Thursday, 5 September 2013

Thursday, 5 September 2013

Thursday, 5 September 2013

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Acting Leader of the House): Next week the House is in a 1-week adjournment. When the House resumes on Tuesday, 17 September, it is the Government’s intention to progress a number of first readings on the Order Paper, including the Vulnerable Children Bill and the Electoral Amendment Bill, as well as continuing the Committee stage of the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): Could I just check with the Acting Leader of the House whether there are any plans to have extended sittings in either of the 2 weeks. I do not think we have had notice of that yet.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Acting Leader of the House): Anything like that will be discussed in the Business Committee.

Points of Order

Questions for Oral Answer—Imputations in Respect of Persons Outside House

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Co-Leader—Māori Party): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Kia ora tātou. I just wanted to check with you about a matter that actually happened yesterday, and I accept that it should have been raised at the time. However, additional knowledge has come to pass since then. Yesterday in question time Clare Curran raised a number of questions in respect of the appointment of the chief executive officer of the Māori Television board. The question was to the Prime Minister, I think, and it talked about the confidence of the Prime Minister in the board in respect of the appointment of a chief executive officer.

During question time she put into the public arena by way of Parliament a number of pieces of information about Mr Paora Maxwell and his former employment, so at the time I assumed that an appointment had been made, but I have since found that that is not the case and that there has been no appointment to the position. The statements that she has now put into the public arena may well influence the appointment of a chief executive officer to the Māori Television Service, so in this point of order I ask what guidance there might be, bearing in mind that the ramifications of that information being in the public arena may well influence the outcome of an appointment of a chief executive officer, and whether there are any consequences—such as an apology, perhaps—from Ms Curran for putting it into the public arena, bearing in mind that that may well jeopardise future employment for that particular person.

Mr SPEAKER: I do not believe there is anything that I can do as Speaker, in that that question was raised yesterday. It was, in fact, a question to the Minister of Finance, as a shareholding Minister. The questions were in order; the answers were in order. The ramifications of those questions and answers are now something that must be dealt with by Māori Television, perhaps, but I do not believe that there is anything that this House can do to assist. If the member believes that there was any deliberate misleading, there is certainly an avenue available to him, and if he is unsure of that remedy, he is welcome to talk to me after question time.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think the normal avenue for misleading has now passed, but I think that if Mr Maxwell feels that there have been any inaccuracies, he has the ability to seek a correction.

Mr SPEAKER: That is certainly true, and that is available to Mr Maxwell, if he so thinks.

Questions for Oral Answer

Questions to Ministers

Economy—Productivity, Competitiveness, and Manufacturing Sector Performance

1. JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) to the Minister of Finance: What steps is the Government taking to build a productive and competitive economy in view of the contraction in the tradable sector and negative growth in manufacturing seen in the mid-2000s?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): A wide range of measures is designed to build productivity and competitiveness, increase savings and exports, and increase productive investment. Much of the detail in this programme is set out in the Business Growth Agenda documents, which detail over 300 initiatives that support jobs and assist businesses to become internationally competitive. I would recommend to all of Parliament that those documents be read, because it is a thorough and comprehensive programme. I had been hoping we would get some suggestions from the current Labour leadership contenders about good economic policy we could add to it, but so far none have eventuated.

John Hayes: What evidence has he seen of improving competitiveness of New Zealand businesses?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: New Zealand businesses have done very well over recent years, given the headwinds of an elevated exchange rate, a domestic recession induced by the last Government, the global financial crisis, and a serious drought earlier this year. As I have gone around the country, I have had the same experience as I am sure all members have of companies telling us stories about how they have been able to innovate, and how they have become more flexible and more adaptable. Yesterday I received The Global Competitiveness Report, which showed New Zealand has risen five places in its ranking on competitiveness—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Where are we?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: —to 18th in the world, which is still too low, as I am sure the member would agree. This does, however, for the first time put New Zealand ahead of Australia.

John Hayes: What areas requiring further work were identified in The Global Competitiveness Report?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The report identified a couple of areas that I think actually needed a bit more information about what is happening in New Zealand. The report referred to the supply of infrastructure. Well, we have one of the better planned, more certain infrastructure projects in the developed world—fully funded and rolling out, despite the fact that we have been at it for 5 years, for a further 5 to 7 years. Secondly, we were rated low on capacity to innovate. I think we should test that conclusion with whoever puts the index together, because we see plenty of evidence around the country that our businesses can and do innovate, and certainly a substantial and consistently growing Government investment in innovation.

John Hayes: What progress can the Minister report on growth in the manufacturing sector, particularly compared with the manufacturing sector’s performance in the mid-2000s?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The manufacturing sector has been the beneficiary of some political attention, including from Opposition parties, so I thought I would just check the facts on this. There is an index called the BNZ-Business New Zealand Performance of Manufacturing Index, which is actually a globally used index, and at the moment it stands at 59.5. Any value above 50 shows growth, and 59.5 is among the highest readings in the world. All five of the sub-indices are showing growth, including the employment index at 53.1. I thought that we should compare this with a time when manufacturing was apparently going quite well. In 2008 the performance of manufacturing index was 35.9, the lowest value in series history. I presume that was the result of the accumulated effects of the support of policies of the last Government, where it hit the lowest level ever in 2008. Now it stands at the highest level ever.

Hon David Parker: Is the Minister aware that the index that he has just quoted is dominated by the increase in construction manufacturing out of Christchurch, and that in truth, manufactured exports out of the primary sector are lower than they were in 2008 in real terms and lower than they were last year as well?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I would want to go and check the assertions the member makes, because I do not know for sure whether they are true or false. But it does seem odd that a party that says it represents working people thinks that a—

Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister of Finance has said he does not know, and I think that is a sufficient answer. The rest is just political.

Mr SPEAKER: If the member does not want any further development of the answer, then I will accept that on this occasion.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If the objective of the Government is to build a productive and competitive economy in view of the contraction in the tradable sector, as Mr Hayes so wisely asks, at what point will the Government do something to stop the rise in our dollar, which some economists say will go to US90c, or will it still persist with loan-to-value lending aimed at the hyper housing market of Auckland, but which [Interruption]—I said 2014—persists right around the country, even though there is not a housing crisis in those parts of the country?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I know the member has a real depth of knowledge on this topic, but I think we should try to get at least a pretty clear factual base. I think the member’s contention was reasonable that 6 months ago it looked like the dollar was heading to US90c, but actually since then it has dropped from the mid-80s—around US84c—down to US77c or US78c. That is actually not a bad place for the New Zealand dollar to be, so I would have to say at the moment that I do not think there is a problem for which we need his kind of solution.

Public Safety—Street-based Prostitution in South Auckland

2. Le’aufa’amulia ASENATI LOLE-TAYLOR (NZ First) to the Minister of Police: What reports, if any, has she received from the Police concerning public harassment and intimidation from street prostitutes and their clients in South Auckland?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Police): I have not received any specific reports from police about public harassment and intimidation from street prostitutes and their clients in South Auckland. I have, however, received two reports regarding the Manukau City Council (Regulation of Prostitution in Specified Places) Bill, and both of these reports contain some comment on street-based sex workers in Auckland.

Le’aufa’amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor: What does she have to say to parents in South Auckland who every day have to walk their children to school in order to protect them from street prostitutes, their pimps, and their clients?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I am aware of considerable concerns from the community around street-based prostitution in some areas of South Auckland, and it is quite right that people should feel free to walk on the streets and walk their children to school. However, street-based prostitution is not illegal. The police do actively patrol known trouble spots and they do work to diffuse any antisocial behaviour. But, look, if any member of the public feels that they are being harassed or intimidated, they should report that to the police, and I would expect that the police would take some action.

Le’aufa’amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor: Does the Minister think that it is concerning that there is such a high demand for very young girls to work as street prostitutes and that pimps are actively recruiting schoolchildren, some as young as 14 years old, and will she instruct the police to take action to prevent children in school uniforms on their way to and from school from being approached by men seeking to hire them for sexual favours; if not, why not?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: First of all, I am unable to instruct the police, under the Policing Act 2008, but I am also aware that there have been concerns raised about under-age sex workers. The police, as I say, regularly patrol those hot spots. They have reported to me that they have found little evidence of under-age street sex workers, but if people do have evidence of that, they should make that available to the police. [Interruption]

Le’aufa’amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor: I have evidence, Maggie. I will table it soon.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have called the member to ask a supplementary question.

Le’aufa’amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor: What does she say to local residents who have said: “The freedom of the street sex trade has become so predominant that no local resident is immune from being approached or intimidated by street sex workers.”?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: As I said earlier, I am aware that there is concern, and I would say that that member should encourage that member of the public to come forward to the police with the evidence, so that they can take some action.

Le’aufa’amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor: Would she feel harassed and intimidated if she was asked, while walking down the street, “How much for a blow job?”

Mr SPEAKER: In so far as the Minister has some police responsibility, would the Minister like to attempt to address the question?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Mr Speaker, I am blushing.

Mr SPEAKER: I don’t blame you.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I have no ministerial responsibility.

Le’aufa’amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Despite the fact that that may be funny, it is not a laughing matter out there, because that is the reality out there in South Auckland.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member has called a point of order, I assume, to table a document.

Le’aufa’amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor: I am seeking leave to table a letter from some of the parents in South Auckland, raising their concerns about what they have been faced with with regard to street prostitution.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that letter from some concerned parents in the area. Is there any objection to that being done? There is none. It can be so tabled.

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

Businesses—Financial Support from Government

3. Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree that the Government’s review of telecommunications law which may benefit Chorus by up to $160 million and the $30 million taxpayer funded subsidy to the Rio Tinto-owned Tiwai Smelter are examples of corporate welfare; if not, why not?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): No, I do not agree with that or the member’s assertions. I regard them as examples of the Government making pragmatic, hands-on decisions, a style that I know that member and his three leaders strongly support, and I thank the member for what might be one of his last questions.

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Hon David Parker: Thank you, Mr Speaker. How can he justify doling out $30 million in corporate welfare for the benefit of Rio Tinto, when it posted a half-year profit of $1.7 billion and he did not even bother to ask it for a guarantee that the jobs at Tīwai would be safe?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: As we have explained before, the Government was asked to provide extensive subsidies to the aluminium smelter, both through transmission charges and a lower electricity price. We refused to do that, because it could have cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and I believe it would have been a subsidy to the ongoing operation of Rio Tinto. The payment we made was a one-off incentive to get the contract signed. The contract has been signed, and I am surprised that while the Labour members’ leaders are campaigning around the regions for Government intervention to create jobs in those regions, they are—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not part of the Minister’s responsibility.

Hon David Parker: Why are the rules different for companies like Rio Tinto, Skycity, and Chorus, which are already profitable companies that gain breaks from his Government after dinner or phone calls with the Prime Minister, yet other companies such as Norske Skog, Summit Wool Spinners, and Holcim cement that do not have the ear of Steven Joyce or the Prime Minister are forced to retrench and make staff redundant?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think that the member would understand that the Government cannot—and certainly this Government will not—support every company that is under economic stress. On the basis of our strategic intentions, such as bringing forward the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband—supported, I understand, by the Opposition—we do occasionally make decisions to intervene in the market. We are quite happy to explain those interventions transparently and for the public and the Opposition to see all the rationales behind those interventions.

Te Ururoa Flavell: Would corporate welfare extend, then, to compensation or subsidies for ultra-fast broadband subcontractors affected by non-payment from Transfield Services, with some owed more than $1 million, and who have laid off most of their staff; if not, why not?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I am advised that relevant Ministers are inquiring into the circumstances to ensure that there is no action that the Government has taken or no aspect of its contract that prevents the fair payment of people who have worked hard, delivered their side of the bargain, and not been paid. I would point out, though, that the contractors have work—which of course, they deserve to have—because the Government put up a billion dollars in a market intervention in an openly negotiated contract with Chorus. As part of the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband, which we brought forward by 10 years, these contractors have the opportunity for work, but of course they should be paid.

Hon David Parker: Why is the Government intervening to keep a high price for copper broadband for Chorus now, when Minister Joyce refused this to Chorus’ competitors when he oversaw the granting of the ultra-fast broadband contract?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is a bit rich to have this member asking these questions while his leaders are out promising pork to every part of the country.

Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. His irrelevant opinion is not an answer to the question.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Order! I invite the member to ask his question again.

Hon David Parker: Why is the Government intervening to keep a high price for copper broadband for Chorus now, when Minister Joyce refused this to Chorus’ competitors when he oversaw the granting of the ultra-fast broadband contract?

Hon Steven Joyce: It’s incorrect. It’s just incorrect. It’s incorrect. It’s wrong.

Hon David Parker: It is correct, Mr Joyce.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think the member is incorrect. The hard reality about prices for this infrastructure is that having made the decision to bring forward the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband by probably about a decade, that does bring forward the cost of meeting the capital investment—which is many billions; probably $4 billion or $5 billion—of that network. One way or another, the network has to be paid for. If it is not paid for, you do not get ultra-fast broadband.

Hon David Parker: Given that he is aware that many of the people laying the fibre for the Chorus ultra-fast broadband project have not been paid for weeks, how can he justify yet more corporate welfare for Chorus—a profitable billion-dollar company—when the people doing the actual work are not being paid?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think that although the member may be trying to stick to his corporate welfare theme, the facts of this matter are that Transfield has a contract with Chorus, and Transfield is responsible for the payment of those contractors. Of course they should be paid, and I would expect that Ministers and Transfield will get to the bottom of that issue before too long. Contractors have every right to complain if they have not been paid for work that they have completed.

Oil, Gas, and Mineral Resources—The Petroleum Minerals Sector Report

4. JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: What reports has he received on the petroleum and minerals sector in New Zealand?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): Earlier this week the Minister for Economic Development, Steven Joyce, and I released The Petroleum and Minerals Sector Report. The report shows that the sector has been growing sustainably for a decade. Exports of petroleum and minerals have trebled since 2002. Over the last 5 years $1.9 billion in royalties and levies has been paid to the Crown, and investment in minerals exploration is at a historic high. Unlike the continuing confusion that reigns on the opposite side of the House, this Government—

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have not got the Speakers’ Rulings immediately to hand, but earlier in the week we had quite a good discussion and very good reinforcement of those rulings from you as to what the member’s responsibility is as a Minister, and it did not include Opposition policy. He just headed right into that area then.

Mr SPEAKER: I am sorry, I did not actually hear where the Minister was heading—[Interruption] Order! Order! I fully accept the point that Mr Mallard is making, that no Government member has any responsibility at all for former Government policy. Does the Minister want to now conclude his answer?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I certainly want to finish my answer. This Government is clear about its commitment to supporting the sustained growth of this sector.

Jonathan Young: What does the report say about employment in the petroleum and minerals sector?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: The report shows that the petroleum and minerals sector is the most productive in our economy, generating $333 per hour worked, compared with a national average of $48. Workers are paid over $100,000, on average, which is more than twice the national average, and employment in the sector has doubled over the last decade. We have seen real benefits in Taranaki, where the sector has had a transformative effect on the regional economy. The Government is keen to see other regions reap the benefits of such development.

Jonathan Young: What lies ahead for the petroleum and minerals sector in New Zealand?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I am excited about upcoming activity and the ongoing investment in the sector. The summer ahead will be one of the—and possibly the—largest on record for oil and gas exploration, with the industry expected to spend upwards of $600 million. Competitive minerals tenders will continue, following the success of Northland 2012. The Government is committed to developing our resources in an environmentally responsible and safe way, to help build a more productive economy for all New Zealanders.

Brendan Horan: Given that the Deepwater Horizon disaster was from an exploratory well, cost US$16 billion, and used ships of up to 70,000 tonnage to clean up, can the Minister guarantee that the current New Zealand oil response fleet of three 8-metre aluminium dinghies will be sufficient to clean up any oil spill in New Zealand?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I appreciate that this is a matter the member has experience in. He once got oil on his pink budgie-smugglers. But—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Order! Just answer the question.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: —I can make it very clear that we have the processes and everything we need in place to do this properly.

Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That was absolutely ridiculous.

Mr SPEAKER: Well, I accept that. If the member was offended, that is a different matter. I asked the Minister to cease and he did so. Is there a further point of order coming?

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I know that I have not always been the person who has upheld tone to the highest level, but today I think we have been below the belt on two occasions where you could have intervened.

Mr SPEAKER: Certainly, on the last occasion I did intervene by saying that that was an unnecessary comment from the Minister, so I did that. It just does not help the tone of the House if people—any member—descends to that sort of level. It is unhelpful.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Do you want me to answer again?

Mr SPEAKER: No, I do not. The member has given his answer. We are moving on to question No. 5.

Welfare Reforms—Impact on Beneficiaries

5. JAN LOGIE (Green) to the Minister for Social Development: Does she have any concerns that the changes to welfare implemented by her this year are causing some beneficiaries trauma; if not, why not?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development): Yes, I have always got concerns, and I understand that change can be distressing for people, but, quite frankly, the alternative is to accept that the system, as it was, was as good as it gets, and I think we can do better.

Jan Logie: Why was a refugee mother from Burma with a 5-month-old baby ordered to attend a seminar about a military-style boot camp and warned that if she did not attend, her benefit would be reduced or stopped?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Well, that should not have happened, quite frankly. Work and Income send out about 9 million letters a year. About 100,000 have been sent out proactively in the last 6 weeks. That is just for proactive appointments for people to come in. There was a sentence that said that if we had got this wrong or if she did not agree, she should come in or ring us to let us know. I apologise to her. She simply should not have got that letter, and we are looking at fixing that.

Jan Logie: Why was a woman told she could not buy tampons on a Work and Income payment card because they were considered “luxury items”?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I have no evidence that that has happened. It is certainly not policy. They are not considered luxury items, and people can buy them through emergency food grants.

Jan Logie: Why are people who are attending Work for You courses being told they must have a cellphone, even if they cannot afford one?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I have not seen any evidence of that. That has not been brought to my attention. If the member has cases like that, then she can certainly bring them to me and let me know.

Jan Logie: Why, just a few months after she sang the praises of grandparents caring for their grandchildren, was the Ministry of Social Development sending letters to these same grandparents telling them they must get paid work?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Well, there are different circumstances for different people who are on benefits. Some will want to work, some can work, some will have part-time work expectations, some will have full-time expectations, and some will have exemptions. It will depend on the circumstances. We do look at the individuals, and there are individual circumstances. Some grandparents raising grandchildren can and want to work, and so they should, and, quite frankly, for some it just would not be suitable, and there are exemptions for them.

Jan Logie: Considering that beneficiary advocates on the ground are telling us that these cases are symptomatic of a culture of blame and suspicion that make it “near impossible for people to receive the assistance they are entitled to”, will she commission a comprehensive audit to ensure that what she says she expects of the front line is what it is actually delivering?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Well, no, because for every example that that member can give, I can give another 10 of people who are grateful for the help that they are getting. They think that it is actually working better, they are getting faster appointments, they are getting more money spent to help them up front, and they have easier access to courses, support, and everything else that they need. So I do not think that that is something that is throughout the whole organisation at all.

Health Targets—Waiting Times for Elective Surgery

6. Dr JIAN YANG (National) to the Minister of Health: What progress is the Government making in improving waiting times for elective services?

Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): The Government is working towards having no patients waiting more than 18 weeks, once they are booked for a first appointment with a hospital specialist, by the end of next year. To help achieve this step, targets of no patients waiting more than 6 months, shortening to 5 months for a first specialist assessment, have been set. Because an extra 40,000 patients a year are now being seen by specialists, I am able to report that the number of people waiting over 6 months to see specialists has been reduced from around 23,000 in 2005 to, at June this year, only nine patients. Nineteen of the 20 district health boards had none.

Dr Jian Yang: What reports has he seen that show the tremendous progress that has been made with reducing waiting times?

Hon TONY RYALL: I have seen a number of reports confirming the dramatic reductions in the number of patients waiting over 6 months, but none has laid out the huge improvements as clearly as in the response to an Official Information Act request from the Opposition health spokesperson, Mrs King. Mrs King requested, under the Official Information Act, to know how many patients were waiting over 6 months for surgery and assessments when she was Minister in June 2005, and how many in June this year. The answer is an incredible 31,000 patients waiting over 6 months in 2005, and now—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I listened to that supplementary question very carefully. The question asked what reports has the Minister seen. I am waiting for the identification of the report, not some sort of Official Information Act answer. That is not a report. We are waiting for that response, and thus far he has not got to it.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! If the Minister says that he has received such a report and he is detailing that report, that is in order.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The question asked for—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. The member raised his first point of order and I ruled on that. If the member has a fresh point of order, I will hear it, but if the member is going to rise to his feet and relitigate that, then that will lead to disorder and I will be asking the member to leave the Chamber. If he has a fresh point of order, I am happy to hear it.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well, I would like some clarification then, because I understood that the Minister would eventually, as you said, get to a report. Are you saying that he is yet to get to the point where he does come within the question he was asked?

Mr SPEAKER: No, I think, in fact, that the member was well and truly getting within that point, but if the member wants to listen a bit further, it might be clarified to his satisfaction. At this stage it has actually been clarified to my satisfaction. Would the Minister like to continue his answer.

Hon TONY RYALL: The answer is an incredible 31,000 patients waiting for over 6 months in 2005, and now it is 20. Earlier assessments and operations are better for the health of thousands of New Zealanders and their families.

Finance, Minister—Management and Support of State-owned Enterprises

7. Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all his statements?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Yes. In particular, I stand by my statement in the House yesterday that I have listened to as much as I can stand of the Labour leadership—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is an unnecessary part to the answer.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is quite common that when any Minister is asked whether they stand by their statements they are able to outline a statement that they stand by.

Mr SPEAKER: Yes, but when he is referring to statements that have been made involving the Labour Party leadership challenge, I do not think that that is part of ministerial responsibility. I have accepted his answer to the question, and we are moving on to a supplementary question.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Does he stand by his statement in his letter to State-owned enterprises in December 2009 that his Government is committed to “improving the performance of State-owned enterprises”; if so, does he consider that he has improved the performance of Learning Media by having it join Solid Energy in the State-owned enterprises wreckage yard?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: We have worked very hard, actually, to improve the performance of State-owned enterprises. The fact is that in the case of Learning Media, the member is making the assumption that the Government can change the pressures and forces of what is going on in digital publishing, and, actually, we cannot. That business has struggled without the benefit of a monopoly contract with the Ministry of Education. It has made every effort that it could make, but it simply is not the kind of company that can survive in the market with the rate of change in digital publishing.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Given that it was a decision of his Government, via the Ministry of Education, to end the preferred supplier agreement with Learning Media, thereby significantly changing the market conditions that Learning Media operates under, why when he knew over 2 years ago that there were problems, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of salaries, by the by, did he not actively work with the board of Learning Media to develop a strategy to mitigate these issues and changes in market conditions, or does the lack of action simply mirror his inept handling of Solid Energy and is yet another example of him and his Government being asleep at the wheel?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: If the member knew anything about Learning Media, and I suspect that he does not, he would know that it has tried two particular strategies. One was to export our educational publications, which do have a level of global excellence, and the second was to buy CWA New Media, another digital publisher. Neither of those strategies has succeeded, and we are not willing to bail it out yet again. The previous Government bailed it out with several million dollars’ worth of capital—in fact, it might have been tens of millions of dollars’ worth of capital—and that strategy did not succeed either. The fact that this company has been owned by the Government does not mean that it is exempt from all the commercial pressures that come on any business.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Does he agree that he has made history as a Minister of Finance who has now overseen the collapse of two State-owned enterprises that were collectively valued at half a billion dollars 2 years ago but are now, through his own ineptitude, basket cases?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: No, I certainly do not accept that. I mean, if we want to go into the Government’s record, the Government has actually, because of circumstances, had to go and bail out a billion-dollar guarantee entered into by the Labour Government on South Canterbury Finance and buy AMI Insurance, which holds 30 percent of the Christchurch market. The fact is, I know that Labour is completely disconnected from economic reality, but Government businesses and other businesses have been under a bit of pressure recently.

Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Going back to the previous question, the Minister said he was quoting from an Official Information Act report, which is an official document. I would ask that he tables it.

Mr SPEAKER: If the Minister was quoting from an official document—

Hon Tony Ryall: He was referring to it.

Mr SPEAKER: He was referring to an official document.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Why did he not ask for a guarantee for the Tīwai Point jobs up to 1 January 2017 when he was negotiating the deal with Rio Tinto as part of the $30 million payment that he made? Why did he not even ask for a guarantee of those jobs, given that he states that the jobs are secure?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I have explained to the member that it was never the Government’s intention to try to run Rio Tinto’s business. In fact, a guarantee of existing jobs at Tīwai Point may well increase the possibility that it shuts down. If the operator is stuck with providing the current number of jobs, it loses the opportunity we would all benefit from for it to further restructure that business so that it can survive. I know that the member would like to run every business in the country; we would not because we cannot. We believe that we have got the best deal possible, and we are going to stick to that deal.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I seek leave to table several reports from media organisations, including Jessica Mutch of One News, showing the litany of examples—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Such information is freely available to all members.

Clare Curran: Is he aware that the lead contender for the position of Māori Television chief executive, Paora Maxwell, was not considered suitable for the position by the recruitment company engaged to oversee the process and was not included on the shortlist, but that this decision was overturned by his close friend and board chair, Georgina te Heuheu; and does this meet his test for an appropriate appointment process?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I am advised by the chairman that all the correct procedures have been followed. I would say to members of the Opposition that anyone applying for a job in the Public Service deserves a fair go on their merits. The Opposition seems to think that anyone applying for a job in the Public Service or a Crown-owned entity is fair game for its political games, and I think that is rather harsh on any candidate.

Clare Curran: Is he aware that Paora Maxwell has been in long-term debt to Te Māngai Pāho, which is the major programming funder for Māori Television, for money owed from his own production company, Te Aratai Productions; if so, does he think it appropriate that the board would appoint a chief executive in long-term debt to the station’s programme funder?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I do not know—

Te Ururoa Flavell: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Bearing in mind that no appointment has been made to Māori Television, is this line of questioning appropriate, in the sense that the appointment is still under consideration?

Mr SPEAKER: I appreciate the point the member is making. On this occasion, when I refer back to the primary question that was asked, which was whether the Minister stands by all his statements, I have, with some reluctance, to be honest, ruled that the question is in order. Therefore, it is for the Minister to answer as he sees fit.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I do not know the individual. I do not know anything about his circumstances. What I do know is that a strength of the New Zealand government system is that there is no political interference in the appointment of people to positions in the public sector. Unfortunately, the Opposition has seen fit to attack the process. The fact is that the chairman has assured me that proper procedure has been followed. If there was any evidence to the contrary, then I suppose we would look at it. I do not think that character assassination on someone who cannot do anything about it is the way to deal with public sector appointments, although it is not the first time the Labour Party has done it.

Clare Curran: Does he believe that the board should have accepted the offer of a briefing from the Television New Zealand Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Kenrick, given that Paora Maxwell left the company without a reference and under a cloud of financial and staff mismanagement?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well—

Te Ururoa Flavell: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. There are a couple of issues that have arisen out of this line of questioning. The first point is about the process, but the second point, which I really want to focus on, is about what protections individual New Zealanders have in going through an appointment process when their past employment history is put in front of New Zealand society for all to see. They are applying for a job, they have not even been appointed to any position at the moment, and yet parliamentarians are able to follow this line of questioning, which for me is way out of order. It is one thing to move to the process, and another one to deal with the person.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: You will recall that there was an appointment made to a Canadian who claimed to have qualifications, and he had no qualifications whatsoever. Surely, we do not want to make the same mistake a second time. It may be embarrassing for some members of Parliament, but this is a transparent process and these questions are entirely proper. Of course, if the member is wrong, then she will have to live with that and the public opprobrium will come. But if she has got the facts, then she should be allowed to put them.

Te Ururoa Flavell: I acknowledge the comments by Mr Peters, but those discussions, those revelations, were made public after the appointment, not before the appointment, and that is the issue.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Well, now I think I have to intervene. The questions are about the process and whether or not the board of the Māori Television Service should take a briefing that is offered. It could not possibly take a briefing that is offered to do with an appointment after it has occurred. It has to be before, in order to make sure that the process is proper.

Mr SPEAKER: The way the questions have been asked has been more than about just process. They have certainly attempted to malign a particular candidate, and that is a matter for the member who was asking the questions. This is a place that is a democracy, and members in this House have the right to free speech, but that comes with a responsibility to be clear of the statements that a member is making in asking those questions. If a particular member of the public feels that he or she has been maligned by this House, there is a process by which they can seek to send a response to the House. I think we got to the stage where the question was asked and—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. With respect, can I ask you whether it is in order for you to make a judgment as to a member’s motives when asking a question, as you just did.

Mr SPEAKER: No, I did not. I am going to ask Clare Curran—

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I do recall the question.

Mr SPEAKER: Well, if the Minister says that he recalls it, then he can move to answer it.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is a matter for the board as to what briefings it takes or otherwise. It is obliged to the candidates to follow fair process. Bear in mind that the make-up of the board is three Government appointees and four appointees made by the Māori Television Electoral College. So it is not a Government-appointed majority; it is a mixed board. But whatever the make-up of the board, it is obliged to follow fair process.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Is the Minister aware of the serious failure of Public Service standards when politicians interfere in public sector appointments, which resulted in the resignation of both a Minister—

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Dr Nick Smith: —and a chief executive under the previous Government, and that the person at the heart—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I cannot see how that supplementary question relates to the primary question. Further supplementary question—[Interruption] Order! Further supplementary question, Clare Curran.

Clare Curran: Will he, as shareholding Minister, investigate the appointment process of the Māori Television chief executive and the board chair’s role in that process, and if that process is found to be inappropriate, will he ask Georgina te Heuheu to stand down?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member is getting way ahead of herself. The board is in an appointment process. It is not complete. There has been no complaint to me from anybody about the nature of that process. Of course, people are unlikely to complain until they see the result. But as someone who was the beneficiary of an overtly political appointment in the Public Service, I would have thought that that member would be a bit more reserved in her criticism of others who are trying to do their jobs under intensive public scrutiny.

Inland Revenue Department—Information-sharing Agreement with Department of Internal Affairs

8. KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National) to the Minister of Revenue: What recent initiative has the Government put in place to improve compliance with child support and student loan repayment obligations?

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Revenue): Yesterday Minister Tremain and I announced a new information-sharing agreement where the Department of Internal Affairs will provide the Inland Revenue Department with contact details for adult passport renewals and applications. The Inland Revenue Department will use the information to contact New Zealanders living overseas who owe money to the taxpayer on their child support or student loans. The agreement is limited to contact information about overseas-based student loan borrowers who are in default on repayments, and liable parents living overseas who are in default on their child support obligations, and whose contact details are out of date.

Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: How will this information sharing encourage those in default to meet their repayment obligations?

Hon TODD McCLAY: The vast majority of people pay their child support payments or student loan repayments on time. However, it has become apparent that the principal reason why many New Zealanders living overseas fail to comply with these obligations is that they have, in many cases, simply lost contact with the Inland Revenue Department. Accurate contact details are crucial for ensuring overseas-based liable parents and student loan borrowers are able to meet their obligations, and the department’s experience is that 70 percent of borrowers in default begin to comply once they have been contacted. This common-sense measure will allow the department to contact these people and help them to meet their obligations to taxpayers and to their children.

Primary Industries, Ministry—Biosecurity and Food Safety

9. 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: Given the Minister’s regular statement that biosecurity and food safety are his No. 1 priorities, what has he done in the last month to address the issues of Psa in kiwifruit, fish or sheep contamination in palm kernel expeller, Fonterra’s false botulism debacle, Russia’s blocking of New Zealand’s dairy imports, problems with meat certification, the sale of unlabelled irradiated tomatoes, “angry birds” in Auckland, and—today—possible black grass weed infestation?

Hon NATHAN GUY: Biosecurity is my No. 1 priority. Just today I was out talking to the industry about the Government-industry agreements to do with biosecurity, and I also note—and I am sure that the member will be pleased to know—that the Horticulture New Zealand President, Andrew Fenton, recently said that the Ministry for Primary Industries performance has lifted under his leadership and that its biosecurity system is now the best in the world.

Hon Damien O’Connor: He is on the way out too. Has he given—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is an example of what happens when the member starts with an interjection. If he could just ask his question.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Has he given formal notice to all food exporters of a change in protocol to notify the Ministry for Primary Industries of any potential contamination issue; if not, why not, given the 5-week delay of Fonterra notifying the Ministry for Primary Industries of the possible botulism contamination?

Hon NATHAN GUY: The latter part of that question will indeed be part of the ministerial inquiry. What I can tell the member is since 20 August the Ministry for Primary Industries has been implementing some new regimes to do with the dairy industry processing plants, and they are lifting regulatory presence in the manufacturing plants, lifting testing, and doing more regular reviews of their risk management programmes.

Dr David Clark: What concrete steps is the Minister taking to ensure his ministry is improving monitoring of all meat-processing plants to ultimately protect the jobs of people in regional New Zealand who are dependent upon them?

Hon NATHAN GUY: The Ministry for Primary Industries has a real focus on jobs in the regional economies. The Primary Growth Partnership is a great example, which that Opposition party should be supporting because it is generating a huge number of results, and a lot of those results and benefits are flowing through to regional economies.

Dr David Clark: What has the Minister said to his minder, the Minister of Science and Innovation, the Hon Steven Joyce, on the importance of Invermay Agricultural Centre to the primary sector? [Interruption]

Hon NATHAN GUY: I could not hear what he said.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can the member please, for the benefit of the Minister, repeat the question.

Dr David Clark: What has the Minister said to his minder, the Minister of Science and Innovation, the Hon Steven Joyce, on the importance of Invermay Agricultural Centre to the primary sector?

Hon NATHAN GUY: Mr Joyce is not my minder.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We have seen the Prime Minister say that Mr Joyce has been appointed—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not a point of order. The question was very adequately addressed.

Local Body Elections, 2016—Online Voting

10 CLAUDETTE HAUITI (National) to the Minister of Local Government: What is the Government doing to make it easier to vote in local body elections?

Hon CHRIS TREMAIN (Minister of Local Government): Yesterday I announced that we will trial online voting at the 2016 local body elections. I am confident that online voting will boost turnout, as it is more convenient and will particularly appeal to young voters. Postal voting creates a barrier for some people, and voter turnout at the 2010 elections was below 50 percent. Online voting will encourage participation, which is good for democracy.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The public of this country are soon to engage in a local body election. There is a great chance of confusion happening now, because the assumption of this question was that it was for the election that is coming this year. He is talking about the year 2016. Frankly, it is not relevant and it is likely to mislead the public when there is a low enough vote already—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not a point of order. The question is in order, and the Minister was answering it in an orderly fashion. Does the Minister who was interrupted want to add any further to the answer?

Hon CHRIS TREMAIN: No.

Claudette Hauiti: How will the RealMe service be used to enable online voting?

Hon CHRIS TREMAIN: New Zealanders will be able to use the new RealMe service to prove their identity so they can vote online in 2016. This is safer and more reliable than postal voting. The Government is also making changes to electoral law to enable full online enrolment using RealMe.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Stop wasting taxpayers’ money.

Hon CHRIS TREMAIN: I understand the member has significant difficulties with information and communications technology and online voting would be beyond him, so do not worry about that in 2016.

Health Targets—Heart Disease and Diabetes Prevention and Care

11. KEVIN HAGUE (Green) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by his statement that “the Government is committed to improving health services for diabetes and heart disease, with a strong focus on prevention”?

Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): Yes. As just one demonstration of this, in Budget 2013 we announced a $35.5 million boost of new funding over 4 years for New Zealanders with or at risk of developing diabetes, pre-diabetes, and heart disease. This is in addition to the other funding that the Government invests in initiatives to encourage New Zealanders to make healthy changes to their lifestyles.

Kevin Hague: Does the Minister stand by his answer to my previous questions in the House that this Government is investing the exact rational amount of funding—around $60 million this year—into diabetes and obesity prevention, even though his answers to my written questions show he has neither sought nor received any advice on the future costs of diabetes to New Zealand?

Hon TONY RYALL: Well, of course we are investing what we are able to invest in light of the financial constraints in which we operate. I have to say that in light of this year’s Budget investment of $35.5 million going into heart checks and diabetes management, I think that is a pretty good investment in tight times.

Kevin Hague: How can $60 million a year possibly be enough when current diabetes costs alone are already more than 10 times that amount and diabetes prevalence is growing rapidly; and how much of the $1.78 billion treatment costs projected by PricewaterhouseCoopers for 2021 does he anticipate preventing with that level of investment?

Hon TONY RYALL: The Government’s investment in preventing diabetes and heart disease goes beyond the $60 million that he talked about. It also includes the $35 million that we announced in this year’s Budget. On top of that, district health boards and primary health organisations are themselves investing in diabetes prevention. For example, in Northland additional funding under the Diabetes Care Improvement Package has been used to increase the availability of nurses, providing nurse education, and realigning kaiāwhina in mobile nursing services, and at the Whanganui Regional Primary Health Organisation it has begun a nurse-led clinical review to determine patient needs and tailor a package of care around the patients, including group education, self-management, training, community outreach clinics, and workforce developments of multidisciplinary teams to support people in better managing their diabetes.

Kevin Hague: Why, then, has he, according to his own answers in this House and to written questions, and according to the Ministry of Health’s answers to questions on the estimates, in fact reduced funding for prevention from $70 million in 2008-09 to $60 million this year, and, of this, reduced funding for initiatives intended to actually prevent obesity in the first place by 29 percent, from $66 million to $47 million, when all recent research shows that diabetes prevalence is much higher than originally thought and obesity rates continue to climb?

Hon TONY RYALL: I just reject the characterisation of those numbers as the level of the Government’s investment in diabetes prevention. That is the reason why we do not use those figures; the investment is far beyond that. The reason why our prevention includes the significant boost of $35 million over 4 years in this year’s Budget is that we do want to assist in the identification of those with diabetes and pre-diabetes, in particular, not only as a way of assisting those with diabetes to better manage their diabetes but also to prevent people with pre-diabetes from moving into the diabetic state. That is the reason why this year’s Budget also included a big boost to Green Prescriptions, which enable doctors to refer people to exercise and diet support programmes.

Kevin Hague: Well, can the Minister confirm to the House that of that reduced prevention investment of around $60 million, a figure that prior to his answers today he has repeatedly used and the ministry has also used, fully $10 million is being spent this year on bariatric surgery?

Hon TONY RYALL: Yes, the Government is determined to increase the availability of bariatric surgery in New Zealand. We know that it has significant life-changing impacts for people, and it seems to make a lot of sense to me that we continue to expand the availability of that service to patients who benefit.

Housing, Affordable—First-home Buyers and Mortgages

12. PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) to the Minister of Finance: Has he been advised which banks have put up their interest rates or bank charges since Loan to Value lending limits were announced?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): I have noticed media reports of some banks lifting rates. On inquiry, it appears that they are adding to their lending margins in response to action taken by the Reserve Bank some time ago to increase their capital weightings against low-deposit loans. This is a quite separate and different measure from the restrictions on the number of low-deposit loans.

Phil Twyford: Can he confirm that none of the four big banks—ASB, BNZ, ANZ, and Westpac—have prioritised first-home buyers, and why does he think the Minister of Housing, Nick Smith, told the House yesterday that “The banks have said that they are going to give priority to first-home buyers.” when none of the big four banks have said that?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I am not aware in detail of what criteria the banks are applying. The Government has certainly prioritised first-home buyers with its changes to Welcome Home Loans and KiwiSaver subsidies. What I can say is that borrowers are enjoying an average floating mortgage rate at the moment of around 5.8 percent. In August 2008 it was 10.7 percent.

Phil Twyford: Did he ask the major trading banks to prioritise first-home buyers once the loan-to-value ratio lending limits were announced; if so, what was their response?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: We held some discussions with the banks in order to inform the Government on its own policy in respect of first-home buyers, but the banks, clearly, do now reserve, and always have reserved, the right to make their own commercial decisions. I suspect some of them will try to differentiate and others will not.

Jami-Lee Ross: What statements has he seen in support of limits on high loan-to-value ratio lending?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Actually, I think that one of the first times that I heard about this idea was when it was mentioned by Phil Twyford, who apparently was the housing spokesman for the Labour Party, who believed that having restrictions on high loan-to-value ratio loans might actually help cool down the housing market. If he still holds that position, then certainly the Reserve Bank Governor agrees with him. I am still a bit of a sceptic.

Phil Twyford: I seek the leave of the House to—[Interruption]

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

Phil Twyford: I seek leave to table the results of a survey of the major banks showing that none of the big four banks—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! What is the source of the document?

Phil Twyford: It was published in the New Zealand Herald.

Mr SPEAKER: Then that document will not be tabled. Has the member got a further supplementary question?

Phil Twyford: I do, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Then he can ask it.

Phil Twyford: Why did he allow a full month to pass after signing off a memorandum of understanding giving the Reserve Bank the power to use loan-to-value ratio limits before he requested advice from officials on the impact of loan-to-value ratio limits on first-home buyers?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The impact of any of the measures under the macro-prudential regime has been discussed on and off, actually, for a couple of years. Certainly, when the Reserve Bank announced that it was going to formally consult, then we formally took advice so that we could discuss with the Reserve Bank the intriguing idea put up by the Labour spokesman on housing, Phil Twyford, that restrictions on loan-to-value ratio loans might actually cool down the housing market.

Phil Twyford: I would like the leave of the House to table a—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Is the member seeking to table a document?

Phil Twyford: Yes. I would like the leave of the House to table an answer to a written question—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member is now trifling with the House. Has he got a supplementary question? [Interruption] Order!

Phil Twyford: When the Prime Minister told the New Zealand Herald in June that “I don’t think it should be a tool that is used to write high LVR ratios for a bunch of rich people, and lock out a whole lot of first-home buyers.”, did he seek your advice first, and did you tell him that you had already signed off the memorandum with the Reserve Bank without an exemption for first-home buyers, making him look like a complete fool?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think the foolish bit is well covered and will not be part of this answer. The Prime Minister was aware of the memorandum of understanding because, as I recall, it was announced in the Budget in front of some 120 MPs, so it was not exactly a secret. The Prime Minister had some views about it and he has translated those views into changes in Government policy, which mean that within the restrictions that are now applied by the Reserve Bank, independently, first-home buyers have a better opportunity than they would have had to get a loan.

Phil Twyford: When will he admit that he has completely bungled the loan-to-value ratio negotiations and the result is that nearly 80 percent of first-home buyers now say that they have no hope of getting into their first home, thanks to this Government?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The answer to the member’s first question is “Never.” Secondly, first-home buyers, under any set of rules, are better off now than they were in 2008. In 2008 a first-home buyer had to pay a floating rate of 10.7 percent for their first mortgage. Today, on average, they can actually get mortgages at 5 percent, less than half the rate when that Government was in power, and the average is 5.8 percent. So they are better off.

Question No. 6 to Minister

Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): I seek leave to table a copy of an Official Information Act request asking how many patients were waiting more than 6 months for first specialist assessment and surgery for the years 2005 through to 2012—

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that particular document. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.

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

Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): Mr Speaker—[Interruption]

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

Hon ANNETTE KING: Poor old Billy!

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member can raise her point of order, and it will be heard in silence—it will be heard in silence.

Hon ANNETTE KING: I seek leave to table every letter I wrote to every district health board asking how many patients were refused first specialist assessment for the years 2010-11, 2011-12, and 2012-13—the entire set of letters.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table the entire set of such letters. Is there any objection to that course of action happening? There is none. The member can table those letters.

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

Bills

Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill

Third Reading

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Housing): I move, That the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill be now read a third time. This bill, introduced as part of Budget 2013, is about enabling tens of thousands of homes to be built. It is about helping Kiwi families to realise the dream of owning their own home. It is about supporting the Government’s economic recovery plan by reducing the financial risks of Auckland’s house price bubble. It is about employment and freeing up land so that builders, plumbers, electricians, drainlayers, plasterers, and painters can get on and construct the homes that cities like Auckland so desperately need.

This bill is based on sound research. We have had the Productivity Commission, we have had the Reserve Bank, and we have had the OECD and the IMF, and every substantive report on housing highlights the need for additional supply. Let me highlight the problem. Auckland has got just 1,300 sections currently available for housing. That is a third of what it had a decade ago. We need 13,000 sections each year just to keep up with population growth. We have got a rigid, metropolitan urban limit prohibiting any new housing development beyond the artificial line drawn 15 years ago. We have got a few lucky landowners sitting on the last few parcels of developable residential land, holding prospective homebuyers to ransom.

Section prices have trebled and have gone up by more than any other part of the housing cost equation. We have got a convoluted Resource Management Act planning system, where it takes an average of 7 years to get a plan changed, by the time you get through all the consultation and appeal processes. Even when you have got a plan changed, it takes an average of another 3 years to get resource consent for a greenfield development and a year for a brownfield development.

We have got a constipated planning system bogging new residential construction, and this bill is a laxative to get new houses flowing. It will enable plan changes and resource consents to be approved simultaneously. It overrides Auckland’s metropolitan urban limit, freeing up thousands of hectares of land for housing. It fast tracks the consents process, enabling greenfield developments to be approved in 6 months and brownfield developments to be approved in 3 months. It makes plain that the Government’s strong preference is to get this work done in partnership with councils, through housing accords, but it also provides that the Government can get on with the job if councils stand in the way of delivering an increased supply of affordable housing.

We have secured the first housing accord with Auckland. In essence, it enables the 39,000 least contentious homes, of the 400,000 homes proposed in Auckland’s 30-year plan, to be built over the next 3 years. The alternative is that we sit and wait for 3 years before we enable any new residential development. That would be a disaster for Auckland and an even bigger disaster for New Zealand. We are also progressing discussions with other councils with high housing costs, to use the tools in this bill to facilitate more affordable housing.

The Government has made plain that this new law is just part of a comprehensive plan to address the challenges of housing supply and affordability. We have announced changes to infrastructure costs, with a further bill to be introduced later this year. We have announced the next phase of Resource Management Act reforms, which will simplify the planning process and require councils to plan for 10 years of residential housing supply. We have got the building materials cost inquiry, reporting shortly to Ministers, from which will flow significant new initiatives. We have got the work on streamlining building consenting and the new online consenting system.

We have lifted our investment in apprenticeships. We have trebled the number of Welcome Home Loans. We have announced the expansion of the KiwiSaver first-home deposit subsidy scheme. We have got dozens of projects under way where the Government is directly facilitating new housing developments, like at Hobsonville, Rangers Park in Christchurch, Tāmaki, Papakura, and Weymouth. This Government is directly building more houses than any Government in more than a generation. This bill is a critical part of that programme.

I must put on record the incredibly shallow response from Labour members, which shows that they have been far more interested in playing politics than helping Kiwi families secure an affordable home. They first described this bill as Draconian and going too far. Next minute, they say it is tinkering and does not go far enough. They demanded urgent action, then opposed urgency to get this bill progressed, and filibustered at every opportunity, to try to slow it down.

They demanded that we secure agreement with the Auckland Council. In fact, they put my picture up all over Auckland, demanding that we get agreement. Then, when we get agreement, they oppose the accord and try to do everything to unravel the agreement. Then we have their housing spokesperson saying earlier in the year that it would be very useful for the Reserve Bank to put limits on low-deposit loans. Then when the Reserve Bank does that, he attacks it and opposes the measure.

During the Committee stage there was this poignant moment when Mr Twyford claimed that the bill had no specific mention of affordable housing. When challenged, he admitted that he had not actually read the bill. It reminded me of that snapper moment with David Shearer. I suspect that Labour will soon have a new housing spokesperson, along with its new leader.

Even more worrying is the Opposition’s intellectual bankruptcy on the core issues affecting housing affordability. Mr Twyford is on record as saying in June that land supply is not the issue. He described the Productivity Commission’s report on housing as the work of dinosaurs. Even more concerning was the contribution from Labour’s environment spokesperson, Maryan Street, who, during the Committee stage, said that Labour opposed reform of the Resource Management Act and saw absolutely nothing wrong with it taking 3 years to get a consent for new residential development. That shows that Labour is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Labour has repeatedly criticised this bill because it does not guarantee houses at a particular price for Kiwi families. It just shows the degree to which Labour is off in la-la land. Labour members somehow believe that all we need to do to get New Zealanders an affordable house is pass a bill through this House and say that such and such a price shall be the price of a home and it will magically happen. It is about as daft as the idea from two of the Labour Party leadership hopefuls, who say that all we need to do to lift incomes in New Zealand is pass a bill through Parliament requiring a liveable wage of $18.40 an hour, or their electricity policy that has the Government just setting the price and somehow that will work. It shows a complete ignorance of how a modern economy works.

Our job is to make the market work for people and for our country. The truth is that there are dozens of landowners and builders ready and waiting to get on and build the houses New Zealand needs before we contemplate the Government building all the houses we need. We need to remove the barriers and let our Kiwi entrepreneurs and innovators get on with the job.

There has been a power of work go into this bill. I want to acknowledge the team at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; the team at the Parliamentary Counsel Office; and Sam Lotu-Iiga, particularly, and the very competent and focused Government team on the Social Services Committee—all of whom worked under very tight time pressure to deliver this new law.

The next step after the passage of this bill will be Auckland Council’s adoption of its housing accord next Tuesday and the notification of its unitary plan. This law will then take effect the following Monday. My ambition is to have sufficient special housing areas approved for at least an additional 5,000 homes by Christmas. That is what it is all about—getting on and building the homes that Kiwi families need. I commend the bill to the House.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): In beginning this speech I want to note just how reliant members of Parliament are on the many staff who support us in this Parliament. One such staff member is Sarah Austen-Smith, who works in the Labour media team and who has supported me on housing issues on a number of occasions. She is about to leave us shortly, and I want to thank Sarah for her work, but also thank all of the staff in this institution who make it run.

I want to say first that there is nothing wrong in principle with a bill that sets up special housing areas, with a bill that makes new greenfield land available, or a bill that fast tracks consenting. There is a housing crisis in this country, largely because of the economic settings that this Government has refused to change over the last 5 years. The crisis is taking the Kiwi dream of homeownership further and further out of reach for a whole generation of young New Zealanders. It requires bold action, but this Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill is not it.

This bill is the centrepiece of the Government’s housing policy, and, in spite of the claims made by the Minister of Housing in his earlier address, it falls well short of what New Zealanders want and expect from their Government in tackling the housing crisis. This Government refuses to crack down on speculators. It refuses to consider the advocacy of almost every mainstream economist in this country who says that a capital gains tax should be implemented in order to take the speculative steam out of the housing market. It refuses to stand by Kiwi first-home buyers and do something about the offshore speculators who outbid young New Zealand first-home buyers at property auctions daily. It has no concern that real estate companies are actively marketing New Zealand houses in places like Hong Kong and Singapore as some kind of happy hunting ground for property speculators, with no capital gains tax, no stamp duty, and no restrictions on foreign ownership.

Even worse still, National refuses to roll up its sleeves and actually build affordable houses. For some reason, it is allergic to the notion that a Government in a housing crisis like this should actually build affordable houses, and in spite of the Fairfax poll a few days ago that showed that 73 percent of New Zealanders support the policy of the Government actually building affordable houses. Instead, it prefers to tinker with the Resource Management Act and blame councils for the worst housing crisis this country has seen in a generation.

The final piece of the picture that is the essential context for this bill is the agreement negotiated in May between the Reserve Bank and the Government on the introduction of macro-prudential tools that would give the Reserve Bank more tools to deal with monetary policy and particularly loan-to-value ratio lending limits. The Government bungled it, it panicked, and now first-home buyers are being shafted by this policy, which has the effect of locking out 80 percent of first-home buyers who cannot get a 20 percent deposit together. First-home buyers are now being affected by interest rates going up. In fact, everyone who borrows money is now being affected by interest rates going up. All four of the major banks have put up their rates, citing the effect of loan-to-value ratio lending limits. Bank charges have gone up specifically for low-deposit borrowers, and the banks are charging a premium. All four banks are charging a premium to low-deposit borrowers, because of the Government’s failure to negotiate even a temporary exemption for first-home buyers from the loan-to-value lending limits. A generation is being locked out of the Kiwi dream of homeownership.

We voted for this bill at its first reading during the Budget debate because we took the view that the housing crisis is so severe, it is having such a terrible impact on New Zealand families, and we felt that if the Auckland Council and the Government had spent 6 weeks trying to negotiate an accord, it was worth giving serious scrutiny to at the Social Services Committee. But we will not vote for it now. It is weak. We have no confidence that it will result in any affordable housing being built, and submitter after submitter came to the select committee and said that. We have no confidence that it will even make housing any more affordable in general. It is based on a kind of trickle-down theory of housing that if you build more houses, no matter how expensive they are, somehow that is going to make houses more affordable. Mr Banks is shaking his head, but I ask him this: if you import more Maseratis into New Zealand, will that make the Corolla more affordable? It is a fairytale of economics, there is no justification for it, and we will not go along with it. The Minister explained to the select committee, under questioning, that if you build a whole lot of $800,000 houses, then some people are going to sell their houses, possibly cheaper ones, to move into the $800,000 ones, and that is how this bill will make housing more affordable. It is trickle-down housing economics and nothing more.

I want to note, in response to the Minister’s comments, that he rushed a swag of amendments to the House an hour or two before the Committee stage of this bill. Supplementary Order Paper 351 amended 57 of the bill’s 89 clauses. He did not see fit to bring those amendments to the select committee. He tabled them on the floor of the House only an hour or two before the Committee stage. That is sadly symptomatic of the rushed, ad hoc approach we have come to expect from this Minister. At least, I suppose, the Government has bowed to pressure and all the comments made by submitters who came to the select committee and complained that the bill contained no serious mechanism to deliver affordable housing. The amendments give the Minister, by Order in Council, the power to regulate for a share of affordable housing in any qualifying developments. But he declined to put the actual mechanism into law. He covered the bill’s inadequacy with only a fig leaf of a power to regulate. Frankly, on this Government’s record, that gives us no confidence whatsoever that he will use this power. One of the first things this Government did when it came to power in 2008 was it repealed Maryan Street’s law that gave councils the power to practise inclusionary zoning to require a share of affordable housing in new developments, the very thing that should be in this bill—the very thing that should be in this bill. Nick Smith, in 2008, voted to repeal the law that would have done that, and now he has brought to this House a diluted, weak, watered-down version of the same thing.

This Government stripped the Hobsonville development of State housing, and under pressure from Labour the best it could do was reinsert a watered-down promise to build some small number of so-called affordable houses costing more than half a million dollars—affordable to very, very few Aucklanders. That Minister and others, like the Hon Bill English, are on record all over the place as rejecting the notion of inclusionary zoning, rejecting the very notion of requiring developers to build a share of affordable housing. That is why we have no confidence in that Minister’s provisions.

There are several other defects I want to just note in closing. This bill weakens quality controls. It undermines environmental standards. Is it any wonder that Aucklanders are alarmed by Nick Smith’s comments in the New Zealand Herald that Aucklanders had better get used to lower-quality housing developments? That is a major concern. Secondly, the override clauses in this bill are undemocratic. They are part of a trend under this Government of stripping away the powers of communities and local government and constantly centralising power to the executive. It is a mockery of the whole notion of an accord that this bill gives the Government the power to do whatever it wants, regardless of what a council wants to see. How can a council negotiate a housing accord in good faith with a gun held to its head in that way?

The bill also undermines the protections given to special areas, like the Waitakere Ranges under the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act. That Act currently has primacy over other laws and regional and district plans, but this bill requires only that decisions made in relation to special housing areas give consideration to that Act. Is it any wonder that people in west Auckland are worried about housing developments in the Waitakere Ranges? Labour will not support this bill.

MELISSA LEE (National): Ahn nyung ha se yo. It is a great pleasure to rise in support of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill at its third reading. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Minister of Housing, the Hon Nick Smith, and acknowledge all of the officials, submitters, Social Services Committee clerks, and members of the committee right across the House who have spent many hours considering this bill.

We may not necessarily all agree, but in my view this bill will make a great deal of difference, and I look forward to the changes that it will bring. If we actually take what the Minister has said, we see that he hopes there will be 5,000 new homes consented. That is a heck of a lot more than the 3,600 a year that are currently consented, when there are only 1,300 sections available and there are 13,000 homes a year that are required to be built to keep up with the population growth.

Over the course of the passage of this bill members have traversed their views widely. One that had particular resonance with me was the issue members have raised regarding housing affordability and how different our views were. Members have heard my views on why I believe that the Opposition’s idea to build 100,000 homes for under $300,000 in 10 years is complete hogwash. Can I remind members that if an average section price in Auckland is $325,000, how will the Opposition build homes under $300,000? I say to members opposite that they should sack whoever did their sums for them.

I do not possess a brilliant mathematical mind—I know; most Asian people are brilliant at maths—but even I can figure out that when the average section price is $325,000, Opposition members’ promises to deliver affordable homes under $300,000 are nothing but lies. I am guessing that land was not actually included in their calculations. If so, if they believe that they can build homes for under $300,000 and they consider that affordable, I say they have got rocks in their heads. We know that we can build houses for half that price—and the Starter Home Design Competition proved that—but it is the land where the houses sit that pumps up the price of homes. They go together, actually—houses on land become homes for people.

I was also consistently dismayed at members opposite who seem to think that first-home buyers buy brand new homes and at the median price. How many members in this House of Representatives can say that their very first home was a brand new house and it was their dream home? Most people start very, very small. They start with a small home that they can afford to buy, and then they move to grow with their growing family. They never start with their dream home.

This Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill provides for a special housing area under accords between the Government and councils. What happens in special housing areas is that the councils can fast track planning and consenting processes. At the moment, the average for greenfield development consents is 3 years, while brownfield consents take about a year. With this bill, the council can consent greenfield developments within 6 months and brownfield developments within 3 months.

The first accord—the Auckland Housing Accord—sets a target of 39,000 new homes consented over 3 years. This is a far greater number than the 3,600 homes currently being consented a year. This accord is a great example of how the Government can work collaboratively with councils to make housing affordable. The Productivity Commission, the IMF, and the Reserve Bank all identified that land supply was one of the key factors in making housing affordable. Unlike the Opposition members, who cannot even do sums—you cannot pay $300,000 for a home when you pay $325,000 for land for that home—it is a view of this Government that when five key areas are targeted, we will improve and achieve affordability of the homes that Kiwis dream of. These five key areas are land supply, material costs, infrastructure, productivity in the construction sector, and compliance costs. Everyone seems to get this, apart from the Opposition, it seems.

Labour also had another solution to housing—a xenophobic solution. It was to ban foreign buyers. Actually, Labour members did not mean all foreigners. They did not say boo about Shania Twain buying a farm. They never said anything about James Cameron. [Interruption] That is right. They actually mean Asian people. That is who they object to. If Labour were in Government, and God forbid that it be in Government, and if Labour were to ban foreign buyers, if I turned up to an auction to buy a house I would probably be considered a foreigner, to be banned from buying, and that is exactly what I object to. This kind of xenophobic scaremongering results in Kiwis who are born overseas, and in Auckland that is almost half the population, being treated like they do not actually belong in this country that we have chosen to call home.

Let me state here that a BNZ survey shows that only about 3 to 4 percent of house sales go to foreign buyers. Barfoot and Thompson has also put the number at around 4 percent. If I could put a personal view, a personal migrant’s perspective, on this, most foreign students who study in New Zealand are supported by their parents, who often buy homes to house their children. Once their children have stayed in New Zealand for a number of years, the natural progression is for their parents to consider moving to New Zealand, to be with their children on a more permanent basis. Preventing these people from buying a home will most probably have a major consequence to our international student numbers as well.

This is a sensible bill, at the right time, and if I can see that 5,000 homes are consented before Christmas, that would be a wonderful thing. I commend this bill to the House.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): Namaste, Mr Assistant Speaker. There was just so much wrong and inaccurate in that last speech by Melissa Lee that it is hard to know where to begin. For example, the member said that no first-home buyer in New Zealand ever starts with a new house. Well, I did—I did. It was a long time ago, I say to Melissa Lee. It was the norm. It was the norm when we were just starting off in our first jobs to go out and buy group housing for three times our salary. That was the norm in those days. Things have changed, I know, but to say that that never happened is not true.

Then the member said that the Labour Party policy on overseas buyers—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member, but I have a debate going on in the Chamber between two members on one side of the House and one on the other. It is not permitted. If you want to interject, then there is a speaker addressing Parliament and that is where it should be directed to. Interjections between members who do not have the floor are not permitted. Sorry, Dr Prasad.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. If the member Melissa Lee is going to cite the policy of this side of the House, then I ask her to cite it accurately. Anybody who has a permit to be in New Zealand, to migrate to New Zealand, or who lives here has no restrictions on buying a place, whether they are black, brown, or brindle. It does not matter where they come from. The bit that we object to is the overseas people who are simply speculating on the New Zealand market and driving—

Melissa Lee: How can you tell the difference?

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: If the member just zips it for a minute, I will tell her how. Zip it and I will tell you how, Melissa Lee. None of those contracts would be approved if the lawyers could not guarantee that those people qualified—none of them. It would not happen, I say to Melissa Lee. So before calling this side of the House xenophobic, I ask that member to interrogate her own sense of understanding of policy.

The third point that that member makes, in a really insulting way, is about the bean counters on this side of the House.

Melissa Lee: What have you got against Asians, Raj? You’re an Asian.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: I ask the member to listen—please listen. The member might learn something. That member and many other members on that side have said repeatedly that this side of the House does not know how to do arithmetic. If a piece of land costs $300,000, then that member says that it is not possible to build a house and land package for $300,000. That member is making one fatal assumption—

Hon John Banks: What?

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: —and that is that you can build only one house on one piece of land. John Banks should know better. You can go high. You can have multiple units. How many countries have the members seen this in? The whole plan is about going up using—

Hon John Banks: How high?

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Six storeys, according to this bill. Six storeys, according to this bill. John Banks should read the bill because the member has not. So those are just three points that Melissa Lee makes. You know, whenever Melissa Lee speaks in the House she does make so many fatal errors that one could make a whole speech based on just those errors—

Melissa Lee: Oh, that’s harsh.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: —and insulting, Melissa Lee—insulting. Please do not do that. If the member stopped doing that, then I would not have to retort in this way, because it always happens.

This particular bill is based on a theory. The theory is that if we made more land available and we addressed planning procedures, this would produce two results: more houses and more affordable houses. That is the theory that this particular bill is about. The mechanism that this bill believes will do that is the market. If, indeed, the market is left to its own devices, it will produce affordable housing. This is believed to be the perfect mechanism by members on that side of the House. Well, it is a failed model. The market model does not apply comfortably in the housing area, which is why the problems have been created.

Hon John Banks: Oh, don’t be silly, Raj.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: John Banks should know that it is not being silly. It is a fact. If that member is going to argue for the market model in its entirety, then that member is in cuckoo-land. He is in cuckoo-land, because you would not need any laws to reduce the market to be civil and work properly. That is why we have rules, Mr Banks. The market is not a perfect model. If the market worked, then why is housing in such a mess today? It does not work as a perfect model. It will not create affordable housing. It did at the time when I bought my first home—which Melissa Lee knows nothing about—but it does not work now, which is why it needs to be fixed. But these provisions will not fix it.

There are a whole range of things that need to be brought together to address the housing crisis of New Zealand. This bill brings some of them together, I agree. We have acknowledged that. Making more land available is important. But what we argue against—

Melissa Lee: Support it.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: It will not work—it will not work—unless all of those other things are also addressed. Some are and some are not—the cost of material, access to capital, tax treatment of housing speculation, and development of the workforce in this particular area to engage in big building. Look at the problems we are having in Christchurch at the moment. The Minister of Housing speaks about how the number of houses that are planned and being built by this Government is so impressive. The bulk of them are in Christchurch. The bulk of them are in Christchurch because they have to be built. They are funded by insurance. There are no other choices. The Government cannot take credit for the earthquake and all of that as well. That just happened to be the case. Any Government would do that.

Fundamentally, what this side of the House is arguing is that there is a major need for affordable housing, and a comprehensive approach would address this.

Hon John Banks: Well, what is it? What is it?

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Mr Banks, it goes like this. What is what?

Hon John Banks: What is the comprehensive approach you are proposing this afternoon?

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Well, if the member would have been listening, the member would know what they are. Clearly, the member does not know what they are. All of a sudden, this Government has become interested in housing. Up until quite recently it was not.

The genesis of this bill, really, is Labour’s KiwiBuild programme. The Government got a sense that this was really important. The second one, Mr Banks—and Mr Banks should know—was Auckland City beginning to look at housing in a different kind of way and saying: “We have to address this.” All of a sudden, the Government realised that it had to do something, and this bill was the hurried approach that came out of it.

There are some things that are good in this bill, but it is not comprehensive. It does not address the whole thing. The Minister said: “We have a comprehensive programme. There are more bills to come.” Well, a comprehensive programme brings all of the solutions to a complex problem together and puts a bill up so that we can debate all of them so that we can achieve change. This bill does not do that. What is needed is a bold plan to do that.

Hon Maurice Williamson: What is this member actually saying?

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: I knew Maurice Williamson would say something. He is an intelligent member. He is a member who knows a lot about this area, and he is a member who knows what a comprehensive programme would look like. Mr Williamson knows that this is not a comprehensive programme. Mr Williamson does know a lot more than John Banks does or Melissa Lee does.

This Government is disingenuous when it comes to housing. If the Government was really sincere—

Tim Macindoe: No, no, we’re active and on the market.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: I say to my dear friend from Hamilton, please do not give me another opportunity to have a go at another one of my friends from the other side of the House.

Tim Macindoe: Oh, go on.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: The member just did. The member just did. When Hobsonville came up, Hobsonville was there—you know, the Government takes the credit now. It says: “Look, we’re building Hobsonville.” But, no, the Government is not generous enough to acknowledge that the grunt work for Hobsonville was done by a Labour Government. It was all put in place by a Labour Government. National just happens to be in Government when the time has come for the houses to come on stream. But what was the first thing the Government did? The first thing it did was to make sure there would be no affordable houses there—none. It did not want the average working-class person to go to John Key’s electorate. So what the Government did—and now it regrets it, but I wish it would apologise for it. If the Government had allowed Hobsonville as designed to happen, it would have produced affordable housing. It would have been a much better programme. But, no, in its zest to keep people separated or keep the poor where they belong, keep the average-wage people in some other place, it actually kept them out. Now Hobsonville has got some affordable houses—I think it is seven or eight really small ones. Who is going to live there? Maybe that student whom Melissa Lee was talking about. Here, again, the programme for affordable housing is not there.

The last point I want to make is this. The Minister said in the Committee stage of this bill that affordable housing is now mentioned in the bill. Yes, it is. In the amended bill, clause 15(2A) does mention it. By Order in Council, the Government can do something about this. When we asked the Minister to explain to us in the Committee stage what this meant, he did not take one call. He did not want to explain. Something has just been put in there. This is not a bold plan. It will not work. We would have loved to support a housing programme, but we will not be supporting this one. Thank you.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): Tēnā koe. Before I begin this contribution on the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill I want to just acknowledge the passing of Dennis Hansen, who has been named as the man who was killed in a car crash yesterday. Koro Hansen is a kaumātua of significant standing not just in Auckland and with Ngāpuhi but around the country, and so we want to just acknowledge his loss and the loss to his whānau, his hapū, and his iwi. Kia ora.

Now to the bill. This bill is not about housing affordability. That is not what this bill addresses. It is actually about urban sprawl. It is about undermining the Resource Management Act, and about usurping the role of local government in making decisions about housing provision in its local area. I will talk in this contribution about housing affordability, and my colleague Eugenie Sage will discuss the Resource Management Act and the local government aspects of it, because this is a very serious attack on the right of local councils to make decisions for themselves.

There is no doubt that we need legislation to improve the affordability of housing. There is a nationwide housing crisis. My colleague Holly Walker, who is responsible for this bill on behalf of the Greens, has talked in previous contributions on this bill about the fact that the average house price in Auckland is over $700,000. There is a crisis in Christchurch as a result of the lack of housing following the earthquake. The average price of housing across Aotearoa as a whole is well over $400,000. It is simply unaffordable for most New Zealanders to purchase their own home. So, absolutely, housing affordability must be a priority for this Government, but this bill clearly shows that housing affordability is not, because this bill does not deal with it in any way. This bill identifies housing affordability as a problem but it deals, in fact, with land supply.

Land supply has been a major political issue for this Government but is not actually the major issue when it comes to providing more affordable housing for anyone, even in Auckland. It is certainly true that there may be some issues in Auckland, but there are also issues with land barons, for example—people holding on to land that could be used for housing now but are waiting for it to improve in its value. So there is an element of, I think, greed in the way that housing has been treated, and the way that the Government supports housing being treated by the private market. The Property Council has said that land supply is, at most, half of the problem around housing affordability, and that land supply certainly is an issue that does not affect the rest of the country outside of Auckland to any great extent. To the extent that this bill deals with land supply, it is dealing with only a small proportion of the problem in some specific areas, not about housing affordability across the country.

There is no requirement in this bill for the houses that are to be built to be affordable. There is no legislative provision that makes affordable housing core to this legislation. The Government has acknowledged that that is the case. In fact, the only reason that housing affordability is even in parts of the bill as it is is that Auckland Council has required that to be the case as part of the accord. That is great from the council’s point of view, but if the Government does not make it a priority for itself, it simply will not be a priority for others elsewhere. The Minister of Housing has also confessed to the Social Services Committee that this bill will not increase the numbers of affordable houses for New Zealanders to buy. The Minister has agreed that the bill will not result in the provision of more affordable housing, so it really is a farce from the beginning.

All the evidence shows that the issue of housing in New Zealand is that there are too few affordable homes being built, and the private market—private industry—cannot really be expected to fill this gap. There is too low a return for it building these homes. So who ought to fill the gap? Well, of course, the State has to be a part of this. The State needs to treat housing as core infrastructure. It is no less important to our economic and social well-being as roads are, as power provision, as water, and as internet or broadband, and they get treated as infrastructure whereas housing does not. Unless the State takes on housing as core infrastructure, we will continue to see this problem because it cannot expect the private sector to take up the space.

The Government is not being asked to do it on its own. It is being asked to do it in partnership with a whole range of organisations that are prepared to help and take on a huge part of the burden. Community organisations, housing organisations, iwi organisations, and councils, for example, are all prepared to engage in a partnership with the Government to improve the numbers of affordable homes being built. But this Government is not interested in those partnerships. It wants to leave it to the private market and keep its hands off. The fact is that the suburbs of this country, the towns of New Zealand, were not built by private industry; they were built by the State. They were built by the State because the State believed that in order to protect our economic base, in order to provide stability for families and for workers, and to ensure that children had the best chance of a good life and a fair future, a stable, warm, dry, affordable home was essential. That is why housing has been in the past, some decades ago now, core infrastructure, but in more recent times abandoned, and therefore that neglect has left thousands of New Zealand families, especially the very young who are just starting out on their journey of having children and building their life together, from being able to access homes.

Let us just have a look at some of the statistics. Half a million New Zealanders now rent. There will always be those who want to rent, but there are half a million New Zealanders who rent, many of whom are trapped into the rental market because there simply are not enough affordable homes. We are seeing a decline in homeownership, particularly in the middle deciles. It is among middle-income New Zealanders, actually, where we have seen the greatest decline in homeownership over probably the last 5 years. So we see that this is not about, necessarily, State housing for the very poor, although that has to be part of the solution; this is about housing for the middle classes. Actually, the middle classes are the ones who are suffering from the greatest decline in homeownership. We just need to look at the statistics around new dwellings. In 2003 there were 10 times more homes being built that cost less than $250,000 than those that cost more than $250,000—10 times more affordable homes being built in 2003. After a sharp and steady decline, we are now in a situation where there are only half as many. So only half as many affordable homes are being built as unaffordable ones.

There needs to be a significant shift in the way that the Government is treating housing, because nobody else can do it. Nobody else has the infrastructure, the funding, and the low cost of borrowing to be able to do this. So the Greens are proposing a number of solutions to deal with the housing crisis. Yes, we must engage in a State house building programme, in partnership with a whole range of other organisations, and treat it as an investment, not as a burden. These are assets on the Government’s books. We must have products like the progressive ownership system, for example, which we have proposed in our Home for Life proposals, which do not require a family to have a mortgage and do not require a deposit, but are means by which families can enter into and own affordable homes while paying them off over a long period of time, to create stability for them as workers and to create stability for them as families and for their children. We need a comprehensive capital gains tax on all but the family home, to just help take the heat out of the market; a warrant of fitness for rental properties, again, to help take the heat out of the rental market; and more secure tenure for renters so those who will be locked out of homeownership for long periods of times can still have the benefit of secure, affordable, warm, dry homes. These are not radical solutions that are untested. These are all sensible policies that will address the housing crisis and will treat housing like the core infrastructure that it is. Unfortunately, this bill does nothing. We are opposing this bill.

Hon JOHN BANKS (Leader—ACT): I was listening carefully to the co-leader of the Green Party, Metiria Turei, and I was shocked to recall in my mind the Committee stage of this Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill when her colleague Holly Walker simply denied that there was a link between the supply of land and the price of homes. It is a sad reminder to us that the Greens simply choose to deny basic economics.

As I said earlier, the time for debating the problem is over—it was over a long time ago—and today we have an opportunity. I am reminded of the advice that Keith Holyoake gave us all of those years ago, as young members of Parliament. He said that for every bill that comes into the House there will be 80 percent of the stuff that you will agree with and 20 percent that you will not, but he said that if you are part of the team promoting it, you go with the 80 percent because that is way it works.

I was surprised this afternoon that the Labour Party, which looks after the poor and the dispossessed and the low-paid workers and those striving to make ends meet and to get a better life, would deny those people the opportunity through this bill to own their first home, as a first step, even if it does not agree with 100 percent of young Nick Smith’s bill but agrees with only 80 percent of it. Listening to the speeches today, there is a lot that those members do agree with and not much that they disagree with, but they are not going to support it and they are not going to vote for it. That is not the way that this Parliament should work in the best interests of people struggling to buy their first home.

So the ACT Party and the people of Epsom are pleased that the National Government is doing at least something to address the issues, because what the Opposition parties are suggesting is simply not workable. Labour wants to tax New Zealanders more through bringing in a capital gains tax that cannot work. It has a xenophobic attitude towards foreign ownership because, presumably, the foreign owners—the 3.7 percent who bought homes in Auckland last year—are going to take them out on the Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong tonight. Then the next proposition is that the Labour Party is going to build 100,000 new homes over the next 10 years—10,000 homes a year. In the last 12 months 1,300 new homes were built in Auckland. It is not going to happen.

This bill is a way forward. This is a mandate to get some progress. During the period 2001-07 house prices nearly doubled and wages did not increase by more than 20 percent. With prices still rising, too many young people are struggling to purchase new homes. I was disappointed to learn in the House today that the five big foreign-owned banks lending into the housing market in New Zealand are putting a premium interest rate—a penalty, if you like—on those new home buyers and low-income families who are struggling to get into their first homes with their mortgages because they are stretched beyond the loan-to-value ratios that suit the bank. That is disappointing. If this Parliament can do something in the interests of getting people into their own home and building more houses in a property-owning democracy, then I think that the rich and powerful foreign-owned banks should pull their weight.

The Productivity Commission has concluded that there simply is not enough land that is free to build on and, as a result, there aren’t enough houses. In Auckland the price of a section is, on average, 60 percent of the price of a home. This is extremely high by international standards.

My diagnosis of the problem is complete. We now know the problem. I think all sides of this Parliament agree on the problem. It is a land supply problem. It is a demand problem. There is not enough land within the urban metropolitan limits of our big cities like Auckland and Christchurch to allow the building of new homes for new home buyers, and there is not enough land supply because there is not enough actual land. That is why there is a land supply problem.

New Zealand is one of the least densely populated nations in the world, with only 3 percent taken up by residential development. So why are people not building on the spare land? The issue is that we are not allowed to build on most of it. The Government, through the Resource Management Act—and I was here in Parliament in 1991 at a quarter to 11 one night when, within 7 minutes, we passed unanimously in this House the Resource Management Act. It has been the greatest handbrake on investment, growth, and jobs that this country has ever seen. This Government, under Amy Adams, is doing something about it. We are trying to address it. There is a long way to go, but the Resource Management Act and the bureaucratic interpretation by individual local authorities has been very bad in the interests of supplying more land to build more houses. It is great to see that we are making some progress.

The metropolitan urban limit that I talked about is the worst offender. Land 2 kilometres inside the metropolitan urban limit is 8.65 times more expensive than land 2 kilometres outside it. That is staggering. The Housing Accords Bill and Special Housing Areas Bill is a lukewarm response to this, but the ACT Party and the people of Epsom want me to support this in the House today because it is a major step in the right direction. I could throw out the toys from the cot, but I have decided that, on balance, the progress is such that it deserves the attention of this House today. It deserves to be put on the statute book so that we can get more people into homes in a property-owning democracy. So I am supporting this bill.

The bill itself says that these special housing zones will be established in areas that are already having a housing affordability problem. That amounts to waiting for the problem to occur and then rushing in to provide some short-term relief.

The ACT Party supports significant reform to the Resource Management Act. The ACT Party supports freedom to build. The ACT Party supports the freedom to build a new housing development when there is demand from the community for more homes. The people of Epsom support a less hands-on approach by territorial local authorities and some time constraints around the bureaucratic process of resource consent. This bill addresses that. We need to let the market operate as freely as possible so new houses will get built in response to demand. New Zealanders want affordable homes and developers want to build affordable homes, yet unnecessary regulation is stopping simple demand and supply from working.

The ACT Party is committed to real reform around the Resource Management Act, and will have plenty to say about that as this Parliament rolls on. But we are pleased that the Minister and the National Government are doing at least something to address the issues through this legislation, because what the Opposition parties are suggesting is laughable. It is time for real action, not just a few special housing areas in places where we have a real crisis on our hands. New Zealanders who work hard deserve to be able to save and buy their own home. We must restore the freedom to build. The people of Epsom and the ACT Party support this legislation.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): The National Government has waited several years while a housing crisis developed. Over the last 5 years the Government has allowed a housing bubble to emerge in Auckland, by its inept immigration and housing policies. Now it blames local government. The Government pretends that with the introduction of housing accords and special housing areas it can solve the problem. But it will not. Only a comprehensive housing strategy to address both demand and supply factors, as advocated by New Zealand First, will make housing affordable for home buyers.

The price of houses will not reduce under this legislation. Even the rate of increase is unlikely to reduce as a result of this legislation. First-home buyers will not be able to afford a house because the Government’s approach will have no effect on their capacity to raise a 20 percent deposit or to find an affordable home. Historically low interest rates are now rising, to make matters worse.

New Zealand First supports a broadly based housing policy that will again make homeownership a reality, rather than a dream, for ordinary New Zealanders. New Zealand First wants to see direct assistance to first-home seekers. Although New Zealand First has no problem with the concept of housing accords and special housing areas, they will not be enough to improve the housing crisis.

What the Government fails to grasp is that the housing crisis is not driven just by the availability of houses on the market, but by the price driven by many other factors as well, and by access to finance, especially the capacity of first-home seekers to raise a 20 percent deposit, as is now required.

The Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill addresses only the issue of collaboration with local government to assist it to ensure land availability. This is clearly only a part of the problem. It does not actually cause any more houses to be built, and it does not address the issue of the affordability of those houses. The hopes of at least 80 percent of first-home seekers have now been annihilated by the Reserve Bank’s limiting of the quantum of high loan-to-value ratio mortgages that the trading banks can make. This will do great damage to the proper expectations of first-home seekers to buy a family home. This does not address the fundamental issue. The Reserve Bank does not care about it. This Government obviously does not care about it either.

Another problem not being addressed is that overseas property investors and speculators have been buying up Auckland property, outbidding Kiwis trying to buy a home, and worsening the housing crisis. They, of course, are not hurt by the Reserve Bank’s loan-to-value ratio restrictions. Back in March this year the BNZ-REINZ Residential Market Survey said that in Auckland an estimated 11 percent of sales are to people offshore, not 3 percent, as Melissa Lee claimed—11 percent. You see, I actually read the report, so I know that, as a matter of fact—11 percent, not 3 percent. That is a significant proportion of the total number of home buyers in Auckland, contributing to the housing bubble there.

The trend is worsening. There is still a significant number of real estate agency companies promoting Auckland houses in Malaysia, China, and other parts of Asia. Here is what one recent Chinese magazine article said: “What could be better than a picturesque, comfortable country that is attractive to foreign buyers? You can benefit from New Zealand’s rising domestic housing market. Data released last month reported the Auckland real estate market is firing like crazy and will soon exceed the 2007 peak, and international buyers can share in this.” That gives you a flavour for what is going on, as far as encouraging overseas people to buy houses, especially in Auckland.

The Government also does nothing about the migrant flows that have been concentrated in Auckland. It does nothing to tighten immigration policy in areas such as parental reunion, which have added significantly to housing demand in Auckland. This is not xenophobia. It is good immigration policy to create those restrictions. It puts New Zealanders first, and that is one of the primary purposes for New Zealand First in this Parliament.

Most important, the impact of Reserve Bank policies will fall most directly on first-home buyers. The Government’s response to that has been pathetic. All it has done is ease access to KiwiSaver, which is both ineffective and inappropriate because the Government should be encouraging people to save for their retirement.

This bill may do some good in assisting local government to free up land for housing, but it is far, far too little and far too late. It is likely to be at the expense of good planning too, and at the expense of the usually well-thought-out plans of city councils and regional councils to balance housing land availability with sustainable urban boundaries. And it will be at the expense of local democracy, with local people having a very limited say in what will happen to their own city and their own neighbourhood.

This bill lacks balance. It lacks a strategic approach that would cover all of New Zealand, and not just Auckland’s problems. It will not, in the end, help even one of the thousands of young families on limited incomes seeking their first home to find a modest and affordable home on a smaller section, and to access a deposit and a sufficient home for their needs. These people need a Government with the ability to get them into a home they can afford. This legislation is a dismal failure in bringing that reality to them. So in the end, New Zealand First has resolved to oppose the bill. The basis of our opposition is not opposition to the concept of housing accords or special housing areas; it is a protest at the inadequacy of Government housing policy. It is far, far too little and far, far too late. It is mostly a protest at the Government’s tacit approval of the Reserve Bank’s shutting out of low-income first-home seekers from the New Zealand housing market.

This Government does not get it. The problem is affordability—affordability—for these people. Much, much more needs to be done about that, and this Government simply has no ideas about how to deliver affordable homes to New Zealanders and to assist them to get their first home. It should be one of the first priorities, at the top of the list, for any Government in this country. This Government’s attempt to attack that problem, after 5 years of inaction, has been utterly pathetic, and this bill demonstrates that much better than my words can say.

Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei): People watching and listening to this debate on the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill will wonder why the member for New Zealand First, Denis O’Rourke, was using notes so much—essentially, a read speech from a paper presented to him. You know, if you do not know the facts or know the portfolio well or know the sector well, you cannot speak to it well. So what I thought I would do is give just a brief history of time and cover the range of housing issues that people out there face—[Interruption]—people whom list MPs in New Zealand First do not need to face.

First of all, when it comes to buying a house—and even renting, because you are essentially paying the landlord’s mortgage—interest rates are the most important issue. So if you have a $300,000—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

Hon PHIL HEATLEY: New Zealand First will need to concentrate; if you have got a calculator, grab it. If you have got a $300,000 mortgage and interest rates go up by 1 percent, you have got to find an extra three grand a year.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Do not bring me into it.

Hon PHIL HEATLEY: If the interest rate goes up 2 percent, you have got to find six grand a year. If it goes up 3 percent, you have got to find another $9,000 a year. Interest rates in recent years have been around 5 or 6 percent. Under Labour they were 8, 9, and 10 percent. That is how Labour managed the economy. Under Labour, people had to find an extra $3,000, $6,000, or $9,000 a year just to service a mortgage.

What about social housing? Under our policy, we have seen social housing providers supported through the Social Housing Unit. Labour never gave them income-related rents. We are looking at that at the moment. In Hobsonville the Labour Government owned the land for 5 years and never built a single house. Labour members talk about what Hobsonville could have been—State houses, and all the rest. In 5 years Labour never built one house—one house—and it is the same in Tāmaki.

We have also upgraded State housing. You will know that 7,000 or 8,000 State houses across New Zealand were not even insulated—tens of thousands of State houses across New Zealand were not even insulated. They are all going to be insulated by the end of this term, and so they should be. Old, cold, and mouldy houses, under Labour, are not what we support.

The Resource Management Act and the Building Act—more regulation under the Labour Government, and we have cut back on that. Of course this bill, which solves the last of the holistic problems, covers the suite of projects that we have put forward, which I listed—one of which is land supply. It is very, very important to supply land for housing. The Labour Party opposes new land for housing. Labour members call that sprawl. They oppose density. You cannot squeeze in housing together and go up. So they are against more land for housing and they are against using land better by increasing density. I do not know where they are, but this bill shows clearly that we are looking at the suite of options.

We understand that there is no silver bullet, no quick fix. You have to look at regulation, you have to look at interest rates, you have to support social housing, you have got to upgrade those State houses, and you have to increase the land available for housing to be built on. I support this bill.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): It gives me some pleasure to rise, as a former Minister of Housing myself, after the speech from the former Minister of Housing Phil Heatley. So let us just track through some of the different ideas that exist between the National Party and the Labour Party on housing affordability.

First of all, however, I do want to say that in the 5 years that this Government has been in office we have seen a stunning lack of activity on housing affordability. The previous Minister—the member who has just resumed his seat—has said that he came into the portfolio on a slogan about cold, old, and mouldy houses, which was just about the only thing he ever saw fit to address in his time. There was no acknowledgment of the work that had gone on by the previous Government in upgrading and insulating State houses, starting with the coldest part of the country first, at the bottom of the South Island, and moving progressively northwards, so that we could improve the state of our Government’s housing stock for those who are most in need.

In addition to that, of course, we also brought in a subsidy system for insulation for homes owned in the private sector, and that, of course, is never acknowledged by the former Minister of Housing. Suddenly getting to this point 5 years on in this Government’s tenure and seeing a rush of activity on housing affordability tends to make us, on this side of the House, roll our eyes.

One of the points is that in the period that the National Government has been in power, since the end of 2008, we have seen skyrocketing prices. Prices for housing are up 30 percent in Auckland and up 26.5 percent in Christchurch. We have seen 1,500 fewer building consents between 2008 and 2012. This Government has not been attending to the issue of housing affordability. I thought the situation was dire when I was the Minister of Housing in 2007-08, but, in fact, there has been a more precipitous decline in homeownership, particularly in Auckland, in the last few years than at that time. Not only have we seen housing ownership levels getting worse but we have seen this huge increase—some 17 percent on average, I think—a 17 percent increase, in housing prices over the whole of New Zealand. It is worse in Auckland, worse in Christchurch, and worse in those less affordable parts of the country, but it has got worse under this Government, not better.

In response to one of the earlier speakers, I would like to say that Labour would be happy to support this bill if we thought it would make one jot of difference to housing affordability. Nowhere does it talk about housing affordability except by implication in a rushed Supplementary Order Paper 351, which the Minister brought to the Committee at the last minute, earlier this week.

So this bill is not about a planned, systematic approach to housing affordability. This is a knee-jerk reaction because there is a lot of noise out there about housing affordability. It was bad enough when I was the Minister of Housing, but at least we brought in legislation that made it possible for local authorities to require 10 percent—not the whole lot, just 10 percent—of any residential development to be put aside for affordable houses.

What did the National Government do on assuming office? Almost immediately it repealed that legislation because National has never been concerned about the low to middle income earners, who have as much right to get their foot on the first rung of the homeownership ladder as anybody else. Now that it is beginning to squeeze the children of the upper middle class, whom the National Party listens to more than anybody else, the National Government is hearing the noise for the first time, and that is because the prices are so much higher than they were even 5 years ago.

In addition to bringing in legislation in our day, we brought in a raft of other measures such as the Welcome Home Loan, which, in fact, this Government has kept but has cut back its funding. We introduced the KiwiSaver measures, which allowed for those who had invested in KiwiSaver, signed up to KiwiSaver, and saved a certain amount—$1,000 a year for 5 years—that $5,000 would be matched by the Government with another $5,000. So if a couple could manage to save $5,000 over 5 years, which is achievable even on a low to middle income if one works hard at it, then that would have been a combined amount of $20,000 to go towards a deposit, which in concert with the Welcome Home Loan would have given people the first step up on that ladder of homeownership.

But the shared equity scheme that we introduced was scrapped by this Government. It repealed our laws, as it has said. It has opposed the ambition of having 100,000 new affordable homes over a 10-year period. It has opposed our proposals for a capital gains tax that would see a tax on a capital gain made from speculative investment in housing and would change the nature of where people in this country might invest.

I also want to correct something a previous member said when she railed against xenophobia. I would join her in railing against xenophobia. There is no place for xenophobia in this multicultural society of ours. But I would say that our opposition to foreign buyers is on the basis of those who speculate, not those who want to come and live in New Zealand. It is on the basis of their being speculators, not people who are genuinely seeking to be citizens and permanent residents of New Zealand. So let us not hear any more nonsense in that respect.

Finally, I want to revert to one of my old themes, and it is about land supply. The previous speaker, Phil Heatley, talked about land supply being the critical factor; it is only one of the critical factors. Low wages are another critical factor in housing affordability. It seems to me that in the releasing of Crown land for increased density—which is what the Labour Government did, both in Glen Innes and in Hobsonville—that was the approach that combined all the necessary factors to get things going. The Minister told us the other day that 400 houses had been built in Hobsonville—400 houses had been built in Hobsonville. We were meant to applaud him. How many of them were affordable? How many were affordable? Seventeen were affordable. Seventeen of them are meant to be affordable houses. So this Government has no interest in genuinely addressing affordable housing. If it was genuinely interested, it would have brought forward a bill that would achieve that, rather than this nominal piece of nonsense that we have in front of us today. Thank you.

ALFRED NGARO (National): I rise to take a call on the third reading of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, in its final stage. I want to commend the Minister of Housing. I also just want to take a short call, because much has been said by my colleagues about both the substantive process and the outcome in this piece of legislation, which we think is absolutely important. The regulatory impact statement established in its overall conclusion that the special housing areas in which local councils or the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment would exercise more flexible resource consenting powers, in conjunction and collaboration with the Government’s proposed changes to the Resource Management Act, would most likely increase land supply over the short term in ways that are consistent with collaboration with those two parties. We believe that this is important.

I just want to cover a couple of brief comments in regard to the submissions that we heard in Wellington and Auckland. Here are some of the things that we have heard in responding to the submitters, and have amended the bill accordingly. We had submitters that were genuinely supportive of the Government’s intention to streamline planning and consenting to boost land supply and housing supply, but there were some changes. In fact, the Property Council in its submission said that this is not a silver bullet. The Social Services Committee made changes to strengthen the bill by clarifying how and when the powers of the bill can be used, and by clarifying how the provisions of the bill will work with other legislation, including the Resource Management Act.

The select committee also amended the bill to specify the inadequate infrastructure, which was a concern from a number of developer submitters, who talked about the concern that there was not the parallel development in regard to infrastructure. So the bill has been amended to ensure that infrastructure must either exist or be likely to exist in proposed special housing areas.

I just want to cover also one other key principle. I think that what was quite critical was that there was a lot of concern in regard to the override principle. We have to be up front and honest about that. Some might call it an anti-democratic approach, but really, it is a process and a way of ensuring that if there is no ability to come to an agreement, in the sense of progress, then there must be a process to move this intent on. The select committee has also heard, along with the Minister, and has agreed that in regard to the override principle, there be included a dispute resolution process. This has been important, along with Supplementary Order Paper 351 and what it includes around establishing the affordability criteria. Again, it was quite clear that submitters wanted to ensure that when we talked about affordability—and I want to finish on this, because I think this is important. Supplementary Order Paper 351 further improves the bill by allowing councils to consider the affordability of dwellings when recommending the criteria for qualifying developments. This is something that was quite clear in the submissions. It was something that submitters felt was very important in addressing the areas around affordability. This adds to what I think is a very substantive piece of legislation. I commend this bill to the House.

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

Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): I would like to take a short call on this bill, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. I think that we on this side of the House are absolutely clear that there is a housing crisis and that it has an impact on our communities throughout the length and breadth of New Zealand. The Government has known about this housing crisis, but I suspect that it has not worried about trying to address it. In the 5 years that this Government has been in office it has actually accelerated the housing crisis by attempting to sell off State houses and by gutting Housing New Zealand and removing the social focus of Housing New Zealand, and when it approved a loan-to-value ratio of 20 percent, it made it virtually impossible for families who want to buy their first home to be able to buy that first home.

Currently we have families who are unable to secure proper rental properties because the prices of rental properties are high, or because the quality of some private rental properties is some of the worst we have seen—not all, but some. We now have a situation where even though a person might need a house, and even though they might be living in garage or living in car, if they trot up to Housing New Zealand they will not necessarily be able to access a house. Housing New Zealand will simply either recognise them as client A or client B; client A having priority, and client B, irrespective of whether they are living in a car or not, simply would not be able to access a house.

When I asked the Minister earlier about how many of these houses would be affordable and what the price of an affordable house is—which he envisages will arise from this bill—the Minister’s response was that that would be left to the market. Well, let us look at the market. Currently, if you are looking at a $200,000 two-bedroom or three-bedroom bach in the rural areas out in the boondocks, where there are no jobs, where there are no Government services, you would still have to front up with a $40,000 deposit.

Then the question is whether that person will be able to sustain that mortgage. If a person is on a median income of $20,000 a year, then there is a big question mark. If the house is in the city, where some of the cheapest two- and three-bedroom houses are around $300,000, $400,000, or $500,000, a person still has to front up with a $60,000 to $90,000 deposit, and still has to be able to maintain that mortgage. The proposal to raise the loan-to-value ratio to 20 percent means they have to front up with a $60,000 to $90,000 deposit. But the median household income for some of our cities, particularly in Manukau, if I can use it as an example, is $40,000. The question is whether someone on $40,000 is able to sustain a mortgage of $400,000. There is a big question mark on that.

But the appalling thing is that when the Minister says that the situation is left up to the market, he reveals that this Government has not learnt the lesson that the market has failed. That is the reason why it keeps blaming the global financial crisis for the situation that we are in. The market has failed, and that Minister and that Government have not learnt a single lesson from the mistakes of the past and they continue to peddle these ideas.

This bill does not provide affordable housing. What it does is it enables the Government to control a council and it enables this Government to be able to allow for development that favours its mates and its friends. Simply allowing land to be freed up does not necessarily mean that people will be able to build affordable houses. In fact, once the zoning of rural land is moved into residential, that in itself will ensure that the price of that land will increase. This bill is not about affordable houses and anybody who believes that will also believe those lies.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): The Green Party does not believe that this Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill is part of a good solution to our housing affordability crisis, and it is not just the Green Party that is saying this. As the Hamilton City Council said in its submission: “Housing affordability is a complex issue and it would be better for the Government to develop a comprehensive, integrated and holistic affordable housing policy in collaboration with key stakeholders.”

Of course, local authorities are one of those key stakeholders. The Christchurch City Council is the largest provider of social housing in New Zealand after Housing New Zealand. But this bill undermines any sense of collaboration and partnership with those stakeholders because of the ministerial override provisions. They allow the Minister to cut across the statutory role of local authorities in deciding, in consultation with their communities, where new subdivision and residential development should occur and how it should occur. If the Minister cannot agree with the council, he can then simply designate special housing areas and just establish them, and have the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment take over the consenting role. And he can revoke those areas at will as well.

Where these special housing areas are created outside metropolitan urban limits—we had the Minister talking about thousands of hectares of land being freed up—this will be a boon for property developers, because if the development is a “qualifying development” in terms of the criteria in clause 14 of the bill and in any regulations that the Minister chooses to gazette, the developer can then apply to fast track those developments. That shuts out the community from decisions on where and how and when urban growth should occur, because under those fast-track provisions it is only neighbouring landowners, the local council, requiring authorities, and infrastructure providers that may be notified and may have an opportunity to put in submissions. So that is one of the reasons why the Green Party opposes the bill. It cuts right across public participation and it also limits appeal rights.

We are also opposing it because, despite the rhetoric of the Minister, it is not about simplifying and streamlining. It is setting up a different decision-making process with different criteria to those that exist in the Resource Management Act. We also oppose it because it erodes local democracy through the Minister’s override powers and his ability to establish these special housing areas.

Again, as with the Resource Management Act changes, the Government is talking about quick decisions rather than quality decisions. So we risk having ad hoc, sporadic urban development and urban sprawl rather than the compact urban areas that we want for sustainable growth. As Local Government New Zealand said in its submission: “The pendulum has swung too far in the direction of speed, away from community involvement and the robust assessment of environmental effects.” So, yes, we may get things happening quickly, but that does not mean that they are going to be sustainable over the long term.

We also oppose the bill because it does not recognise the work that a lot of local authorities are doing to plan for growth. You have got the Wellington City Council, which has got a sound urban development strategy. That has over 20 years of land supply through a mix of high density, infill developments, central city apartments, and greenfield land. Again, it is this Government centralising power rather than trusting local authorities to work with their communities and have sensible growth.

We in the Green Party believe that if we are going to deal with this affordable housing crisis, you need a package of measures. This includes a capital gains tax on everything except the family home, which will help deflate the property investment bubble. We want the Government to recognise that because there has been a market failure, the Government should be investing in building affordable homes. As Metiria Turei said, that is an investment, because if you give people a warm, dry, safe, secure home, that is the basis for family stability and it is the basis for healthy families, for educational achievement, and for good health. That is an investment in our people and in our country, not a cost in the way that this Government, by relying largely on the market, seems to think it is. We want livable cities, compact cities, where you have got land-use planning that is integrated with public transport. This bill does not deliver that. It delivers sprawl and ghettoes on the edges of our cities.

MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): If we were living on Fantasy Island, that contribution from Eugenie Sage would have been absolutely appropriate. But—

Hon Simon Bridges: “The plane! The plane!”

MIKE SABIN: “The plane!”—that is right, “The plane!”. But, actually, we are not. We are living in the real world, not in the Green vacuum. As for this legislation and this Minister of Housing, if we are to accept criticism—and we do accept some criticism from across the floor. But if the criticism of this Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill is that this is moving too fast and this will have things happening too fast, then I say that we welcome that criticism.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of New Zealanders who are queuing up wanting land, and who are wanting to build or buy a home and cannot. This bill is about Economics 101. It is about freeing up land. It is about providing enough supply to meet the demand. This bill is not about solving all of the problems; if nothing else, it is one aspect of solving the nexus between the supply and demand situation, in particular, in the city of Auckland. If it is good enough for the pseudo-leader of the Labour Party, the de facto leader of the Labour Party, Len Brown, to support this legislation, and if it is good enough for Len Brown to work on pragmatic solutions for his city with the Minister, then why is it not good enough for the Labour Party to support this bill?

The Labour Party’s solutions to this are, firstly, to oppose, because that is what it will do to any pragmatic solution; secondly, to criticise, because that is just what it does, and it does it so well; thirdly, to ban Asians and get all xenophobic about it; and, fourthly, to impose a capital gains tax. I could throw in a few other things if I had the time. One of the special ones is to promise 100,000 homes in 10 years for an average of $300,000. Of course, these are homes that must levitate—must hover above the ground—because when the average section is $325,000 in Auckland, how can one build a house for $300,000? It is lunacy. It is Labour Party politics. That is why members are scrambling around trying to find someone who might be crazy enough to stand up and lead that party—because it is leading itself into oblivion. This is good legislation. I commend the Minister, and I have been pleased to work on the bill. I commend it to the House.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 6; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 11 July.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker, for recognising me for the call. I have to confess that I am struggling to remember the first 8 minutes of my speech and just quite where I left off in my speech at the end of the 8 minutes, because it has been such a long time since this interrupted third reading of the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill commenced. We continue, despite interruptions, to oppose this bill. In the end, although we were open to finding a solution to the continuing problems that have plagued the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board over the collection of the disciplinary levy, in particular, and, since 2010, the offences fee for the prosecution of unlicensed practitioners, we have not managed to arrive at that conclusion.

We are going to be left with the validation of an illegal fee that was collected, an illegal charge upon tradespeople, which is continuing to aid the complete exodus of our tradespeople—our plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers—from New Zealand to Australia. This bill is not going to assist the plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers in any measure, and we cannot—cannot—support it. Thank you.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): The Green Party will be opposing the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill because, quite frankly and quite simply, it is just not fair. There are some important issues in this debate, but it is not fair to make this legislation retrospective and therefore allow the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board to continue to hold on to the fees that have been paid to the board unlawfully for some time.

Like the Minister for Building and Construction and like other parties in the House, we do understand that there is a problem with the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act 2006 in that it did not give the proper lawful authority for the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board to collect the levies and fees that it did for the purpose of prosecuting unlicensed practitioners. It does appear that that 2006 legislation was intended to provide that lawful authority, but it did not, and that is a mistake that does get made from time to time. We also agree that the board should be able to prosecute unlicensed practitioners. It is important for industry standards to have a body that is able to do that, and the fact that there are fees levied for that purpose is not unreasonable either.

So, in principle, we agree with the purpose, the intention, of this legislation, but the difficulty is that although we could have supported a bill that does this for the future, we simply cannot bring ourselves to vote for a bill that makes this power retrospective. We have communicated that with the Minister so he understands what our position is.

There has been, I understand, a long history of grievance and dispute between the members and the board about the payment of those fees and the use of those fees. It is, quite frankly, very poor practice when members who make a financial contribution to this board have to go to the Ombudsman in order to find out how that money is being used and what it is being spent on and to make sure that the purpose for which the money was given is actually being played out. So there is a whole history here around plumbers and gasfitters—the people who are affected by this bill—working very hard to seek a decision that the legislation does not provide lawful authority and to seek a remedy for that.

They have been everywhere that you can go—the Regulations Review Committee twice, the Ombudsman, the Auditor-General. They have spent considerable time bringing this issue to the attention of the legislature, so, quite rightly, the legislature is responding. But it is not fair to say now that those people who have had the burden of paying an unlawful fee, have had the burden of trying to find out—against, it appears, the board’s practice—how that fee was being used and what was being paid for, should then continue to lose money as a result of that unlawful action and the poor actions of the board. Why should they now be required by Parliament to give up the money that was unlawfully paid, given that they have spent so much time and effort to bring this to our attention and that it has taken so long to do so?

So, in short, the workers and the families who are affected by this legislation and its retrospective implementation have fought extremely hard to bring this to our attention. They have incurred costs in order to do so. Now that we are about to try to fix the primary problem, we should not demand that they continue to pay. So on that basis the Green Party does not support this bill. We do not support the retrospective aspects of this legislation. We think that it is unfair to make those demands on those workers and their families. Thank you.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction): Before I start my call on this particular bill, the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill, I want to pass on my condolences for the loss yesterday from the building and construction sector of Mr Bill Smith. He was probably one of the most lively and known characters in the building and construction sector. He actually ended up with the title of “Mr Pink Batts” at one stage because of the company he had worked for and for bringing in insulation. Bill died yesterday, and I just want to pass on my condolences, as Minister, to his family.

This is a bill that I would like to take the House through the specifics of, and then get to the issue that I think concerned Metiria Turei more than anything, and that is the element of retrospectivity. What happened was that in 2006 the Labour Government of the day passed the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act. That thing has not been without trouble. Michael Cullen, while he was Minister, sacked two entire Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Boards. So it is a bit rich to come along and say that somehow it is Maurice Williamson who is causing these troubles. These troubles precede Michael Cullen; it goes a long way back. I would actually say that now the new board and the people we have managed to get on there—including a character called Peter Jackson, who is not the same Peter Jackson who most people in the House would know—are working quite well.

The problem with the Act was that it had some mistake in its wording. I have gone and looked at the drafting instructions and I have even looked at the intention of the bill and I have even looked at the speeches of the then Minister Michael Cullen. It was quite clear, as members of this House would expect it to be, that the Act was to allow plumbers and gasfitters to hold to account poor practice and bad behaviour of not just registered and licensed practitioners but anybody else trying to work in plumbing or gasfitting or drainlaying who actually may have no licence. It would be hellishly dangerous if someone just happens to arrive in New Zealand, walk off a plane, have no qualifications, and say “I might have a crack at gasfitting.” The wording in the Act was wrong, and the wording actually allowed the board to go only after licensed practitioners. It was a mistake. It was not intended.

Think about it in another industry. How would we feel if the Civil Aviation Authority was entitled to go only after licensed pilots and prosecute them for poor behaviour? If someone said: “I’m going to have a crack at flying a Boeing 747 and I’m not a licensed pilot—you can’t touch me.”, everyone would just laugh at you. You would say it was just ridiculous. Fred is up there flying a Boeing 747 and the only reason you cannot touch him is because he is not a licensed pilot. Or in the medical fraternity if a guy said: “Well, I’ve got no qualifications at all, so I’m going to have a crack at brain surgery this afternoon. Now, because I’m not a registered doctor, you can’t touch me.” It is just crazy.

The board is there to protect human safety, public safety, and its role is to go out and catch and prosecute people who are performing poor practice, and that was the intention at the time. Ask Michael Cullen—ask him. That was the intention that was in the drafting instructions, but the Labour Government got the wording wrong. I feel a bit miffed that as Minister I am now trying to fix that and bring it into line with every other industry sector, so that the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board can legally go after both registered, licensed practitioners and unlicensed practitioners.

Somehow the Opposition has decided it is going to oppose it. I understand that the Green’s main opposition to the bill is that it is retrospective. Well, I am really looking forward to the next time a local government rates validation bill appears on the Order Paper. Oh, Lianne Dalziel might be really interested in what needs to be done with Christchurch. I will be watching with great interest. If Labour says “Oh, well, it’s not fair to make those rates that have been collected for 5 or 6 years illegal because the wording was wrong in the Act or the wording was wrong in the rates, and now we are going to pass a validation bill through this House.”, which we do regularly to retrospectively validate an action that was thought to have been the case but was wrong, I am going to watch it. I have actually got a big list of the validation legislation that Labour members have voted for over the years, retrospectively validating a whole range of things. They never got up once and said: “Oh, well, I’m going to watch Lianne Dalziel with great interest for the Christchurch validation.” I want to hear her get up and say “Well, it’s not fair to keep all those rates from those poor people in Christchurch, because the rates were not set properly. We should give them back all that money from over those years, and start only from now.”

Well, I am going to bet you a dollar to a doughnut that Lianne Dalziel will vote happily to have some rates validation, and the Labour Party in Opposition will vote happily for a whole range of other validating legislation. This is actually even more sickening, because it was the Labour Government that cocked up. It was Labour that got the legislation wrong. It was not me. I would actually be going to them cap in hand if I had got the 2006 Act wrong and saying “Look, I’m really sorry about this, I really screwed up. I wrote the wording wrong in the Act. Please help me.” That is what I would do. I would say: “Please help me. Is there a way we can get through this?”. But it was not us. It was them. It was the Labour Government of 2006 that got the wrong wording, and now all this tiny little bill does is validate the fees that have been collected over those years since 2006, because they are illegal—just like with rates in Christchurch, just like with a whole lot of other rating validation bills and a whole lot of other local bills and things that we see through this House on a regular basis.

The fees were illegal, and if they stayed illegal, the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board would be in liquidation and would need to have millions of dollars from the taxpayer to bail it out. I say that is not right. I say that the individual people who work in the profession—that is, the plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers—have got an obligation, like pilots do with their licensing and like doctors do through their fees and so on, to pay for a body to be there to guarantee public safety and guarantee standards.

So I repeat to the listeners tonight—to that adoring drive time audience in Auckland who listens to me while they are stuck on the motorway heading home—that this bill is so trivial it is not funny. All it says is that in 2006 the Labour Government passed legislation where it thought that the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board could levy its members and use that money to go after both registered, licensed practitioners and unlicensed practitioners. The wording was wrong. Since 2006 those fees that have been collected from those practitioners have been used illegally. We have found that out only when a handful of disgruntled people took it right through to the Regulations Review Committee and so on. I actually said that there is only one way through this. We really need to validate what was expected.

So, again, I repeat that I am one of the strongest opponents of retrospective legislation in this House. I hate it. But I vote for it every time if it is trying only to validate what everybody thought was the case back there anyway. So if we were passing retrospective legislation today to make the tax rates 60c in the dollar back to 2005, I would be opposed because everybody knew what the expected tax rate was. But if we are doing this, which is validating something we expected—in fact, something Labour expected, and then we came to power 2 years later and just carried on with that expectation. All we are doing is just telling the vast bulk of the practitioners—in fact, every plumber, gasfitter, and drainlayer whom I have talked to up and down the country has said “I thought you always could.” I said: “Well, we did too, but it turned out there is just some mistake in the wording, just like in the Christchurch rating thing.”

So I repeat again: I want the next Labour speaker or the next Green speaker to say that when they get the next validating legislation of some mistake, like a rates validation bill, they will make sure they vote against it because they are opposed to retrospectivity.

Chris Auchinvole: Like Damien O’Connor.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Like Damien O’Connor. Well, actually, I could name any of the members over there. As I have said to the previous person in the chair, the Assistant Speaker, but I will say it again to you: I bet you a dollar to a doughnut—or, in your case, Mr Deputy Speaker, a crayfish to a whitebait—that when the next validating bill of any sort comes through this House, they will be like lemmings racing over a cliff to vote for it.

BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call on the third reading of the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill. New Zealand First will not support the passing of this legislation. There is a grave injustice occurring here. Hard-working New Zealand tradespeople are being required to pay for something that was illegally taken from them by their industry’s board. Levies collected by the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board come only from people who are registered under the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act. In respect of the fees set by the board, the main point of contention is the disciplinary levy. This levy is set by the board to fund the cost of complaint and disciplinary actions against people who refuse to pay levies. The disciplinary levy imposed by the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board was collected illegally. This bill aims to make that lawful.

Experienced plumbers, drainlayers, and gasfitters have chosen to boycott the undemocratic process followed by the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board and have chosen to boycott those fees imposed on them. Industry members took their complaints to the Ombudsman because they considered that the board’s actions were not fair and that there was a total lack of consultation. The Ombudsman, in his report on their complaints, stated that the fee is not justified and also imposes a new form of tax on those experienced plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers. The Ombudsman has made two recommendations, but only the first one was included in the ministerial officials’ briefing. The Ombudsman recommended: “To the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board, that they together or separately make proposals to the Minister of Building and Construction concerning the desirability or otherwise of … legislation to validate the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board (Fees) Notice 2010 as it relates to the disciplinary levy;”.

The second recommendation from the Ombudsman was not included in the briefing. That recommends: “To the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board (regardless of the outcome of 1 above), that it enter into discussions with representatives of persons registered under the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Act 2006 to achieve a satisfactory arrangement with persons who have paid excess amounts of levy under the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board (Fees) Notice 2010 in respect of the disciplinary levy.” So it is very disappointing that the deliberations at the Government Administration Committee did not include the full recommendations from the Ombudsman. The Minister for Building and Construction has conveniently omitted this important part of the Ombudsman’s judgment. It is very clear, in the Ombudsman’s words, that this “is an unlawful levy, a tax, that the Board was not authorise to impose.” Further, to quote the Ombudsman, the board failed “to consult adequately before making the [continuing professional development] Notices.”

The Minister for Building and Construction would have us believe that if this legislation is not enacted to secure the $600,000 in levies, the board will be bankrupted. This is a smokescreen. The board receives constant revenue from registration and licensing fees. What it is doing now, through imposing these disciplinary levies and offences fees, is driving registered plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers away from the organisation. They have lost faith in the board and the whole structure. That is not good for the industry and it undermines the whole profession. Passing this legislation will compound the situation and will drive an even bigger wedge between the board and a large section of plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers. The Minister has not looked into other ways of finding a sensible solution that would appease all parties. This is a retrospective piece of bad legislation, which New Zealand First cannot support.

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): As always, it is a pleasure to follow such a distinguished MP as Barbara Stewart. She is a lady who has wisdom and knowledge. If only she would break that sort of New Zealand First mould of being unable to vote for anything. It was not as bad as “Dismal Denis”. It was an interesting speech but it concentrated on the minutiae of who said what and when. I must say that I liked the Minister for Building and Construction’s speech because he got straight to the heart of it that what happened was a mistake. We have to be big enough to recognise our mistakes. Even though we do not like them, we have to be big enough to correct them.

The Minister made mention of Labour members saying that they are opposed to retrospective legislation. Well, I am sure it is that most of us are. I wonder whether they will hold to that, as my friend and parliamentary colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor progresses his bill, the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill.

Simon O’Connor: Is he a Labour MP?

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: Well, he is a Labour MP. He is not comfortable with it, but he feels the bill is the right thing to do. So I will be interested to see what his colleagues on that side of the House do.

All that happens with this Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill is that it tidies up the legislation around the funding of the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board so that—and this is the kicker; this is the kicker, Barbara, this is the kicker—it can effectively do its job of protecting public safety. That is the most important bit. The bill also validates the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board’s disciplinary levy, which funds investigations and prosecutions of plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers, not just the licensed variety but the cowboys and the cowgirls, those who think they can do a favour for a friend by fixing up their plumbing, gas, or drains, and who are practising without the proper skills and qualifications.

These breaches, the shoddy work done by unskilled workers, could lead to illness. If anyone thinks that drainlaying is unimportant, think again. If anyone thinks that plumbing is unimportant, think again. Good plumbing has done more for longevity than medicine ever did. Medicine corrects things once you are ill. Plumbing stops you being ill.

Hon Simon Bridges: More than the internet.

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: Far more than the internet.

Hon Simon Bridges: Where would we be without the common bog?

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: Minister, I bow to your superior consideration of these matters.

The disciplinary levy was the subject of a complaint to the Regulations Review Committee on the basis that the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board did not have the legislative authority to require registered people to pay for prosecutions against non-registered people. It is as silly as that, and members on the other side are saying that we should make an issue of this. It is somebody else’s fight—it is somebody else’s fight; it is not ours. Ours is to legislate and to legislate properly, and that did not happen in this particular case.

I can speak with some experience in this. I have been doing plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers bills ever since I came into Parliament in 2005. I was a member of the Commerce Committee. I think Katherine Rich was the chair—

Hon Ruth Dyson: So it’s your fault—it’s your fault.

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: No, this is not our committee’s fault, because the bill we are having to correct was passed subsequently. It was a drafting error under a Labour Government. I am not concerned with that. The Minister is not concerned with that. We have not made this a political issue.

Hon Ruth Dyson: That’s all he talked about.

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: No, we are not interested in making this a political issue, I say to the member the Hon Ruth Dyson. She knows me better than that. We have discussed this at the committee. No, no, the fact that National is taking a very open-handed, earnest, and honest attitude towards the whole thing is simply the way we do things. I do not recommend to anybody that we get into other people’s arguments, and that is the danger that the Opposition is getting close to.

Another thing, of course, is that we recognise in others that which we least like about ourselves. A mistake has occurred. As the Minister said, had this been our mistake, I am quite sure that you would have the Minister saying “Gosh! I’ve made a mistake or a mistake was made in the drafting under my watch. Can you please work with me so that we can sort this out in the best possible way for the people concerned.” That is what we would be saying. Instead of which, it would seem, and I could not quite follow it at the Committee level, I could not quite see where the argument was coming from, and I am almost coming to the conclusion—reluctantly, colleagues, reluctantly—that this has a political content to it rather than a practical one.

Simon O’Connor: Say it’s not true.

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: I think that—well, I would like to say that it is not true. We wait to hear other speeches from other members to see whether they can rid my mind of that suspicion. In the meantime, I commend this bill to the House. It is an important one, it does the right thing for the right people, and it does the right thing for the industry.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Can I first of all acknowledge the contribution of the member Chris Auchinvole on the Government Administration Committee, as well as Mr Deputy Speaker himself, and Kanwaljit Bakshi, who, along with my colleague Trevor Mallard and Green member Holly Walker, considered this Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill. At the time of its referral to the—I did acknowledge you, Mr Deputy Speaker, as one of the members of the committee. I specifically acknowledged you.

Chris Auchinvole: And your other Labour member.

Hon RUTH DYSON: I think Mr Auchinvole is losing his attention span. I certainly referred to the Hon Trevor Mallard.

Chris Auchinvole: No, it wasn’t Trevor.

Hon RUTH DYSON: It was Raymond Huo—quite right, thank you. When this bill was originally referred to the select committee in March of this year, the Minister for Building and Construction asked our committee to have 1 week—1 week—to receive the briefing on the bill from officials, whom we could not appoint until we had the meeting, and within that same week to call for and hear submissions, and within that same week to deliberate and report back to the House. That was the urgency that was accorded to this bill in March of this year—we were given 1 week.

I went back to the Minister for Building and Construction, the Hon Maurice Williamson. I said to him that I thought that that was not really appropriate or reasonable, and he agreed. We extended the length of time the select committee had, from 1 week to 2 weeks—we had 2 weeks—and in that time the committee appointed its advisers, received its briefing, called for and received submissions, heard submissions, and deliberated. We did our work in the best way possible. We took this issue seriously because we understand the value to our public health and safety of having the regulation of the practice of plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers. This is actually not a small issue; this is a really important issue. If we have people performing that work who are not qualified to do it, then we can have serious health and safety issues, and none of us on the committee wanted that. So we did take the issue seriously, thinking of it as being within that public health and safety frame.

But what we were asked to do was to really consider the fact that this matter has been considered by the Regulations Review Committee, it has been considered by the Ombudsman, and it has been considered by the Auditor-General, and I do not think that any of those bodies are lightweight or insubstantial. The Regulations Review Committee is rigorous. The Auditor-General is completely independent and has a rigorous process, as does the Ombudsman. All three of those bodies came to the conclusion that this process was wrong. The Auditor-General recommended alternatives. Our committee discussed at length—given the short time we had; it was not as long as we might have preferred it to be—how this problem could be fixed once and for all, and it is not my view that retrospectively validating fees and levies that have been ruled to be inconsistent with the law by the Regulations Review Committee, the Auditor-General, and the Ombudsman is the way to fix the problem.

Chris Auchinvole, who just resumed his seat before I took the call, noted how often he has been part of discussions to try to resolve this matter. He said that if the Hon Maurice Williamson had made a mistake—you know, it is hardly imaginable, but if he had made a mistake—then he would front up and say: “I’ve made a mistake.”, and would put his hands across the water and try to fix it. Well, actually, that is what we did. We said to the Hon Maurice Williamson: “You can do your political point-scoring as much as you like,”—his entire third reading speech was political point-scoring—

Chris Auchinvole: Oh!

Hon RUTH DYSON: —clearly, Chris Auchinvole missed it—“but we actually want to fix this in a way that ensures that the public health and safety issues are resolved and that is fair to the plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers, and this is not the way to do it.” So, on that basis, and actually with great sadness, to be honest, because I do not want this bill—

Chris Auchinvole: Here we go—here’s the kicker.

Hon RUTH DYSON: —to come back again, we are going to vote against it.

Chris Auchinvole: There we go.

Hon RUTH DYSON: The member knows that. He was at the committee when we made that determination.

It is not actually within the scope of this bill, but I also want to draw the House’s attention to other concerns that were raised, and I want to give our commitment as a party to working with other parties throughout Parliament to address the issues that were raised by submitters. They raised a very significant issue about the lack of transparency and accountability. So money is being collected from registered tradespeople for a purpose that has now been determined as being outside the law—this is what this bill is going to alter—but the accusation has been made in the committee that that is not what those fees and levies are used for entirely. There are other purposes for which those fees and levies are used. That is the accusation that was laid. I would like the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board to improve its accountability and transparency so that all doubt about the use of moneys collected can be put to bed, and at the moment I do not have that confidence. So that is the first challenge I would like to give to the Minister and to the board.

We were told that the board collects just under $35,000 a week, and yet last year only 13 people were prosecuted. That seems to be quite a large amount of money for a small number of prosecutions, and, again, the accountability and transparency of the collection of fees and levies—the use of the money and exactly what cost what—would remove any doubt about that. We want to be confident that the fees and levies that are collected are used for the purpose for which they were collected, and at the moment there was certainly some doubt raised with the committee. There is an extraordinary amount of money reported to us that is being spent on legal fees, despite the board having in-house lawyers. Again, if the board was a bit more open with the members about why it might have needed at some stage to engage counsel from outside its permanent staff, then there would not be such suspicion about it. I do not think a board should operate with its members in a way that creates suspicion. It should work in the opposite direction.

The Minister has, on several occasions in the House and, indeed, again this evening, said that this bill will bring the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board in line with other boards that regulate the activities of tradespeople. That is not what the select committee was told. The select committee was told that there is a myriad of ways in which boards operate, and I, frankly, do not think that that is very satisfactory, but I think it is a misrepresentation for the Minister to say that this would bring the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board in line with other boards, because that is certainly not the advice that we have taken. In fact, with the licensed building practitioners and the electricians, we were specifically advised that they have an entirely different method of funding. The idea that the board would be insolvent is a bit of a nonsense. It is less than half a million dollars that it would have required, and actually, now, because of the passing of time, there is no such danger and no such risk of insolvency to the board.

The final point I want to make is that I think that the board has carried on, despite the Regulations Review Committee’s ruling, despite the Auditor-General’s comments, and despite the Ombudsman’s determination that the board has acted in a way that I could only describe as arrogant. Those bodies determined that the board should not continue with the practice in the way it did, but instead of desperately seeking a solution to resolve the issue, it went—as if it was the only option—to the Minister and said: “We require retrospective legislation to validate the collection of fees and levies.” I do not think that that is the only answer, and I do not think that this is the best answer. I think that we should have sat around the table with the relevant bodies and tried to reach a solution that would, as I said earlier, guarantee the New Zealand public the health and safety that we require of plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers. They are doing an important job. There are high risks. Chris Auchinvole was absolutely correct when he talked about the public health contribution made by these tradespeople, as opposed to medicine. He was absolutely 100 percent correct with that, but we also wanted a solution to this issue that was fair.

Unfortunately, retrospectively validating legislation that has been ruled by the Auditor-General, the Ombudsman, and the Regulations Review Committee as inconsistent with the law is not the best answer.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I am pleased to take a call on the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill in its third and, obviously, final reading. Although I did not sit on the Government Administration Committee, I have followed this bill with interest, particularly as I have had to prepare to speak on it but also because various constituents have come to my office to raise questions around why this is happening. We have heard from a number of people, particularly from this side, around the structure or why this had come about. We have heard, I think, legitimate thoughts and concerns from the other side too, but a lot of it keeps away from the real issue, which is that the Government must act. The Government has to act. I am very conscious that the likes of the Ombudsman and others can provide opinions and so forth—very valid. That is their job. But it is Parliament’s duty, prerogative, and ability, of course, to act and to make this amendment occur, go through Parliament, so that we can provide the safety, the security—the health and safety—that is required.

As we have heard, this comes through basically an error in drafting in the original bill. When you look back through Hansard and the debates at the time, it is very clear—very clear—that the intention was for the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board to be able to prosecute those who were not registered, to levy its members, and to do disciplinary action, but also to prosecute those people who are not appropriately registered but are undertaking plumbing, gasfitting, and so forth. It was very appropriate. However, it was found not to be legal. It was found not to be legal. It has left the board in a difficult position. In many ways it has left the country, therefore, in a difficult position.

This bill is basically aligning the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board with what many other boards and similar structures do. We heard from Minister Williamson around how it operates. I acknowledge what the previous speaker, Ruth Dyson, was saying before she resumed her seat. There are different models, but ultimately the boards review, through regulation, their industry. They work with the industry. They maintain their standards. They act where they can. This bill is really a simple opportunity—a simple opportunity—to make legal and bring about the original intention of the bill: that levies can be collected to ensure that the high quality and standard that we expect, and have come to experience, from our plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers around New Zealand can be maintained; that this board will be able to set its levies and take disciplinary action of its members where required; and, most important, as this amendment bill seeks to do, that we allow the board to take action against those people who are not licensed and not registered. I support this bill and commend it to the House.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour): It is a pleasure to take a call in the third reading of the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill. It is the first time I have spoken on this bill, but I have watched with great interest as it has done its circular dance through the process.

Hon Simon Bridges: I’d like to see that.

DARIEN FENTON: Would you like to see a circular dance, Minister?

Hon Simon Bridges: How does it go?

DARIEN FENTON: Oh, pretty good, pretty good. I do notice, actually, that this had its first reading in Parliament on 14 March 2013 and it was really urgent then. It was referred to the Government Administration Committee, chaired by my wonderful colleague Ruth Dyson, who does a fantastic job. I think that what the select committee has expressed concern about was the fact that it was given, initially, 1 week to consider this bill, because it was so urgent. It had to be back in place, I think, by 13 April so it could be applied. Of course, that did not happen. Then it was extended by 2 weeks. We have seen this come and go on the Order Paper, time and time again. From my perspective, it has been a circular dance because I have had my name on the speaking list for this several times in the third reading, and I have thought: “Well, what am I going to say about the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill?”. I have thought about it and put a lot of work into thinking about it. And then, lo and behold, it drops off the Order Paper again. Lo and behold, it is not there. So I have finally got my great moment to talk about this bill.

I am very interested in the comments that were made by the Hon Maurice Williamson, who I thought seemed a little bit peeved, actually—a little bit peeved—in his comments. Look, the truth is that in the Committee stage I heard my colleague Raymond Huo offering real assistance to the Government. We were here to help on this bill. We were willing to help make it workable and make it something that we could live with, but guess what happened? What happened was that Supplementary Order Paper 204, which was put up by Raymond Huo, was voted down by the Government. So, look, the Hon Maurice Williamson should not be peeved, because the Opposition definitely tried to help on this bill. We definitely tried to do our best to make it work and to make it acceptable.

This bill amends the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act 2006 to validate a disciplinary levy imposed under that Act between 1 April 2007 and 11 January 2012 and an offences fee prescribed by the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board. Then there is another aim, which is to correct the underlying problem by amending the Act to provide that board with a levy power to fund its functions and to institute prosecutions against persons for the breach of any Act or regulation relating to sanitary plumbing, gasfitting, or drainlaying. The Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board does play a very important role. Its job is to protect the health and safety of the public by regulating and ensuring the competencies of persons carrying out sanitary plumbing, gasfitting, and drainlaying work. It is a really important job, and I have got a lot of sympathy with the plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers who have had a great deal of concern about this bill, because they are skilled tradespeople. They are people who deserve to be listened to by this Parliament. I know that many members, including me, have been lobbied heavily about this particular bill and about the concerns, and, as I said, they are not being particularly listened to by this Government.

As I said, the Labour Opposition is opposing the bill. It is around the issues of retrospectivity, but, as much as anything, it is also around the fact of the process. The process was poor. It was far too short. We tried to help with a Supplementary Order Paper, which would have actually provided a solution to the continuing problems that have plagued the board over many years. We have a lot of sympathy with this, but what happened, as I said, was that in the Committee stage the Government was not prepared to accept the Labour Opposition’s help once again. Once again, it refused our help. So I am sorry, but Labour opposes this bill.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 54

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 6; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill

Second Reading

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage): I move, That the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill be now read a second time. This bill repeals and replaces the Historic Places Act 1993. The Local Government and Environment Committee considered the bill and recommended that it be passed with a number of amendments, to which I will shortly refer.

One of the original drivers of this bill was a concern about the structure of the Historic Places Trust, which is a Crown entity with branch committees and elected board members. In 2009 the Ministry for Culture and Heritage undertook a review that concluded that the structure was contributing to a lack of clarity around the trust’s regulatory and advocacy roles. A main aim of the bill is structural reform of the trust to clarify this matter. The bill disestablishes the three board positions elected by the wider membership and creates two new board positions to be filled by ministerial appointment. This will mean the board will consist of eight members appointed entirely by the responsible Minister. The eight-member Māori Heritage Council is retained.

The bill also disestablishes the branch committees, and since the review I have been very pleased to see the number of independent advocacy groups that have formed, including a national umbrella Historic Places Aotearoa, to which some regional groups are now affiliated. This is advocacy coming back to its roots—citizens who care about our heritage getting together to ensure it is looked after and passed on to future generations. The new structure will enable the organisation to focus on its regulatory responsibilities, and the advocacy groups to go about their work unconstrained by the priority setting, the rules, and the conventions of a Crown entity.

The second central theme of the bill is the need to better balance competing interests in our heritage, because it is sometimes a very difficult exercise to reconcile the admittedly very valid desire to preserve our nation’s unique heritage with the need to promote new development. These differing perspectives were reflected in the submissions. Many wanted a stronger emphasis on property rights, but many others, including heritage advocacy groups and some iwi, were seeking more active protection for heritage. A recurring aim through many of the bill’s provisions is to reduce costs and difficulties for property owners while enabling the future Heritage New Zealand to fulfil its statutory functions. If passed, the bill will be a major step in achieving a more appropriate balance between heritage values and the needs and realities of private ownership.

The third very important aspect of the bill I want to refer to is its response to the Canterbury earthquakes. As well as the devastation they caused the people of Canterbury, the earthquakes were a wake-up call for all of us that our heritage is often built on geologically unstable land. The bill was already a work in progress at the time of the first earthquake, and it was clear straight away that we would need to take pause to investigate the implications for this legislation. The lessons we learnt from the earthquakes are reflected in this bill. The bill confirms that Heritage New Zealand will have a role in providing advice to emergency authorities on heritage matters in a national or local emergency. We have also added a number of provisions for heritage management in a national disaster, including an emergency archaeological authority, to ensure that the process can be as quick and responsive as possible while still respecting our heritage, so that people can go about the business of recovery without getting tangled up in red tape.

I now want to turn to the very good work of the select committee. The committee received 80 written submissions. I presented Supplementary Order Paper 135 in October last year, which resulted in a further 15 submissions, and there were 36 oral submissions. I will now outline for the House the main issues and amendments that emerged. The first one was that some submitters raised concerns about the disbanding of the branch committees and the difficulty of getting new organisations established in their place. As a result, there will be a new clause requiring Heritage New Zealand to take reasonable and practical steps to support independent heritage groups set up to replace the committees for a period of up to 12 months after the Act’s commencement.

A commonly occurring theme in the submissions was achieving better balance—in particular, the need for greater consideration of property ownership and development interests in the decision making of the organisation. The committee has proposed a number of amendments to redress the balance between these interests and the heritage values that have been a strong focus for the bill. An amendment to clauses 47 and 60 of the bill will require Heritage New Zealand, when considering an application to an archaeological authority, to take into account the same matters as the Environment Court. These include the extent to which protection of an archaeological site prevents or restricts the existing or reasonable future use of the site and the interests of any person directly affected by the organisation’s decision.

Amendments to clauses 11, 12, and 24 are recommended to require Heritage New Zealand and the Māori Heritage Council, when undertaking their advocacy rules, to recognise landowners’ interests. An amendment to clause 4 also widens the range of parties Heritage New Zealand will be obliged to work with collaboratively, to include Government agencies and tangata whenua. These are very constructive changes that, in essence, require the organisation to look at both sides of the story in their advocacy and regulatory work. This will lead to more meaningful decisions that will reflect an understanding of the effects on all parties.

Submitters were also concerned that the wording of the bill in its original form required owners to apply to archaeological authorities to undertake even minor works on buildings erected before 1900. This was not the policy intention of the bill and in practice it would be ludicrous. Anyone living in a pre-1900 house, as many New Zealanders do, would have to go through an authority process just to renovate their kitchen. The committee has therefore agreed to amend clause 40 to remove the requirement to apply for an archaeological authority to modify a standing building, unless there is an intention to demolish it in its entirety.

Also resulting from the committee’s consideration of submissions is a requirement for Heritage New Zealand to consult and develop policy in a greater number of areas. The original bill and Supplementary Order Paper 135 required Heritage New Zealand to develop and consult publicly on policy for administering the archaeological and registration provisions of the bill. Some submitters considered that requirements for policy development should be expanded to other processes, and I am pleased that the committee proposes that Heritage New Zealand also develop and consult publicly on policies for the National Historic Landmarks List and for its role in advocacy work. This will ensure the public is involved in shaping policy in these very important areas.

There is just one further amendment to the original bill that I want to mention, which is the addition of new clauses 10A and 10B to create a role for the chief executive of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage to act as a special adviser to the board. The new role will strengthen the relationship between Heritage New Zealand and the responsible Minister and ensure that the board’s decisions are informed by an understanding of Government policy.

There are a number of matters that could be referred to in the Supplementary Order Paper. In the time available I simply want to refer to the establishment of a National Historic Landmarks List, which is proposed for New Zealand’s 50 most important historic places. This is to emphasise the importance of our historic places and to give us an agreed set of national priorities for conservation. Some people were concerned that to have a 50-place limit was unduly constraining, so the committee has agreed on an amendment to clause 81B to remove the cap. It is confident we can rely on the strict criteria for inclusion to provide a list with a natural limit.

Finally, the amendments propose the addition of a new category to the register of historic places, historic areas, wāhi tapu, and wāhi tapu areas. The new category is wāhi tūpuna, ensuring that places of significance to Māori that do not necessarily have tapu, such as certain marae buildings, will also be able to be included.

A lot of work has been done on the legislation and I am confident that the bill is going to provide a firm foundation for the future work of Heritage New Zealand, equipping it with the right structure and processes for the 21st century. I look forward to seeing the progress of the bill through the House.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): It gives me great pleasure, actually, to rise to speak to the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill. I must say that I enjoyed its progress through the Local Government and Environment Committee very much. I learnt things that I did not know before, and I could see that this modernisation of the previous legislation, the Historic Places Act 1993, was overdue. This bill will be supported by the Labour Party, as will the amendments that the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage has put forward in his original Supplementary Order Paper 135 of some time ago, and more recent amendments as well.

This bill seeks to repeal and replace the Historic Places Act of 1993: “The Historic Places Trust (Pouhere Taonga) in its current form, which was established under the Act, would continue under the name Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. The new name is intended to remove confusion as to the organisation’s legal status as a Crown entity.”

It restructures the organisation, it reforms the governance of it, it disestablishes branch committees, and it does continue the Māori Heritage Council.

I want to go immediately to that point about the disestablishment of local branches of the Historic Places Trust. I, for example, have belonged for a long time to the local branch of the Historic Places Trust and have been a regular donor to it. There has been some concern expressed, and it was expressed quite some time ago when the bill was first introduced. People felt as if they were going to lose their local opportunity to express concerns about historic taonga of great importance to them in their local region. We on this side of the House got quite a few submissions from people who were concerned about that and who said: “Well, how are we going to stay alive as a local branch of the Historic Places Trust if there is no role for us in the governance structure of the new entity?”. That was a concern that I took to heart. In Nelson there are numbers of people who are very actively involved in local societies of this kind, and it was something that I took a great deal of notice of.

So it was with some real pleasure that when we talked to officials about this at the select committee, we were told that—this was when we interrogated them about clause 101 of the bill—in fact, transitional grants were available on enactment of the legislation, and they would be based on the number of members of the previous societies that there were in that locality. In those transitional arrangements there was to be $250,000 that was to be passed across to the committees that transitioned through to the new structure. At the time that we considered this bill, there were 20 of the 24 previous local societies that had transitioned across to the new structure. There were four left. Auckland was one, and there were three others. I am hopeful that the action of Supplementary Order Paper 135 and the structure of the governance in the bill will encourage the other four to migrate across to the new structure and the new legislation and to apply for some of that $250,000, which could support them as they seek to develop their new existence under the new provisions. So I put that out there to encourage the new bodies that have been developing locally to apply for that funding once this legislation is enacted.

That was something about which I was very pleased. It made me feel a little comforted—the fact that the people who have put their hearts and souls into Historic Places Trust manifestations in local communities, and who were feeling disenfranchised by the original bill, could have access to some support that would allow them to carry on, and to carry on the good work that they do.

This is a significant bill for the national identity of Aotearoa New Zealand. The way that we in a modern society protect our heritage, protect artefacts, and protect archaeological sites is really important. We need to be modern. We need to never discard these protections as we progress through the ages. It is important that there have been some significant protections inserted into this legislation, which I think will make a difference, particularly for archaeologists, as well as for the protection of names. As the Minister referred to in his speech, the development of a historic landmarks list will also give added protection and significance to places, artefacts, buildings, and monuments that hold a special place in our history.

When we had our sesquicentennial, I think it is called, when the Treaty of Waitangi reached 150 years of age, I was saying that this was a wonderful thing—150 years of the Treaty of Waitangi. A friend of mine who lives in London said “My kitchen is older than that.” Yes, that is true. Māori have been here since the 13th century and Pākehā settlers have been here for much less time, but we still need to ensure that this House takes our heritage and the responsibility for protecting our heritage seriously, even though in other people’s terms we are, in fact, a very young country—a very young settled country.

Hon Tau Henare: Is that “settled”?

Hon MARYAN STREET: A settled country—settle down, Mr Henare. Oh, he is married now. He has settled down. So I commend this bill to the House. One of the things that I think is good in it, as well, is that there has been a definition of protection that occurs and can be applied immediately in the event of a natural disaster, an emergency. There is a particular clause applying to emergency situations, and that refers to natural emergencies. So in the event of earthquakes and other things with which we are now all too familiar, there is still provision in this legislation to protect the things that are dear to us in terms of historic presence and identification of us as uniquely Aotearoa New Zealand. Thank you.

NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central): This Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill replaces the old Historic Places Act of 1993. It updates and better equips the New Zealand Historic Places Trust to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Together with Supplementary Order Paper 135, it responds to the challenges for heritage management highlighted by the Canterbury earthquakes—and I was pleased to hear the Hon Maryan Street talking about the need for this kind of legislation with these earthquakes that we are having at the moment.

I want to touch quickly on the main provisions. First of all, it reforms the New Zealand Historic Places Trust’s governance structure—and I want to make a few comments on that later. It modernises the archaeological authority consents processes and aligns them with the Resource Management Act. I would like to thank the groups that came and gave us really detailed submissions on this archaeological area and also on how the Resource Management Act consents fitted in, because it is complicated and we wanted to know that it worked on the ground.

It also clarifies the purposes and changes the name of the register of historical and cultural heritage and introduces statutory recognition for wāhi tūpuna. It also establishes the National Historic Landmarks List. This list is designed to set national priorities for historic conservation, and that includes details about managing the risk of natural disasters.

Finally, it establishes a separate emergency authority process in the event of natural disasters. There are quite a lot of other minor changes there to improve the proposed Act’s workability, in line with modern legislative drafting processes.

Most of the changes were non-controversial and aimed at improving the processes of the trust. The most debated issue was the change in the structure and the new roles for members. In the past there was a combination of statutory responsibilities with active branch committees and elected board members. That meant that there were times when there was actually a conflict of interests within the organisation, and those tensions compromised the New Zealand Historic Places Trust’s ability to perform its statutory functions. So to resolve these tensions, the bill disestablishes the branch committees, it removes the three positions for elected board members, and it creates new positions for board members appointed by the responsible Minister. It does still contain the Māori Heritage Council.

There are members who want to actively advocate for heritage issues, and they have been encouraged to join Historic Places Aotearoa. That is a very active group that is already set up, and some funding has been provided to help with that process. As a Crown entity, Heritage New Zealand can continue to offer membership if it wishes, although those members will play no part in the governance of the organisation, and that is the real difference.

Just having a look at heritage buildings, from my experience of what has happened in Christchurch after the earthquakes, I am particularly interested in the National Historic Landmarks List. It is really important that we have a robust debate in our communities and right across the country to make sure that the country really knows which buildings we value, because, after all, there are over a thousand category I historic places. We need to know which ones we value, which ones we are prepared to heavily protect, and which ones we can deal with if there is a disaster. We also need to have plans for when or if there is a disaster.

Originally, that list was to have only 50 places, although those places did include clusters, such as, perhaps, Parliament Buildings or the Auckland volcanic cones. So it was a larger mandate; it was not just 50 individual items. But after listening to the submitters, the Local Government and Environment Committee removed the absolute number. We decided that it was hard to know which was in and which was out. What we decided was that it was far better for Heritage New Zealand to consult with the public as it develops its policy on the administration of the landmarks list. During that consultation it will provide further guidance on the eligibility for inclusion. So there will be about 50 places, including clusters, but it is a little bit more flexible.

I am really pleased to see this bill come to the House. It is timely and it will help us protect our heritage for the future, so I commend this bill to the House.

Hon TAU HENARE (National): If I can, I will start my speech by paying my condolences to big Denis Hansen. For the last 30 years or so of my life out in west Auckland, he was a father figure to most male Māoris my age out in the west. E te rangatira, takoto mai rā, takoto mai rā. Haere ki te okioki, haere, haere, haere.

[Lie there, the elder, lie there indeed. Go forth to rest, depart, journey on, farewell.]

I suppose that when we are talking about heritage, Denis Hansen is part of the heritage of west Auckland, and part of the heritage of Auckland itself in so many ways. I think we have to protect the memories and we have to protect what our heritage is in this country, and that comes in all shapes and sizes. I do commend the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill to the House. I think it is important that we make legislation that works, and works very easily and well for the country, rather than long-winded and drawn-out legislation that does not serve any purpose.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.