not good enough.

If we can keep people out of court, if we can get them to take responsibility for their actions rather than blaming their lawyers, and if we can get them to take responsibility for their children, I think that is a very sensible thing.

Andrew Little: Who’s blaming the lawyers?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: The member asks: “Who blames the lawyers?”. Well, having been a lawyer for 22 years, I have listened to a lot of people blame everything on their previous lawyers but who, after $200,000 worth of legal fees, now wanted to settle it. I think it is incredibly important for people to understand that, yes, people split up, but there is no need for these matters to go to court unless every other avenue has been addressed. People need to be helped to be responsible for their actions.

What we also know is that if we want to see the abuse in the Family Court system, all we need to do is look at the way that the costs in the last 5 years have gone right through the roof—a 65 percent increase in legal aid costs out of Family Courts. Do we think for a moment that there is a 65 percent increase in benefits for the people who were going into the Family Court? No, unfortunately there was not. Were there any better outcomes for children? No. Were there any better outcomes generally for families? No. There were, in fact, more people encouraged down a route that was going to actually tear them apart as families and also come between children and parents.

We all know as parents that it is a very tough job being a parent. It is actually even tougher being a 6-year-old child being asked to have your own lawyer and having to tell your lawyer where you want to live. I cannot understand how anyone can think that it is anything other than, frankly, abuse of a child to require a child aged 6 years old to choose which parent they get to live with. That is like saying to a child: “Who do you love more, Mummy or Daddy?”. That is not fair to a child. That is the role of the parents, and if not the parents, of the court. The court has the opportunity under this bill to appoint a counsel for a child if needed, but it should not be the norm. It should be in exceptional circumstances when it is needed, not because the parents are not being encouraged to come up with reasonable decisions about their own children. It is for the court to be able to make a decision if they cannot reach that.

I make no apology for thinking that parents need to be in charge of their children. They need to put their children first and they need to put their own personal views about the other parent second. It is not the child’s fault that the parents have split up, and too often children feel that it is their fault, because of the way in which the court system works. So family dispute resolution is something I am absolutely supportive of, as I am of counselling when needed—when required by a judge or suggested by a judge. But it is actually time that Governments worked out—and this Government has—that families, parents, adults, and children need to be able to get on with their lives. They do not need to have some nanny professional organisation, whatever it is, interfering in every single thing that they do. Parents will not be encouraged to take responsibility unless they are, in fact, asked to do so.

Hon Phil Goff: This is all about saving money, regardless of what the Minister’s saying.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Mr Phil Goff may well say that, but he, of course, oversaw the biggest blowout in legal aid ever—the biggest blowout in legal aid ever. And yet I would think he should also be thinking: “Who benefited from it?”. Did the children benefit from it, Mr Goff? No, they did not. Who benefited from it? Certainly not the children. Were the people who benefited from it the adults, the parents? No, not them. There was not one better outcome for all of the money spent on legal fees, on psychologists, or on anything else. What it did was it strung out costs for years. It also strung out massive amounts of litigation that tied up these children’s lives for years.

I think anybody who has heard some of the stories that the select committee will have heard and that I have heard—and that I know of, as a practising lawyer before I came to Parliament—will know that whenever parents went to the wrong lawyer, they ended up in litigation. They might have been there for years. This is not something that should be in the courts unless it is an exceptional circumstance, and then the court needs to act quickly, it needs to act fairly, and it needs to act decisively.

Courts should not be asked to relitigate where a child spends Christmas every year—the sort of nonsense that we have seen going through the courts. It is an absolute outrage that the taxpayer and everyone else and the children are being pulled through that sort of nonsense. The courts should be left for big decisions. The decisions around where a child lives and the big decisions about whether a child is safe are the decisions for the courts, not whether a child spends Christmas this year with Daddy or Mummy. Those are the decisions that parents must be encouraged to make for themselves, and only if they cannot should they then go to a court.

This bill is about changing the way we think about family law. Family law should be about the children and it should be about the parents. It should not be about the lawyers, the psychologists, and all the other professionals who are very highly paid to do this job. This bill is an excellent bill. I would like to particularly thank those members of the select committee who undertook to review this law on the basis of what is in the best interests of children.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): The Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill started out with some very good intentions, and, indeed, there are a number of good things in it. Although there have been many worthwhile amendments—and I do think that the Justice and Electoral Committee did a very good job on it—there have, in fact, been so many amendments that the bill hardly resembles the one as introduced. I think the effectiveness of the Family Court system will, however, be somewhat compromised by this bill, so it therefore remains unsupported by New Zealand First. There are four major reasons for that: firstly, because the bill fails to ensure the availability of adequate publicly funded counselling when it is needed most, which is before any dispute takes hold; secondly, because it fails to ensure that parties will have legal representation at all stages when we think they will need it; thirdly, because legal aid will be too restricted; and, fourthly, because we think that the provisions concerning the appointment of a lawyer for the child are far too tough. So New Zealand First will be voting against the bill.

I want to deal briefly with the Supplementary Order Papers at this stage, and firstly with the Minister of Justice’s Supplementary Order Paper 349. The provisions in the bill relating to the fees and expenses of a lawyer appointed to represent the child, to assist the court or to appoint it to write a report, are amended in clause 21, so that the court may not order the parties to contribute toward the fees and expenses of a lawyer appointed to assist the court if the lawyer was appointed to provide independent advice “on any complex legal issue”. The words “complex legal issue” are highly restrictive but also very uncertain, so it is not easily possible to tell whether this amendment will really help at all. But where complex legal issues are not the reason, and where the court appoints a lawyer to assist the court, the parties would have to pay for it, and we in New Zealand First think that is wrong. The parties should pay only for their own representation, not for a lawyer appointed by the court for its purposes, whether for complex legal issues or not. There is a discretion for the court to exempt parties from this if there is serious hardship. Presumably, one party might be exempted for serious hardship, though the other might not be. But, more important, serious hardship is a high bar for the purposes of exemption from the obligation to pay, and many parties will struggle to meet the costs. We think these costs should be met entirely by the State. So the Minister has simply not gone far enough to amend the bill in this way.

However, concerning appeals, the Care of Children Act 2004, the Child Support Act 1991, and the Family Proceedings Act 1980 are amended to provide that no appeal may be made to the High Court in respect of a decision to appoint a lawyer to represent a child or to assist the court, or in respect of a decision to request a person to write a cultural, medical, psychiatric, or psychological report, or in respect of a direction that the parties may or may not be represented at a settlement conference. New Zealand First does support those amendments. We think those are sensible, and they are the sorts of decisions that should finally be made by the Family Court.

Moving on to the Care of Children Act 2004, which is also amended so that the maximum number of counselling sessions is to be determined by regulations, we do not really know what counselling would be made available, because it is simply to be set out in regulations. We suspect that counselling services will, in fact, be severely reduced. New Zealand First believes that a more comprehensive Government-funded counselling service should be provided. The bill repeals existing provisions for Family Court counselling and replaces them with a new scheme involving mandatory parenting information programmes, family dispute resolution, of course, and judge-directed counselling. We do not think those provisions are enough. It is clear that counselling now plays a very large role in avoiding disputes, and that needs to be enhanced, we believe, and not reduced in the way that we see with this bill. Not all families will break up if first given the benefit of counselling before any other process is used. Family dispute resolution should come after counselling if counselling is not enough. The new section 46E, inserted by clause 9 of the bill, is therefore too restrictive. The parties should be able to decide for themselves to do this, without having to get a judge’s direction.

Finally, regarding David Clendon’s Supplementary Order Paper 254, we will be supporting that. It gives greater weight to the principle that protects the child from all forms of violence if there is any inconsistency in applying the principles in new section 5, inserted by clause 4. Mr Clendon’s amendment would insert a new section 5(2) to provide the courts with clear legislative guidance if the application of one or more of the other principles in the section conflicts with that principle. So I agree that new section 5(a), inserted by clause 4, which says that “a child’s safety must be protected and, in particular … from all forms of violence … from all persons,”, must be clearly, absolutely paramount and be explicitly stated to prevail over the other principles. New Zealand First will support that Supplementary Order Paper, but for the reasons that I gave at the beginning of my address, New Zealand First will not be able to support the bill as a whole.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East): I want to support the comments that Labour’s spokesperson on justice, Andrew Little, began with, which was that this was an amazing process. It was a fantastic process for bringing law reform to Parliament. That process was to develop a discussion paper that would set out all of the issues that everybody could engage in—understanding what all those issues were about. And this amazing process happened not far from this Chamber in the Legislative Council Chamber. The then Minister of Justice enabled all of the parties to come together, and they basically held a conference here at Parliament with all of those external interests operating—with the Ministry of Justice, with the Minister, and with the Opposition parties. Everybody was there. Everyone had a say. Everyone made a contribution. We had the judges. We had external consultants. We had everyone engaging in a really, really positive process. Then we had this external reference group established, which was also able to engage in a much broader process that enabled many, many more people to be involved in developing the way the law would be introduced for debate in this Parliament—fantastic.

Except something went wrong. Something changed along the way. Instead of the bill that everybody thought would be introduced, suddenly there was the bill that was introduced—the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill—and suddenly the game plan had changed. Actually, what changed was that it became about the money instead of about the people who we are told—lectured, I would suggest—by the Minister of Justice are the real subject of our debate. Suddenly it was actually about money. It was not about the children. It certainly was not about parents coping with the most distressing environment that a parent could possibly cope with, having to disassociate themselves with the heartbreak of being left by a partner who has just told them that they have cheated on them for the last few months and have actually left them for somebody else, maybe their best friend, and are re-establishing their life with somebody else. They were prepared, they were ready to go, but not the person who was left behind—and suddenly she is the problem? Suddenly he is the problem, if it was him? Are they the problem in terms of this process because they cannot focus their immediate and absolute utmost attention on the best interests of the child?

How heartless this Government is that it actually leaves it to people at the most distressing moment of their lives to take care of how they resolve the issues in the best interests of their children. This Parliament has an absolute responsibility for the best interests of the children, and we actually do have a role to play as a Parliament and as a Government to step in and assist parties to resolve disputes in the best interests of their children, when they may not be in the best frame of mind to do so for themselves. That is why we have always had counselling.

When this law was introduced—when the Family Court proceedings legislation came into play—I was studying law. When the Family Court was first established I was a law student. We were studying the changes that were going to replace the law that existed before that, and actually the Family Court process was much better. It was much improved in terms of what was there before, and we were all looking forward to it.

Yes, there have to be changes—we all agree with that—but why would you take out counselling? I can find that in the regulatory impact statement. I know my colleagues will be shocked to find that I have read the regulatory impact statement. It says, and I think all of you will know instantly what I am going to say: “Counselling costs the State approximately $9.7 million per year.” It is $9.7 million dollars a year. We are talking about a multimillion-dollar budget here, and $9.7 million is a small chunk of that multimillion-dollar budget, but what it saves is not mentioned here.

What it means is that couples are referred away from the court. Yes, they file under the court system—a section 9 referral—and up until now they have been receiving six different, individual counselling support sessions so that they are able to work out their issues. The evidence that we received at the Justice and Electoral Committee—and, yes, we did sit on the select committee and listen to people who came, and, yes, many of them were lawyers, and, no, Minister, they did not come out of a sense of self-interest. They came out of sense of public duty. They believed that it was important that they had the capacity to refer to counselling paid for, yes, by the State, but the benefit in that conflict resolution was for the benefit of the country as a whole and certainly for those individual children. Eighty-five percent to 90 percent of those cases never came back to those lawyers. They never came back.

The cases that the Minister keeps referring to are the very, very hard cases—the ones that come to the attention of the legal profession at the first instance. They go off to counselling, they get matters resolved, and that is where the Government should be investing this $9.7 million. But it has already cut the number of counselling sessions in half and is going to reduce the number down to one session after this legislation takes effect. This is absolutely crazy. You can talk about alternative dispute resolution or family dispute resolution all you like; the first step is the counselling sessions that are there. They are the dispute resolution provisions that we have at the moment. They are fully funded. They were funded at the level of six sessions before and that is now reduced, as we know.

I cannot understand how the Minister can stand in this Chamber and say that the Government does not want nanny State, nanny agency—whatever—to stand in the way of making decisions that might assist the best interests of children when parents are in a highly charged emotional state. Many children in this country get killed by a parent every year or get killed by a caregiver every year in this, a developed nation. This is supposed to be the country that is the best country in the world in which to bring up children, but we cannot find it within ourselves to fund $9.7 million worth of funding to assist parents work through these most highly charged issues.

The Minister said that the UN does not bring up children. That is true. The United Nations gives an absolute statement of what a child is entitled to expect of its country in terms of his or her rights in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The rights of the child have got to be protected by our Parliament—or what the hell are we doing here? Why are we here as members of Parliament if we do not care about the rights of children? What are we in Parliament for other than to advocate for the rights of children? You know, I have to say that I am actually not disappointed to be leaving this place right now, because I am absolutely appalled that we would allow legislation to go through this House in order to take away from those people their actual reliance on this Parliament doing the right thing for their families, and that is to protect children against what are perfectly normal human emotions at times of great distress, and to enable them to come through and to achieve whatever they can achieve in their lives. But we will not do that by taking away their rights to our support at this very, very, very difficult time.

So I have to say that we might have had a very good process going into this legislation. My difficulty is that dollars and cents have taken over from the common sense that actually drove the original reform process. Instead of focusing on the solution, we have now started focusing on the problem, but we have framed the problem as one about money instead of human rights, children’s rights, and the things that really matter. I would have thought they would matter most to a country like New Zealand.

ALFRED NGARO (National): I rise to take a call on the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill. We heard about the aspect of sense and common sense in that speech by Lianne Dalziel, but I think that in some cases some of the member’s points that she made were nonsense, in the sense that I was also part of that Justice and Electoral Committee, along with her and also Mr Little over there, and we heard what they had to say. The regulatory impact statement declares that the aim of this bill is “... to create a modern, accessible family justice system that is responsive to children and vulnerable people.” That is the intent. Do we care about children? Absolutely—absolutely. It is nonsense to say that this Government does not care about children.

There were 386 written submissions, 217 of which we heard at the select committee. Here are just some of the comments, because I want to give a balanced view around the perspectives that have been shared today. This is, word for word, from submissions that were shared at the select committee—a variety of different submissions.

Here is one of the submitters and this is what they said: “This is not about the lawyers. I am particularly interested in the extent to which it is feasible to provide positive, conflict resolution assistance to families and lawyers and clients. I support the intent of this bill, because I have seen money wasted on legal fees and Family Court time that could be better spent on helping parents”—and here is the key point—“and children.” So you cannot argue with that, because here is a submission from a submitter out of the 217 and this is what they are declaring to us.

Andrew Little: Who was that?

ALFRED NGARO: This was actually down in Christchurch and Mr Little was there as well. This is what we want to say. In the select committee we have heard, we have listened, and we have responded, and here are some of the recommendations.

I want to pick up on the point around counselling. We heard Relationships Aotearoa, which provides counselling services. When we asked it what the number of sessions it gave was—and we know that it is currently contracted for four sessions—this is what it said. The number of contracted sessions that it provides, on average, is three sessions—three sessions. So, in response to that, we have also said that a recommendation from the select committee is to provide up to 3 hours’ preparatory counselling for eligible parents so that they can make the most of family dispute resolution. We are responding to what we hear are the concerns: three sessions, 3 hours. That is what we are responding to.

The other issue that I want to talk about is about empowering the judge to be able to refer parties back to family dispute resolution and also Parenting through Separation. I have sat through and I have also taken part in Parenting through Separation. I have seen the importance that that has had. We heard from some submitters who were in quite an emotional state, and you have heard about that. It is an emotional state.

Often, when parents have got into that state, it is not about what is right; it is actually about what they feel within themselves. All of a sudden—one of the submitters talked about this—everything just went red for them. They could not see the wood for the trees. All they saw was their sense of right. What they forgot about was their responsibility for their children—the responsibility for their children—hence the reason why Parenting through Separation is absolutely important. It has been endorsed by those who have been through this course and who have seen the importance of the course. Parenting through Separation—what does that do? It actually allows the parents to see the children, hear the voice of the children, and recognise the importance of the children to be taken into account in this issue as well.

Also, one of the things that was indicated as part of a recommendation of change is to provide up to 4 hours of legal support before entry into the court for parents who meet the legal aid threshold. One of the other areas that we think is absolutely important is enabling lawyers to get involved early in the court process at the judge’s discretion. It would increase the chances of a successful resolution.

What is really important to us is that family dispute resolution has been endorsed by the arbitrators and the mediators who came to make their submissions. This is what they said to us, word for word: “Good arbitration, good mediation, has the ability to be able to exit families out of the court system as early as possible.” We know that the court system in itself is not only brutal but traumatic, and is not a place we want our children to be part of. We do not want them to see their parents in the trauma of fighting against each other. We have heard that time and time again.

What we have heard, again from the mediators—well-trained mediators—is that the family dispute resolution is important to this process as well. So this bill establishes the family dispute resolution process to focus the family justice system towards supporting people to resolve their disputes where appropriate and, most important, out of the court system.

The bill also requires a person to complete a parenting information programme as well, and—

DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am pleased to take an initial call at this stage. It was interesting to hear the Minister of Justice’s comments some few minutes ago. They were a very useful summary of what I consider to be the mythology that has grown up around the Family Court and the various issues and problems that are associated with it. I think it is the overstatement of those problems that leads me to the language of mythology. Like all good myth, there is enough of an essence of truth in there to make it almost credible, but it is grossly overstated. That overstatement is used for a very dramatic, a very far-reaching, and, I think, a very ill-conceived set of changes to the court and the court processes that will resolve some of the undoubted issues that have emerged, some of the difficulties with the court, but at great cost—at the cost of making vulnerable people more likely not to get good service from the court and of exposing children and, indeed, some of their parents to considerable danger at some points.

The language I was referring to in terms of the Minister’s contribution was about a budget blowout. Yes, indeed, there was an increase in spending, but it is interesting that some of the groups that sought to get a little bit more analysis, a little bit more guidance about how that all broke down and how it shaped up, found significant barriers in their way. We have yet to see a comprehensive analysis of this so-called budget blowout. We heard reference to highly paid lawyers and counsellors, as though it is their fault. In fact, again, that is not sustainable in real terms. We heard literally hundreds of lawyers presenting. We heard counsellors. We heard other professionals who work in the Family Court. Frankly, none of them struck me as being motivated by this supposedly very lucrative place called the Family Court. Lawyers who want to make lots of money are very ill-advised to go into Family Court work. We know this. In fact, for that reason, some of the larger partnerships are actually discouraging their partners and their associates from engaging in family law. It is not about people using this as a gravy train, least of all the professionals.

We heard a lot about the trivial cases that come before the court. And, yes, I have witnessed that personally—not at first hand, I am pleased to say. But we know that, yes, people have used and misused the court to continue their domestic battles by other means, to argue over very trivial issues, often at the cost of the children involved. But these are the minority of cases. We know that the large, large majority of New Zealanders whose relationships fail do resolve their issues internally. We have heard a great deal about the need to get the State out of these private matters and to leave it to the parents to resolve their own problems. I agree with that. Most New Zealanders agree. And most New Zealanders achieve that. In fact, as a percentage, very few cases where the marriage or relationship breaks up do ever come to the court. Some do require counselling and benefit from that. I agree that that $9 million - odd—less than $10 million—is money very well invested, rather than spent.

Most couples do resolve their issues. By definition, the cases that come before the court are the hard cases. They are the ones where the individuals, the couples—whoever is concerned—have not been able to resolve their differences. Yes, we might stand in judgment and say they ought, as grown-up adults, to be able to do that, but the reality is that many of them do not and cannot. In the course of trying to take away their opportunity to use the court as a battleground for their occasionally trivial issues, we are also taking away that opportunity from people with very deep-seated, very real, serious issues about safety, about the uneven power within relationships. All of these are matters that are very serious, and they need to be treated as such. In the reforms proposed to the Family Court proceedings, we see that we are throwing out an awful lot of babies with the bathwater—and I do apologise for the inevitable cliché, but there you are.

There is a great deal at stake here. Again, it is not to say that the court is not in need of reform. It is a 30-year-old institution, and there are very few 30-year-old institutions that cannot stand some improvement in terms of process. Initially, there was a very good analysis of what that was and where it might go. But things did go astray, very clearly. When you get groups like judges, like lawyers, like counsellors, like many, many people who came to us who had had dealings with the court—some of them having had very good experiences in the court, others having had very unfortunate experiences—we heard about the breadth and depth of the issues the court does confront.

Clearly, the legislation is about the safety of children. Part 1 of the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill amends the Care of Children Act. Clause 4 talks about the child’s welfare and best interests needing to be paramount. That is as it should be. I say with absolute confidence that nobody who sat on the Justice and Electoral Committee, nobody in this Chamber, would dispute the importance of protecting children. Their safety and well-being ought to be paramount and it is a good thing that that line is in there. There was considerable debate, however, in the select committee—good debate, principled debate—about the removal or otherwise of sections 58 to 62 of the Care of Children Act, the so-called Bristol clauses, which were seen to offer another layer of protection where there are allegations of violence against children. Personally, it was a very difficult decision. I know that our party, other parties, and members of the select committee also struggled with the proposition in clause 14 of the bill to remove those sections. There was a very good analysis from the Law Society that spelt out the pros and cons and determined that we could do without those sections, that there were some negative aspects in terms of cost, in terms of delays, and in terms of the separation of parents from their children, which later proved to be unjustified. Some of the language in new section 4 and, indeed, new section 5 in clause 4 around principles related to child welfare are seen as a replacement and sufficient to ensure the child’s interests are paramount.

But I make reference to Supplementary Order Paper 254 in my name, where I highlight that there is a possible conflict in some of these principle clauses, particularly when we see that there is a strong proposition that members of the child’s family group, whānau, etc., should be involved in the child’s ongoing care and that the child should continue to have a relationship with both their parents. But we also acknowledge that there are situations where being with family is the last place that a child should be because there is danger within that context. I see within the principles and, indeed, with new section 4 some potential conflict where judges or others might be obliged to try to balance this notion of the paramountcy of the protection of the child with the very compelling proposition that families should continue to be involved in the care and treatment of their child.

I do think that this proposed amendment goes some way to removing that potential for conflict, for uncertainty. It spells out that in every situation, if there is any sense that we could make a call one way or the other, the paramountcy of the safety and interests of the child must be at the top of the hierarchy. Those principles could be read as a hierarchy, they could be read as having equal weight, and I do think we need just to remove that potential for conflict, that potential for uncertainty. I do think that is what the Bristol clauses were originally in place to do—to ensure that we did everything we could to protect children from that situation that could end in that ultimate tragedy, which, of course, the Bristol case was.

So we do see value in the proposition in this Supplementary Order Paper, and I encourage other members to support it and look at it. It is not intended to be a political statement. It is not intended to second-guess any of the negotiations or the discussion that occurred in the committee. It is a genuine attempt to ensure that no judge—nobody—is obliged to make that call about which of these principles is at the top of the heap. It makes it absolutely certain, beyond any uncertainty, that the welfare of the child, the safety of the child, must be paramount. I think I will leave it at that for this contribution, and look forward to discussing this further.

Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): In the bill that we are discussing tonight, the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill, we are seeing evidence of a Government that is increasingly arrogant and increasingly dishonest in what it puts forward. I have got to say to the Minister of Justice, I was incredibly disappointed with the comments that you, as Minister, made. First of all, it was the arrogance that somehow you, as Minister, know best. Forget the people who work hard in their profession both as legal experts and as specialists who report to the Family Court. Forget the fact that your predecessor, Simon Power, appointed an expert advisory group, a reference group, and appointed them on the basis of their knowledge, their skill, and their experience. You, Minister, disparaged the people appointed by your predecessor because they say that this bill is a disaster. Let me, Minister, use their actual words, “If this Bill proceeds as drafted, the very fabric of the New Zealand family justice system will be destroyed.”

Minister, those comments were made about this part of the bill by the people whom your predecessor appointed because they are expert in this area. I want to know from you, Minister, whether people like Antony Mahon, a barrister with 30 years’ experience on the Family Court, is a person who does not know what he is talking about. Professor Fred Seymour—I worked with Fred Seymour when I was Minister of Justice. He did brilliant things on behalf of the Ministry of Justice and to make our family justice system better. Dr Suzanne Blackwell is another person—a clinical psychologist with 30 years’ experience. Those are the sorts of people whom your predecessor appointed. You ignored their advice, and then in the Cabinet paper that you presented to your colleagues you had the effrontery to say that what you were proposing aligned with what they recommended. They did not say it was lie; they said it wrong, that it was incorrect. But I want to know from you Minister, when you take the call, why it was that the claim was made that what is being proposed in Part 1 and the other parts of this bill was aligned with what the expert advisory committee told the Government. Because they told the Government absolutely the opposite of what you have said. Then you said that this was motivated by your great desire to do what was best for the children of this country. That is not an honest interpretation of what motivates this bill, and it is not what the submitters to the committee said was what motivated this bill.

This bill, pure and simple, is about cutting costs, regardless of the impact on the families, and regardless of the impact on the children. That is what it is about. If you do not believe me, Minister, believe your own regulatory impact statement, because what does it start by saying? It states: “Given the overall fiscal situation, urgent steps must be taken to lower the cost of the current justice system …”. This bill is about cost cutting regardless of the social costs, the family costs, and the costs that you are imposing on the most vulnerable, the children, who will no longer get the sort of assistance that they need before the Family Court. It strikes me as strange that we have money to pay for Warner Bros, we have money to pay to Rio Tinto, we have money to pay to Skycity, and we have got money to give in tax cuts to the wealthiest people of this country but we cannot afford to represent the interests of children in court by counsel for the child other than in exceptional cases. We cannot afford to get the specialist reports that are needed to make sure that the proper outcomes are reached on behalf of the vulnerable children. We cannot afford to do those things but we can give subsidies and welfare payments to the big corporates and to the most wealthy. I do not accept that, Minister.

Minister, I want to refer you to the comments that were made by your expert advisory committee on the clauses that you are pushing through in this part of the bill. It says this is flawed. It says that the proposed reforms—maybe that should be in inverted commas—“are not based on empirical evidence; (b) are contrary to extensive, existing evidence of best outcomes for families and children;”. I want to know, Minister, whether you agree with the comments made by the expert advisory group on what you are proposing in this part. Let me help you out, because if you do not believe the expert advisory group, perhaps you will believe your own ministry, which says in the regulatory impact statement that the research that was done on this was limited and that some of the proposals have to be based on overseas examples. There was “insufficient historical fiscal, and statistical data to accurately predict the average costs of performing some tasks associated with Family Court processes. There was insufficient time for piloting … [and there was] limited opportunity to discuss the final proposals with stakeholders.”

If I was Minister of Justice in this Chamber and I had that report from my own ministry, I would hang my head in shame, Minister, because you are making, as you have acknowledged yourself, comments that you know are not backed up by the facts. They are denied by her ministry. They are denied by the expert reference group. They say that this piece of legislation will create a two-tiered family justice system: “The more vulnerable members of society will have limited access to services to assist them in the resolution of family disputes.” OK, if you earn less than the margin that entitles you to civil legal aid, you will not have to pay the cost of the family dispute resolution service. What is that figure? I think, Minister, it is $22,000. So if you earn less than $22,000, you will not have to pay. If you are on a ministerial salary of a quarter of a million dollars, paying will be easy, but what about the strugglers, the battlers, the people going through a really difficult time in their lives? How are they going to pay $900 to get access to the family dispute resolution service? Nine hundred dollars is going to be a huge barrier to the strugglers and the battlers in life who cannot afford that, and therefore will not be able to take advantage of that service. That is why the expert advisory group says that this will create a two-tiered justice system. Do you know what they mean by that? They mean justice for the wealthy, who can pay for the legal advice, and no justice for the people who cannot afford it.

I thought that justice in this country was meant to be equal. I thought that children, as the most vulnerable members of our society, were entitled to the assistance that they needed, entitled to the representation in court, entitled to have somebody advocate for them, and entitled to the specialist services that could say to the court in an independent way: “This is what needs to happen to protect those children.” So excuse me if I feel disgust when the Minister comes into this Chamber and says that this is about looking after the children and doing better by them. Actually, Minister, it is about doing absolutely the opposite. Then the expert advisory committee says: “for those who do have access to the services, the services will be of a lesser quality than services available to better resourced members of society. (iii) it is entirely foreseeable”—Minister, they say—“that inequalities arising from gender, socio-economic status and ethnicity will become entrenched, resulting in increased costs to the health, education, child protection and criminal justice budgets.”

So here we have an example, once again, of a Government that will try to make savings by cutting services only to add the cost of what it is doing to the wider governmental service system. Will it help the court case not to have people represented in court, not to have people understand the legal requirements, and to have people who are engaged in a very emotional struggle between themselves and their partner not to have assistance to work through the system properly? No, Minister. It will not help. The expert reference group, your group, says that the overriding fiscal imperative is evident throughout the bill. This is a bill about savings, not quality.

BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): Thank you for the opportunity to address this revision-tracked Supplementary Order Paper 349, which was released by the Minister of Justice, the Hon Judith Collins. To call the revision-tracked Supplementary Order Paper substantial would be an understatement. It amends almost every page of the bill as it was reported from the Justice and Electoral Committee. The bar 2 version of the bill contains substantial amendments, and Supplementary Order Paper 349 seems to be last-minute stuff. It has been released only today, Tuesday, 3 September—the day we are debating the detail of the bill. If we look at the changes to just Part 1 of the bill, which we are now debating, we see how much has been changed by Supplementary Order Paper 349. Part 1 of the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill contains many changes, some very important changes, to the laws of New Zealand affecting our most vulnerable citizens. Fully 80 percent of this Part 1 that we are currently debating has been changed at the last minute by the Minister in charge.

Today I rang some Bay of Plenty Family Court lawyers who have previously expressed dismay at this bill. I could not get hold of them. One was travelling from Rotorua. Another was in court doing what lawyers do, and that is how life should be. We should be working, doing what we are supposed to be doing, and in terms of bills that come through Parliament, what we should be doing is putting these bills under full scrutiny. I ask where the opportunity is for full scrutiny of this bill. Where is the opportunity for those people, the experts in this field, to fully engage with due process? This is important because this bill has the potential to affect any child in New Zealand.

I would like to now turn to Supplementary Order Paper 349, where today we have in clause 9 the surprise appearance of new section 46GA being parachuted into the Care of Children Act. This restricts the counselling available under new section 46E of the Act. That new section 46E of the Act was contained in the bill as introduced back in November last year. It was substantially the same in the select committee report a few months ago, in June. There were a few minor changes in the wording. The intent of new section 46E was, and is, as set out in section 46E(2)(a) “to improve the relationship between the parties:”—that is, the parents—and “(b) to encourage compliance with any direction or order made by the court.” That sounds like something positive for the children caught up in all this, but now the availability of counselling is to be throttled by new section 46GA. It says: “The maximum number of sessions to be carried out ... must be determined ... [by] regulations ... or, if no such regulations are made, by the Registrar of the court.” So on the face of it this is more cost cutting by the Government and it is more cost cutting at the expense of the welfare of New Zealand’s vulnerable children.

I turn now to new section 49AB contained in clause 12 of Supplementary Order Paper 349. This is another whole new section to be inserted in the Care of Children Act that, again, has made its appearance only today. It states: “Interim parenting order may become final order on specified date”. It appears to be quite technical and detailed in providing that: “... a Family Court Judge may” when making an interim parenting order “direct that the interim parenting order is to become a final parenting order on the specified date”, and there are subsections (2) and (3), which appear not to be contentious. But, as parliamentarians have learnt to their cost over the years, the devil is in the detail.

I would ask why this change is appearing at the last possible minute. Why is it that the experts in the field, the people outside this House, have no chance to scrutinise the new detail of this law? I would like to hear from members opposite whether there is a member of the National Party’s caucus committee on vulnerable children who will say whether they have even seen this new section, let alone had it explained to them, or have been given the chance to ask any questions about the wording, about the detail, and why there should be new law around whether and when an interim parenting order can become a final parenting order.

It was interesting listening to the honourable Alfred Ngaro speaking about exiting people out of the Family Court system as soon as possible. This bill will certainly do that, because this bill will greatly affect the vulnerable people in our society, the parents and those at the centre of all our concerns—of course, the children. Parents and children will struggle with what the bill now means to their future, as individuals and as families. I cannot emphasise enough the intense waves of anxiety and huge costs, emotionally and financially, already experienced during these times. This bill will exasperate the very people it is supposed to support, with additional legal costs and free counselling removed, adding to the living hell that those parents will already be going through. Parents in these difficult times should not be undermined and these parents should not be made to struggle further with legal ramifications—that is, agreeing to things in a process that they do not fully understand or have fully had time to process in their heads, and the costs.

Although most New Zealanders love the idea of the family dispute resolution concept in principle, it will actually be met with unfair battles. The expectation that parents will be fairly matched during this process, even with the assistance of one facilitator, is totally unrealistic. As we know, in these family battles one person holds the strings, one person is dominant, and one person will be able to afford a very expensive lawyer in the background, giving them advice. Each parent will have their own view about what is best for the child. Let us not forget that they would not even be there in the first place, if this was not the case.

Throughout the Committee process, it has been recognised that the focus of this bill is to cut the cost of legal aid, as it has become unaffordable for the Government. In fact, the costs have skyrocketed, yet the numbers of cases have not. I suggest we look at how this can be. What are the real issues for the cost increase? Why are we prepared to cut the services being offered before we really understand where the blow is coming from? More important, making the vulnerable people in our society go without legal representation or an understanding of what they are entering into cannot be right. We need to listen to Family Court lawyers all over New Zealand who are saying that this bill is absolutely frightening, particularly as it could leave the vulnerable parties—children—without legal protection. Thank you.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): I move, That the question be now put.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Before I point to any particular clause in the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill, I would just like to join my colleague the Hon Phil Goff in saying that I think we have actually been witness to close to an Academy Award - winning performance from the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Justice, because she would have us believe that her motivation for this bill is to improve the outcomes for children and families who are going through Family Court proceedings, and that her motivation is to make sure that the outcome for many Family Court proceedings is in the best interests of the child. We know that there are many people out there in the legal fraternity and those who are assisting families in getting through this process who do not believe it. Alfred Ngaro launched a gallant yet failed attempt to run a diversion for the Minister by talking about some of the submissions that were heard at the Justice and Electoral Committee. Very selective was Mr Ngaro.

I would also like to take the opportunity to show or at least read out some of the submissions that came from the Christchurch Family Court judges—people who, I think, would know this process relatively intimately, and certainly would not want the justice system clogged up with unnecessary cases. To say that the Government wants to make this process easier for families and much better for children—the Christchurch Family Court judges do not buy it. I read from their submission. Whoever gave it, it was on behalf of the Family Court judges. He said: “I intend to speak plainly in the short time I have available. I speak on behalf of the Family Court judges of Christchurch. We recognise the driving force behind these reforms is to cut State expenditure on the Family Court.” This is the Family Court judges recognising that the motivation is not to make things better for those going through the process, but to cut State expenditure on the Family Court. They said: “In our opinion, the effect of the reforms will be the reverse: to increase State expenditure arising from the relationship breakdown.” So there we have it, a submission to the select committee on this bill from Family Court judges in Christchurch, fully recognising that the main motivation of this bill is not to make the process easier or the outcomes better for children or their parents, but to cut State funding, and they think it will do exactly the opposite. That is the Family Court judges in Christchurch.

Clause 4 of the bill does point towards the child’s welfare and best interests being paramount in this process, but through this process, since the bill was introduced, there have been a number of people who simply have not thought that this piece of legislation will achieve that. When this piece of legislation was submitted late last year—I believe in October, it was—Professor Mark Henaghan, from the Otago law school, said of clause 7, I believe, about the ability not to have mandatory legal representation, in a media report: “Much of the fight, sadly, is about children. [But] if you take their representation out, we kind of doom them not to be heard.” I think the end of that quote from Mark Henaghan is quite apt—if we take out their representation, then we doom them not be heard. We heard from the Minister in the chair at the same time that she was OK with that. She said: “The current situation where pretty much every child gets a lawyer is overkill, frankly, and is not necessary.” That is what our Minister of Justice said at the time of the introduction of this bill. There is great concern about those comments, this bill, and what she said at that time.

I think, as many colleagues on this side of the Chamber have said, that there was an attempt to strike a balance between maybe getting some cost savings and improving the Family Court process. But over time, when this bill was introduced—and, I think, just before this bill was introduced—there was certainly, and I have felt in my community, a concern about what might arrive on the Table when this bill was tabled. Those concerns were valid when this bill arrived here in Parliament. I just want to make sure I mention the name Catriona Doyle from Family Law Specialists in Porirua, who came to me almost instantly, as soon as this bill was introduced, with her concerns around this bill. She called a public meeting in Porirua, which was quite well attended, and attended also by my Green colleague Jan Logie, who is based in Mana. It was quite a full meeting and a lot of—

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

ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): I just want to conclude the comments I started making before, and just say this: the last thing that we need in order to understand what is going on with this bill, the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill, and with the changes to the Care of Children Act is finger-wagging piety from the Minister of Justice. It does not help families, particularly those who are going through a very stressful and very difficult time, to hear from the Minister that they should pull their socks up and sort it out themselves, as if it was some sort of Gary McCormick pull-yourself-together party arrangement. That does not help. The stark reality is that family separation is one of the most stressful and difficult experiences not only for the couples involved but also for any children involved.

It does not help for the Minister simply to say: “People are grown up and they should sort it out.” The truth is that they do not. They did not before 1981. The problems were getting worse and worse, and it was clogging up the High Court. Different parts of the problems were being sorted out in different parts of the court. It will not fix it up now if we take away the very things that have actually assisted a lot more families and a lot more couples to sort out their problems, because that is what this bill is doing. Simply telling folks to grow up and sort it out does not fix the problem in front of them. People, when they are in the process of making arrangements that have legal effects and a legal impact, are entitled to and must have legal advice. People generally know—or perhaps they do not understand the extent of it—that when you get married or get into a long-term relationship in the nature of marriage, you are creating legal consequences for yourself and your partner. When that unravels and comes apart, there are legal effects that have to be taken care of as well.

That is why we have the Family Court. That is why we have a family law framework. When we make changes to it we had better understand that those aspects that are driven by and surrounded by natural human emotion need to be treated very carefully, especially when there are children involved. It is the height of patronising nonsense for the Minister to say: “Oh well, they loved each other enough to come together and they loved each other enough to have a child; therefore, they can sort it out.” That is ridiculous—that is ridiculous. It is because they once loved each other so much and it is because they both committed to a child or children that when that unravels it gets very difficult to hold on to a sense of perspective. That is why people go to sources of independent advice. Those who do not have the means need to look to legal aid to get access to that advice so they can make decisions, so they can get perspective, and so they can help themselves and their children and the community at large. It does not serve the interests of the community for there to be families who are in constant disputation with each other.

If there is any further evidence required that this bill is totally about transferring the cost of family disputation—from those bits picked up by the State at the moment—to families, you have only to look at clause 21. We already know that the cost of counselling is being reduced. We already know that there is a new charge being introduced for mandatory family dispute resolutions for cases not involving allegations of violence. We already know that legal aid is being cut, and now we also know that when the court feels it has to appoint a lawyer to assist families in the final settlement of the issues before them, those costs will be apportioned between the couple themselves. The exclusion is not just if the court finds there is hardship, but only if there is serious hardship—and serious hardship is defined in the bill. It sets a very high threshold. This bill is all about the costs being presently and correctly picked up by the State, because the public have an interest in effective and efficacious family dispute resolution, and all those costs now being landed back on to the parties themselves, irrespective of their means to pay.

That is the insidious nature of this bill. It will drive families to agree to settlements that do not suit them and that are not suitable for their children. It will drive couples to enter into these processes without the benefit of legal advice and assistance, and that will cost the community in other ways. That is the dreadful thing about this legislation. That is why we remain opposed to it. I think the one redeeming aspect of all of this is David Clendon’s Supplementary Order Paper 254, which confirms at least the priority and the paramountcy of children’s interests in the principal part of the bill. That is the only thing we can bring ourselves to support. The rest of the bill is a dog and we are opposed to it.

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 57

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

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 349 in the name of the Hon Judith Collins to Part 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 61

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

Noes 59

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 254 in the name of David Clendon to clause 4 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 34; 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 Part 1 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 61

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

Noes 59

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Amendments to Domestic Violence Act 1995

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): Part 2 of the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill amends the Domestic Violence Act 1995. I would like to hope that the whole of the Committee can agree with this. What this part does is strengthen the Family Court’s response to domestic violence. The definition of psychological abuse will be widened to include financial and economic abuse. Although these have been recognised as psychological abuse in case law, the change will make it clear in legislation. Economic abuse includes such things as denying or limiting access to financial resources or being able to have a job. Clause 51 of the bill will amend the maximum penalty for breaching a protection order. The maximum penalty will be increased from 2 years’ to 3 years’ imprisonment. The change is one of our election promises and makes it very clear that we will not tolerate domestic violence.

Part 2 also introduces new provisions to ensure that the programmes that we provide to protected persons and for respondents are safe and respond to the needs of people using them. The changes also enable respondents, protected people, and their whānau to participate in each other’s programmes where it is safe and appropriate to do so. Our programmes for protected people need to enable their families and whānau to support them and help them to keep safe from future abuse.

The bill clarifies providers’ responsibilities to report safety concerns. If at any stage of providing a programme to the violent person the service provider becomes concerned for the protected person’s safety, they must notify the registrar. The registrar must ensure that a judge is notified of the safety concerns and also that the protected person is made aware of the concerns. The Government’s Supplementary Order Paper 349 amends clause 52A so that the registrar arranges for the protected person to be advised of any safety concerns. That is an amendment where we have taken on the recommendations of the Justice and Electoral Committee. We actually took on all of the recommendations from the select committee—from the majority of it.

The new legislation will also help make non-violence programmes more effective by ensuring that a programme is provided based on the violent person’s needs. There will be a mandatory assessment for respondents. Responsiveness is increased, as there will be more opportunity for providers to return to court to amend directions or orders where needed. This includes the ability to notify the registrar if after undertaking assessment there are safety concerns or if the provider is unable to provide a programme that meets the violent person’s needs. At the completion of a non-violence programme, providers will be required to report on whether the programme’s objectives were achieved. A new provision is included so that it is clear that a judge can respond appropriately to any concerns or issues raised by the report that can be addressed by the court.

Part 2 now clarifies that the Ministry of Justice has responsibility for the approval of providers. The legislation needs to be sufficiently flexible for the future, to ensure that appropriate providers can deliver safe—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable Minister. The time has come for me to report progress.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill with amendment, progress on the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill, and no progress on the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.