Tuesday, 24 February 2015

TUESDAY, 24 FEBRUARY 2015

TUESDAY, 24 FEBRUARY 2015

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Business of the House

Business of the House

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I understand that the Prime Minister will seek leave to make a ministerial statement on the deployment of troops to Iraq. Before he does, I seek leave for the statement to be up to 10 minutes, for there to be comments of up to 10 minutes each, as follows—two from National, three from Labour, two from the Green Party, two from New Zealand First, and one each from the Māori Party, United Future, and ACT, and for the Prime Minister to speak in reply for up to 5 minutes.

Mr SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action being—[Interruption] Order! I need to put the leave. Can I just understand—are you raising a point of order?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I just want to ask the Minister a question.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! At this stage, leave has been sought for this course of action. I will put the leave. The member will resume his seat. Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is none.

Points of Order

Deployment of Troops to Iraq—Leave to Move Motions Without Notice

ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to move and vote on a motion without notice—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am hearing a point of order.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Yes, but I asked you for a point of order before and you asked me to wait for the vote—

Mr SPEAKER: And I have now taken a call from Andrew Little.

ANDREW LITTLE: I seek leave to move and vote on a motion without notice and without debate at the end of this debate about the deployment of troops to Iraq.

Mr SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is.

Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to move a motion without notice and without debate requesting the Government to not deploy troops to Iraq.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that course of action. Is there any objection to that course of action? There is.

Ministerial Statements

Iraq—Deployment of Military Personnel

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I wish to make a ministerial statement under Standing Order 356 in relation to the deployment of troops to Iraq. Today I am announcing to the House the Government’s decision about our contribution to the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Last November I gave a national security speech that outlined the threat posed to New Zealand by ISIL. This brutal group and its distressing methods deserve the strongest condemnation. ISIL’s ability to motivate Islamic radicals makes it a threat not only to stability in the Middle East but regionally and locally too. It is well funded and highly skilled at using the internet to recruit. Disturbingly, ISIL’s brutality has, if anything, worsened since I gave that speech late last year. In recent weeks we have witnessed a mass beheading and the horrific plight of a Jordanian pilot being burned alive in a cage, and we have seen stories of Western hostages who have been kidnapped and killed in barbaric ways. ISIL’s outrageous actions have united an international coalition of 62 countries against this group. New Zealand is already considered part of the coalition because we have made humanitarian contributions, with $14.5 million in aid provided to the region so far. The Government has carefully considered its options to expand our contribution to the international coalition. As I outlined in November, our approach is one that addresses humanitarian, diplomatic, intelligence, and capacity-building issues.

New Zealand is a country that stands up for its values. We stand up for what is right. We have an obligation to support stability and the rule of law internationally. We do not shy away from taking our share of the burden when the international rules-based system is threatened, as it is today. We have carved out our own independent foreign policy over decades, and we take pride in it. We do what is in New Zealand’s best interests. It is in that context that I am announcing that the Government has decided to take further steps to help the fight against ISIL.

The Iraqi Government has requested support from the international community and has been clear with us that security is its top priority. We have been clear that we cannot and should not fight Iraq’s battles for it, and, actually, Iraq does not want us to do that. Our military can, however, play a part in building the capability and capacity of the Iraqi forces so that they can fight ISIL themselves. I have been open with New Zealanders that we have been considering an option to train Iraqi security forces in Iraq alongside our longstanding partner Australia. Such an operation would be behind the wire and limited to training Iraqi security forces in order to counter ISIL and legitimately protect innocent people.

The Government has decided to deploy a non-combat training mission to Iraq to contribute to the international fight against ISIL. This is likely to be a joint training mission with Australia, although it will not be badged as an Anzac force. Its task will be to train Iraqi security force units so they are able to commence combat operations and eventually able to carry out the work of our trainers, creating an independent, self-sustaining military capability for the Government of Iraq to call on.

The mission will involve the deployment of personnel to the Taji military complex, north of Baghdad. This is likely to take place in May. The deployment will be reviewed after 9 months and will be for a maximum 2-year period. The total number of personnel deploying is up to 106 in Taji, and there will be others such as staff officers deploying in coalition headquarters and support facilities in the region. The total all together will be up to 143 personnel. As well as these people, further personnel and air force assets will occasionally need to be deployed to the region to support the mission—for example, in support of personnel rotations and resupply.

A training mission like this is not without danger. It is not a decision we have taken lightly. I have required assurances that our men and women will be as safe as they practically can be in Taji. Our force protection needs have been assessed by the New Zealand Defence Force and determined as being able to be met by the well-trained soldiers of our regular army. We will be sending our own force protection to support the training activities.

I want to briefly address the issue of special forces. As I said last November, I have ruled out sending the SAS or any troops into combat roles in Iraq. The Chief of Defence Force has advised me that special forces are not part of this deployment. However, I want to be clear that special forces could be deployed for short periods to provide advice on issues like force protection or to help with high-profile visits, as there may be those from time to time. Our deployment in Taji will include logistics and medical support as well as headquarters staff. It is our intention that Iraqi security forces be able to assume responsibility for delivering their own training programmes in future.

The New Zealand Government will retain ultimate decision-making authority over the nature and scope of the activities of the New Zealand Defence Force personnel within the mission, and those personnel will deploy with appropriate legal protections. Exactly what form those legal protections take will be worked through in coming weeks and with our Iraqi counterparts. We will secure the best protections we realistically can for our personnel. Our military has a proven track record of carrying out this type of training work in Afghanistan. This is a contribution that is in line with our values and our skills. But this is not all that we will do to help. We recognise that ISIL is not a short-term threat, and that there is a lot of work to be done in the long term. Defeating ISIL will mean winning the hearts and minds of those vulnerable to its destructive message. That will take time. As I said last year, we have already contributed to the humanitarian cause, and we are currently examining options to provide more help.

We are also stepping up our diplomatic efforts to counter ISIL and to support stability in Iraq. As part of this, we are looking at options to base a diplomatic representative in Baghdad to serve as a conduit between the Iraqi Government and our military deployment, as well as assessing how we can support better governance in Iraq. We will also expand our diplomatic engagement on international counter-terrorism by appointing a new ambassador for counter-terrorism. Underpinning all this, we will work as a member of the United Nations Security Council to advocate for effective action on ISIL.

Last November I told New Zealanders that ISIL had been successful in recruiting New Zealanders to the cause. Our Government agencies have a watch-list of between 35 and 40 people of concern in the foreign fighter context, and that remains the case. Unfortunately, an additional group requiring further investigation is growing in number. We have strengthened the ability of our intelligence agencies to deal with this, and they are taking steps to add to their resources. We cannot be complacent, as events in Sydney, Paris, and Ottawa have underscored.

To those who argue that we should not take action because it raises the threat I say this: the risk associated with ISIL becoming stronger and more widespread far outweighs that. I know there is already risk. New Zealanders do too because they know we are a nation of prolific travellers who have been caught up in terrorist activity around the world many times before. The Government has carefully considered our contribution to the international campaign against ISIL. We are prepared to step up to help. New Zealand does not take its commitment to Iraq lightly. In return, we expect that the Iraqi Government will make good on its commitment to be an inclusive Government that treats all Iraqi citizens with respect. Sending our forces to Iraq is not an easy decision, but without doubt it is the right decision. They go with our best wishes.

ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): The decision of any Government to send troops to a conflict zone is a very serious one, and it is right that this House takes time and is detained in its usual duties to consider it, to debate it, and, ideally, to vote on it, but we will not have that chance today. We will at least have a chance to talk about it today, but the truth is this decision was taken some time ago. The Governments of Australia and Iraq were told about the decision last night, and the people of New Zealand have been told this afternoon about the decision and the details of the deployment of New Zealand troops to Iraq. But, as I say, it is very clear: this decision was made some time ago, and I venture to suggest it was made for a range of different reasons that have not been outlined today.

Labour’s position is clear. We should not send troops to Iraq. There is no case to do so. We have all seen the images coming out of Iraq, the images from the Islamic State, its barbarism, its brutality, and its evil, and there would not be a New Zealander sitting in their home who has seen those images whose stomach would not have been turned and who would not have been impressed upon in a very nasty way by what they have seen. But let us be clear about what we are dealing with. They call themselves Islamic State, but they are not a State. They want to establish a caliphate, a medieval form of social organisation and control, but they are not within a single border; they run across borders. They are cultural, they are ethnic, they are religious, and they are driven by a number of different motivations. They are not a nation State in the way that we typically recognise; they are a grouping, an organisation, a movement, and they draw their support accordingly. Islamic State is not confined to Iraq. It is in Syria, it is in Libya, and—as we know, and as the Prime Minister acknowledged—its adherents can turn up anywhere in the world. Islamic State is a repository of the dispossessed, the marginalised, the fanatical, the extreme, and, yes, the evil, but it is not a conventional enemy and the circumstances in which we are being asked to fight it, or train others to fight it, in Iraq are not conventional.

We are told we are sending troops to train the Iraqi army. The Prime Minister says they will be behind the wire, but we know they will not be. They cannot stick there, they cannot stay there, that is not all they will do. They will not just be behind the wire; they will be exposed to the much wider conflict and it will not be just the soldiers we send to Iraq, it will be Kiwis travelling around the world.

So we need to ask ourselves—and a Government exercising this decision in a responsible way will ask itself—what it is that we are being asked to do, or that our people are being asked to do, that will put our people at risk that has not been tried before. What are they being asked to do that has not been done before? What is it about what they will do that will succeed where others have failed? After 10 years of training of the Iraqi army by the US army, after $25 billion of assistance to the Iraqi army, what impact will we have? What can we hope to achieve? And in all the weeks that the Prime Minister has been talking about this issue since his speech at the end of last year, the case has not been put. New Zealanders are none the wiser and we do not support the decision.

Where does Islamic State come from? It comes from a number of factors. The first is the failure of the Iraqi army, an army that is demoralised, that is poorly led, poorly organised, riven with corruption, and it has been like that for 10 years, and we think that by sending a very modest force as part of a multinational group we are going to achieve what the US army has not been able to achieve for 10 years? Islamic State comes from the failure of Government—the Iraqi Government, which has struggled to come to terms with the responsibility of being an open and transparent and diverse Government. It comes from the failure of that Government to change Iraq as a nation State and rebuild its economy. So young Muslims are shut out of a future, shut out of a livelihood, and they retreat to the hands and the arms of Islamic State. We will not fix the Iraqi army, and those whom we join up there—and it will not be the soldiers of 62 other nations; it will be five nations—will not fix the army. It is disorganised, it is broken, it is treacherous, and it is corrupt.

I take the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Dr al-Jaafari, at his word when he says that the request for assistance is not just for military assistance and, in fact, it is not even the priority. He diplomatically told us that civil reconstruction is equally important if not more so, and it is clear to me that that is what is more important. We will not defeat—no one will defeat—Islamic State through the Iraqi army. We will deal with it when we deal with the underlying causes and we will deal with the underlying unrest that is spread across that region.

There is something useful we can contribute, and it is about turning Iraq into a functioning, viable nation State. To do that they need an effective Government. Dr al-Jaafari was very clear. They need advice on good government, and we will help them when we assist them with economic reconstruction. They know that they need to move away from dependency on oil. They know that they need to build an agriculture sector. They know that they need to build horticulture and industry. Those are the things that will last a long time, that will build a nation State, that will give confidence to a people and enable them to take back their land and control of their country.

New Zealand has a reputation abroad as an honest broker. We have not won our seat on the United Nations Security Council for no reason at all. We won it overwhelmingly in the first ballot, hands down, because of our reputation as a responsible, reputable global citizen. We have the opportunity to provide leadership in a way that we have not for a long time before, and we should do that. We should do that on this issue. We should do that on this issue to help rebuild Iraq. We should do that on this issue to turn back the militants, the extremists, the fanatics who pose a threat to world peace. That is what we can do when we provide assistance to countries like Iraq with civilian reconstruction. It is wrong to say that the only request for assistance was for military assistance, because that is not where the request stopped.

And there is another point. When we send our troops to this conflict zone without clarification, understanding, or certainty about the status of those troops in that country, we are exposing them to even greater risk. If we cannot achieve a status of forces agreement with Iraq, then that says something about that country and the support for this mission by those people, and we should not expose our troops to that risk and to that threat. We have a unique opportunity for moral leadership: to show that there is a different way, a long-term way, and a lasting way to address the conflicts and the hatreds that exist in the world and in that region, and that is through supporting nation States—fledgling nation States, in some cases—to come to terms with their responsibilities, rebuild their economies, rebuild their communities, and give themselves the confidence and the means to repel the evil that is represented by Islamic State. We have turned our back on that option. Labour is opposed to sending troops to Iraq.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green): With today’s announcement, the worst-kept secret in New Zealand is out. John Key and his Government are dragging us by the bootlaces into another US-led Middle East war for an undisclosed amount of time, with a lack of clear goals and exit strategy and with no vote in this Parliament. Yes, you heard it right: we are going to supposedly defend democracy in the Middle East, but the National Government has just now prevented Parliament from voting on whether New Zealand should go to war. Democracy, it seems, is a military export and is not for domestic consumption.

So why is John Key afraid to put it to a vote of Parliament? Is it because he knows that this Parliament and the people of New Zealand have little appetite for entering another bloody conflict that will only make things worse in the Middle East? Is it because he knows that it makes no sense to enter another conflict that will simply endanger New Zealanders overseas and here? Or is it because he knows that he could not get a majority of MPs in this Parliament to support his desire to send our soldiers off to war? The answer, of course, is all of the above—he does not have a mandate, and he knows it.

This decision to go to war was, of course, a decision taken not in Wellington but in Washington. As John Key revealingly told us, New Zealand is going to war because that is the price we must pay to be a member of the club, and the club that he was referring to was the “Five Eyes” club, headed up by the United States and including Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. I guess we always thought that the National Government had abandoned New Zealand’s independent foreign policy, but to hear the Prime Minister state so blandly that the decision to go to war was taken by the club and we simply had to follow suit to stay a member of the club—I mean, why bother with Parliament when the decision is one for Barack Obama? So I do not address my comments to John Key, who is behaving as if he is the governor of the 51st state. Rather, I address my comments to the head of the club, Barack Obama, who actually made the decision to go to war, and I address my comments to the people of New Zealand in whose name more blood will be shed.

Mr Obama, after half a century of Western military adventures in the Middle East, many, if not most, New Zealanders now know that it has only made things worse. People in the Middle East understand this too. It is hard to know exactly where in the history to start, but one obvious contender is when in 1953 the United States and the United Kingdom orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected Mosaddeq Government in Iran, because Mosaddeq threatened the flow of cheap oil to the West. Through our actions in 1953 we told the people of the Middle East that cheap oil was more important to us than democracy.

Following the history, notable mention should go to Madeleine Albright. In 1996 the US Ambassador to the United Nations said in reference to the sanctions against Iraq that were killing half a million children: “We think the price is worth it.” We told the people of the Middle East through our actions that their children’s lives were of no value to us and can be sacrificed to foreign policy goals, and the people of the Middle East remember that. Perhaps special mention should go to a more recent example, which was when the CIA used a fake vaccination programme in order to gather intelligence on Osama bin Laden quite recently. In the process they added to Pakistani suspicion of Western medicine, resulting in a dramatic drop in vaccinations in Pakistan and a rapid take-off in polio cases in Pakistan. We told the people of Pakistan through our actions that revenge was more important to us that our medical science.

Every Western bomb, Mr Obama, that has been dropped on the people of the Middle East over the last half century has only added to the ISIL recruitment queue. Every time Western Governments have made grand statements about democracy and human rights while supporting some of the most brutal, most anti-democratic regimes in the world, that has only hardened the cynicism of the people of the Middle East about the West and driven them into the waiting arms of the appalling jihadis.

If you do not take my word for it, how about this: in 2004 Donald Rumsfeld, hardly a liberal, the US Secretary of Defense at the time, set up a task force to understand what the driver is for the rise of radicalism and terrorism in the Middle East. The Defense Science Board reported to Rumsfeld duly in September 2004, and this is what it said: “American direct intervention in the Muslim world has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists,”. So that was the Rumsfeld task force conclusion—American intervention was adding to the stature of the radical Islamists, the jihadis, and adding to their support. Then it went on to say: “It is diminishing support for the United States.” So it is producing the opposite effect of what we claim to be aiming for. Let us face it—killing hundreds of thousands of civilians tends to have that effect.

The Rumsfeld task force went on to say: “Muslims do not hate our freedom but rather they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voiced their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favour of Israel against Palestinian rights and the longstanding, even increasing, support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably the Governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States.” That was the conclusion of Donald Rumsfeld’s own task force. Western intervention was pushing people into the arms of the radical jihadis, which was the exact opposite of what we claimed we wanted to be doing, and here we are, in this House, about to do it once more.

The report went on to say: “When American diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. In the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering.” Therefore the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has, essentially, borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions have elevated the authority of the jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy amongst Muslims. So the intervention, according to Donald Rumsfeld’s task force, that we are proposing to do today is adding to the legitimacy of the jihadis amongst Muslims, doing the exact opposite of what we would like to be doing. The US defence force basically went on to predict the rise of the Islamic State.

No one is suggesting we should turn a blind eye to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The question is: will sending our troops there help? And the answer is clear: it will not. It will just become part of the recruitment drive for ISIL, and it will put New Zealand lives at risk. It is also clear that there is not a shred of evidence that the military training will make a difference.

We must also ask whether there is another way we can alleviate the suffering and misery of people in Iraq and the wider Middle East. What they want from us is support for humanitarian aid and civil reconstruction—a large-scale international diplomatic effort to stop the flow of arms and cash to ISIL. Did the New Zealand Government even raise this question in the discussion with the Saudi Government, given that a lot of the ISIL money comes from Saudi Arabia?

New Zealand holds a seat on the United Nations Security Council. That is an opportunity to make a difference and to use our diplomatic weight to try to find a solution to not only the ISIL crisis but the broader crisis across the Middle East. Instead, we have another foreign intervention in Iraq, just like George Bush’s in 2003—another coalition of the willing, those who are willing to put their heads in the sand and their lives at risk. When it comes to Western military interventions in Iraq, New Zealand and the world have been there. We have done that. It did not work. It was a mess. If we want to find lasting peace in the Middle East, we need to be a voice of justice. We need to be a voice for human rights and democracy. This means we have to have the courage of our convictions to tell the head of the club, the great nation of the United States of America, that it is time to wean ourselves off cheap oil, and it is time to support genuine peace, democracy, and human rights in the Middle East. Thank you.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): On this day in 628 BC a coup deposed the Persian shah. He was shortly murdered and his son was installed, who died weeks later. On this day in 1991 there was the attack to defend Kuwait and rid that country of the Iraqi occupation. It seems that some people have a very poor grasp of history. It is an affront to our democracy that the Prime Minister long ago has done a deal over deploying troops to Iraq, then obtained Cabinet’s rubber stamp, then bypassed this Parliament, parliamentary sanction, and a vote. If they are so right—as Mr Key concluded that it is the right decision—then why not trust the people’s institution called Parliament? Canada did. Other countries in the 60 have. Why not you? Or is he special when it comes to these decisions where we go to war, not as a people or a country but as a Government? Because this is a minority decision. It is not going to get parliamentary sanction and the Government never contemplated it.

Why are we heading into a conflict that so predictably will not end? Twenty-five centuries ago a wise military commander said that there is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare. That is what we face in the Middle East. Parliament should have been given today not the jingoistic talk, belated patriotism, and the attempt to defend liberty and freedom all around the world—no, no, just in that part of the world, and all the rest does not matter whether it is in Indonesia or in Africa. All of a sudden we have called ourselves into a debate to go to a war, and a debate usually ends in this Parliament by a vote.

So why is the ACT member not having a vote, like the rest of us? Why are the National Party backbench members not getting a say? Or are they just cannon fodder for an executive that is so arrogant now, after 7 years, that it thinks it can get away with going to an election campaign and saying in June, as it did, that it was not going to go to war: “No, no, we won’t be engaged at all. I can’t foresee this.”, the Prime Minister said. He gave every assurance, all the way to election day, and then hardly was the election over and all of a sudden he was deeply upset by people being the subject of atrocities. So what was new back in June that we did not know about now, or vice versa? There are no new factors, and the Prime Minister’s excuse today, in one of the worst speeches I have ever heard on such a serious matter, is of grave concern, because of this we can be certain: we face military tragedy and we will soon face civilian tragedy. I want to look into the faces of those people who thought that this was a fair prospect to take this country into.

We are a special country, one of only nine democracies these last 157 years. That is why they want us, because we have got a record for being fair and for standing up for principles. So when the Prime Minister says that this is a decision to stand up for its values, our values, what on earth did he mean? Our values begin with being a democracy. Our values begin with Parliament deciding whether our people should go to war, not Governments going to war against another people. He cannot even understand that most basic of principles, and yet he is the Prime Minister.

He knew a long time ago that he was going to join the club. He now, of late, is saying: “Oh, it’s a club of 60.” Well, as John Armstrong in the New Zealand Herald pointed out: “Oh, so you are joining the club of 60 by going there to join the club, but you weren’t a member of the 60 beforehand.” It is so incongruous, so illogical, so irrational, but that is the kind of weasel words and—how shall I put it—greasy behaviour that the Prime Minister has evinced for far too long, on far too many issues. If you are a National Party supporter, then you should be seriously worrying about what this means for you, for your country, and above all, dare I say it, for your political party. In the end, you will wear a minority decision and not be exonerated by the fact that you had this brief debate.

This move does not comply with our status on the UN Security Council. This move does not comply with our demand in the past for the UN to give us sanction when we went in, in 1991, and joined that war—all, of course, about oil and not too much else. We are not working under the legal umbrella of the United Nations, just on request from one of the Iraqi factions with a grudge against others. The Prime Minister seems ignorant of the geography, the history, the diverse cultures, and the tribal affiliations and religions of this area that his club is dragging us into. This is the club, I might add, that will give a free-trade agreement to Morocco, but not us. It will give one to Chile, but not us. What are the benefits of being in this club when we have a man travelling around the world on the greatest junket we have ever seen on the World Trade Organization and other negotiations, and not have anything to show for it at all? We want to know what comes with membership of this club, because it surely cannot be misery, loss, and human suffering.

Over there different groups have a longstanding tradition of fighting each other and regularly changing sides. Some of these groups have been fighting for centuries. Our men and women are being thrown into a snake pit, where the snakes are biting anything and everything. I know that most of the people in the Middle East want an end to the war. They say they are sick of the war. But sooner or later the Middle East has got to own up to its own problem and start fixing up its own neighbourhood.

We have been to countless wars. We were there alongside the United States twice, and it was 2 years before they even came along in the First World War and Second World War. So what is the price of belonging to the club that we should pay? If anything we are the prefects in that club, given our record of international responsibility. But you have got to stand up for your country. This business of nod, nod, wink, wink—or as I saw with some of the old countries where they got the view: “Well, don’t worry about New Zealand. We’ll talk to them.” And then you get a novice for a Prime Minister, whose training is at Merrill Lynch, and he thinks that is the way you do international relations. Well, there is always a day of reckoning for that sort of behaviour, and it is coming soon. I hope the Prime Minister, he and his colleagues, will have the decency to own up to the fact that they will have made a massive blunder here again.

Rumour and speculation and twisted facts are being used by all sorts of people. You would have heard from the Prime Minister’s speech, and his face-switch after the election, that all of a sudden he was horrified by all of the atrocities. Oh really? What about Boko Haram? Not a murmur, not a mutter, not a syllable, not a sound of concern at all. No, not a peep—nothing at all. In fact, some of them are just flashing through their phones reading the latest news on Stuff. They are looking at the latest polls to see how it might affect them—Steven Joyce being the principal one here. He is so concerned about this country going to the war that he cannot even be bothered to engage in the debate. This is a tragedy and it should stop.

We want to say to the Prime Minister that the last time the National Party took that view—that is, it was to make a decision by lunchtime, then led by Don Brash—guess what happened? We were being sucked into a war to end and find the weapons of mass destruction, only to find out that the pretext was totally dishonest and they were not there.

Denis O’Rourke: Illegal.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Illegal. And now, all of a sudden, from the mess and maelstrom generating from those events, we, just very recently on from that event, are going back again.

Prime Minister, there is no containment when it comes to war. There is no “behind the fence” when it comes to war. If, for example, he gives the assurance “Oh, well, if the Iraqis are 500 yards down the street and fighting, we won’t be engaged.”, what if they are in the same room? Is he intending to hold a flag up saying: “Don’t shoot us. We’re here on a peaceful purpose.”? It is ridiculous in the extreme and no one believes it. The Canadians are on a similar engagement and are saying and proving to us right now that if push comes to shove, we will be fighting, all right, and fighting for our lives. What sort of respect will our soldiers have if that is the attitude that they take in the field? Thank God the soldiers of our country are not so gutless or lacking in fortitude to make that statement. I know that when push comes to shove they will put their lives on the line. But I would have preferred, and my party, New Zealand First, would have preferred, that Parliament gave them a mandate so that putting their lives at risk for our country and for the sake of peace came with the support of all New Zealand people, not just an arrogant Government making a minority decision.

Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Kia ora tātau e te Whare i a tātau e wānanga nei i tēnei take nui, whakaharahara. I a au e kōrero ana mō te āhuatanga o tēnei mea o te pakanga, me kōrero au mō te hunga mate i te mea, ko mate ka whai mai i te pakanga. Pakanga ki te pū, koinā te mutunga mai, ko mate, pai mai, kino mai. Nō reira, koutou i te pō e moe. Tātau e noho nei i te Whare Pāremata i tēnei rā, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora tātau katoa.

[Greetings to you, Mr Speaker. Greetings to us the House as we deliberate and discuss this matter of huge significance and importance. As I address the situation about this thing, warfare, I must talk about the dead, because following after warfare is death. That is the ultimate good and bad. And so, to you in the void, rest there. To us seated here in Parliament today, greetings, salutations, and acknowledgments to you and to us all.]

On behalf of the Māori Party I think it is fair to say that few would disagree with the opening statements today by the Prime Minister and, indeed, some of the statements made by Mr Little, in respect of the disgust that pretty much every New Zealander would feel collectively around the activities of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). We understand the desire to do something to assist. The question is what. In my discussions with my people and the constituents I represent, I have to say that most have real concerns about our soldiers going off to war. Having said that, they are hugely proud of the efforts of all of those people who put their lives at risk.

As I consider the decision to deploy New Zealand armed forces to Iraq, I need to put it in context. As we approach the centenary of Anzac Day we once again reflect on New Zealand’s involvement in overseas conflicts. Since our involvements with the Allied forces at the ill-fated campaign at Gallipoli, generations of men and women have served our country in combat and non-combat roles. Our tūpuna were inspired to volunteer for the First World War effort by Māori politicians such as Sir Apirana Ngata and Te Rangi Hīroa, who argued that Māori involvement in the armed forces was “the price of citizenship”. Since the First World War and the formation of “Te Ope Tuatahi”, the Māori Battalion, Māori have been prominent in the armed forces and have never shied away from active service overseas.

The legacy left to us by Māori involvement in conflict and peacekeeping missions is absolutely etched in our whānau, hapū, and iwi histories. In fact, in most meeting houses throughout the country, hanging on the walls are pictures of those who have passed on and paid that ultimate price. There are stories of immense pride and valour, such as the deeds of the Māori Battalion and, indeed, our contribution to peacekeeping in East Timor. There are stories of immense loss and suffering from the death of so many young men killed in their prime—indeed, women killed in their prime—from active combat and suffering from campaigns like Viet Nam, which scarred whānau for generations. Last year I was present at Rotorua International Airport as one of our young men was brought home from overseas, returning back to his whānau, who lived in a little town called Kawerau. They felt that pain on that day, as did I.

So as we reflect upon almost 100 years of involvement in international conflict, we need to ask ourselves what is the best contribution that Aotearoa can make. The Māori Party believes that sending New Zealand soldiers to train troops in Iraq for combat is effectively the same as sending New Zealand soldiers to war. The normal conventions of war, as has already been stated, are not observed by ISIS, and any military involvement by New Zealand will be regarded as an act of aggression. The Māori Party believes that sending intelligence personnel into the region places them at grave risk. Undoubtedly they will be placed in the line of fire. So let us be under no illusion that by sending training troops and other personnel to the region we are not effectively raising our heads above the parapet. This decision increases the chances of Aotearoa being a target for rogue ISIS attacks.

In 2007 New Zealand was regarded as the second most peaceful nation in the world, behind Norway and just ahead of Denmark. At the time Iraq was regarded as the most dangerous country in the world. Our consistent message since entering Parliament 9 years ago is that manaakitanga and rangatiratanga dictate that it is not our place to be intervening in the decisions of other nation States, but we could play a constructive role in peacekeeping and providing humanitarian aid. Despite the best intentions of the West by sending in the planes, sending in the tanks, and sending in the soldiers, all that inevitably happens is that everyone packs up and walks away, and for what real gain? Not a lot. New Zealand has earned the respect of the international community for its peacekeeping and humanitarian support. We have shown our mettle in hot spots like Afghanistan and East Timor. We fully acknowledge the courage and intelligence demonstrated so ably by the provincial reconstruction team and other groups working throughout Afghanistan.

There is a large-scale humanitarian crisis in the Middle East, including thousands of whānau surviving and dying in refugee camps, fleeing the terror of ISIS. Aotearoa has much to contribute to eliminating the threat of ISIS, but it is not by sending our troops and military personnel into te mura o te ahi [the battle-front]. Our own people are also asking us why the New Zealand Government remains silent on humanitarian crises such as that happening in West Papua, New Guinea, where thousands of innocent Melanesian people, Papuans, have been slaughtered by the Indonesian Government. This is a conflict filled with similar atrocities of kidnapping, rape, and murder as those inflicted by ISIS, and yet it is far closer to home. Yet, as Mr Peters alluded to, we do not say too much and we have not done too much about it.

Having said all that, now that the decision has been made, and despite our views, from the Māori Party’s perspective, as I am sure from the House’s, we do wish our forces well, and those who are deployed overseas. They will make us proud. We pray that they will be looked after and returned home safely to their friends, partners, and tamariki. Tūmatauenga, kia kaha [Be strong, military force].

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): The activities of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) over the last year have brought a new meaning to that longstanding phrase “man’s inhumanity to man”, because we have seen new levels of barbarism, new levels of violence, and a pervasive stretch of campaign unlike any we have seen in the past. The issue is not whether as humanitarians we should do anything; the issue is what we can do constructively to both assist those who are struggling against that yoke of oppression but also to change the circumstances that gave rise to it in the first place. So this is not a debate about whether to Iraq or not Iraq; it is about what we can do that will be effective.

And when one looks at the history of engagement in the Middle East, over a long period of time—far longer than the 50-odd years referred to earlier—the one constant has been that external intervention has invariably produced failure. Whether it be from the splitting up of the boundaries under the so-called Balfour Declaration early in the 20th century or whether it be the overthrow of the Mosaddeq regime in the 1950s, or the attempts by the West after the various Middle East wars to try to reimpose a sense of order, the constant has been failure, and the consequence has been an ingrained and increasing sense of disillusionment and bitterness that gives rise to the next form of expression we might regard as extremist and unacceptable, and which we recognise today as ISIL. So we can go on doing what we have done. We can go on repeating the mistakes of the past. We might feel good that we are making a contribution, but we will not be fundamentally changing anything.

The issue the House should be debating is what the most effective form of response is. We are an isolated democratic country. We believe, in this country, in the institutions of our State, our courts, our independent legislature, and our judiciary to deliver certain rights and freedoms to New Zealanders. Although the form will differ from country to country, those basic tenets remain in all countries, so to deliver basic freedoms and rights and opportunities to the people of Iraq and beyond comes through ensuring that the institutions of their State are capable of living up to the expectations that their public have of them to be able to provide quality health and education services and to be able to provide law and order and good civilisation.

And how can we contribute to that? The historical record makes clear that external intervention over a long period of time has not made a positive contribution in that respect. When this House debated the intrusion into Kuwait in 1990-91—and I recall the House being recalled early in 1991 for a special debate on that matter—the same points were made. Was New Zealand’s limited military involvement going to make any great difference without any efforts to satisfy some of the more fundamental problems of the region? The answer then was no. When we debated the intrusion into Iraq that led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the same questions were raised. They were raised in a peripheral way about Afghanistan, and they are being raised again today.

New Zealand has a proud reputation, earned over many years, and for many reasons the point we were elected to the UN Security Council was for being a beacon of humanitarianism and common sense in the international arena. People remember the role we played in the Rwandan crisis, for instance, where a similar regime of horrific slaughter was in place, where the world felt powerless to cope with the forces that were at play in Rwanda, but where New Zealand was at the forefront of a sensible outcome, for which we are still lauded today. We should be using our role on the Security Council to, first of all, insist that any action that takes place against ISIL is UN mandated—and this is not—and, second, focus on the areas where the most positive construction can be made: humanitarian aid ensuring that the children who are being maimed, slaughtered, and violated routinely are protected; aid that ensures that the various States of the region, Iraq in particular, have the opportunity and the chance to rebuild their institutions of State to deliver fair and democratic outcomes for the people they serve; and aid that ensures that the experience that countries like us that have a longstanding parliamentary democracy have in issues of good and fair governance is able to be brought to bear to assist the people of that region.

The concern that I have about the deployment of now nearly 150 New Zealand personnel into the area is the escalation effect. They are going as trainers and advisers. President Kennedy sent a few trainers and advisers into Viet Nam in 1961. That culminated in the deaths and injury of up to 220,000 American troops over the next 15 years, and 220-odd New Zealanders similarly suffered in that conflict. The point is that it is very difficult to control these sorts of incursions to protect just the goal that we had to start with. Inevitably, people in military uniforms will draw attention—terrorists do not distinguish between whether they are advisers or other personnel, and conflicts occur. We would expect in those situations people to defend themselves, and suddenly the situation has escalated far beyond what we originally intended. The tragedy then becomes the loss of innocent blood, of young New Zealanders, in that situation.

It is very easy for these things to move very quickly. A limited engagement in Afghanistan that this House agreed to many years ago saw us ending up spending more time in that country than our combined input into World Wars I and II. There is no reason to think that the challenges that ISIL poses will be dealt with quickly, expediently, and that it will be all over in a couple of years. We are committing New Zealand personnel for what will be a long-term engagement. We have to be prepared to face the consequences of that and the risks to those soldiers. We need to equip them well—and we have had issues in the past about how well equipped our forces have been in such situations—and we need to be prepared for the long haul. The question I think many New Zealanders are asking is whether we actually know what the game plan is and how the exit strategy is to be developed. We do not want to see what, in effect, becomes an open-ended commitment made.

There are, as I have said, many other avenues that we can be pursuing. I believe that as a country that espouses the democratic tradition, the forefront of what we do ought to be about encouraging other countries in a similar way and ensuring that they can benefit from the institutions of democracy and deliver safe and fair environments to the people that they serve. I recall a representative of the African National Congress telling a meeting at this Parliament shortly after President Mandela came to power in 1994 that when people accused Mandela of being a terrorist they had it wrong because what Mandela and the African National Congress were about was respect for the institutions of the South African State, but they wanted to control them. They wanted to control the Parliament, they wanted to control the courts; they did not want the white minority to continue in the apartheid regime.

It is the same principle here. Most people value democratic institutions. Most people value representative government and the opportunity to participate. They do not like having things imposed upon them. Our challenge in this instance is to ensure that the people of Iraq can take control of their own destiny; the people of Iraq have the confidence in the authorities to deal with these violent, despicable people in ISIL; and the people of Iraq know that that is wrong, unacceptable, and unbelievably bad behaviour, and they take charge of responding to it. They do not react well to the people of the rest of the world telling them what they have to do.

I think New Zealand is making a sad mistake. But I just want to say one other very quick thing: those troops who go do go with this Parliament’s blessing for their safety and for the challenges that they face. I hope that they come back safely in due course.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): On Sunday night I was at a barbecue in my electorate and an 8-year-old girl asked me what the Government is doing in or about the situation in Iraq. Her mother later came up to me and said she could not believe that such a young person would be so concerned, or even so knowledgable, about such an issue. I reflected to her that, actually, I was 8 in 1991, and some of the first images I recall from that time were Patriot missiles knocking down Scud missiles, “Stormin’ Norman” Schwarzkopf, Operation Desert Storm, tanks rolling across the desert, and so on. I raise this for the benefit of other members because these issues are visceral; they run deep. We are intuitively aware of them, even at a very young age. They raise dilemmas that are timeless, as we have heard from a variety of different members.

I want to run through a kind of paraphrase of exactly what I told the 8-year-old girl. The most important question is: how do we respond to bullies? There are two broad answers, both of which have been given in different ways by previous speakers. One is that you give some humanitarian aid, try to do some reconstruction, and hope that the bullies will be nice to you. The other is that you actually take aggressive action against the bullies. And, as I said to her at the time, unfortunately this is a case where we are facing a genuine evil that is fluid and dynamic. It is futile to hope that they will be nice to us, because it is our very liberal values that offend them. What we must do is stand up to them.

But it leads to another dilemma, which is: what can an external force intervening in what is an impossibly complex situation in the Middle East—as it has been, as we have been told, for several millennia—achieve by way of bringing about peace? I have to say that I have considerable scepticism about what intervention in such a theatre can achieve. I only wish that some of my colleagues around the House could apply the same scepticism when it comes to intervening in a domestic economy, but I digress.

Nevertheless, we have another dilemma and another consideration to consider, and that is: how does a small nation militarily, demographically, and economically insignificant in the context of global affairs ensure the best possible safety and freedom for its own citizens? Again, we have a dilemma: either we can hope for a rules-based world and for the rule of law to be extended from the few fragile Western democracies—I think, from the member across the House, it was nine that have been able to sustain this for a period of time—and perhaps one day that will come, or the alternative is that we can think back to what the Athenians told the Milesians in the Peloponnesian War several millennia ago. It is a sad truth, which is echoed down the ages, and that is that right and wrong, so far as the world goes, is a matter in question only between equals. It is with no great pleasure that I remind the House that the course of most global affairs is that the strong have done what they have been able to do, and the weak have suffered as they have had to.

So in this world it is, indeed, important that a small nation considers collective security and our relationship with our allies. Even if I may be sceptical about how much good can be done by intervening in such a theatre, we have to take seriously the fact that so many countries, including all of our closest allies, are committed to intervening and to standing up to the bullies in this theatre.

With all of that in mind, I believe that the Prime Minister’s position as stated this afternoon is the correct one. Our armed forces are first class. Their role as trainers will have the minimum perverse impact on the situation into which they go. If there is an armed force that has the sense of diplomatic intervention to actually make a peaceful difference in such a theatre, then I believe firmly that it is ours. Those troops go with the blessing of this Parliament for their safety, and against all of the challenges that they will face. Thank you.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Defence): I want to speak in support of the statement made to the House this afternoon by the Prime Minister. I want to acknowledge some of the contributions that have been made by party leaders as we have gone around the House, but also to take issue with some of the points that have been made. As Minister of Defence, can I also thank those who have spoken in support of the individual soldiers who will be part of the contingent that is to be deployed to Iraq. I appreciate that although the political sentiment may not lead to support, the individual support for those soldiers is very much appreciated.

I thought the analysis of what the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is—Daesh, as it should more correctly be known—given by the Leader of the Opposition was quite correct. I thought he did, in fact, sum up exactly what the problem is: this is a mercurial enemy, a Stateless enemy, and an evil enemy that knows no bounds for where it would perpetrate its evil. It is arguable whether it can even find its moral authority inside the Koran, and there will be tens of millions of Muslims who agree with that. It is worth noting, too, that although we are moved by the high-profile beheadings and other atrocities committed upon Daesh’s high-profile hostages, there are thousands of Muslims who are receiving exactly the same treatment from this evil outfit.

If there is a theme that has come through, even from those who are opposed to this action, it is that the solution to the problems that we are currently seeing and to the threats that the world is facing from this particular evil has to come from the Muslim world. I am encouraged that when we met Dr al-Jaafari, the Foreign Minister of Iraq, he stressed that point with us. In recent weeks I have met the Foreign Ministers and Defence Ministers of a number of other countries in that part of the world, and, similarly, they have expressed that view. That, I think, is one of the most significant differences between this and any other interventions in that part of the world.

We certainly respect the desire of those countries to lead the fight against this particular evil. When it comes to the suggestion that in a country like Iraq we should somehow be concentrating our efforts entirely on improving civil society, it denies the fact that it is a country pinned down by the evil that it faces every day—a country that does not have the capacity to reach out to someone who is opposed to it and, somehow, come to a point where you can shake hands and move on. As Andrew Little so clearly pointed out, they are facing an evil that wants to set up a medieval-type arrangement across borders that have been respected for centuries. So the only way forward is, firstly, to be able to tackle that particular evil—Daesh—with military action. Iraqis are prepared to do that but they have said to us very clearly that where they can get help to assist with training their very large military force—some 40,000 soldiers—then they will accept that willingly.

I note that every one of the civil interventions that have been raised as prospects by the Labour and Green parties this afternoon occurs outside the so-called “wire”—beyond a military camp and beyond a boundary that can be protected, just out there in the ether, offering good advice to people about the best way to run things. Well, that flies completely counter to everything that Winston Peters had to offer and that Peter Dunne had to offer. There are times when evil simply has to be put down, and this is one of those occasions.

The suggestion was that we can contribute more if we help a country like Iraq to diversify its economic base, particularly in agriculture. But when you have a country where its most fertile regions are beset by daily improvised explosive device tragedies, by kidnappings, and by other just general lawlessness, then it will not matter how many field advisers with clipboards and UN hats we put in the field, there will be no change. There has to be, at some point, a Government that is supported to take control of its country, and we observe, from a Government perspective, that the arrangements that were in place at the beginning of 2014 are quite different to those that are in place now. Reaching out across the sectarian differences and factions in that country is something that we should be supporting.

This contribution from New Zealand is very well considered. The ridiculous suggestion from the Green Party that this was somehow a deal cooked up in another country and imposed upon us is just that: completely ridiculous. We did not make any commitment at any point, anywhere, until the Iraqi Foreign Minister sat in front of us and said: “We want your help.” No one should be surprised, though, by the reaction of the Labour Party and the Green Party. On the one hand they will stand up and they will say: “We should be supporting a United Nations resolution here, and if the United Nations is not telling us to go there, we should not be there.” Well, they are the two parties that defeated motions in this House to support United Nations Security Council motions in 1998 and then, again, in 2003. They want to have it both ways. On the one hand they say: “We will support the United Nations’ motions.”, but when it comes right to it, no, they do not do it. And what is worse—going back to 2003 and to all this business about: “We have got to go to the House and get a mandate.”—where was the mandate for the intervention in 2003? Where was the House mandate for the 63 engineers who were sent to Iraq as part of the reconstruction in a war?

There are some things about this whole involvement that give everybody cause for concern, but if anybody sits in this House and thinks that there is no threat on a daily basis to New Zealanders, they are seriously deluded. I will ask one question that I think everyone should reflect on: if we were to have New Zealanders or a New Zealander somewhere in the world grabbed by this outfit, put into the hostage block, and paraded in front of us, where would we go for help? Would we simply say: “Well, look, don’t pick on us because we’re just civil advisers. We are just here to help with the agriculture.”? They will not make that decision, and New Zealanders are at risk just as much as anyone else in the world.

I think it speaks volumes for the decline of the Fairfax newspaper that apparently no one in the House—at least on the other side of the House—read in this morning’s paper of the threats posed to New Zealand. This is not something that we can just walk away from—not something that we can turn a blind eye to. I am sorry, but simply saying that there are other ways of doing it does not face the reality of daily life in Iraq for a people who are doing their best to overcome the evil of Daesh.

Hon Member: What difference are they going to make?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: People over there can say: “What difference does it make?”, yet I know that in other circumstances, they will come in here and talk, in all number of other cases, about how one person can make a difference. Well, what we are doing here is simply sticking our hand up and saying: “We want to get rid of this. We do not see it as being legitimate.” It is not about saying that there is a divide between the Western World and the Muslim world, because, as I said before, the Muslim world is suffering from these people as much as anybody else, if not significantly more.

Our troops will go into this mission with the appropriate protections; we have said that we will make sure of that. They will make a contribution to the future security of not only the Iraqi Government, which is legitimately in place, but also of New Zealanders, who travel so much around the world. And we are making a statement about what we are prepared to tolerate on our own shores. This is not a huge intervention; it is a modest intervention. Our people have the expertise to make a difference, and we are very pleased to be supporting them in this endeavour.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): This is probably one of the most important debates that this House could have. Sending New Zealanders to war is a decision that should not be taken lightly, and it should be seen to be made with broad political support. On 18 March 2003 the then Prime Minister Helen Clark initiated a debate on Iraq. President Bush had just issued his final ultimatum. Diplomatic negotiations had failed, and to correct Mr Brownlee, Labour had supported the UN resolutions of 2003, including Resolution 1441. Helen Clark said at that time: “[Our] position on this crisis has at all times been based on our strong support for multilateralism and the rule of law, and for upholding the authority of the Security Council.” We refused to join the coalition of the willing and we took a principled decision. It had integrity, and it was understood by our international friends. We were independent and we did not hide behind the club.

On that same date in that same debate, Bill English, the then Leader of the Opposition, stood and his opening words were: “The National Party will be supporting a coalition of the willing.” National was wrong with that decision then, and it is wrong now. The intervention in Iraq, the National Party said at that time, was in the interests of global peace. That did not come to pass, Mr English. It said that the threat posed to the world would be removed if we went to Iraq. That did not come to pass. What we saw was over 10 years of fighting, training Iraqi soldiers, the spending of $25 billion of US money, and we did not remove the threat to the world.

On 18 March 2003 the Labour Government allowed a vote in support for the position we had taken. National and ACT voted against the Labour Government. They voted against it and they voted in support of the coalition of the willing. John Key was part of that vote and he has never resiled from that position. In fact, he said that we were missing in action in Iraq. Labour, New Zealand First, the Greens, United Future, and Progressive voted against sending troops to Iraq.

So I say to the Prime Minister today: put the vote to Parliament. Let Parliament decide. Show fortitude and ask the people’s representatives. All the parties are represented here—allow us to tell you what we think about the decision to send 143 personnel to Iraq. Show leadership, show courage, show statesmanship, and show moral leadership here in this Parliament. I would say that, once again, the vote would be from National and the one little lonely vote from ACT, who props ups this Government.

Then I ask this: did the Prime Minister and his Cabinet allow his own caucus to vote on whether they should send troops to Iraq? The answer is no. Do you know when their caucus found out about this decision? After the Australians and after Baghdad—they found out at their caucus this morning. They were told this morning. Like cannon fodder, they just go along with the decision.

The Labour Party is in favour of being a good international citizen. We have a track record. We have a highly regarded reputation on the international scene, built up over many years. In fact, it was that track record internationally and our reputation that got us on to the Security Council. We were seen to have independent thinking—it won us the support because our pitch was peace and security and we pitched it to the small nations.

I say to the Government, and to Nick Smith who constantly interjects: what are we going to do differently now? What are we going to do differently under this Government, with what it is proposing? We are not doing anything different from what we promised the people who voted for us on the Security Council. In fact, we are going down the same old line the National Party has always gone down.

John Key said that this is paying the price of being part of the club. Is that a good enough reason to commit our troops to Iraq, dressed up as trainers to train Iraqi soldiers whom we have been trying to train for 10 years with no results? Is it good enough to follow the lead of others and not have our own response? No, it is not. To set out other alternatives—where are the other alternatives? Do you know that the total contribution in humanitarian aid to Iraq is $13.5 million? That is less than we were going to spend on Skycity, or hosting the America’s Cup—less than that, and that is what our humanitarian aid has been to Iraq.

John Key gave New Zealanders a personal assurance during the election campaign that we would not be involved in sending troops to Iraq. That was 8 months ago, and, I have to say, 8 months ago we knew of the evil of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. We knew what it was doing, how it was spreading its tentacles around the world. John Key made that promise to New Zealanders back then, 8 months ago. Over those months we have had the dance of the seven veils by the Prime Minister, as he slowly exposed what his real thinking is, softening us up, priming New Zealanders to send troops to Iraq. He said that he has been open with New Zealanders. If that is open with New Zealanders, I do not know what openness is.

I believe we have been taken as fools by the Prime Minister. I believe Andrew Little when he said that this decision was made a long time ago. It would have been made at the little side-meetings the Prime Minister has with his club in the so-called coalition. It would have been made as they had little chats after the golf. It would have been made in different places, where we did not know what was going on but the nods and the winks were taking place.

I think the announcement today has raised more questions than answers. The Prime Minister said that we are sending force protection for our troops. Who is the force protection? Where do they come from? How are they going to protect our troops? How many of them are there going to be? He said that the SAS are going to be going for only a short time. What is a short time for the SAS to go? They are going to go when there are high-profile visits, I suppose, of people parading around Iraq and Baghdad. He said that they are going to be behind the wire. Where is the wire? Where does the wire sit? How do we know whether they are behind the wire?

He then said it is going to be a 9-month deployment, then a review, and then a 2-year commitment. And then he went on to say, in the other breath, that New Zealand has got to be there for a long time. What are we going to be doing? Are we there for 9 months with a review, 2 years, 10 years? We did not get that answer.

We believe that we ought to be part of rebuilding Iraq. We ought to be part of ensuring the things that we can do best. What does New Zealand do best? It is not sending 143 personnel to Iraq. It is the things that we have strengths in. We do have strengths in rebuilding. We do have strengths in humanitarian aid. Why are we not sending humanitarian aid to Jordan where all the refugees are flooding in and they are having to feed and house them? Why are we not providing that sort of support? Why are we not providing support in terms of medical personnel for those who are wounded and hurt and need hospital assistance? Why are we not involved in rebuilding that country in the way that we have done in many other countries?

But what do we get from this Government? We get that it is making a major contribution to its friends by sending 143 personnel to Iraq. We do not believe it is justified. We do not believe the case has been put. We do not believe that we will make an impact, but we could if we looked at other alternatives. The Government has been blind to other alternatives. It has not put the case.

Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): Today the Prime Minister has let this country down. He has prevaricated for 5 months, softening up the public, during which he has said various things to different people.

He has cheapened New Zealand by commercialising the issue of war and peace, pricing the item in terms of club membership. He has flouted our constitutional integrity, advising the world of the decision before advising the people of the country he purports to represent. He has displayed contempt of Parliament by refusing to allow a debate to be held before the decision, or a non-binding vote on the question of war and peace. That compares with the United Kingdom, the source of our constitutional heritage, which called Parliament back under urgency not long ago to debate the use of force in Syria. In that case the Government respected a parliamentary majority not to send forces, even though that parliamentary view was non-binding.

The military personnel will be sent to Iraq to do four things: to train the army, to protect the trainers, possibly act as spotters, and gather intelligence. As the Prime Minister’s list of things to do in Iraq has lengthened, it has become disingenuous to harp on about staying behind the wire. The wire has become a mockery—a hollow symbol of false reassurance. The wire will become something you step around as you exit the compound. It is an insult to the intelligence of the public. Nothing is more certain, or at least inevitable, than that Kiwi soldiers and the SAS will be moving around the Iraq countryside in due course. How could it be otherwise? How could New Zealand stay behind the wire when other nations are not? We would look craven.

The Prime Minister just advised that the SAS could be deployed for force protection and high-profile visits. How will they do that from behind the wire? The wire has become a conscious deception. It implies that the critical consideration is individual safety. It deliberately misses the point. In a conflict zone there is always personal risk. Safety issues are critically important, but they are an operational responsibility. The criterion for decision is not personal safety; it is the legality and the wisdom of the decision to deploy or not to deploy. It is not personal safety and the wire. It is an insult to send military people, in whatever capacity, in the garb of diplomats. Because the Government cannot determine the status and role of our troops in a 21st century conflict zone, it will give them diplomatic passports. How stunningly irresponsible. The Prime Minister’s notion of 21st century diplomacy is to send soldiers to train to kill. For 300 years the profession of diplomacy has been exclusively civilian—to negotiate and dialogue; reach consensus for pacific settlement. It is the antithesis of violence. The job of soldiers is to fight and, if necessary, to kill. Military attaches in embassies have diplomatic passports because they operate as diplomats, not soldiers. Australia has done the same. It has already garbed its soldiers as diplomats. So it is clearly the hallmark of the lawbreakers club. Mr Abbott and Mr Key are betraying the history of centuries of international law and politics.

The reasons given for sending the troops are threefold. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has emerged as a threat to the world, including New Zealand. It engages in unprecedented brutality. It proclaims a universal caliphate that threatens the national sovereignty of all countries. These reasons are valid for discussion, but they are contestable. They are not a sufficient argument for New Zealand to engage in Iraq militarily. ISIL is a threat to international peace, but not to our immediate national security. The situation requires New Zealand to make an input into the Security Council, but not necessarily to send troops.

ISIL engages in brutality of a kind not seen in Europe since the Catholic Inquisition. But Saudi Arabia does the same. The challenge of ISIL requires economic and financial sanctions, including of member States supporting it. It then requires arrest and prosecution in The Hague of its leaders. It does not require aerial bombing. With the passage of time, you can get to individuals without pulverising the countryside. The proclamation of a universal caliphate is as meaningful as the accreditation of the Holy See to the United Nations. ISIL is a threat to peace, but its ideological excesses are the subject of dialogue, not mutual killing.

In Iraq, today’s problem is the child of yesterday’s mistake. ISIL is the current errant sibling of al-Qaeda. Its rise is the direct result of the chaos that derived from the illegal invasion in 2003 by the lawbreakers club—the United States, Britain, and Australia. That disastrous decision by the club to proceed with the UN if possible, but without it if necessary, is the direct result of a strategic miscalculation to regard 9/11 as a matter of international security rather than international criminality. The invasion of Afghanistan to root out terrorism, to drain the swamp, has set the international community on a wrong course ever since. We are still paying the price today—morally, politically, legally.

The decision to send troops is an illustration of how intelligent individuals can do collectively dumb things. I call on the Prime Minister to table a written paper by his Attorney-General, laying out the legal case for sending troops to Iraq, with the bilateral request. We can then debate the legality of the decision and then its political wisdom.

Just a few hours ago a news item reported Professor Stephen Hawking as saying that the one human failing he would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, he said, but now it threatens to destroy us all. I remind the Prime Minister that before long, perhaps in 2017, aggression will be an individual leadership crime in international law. Cabinet members will be held accountable in our domestic courts and before the international criminal court. It is a salutary indication that future leaders, whether National or Labour or Green, will be taking these decisions with more seriousness and less impunity than they did with this one today.

RON MARK (NZ First): In rising to take this call on behalf of New Zealand First, I want to start by talking about some people who have not gained even one mention from the Government to this point, and they are the Defence Force personnel who will be deploying, the Defence Force personnel who will lay their lives on the line to do what this Government has told them they must do.

Let us be very clear, our Defence Force personnel will be just typical Kiwis—soldiers, air force personnel, and sailors—the likes of whom we have come to know, love, and honour. They will be champing at the bit to get to grips with this mission. That is their nature. That is the way we are. If either I or Darroch Ball were back in uniform again, I would say without a doubt, should we have been asked to do this mission, that it would have been an emphatic “Yes, sir, when do we go?”.

But it is not their job to determine whether or not this deployment is appropriate. That is the job of this Government. Ideally, it would have been the job of this Parliament. Ideally, this Government would have gone out of its way to consult with all political parties to get as wide a level of consensus as possible behind the Defence Force personnel that it might deploy—who in the worst case might not come home—and they would know that the job and the duty that they will perform had the support of the majority of this House.

This Government has instead chosen to embark on a misinformation campaign, a spin campaign, the like of which I cannot recall in this country’s history. Prior to the election it was politically inconvenient to have the question put; there was an assurance we were not going into combat. During the election campaign there were more such assurances and in December we had the Minister of Defence denying that troops were undergoing training.

Well, look at the facts as revealed here today. When New Zealand First said that there were 130 to 140 personnel training and preparing to go, the Minister denied it. Today, we are told that 130 personnel are likely to go. When we said that the deployment was likely to occur and that decisions would be made in February or at the start of March, guess what? It is late February, and we are heading into March.

When we said that there are troops going from the 2nd/1st Battalion, from 1st Battalion, and from Queen Alexandra’s Mounted Rifles, the Minister scoffed, made light of it, and joked. What do we now know? The 2nd/1st Battalion, 1st Battalion, and Queen Alexandra’s Mounted Rifles are going. It begs the question: who knows more about defence than the Minister of Defence? Clearly everybody. And he made jokes about it. This is the Minister of Defence whose biggest whine and bitch was that he could not understand the acronyms and that the Defence Force really needed to stop using them because he could not understand them.

We need to think about these personnel and privates, who are earning—what? They are earning $44,000 a year—$44,000 a year. There are second lieutenants who are likely to be platoon commanders—what are they on, $50,000 to $60,000 a year? We need to think about the large numbers of troops coming back from Afghanistan and other deployments who will be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and the trials and the rigours that they have gone through to try to get assistance and help. Think about that now, Government, Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, and Minister of Veterans’ Affairs, because one thing that I know from my past military experience—and Darroch Ball knows—is that as an army officer you certainly do not think about it when help is being asked for. Think about what they are being paid and what they are being asked to do.

Let us not have any more of this illusionary rhetoric and gloss about the safety of the mission. What do we know about Taji? We know that it was the centre and hub of death squad killings by al-Qaeda and that it still seems to be that way. We know that there is a mix of Shi’a and Sunni there and if that mix exists in the training base, there will be inherent risks of green on blue. We know that they are poorly paid in the Iraqi defence force and therefore—and Mark Mitchell knows this—they are open to and subject to threats, bribery, and all of those other things that occur inside corrupt organisations where you have the very wealthy and the very poor and disempowered.

We know that these people, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), are very well trained, and we know that they study the responses of forces to ambushes and to other interdictions. We know that they go back and study the tactics and prepare for the next time so that they know precisely what the drills of the battalion, or of our soldiers, might have been and know how to counter them. They know about secondary ambushes, where they seek to make the biggest strike.

We know that this mission is high risk. There is no “behind the wire” when you have defence force personnel who will take a bribe, who might find that their family has been threatened, and just leave the gate open, or shoot the guard to allow an entry to happen.

All the rhetoric, all the chest-thumping, and all the carry-on actually does our Defence Force personnel a disservice. They will go loyally where they are sent. They deserve to know that the majority of this House supports them and that this Government has done everything it can—not politicking around the fringes, not minimising the risk for the polls, and not avoiding having to answer the horrible question at the most awkward of times. They deserve to know that our Government would have actually spent time with other political parties, gone through the issues and risks, and worked to garner wide consensus and support. That did not happen, and that saddens me greatly.

We need to know about the training and activities that these people, our Defence Force personnel, are going to be involved in. We have heard a lot, but we have heard nothing. Are we training raw recruits? Are we training Iraqi special forces personnel? Are we training their officer cadets? Are we training them to be leaders? Are we training them not to be corrupt? Are we training them to look after their personnel? And precisely who is training us in how to train them—because we have not been there. Well, not quite. Actually, there have been a hell of a lot of New Zealanders in Iraq for the last 13 years. Some of them are back home now. Some come and go; they go to other countries all over the world.

In fact, if you look at what the Prime Minister has talked about today, you could have given this work to a contractor to do, a contractor that has the sanction of the club members, because those club members have many such companies engaged precisely in this work, and we as a nation might well have chosen to focus instead on humanitarian aid like sending a Defence Force field hospital. Oops, sorry, I think we sold that, did we not? Yes, we probably sold that. Maybe, actually, if we had maintained the promise that the National Party gave to re-establish our air combat capability we might have been able to send that, but, oops, there goes another promise made by Simon Power and Don Brash, supported by half the people who sit in the front bench of this Government. Oops, just forgot that one.

So we do not have those options, but while we are thinking about these personnel who are about to leave, while we are thinking about the position that we put them in over Christmas, where they could not tell their mum and dad and could not tell their grandparents or their uncles and aunties “Yes, I am going to Iraq.”—they could not confide in the detail. Just think about that. Just think about the effect on those young people and those families. I know families who have spoken to me, under my guarantee that I would not mention their names, obviously. Families are, naturally, worried, as they should be. Our young men and women are ready to go and do the Government’s job, as we knew they would be, but I want this House to think carefully about the way it has treated Defence Force personnel.

Look at what is happening in Linton. We are selling off defence houses that soldiers and their families live in, and throwing these very same soldiers from 1st Battalion and Queen Alexandra’s Mounted Rifles out into the free-market forces: “Oh, go fend for yourself. This country loves you so much we’re going to send you to Iraq and give you a medal, and, by the way, we’re taking your house off you and you’re going to be subject to some landlord ripping you off for rents that we know you can’t afford because you’re only being paid $44,000 a year. Don’t worry; we love you. We’re going to give you an operational deployment.”

Well, now is the time—now is the time—for this Government to think seriously about some of the things that are happening inside the Defence Force, some of the things that the Government is not doing to support our Defence Force personnel. Do not sit there, beating your chests and telling me how wonderful you are as a Government because you are taking on these nasty, brutal people from Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, because the truth of the matter is that your focus as a Government should be on looking after our Defence Force personnel whom you are about to deploy into Iraq to do your job.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General): I was disappointed in that snarky and, frankly, underwhelming contribution from Mr Mark. He is capable of better. And I think that on this important day the House deserves better, because today the Prime Minister has announced that New Zealand military personnel will fulfil a non-combat, behind the wire mission to train Iraqi security services so that they are better prepared to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)—or, as Mr Brownlee calls it, Daesh—in their region.

The Government has very, very carefully considered the options for expanding the New Zealand contribution to the coalition beyond the humanitarian assistance that we are already providing. Today’s announcement is in line with a fine New Zealand tradition of providing this sort of support where we can. As the Prime Minister has said, we have an obligation to support stability. We have an obligation to support the international rule of law. And it is exactly the same obligation that Helen Clark relied on when she sent 70 engineers to Iraq.

It is, quite frankly, lazy thinking to believe that New Zealand sits in some kind of benign environment due to its distance from the Middle East. We do not. In a practical respect, of course, there are hundreds and thousands of New Zealanders who are at risk of being directly affected by terrorism. But, more than this, New Zealand is a global citizen. We are not insulated from events in the rest of the world. I was interested to hear Mr Flavell talk about the three most peaceful nations on Earth: Denmark, Norway, and this country. Well, look at what has just happened in Denmark. And just a few days ago Norway’s police security service advised that a terrorist attack is likely in the coming year. Who is immune? No one.

As the Prime Minister has said, we cannot stand by idly while these extremists throw people off buildings because of their sexuality, burn people alive, rape and torture women, behead civilians, and turn children into killers. As a distinguished commentator said recently, ISIL is no mere collection of psychopaths and adventure seekers; it is a group with carefully considered beliefs—among them, that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. It is simply not good enough for people like Kennedy Graham to say it is not our problem—of course it is our problem. The world has seen groups like Daesh emerge before, although not at the same speed and to the same extent—at least not in recent history. But there are too many examples from history for us not to have learnt that when others stand by and do nothing, we pay the consequences later on.

All of us have watched in horror at the rise of this death cult. It follows a perverted interpretation of Islam that labels anyone who disagrees with it as an infidel, and it inflicts extreme terror and violence on others. Just this afternoon we have seen videos of Kurdish fighters being paraded in cages through the streets. It is extremely well funded, extremely well organised, and highly skilled at recruitment. It has been labelled the best-resourced terror organisation in recent history. It obtains its money through extortion, oil fields, looting, and smuggling. It has an active bureaucracy. It is attempting to function like a State. As of today Daesh controls territory in Iraq, Syria, and eastern Libya—an area similar in size to New Zealand. Eight million Iraqis and Syrians are living in areas controlled by Daesh. Its self-declared goal is to form an Islamic State—to establish itself as a caliphate with absolute authority and power.

We are all too acutely aware of the terror and the brutality that Daesh is inflicting on the people of Syria and Iraq. I remind Mrs King of the suffering of her constituents in the Assyrian community of Miramar as they learn what is happening to their relatives in Mosul. There is no argument that the actions of Daesh are to be condemned, but condemnation, I say to Mrs King, is easy; the question of action is a more difficult one. A range of opinions has been expressed in the House today about how New Zealand could contribute. What the Prime Minister has announced is a very strong and sensible contribution. Currently 62 countries are part of an international coalition against Daesh. New Zealand will bring significant expertise to the training of Iraqi soldiers. Our reputation for this sort of work is very good, and with good reason.

We have heard the concern raised today that standing up to Daesh through a training mission increases the risk to New Zealand. But, quite frankly, it is naive to think that the status quo guarantees our safety. We are—and rightly so—concerned about our safety. It is not an isolated threat. We are well aware—all of us in this House—of the attacks on Ottawa, Copenhagen, Paris, and Sydney. All of them were either directly or indirectly linked to or inspired by Daesh. There is no guarantee that New Zealand will stay off this list. It is not a matter of being alarmist; it is a matter of facing reality.

The fight against this evil organisation will not be a straightforward one. It will be difficult and it will be dangerous. But today’s announcement gets the required level of intervention right. Deploying a non-combat training mission to Iraq will help promote stability in the region, it will degrade Daesh’s strength, and it will reduce the threat that it poses internationally. And I say this to Kennedy Graham about his suggestion as to how we could help: quite frankly, it is foolish; it would expose New Zealanders to a far greater risk of injury or death than what is being proposed now.

Let me, in closing, remind the House of the well-known words of that fine young brave supermarket employee. When giving his reasons for hiding Jewish customers during the recent terrorist attack in Paris, he said: “It’s not a question of Jews, or Christians, or Muslims. We’re all in the same boat and we have to help each other to get out of this crisis.” Exactly.

Mr SPEAKER: I understand that Labour will split this call.

DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): The decision made today has meant that our troops will be going to Iraq, and I do not think there will be anyone in the Labour Party who does not wish them well, and hope and pray that they come back safely.

In 2003 New Zealand was under extreme pressure, like today, to send troops to Iraq. We had the courage to say no. I do not believe there is a New Zealander around today who does not believe that that was the right decision to make. The National Party wanted to go. Here we are, 12 years later, and it is in Government and it is sending our troops into an infinitely more complex situation, to do an even less exact and less understood role in Iraq. This decision is one that we will regret. It was a decision that was made months ago by John Key when he was talking to his allies. It was a decision that we already knew about, if not just because we knew that the military had been training for all of that time. Since then we have had a huge number of justifications of why this is necessary, and some of those have been rehearsed out again today.

Going to war is one of the most difficult decisions a Government can make. The acid test is that if there are going to be casualties, we can honestly look those families and the country in the eye and say that their lives were not lost in vain. Our forces will be going to Iraq to make no appreciable difference to the situation there. Any assessment—and I know as well as anybody else—knows that is the case. So the only reason I can see for us being there is to be part of the club, as it is called. For me, that does not stack up as a sufficient and adequate reason. There is a time to stand by our allies but we should make that decision independently, on the basis of the difference we can make and how effective we can be. Sending our people into harm’s way to be part of a club is not sufficient for that sacrifice.

“It is about doing something.”, this Government says—doing something even if it is stupid. That is what it is all about. Our troops will not enter under any conventional status of forces agreement, under which we have always sent our forces away in the past. We will be carrying diplomatic passports. It is a shonky deal, a ruse to get around the fact that the Iraqi Government is so divided that it would be unlikely to agree to a status of forces agreement. That gives you some idea of how universally appreciated our presence will be in Iraq. The troops they will be training are likely to be heavily infiltrated by radicals. We have just heard today that on Camp Taji itself there will be only 16—one six—specialised trainers available on that base. So you can imagine that after $25 billion of US investment, hundreds of US lives lost, and 10 years—10 years—of training, this is what we will contribute, and we believe that risk is appropriate.

And what will they seek to achieve? Well, hopefully a better-equipped army. But we know that the Iraqis can shoot straight; that is not the issue. The problem is with the officers who have been withdrawn and plucked out of the Iraqi army and replaced by relatives and friends of those in power. It is the corruption, the militias who are now more in control than conventional forces—and how are we going to fix that? Quite simply, we are not. We have never been afraid to go into a conflict, but Iraq is a situation where we cannot make a difference, yet we subject our troops and New Zealanders in this country to increased risk from engagement. This will be a decision we regret.

Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): There is no decision more serious for a Government to make than to commit its personnel to a war conflict zone, where some of them may not return. Yet this decision is being made in the House today without a vote—without a vote—because there is no majority in this House to support the deployment of troops to Iraq. In fact, if there was a conscience vote on the National side, there would be a minority in this House in favour of deployment, because that decision in the National caucus was not a unanimous one.

Just 8 short months ago—8 short months ago—John Key issued this statement. It is headed: “No New Zealand Forces to Iraq”—“No New Zealand Forces to Iraq”. He said there would be no boots on the ground, not even in an advisory capacity. He said that New Zealand did not take these actions without a United Nations sanction. Every one of those comments made before the election represents a broken promise. The reason that we are going to Iraq is because after the election, when a little bit of pressure was put on by the Australians, the British, and the Americans, John Key courageously said: “I will deploy, but don’t tell New Zealanders. I need a length of time to soften them up. I need distance from this promise here, before the election, that we would not be doing it.”

There is no doubt that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a brutal and a barbaric organisation, but in that sense it is not that much different from the regime in Syria of President al-Assad, who has slaughtered 100,000 of his people. It is not much different from the Shi’a and the Sunni militias who have committed crimes against humanity and committed war crimes. The one difference is this: ISIS sets out deliberately to publicise its actions to shock and to lure the United States and its friends deeper into committing military forces, and the Government needs to think about why it might be doing that and what the consequences might be. You see, this Government has not thought through the consequences of its actions. National did not when John Key and Bill English supported committing New Zealand troops to Iraq in 2003. They said we should be there, and any analysis of why ISIS has thrived—has thrived in Iraq—relates to the National Party - supported invasion that failed in its objectives and actually made the situation much worse than it was.

We are doing the wrong thing today for the wrong reason. It is for the wrong reason because we are doing it—as Mr Key said in one of his more honest moments—because we are part of the club. It is not like he told the press gallery at yesterday’s press conference that this was the club of 62. Read the Key statement. It nominated members of the club. It said who they were: the Western nations. And we are doing the wrong thing because when you put people’s lives at risk there must be achievable objectives. There must be achievable objectives otherwise the sacrifice that you might indulge in is going to be futile. And we know this. We know that of the 143 people we are putting in harm’s way, just 16 will be there to train—just 16 of 143. We know that in the last 10 years the Americans have put thousands and thousands of trainers into the Iraqi army. They have spent $25 billion in arming and equipping that army to no effect. We know it will not succeed, because that army is deeply corrupt, it is highly sectarian, it is incompetent, and it has low morale. There is no way that New Zealand can do for the Iraqi army what it cannot and will not do for itself. We do not support sending the troops, but our thoughts and prayers will be with them for a safe return home.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I take this opportunity to sum up the statements that have been made in the House. On Monday the Government made a decision to send New Zealand forces to train Iraqi forces. It made the decision to send 106 people to Taji for up to 2 years. We made the decision to stand up to the evil and barbaric behaviour we have seen from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

I want to focus not on political parties that have either well-established positions or fundamentally not much to add to the debate but on Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition. The interesting thing is this. Labour in New Zealand, when it comes to sending New Zealand forces for training, says no—it says no. But the interesting thing is that the Labour Opposition in the UK says yes. The Labor Opposition in Australia says yes, and the equivalent of the Labour Opposition in Canada says yes. So every Labour Opposition in like-minded countries says yes, but, apparently, the Labour Opposition in New Zealand says no. But hold on a minute, Labour when it was the Government said yes to sending 60-odd engineers to Iraq. No debate, no vote—“You’re going, boys.” And Labour when it was in Government said yes to sending the combat forces of the SAS, and it did not tell the country; it just said yes.

I listened to Andrew Little’s speech, and here is the bottom line: he did not believe it, and I do not believe him, because he knows that these people are barbaric and evil. He knows that there are 35 to 40 New Zealanders at risk of being a domestic threat. He knows, like I know, that the number of people on the list is growing to 60 or 70. He knows, like I know, that New Zealanders are in the region. He knows, like I know, that New Zealanders travel prolifically. He says that he cares about New Zealanders and he says that he wants to stand up for them. Well, in Government he would be making this decision. You see, the reason he is not doing so is this. It is not that it is not the right thing, because Phil Goff, when he was the Minister of Defence, used to do all this stuff with bells on. The reason is that he wants politics to win over what is right for the people.

I will not—will not—stand by while Jordanian pilots are burnt to death, when kids execute soldiers, and when people are out there being beheaded. I am sorry, but this is the time to stand up and be counted. Get some guts and join the right side.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I have not called the member yet. [Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! I have a point of order from the Rt Hon Winston Peters and I expect to hear it in silence.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: To enable the Defence Force to be sent with the best wishes of the Prime Minister and this Parliament, perhaps the Prime Minister could be given an extension of time to debate that—rather than the tirade we have just heard.

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

Speaker’s Rulings

Intelligence and Security Committee—Nominations Process

Mr SPEAKER: Last Thursday James Shaw raised a point of order concerning the House’s endorsement of members of the Intelligence and Security Committee and referred to Speaker’s ruling 209/3. He questioned why the Assistant Speaker had ruled that the Speaker had no part in this statutory appointment process.

The committee is set up under the Intelligence and Security Committee Act 1996. It is not a select committee appointed by the House. The Act quite rightly places no duty on the Speaker. The House has always been very careful in preserving the comity between the courts and Parliament not to legislate for the conduct of House procedure.

While the Speaker has no part in this statutory process, he obviously has a concern to ensure that the House operates within the law, which requires consultation to be undertaken. The House cannot make good a failure to consult.

The Act places the responsibility to consult on the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. These consultations are not parliamentary proceedings in which the Speaker has a role. If members consider this unsatisfactory, that is a consequence of the creation of a statutory rather than a parliamentary committee and can be remedied only by changing the law.

A difference of opinion has arisen about the process of consultation. As the Assistant Speaker ruled in the House on Wednesday, the Speaker does not have a role to set what is required by way of consultation. That is a matter for the law. The Speaker’s only role is to determine whether the notice of motion seeking the House’s endorsement is in order. This is entirely consistent with the ruling of Speaker Kidd in 1997.

The House is not above the law. Were the Speaker to become aware that no consultation had been undertaken, the notice of motion would be ruled out of order. The House cannot by resolution right a failure to comply with the law.

Concern about consultation was drawn to my attention on Tuesday. To assist I informed both the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the House and suggested the concerns be discussed with them and other parties, prior to the motion being brought up in the House. It is the mover of the motion from whom I seek assurance about whether the consultation requirements of the law have been met, not those required to consult.

As the Assistant Speaker ruled, using the words of Speaker Kidd in 1997: “we should not be too precious about what constitutes consultation in a political context”. What is usually accepted is that persons will be informed and have an opportunity to be heard. There is no expectation of agreement. There is, after all, the opportunity to put one’s case in debate in the House and ultimately the House could decline to endorse a nomination, the consequence of which would be the recommencing of the statutory process, including consultation.

The Assistant Speaker’s ruling was given in full awareness of the ruling of Speaker Kidd and is entirely consistent with it.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Iraq, Military Deployment—Parliamentary Support

1. ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement with regard to the deployment of troops to the warzone in Iraq that “I don’t think that’s a matter for a Parliamentary vote”?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.

Andrew Little: Given that Parliament has to approve paying the Defence Force, has to approve buying the tools it needs, and has to declare war, does he not accept it is right that Parliament should approve sending our troops to war?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: There is no convention that there will be a parliamentary vote, and history shows that in many cases there has not been. The Labour Government, as I pointed out a few moments ago, when it sent the SAS in, in a combat role, did not actually take that to a parliamentary vote.

Andrew Little: Is not the reality this: the only reason he will not put the decision to deploy troops to Iraq to a vote is that he cannot get the approval of this Parliament?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No. Every 3 years this country has a vote on the leadership shown by political parties. I am quite happy to put my leadership, when it comes to the safety and security of New Zealanders, to a very widespread vote in 2017.

Andrew Little: Given his Government’s failure to secure a status of forces agreement with the Iraqi Government, is he absolutely sure that a diplomatic passport gives the right for our troops to be armed and to defend themselves if necessary?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: That position is yet to be decided, but I am totally confident—totally confident—that our forces, when they go for their training mission, will have all the legal requirements to carry out their functions.

Andrew Little: Does he think that waving a diplomatic passport will get our troops out of trouble following a shooting in Iraq, especially when the Iraqi Government has specifically refused to sign an agreement giving our troops rights over there? Is that the kind of risk he is prepared to take with our troops?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The member is actually quite wrong in parts of his question, but I can say that the matter was raised with the Iraqi Foreign Minister, who gave us every confidence that the position would be resolved to ensure our forces have the absolute protection required.

Andrew Little: Is being part of the club worth sending our soldiers to war without the authorisation of Parliament, without a plan, without legal authority, and without any guarantee of their safety?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: There are 62 members who have decided that they, in some part, will play a role in standing up to evil, in standing up to people who threaten New Zealanders and our values and principles. I suspect, actually, it was a very similar number when Helen Clark decided to send the engineers to Iraq. I suspect it is the same situation as when Helen Clark decided to send the SAS in a combat role. As is so often the case, what we see from Labour is that it does one thing in Government and says another thing in Opposition.

Andrew Little: Why does he not support Labour’s position to actually give the Iraqi Government the help that it has asked for—humanitarian support and reconstruction expertise?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: A number of things—firstly, we are already giving humanitarian support, $14.5 million. Secondly, I would make the point that in our meeting with the Iraqi Foreign Minister the No. 1 thing that he asked for was security training—so the training of Iraqi security forces. I will make this one final point. It is a slightly warped sense of risk when the Leader of the Opposition thinks that the role New Zealand should play should be conducting air strikes when we do not have that capability, as he has publicly said, and, secondly, the reconstruction of roads, schools, and hospitals outside the wire, in an environment where they would be subject to improvised explosive device attacks, attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant—

Hon Member: You’re making it up again.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well, you cannot do them behind the wire, sunshine.

Iraq, Military Deployment—Parliamentary Support

2. Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement “Just passing everything by the barest of majorities isn’t the right way to govern a country”; if so, why?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes, in the context it was given. This comment was made when National had a provisional majority to govern alone following the election in September. It referred to the fact that I intended to work with other parties where possible, and I do that.

Dr Russel Norman: If the Prime Minister thinks passing legislation with bare majorities is not the right way to govern, how is sending troops to Iraq, with no majority, the right way to govern?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I think the member is quite incorrect, actually. The authority and responsibility for making decisions to deploy Defence Force personnel is one that rests with the executive. It always has, and that is why Helen Clark chose to send our SAS forces, in a combat role, to Afghanistan, not only without a parliamentary vote—she did not actually have the courtesy to tell the country they were going.

Dr Russel Norman: Does the Prime Minister accept that sending troops into a combat zone is part of the functionality of a Government and is part of governing a country; if so, how can sending troops to Iraq, with no majority, be the right way to govern a country?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The Government makes decisions on behalf of the people of New Zealand and it puts those to a test. I remember in 2011 when the entire election was dominated by the mixed-ownership model. Despite the fact that we had the single-biggest result prior to the 2014 election of a parliamentary party under MMP, and despite the fact that the Labour Party and the Green Party Opposition got an absolute trouncing, the member still did not want to accept the word of the people. The problem with Russel Norman and the Green Party is they want to accept the word of the people only when it suits their argument. When the people believe in something different from them, all of a sudden they are the idiots. It is a very sad way to treat the people of New Zealand, Mr Norman.

Dr Russel Norman: If the Prime Minister wishes to test this decision he has made to send troops to Iraq, against the will of the people, as represented by the 120 members in this Parliament, why does he not put a motion on the floor of this Parliament and we will see whether he has a majority?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: As I have said so often before, the convention is not that, and that was not the case when Helen Clark made the very numerous decisions that she did. In the end, we test these things every 3 years. But I will say this. We all understand the domestic risks from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). We understand those risks, and we understand those risks from New Zealanders. I just look forward to the political leaders who have spoken in opposition today being the ones who come forward if something goes wrong to those New Zealanders. It will be very different, boy.

Dr Russel Norman: Is it not just a simple truth that the decision the Prime Minister has made today to send troops to Iraq has actually put New Zealanders at more risk?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Quite the opposite. A stronger ISIL is one that has more outreach, more resources, and more capability to actually inflict pain, torture, and kill New Zealanders.

Dr Russel Norman: When he said that sending troops to Iraq was the price we paid for being part of the club, what exactly did he mean?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I meant that New Zealand for a very, very long period of time has worked with other countries to provide support to other countries because in return New Zealanders get support. There are 62 nations, actually, that are part of the coalition effort, and we help each other in a variety of different fields in support. That is why Governments make these decisions, because they know, in my view, that they are strongest when good nations get together to stand up to bad and evil forces. That is something the member does not know, because he has not been in Government, but any party that has knows that.

Dr Russel Norman: Is it not actually the case that the club he was referring to was the “Five Eyes” club; if that is not the case, then why did he not correct the interpretation, which was widespread throughout the New Zealand media for more than a month, that the club he was actually referring to was the “Five Eyes” club, not the 60-odd nations he is now referring to?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: That is quite incorrect. Actually, a number of people asked my office, because I was overseas at the time, and my media team made it quite clear what I was talking about. It is a shame the member will not get a chance to talk about those matters, because he is persona non grata when it comes to the Intelligence and Security Committee.

Economy—Government Financial Position

3. PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he received on trends in Government revenue and how does this compare with forecasts in the Half-Year Update in December?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Last week Treasury released the Government’s financial statements for the 6 months to December. They show higher than expected tax revenue and lower than expected operating expenses, which contributed to an operating balance deficit of $990 million for the 6 months to December. That is $380 million smaller than the one that was forecast by Treasury in the half-year update. The Government considers that a strong economy and responsible fiscal management can deliver a surplus when the final accounts are published in October this year. However, it remains to be seen whether the additional tax revenue above forecast persists for the rest of the financial year.

Paul Foster-Bell: What were the drivers of the better than expected out-turn on the Crown accounts?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Tax revenue was a bit above forecast: GST was about 1.7 percent above the forecast and corporate tax was 3.1 percent above the forecast. Customs and excise duties were $46 million above the forecast. Core Crown expenses were a bit lower than the forecast. We have yet to see whether corporate tax, which is notoriously variable from a forecaster’s point of view, and increases in GST persist through the rest of the year.

Paul Foster-Bell: What steps has the Government taken to return its books to surplus?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government has focused particularly on two aspects. One is policy that underpins a growing economy that can deliver more tax revenue. We have also focused on reasonable constraints on expenditure. We could have got to surplus sooner if the Government had pursued the kind of large-scale drastic cuts that Governments in other developed countries have pursued. However, we have chosen a more considered and incremental path. It does mean that getting to surplus depends less on drastic spending cuts and more on continued growth and revenue.

Paul Foster-Bell: What approaches to fiscal management would make it more difficult for the Government to reduce debt?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Other approaches would be opposing every single Government measure to constrain spending and debt, joining union protests calling for unsustainable increases in public sector spending, and advocating policies that persist with previous spending and borrowing that Treasury forecasts would push New Zealand Government debt to very high levels. This is the approach of the finance spokesman in the Labour Party.

Government Financial Position—Crown Debt

4. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: What is the additional amount of gross debt that the Crown has taken on since the Government was elected in November 2008?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Gross debt in 2008-09 was $43 billion. At the time Treasury was forecasting that it would rise to $125 billion by this year. In fact, forecasts now show that gross debt will reach $80 billion. That is a reduction of $45 billion on the forecasts inherited by the incoming National Government. That does not take account of the fact that in 2008-09 those forecasts did not, because they could not, include the impact of the Canterbury earthquakes and the generally slow recovery from the global financial crisis. So, in the circumstances, the Government has pursued prudent and balanced policies that have led to an increase in gross debt, and if we continue on our current path that debt will start to reduce in the next year or two.

Grant Robertson: Despite that answer, can he actually confirm that New Zealand’s gross debt has gone up by $51 billion under his watch and now represents 36.1 percent of GDP, an increase of 18.2 points since he took office?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The figures will be roughly pointed in the right direction, although I cannot confirm the actual figures, but it is a bit ironic coming from a party that has advocated more spending the whole way through the last 7 years.

Grant Robertson: Further to that answer, can he confirm that net debt is currently $66 billion, or 28.1 percent of GDP, compared with $12 billion, or 6.8 percent of GDP, in 2008, a fivefold increase under his watch?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes, it is roughly that, although the percentage of GDP is too high because Statistics New Zealand have rebased the GDP number and it is actually closer to 25 percent. But of course the Government has followed a balanced policy where, with regard to net debt, we have tried to minimise the amount of borrowing in the face of the recession and the earthquakes on the one hand, and exercise pretty careful constraint on Government spending so that we do not run debt out of control. Every recommendation that party has made would have ended up with higher levels of debt.

Grant Robertson: I seek leave of the House to table a paper from the Parliamentary Library that shows that the figures I just gave on net debt are in fact accurate.

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

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

Andrew Bayly: What steps has the Government taken to reduce Crown debt?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Just by way of example, if I look at the Government’s new spending and revenue initiatives over the past six Budgets, net of reprioritised spending, over six Budgets that new spending and revenue have totalled less than $2.7 billion over those six Budgets. By comparison, the equivalent number for the six Budgets of the previous Labour Government was $20 billion over six Budgets. So the Government has sought to minimise the increase in debt in the face of difficult circumstances by controlling its spending very carefully, at the same time as improving public services and supporting the most vulnerable. We believe that we have got the balance about right.

Grant Robertson: Can the Minister confirm that New Zealand is now paying $10.4 million in interest each day to service the debt built up under his watch?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: That may be around the figure. Of course, it would have been higher if we had listened to that member when he protested outside public service buildings around Wellington against any spending restraint.

Grant Robertson: I do not think any of that—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Is this a point of order?

Grant Robertson: Yes, it is. I was going to say that I do not think any of that material was relevant to the answer, but if he—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will resume his seat.

Andrew Bayly: What progress has been made in achieving the Government’s fiscal goals?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: As I have indicated, we have made measured and incremental progress. We could have gone faster—there is no doubt about that—if we had done what other Governments have done and fired thousands of civil servants. We could have gone slower if we had listened to the finance spokesman for the Opposition and spent a lot more money and run up a lot more debt. But we think we have got the balance about right. The operating balance has shrunk significantly from a peak of around $18 billion to around an estimated $500 million for this year. That is very significant progress.

Grant Robertson: Is he satisfied that he is fulfilling his promise to New Zealanders to “reduce total debt to prudent levels” by incurring gross and net debt levels of $85 billion and $66 billion respectively?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes, and I think the election showed that New Zealanders, on average, are pleased that they have got a Government that understands that to achieve those things you need to exercise restraint in spending, whereas the Opposition finance spokesman has been protesting around Wellington, outside public service buildings, that the Government is not spending enough.

Northland—Support for Vulnerable New Zealanders

5. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: When he said: “This Government has already undertaken a range of work to protect the most vulnerable New Zealanders.” and that became an issue in the Northland electorate and in his own organisation, what did he do about it?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: One thing is the creation of 7,500 jobs with the goodwill of commercial and business people of Northland since that statement, I think.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That answer, with respect, has nothing to do with the question I put, which was, going off his quote, to do with vulnerable New Zealanders.

Mr SPEAKER: No, the question—I can assist the member if he resumes his seat—finished with “So what is the Prime Minister doing about it?”. The Prime Minister then told the House.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister gave this quote in a speech on family violence.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. I have ruled that the question has been addressed. If the member wants to take further supplementary questions to try and delve into the issue, I invite him to do so, but I will not take the member continually now questioning a ruling that I give in this House.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If the Prime Minister has said in a speech on family violence: “This Government has already undertaken a range of work to protect the most vulnerable New Zealanders.” and that issue arises in the Northland electorate with connection to his own organisation, what did he do about it?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The Government has taken a number of steps when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable from family violence. We could list those for you, but they include everything from the work that Paula Bennett did when she was Minister for Social Development right through to the work that Anne Tolley is carrying on today.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: When the Prime Minister said in the same speech: “A great example of this is the recent passing of the Vulnerable Children’s Bill, which ensures that New Zealand’s most at-risk children get priority,” and that became an issue in his own organisation in the Northland electorate, what did he do about it other than to try and cover it up?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! In so far as the Prime Minister feels there is ministerial responsibility, he can answer the question—no? He does not have to.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The Government has been working hard on a range of different issues, and vulnerable children are a great example of the work we are doing.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: When he said in the same speech to do with family violence, children at risk, and vulnerable children: “It is time we learned we must not ignore it, nor should we accept it,” and this became an issue in the Northland electorate within his own organisation and with an MP in his own caucus, what did he do about it other than to cover it up?

Mr SPEAKER: I can see very little ministerial responsibility, but if the Prime Minister wishes to address the question, he can do so.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: In Northland there is a Children’s Team that has been established there, and the Government is doing great work in that area in Northland.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am asking the Prime Minister—and the question included this—about the issue of allegations of family violence to do with his own organisation and his own caucus. I asked him for specificity, and he is not giving me anything at all.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. You are asking the question of the Prime Minister in his ministerial responsibility. He does not have ministerial responsibility for actions within his organisation or his caucus.

Climate Change—Sea Level Rise and Local Government Response

6. EUGENIE SAGE (Green) to the Minister for the Environment: Does he agree with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment that a 30 centimetre rise in sea level “may not sound much” but “will be significant at a national level” in New Zealand?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): Yes, but we need to be open about the considerable uncertainty in projections. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report projects a rise from now to 2050 of between 10 centimetres and 27 centimetres, so the parliamentary commissioner is at the most pessimistic end of that range.

Eugenie Sage: Does he agree with Local Government and Environment Committee chair, Scott Simpson, that the primary concern with the parliamentary commissioner’s investigation into sea level rise is its potentially detrimental financial impact on the owners of coastal property, and is that why he has chosen not to use the Resource Management Act to develop a national policy statement or a national environmental standard for sea level rise to help local authorities in their climate change adaptation?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member misrepresents the comments from my colleague the member of Parliament for Coromandel. The reason the Government provides guidance to local authorities to plan for a sea level rise of between 0.5 metres and 0.8 metres over the years through to 2100 is that the science says that over that period it could be anywhere—and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says this—between 0.28 metres and 0.98 metres. That is a huge range. The idea that you can simplistically regulate, when the science is not that simple, is the reason the Government has not provided a national environmental standard but is instead providing guidance for local authorities.

Eugenie Sage: I seek leave to table an email from the Buller District Council chief executive officer, Paul Wylie, which says, in relation to that council’s work on climate change risk assessment, that the council will look to central government for some national—

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that particular email from Paul Wylie. Is there any objection to it being tabled? There is none. It can be tabled.

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

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I seek leave to table the guidance that my Ministry for the Environment provides for all local authorities, including the Buller District Council, on the level of sea level rise that they should plan for.

Mr SPEAKER: Before I put the leave, can I just be clear that it is not something that is easily available on a website?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Oh, it is easily available. It is quite clear—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! There will be no need for me to put the leave.

Eugenie Sage: Given the significant impacts of sea level rise such as increased coastal erosion and increased flood hazard risk, why are councils being given just some 2008 guidance and being left to deal with the issues themselves, rather than being supported by central government?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No matter how much the member wishes, there is not the level of definitiveness in the science to tell local authorities over the period to 2100—or, for that matter, in the period to 2050—exactly what level of sea level rise there will be. No amount of wishful thinking will provide that exact science.

Eugenie Sage: Does the Minister think it is responsible for his Government to implement policies that have New Zealand on track to double our emissions in the next decade while providing little practical support to local government in how it tackles issues such as coastal erosion, where it controls future development, and how it reduces the risk is of sea level rise?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I would be happy to challenge the member and say that this Government has made more progress on constraining greenhouse gas emissions than any Government since this issue arose. If you look at the growth in emissions between the year 1999 and 2008, when the Green Party propped up that Government, we saw record increases in New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. What you have seen under this Government is record increases in renewable energy and I am proud of it.

State and Social Housing—Purchasing Strategy

7. STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura) to the Minister for Social Housing: How will the Ministry of Social Development’s social housing purchasing strategy lead to better outcomes for tenants?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): An important part of the Government’s social housing reforms is the Ministry of Social Development’s new role as the purchaser of social housing places. The Ministry of Social Development is already conducting a social housing purchasing trial in both west and south Auckland that provides community housing providers and Housing New Zealand with information about who needs a house and where so they can offer people houses and services that meet their needs. This will lead to more choice for tenants. It means that it is all about them and their needs, not necessarily about the Housing New Zealand home that may be in the wrong place and the wrong size.

Stuart Smith: What kinds of tenancies will the Ministry of Social Development be able to purchase for people?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: The whole idea of the purchasing strategy is that it will allow the Ministry of Social Development to purchase a variety of tenancies that will suit the unique needs of the individual. It could, for example, purchase a short-term place for a man coming out of prison with a community provider that specialises in drug and alcohol issues to help him reintegrate and then to move to independence. For a single mum leaving a violent relationship, it might be that it secures a 10-year tenancy that means she is getting a wrap-around service over a long period of time—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Speak to John Key about it. Talk to John Key, not me.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: —and that member, if he ever needs it, should knock on the door and we might look for him, as well.

Phil Twyford: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister has referred to an official document in her answer. Can I ask that the document be tabled?

Mr SPEAKER: I just need to clarify: was the Minister using an official document?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: No, I do not think I did.

Mr SPEAKER: She was not.

Phil Twyford: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Both the primary question and the Minister’s answer referred to the Ministry of Social Development’s social housing purchasing strategy. I would ask that that document be tabled—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member needs to understand that if the Minister was quoting as she gave an answer from an official document, the member can ask for that to be tabled. [Interruption] Order! On this particular occasion, the Minister may well have referred to a development within her ministry, but she was not using it in the House. She does not have to table it.

Stuart Smith: How will the strategy help grow the community housing sector?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: In order for tenants to get better services, the community sector will need to grow. The sector currently provides about 6 percent of social houses. As we know, Labour supports this policy, as we have heard from its members in the past. They are committed to the community housing sector having access to income-related rent subsidies, to capital grants, and to stock transfer. We heard Phil Twyford himself say that we need, particularly in our bigger centres, large-scale urban developments backed by private sector developments and community housing organisations. This is all about that strategy of providing more for tenants and focusing on their needs.

Iraq, Military Deployment—Safety of Personnel

8. Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) to the Minister of Defence: What is the level of risk assessed by the New Zealand Defence Force if its personnel are deployed to Iraq and what force protection would be provided for them?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Defence): Force protection has been determined on the advice from the Chief of Defence Force, and I trust his professional judgment. I am not going to undermine his responsibilities or the security of our forces by providing the detail asked for by the member.

Hon Phil Goff: When the Australian Government is prepared to say that it believes the risk of deploying trainers is high, why is the Minister of Defence and the National Government denying that important information to New Zealanders?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I do not think it is in the interests of the public or the personnel we are deploying for these matters to be discussed. If the member wants to persist in saying that this is something we should be discussing, he needs to look back over the record of a previous Government that did not even tell New Zealanders they were deploying into combat zones.

Hon Phil Goff: Given the importance of a Government’s decision to put its soldiers in harm’s way, should not a deployment be put to the vote in this House in the same way as it was in 2001 when Labour deployed the SAS into Afghanistan and this House passed by 105 votes to seven a resolution supporting the New Zealand deployment to Afghanistan, contrary to the inaccurate and misleading assertions of John Key a moment ago?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The date that the member refers to, of course, relates to a time when we had a responsible Opposition in this House, not the riff-raff we have got there at the moment.

Hon Phil Goff: Why are we sending New Zealand troops into a high-risk environment when the training outcomes are expected to be low because New Zealand trainers cannot make a difference to the deeply entrenched corruption, the incompetent leadership, the sectarianism, and the low morale of the Iraqi army?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I notice that the member, as he is asking that question, is referring to his own notes. I suggest that he stops talking to himself in the mirror, because he is getting just far too much misinformation from himself.

Hon Phil Goff: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I can sense what the point of order is. I am going to invite the member to re-ask that question.

Hon Phil Goff: Why are we putting Kiwis into a high-risk conflict environment when the training outcomes are expected to be low because of the incompetent leadership, the deeply entrenched corruption, the sectarianism, and the very poor morale of the Iraqi army, which our trainers cannot have any influence over at all?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I reject totally the points that are made by the member and suggest that they are made simply to try to give some credence to the very, very sad commentary that he is delivering the nation on this matter.

Hon Phil Goff: Why have we agreed to send New Zealand soldiers into Iraq without a status of forces agreement, which is the normal part of the protection that Kiwis serving in another country would have?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: It would be good if the member kept up with what is actually happening. What was announced today is that the Government is giving the New Zealand Defence Force the go-ahead to prepare for deployment with the expectation that, all going well, it would be deployed at some time in May. One of the conditions around that is ensuring that we do have appropriate legal protections for our defence forces. I do not think that the fixation the member has on a particular type of protection is reasonable, given that there is only one country out of 22 currently in Iraq that uses that particular protection. I just think that it is wrong for the left to come in here and insist that unless there is this specific type of protection available, then everything is wrong. It works for 22 other countries. We will negotiate something that will give our men and women in the mission the protection they need.

Hon Phil Goff: Is Lieutenant-General Tim Keating, Chief of Defence Force, correct in asserting that of the 143 New Zealand Defence Force personnel we are putting in harm’s way, only 16 of those are specialist trainers—only 16 of 143 being put in harm’s way?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Let me just reject the concept that we are deliberately putting troops in harm’s way. Every precaution is being taken to ensure that they are as safe as possible in difficult circumstances. The Chief of Defence Force has advised us that if we were to send a group of as many as 16 who are specialist trainers, then they would need other support, and we have not been stinting in allowing him to put together a mission that has all those supports in it. It is ridiculous for the member to start making a big deal of force protection at the start of his question, and then start getting outraged because we have got force protection that he thinks is too much. What is it, Mr Goff? Are we protecting them or not?

Hon Phil Goff: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. From that very long answer, was the answer actually yes?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member can go back and look at his question—[Interruption] Order! The member can go back and look at his question and he will see that the question was certainly addressed. It may not have been to the member’s satisfaction, but it was addressed.

Small Businesses—Growth

9. MELISSA LEE (National) to the Minister for Small Business: What steps is the Government taking to support growth for small business?

Hon CRAIG FOSS (Minister for Small Business): A strong and growing economy, with low interest rates, helps to create an environment that supports small business growth. Policies limiting the amount of extra Government spending, lowering personal and company tax rates, and focusing on sustainable jobs have contributed to GDP growth of 3.2 percent and low interest rates. In addition to getting the macroeconomic policies right, the Government’s Business Growth Agenda is also helping small business growth. These policies are creating an environment that is better for business.

Melissa Lee: What evidence has he seen that shows these policies have contributed to small business growth under this Government?

Hon CRAIG FOSS: According to the most recent 5-year MYOB Business Monitor report, New Zealand small and medium sized businesses are now showing the highest revenue growth in more than 5 years. The report shows that almost twice as many businesses reported a rise in revenue performance compared with 2009. The report, which canvassed over 1,000 small and medium enterprises over 5 years, indicates how business conditions have significantly improved. This is another example that under a National-led Government small businesses are more confident growing their businesses and hiring more Kiwis.

Melissa Lee: How does the current environment, which is helping to contribute towards small business growth, compare with the environment in 2008?

Hon CRAIG FOSS: Small Kiwi businesses are now more confident as they are now operating in a growing economy and are enjoying low interest rates. This is in contrast to 2008, when the economy had been in recession for 1 year prior to the global financial crisis, and mortgage rates exceeded 10 percent. To continue this growth and to enable small businesses to employ more Kiwis, the last thing they need is high extra spending policies and more complex taxes, as proposed by the Labour Opposition.

Biosecurity Management—Baggage Screening

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): My question is to the Minister for biosecurity: does he consider that cuts the Government has made to biosecurity have contributed to the current fruit fly outbreak?

Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Once again, this member cannot read the question from the sheet correctly. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member should have addressed it to the Minister for Primary Industries. The question will stand, and the Hon Nathan Guy will answer the question.

10. Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman) to the Minister for Primary Industries: Does he consider that cuts the Government has made to biosecurity have contributed to the current fruit fly outbreak?

Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries): The assertion in that question is factually incorrect. Overall biosecurity funding is now $9 million more than when we took office. In the last 2 years we have significantly increased the number of detector dogs, we have added 130 front-line quarantine officers, we have 15 new X-ray machines, we have two portable response labs, we have introduced Government-industry agreements, we have announced we are building a $68 million biocontainment laboratory, and the list goes on.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Supplementary question, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am just waiting for a little bit of assistance here.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Is it not true that in the first year of the National Government, $2 million was cut from the biosecurity budget, 54 front-line staff were fired, detector dog numbers were cut, and since then the hard-working front-line biosecurity staff have been unable to maintain an appropriate level of biosecurity at our borders?

Hon NATHAN GUY: No. The member over on the other side cannot even read a question that is down on the sheet correctly, so—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I dealt with that matter earlier. Would the Minister just answer the question?

Hon NATHAN GUY: I have. I have answered it.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I rose to my feet; I could not hear the answer because of the barracking the Minister’s comments caused. I have asked the Minister to answer the question.

Hon NATHAN GUY: We have increased funding by $9 million extra since we came into office, we have established more front-line quarantine inspectors, we have introduced 15 new X-ray machines, and we have significantly increased the dog detector teams. So I do not know where that member gets his information from.

Hon Damien O’Connor: How does the Minister justify his elimination of 100 percent bag screening in 2012 and the subsequent four incursions of fruit fly, given the statement from own department that “Fruit fly is most likely to arrive with plane passengers bringing in infested fruit in luggage.”?

Hon NATHAN GUY: It is interesting, because X-rays are just one of a combination of tools that are used at the border, and what is really interesting for the member—and he may have forgotten—is that when there was 100 percent screening, from 2001 to 2008, we still had significant incursions under the Labour Government. They were varroa, painted apple moth, didymo, fall webworm, red fire ant, and Asian gypsy moth, which required aerial spraying over Hamilton in 2003—and the list goes on.

Hon Damien O’Connor: If the Minister considers, as he so often states, that our biosecurity system is world class, how does he explain that in 2010 we had Psa in kiwifruit, and the great white butterfly; in 2013 we had an animal limb in palm kernel expeller, black grassweed, the red-vented bulbul, and the live bamboo longhorn beetle; and in 2014 we had white peach scale on kiwifruit, and onion fly in imported garlic? How many more unwanted pests and diseases need to arrive before he resigns?

Hon NATHAN GUY: That member obviously does not realise that there was a whole list of incursions under the Labour regime. We have very much a world-class system in New Zealand, and the reason I say that is that we are one of the few countries in the world that has a proven history of successful eradication of pests, whether it is fruit fly, white-spotted tussock moth, the Asian gypsy moth, or even termites. We have proven to the world that we can eradicate pests, and we will continue to do that.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Can he confirm that an audit of the new direct exit system introduced by his Government, at the same time that he removed 100 percent X-ray bag screening, found failures in the system that resulted in risk items getting through into New Zealand with 80,000 people; and why did he not reinstate at that time 100 percent X-ray bag screening?

Mr SPEAKER: The Hon Nathan Guy—either of those two supplementary questions.

Hon NATHAN GUY: Biosecurity officials are focused on those that have the highest risk, and the green lane actually has the best compliance rate. The member needs to realise that we have strengthened the biosecurity systems. We are putting in 100 percent dog detection screening. All international passengers coming into our international airports have 100 percent screening, and the member also needs to realise that there are four pathways that we are focused on: cargo, craft, mail, and passenger. We will continue to strengthen the biosecurity system as it continues to evolve with new technology.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Given that in the past 4 years border security monitoring funding decreased by 2 percent in real terms but international visitors increased by 13 percent, and international cargo imports increased by 19 percent—meaning biosecurity staff were expected to do 15 percent more work with 2 percent less funding—how can he claim that we have a world-class biosecurity system?

Hon NATHAN GUY: I cannot verify that member’s facts and figures, because he is known to get things wrong, but what I can say is that the budget for biosecurity is $9 million higher now, under this Government, than when we came into office, and the member should not forget that.

Consumer Affairs—Repossession Agents

11. KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National) to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: What actions is the Government taking to limit the powers of repossession agents?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Recently I joined the Associate Minister of Justice in announcing new laws that will better protect consumers from those repossession agents who act in an unscrupulous manner. From 6 June 2015 all repossession agents must be registered, with fines of up to $40,000 for those who breach those rules. Those new requirements are one of a number of changes focused on increasing consumer protection under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Act 2014.

Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: What other requirements of repossession agents is the Government implementing?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: From 6 June 2015 creditors will be allowed to repossess an item only if it is specifically identified in the credit contract, and repossession agents will no longer be permitted to take certain essential items, such as beds and cooking equipment. The new changes will also prevent someone from becoming a licensed repossession agent if they have committed certain crimes, including violence and dishonesty offences. Increasing consumer protection through an enhanced repossession agent licensing regime is just another important part of our Business Growth Agenda.

Social Development, Minister—Migrant Workers

12. CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First) to the Minister for Social Development: Does she stand by all her statements?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): Yes.

Clayton Mitchell: Why did she backtrack on her recent statement regarding migrant workers: “We must be careful we don’t fill up all the spaces with immigrants”?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: In fact, I did not backtrack. That was part of a very long, complex interview and the Gisborne Herald, when I complained about those comments, actually printed a retraction and the full transcript of the radio interview that I had completed.

Clayton Mitchell: Can she explain why New Zealand job seekers are not equipped to take the spaces she talks about, like the thousands at the Cricket World Cup in seasonal positions that so many migrant workers have come here for?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: As I said in that radio interview that the member referred to, this is a very complex issue, so we have to be very careful. The Government is very clear that it wants New Zealanders to have access to jobs first and foremost. So everything that we do—through Work and Income, through our immigration policies—is predicated on that. But there are times when our growers, in particular—and the member comes from an area that needs seasonal employment—tell us that there are times when New Zealand workers are not enough, and we have to provide for migrant workers in order to get those crops to market.

Clayton Mitchell: Would the Minister support tax breaks for employers so that they can afford to pay First World wages and reduce the number of job seekers, instead of taking the cheap option of abusing the goodwill of migrant workers; if not, why not?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Well, it is a bit rich, coming from a party that does not even believe in migrant workers. But, however, there is a great deal of support offered to employers in order to ensure they give support to the New Zealand workers. The issue I was discussing in that radio interview is the difficulty where we have some isolated rural communities where there are not the jobs available and other areas where there are jobs available. That is why this Government has put into place the 3K to Christchurch initiative, and almost over 1,000 people now have taken advantage of that. We have been able to move mainly young people into good jobs, good paying jobs, down in Christchurch. This Government intends to roll out more of that sort of support to make sure New Zealand workers get those jobs.

Bills

Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2)

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 19 February.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you for the opportunity to continue my call to speak on the third reading of the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2). I was saying that the amendments in the bill are consistent with the intent of the Act, which is to minimise harm from gambling. The number of pokie machines has actually decreased significantly since 2003. The National Government is aware of issues that arise due to gambling, and it is always making sure that it is putting provisions in place to reduce the harm that can be caused by gambling. I also acknowledged that the behaviour of some class 4 gambling societies has not been as it should be. The Government recently announced a range of reforms to class 4 gambling. Other improvements to the regulation of class 4 gambling will be made through a new amendment bill, which was introduced in May 2014. The changes will give the public better information on grant-making decisions and reduce the opportunities for personal gain from conflicts of interest.

Supplementary Order Paper 454 adds value, but we do not support Supplementary Order Paper 478, which amends clause 5, and we do not support Supplementary Order Paper 84 as this Supplementary Order Paper has similarities to the Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill—a member’s bill, the Flavell bill—which sought to amend the Gambling Act 2003, the parent Act. The Flavell bill was passed with some amendments in December 2013. The amendments in Supplementary Order Paper 84 to clauses 22, 22AA, 40, 41, new 41A, and 42 are now already in effect. The select committee’s report on the bill did not support the change in clause 5, and the amendment was deleted from the bill. The amendment in Supplementary Order Paper 84 to clause 28 appears to be targeted at an issue that arose around the time when the Supplementary Order Paper was tabled. Some gaming machines were being placed in open areas of venues so that gamblers could smoke while playing the machines, but this is not relevant any more. The amendments in Supplementary Order Paper 84 to clauses 47 and 52 are about increasing the penalties for not using gaming funds for community purposes and, for those managing venues, for breaching conflict of interest provisions. There is no justification for these increases. The definition of the words “gaming machine” is amended, and this is to clarify items that do not need the same level of regulation as a gaming machine.

The amendments to the Act will make sure that gambling operators know their obligations. The venue manager rather than the holder of the venue licence will be required to display a notice in the gambling area advising customers that the venue has a policy of identifying problem gamblers. All these measures are important as most of these cases of a problem with addiction to gambling do not recognise it themselves. There are multiple steps to inhibit the action of gambling if it is found to be a problem for someone. One of the main actions in place is that operators are required to keep records of every single person prohibited from their venues, as well as having to provide the Secretary for Internal Affairs with any information on a person, if it is required. This information is to be provided in such a way that the privacy of the individual is not breached, yet, there is sufficient information to track down or locate this person. The good thing about this is that the exclusion of problem gamblers restricts them from accessing the gambling area only rather than the entire venue, so this also allows the person not to be restricted as such for other activities.

For gambling licensees and applicants, the conflict of interest safeguards will be for all persons making decisions regarding gaming machine grants, rather than just a select few key people in management. The suitability criteria for those applying for a licence to operate non-casino gaming machines will include relevant and serious crimes and any other offences under other legislation. Currently, they are restricted only to crimes involving dishonesty. This will make sure that the operators have credibility and understand the importance of enforcement of the legislation. Given this bill is about making sure we look after those who can get into the trap of gambling addiction, I support the bill and commend the bill to the House. Again, as I am not a part of the Government Administration Committee, which considered this bill, it has been a great privilege to be able to make a contribution to this bill. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. I call Denise Roche—5 minutes.

DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take a call on this bill, the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2). While I was looking at this bill in preparation for today’s speech, I decided to go back to look at why it was first introduced. If we recall, this bill was introduced in August 2007. Essentially, the reason for it was to make some amendments to tighten up some technical parts of the 2003 Gambling Act, which was enacted only a few years before that in 2004. This bill came to the House in August 2007. The Government Administration Committee reported back to the House in May 2008. The second reading was in May 2009, and it was introduced back to this House last year, in 2014. This Parliament, the 51st Parliament, picked it up again in December for the Committee of the whole House, and here we are in its final reading. That is a gestation of approximately 7 years. You have to ask yourself why it has taken so long. I am assuming that it is because circumstances have overtaken many parts of this bill. There have been other bills that have been introduced that have tinkered with the Gambling Act and there have also been quite a lot of different applications of the original Act, which still need to be tightened up and are still about to be addressed with the next bill, the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3), which is currently in front of the select committee.

The reason this was enacted in the first place was to tighten up some of the controls around gambling machines and regulations for casinos. I went back and looked at the Hansard speeches of the second reading in 2009. I was interested to note in Sue Bradford’s speech at that time that she said that $2 billion was gambled in that previous financial year. So in 2008-09, $2 billion was gambled and was lost from people’s pockets. Despite a reduction in pokie machines between that time and now and despite the efforts of councils and sinking-lid policies, this year and the last financial year the Department of Internal Affairs reported that $2.09 billion was spent. That is $19 million more than what was spent on gambling in the previous year. In the last financial year, $808 million was spent on class 4 pokie machines—that is the pubs and clubs gambling—and $509 million was spent at casinos. This is despite a gradual reduction in the number of venues, the number of licence holders, and the number of non-casino gambling machines that have gradually decreased. So what we are seeing is that despite those efforts by communities, people are gambling more.

Without a doubt we support this bill. It has mostly technical amendments. It includes the definition of a “gaming machine” and that is great because it actually starts to take into account some of the changes to gaming machines that are being introduced—specifically, the multi-seat automated gaming machines that Skycity will be introducing to its casino as part of its deal for the convention centre, which allows an extra 20 automated machines that will have up to 12 persons at each site. We see this bill as a lost opportunity, essentially. We had Supplementary Order Papers to this bill through the Committee of the whole House to look at player tracking and pre-commit cards, which would essentially make gambling on pokie machines a lot safer than it is currently. We have had attempts in other bills—specifically, in the Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill that went through in this House 2 years ago in the name of the Māori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell—and yet we still have not addressed problem gambling as an issue.

We will be supporting this bill as it comes through; however, we do want to say that there is a lot more that we could be doing to sort out some of the rorts in this industry and to keep people safe.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a call on this bill. It says much about the current Government’s priorities when it comes to problem gambling that this bill has been sitting on the Order Paper or slowly making its way through the House for 8 years. It was introduced by the last Labour Government and it is not the slightest priority for the current National Government. Actually, the Government pays only lip service to reducing problem gambling, because when an opportunity comes to increase problem gambling so that it can get a convention centre in Auckland, it does not hesitate to take that up with its dodgy deal with Skycity.

I was particularly interested in Part 2, where the bill talks about what an increase in casino gambling actually is. It gives clear responsibility for making those decisions to the Gambling Commission. Why does it do that? It is because it believes that those decisions should be made independently of political considerations and that decisions around increasing casino-related gambling should be made independently of Government. What the Government has not put in this bill is the little rider that says “except when it comes to a deal with Skycity”.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! This is not just about casinos; this is about—

CHRIS HIPKINS: I raise a point of order, Mr Assistant Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No, we have followed this one through. I ask the member to come back to the bill. It is not about deals with Skycity and convention centres; it is about class 3 licences. If you are referring to Part 2, it refers to the Gambling Commission. I ask the member to come back to those specific points.

CHRIS HIPKINS: I will read the clause. The clause that I am referring to says: “Decisions on what constitutes an increase in the opportunities for casino gambling are a function of the Gambling Commission.” They are not a function for Government. So if the Government decided to increase casino gambling in order to get a free convention centre—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I will warn the member. We are not talking about anything to do with casinos and convention centres. The member will come back specifically to problem gambling and the Gambling Commission. Those are the points that I want the member to concentrate on.

CHRIS HIPKINS: The Gambling Commission is tasked with reducing problem gambling. One of the ways it does that is it is given the authority to determine what constitutes an increase in casino gambling. The Skycity convention centre deal—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! [Interruption] Order! If the member mentions the convention centre again, I will terminate his speech. Come back to the content of the debate.

CHRIS HIPKINS: You’re wrong—you’re wrong. You are absolutely wrong. That is an abuse of your position.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! The member will stand and apologise for those comments.

CHRIS HIPKINS: No.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): If the member does not apologise for those comments, I will ask him to leave.

Chris Hipkins withdrew from the Chamber.

MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): It is my pleasure to take a call on the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2). The Gambling Act 2003 took effect on 1 July 2004. The Act brought major reforms to the gambling sector and a significant shift in focus towards the minimisation of harm associated with gambling. After the Act came into effect, it emerged that an amendment bill was needed to tidy up the errors and clarify provisions to ensure that they operated as originally intended. I actually sat on the Government Administration Committee, which heard the original submissions last term. I think we were all motivated—everyone in this House and especially this National Government—in terms of making sure that we got a firm focus on harm minimisation.

However, the pokies are actually quite important. The revenue that is generated each year that goes back into our sports clubs and our community groups is significant: $637 million. I know that as someone who is actively involved in the Ōrewa Surf Lifesaving Club back in my own electorate. Some of the money that is generated through pokie gambling has been used to buy equipment like defibrillators and equipment that relates directly to surf lifesaving, and what is required and needed by the patrols on the beach each summer. We are supporting Supplementary Order Paper 454 in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne. What this Supplementary Order Paper does is it clarifies the Secretary for Internal Affairs’ suspension and cancellation powers for licences and class 3 and class 4 operators and venues, so it is clear that the power is available for past one-off breaches.

I think this is really important, and a couple of the other points also relate to this. It is important that the Department of Internal Affairs has got the power to go in there and sanction and act against operators that are in breach, and it has to be able to do that retrospectively as well. It clarifies the Gambling Commission’s power to suspend or cancel a casino licence. To make it clear, it is also available for past breaches—very similar in vein to the first point.

The Supplementary Order Paper specifies ongoing obligations and duties on societies after licensing—for example, to minimise costs, maximise returns, and minimise risks of problem gambling. Minimising costs is critically important because the first thing that struck me with an organisation that is responsible for the distribution of funds that are coming from pokies and class 4 gambling is the fact that if you look around the world—and I am not going to single anyone out in particular; I would not do that—there are organisations, NGOs, that are designed and developed to deliver aid into areas like, say, Africa. But when you actually have a look and you actually break down or if you were to audit where the money is going, many of them are often running at 70 or 80 percent of the money raised—being used on admin. I do not think that the people making donations or the people supporting those types of organisations are doing that in anticipation that the 70 or 80 percent of the funds is going to administration. Of course, the same situation could very quickly arise here if there were not very strict rules and regulations in place to prevent that from happening, and there are.

The Supplementary Order Paper specifies that societies must incur only actual, reasonable, and necessary costs, which is a big part of what I have just been talking about and obviously is a big part of the Department of Internal Affairs’ responsibility in terms of auditing. There is also a part there—I am just struggling to see it at the moment—that relates to the treatment of depreciation. I see that the Hon Michael Woodhouse is in the House tonight, and I am sure that he could relate to and understand, having run a fairly big organisation himself, the importance of being able to get depreciation right. It may sound easy; it is not actually that easy. There are always gaps that are wide open in terms of abuse around the way you handle and deal with depreciation, so it is very important that this bill clearly spells out exactly how depreciation is going to be handled.

In terms of harm minimisation, we actually heard a submission the other day on the committee that I found fascinating, and certainly the committee is looking into it more and seeing how viable the option is. It is facial recognition. The group that made the submission had just gone through a trial where it had used facial recognition as a way of monitoring and managing problem gamblers. The trial had been very successful, and to me it seems like a pretty good solution, actually.

Brett Hudson: Sensible—very sensible.

MARK MITCHELL: A sensible solution, exactly. But, of course, there is a whole lot of work now to be done in terms of what the practicalities are in terms of actually being able to roll this out. I know one of the issues that was raised is that there are costs associated with it—I think anything up to about $30,000 for a unit to actually attach to one of the gambling machines. Then, of course, there are the issues around having to make modifications to a gambling machine and how you do that whilst still remaining compliant. So those issues are going to have to be worked out and ironed out, but they do not seem insurmountable to me. The facial recognition system seems like a very good system that will actually remove a lot of the stress that probably employees who are working in licensed premises where there are pokies have to deal with now, in terms of trying to identify someone who is a problem gambler or who may be starting to develop a problem-gambling habit. They have to use an intervention to try to work out how to manage that. It would actually remove a lot of that—

Brett Hudson: Much easier on the staff.

MARK MITCHELL: Yes, it would make the whole environment for the staff, in terms of management, much more effective and much easier for them. So I think that that is something that is going to be interesting and we will definitely keep a close look in terms of how that develops and where it goes.

The behaviour of some class 4 gaming societies has been disappointing. There is no doubt about that. The audit that the Department of Internal Affairs carried out recently showed that there are definitely some areas that need to be focused on. But the positive thing about that is that we have got the audits happening and they are identifying the problems, which means that remedial action can be taken to fix them. It also sends a very clear message to the sector that it is being watched, it will be audited, and the Department of Internal Affairs is across the issue. So to me that was a very positive thing—not positive in terms of that it could have been a far better result, but positive in terms of that the sector is on notice and that with an ongoing audit programme we will definitely see an improvement in behaviour.

Brett Hudson: That’s right—you’ve got to measure it to manage it, Mr Mitchell.

MARK MITCHELL: That is dead right—absolutely.

So, finally, I would just like to say that the bill is very important. It does take positive steps in terms of tightening up the loopholes that were there and making it far clearer in terms of what can be done. I recommend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): I stand to support the third reading of the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2). We support this bill because it was first introduced by Labour in 2007. I just listened to the speech from the member who has resumed his seat, Mark Mitchell—a good member. He said the bill was very important. Member, it has been very important for a very long time—since 2007. So I am glad that the Government has finally caught up with how important it is and has decided to move it along the agenda of this House. It was first introduced by the Hon Rick Barker. If he is listening today, he will be delighted to know that a bill that was once in his name is finally being passed today.

There is quite a number of bills like this on the Order Paper. I am looking forward to what we do with the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill, which is in my name, has been there since about 2007 as well, and keeps being put back on the Order Paper with little or no action. Or what about the Public Health Bill? That goes right back into the early 2000s, and we are still waiting for some action on that. So we are pleased that we are getting to the end of the process of this bill.

I have to say, just in brief and in passing, that there is an irony that we are debating a gambling bill at the same time that we are talking about more gambling in the Skycity Casino. As you know, the deal was for a convention centre—yes, I know, but this is about gambling, and gambling is around pokie machines, the most evil sort of gambling you can have. I see a member over there nodding and agreeing with me. He knows that it is true. So there is an irony or a syllogism—a word like that—that we are debating this Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) at the same time that there is discussion about putting money into more gambling through a deal done on the convention centre.

We passed some very important major reforms to gambling back in 2003. I noticed that some of the members in the discussion on this bill talked about how they had put a lid on pokie machines, casinos, and so on. I need to remind them that, actually, it was not the National Government that did that at all. That, in fact, was done by the previous Labour Government.

Brett Hudson: Well, they didn’t pass this bill.

Hon ANNETTE KING: We did bring in those major reforms, Mr Hudson. We brought them in by putting a moratorium on casinos.

We do not want a casino in Wellington. For anybody out there thinking we should have a casino in Wellington, there are those of us who will fight it tooth and nail. We want to be the cultural capital of New Zealand, the cafe capital, the coffee capital—certainly not the casino capital. We will leave that to the Aucklanders. They can have their casino; we will have all the other good things in life.

We brought in a moratorium on casinos, we brought in a reduction in the number of class 4 gambling machines and new venues, and we had a significant shift in the focus towards minimisation of gambling-associated harm. As a former Minister of Health, and as a person who has an interest in the harm of gambling, I thought that was a very important measure. I thought it was a long time until we actually acknowledged that gambling is an addiction. As we know, addictions can destroy people’s lives. In fact, a gambling addiction, as many of us have learnt from constituents and from knowing people who have addictions, can mean that people can lose their homes, their houses, and their families because they are addicted to gambling. Those big changes we made were, I think, very important indeed.

This bill makes some more small policy amendments, and some technical amendments, but it aims to allow the Gambling Act to operate as it was originally intended. We do, in fact, support this bill. I think that Peter Dunne’s Supplementary Order Paper 454 strengthens the bill to some extent, and we believe that whatever we can do to improve the gambling environment we have in New Zealand will be better.

We are a nation of gamblers. There is nothing wrong with a flutter now and then. Mr Assistant Speaker, as a member from up Waikato way, you would be interested to know I went to the Trentham cup this year. Of course, once a year some of us go to the races. I know that Mr Bishop was there, enjoying a flutter. I did too. I lost my purse of money, which was not very much, being miserable in terms of the dollar each way I put on, but I enjoyed it. I did get some tips from Sue Moroney. None of them was any good. But I did enjoy the flutter that I had, and I think that New Zealanders do. They like the opportunity to take a Lotto ticket or to have a bet on the horses. No one is denying that.

What we are concerned about are those gambling operations that are addictive to New Zealanders. We know that it is not easy to get addicted to Lotto every Saturday night, because it does not reinforce you often enough. In fact, as you know, you are not reinforced at all unless you are one in 10 million or something. But we do know that pokie machines, gambling casinos, and so on have intermittent reinforcement for the person who is involved in them. So legislation coming out of this Parliament that helps around those issues and allows people to still enjoy a gamble now and then but puts in protections is, we think, very important indeed.

Just in conclusion, I have never forgotten that before we put in restrictions on pokie machines under the last Labour Government, there was a hotel that had opened up in the poorest part of my electorate. What shocked me was that it was not going to be the beer that was poured at the bar that was going to keep it going; it was the pokie machines that were being put in where the poorest people of my electorate live. They were encouraged to have a go on the pokie machines for some hope. So I have to say that at that moment I knew that if that was the only way the hotel was going to make money—encouraging people to gamble more on pokie machines—we had things wrong, which is why I am glad that we have restricted the numbers.

We have involved local government much more in gambling than we had in the past. I would like to see us do that with alcohol. We have got a way to go, because we have not addressed that issue properly yet. I look forward to when we do address the alcohol issues in terms of local government’s ability to have alcohol plans and so on. So we do support the bill. It is long overdue. We are pleased that it is finally coming to its third reading. I say to Mr Barker, who will definitely be glued to his crystal set, that this bill is finally going to be passed.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Jonathan Young—5 minutes.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill. Can I say what an excellent mayoral bid speech that came from Mrs King, talking about the great city of Wellington: the cultural centre, cafes, and galleries. Actually, that is what New Plymouth has been called—the emerging cultural centre of heartland New Zealand—so I know what you are talking about.

Stuart Nash: By who?

JONATHAN YOUNG: Oh, by Auckland travel writers, of course, Mr Nash. Nobody from the East Coast would say that about the west coast, I know, but only because they have a bias that is misinformed.

This is a very important bill to speak about, and the Government does realise that there are issues around harm minimisation, regarding class 4 gambling, that need to be attended to. One of the things that we do understand in this country is that if the Government were not involved in the management of such areas, there could be even greater harm. One of the concerns there, of course, is the online gambling that happens, which is unrestricted. So when the Government can look at what happens with pokies right throughout the country and can have appropriate legislation to ensure that there is minimum harm, then that is a good thing.

The problem gambling levy currently raises $55 million over 3 years to fund services and to minimise the harm caused in communities. This is used on front-line counselling, including dedicated services for Māori, Pacific, and Asian communities. Gambling policy is always a balancing act for the Government. It is worth remembering that many people gamble and do have fun responsibly, and the money raised for the community from all types of gambling is also significant. I think my colleague Mark Mitchell mentioned surf life-saving clubs, which, throughout this country, work very hard over the summer seasons. In fact, they go to remote beaches where there is hardly any community except during the summer time, and they have no ability to fund-raise locally. Yet, they are able to receive some sort of benefit from different societies to enable them to continue to serve the New Zealand community on those beaches.

We have to say that the behaviour of some of the class 4 gambling societies has been less than the best and has been very disappointing. But there are signs of progress, and what this amendment bill does is brings far more attention to the remiss behaviour that has happened, and that is good. As time progresses, of course, technology improves and there are new ways in which somebody can be identified as a problem gambler, and there are ways in which mitigation can be put in place. It is very important that there is a very strong and robust process by which the proceeds of gambling are handled. So this amendment bill covers many of those facets to ensure that the benefit that comes from gambling—33 percent of the proceeds—is returned back to the community and that there is not some rorting of the system where the community does not receive that level of benefit.

Gambling is with us in our communities and our societies. As I said before, online gambling is unmonitored and unmoderated, and there is some real concern about that. So it is important that amendment bills, such as this, make progress to make the potential harm minimised and the benefits to our communities maximised. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Barbara Kuriger—5 minutes.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki—King Country): It is great to be given the opportunity today to stand here and speak on the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2), set down here for its third reading. I would like to thank the Government Administration Committee for its work. I too am in a position to endorse the member for New Plymouth’s comments about the culture and cafe centre of the world—I endorse that, Jonathan.

Gambling is one of the industries within New Zealand that has the potential to cause harm and devastation to many families, to many individuals, and to many communities. Previously, the Gambling Act 2003, as it stood, was in itself very large and complex, and there were a number of issues that were identified, which meant a review was needed. The Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2), which I am speaking on today, contains various amendments alongside technical policy developments to clarify the original legislation and remove any vague confusion. The bill has been through the select committee process and has received a number of recommendations, and it is clear that the main amendments here are to minimise the harm resulting from gambling in our communities. This falls in line with the priority of this National Government, whose purpose is to control the growth of gambling and minimise the harm that is caused.

The Gambling Act 2003 brought about major reform to the gambling sector with a shift in focus that highlighted the need for a minimisation of the harm associated with it. The Government recognises and appreciates that harm, and it is not an issue to be taken lightly. Gambling is a destructive form of addiction that affects many New Zealanders. The Gambling Act, therefore, imposes a levy on the proceeds of gambling to deal with that. Currently, over $55 million in 3 years has been raised to fund the front-line counselling services that are necessary and essential for mitigating the harm and damage that problem gambling can cause in communities. This is a significant and commendable effort, and the dedicated professional services that exist for those diverse and affected groups in our communities are a reflection of the motivation and intent of this Government to alleviate the harm caused.

The amendments recommended by the Government Administration Committee will make sure that the regulatory framework operates as it is supposed to, and that gambling operators know their obligations to both themselves and the communities they represent. This Government’s policy is focused on minimising the harm caused by gambling while at the same time maximising the returns to the community. The amendments to the Act, as implied by the select committee, will tighten the regulations around the monitoring of gambling. Those organisations and people who receive grants from those gambling societies are, therefore, able to be kept accountable as to how they distribute their finances.

Gambling is a moneymaking business; there is no doubt about that. However, the amendments in this bill are consistent with the aims of the Act and with minimising harm. Gambling policy is, and always has been, a balancing act. Many individuals gamble in a responsible manner and have fun while doing so. Of note is the fact that gambling societies raised over $637 million for their respective communities in the year 2013. Again, this is a significant and commendable effort, and it cannot be ignored that this money is going back into the community. However, one of the major focuses of the Government is to ensure that the Gambling Act can be accurately and rightly enforced.

In summary, yes, gambling does damage families and communities. These amendments to the Act will tighten the regulations around the monitoring of gambling and will minimise the hard resulting from it. These changes to the Act are intended to resolve any confusion about its meaning and reinforce to the industry how important aspects of the Act work and exactly whom it is accountable to. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time.

Ayes 109

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 11

New Zealand First 11.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Parole Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 17 February.

TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland): In introduction I would just like to challenge a point a couple of my colleagues made—Barbara Kuriger and Jonathan Young, and then the Hon Annette King—about calling Wellington, and New Plymouth, the coffee and cafe capital of New Zealand. Let me introduce you to Gore. We have cafes, a coffee culture, the New Zealand Gold Guitar Awards, and A and P shows galore—

Hon Member: Big fish.

TODD BARCLAY: —and a huge fish. Just moving on to the Parole Amendment Bill—just a segue there slightly—it is an honour to rise to speak in support of the Parole Amendment Bill in its third reading.

As we heard last week, one of the main objectives of this bill is to decrease the number of unnecessary parole hearings for offenders, which will in turn decrease the amount of stress, trauma, and heartache that victims of crime must endure. Each year there are 5,000 parole hearings, and on average there are three parole hearings per prisoner before parole is granted, at a cost of about $1,000 per hearing. This bill requires that when the Parole Board declines a parole application it sets the next hearing date. There is also provision for the board to identify relevant activities relating to the risks the offender poses to the community, and the offender must achieve these before their next hearing. If the offender achieves them early, then the case can be brought forward.

There are strong incentives also for prisoners to address their reoffending and their offensive behaviour before they reintegrate back into society. If we can curb this behaviour before they leave prison, we can reduce the chance of their reoffending when they get back into New Zealand society.

This bill also provides for greater flexibility for the Parole Board to set hearing dates to align with the completion of rehabilitation programmes that are currently running. The Department of Corrections is strengthening the focus on rehabilitation with the introduction of case management systems for all prisoners, and they can refer prisoners for an early parole hearing if they have made significant progress.

Some more work that has been going forward in prisons over the last few years is that more drug and alcohol treatment programmes have been introduced. All prisoners now have an education screening and individual learning plans. By 2017 all prisons will be working prisons. This is helping to prepare prisoners for reintegration into the workplace and reintegration into society.

The current changes are having an impact, not just the parole work but also the wider work being done in the corrections space. The Southern Police District, which takes in Central Otago and Otago, as well as Southland, has one of the lowest levels of recorded offences per 10,000 people with one of the highest resolution rates. From 2012 to 2013 to the financial year of 2013-14 there was a 5 percent reduction in crime nationally. The total number of burglary offences has reduced by almost half in 20 years, to 2,433 recorded offences in the last financial year. This is evidence that National has embarked on a comprehensive programme of reform to protect communities and to prevent crime by putting victims first. It is working, and New Zealand now has its lowest crime rate since 1978.

As a Government we are delivering on our Better Public Services programme, and that is one of our core priorities in this term of Government. We have set challenging targets in terms of crime. We want to reduce the crime rate by 15 percent, violent crime by 20 percent, and youth crime by 25 percent by 2017. We enhanced these targets just last week. We have already met and exceeded two of them, and now we are increasing them to a total reduction of 20 percent in crime. The proposed changes in this bill will only enhance that.

It is critical that we stymie reoffending and prevent first-time offenders from becoming recidivist offenders, but to take it one step back, there are a lot of initiatives under way, directly and indirectly, that prevent members of society from becoming offenders and therefore entering the justice pipeline.

The first one I want to talk about is the Social Sector Trials. We are lucky to have one of these taking place in Gore, actually. I met with them last week. It involves representatives from the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Social Development—including Child, Youth and Family Services and Work and Income—a number of the schools in the area, and the police. They meet on a regular basis and they pool their resources together by identifying families and individuals who need Government support and are receiving Government support. They try to get them back into an appropriate programme, whether that be reintegration into the education system or reintegration into the workplace, in order to prevent them from becoming participants in the justice pipeline.

This is one example of a wider initiative that is taking place that will enhance the work that is being done in the justice sector to try to prevent people from entering this downward-spiralling, unfortunate situation.

Another example of something that is taking place in my electorate that works in with the Social Sector Trials in order to prevent people from entering the justice pipeline and therefore coming before the Parole Board, is the Student Engagement Initiative. It is a programme run by all of the high schools in the area, in consultation with the Ministry of Education, again to reintegrate students who are currently falling between the gaps in the education system.

Another initiative that is taking place across the country is to do with 2,000 of the Government’s toughest clients. These are males who are currently in care in New Zealand; some of them have been in care with more than one or two families. There is one child in my electorate, who is 12 years old, who has had 93 foster care families that have looked after him—and he is only 12 years old. He is one of this group of 2,000 children. Based on 30 years of records that have been collected by Treasury, the Ministry of Social Development, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Education, their future prison costs combined will cost the taxpayer $750 million, in prison costs alone, if they continue on the path that they are currently going down, which is exiting the education system and not getting a proper education that will then see them being able to participate in the workplace.

By continuing to service the system that cares for children and the prison system in isolation, we are not going to be able to define a result and help these people out. We need to be looking—which this Government is doing—at how different agencies are interacting with different members of society, and getting them to work together for the common resolve, which is to enhance the life of individual New Zealanders and prevent them from becoming part of the justice pipeline, which ultimately sees them before the Parole Board in the future.

While it is a bit disconnected from the purpose of this particular bill, these New Zealanders who are currently on the pathway to being a part of, or a recipient, or a beneficiary of the outcome of this bill—if we can prevent them from getting there, then it will only enhance the impact that the changes in this bill will have.

So if we can do that, it will have a positive impact not only on those individuals but on the communities in which they live, on their families, on the justice system more generally, and on the well-being of victims of crime as well. As we see the changing dynamics of the parole system, the needs of the victims and of offenders, it is timely to reconfigure the parole system in order to meet those changing and evolving needs. So it is in that context and with that background that I commend this bill to the House.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): May I just begin by responding to one or two of the points made by the member Todd Barclay, who has just been sharing his wisdom with us. I agree that there have been some positive moves made by this Government, particularly around corrections: the notion that every inmate, as they enter prison, will receive some screening for alcohol and drug issues, problems, dependence, whatever; the idea of a needs-assessment when people go into prison, which is positive and long overdue; the provision of meaningful work in all of our prisons for those inmates who choose to do it; and programmes around rehabilitation and reintegration. These are all good things. Unfortunately, what we are seeing is a lot of rhetoric about them but very little investment. We spend something like $1.4 billion on corrections and a minuscule part of that budget is being committed to these quite positive changes. Drug and alcohol assessment on entry to prison—we simply do not have the skilled and experienced people to do that; nor are we investing in creating that pool of people who could do that very positive work. I do commend some of the changes on paper, but now we need to put in the investment, reinvest the justice dollar into putting these things into practice in a meaningful way. I look forward to the member’s support within his party to see that that investment is made.

I return to the Parole Amendment Bill. The Greens have tried hard to like this bill since it was introduced, but unfortunately we find it is flawed. I guess the fundamental flaw is that it was introduced as a reaction to some very noisy vocal minorities who were calling, ideally, from their point of view, for an abolition of parole—the simplistic and completely adrift notion that we should actually do away with parole completely. I fear this bill is essentially a political response to try to placate those people. In defence of parole I would quote the former chairperson of the New Zealand Parole Board in the 2012 annual report of the Parole Board, headed at that point by Judge Sir David Carruthers, who said: “The most important reason for a Parole Board lies in the fact that the international research shows that managed release on parole with a right of recall back to prison during the term of a sentence is about four times more effective in preventing reoffending than automatic release at the end of the term of imprisonment.” Releasing people back into the community with conditions, with management, with monitoring is vastly superior to this flawed notion of simply making them stay in prison up until the last minute of the last day of their sentence.

What this bill does, of course, is increase the permissible time between parole hearings to allow for the increase in the maximum term of a postponement order from 3 to 5 years. Again, a number of speakers on this bill have talked about this giving the Parole Board more flexibility. In fact, the board already has some flexibility. Where it sees that a particular individual is almost certain not to get parole—I think section 27, from memory, of the Parole Act allows for postponement orders. There are existing mechanisms that can fulfil the aims of this legislation. What this bill does is it creates a mechanism where inmates can apply to have a parole hearing subject to completion of relevant activities, and that is seen as a positive thing. However, it assumes that inmates know their rights, are able to articulate them, and are literate enough to read the legislation to understand what their rights are around these issues. Unfortunately, the profile of a standard inmate in our prisons does not match that person who is literate, confident, and able to assert their rights.

We know that some of the relevant activities—that is, the milestones, although we are discouraged from using that word—that prisoners must meet to be considered for a parole hearing under this new rule could include things like group or individual counselling, literacy work, drug or alcohol programmes, and work training. These are all good and positive things and should be readily available to inmates. But the reality is that they are not. They are not now, and we have no reason to expect that they will be sufficiently available in the future.

We had one excellent submission from one Sue Shone, a parole lawyer. She came to the select committee in March of last year with a couple of very good case studies of inmates who were motivated to get themselves on to parole, who were doing all the right things, but who, for very sound and understandable reasons, were not getting access to some of these programmes. One inmate who was required to do group counselling pointed out that if he was obliged to do group counselling it would put him at considerable risk. He was endeavouring to extract himself from a gang. Group counselling would oblige him to state publicly and in front of other inmates his ambition to get away from the gang, which actually would put him in considerable danger. There were other similar examples presented to us of inmates who had the goodwill, the motivation, but simply were not getting access to the programmes that the Parole Board was keen for them to do, that the inmates themselves were keen to do, and that could have led to their release on parole, and ultimately their reintegration. Unfortunately, the—

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

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

DAVID CLENDON: Before the dinner break I was beginning to talk about motivation. We had what I thought was a rather debatable claim from the Department of Corrections officials. They told us that in respect of inmate motivation, “entitlement to an annual hearing”—a parole hearing, that is, of course—“provides no incentive for unmotivated offenders to address their offending behaviour.”, the proposition being that if inmates know that the delay or the time between the parole hearings can be extended, they are more likely to be motivated by that. That is not the experience of people working in prisons, of inmates themselves, of their families. Inmates are not foolish. Well, at some point they are to get in there, I guess, but in terms of Parole Board hearings, they understand very well that simply sitting and doing nothing for a year and then walking in front of a Parole Board is not actually going to advance their cause. The inmates understand very well that in order to improve the likelihood of them getting parole, they will have to demonstrate behaviour changes, attitude changes, completion of programmes—whatever it might be. So to suggest that this change, the extension of the term between the mandatory hearings, is somehow a motivating factor—I think it could actually be quite the opposite: inmates could become quite unmotivated if they see that the horizon to the next hearing is being extended.

As we have discussed in earlier speeches in this bill, the fact that the availability of the hearing is dependent on prisoners conceding guilt could simply lead the prisoners to lie. There are people in prisons who do declare themselves innocent, and, on rare occasions, those are actually true claims.

Briefly I will speak about the human rights issues that we are running close to the boundaries of. The changes in this legislation take us further away from the UN Human Rights Commission requirement that effectively says that to ensure an offender’s continued detention beyond their parole eligibility does not become arbitrary, there must be regular, periodic reviews of the individual offender’s case. So this is built into the UN Human Rights Commission documents to which we are signatories. To the extent that we allow the term between hearings to become extended, the decisions can run perilously close to being seen as being arbitrary decisions, given that there will not be the level of interrogation, the level of evidence of investigation, into just what is going on. Crown Law is satisfied that the current arrangements keep us well within the boundaries of the Human Rights Commission requirements, but moving to the extended breaks and the extension of the 3 to 5 years could be a step too far in terms of assuring that we do stay in line with our international human rights obligations.

Finally is this question of “relevant activity”. Assuming that when inmates appear in front of a Parole Board all of the information about their activities over the previous 1 or 2 years has been correctly recorded is disputable. We have had recent examples where inmates’ security classification reviews have been found to contain significant errors of fact that worked to the detriment of the inmates. For these reasons and many more we will not be supporting this bill.

MAHESH BINDRA (NZ First): Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Wharenui. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Parole Amendment Bill, with some reservations, and I shall expand on those reservations during my contribution.

As New Zealand First members have said previously in this House, we would like to see more support for the victims of crime. We would like to see that the concerns of the victims of crime are addressed by all of those who are involved in the reduction of crime in New Zealand. The crime rate at present is unacceptable to us. A review of parole laws is well overdue. This bill does go some way to making New Zealand a safer place for our families and our futures—our children. In saying that, we also need to be sure that those who apply for parole are not given that request too easily. The offenders must exhibit solid reformed behaviour before being released into our communities. Otherwise, we will continue to see the same issue that we have been seeing in the recent past, which is reoffending. This puts more pressure on the victims, and their families and communities, and in many cases it revictimises them.

This bill quite rightly aims to reduce the costs incurred by the number of parole hearings when it is clear that the prisoner has not achieved the prescribed milestones in their rehabilitative programme. However, it does not go far enough in supporting those offenders who have a genuine desire and motivation to address their offending behaviour and their offending lifestyle. New Zealand First would prefer to see that no offender is short-changed when it comes to rehabilitation, because the safety of our society, at the end of the day, relies on releasing rehabilitative offenders who will not repeat that behaviour and thus harm law-abiding citizens.

At this point, I would draw the attention of this House to the fact that privately run prisons do not have a single key performance indicator addressing the rehabilitation of prisoners. These are organisations that base their businesses on profits, not people, and yet they receive no financial penalty if they do not provide rehabilitative programmes on a par with those in the State-run prisons. Although these organisations’ contracts have financial loss if they accidentally let someone out, and even though they have to meet certain performance targets, none of these targets are about the rehabilitation of prisoners. Prisoners in privately run prisons do not have access to the programmes that our publicly run prisons have. My point is that you could have a situation where a prisoner in a privately run institution has his or her parole pushed out under this legislation with almost non-existent rehabilitative support and, therefore, has almost no chance to meet the criteria for release when they do go in front of the Parole Board. This is not fair on the prisoners, and not, at the end of the day, fair to the general public, whose taxpayer dollars are paying for both systems—the State-run prisons and the privately run prisons.

There are many who believe that if you do the crime, you do the time, and that life should mean life. Well, this is not the conversation we are having here today. New Zealand First understands that our laws allow for parole and that the Department of Corrections professes to be committed to reducing reoffending by 25 percent by 2017. That, we think, is a noble goal. So New Zealand First agrees that now is the time to make changes to the parole laws so that we can be sure we are fair to the victims and we achieve our goal of reducing reoffending.

To carry out the changes foreseen by this bill, the department will need more resources, and the public-private partnerships such as Serco will need to be included in any of these programmes. These programmes should be included in their key performance indicators. If State-run prisons are expected to perform to a certain standard, then so should the privately run prisons, because both of them are funded by the taxpayer. We will be looking closely at the 2015 Budget to ensure the Government puts its money where its mouth is, and we will be checking that public-private partnerships have rehabilitation programmes in their key performance indicators.

So let us get this right. Let us punish where it is needed, educate where it is needed, resource where it is needed, and call for performance where it is needed because, after all, our victims deserve it. All New Zealanders deserve it. Thank you.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am very pleased to stand and speak to the Parole Amendment Bill, here in its third reading. This is good legislation. The bill proposes a number of amendments to the Parole Act 2002. The explanatory note states that the amendments are to reduce the number of unnecessary parole hearings, but not to increase the length of time an offender spends in prison; and also to improve efficiency by simplifying pre-hearing processes and clarifying when an offender’s attendance at a parole hearing is required. The proposed changes do not affect the earliest date at which an offender would become eligible for parole, nor the actual length of an offender’s sentence, but they do create incentives for prisoners to engage in rehabilitation activities and thereby become less likely to reoffend when they are released. It also reduces the trauma for victims who are faced with unnecessary annual parole hearings when the prisoner has not made efforts in rehabilitation and the outcome is known, but the parole hearing continues because of the mandatory annual review.

The ability to extend the period between parole hearings up to a maximum of 2 years instead of every year, as is currently the case, does not mean that the prisoner will experience a longer sentence. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has held to the fact that to ensure that an offender’s continued detention beyond their parole eligibility date does not become arbitrary, there must be regular periodic reviews of the individual offender’s case by an independent body to determine whether continued imprisonment is substantively justified. The human rights committee has held that 12-month intervals between parole reviews with judicial review rights meant that continued imprisonment was not inherently arbitrary. The European Court of Human Rights has held that a 2-year interval between parole reviews did not render detention arbitrary, because the decision to fix that interval was approached with flexibility and with due regard to the individual’s circumstances.

The bill provides that if the Parole Board declines to release an offender on parole it must ordinarily specify a date within the following 2 years for the offender’s next parole review, instead of every year, as is currently the case. As part of that decision there is also provision for the board to identify relevant circumstances, formerly called milestones, relating to the risk the offender poses to community safety, for the offender to achieve before the next hearing. This is an element of consideration and flexibility. If the offender achieves these early, the case can be brought forward. The bill also extends from 3 to 5 years the maximum postponement period for offenders serving indeterminate sentences and determinate sentences of 10 or more years. We do expect a 5-year term to be reserved for the most extreme cases, as the current 3-year term is used only a handful of times every year.

Each year there are about 5,000 parole hearings. On average, offenders have three hearings before being granted parole. In putting victims at the heart of the justice system we are delivering on our promises. Our plans to reduce unnecessary parole hearings for offenders will reduce stress for victims of crime. Victims of crime should not have to face the very stressful prospect of parole hearings year after year when an offender is clearly not safe to release into the community and has made little or no effort at rehabilitation. The measures that this bill proposes will also save the taxpayer approximately $700,000 a year.

Our changes will provide strong incentives for prisoners to address their offending behaviour. The Department of Corrections is strengthening its rehabilitation focus with the introduction of case management systems for all prisoners. It can also refer prisoners for an early parole hearing if they have made significant progress, such as reaching rehabilitation milestones or successfully completing programmes. All prisoners have education screening with individual learning plans designed for them. Obviously they have been speaking to our Minister of Education. The number of prisoners gaining qualifications has increased by 830 percent, up from 197 in 2008-09, when we came into office, to 1,833 in 2012-13, which is a significant increase. Almost 3,000 prisoners have started literacy and numeracy programmes in the 2013-14 financial year, up 155 percent compared with 2007-08. An almost 1,500 percent increase in places in drug and alcohol treatment programmes for prisoners has happened since 2008. So there is ample opportunity and evidence that prisoners in corrections are being encouraged to undertake, and are undertaking, increased rehabilitation programmes.

This bill does not affect the earliest date at which an offender would become eligible for parole, nor the actual length of an offender’s sentence, but proposes greater efficiency in the parole process, protects victims from unnecessary trauma, and provides a greater incentive for prisoners to engage meaningfully in a personalised rehabilitation programme. This helps to achieve our Better Public Services targets. Results so far are impressive, and we continue to build on them. Our target was to reduce prisoner reoffending by 25 percent by 2017. We have seen a 12.2 percent reduction in offending so far. Our target is to reduce overall crime rates by 15 percent, violent crime by 20 percent, and youth crime by 25 percent by 2017. The result so far is that the total crime rate is down by 16 percent, violent crime is down by 11 percent, and youth crime is down by 30 percent, exceeding its first target of 5 percent and its second target of 25 percent. We are giving prisoners far more opportunities to rehabilitate and, of course, in that regard we are making our communities, streets, and homes safer places for New Zealanders.

This Government has done a tremendous amount for what could be deemed the lowest socio-economic group in our society. Twenty-eight thousand children in New Zealand have a parent in prison. Our work to build rehabilitation, and, in this bill, to ensure that people engage in rehabilitation, is doing so much for the safety of our society and doing so much for children whose parent, sometimes even both parents, are prisoners. New Zealanders deserve to feel safe in their homes and communities. National is focused on preventing crime and reducing the impact of crime by improving the responsiveness of the justice system for victims. I am very happy to stand in support of this excellent bill. Thank you.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): It is a pleasure to rise and take a call on this bill, the Parole Amendment Bill. Parole is controversial. There is nothing like the stories that appear when someone has been released on parole and has reoffended while in the community. The community deserves to be protected and have the best things in place to ensure that our prisoners, when they are released on parole, do not reoffend. It is controversial, so this is an important bill, as it seeks to address some of those concerns that the community has.

One of the things that this bill seeks to address, of course, is the frequency with which parole reviews are conducted by the Parole Board. Currently, with the requirement of being reviewed at no more than 12-month intervals, one of the major concerns, of course, is whether the prisoners have had sufficient time with which to engage in the programmes of rehabilitation. That is really important because rehabilitation speaks to preventing the reoffending. That is really what is at the nub of this, I believe: our desire to ensure that not only do we protect the public from reoffending but, if we look at it in the wider context, that we protect victims of serious crime from being harmed in the first place.

The view taken in this bill to extend the review period gives the prisoner the opportunity to work through those rehabilitation programmes. We know that having the current period of 12 months means that sometimes they are only part-way through, and we know that programmes are effective only when they are completed, so this gives us an opportunity to ensure that those programmes are indeed completed and completed effectively.

It also seeks to address the concerns of victims about those offenders who do not take responsibility for their offending, and the burden that it places on the Parole Board when offenders are appearing often, with the view that they are not going to accept responsibility. Given all of the work that sits behind that review process, moving the reviews to every 2 years rather than annually saves us thousands of hours of Parole Board time and, from what I understand from the work the Law and Order Committee did, thousands of actual reviews, which is significant. It does give that offender the opportunity to work through the issues and hopefully work to the point where they are able to take responsibility for their offending and thereby take the full effect of the rehabilitation programmes offered to them.

There are some benefits that have been mentioned about what can be supportive for victims. As far as I can see, the benefits are twofold for victims. Firstly, victims—particularly victims of crimes where the offence is serious enough for a person to be imprisoned—can respond in two ways, really, to the offence. Either they will want to be engaged in the process or, like many of my colleagues have already talked about, many of them are really wanting to put the offence behind them. So by extending the period of review, it does give the opportunity—for those people who really are revictimised by the process of annual reviews and the process of being contacted by the department to be notified that the parole is coming up and their intentions around the particular hearing—to relieve and mitigate some of the stress for those victims.

Secondly, there are those who are wanting to engage in this process knowing that the review is done after a period of time in which the offender is able to engage in programmes where there may be some success in terms of accepting responsibility, so that the victim actually has some peace in this process. So I commend it in that regard, but I will return to the victims of crime at the end of my presentation, because they are the most important component of this work. There is also the aspect that this potentially is a positive incentive for offenders who will consider taking responsibility and then take advantage of the rehabilitation that is offered to them.

The bill provides for the alignment of the core milestones. I have heard some other speakers this evening talk about that. The parole hearings are lined up with the completion of programmes and it provides a better opportunity for a successful rehabilitation. What this offers is the opportunity to really look at prevention of reoffending. That sits at the heart of this bill. Recidivism of offenders is an important issue for us, and we want to do everything we can to maximise the rate of prisoners not reoffending. Good access to good programmes, good access to support, and good access to prisoner release programmes give us a very good opportunity to ensure that we do what we can to reduce reoffending in the community.

This bill provides some flexibility around the use of postponement orders, which means that some hearings might be extended to as much as 5 years, but that will occur only when the sentence is of an indeterminate length, such as life imprisonment, or when there is a sentence of 10 or more years.

I want to turn to the victims of crime, who are, obviously, the most impacted by this. Victims are, as some of my colleagues have already spoken about, at the heart of this. What can we do to prevent not only the reoffending but the offending from occurring in the first place? There are several bills that we have looked at that provide opportunities to tie that all together. But would it not have been a more appropriate process to look at legislation that actually looks at the issue of prevention of crime in the first place, rather than legislation that tidies up aspects of bills?

Some of the things that we will be discussing over the next few days, including tomorrow’s member’s bill on paid parental leave, look at some of the aspects of the lives of children and how by providing a really good start in life for children we can prevent what happens later in life, prevent crime, prevent prison rates, and prevent poor health outcomes. We need to actually include that discussion in this debate, because crime and offending do not come from nowhere; they come from somewhere, and having a great start in life actually provides support around that. There will be some discussion in the next item on the Order Paper, which looks at tidying up a few of those issues.

But what do we do once we have been through our processes? What happens to prisoners when they are actually released back into the community? That is a big issue, I feel. We are getting good rates with better educational achievements of prisoners, but what are they leaving prison to go to? We need to look at employment and we need to look at housing, and there are some other major concerns to address to ensure that when they are released into the community, they do not continue to reoffend.

This bill is in its third reading and we will commend it to the House. Thank you very much for permitting me to take this call.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Just before I get on to the facts of the night, I thought I would mention a couple of other things. Firstly, I guess I wanted to pay tribute to Celia Lashlie. I had a lot to do with her in my time with the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs. She was an amazing person who had an amazing way with young people and certainly played a large part in the very topic we are talking about here tonight in respect of our law and order community. That was the first thing I wanted to talk about. The second thing was the fact that Chris Gayle just hit 200 in a world cup game—the first time it has ever been done. I think that is pretty significant, given that the world cup is very topical at the moment. I thought that was very important. Right, on to the Parole Amendment Bill—you can talk about only so much fact in one of these things, so I needed to talk about a few other things. During the course of early discussions on this bill I went to—

Kris Faafoi: Heaven forbid you get weighed down with facts!

IAN McKELVIE: Mr Faafoi, interestingly, was part of the early discussions on this bill. He was a member of the select committee when it was introduced, I would imagine. But I want to talk about the structure of the Parole Board and how that works and then I want to get on to one or two other things that we found during the course of the investigations into this bill. We had the opportunity early in the piece with this bill to visit a parole hearing. I was fortunate enough to go to Wanganui where I attended a parole hearing of one of our most notorious parolees. It was a really interesting process. You get to see how the process works. There are three people on the Parole Board: a convenor and two others. They bring the prisoner into the parole hearing and they present the evidence. The prisoner can have a representative with them, they can have a lawyer with them, or they may choose to be there on their own. Certainly, the whole process for me was very impressive. I think that to see how the parole system worked made a big difference to the understanding of how this whole bill proceeds. So that was the first thing we found out.

The second thing we found out was that the Parole Board does not necessarily have access to all the information that we felt it needed. It certainly did not have access, necessarily, to any protection orders that had been given to those prisoners who were appearing before the Parole Board. We felt that was necessary. Our understanding now is that the Judicature Modernisation Bill that is coming into the House right now, in fact, will take care of some of those issues. It was a significant process. Prisoners were going into these parole hearings but, at times, the Parole Board did not necessarily have all the information that gave it the background on that prisoner. So that was a bit of a challenge, we felt, for the Parole Board, and we made some inquiries into that. I think we have now got to a point where we are satisfied that it creates an environment where the Parole Board can operate fairly.

There are, as Jonathan Young said, an average of some 5,000 parole hearings—in fact, there were over 6,000 parole hearings in the last year we had statistics for. That is a lot of parole hearings. This bill will relieve us of about 800 of those parole hearings. To appease New Zealand First, which always wants to put more money into everything, that will save us about $700,000 in the Parole Board’s operational costs. I think aside from the fact that it is saving money, it is easing the situation for victims, firstly, because they get notified as parole hearings come up. There will be 800 fewer notifications of victims a year, if you look at it from that perspective—[Interruption]—kicked the bucket. That will make quite a lot of difference to the—now I have lost my concentration as well. So having the saving of that money and the information that needs to come to those parole hearings will make a difference to the victims. It will also make a difference to those prisoners who are constantly dragged before parole hearings, at least on an annual basis. They sometimes end up with up to four or five parole hearings—in fact, I think the average may be four parole hearings before they are released. So that will alleviate that problem quite a bit too, so it will probably take at least two hearings out of that.

I think that there are some really good features of this bill. Although this bill affects only 6,000 parole hearings, I guess, it is really probably affecting only 1,000-odd people a year—so it is a very small part of New Zealand’s overall well-being—it does, none the less, have a positive effect on all of those victims and certainly on those people who come before the Parole Board. So there are a whole lot of other things that came up as part of this. The select committee considered some 12 submissions in the course of this bill—almost all of them positive; some of them pointing out, as they always do, some of the pitfalls that, I guess, you find with this kind of legislation and, obviously, human rights becomes a factor in all these sort of things. You get these submissions on those lines, but on the whole the submissions were positive and supported the bill, so I think it came out pretty well from that perspective.

So there are some other things that the bill created. The Parole Act, interestingly, was initially introduced in 2002 by the Hon Phil Goff, who was on that select committee as well. It just shows that you can be here for a long, long time and you get to change the bills you started with. He has certainly achieved that on a number of occasions. The bill requires that when the Parole Board declines a parole application it sets the next hearing date. That gets set, and those parolees—the people whom it applies to—get a set of conditions that they must, I guess, comply with. So they have either got to go through some kind of alcohol and drug programme, or they have to come back with some form of employment as they leave prison, or they may have to come back with accommodation that they can go to when they leave prison. There are a lot of things that they can be required to bring back to the next parole hearing. If, of course, the offender achieves these early, the case can be brought forward.

As I said earlier, it provides that the victim, offender, or other authorised person can attend a parole hearing remotely, such as via video link or phone. I certainly have not seen that in action. The parole hearings we attended were all right there. The bill also provides that as well as the victim, the prison managers and police must be notified of hearing outcomes. They are also to be notified of the next parole hearing date and any milestones, as I said earlier, that the offender has had set for them. So there are some conditions that make the thing much sounder than it was before. So I think we are getting on pretty well with a lot of the changes to this bill. The board, after the initial appearance, must consider the prisoner for parole at least once every 12 months—so that is what happens now, as I said. Once that has happened every 12 months, and once the conditions are imposed, then, I guess, the Parole Board will make a decision as to when they come back before the board for the hearing. Chris Gayle is at 220 now.

Brett Hudson: Give Symonds a go.

IAN McKELVIE: He will get there shortly. It was a very interesting bill to be a part of. I think that during the course of it we did turn up some information that was well worth discovering, and certainly it helped us to get through and come up with what I think is a very good conclusion. So I have a great deal of pleasure in supporting this bill as it goes through the House, and it will very soon be through the House.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is my pleasure to take a call on this third reading of the Parole Amendment Bill—after the contribution from the member on the other side of the House, Ian McKelvie, sponsored by Cricinfo!

Look, parole is a very loaded topic. It is one where on all sides of the equation I think you try to strike a balance. That may mean that people around that conversation may not get everything they want, but I think in this instance the balances that were sought have been found after some pretty good work at the Law and Order Committee. Those balances are around the rights of victims, and we have heard a lot of talk around the revictimisation of victims who have to go through unnecessary parole hearings.

As a former member of the Law and Order Committee, in the 50th Parliament, I was on a trip to Christchurch Prison—and prisoners do watch Parliament TV—and someone came up to me and said that they liked my contribution on some piece of corrections legislation. So they will be keeping an eye on our contributions, and they will be watching us. For those at home, or those who are not at home but are incarcerated, the Parole Board has to consider you for parole every 12 months, basically.

As we have heard in other submissions from speakers during this debate, a lot of those hearings are unnecessary. I believe that the Law and Order Committee during the submissions process heard from the Parole Board that sometimes it takes two, three, or four appearances before the Parole Board before the person before them is seriously considered to be worthy of being considered for parole. If you are on either side of that equation—either as a victim or as an offender or an inmate—a lot of that time would be just a waste of time, or would be spent reliving a pretty nasty experience. So from that perspective we think the ability to move the minimum time frame between parole hearings from 12 months to 2 years is a good thing to make sure that you do not have the unnecessary Parole Board hearings that we have seen.

Can I now step over to the victims’ side of the equation here and say that if the offending was serious—and I know that there were submissions from the likes of the Sensible Sentencing Trust; I do not always necessarily agree with everything that it has to say, but I think it makes a worthy contribution at these kinds of times—there is a sense that if they know that the person up for parole is not going to be granted parole, then that makes it pretty difficult for those victims every 12 months, having to relive the ordeal that they have gone through, or what their loved ones have gone through, which is a very, very difficult experience. I do not think we as a Parliament, or the officials who overlook this process, want to unnecessarily put victims through that kind of stress—through that kind of torment—every 12 months.

What we think on this side of the House, which is why we are supporting this legislation, is that the extension of the window between parole hearings to a maximum of 2 years is a wise move. It will save, we have been told, around 800 parole hearings per year, which is roughly, I think, somewhere close to 10 or 15 percent, so it is a significant amount. Also, I think the caveat there is that there is, I guess, an enticement for offenders that if they do meet—and I think in the legislation it was changed to “relevant activity”—some milestones or they do behave, they will be reconsidered for parole earlier.

I guess that is the trade-off that you do have in this legislation. Someone may come up, and the Parole Board may say: “You are not ready, and we don’t think you’re ready. You are going to have to wait 2 years until we reconsider your application for parole.” But if that inmate goes away and says “I don’t want to wait 2 years.” and they are of the mind to go and get themselves back on to something like a drug and alcohol rehabilitation scheme and they do good work, they have the ability—if they meet the criteria before that 2 years is up or whatever the time frame is that the Parole Board might rule—to do the work in order to be considered earlier for parole. I think that strikes a good balance in terms of saying to a person: “You are not ready yet, but if you go away and meet these objectives over the next 12 to 24 months, then you will be considered for parole.”

There is some international research that I think the Law and Order Committee was privy to, which basically said that if someone serves out their whole sentence, their likelihood of reoffending is higher than someone who might have been rehabilitated and then been given parole earlier. So I think that, given that kind of finding from international studies, what we are doing here is a pretty important thing to make sure we bring down recidivism rates as well. Again, another one of the things that we are trying to balance here is reoffending after those inmates have either been given parole or served their sentence.

I know that members of the Law and Order Committee got to sit through some parole hearings. I think that being on the Parole Board would be quite a thankless task. That is one of those jobs where, like judges, referees, or cricket umpires, you have to be perfect on day one and get better after that. I think the way that they have to operate and weigh up all the risks of reoffending by someone who has looked to rehabilitate is something that I do not think the general public appreciates. Of course, we all hear when things go wrong and when someone who has been given parole has reoffended, but I think—and I do not have the numbers in front of me—that on the whole the rigorous decisions of the Parole Board are ones that are pretty good.

My colleague Poto Williams spoke about the kind of support that inmates need after release. It is one thing for us to say “You need to rehabilitate yourself and meet certain milestones while you’re in prison.”, but I think it is very important to make sure that they do not reoffend once they leave prison—the kind of support that we should give them after they leave prison. It is easy for us to say “You’ve done it. You’ve ticked the box here. Out you go into society.”, but it is not that easy. There will be some people who say “No, you shouldn’t give them any support after they leave.”, but I believe that if we are going to put within this legislation some milestones for them to meet that could give them the possibility of getting out of prison earlier, we need to make sure that there is support for them after they leave so that these people who have offended—and some of it will be serious offending—do not reoffend again. We cannot just chuck them out into society and think everything is going to be hunky-dory. It is not always that way, especially if we are, in one sense, fast tracking their exit from prison.

So I would hope that the Government, when it thinks about resourcing the likes of the probation service, thinks about the kind of flow-on effects that this kind of policy has, because we cannot just front-load it and try to make everything good while they are in prison and then forget the issue when their name is not on the whiteboard any more and they are out in society. I hope that we are wise and we are very prudent and make sure that there is support for them out in the community.

I think we need to give credit where credit is due, and having been through quite a few prisons and seen some of the work that is going on in the drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes, I think a lot of good work is being done. I think we have all got a vested interest in making sure that there is less offending and there are fewer people in our prisons because, as Bill English has said, it is both a fiscal and moral failure. We do not want to be spending billions and billions of dollars on incarcerating people. We want to make sure they are all contributing members of society. But the fact is there are people whom we need to rehabilitate. Good work is being done now, but through this legislation I hope the Government can realise we need to do more for those offenders in order to make sure there are fewer victims.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I understand that this call will be a split call between National members.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): It is a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Parole Amendment Bill in this third reading debate. Can I begin by paying tribute to the Hon Amy Adams, the Minister of Justice, who is currently shepherding this bill through Parliament, but also her predecessor, Judith Collins, who introduced this as justice Minister.

I believe passionately in redemption, rehabilitation, and the power of education, of drug and alcohol treatment, and of literacy training in prisons to be able to transform the lives of those who have offended very gravely against society. Not everyone can be fully rehabilitated—there are those offenders—and this Government is progressing other legislation to deal with those who are not able to be treated for the offending that they do perpetrate, particularly on the most vulnerable in our society. I am proud to be part of a Government that, through this bill along with other pieces of legislation such as the 1,000-page Judicature Modernisation Bill, is reforming some issues at the heart of our justice system to make sure we do have a system that protects New Zealanders, that makes New Zealand a safer place, that keeps our communities safe, that reduces crime, but that does also deal with the issue of the people who have been incarcerated and what becomes of them when they are released back into society, as inevitably the vast majority of them will be.

May I congratulate Opposition members on agreeing with, certainly, the Law and Order Committee deliberations and the findings that came out of those hearings. In particular, there were a couple of pieces that I picked up in the previous speeches that I thought I would touch on. Poto Williams said that helping offenders work through their issues, in part through an extension of the time of the process that they might go through, was a positive part of this bill and I could not agree more. There are occasions when an extra year to work through courses such as drug and alcohol rehabilitation—funding for which has been quadrupled by this Government—will have a positive impact on that offender’s likelihood of reoffending when released. I also agreed entirely with Kris Faafoi when he said that this balances the need to maintain rights for the victims but also a focus on the rehabilitation of the offenders.

But there are a few specific instances I would like to reference in the brief time I have. I did not sit on the Law and Order Committee but I had the privilege of sitting in on one of the hearings of evidence in Auckland in which we heard very moving and sobering evidence from a very brave woman, whom I am not going to name in the House, who was the victim of a double murder in which both of her parents were killed by two offenders. I was impressed with the view that this particular victim of crime—of the most serious crime you can imagine—took in that she felt that one of the offenders had made significant inroads into being rehabilitated. She felt that that offender was, in fact, led by the other one. And when the victims themselves feel that the person who offended against them no longer poses such a risk to society, it is good to see legislation giving that person an ability to have their voice heard at an appropriate time and in a convenient and sensitive manner.

Similarly, this particular victim felt that the other offender, who was the ringleader in this particular double murder, had not been rehabilitated. So it is absolutely right and proper that instead of being hauled before a Parole Board on an annual basis, which is a very upsetting experience for victims of these serious crimes, the board has the ability to determine that, in fact, no positive change has been made by that particular offender, that there is still a significant risk of reoffending, and, therefore, that offender will have a 2-year delay before they are reheard by the Parole Board.

Also, I look at some of the technical changes in this bill, including the ability to have hearings conducted by video or phone link. This is a sensible, progressive change in the modern era. Not only will it contribute—as my colleagues on this side of the House have alluded to—a $700,000 reduction in costs, which is a saving to the taxpayer that can be much better spent on crime prevention, but also there are safety considerations for corrections officers, police, prison guards, and those who deal with offenders in the transport. We are going to keep those staff much safer by greater use of videoconferencing. Thank you.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Brett Hudson—a 5-minute call.

BRETT HUDSON (National): It is an absolute delight to speak to this bill, for more than one reason. One, because it is a very sensible and pragmatic bill that will help to place victims at the heart of the justice system, which is a key priority for this Government. Also, because there is broad support, or there appears to be broad support, for this bill across the House. Thirdly, because we all seem to think that it is the same provisions of the bill that are so positive for victims and also offenders, in fact.

If we look, for instance, at reducing the number of unnecessary parole hearings by permitting Parole Boards to extend the period between hearings from 1 to 2 years—or, in the case of indeterminate sentences, in fact, from 3 to 5-year intervals—then that is obviously a positive thing not only for the victims, who will perhaps not feel as revictimised as they might do under the existing conditions of having hearings each year, but actually also for the offenders in some ways. You could argue that coming up to a Parole Board each year, irrespective of what progress has or has not been made, could actually lead to a situation where some inmates build up false hope of their real chances of being released at that point in time. So one can only imagine that when they are unsuccessful—the average is three hearings for each release, so they most often are—they quite possibly leave those hearings feeling quite quashed, and that in itself is not that good for rehabilitation. Although that is important, let me not detract from the fact that the heart of this is actually ensuring that the victims feel they are placed at the forefront of our priorities.

The other really positive thing that I saw in this bill is this idea of relevant activities. Although we might be putting in place something that is going to say to inmates that the interval between their hearings is going to be extended, by taking into consideration at the board hearings these pre-determined, if you will, relevant activities and milestones, there will, in fact, exist provision to bring those hearings forward. So an offender or an inmate who chooses to focus on the rehabilitation services and opportunities in front of them has the opportunity to bring forward the date when they will be considered again. That surely gives those inmates hope and a real sense they can have some control or some influence over their destiny and the time they will spend in prison. That, I think, is a very, very important thing, as well.

There are another couple of considerations that I think are very positive, and they actually return back to the victims, too. It is extremely positive to see that victims will not only be notified of the first hearing date but actually be notified of when the next date is scheduled, too, so they will not be in any uncertainty. If there is an order given that it will be a 2-year time frame, the victims have the same knowledge and certainty of that as, in fact, the inmate does, and also of any milestone, any relevant activity or activities that might change that and bring the date forward. That surely helps the victims of those original crimes to be able to better prepare themselves for those hearings when they are going to come up.

Also a part, which I think it is fair to say would probably have come as a bit of a surprise to most New Zealanders, is that under the conditions as they exist today there is no provision for the Parole Board to be made automatically aware of civil protection orders that may exist. There is the ability for the board to request information. That information is then considered by a judge, and the judge makes the determination of whether the board is made aware of the information at that time. These amendments will permit the boards to become automatically notified of it, which surely leads to better consideration by the boards, better judgments, better decisions, and, ultimately, better outcomes for the victim principally, but, as I have said earlier, actually, when you think about it, also for the inmates.

Overall, what I can say about this is that we could talk about saving $700,000 a year, and that is always a good thing. We could talk about being very much focused on rehabilitation, the introduction of case management systems for all prisoners, and the introduction of working prisons schemes across all of our prisons to help prepare inmates for their release. What I would like to conclude with is to say that this bill is putting the victim at the heart, where they should be. It is a pragmatic and sensible bill, which I commend to the House.

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

Ayes 104

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 11; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 16

Green Party 14; Māori Party 2.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 18 February.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): This has been an interesting bill. I did not attend all the Justice and Electoral Committee hearings, but some of them I did. I believe that everybody in the House is supporting this bill, and so too are the Greens. I think that the goodwill towards this bill clearly comes from the general abhorrence of the sort of offending that it deals with, particularly the sexual exploitation of children, which is unacceptable at any level of society. For that reason the Greens are supporting this bill. The current legislation is not actually fit for purpose, particularly given changes in technology and other changes over time. We do have a couple of pretty serious misgivings about a couple of provisions of the bill, and we will seek, perhaps, to have those addressed as the bill proceeds through the Committee stage.

Clearly, as I said, the law is not fit for purpose, to the extent that forms of offending are now available, or possible, through technologies that simply did not exist when the legislation we are amending was first passed. It is interesting that there were remarkably few submissions on this bill—only eight, three of which were heard orally. That may have been a function of the timing. The bill was tabled in November 2013 and, of course, the submission period closed in February—never a happy time to endeavour to generate public interest in something like this. I am not suggesting any political motive behind that timing, I reassure the House. I am not suggesting, either, that that never happens, but in this instance, I think it was simply unfortunate timing, and perhaps we might have got a little bit more in the way of submissions given the seriousness and the nature of the legislation. But, be that as it may, we did get some good and useful input from the Law Society, from community law centres, and so on.

Among other things, what this bill does is create a new offence of indecent communication with a young child. This sits somewhere in the middle of a spectrum. At one end is the simple possession of offensive material, and, at the other end, sexual grooming—those rather undesirable practices where people worm their way into the confidence of a child, or indeed a family, and then use that as an opportunity to exploit and ultimately sexually assault children. This new offence covers a gap in the centre of the spectrum, in between the availability of porn and these sorts of undesirable matters. That, I think, nobody can have an objection to, and to that extent the bill does fill a very obvious gap in the existing legislation.

The bill also provides for a presumption of imprisonment for “repeat child pornography offenders”, and that is one of the elements where we do have some unease. That unease was shared by the Legislation Advisory Committee and by the New Zealand Law Society. The former, the Legislation Advisory Committee, felt that there has been a little bit too much legislation coming through in recent times with things like the reverse burden of proof and the presumption of imprisonment—perhaps these are tools we are using rather too readily, given the seriousness of them and the seriousness of the message they send to the judiciary. To some extent, they do not constrain the judiciary by any sense, but they do begin to limit the discretion of the judiciary perhaps.

I think that the idea of presumption of imprisonment does certainly reflect people’s abhorrence of this form of offending, as I said, but I think we need to be a little more creative as well and look at what other solutions might actually generate better options. Specialist courts for sex offenders—which we know from international experience and, to a limited extent, from experiments or trials conducted here—could possibly do better with the lower-end offending of this nature, even repeat offending, in terms of managing these people, rather than simply locking them away and hoping that things will come right.

There are alternatives, like treatment facilities and programmes for sex offenders. I cannot now recall which one, but one of the Government contributors on this bill talked about the people who offend in this way as actually being sick, and I think that is fair comment. People commit crimes for all sorts of reasons. Greed is a common one. I might choose to go and steal somebody’s possessions because I want to own them. Sexual offending of this sort reflects a very disturbed personality, at least. Often that sort of disturbance is amenable to treatment. We have had some success in New Zealand with specialist sex offender units and programmes within our prisons and, indeed, outside our prisons, and I think we need to invest a bit more in making sure that those services and programmes are made available to the people who most need them.

I have had numerous letters over 5 years or so from people in prison who acknowledge that they have a serious problem and want to get on to a programme for sex offenders, but the availability just is not there. I think we could look at investing more in those sorts of positive mechanisms, rather than simply leaping to imprisonment as being the be-all and end-all of the solution.

Some provisions in the bill caused a bit of concern among internet service providers. That concern was around a clarification that a person could have possession of objectionable material without actually saving it or having a physical copy of it. Of course, this recognises that it is perfectly possible to expose yourself to this sort of offensive material, but under the provisions of the old law it was debatable as to whether you actually were in possession of it.

The provisions to overcome that barrier excited the interest of Vodafone, at least, which saw that, as an internet service provider, it could be captured unintentionally—the fact that it is effectively hosting this material, albeit unwittingly, of course, meant that it could be swept into the same bucket. That was a very useful contribution from Vodafone. The response was that that is obviously not the intention of the bill. The Harmful Digital Communications Bill is struggling with similar issues at the moment, but it is made very clear in the text of the bill that that is absolutely not the intention. The internet service providers are not the target.

The point at which we do part company a bit from this legislation is the point at which it is proposed that there be an increase in maximum penalties for the possession, importation, exportation, supply, distribution, and making of objectionable material. The underlying assumption behind that is that longer sentences are a deterrent, but there is ample evidence internationally and, again, in research that has been done here that longer prison sentences are not necessarily a deterrent.

People who offend in this way are driven, as I said earlier, by some deep personality defect. Often they have no boundaries, no parameters. In a sense, this is not rational offending. People are not necessarily going to make the judgment: “If I offend in this way, I’ll go to prison. Therefore, I won’t offend.” The drivers are more complex than that. Simply saying that we are going to have longer sentences does not necessarily equate with deterrence in these cases—or, indeed, in many cases—and I think, again, we need to be a little bit more sophisticated in our understanding of what actually does work as a deterrent and what will enable these people to better control themselves.

The Salvation Army and the Dunedin Community Law Centre made submissions expressing concern about the notion of stretching the maximum penalties on the basis that you could get a somewhat perverse outcome where the possession of objectionable material could carry a higher penalty than the actual physical assault or abuse of a child. There was a counterargument made, to be fair, by the officials. They said that the creation of objectionable material may well involve the abuse of a child or physical harm to a child. So again it requires a reasonably sophisticated approach to try to ensure that we achieve the outcome, which is to drive this menace out of our society, and to do it in ways that are actually going to achieve that end and do not just seem to be going through the motions.

I think that that is probably as much as I can say in the time available, except to say that the Greens will continue to support this bill because there is a gap in the legislation. We are dealing with particularly abhorrent offending. We will, however, seek to get some changes in the Committee of the whole House. Thank you.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): At the first reading I said New Zealand First would support this bill because there is a need for strong deterrence to offenders who exploit children, and I would have to disagree with Mr Clendon on this. He says that longer sentences do not necessarily deter offenders. To that I would say that shorter sentences certainly do not deter them, either. The point here is that the deterrents must be sufficient to deal with the crime, and I do not think that in this bill they necessarily are—but I will come to that in a moment. New Zealand First still welcomes the provisions in the bill that clarify some of the offences covered by the relevant legislation and that widen the net to catch a greater range of the people involved. I still welcome the increases in the penalties—some of which are being doubled and others added—but we now find that the bill is defective in several ways, to the extent that although there is much good in it, it can no longer be supported by New Zealand First.

Part 1, amending the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993, no longer lives up to New Zealand First’s expectations. Clause 4 increases the penalty for supplying or distributing objectionable material from 10 years’ imprisonment to 14 years’ imprisonment. The offence needs an especially strong deterrent, and the increase is appropriate, but the offence covers distribution by an offender to any other person or other persons generally. New Zealand First believes that there should be a further special provision in cases where the offence is against children under the age of 16, and we reject the arguments that were advanced by officials against doing this. The amendment should instruct the court that where the offence is against children under 16 that is an aggravating factor, ensuring that the penalty imposed would be at the upper end of the scale, which goes to a possible 14 years of imprisonment. We do not accept that it should be left to the court to achieve this by way of its general discretion. We want it to be mandatory, and that is the principal reason New Zealand First will now oppose this bill. It just does not go far enough.

Clause 5 relates to the offence of the possession of objectionable material, and subclause (3) inserts a new section into the relevant Act, which solves evidential problems and widens the net to catch more of the people involved, especially proof of possession where electronic means are used, so that it will not be necessary to prove that an offender has saved an electronic instrument, and there will be no need to prove any intention of doing so. That, we think, is appropriate and necessary, otherwise the evidential burden would be too severe. Electronic material clearly has to be searched for, or at least knowingly accepted, otherwise the offender could not in practice obtain it.

Clause 6 relates to offences of possession of objectionable publications, knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that the publications are objectionable. The penalties are increased from a term of imprisonment not exceeding 5 years to one not exceeding 10 years, or to a fine not exceeding $50,000. But this amendment, we think, should also say “both”, so that both the imprisonment and fine penalties can be imposed. And the fine is far too light. It should be increased to at least $100,000. The reason for that is that some people make a lot of money out of these offences, and the deterrents—the fine and the possible imprisonment sentence—need to be severe, especially the fine. It is just too light, we think.

Clause 7 inserts an important new section, new section 132B, which contains a presumption of imprisonment for repeat offenders who have been convicted of one or more specified publications offences. These offences include the sexual exploitation of children. The offender must be sentenced for the repeat offence to a sentence of imprisonment unless the court considers that the offender should not be so sentenced, having regard to particular circumstances. That could include his or her age, if he or she is under 20. These new provisions are appropriate and would be quite acceptable to New Zealand First. They are the sorts of sentences that are needed to break a cycle of offending, because some of these people become addicted, and for others the financial rewards are just too seductive. So those sentences are satisfactory.

Concerning the amendments to the Customs and Excise Act 1996, clause 10(1) relates to being knowingly concerned in the importation of an objectionable publication—films, videos, and suchlike. The amendment increases the maximum term of imprisonment from 5 to 10 years, and, again, New Zealand First sees that as appropriate. However, Part 2, concerning the amendments relating to indecency, no longer lives up to New Zealand First’s expectations. Clause 13 creates a new offence of indecent communication with a young person under the age of 16 years. A person of, or over, the age of 16 years is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years if he or she intentionally exposes a person under the age of 16 years to indecent material in communicating in any manner with the young person.

Although New Zealand First fully supports that new offence, we do not think that a maximum of 3 years in prison is anywhere near adequate. Compare that sentence with those I have just mentioned for other offences being increased from 5 to 10 years, and in one case to 14 years. These offences are not very different in nature, and for this particular offence to specify a maximum of 3 years is clearly, in our view, grossly inadequate. This is the kind of provision that needs to deter the sort of activity that we saw with the Roast Busters—pretty disgusting stuff. Those people need to be sent a very clear signal, and if they persist in that sort of offence they should look forward to a sentence in some cases, where it is justified, of well over 3 years—in fact, probably well over 5 years if there is going to be an effective deterrent.

So although there is so much to be commended in the bill, and I have mentioned some of it, there are also far too many inadequacies to enable New Zealand First to support the bill overall. I have also mentioned some of those inadequacies. We think, in the end, that the bill is just too weak to ensure that where the offences are against children, the penalties for offenders must be at the high end, or close to the maximum. Otherwise, people who are addicted to these activities, or who just make a huge amount of money from them, will not be adequately deterred, and that, of course, is what the objective is. So New Zealand First, for those reasons, can no longer support the bill.

ALFRED NGARO (National): I rise to speak on the second reading of the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill. I cannot help but make a comment in respect of Mr O’Rourke, who was on the Justice and Electoral Committee throughout the process. There were eight written submissions, and three oral submissions, and throughout that process we had departmental input. We had advisers, and throughout that process and not once did I hear some the comments that have been made today in the House. When it comes to the care and welfare of vulnerable children, it concerns me that that member, who often talks about being tough on crime, has said on behalf of New Zealand First that it will not support this bill. He knows—he has been here long enough—that he could put forward a Supplementary Order Paper and try to advocate and lobby for some of the changes he has just talked about. It is shoddy. It is lazy. That is not the sort of behaviour that I think that members of Parliament should engage in.

This bill is an important bill. This bill is about protecting young children who are exploited. To know that we have support for it right across the House bar New Zealand First concerns many people, and I hope that the constituents of New Zealand First will take notice of that speech and of that member, who represents the party. He is just nit-picking. He is not picking up on the important issues.

So let us think about what is important in this. This Government saw it was important to address these issues, and in December of 2014, over in London, along with 48 other countries and international organisations, we signed up to a statement of action at the We Protect Children Online summit in London. The aim was to address the issues of child sexual exploitation right across the world. This is an issue not just for New Zealand but internationally and globally. This is an issue that is important to the hearts of many people and to many communities that, I am sure, Mr O’Rourke will know about.

The purpose of this bill is simply stated in the explanatory note as this: “A key purpose of this Bill is to implement the Government’s post-election action plan to increase penalties for producing, trading, or possessing child pornography.” That is about as simple as it gets. That is the clear purpose of bill. It goes on: “The Government’s objective is to ensure that sentences for child pornography offences reflect the seriousness of the offending and send a strong message …”—it sends a strong message, Mr O’Rourke. We debated this at the select committee, and the unanimous view at the select committee was a full recommendation not to change the bill that had come before the select committee.

Unlike other jurisdictions, New Zealand does not have a distinct child exploitation material offence. The material is the subject of publications that are objectionable under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993, so we believe that it is important that the bill is an omnibus bill. It amends three different Acts where we need to effect a change, and here is the reason why we think that is absolutely important. The Office of Film and Literature Classification is responsible for determining what is objectionable and ensuring that all publications are dealt with in a uniform and consistent manner. To that end, we know that the submissions that came through helped to address these issues. I want to go through some of the clauses that I think are really important. Out of the eight submissions—and we had three oral submissions—there were three key focus areas that came to our attention.

Denis O’Rourke: Tell us why the penalties are so weak.

ALFRED NGARO: Maybe Mr O’Rourke was not awake at the time, but here it is, and I will read them for him: increased penalties, possession of electronic publications, and presumption of imprisonment for repeat offenders. Let us go through some of those, Mr O’Rourke. First, increased penalties, because that is the issue of contention for New Zealand First. Again, I am absolutely surprised at the member’s comments, because we had a unanimous view and we were working collegially.

Denis O’Rourke: It wasn’t unanimous for New Zealand First.

ALFRED NGARO: This is an important bill, Mr O’Rourke—an important bill to New Zealanders—so let us talk about some of the offences that were there. The bill increases the maximum penalties for objectionable publication offences as follows. Possession of an objectionable publication—under section 131A of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act, the penalty increases from 5 years’ imprisonment, which is its current state, to a maximum of 10 years. We believe that is fair. That is an increase from 5 years’ imprisonment to 10 years. The import or export of an objectionable publication—clause 10 of the bill amends section 209 of the Customs and Excise Act by increasing the penalty from 5 years to 10 years. We believe that that is important.

Here, maybe, is the contentious part—the supply, distribution, and making of an objectionable publication. Under section 124 of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act as amended by clause 4, the penalty increases from 10 years’ imprisonment to 14 years. We know that some submitters were concerned about this because of the anomaly that it seems to create when people think about instances of this offence compared with instances of physical abuse. What we drew on, along with the officials, is that the material that is often being exposed is material that is a physical offence and a sexual offence—and often against children, which we know is abhorrent to all New Zealanders and to people all around the world as well. So we believe that increasing the penalties for these offences does send a very strong message as well.

I just want to pick up on the point that Mr Clendon made in regard to incarceration and whether it has an impact, an effect, on rehabilitation. We believe that, yes, it does. It sends a strong message, but the research also shows that that process of incarceration shows what kind of rehabilitation is important. This Government has ensured that we will put in extra resources, support, and help. I have even been down to see some of those programmes. I went down to Spring Hill Corrections Facility to see Saili Matagi, which is a programme to help rehabilitate offenders—not with regard to this offence, but other offences. But it is the belief of this Government, working with the Department of Corrections, that with incarceration and good rehabilitation we do see changes in the behaviour of those who are imprisoned for their offences.

I want to pick up on another one of the key points that was picked up. Clause 5 relates to the possession of electronic publications. We know that that was a concern and, as was mentioned by Mr Clendon, the internet service providers talked about their concern about this. This amendment is for the avoidance of doubt, and it was clear about that. We believe that that is really important because there was a loophole that allowed others to view the material, but because they had not downloaded the material or saved it on to their hard drives, they could find a legitimate way—illegally—of avoiding any form of imprisonment and any form of charges as well. So we believe that this was an important aspect of that.

We did pick up on the point that Vodafone made—which was important—around its concerns about unintended consequences. In that negotiation, or conversation and debate, Vodafone did talk to us around the checks and balances that it has in place to ensure that for certain time periods, where that was there, it is often scanning its material, looking to see what is there and what is not acceptable. So for that submitter, I think we came to a place where even it could agree that clause 5 was important. The clause should not be changed. It should be included in the legislation.

Clause 5 is not intended to widen the definition of possession. Instead, it simply affirms in legislation the approach already taken by the courts. As such, internet service providers, telecommunication carriers, and network providers will not be subject to any laws under the proposed amendment.

I want to also draw attention to some final comments, and this is in regard to the Harmful Digital Communications Bill. There was some conversation by submitters who talked about the fact that we have got two bills and they asked why we could not include those amendments all into one. So in regard to the Harmful Digital Communications Bill, we know that, in particular, the digital aspects of the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill connect with the Harmful Digital Communications Bill. We would have preferred to address the issue in one large piece of legislation, but for us, the bills are different. One mitigates the harm around cyber-bullying and digital harassment. Therefore, it is important that that bill provides a civil enforcement regime so that we can appoint an approved agency and a provider that is allowed to mitigate those issues. We believe that it is important to receive, assess, and be able to deal with the complaints that come through. The Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill has a broader focus than the communication of publications that occur in the digital realm, but we believe that this bill is important to that issue as well.

I believe that this is a good bill. I look forward to the Committee stage. I look forward to—

Denis O’Rourke: SOPs.

ALFRED NGARO: —Mr O’Rourke putting in a Supplementary Order Paper, because I think that is important to this bill. We believe that there is support around this bill, so despite the banter that we have just had, I think what is important is that the key elements of the bill are supported right across the House. We believe that it will protect. We believe that it will provide a regime that is important in order to enforce a very strong message, so that the crime sort of fits the offence that has been committed, especially against children and those who are vulnerable. I commend this bill in its second reading, and look forward to its Committee of the whole House stage. Thank you.

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

JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a short call on the second reading of the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill. The Green Party is supporting this bill. This legislation seeks to do five key things. Firstly, it seeks to increase the maximum penalties for the possession, import, and export of objectionable publications from 5 years’ imprisonment to 10 years and to increase the maximum penalties for supply, distribution, or making an objectionable publication from 10 years to 14 years. Secondly, it creates a presumption of imprisonment for repeat offenders involved with child exploitation.

These first two points the Green Party does have concerns about, and I will talk about that a little bit later, but the next three points we totally support. This legislation also amends the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act to clarify that possession includes the intentional viewing of indecent material even without downloading or saving it. The fourth point is that it removes the requirement for law enforcement agencies to get the consent of the Attorney-General before prosecuting, while maintaining that need for consent for private prosecutions. The fifth point in the bill is that it creates a new offence under the Crimes Act of indecent communications with a young person. The young person is defined in this legislation as 16 and under in this instance.

This bridges the gap between objectionable publication restrictions, which prohibit recording communication with a young person, and the other legislation that we currently have of a sexual grooming offence, where an offender takes a step to meet a young person. So we saw that in the law there was a gap around that indecent communication online. We did not have an offence in that space until this legislation, and we believe that this is a very important gap to be filling.

I clearly recognise that the intent of this bill is to improve the safety of children and young people in New Zealand as a primary driver. And, clearly, there have been gaps in legislation such as defining intentional viewing as counting as possession and the crime of knowingly indecently communicating with a child under 16.

It is, of course, important to ensure that our legislation matches the modern world that we live in and enables identified harms to be appropriately responded to by our law enforcement agencies. We should be doing what we can to protect children from predators and also creating an environment to ensure that adults engaging sexually online are actively encouraged to check the age of the person whom they are engaging with. This legislation helps to create that environment.

I do, however, want to sound a note of caution about the increase in penalties and the presumption of imprisonment. We share the concerns raised by the Law Society and the Legislation Advisory Committee. We are not opposing this legislation but we do believe that the impact of these changes should be carefully monitored. There is certainly some evidence that increases in penalties for sexual violence have not helped reduce the incidence of sexual violence. Indeed, we have quite a lot of anecdotal evidence that at times they have created a barrier to reporting. We want this to be carefully monitored. It is important, though, to note that the increases in penalties do provide for a new maximum, and it will be up to judges to decide. The current legislation requires the court to take into account, as an aggravating factor, the extent to which the publication exploits children.

I also reinforce for this House the urgent, urgent need for more treatment services for sex offenders and children engaged in harmful sexual behaviour. It is not enough to get tough on crime. We need to ensure easy access to support services and treatment services, and of course ensure we have a functioning justice system that will enable convictions and appropriate consequences. We owe it to ourselves as a country to ensure we do everything we can to prevent sexual violence.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Kris Faafoi—5 minutes.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): We quite often say it is a pleasure to take calls in this House on pieces of legislation, but it is not in this case because I think anyone who has spoken on this bill would prefer that they did not have to. However, it is a necessary piece of legislation, given the kinds of times we live in and given the access to content that we have now, by people of all motivations. As the previous speaker said, this piece of legislation has widespread support from around the House. Up until recently I thought it had unanimous support from around the House. But obviously New Zealand First has the right to have its objections to the bill and it will have the Committee stage to make any amendments that it sees fit.

Can I deal with some of the practicalities of this bill before I talk at another level. I think we are seeing piecemeal legislation coming from the Government in terms of dealing with online content, how we police it, how we monitor it, and how we control it. The technological changes are happening at such a fast rate, but it is quite clear that our legislation at the moment is not fit for purpose. I will come back to that in my very short contribution. The increase in sentence, from 10 years’ imprisonment to 14 years, for the possession, import and export, and supply and distribution of objectionable material is something we obviously have supported. I do note there was some objection at the select committee, from both the Law Society and the Legislation Advisory Committee, to the assumption of imprisonment for second and third offences. Despite their reservations—and I think we may have had some sympathy with some, but not all, of their submissions—we will continue to support this legislation because of the nature of some of the material that we are talking about here. For second and third offences, the judges will have discretion as to whether or not they use their discretion to put people away behind bars.

I think Alfred Ngaro also referred to clause 5. I guess this is a classic clause as to where the material facts might be different for someone if they actually have possession of a tape—VHS in the old days, or a DVD these days—and view the material, whereas someone online views it but does not have possession. They have essentially committed the same crime. They have viewed it and have possession of the content. But under the old law, the person who has simply watched it online and does not download it or copy it would not have been held accountable for an offence. I think clause 5 makes sure we are moving with the times. If you intentionally watch some content online that you should not be watching, under this law you are captured—you commit the offence.

I also acknowledge the submission of Vodafone New Zealand. It was concerned that the bill, in its primary form, said that if you were in possession of the material you would be committing an offence. I spent 2 or 3 days with Vodafone. I am not a techie, but basically if someone searches for something on the internet on Vodafone’s network and that content is overseas, Vodafone holds that content here in New Zealand. It saves the money from getting the content from overseas. So technically if someone on Vodafone’s network had searched for the objectionable material, Vodafone would hold it inside their server here in New Zealand. That would technically mean it was contravening the law as it stood. I think it is wise and clever that we have made some amendment to the bill to make sure the likes of Vodafone, Spark, and any other internet service providers are not found guilty of possessing this material if someone on their network is going out and getting it. It is the person who is actually in possession of it, has downloaded it, or viewed it who is the one who is going to be held accountable.

This is necessary legislation, but I think the Government needs to think in broader terms about how it deals with the deluge of content that New Zealanders are soon going to get their hands on when this ultra-fast broadband system comes online. Basically, households around New Zealand are going to get their hands on much more content and we need to make sure that there are penalties for people that are uniform right across the spectrum for any offences they commit. So far we have got this piecemeal approach, which I do not think has been working, and that I think is something that New Zealand First has brought up.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): It is a pleasure to take a call on this bill, the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill. It is always a pleasure, of course, to follow Kris Faafoi, my friend from the parliamentary cricket team. He always makes a learned contribution and I think he spoke very well. I did find it a slightly odd contribution from Mr O’Rourke for New Zealand First. Let us be very clear about what New Zealand First is voting against tonight. The New Zealand First Party is voting against putting up the penalties for the supply, the creation, and the distribution of objectionable material—

Denis O’Rourke: You couldn’t have listened to the speech.

CHRIS BISHOP: I did listen to your speech. You said you are going to vote against this piece of legislation. So let us be very clear. It is particularly odd that New Zealand First is voting against it, given the words of Mr O’Rourke in the first reading debate on this bill, when he said that “New Zealand First welcomes the increases in penalties and the new offences that are specified in the bill.” Indeed, he also said: “It is always a pleasure to support good Government legislation,”—and indeed he was right—a few months ago. He said further that “New Zealand First will be happy to vote for it.”

It is not a good enough argument to say that you are going to vote against a piece of legislation because it does not go far enough. Mr O’Rourke’s colleagues in the Green Party, over on the Opposition benches, often vote in favour of legislation whilst expressing caveats and the belief that they would go further in some instances or they would change a few things. But, on balance, they often say: “Actually, this is generally a good bill. We might do a few things differently. We might increase the penalties in some particular instances. We might change a few things. But, on balance, is this bill going to improve the lives of New Zealanders? Is this bill going to make New Zealand a better place?”. The Green Party often votes with caveats. In fact, to be fair to the contributions of Mr Clendon and Ms Logie to the debate tonight, that is exactly what they will do. But not so for the good people in New Zealand First—no, no. If they cannot have it all their own way, if the bill is not perfect, they will vote it down. I say that is very regrettable, because what this bill does is very important. This bill increases the penalties for people who supply and distribute child pornography, and it fills a lacuna in the law by which people can intentionally view material but not necessarily download it and, therefore, cannot be prosecuted. That is a very important part of the bill, and New Zealand First is opposed to it. I think that is regrettable. I urge—

Denis O’Rourke: New Zealand First is not opposed to that part. That was made clear in my speech.

CHRIS BISHOP: You are voting against the bill, so I urge you to reconsider your position at the Committee of the whole House and the third reading. This bill is an important bill. As I have mentioned, it does increase the penalties for possession of objectionable material. It does fill a lacuna in the law.

I want to spend a little time talking about the presumption of innocence that it creates for repeat offenders. Quite rightly, a little bit of concern was expressed by the Green Party, and I think it was reflecting some of the submissions to the Justice and Electoral Committee. I was not a member of the House, regrettably, when the select committee considered this bill, but I have read the submissions. The Green Party’s concern reflects the concern of the Legislation Advisory Committee and the Law Society, and that is fair enough. So what I did was I went and looked at the Crown Law Office advice to the Attorney-General, because members will be aware, of course, that the Attorney-General is required, after the first reading of a bill—or I think it is actually after the introduction of a bill before the House, from memory—to file a report with the House if that legislation is unjustifiably inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

Brett Hudson: What did the Attorney-General find?

CHRIS BISHOP: So I went and looked up the legal advice. The first point to note, Mr Hudson, is that there is, in fact, no section 7 report that the Attorney-General has laid. So what that indicates is that, in his view, the bill that is before the House is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. And that is important. Not every bill that comes before the House is. In fact, this Government has introduced bills that are inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—where the Government takes a different view to the view of the Attorney-General in his learned opinion.

I also went a little bit further than that. I went and looked up the legal advice. Members will also be aware that the Government waives privilege that attaches to the legal advice that goes to the Attorney-General from either the Ministry of Justice or the Crown Law Office on matters for section 7 reports under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. The legal advice that came from the Crown Law Office was that the presumption of imprisonment did engage section 9 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which protects against disproportionately severe punishment. So it engages the right, but the legal advice said that that would be unjustifiably inconsistent with that right only if the effect was to require a judge to impose a sentence that was grossly disproportionate to the offending. The legal advice makes it clear that the discretion still lies with the judge. So, if imprisonment is not an appropriate sentence having regard to the particular circumstances of the case, the discretion that remains with the learned judge is enough to make sure that the right in section 9 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—which protects against, as I said, disproportionately severe punishment—is not breached. I thought that that made a lot of sense. Although I fully recognise and understand to a certain extent the concerns expressed by my colleagues in the Green Party, I am satisfied, as, I think it is fair to say, Government members are, that there is not an unjustifiable limit on any right in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

The other right I want to talk about just briefly is in section 14. I have had a look at the debate and section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act has not really been engaged with so far. Of course, that is the right to freedom of expression. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression—the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form. Of course, this bill is a prima facie breach of the right to freedom of expression. I will express a little bit of concern here, as I did on the Coroners Amendment Bill in the latter part of last week. I will express a little bit of concern about the legal advice on this point that went to the Attorney-General. The legal advice that went to the Attorney-General simply said that the bill constrains the creation, possession, and trafficking of objectionable material, and that is a demonstrably justified limit. That is it. That is literally the statement. It is just one sentence. There is no reasoning. There is no analysis. There is no explanation. It just asserts without evidence or without much reasoning that this is a demonstrably justified limit. I happen to agree that this—increasing the penalties or, in fact, the mere existence of penalties for the trafficking of objectionable material, child exploitation material, in particular—is a demonstrably justified limit on the right to freedom of expression. It is important that we deter the possession of this material so that we deter the creation of the material, so that we deter the exploitation of children and others in the creation of this material, and so that we stop the revictimisation that occurs when this material is in the public domain. I think it would have been good to see some more explanation and more analysis within the legal advice.

This is an important bill. As I mentioned at the outset of my speech, child exploitation is an abhorrent crime, and other members have mentioned this as well. It is a problem for which there is some evidence that it is getting worse. I am informed that 200 new images are put into circulation on the internet every day. That is a shocking number. This is clearly a global problem, but it is a problem that New Zealand can have some impact on by a bill such as this, which increases those penalties, fills a gap in the law, and makes sure that the New Zealand legal system keeps up with technology that is, of course, increasing apace. I have to say that this is a good bill. It is just regrettable that a party that voted for it at its first reading for very good reasons is not prepared to recognise that it remains a good bill and will not continue to vote for it.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I am pleased to take a call on this bill. I want to raise a couple of points that I do not think have been fully explored by the other speakers. This is a very important bill. Protecting our children from exploitation—supporting the safety of our kids—is one of the most significant things that we can do as a House. But what I am a little disturbed about is the timing of this bill in respect of its passage through the various stages—not actually giving submitters, I do not feel, sufficient time to actually prepare submissions, be aware of the bill, and actually make submissions on this bill. I hear from other contributors to this bill that there were fewer than a dozen submitters.

When we think about the work that has already come to this House—for example, on the Vulnerable Children Bill or on the funding for sexual violence services—this is a bill that has the calibre to protect our children in the same vein that those two other bills do. I am disturbed and confused as to why there were not more submitters. I feel that it is unfortunate; it is because of the timing of this.

I know that there are groups that would like to have had the opportunity to present submissions on this. This is a significant issue. It is an issue that goes to the heart of protecting our children and it is an issue that tends to go under the radar. A lot of the activity that this bill addresses happens in the privacy of one’s own home, away from the eyes of the wider public, but we all know that it occurs.

This is a serious bill about the offences relating to child pornography. Let us not dress this up. The bill does go some way to looking at the maximum penalties for the manufacture, possession, supply, and distribution of this material, but it really relates to the fact that if there was no consumer, there would be no manufacturer. So, as I said in my previous piece tonight, we also have to look at what we are doing to prevent the harm from happening in the first place. I know that this bill does not deal with that, but the wider issue is that we need to look at prevention before we actually deal with the harm that is caused. Earlier tonight in the Parole Amendment Bill debate we talked about the impacts of offending on victims. We need to remember the victims when we are working with and dealing with bills such as this.

I want also to look to the discussion that was had. There has been quite a fruitful, I guess, discussion across the House. The report that came back from the Justice and Electoral Committee was about the majority view. New Zealand First has taken a slightly different view in terms of penalties. I agree that that is definitely an issue that we need to look at.

One of the matters that was raised was around the relativity of this offending to physical harm. I understand that someone has already made the comment that the production of this material could also result in the physical harm of children. So I agree that there is some discussion to be had around the relativity of penalties imposed around the development of this objectionable material and regarding the physical harm to children. I agree that there is more discussion needed on that.

With regard to clause 5 and the possession of electronic publications, I also look at some of the contributions that were made that want to also include discussions around the Harmful Digital Communications Bill, because we are looking at material that could potentially sit in both areas. It concerns me that we do have legislation that possibly can cover both situations. Would it not have been more sensible to look at overarching legislation that captures all of those experiences and situations, rather than to have two? I think that there is an opportunity for us to discuss that.

I notice that Vodafone made a submission around the possession of electronic publications, and I think that is right. It is interesting that it was the only internet service provider to do so. I know that within the electronic publications arena there are also modern applications that we all have access to on our smartphones and other devices that potentially throw us into a position of having that material on our device even though we may not have initiated it. We all know about Snapchat and the material that comes to us unwittingly, and there have been several high-profile people who have been caught out with material that has been forwarded without their knowledge.

Clause 13, which creates the new offence under the Crimes Act of indecent communication with a young person, closes, I agree, a very big gap in terms of the issue around the grooming of children. It is a very useful addition to our arsenal in terms of supporting children. The grooming of children and then taking the next step and actually arranging to meet them was discussed, I know, in a bill that came before the House last week, I believe. It is an interesting issue, again. I go back to the point that we have part of the concern here in this bill, we have it addressed in another part in another bill, and we should consider, really, tidying up the issues, rather than having part of the offence in one bill and a part in another bill.

I notice too that there was some discussion around the actual definition of “indecent”, and a discussion that it appears often in the Crimes Act. There was a note made that there is a well-established body of case law around the definition of “indecent”, but modern times should cause us to rethink that. I want the work that continues on this to actually consider that.

I also want to refer to what I said earlier about prevention. It seems to me that the wider context about many of the bills that we have seen recently speaks to the social mores that this modern world brings to us and how we can actually protect people from this offence in the first place. I look forward to the discussion where we are able to look to those matters of prevention rather than dealing with the offence in the first place. Thank you.

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

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Thank you for allowing me to take this call in the second reading of the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill. I want to thank the Justice and Electoral Committee and the Hon Amy Adams for spearheading this and for bringing it to the House. We have already heard from members opposite and from members on the Government benches that this is an important bill.

Of course, I am very passionate about children, too, and pleased to be speaking about the bill. I certainly take the point of a member opposite, Mr Faafoi, that it is not a pleasure to be talking about these offences but that it is certainly a pleasure to be aiding the protection of children. I am a mother, and, as I said, I am very passionate about children and protecting them, but, as we have witnessed around the House, you certainly do not need to be a mother or a father to have fierce motivation to support this bill. I note that there was good work done in the select committee and that when the bill was brought to the House, there was unanimous support for it, despite the contribution of New Zealand First. I am looking forward to supporting this bill.

This bill is all about ensuring that the sentences for those who deal with objectionable material involving children reflect the seriousness of the offending. I must say that the exploitation, the cruelty, the violence, the horror, and the abuse of children will certainly not be tolerated by this Government. With the evolution of the internet, offenders can obtain objectionable materials quickly and at rates that we just could not imagine even a couple of years ago. We have already heard about accessibility through networking sites, sharing of photos through Snapchat, and text messaging. Communications such as these are making it so easy for people to connect but also very easy for adults to connect in communications with children. As part of that, obviously, this bill brings in an amendment—clause 13—that is the major change and covers the gap, making it an offence to have indecent communication with anyone under 16 years of age.

The bill takes the matter further, too, with the object of grooming, where those people take it one step further, with a view to meeting those children and putting them in harm’s way. I will just reiterate that this Government will not tolerate exploitation and violence towards children, so I am totally supportive of that amendment.

The bill also talks about the presumption of imprisonment for repeat offenders, and I think that that is fair enough. There should be that presumption. If somebody is dealing in objectionable material and they have done that time and time again, then they should be punished. I take the point mentioned earlier that these people are dealing with deep-rooted psychological issues, and they will certainly be treated through specialist programmes, but I reiterate that this bill is about making the punishment fit the crime, and it must be looked at in that way. The sentences have been extended to support that, and, as such, I commend the work of the Justice and Electoral Committee, spearheaded by the Hon Amy Adams. I commend this bill at its second reading.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Stuart Smith—5 minutes.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): As my colleague Sarah Dowie said before, I also commend the Justice and Electoral Committee for its work and Amy Adams for bringing this bill, the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill, before the House. I take on board what was said by Mr Faafoi earlier. It is not something that gives anyone any pleasure to speak about, but we are here to do the right job for New Zealanders, and sometimes that means doing the tough things, as we saw earlier in the day today.

I was also taken by Poto Williams’ comments before, and I absolutely agree with what she said. However, it is such a difficult thing to deal with at that end, and we cannot give up on it, but trying to ensure that there is no market for this material would, of course, be the best solution. Unfortunately, we are living in a world where we have this situation now and we have to deal with what is in front of us, but I agree wholeheartedly that we need to look forward and spend some time thinking about how we might make some ground on that. I know, as a member of the Social Services Committee, which has been dealing with an inquiry into sexual violence, it is not a pleasant subject and it is not an easy one to grapple with. Certainly, the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill is dealing with the sharp end of that.

I note that this bill is increasing the maximum penalty for the possession, import, and export of an objectionable publication from 5 years’ imprisonment to 10 years’ imprisonment. Too often I think we think of imprisonment as punishment, and, indeed, that is partly what it is there for, but it is also there for protection, and protection for the innocent people left behind. I think we must not ever forget that. Really, for some people you would think maybe getting out of prison should not be an option, particularly in some of these hardened cases, so I applaud that clause in the bill that moves it out from 5 to 10 years. I think that is a very good move. Likewise, I also note that increasing the maximum penalty for distributing and for making an objectionable publication from 10 years’ imprisonment to 14 years’ imprisonment is also a good move and something I wholeheartedly support.

It seems to me that at the heart of this bill is really a change in technology. I note that this bill is really looking forward and trying to futureproof the law for the future. It is something that we really must think of in all of the legislation that we put forward, because times change. Although we really think Facebook is in everybody’s lives today, it is not that many years ago that Mark Zuckerberg came up with Facebook. How many years ago was that? Brett? Was it 10, 15?

Chris Bishop: 2004.

STUART SMITH: Four years—4? No, no.

Chris Bishop: 2004.

STUART SMITH: 2004. So it is not that long ago—10 or 11 years ago—and yet everybody in this House today, I would imagine, has a Facebook account. I think we now know that before some employers take people on in employment they look at their Facebook accounts and see what they can find. For some young people being caught with indecent publications in social media, it is with them for ever, so it is really important that we get on top of this pretty quickly. I think what we would have thought of as being pornography and indecent publications only a few years ago would have required some sort of hard copy; today it is digital. Who knows what it will be in the future. Holograms are only just round the corner.

I think we really need to ensure that we get good legislation, and this bill is going a long way towards that and I wholeheartedly support it. I am rather disappointed in my colleagues in New Zealand First. I really think their attitude on this bill is a triumph of ideology over good sense, and really they should take a bit of a hard look at themselves on this one. I take great pleasure in commending the bill to the House. Thank you.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4)

Second Reading

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Associate Minister of Justice): I move, That the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) be now read a second time. Sometimes bills come before the House and create a real stir. I think it is fair to say that this is not going to be one of those bills. It is probably in the category of being dull but worthy. I hear the members behind me say that that is like some of the members in front of me, but I could not possibly say that.

Hon David Parker: They were talking about you.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: How cruel. As the House knows, what a statutes amendment bill enables Parliament to do is to make technical, short, and non-controversial amendments to a number of Acts. It enables amendments that would not usually receive sufficient priority to be progressed individually. This is achieved with the support of all parties in Parliament, and I certainly want to thank all parties for their cooperation on this bill.

This current bill, as reported back by the Government Administration Committee, amends 34 Acts. Each of the amendments in the bill has received unanimous cross-party support in the previous Parliament. It is a demonstration of all parties working together. The bill was reported back by the Government Administration Committee on 29 July last year, and I thank the committee for its careful consideration of the bill. The committee recommended changes to the proposed amendments to two Acts and the insertion of additional amendments to two further Acts. I support these improvements. The committee also recommended amendments to parallel clauses in the bill amending the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 and the Official Information Act 1982.

The Law Commission recommended the initial amendments in its 2012 report on official information. It proposed the changes to clarify common practices about the operation of the legislation and to update the wording of the Act. The committee recommended removing four of the clauses in the bill affecting these two Acts. The committee considered them to be policy issues and not appropriate for a statutes amendment bill. These provisions relate to legal professional privilege.

The committee also recommended clarifying clauses dealing with information requests and how agencies may deal with these requests. Two of the recommended amendments will clarify that agencies may request that an oral Official Information Act request be put in writing only if reasonably necessary. Further recommended amendments will ensure that a clarified or amended Official Information Act request is considered a new request. Collectively, these changes will make the legislation more effective and efficient for requestors and agencies.

The committee also recommended inserting a new amendment to the Local Electoral Act 2001 and the Local Government Act 2002. These changes will address omissions from previous amendments to these Acts. The Acts were amended in 2013 but some necessary consequential amendments were overlooked. The changes will extend the time frame for completing pre-election processes by 7 days for all elections and polls, not just general elections.

This bill proposes a number of positive changes to the statute book that are technical, short, or non-controversial—as I said, dull but incredibly worthy. Again, I thank the committee for its hard work and I thank the House for its unanimous cross-party support. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): By my reckoning there are 33 Acts that are amended here. I think you might have had poor advice from your ministry that there were 34, because there are only 33 parts to the bill, Mr Bridges.

Alastair Scott: Start again.

Hon DAVID PARKER: That is right. It might not be the most interesting piece of legislation, but I would have hoped that the Associate Minister of Justice would at least know the number of Acts that he was amending through this legislation. This bill splits into 33 parts upon its passage, because it amends each of those 33 Acts—not 34.

Hon Simon Bridges: You need to get out more.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, the difference between 33 and 34 is probably a wee bit more important on this side of the House than it is on that.

In terms of the amendments to the legislation that are recommended by the Government Administration Committee, I endorse its caution in respect of some changes that were being made to these Acts, particularly the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act and the Official Information Act, both of which had amendments that went further than was probably appropriate for a statutes amendment bill. As the Minister has correctly pointed out, the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) is an omnibus bill. The reason that we do not generally have omnibus bills in this House is that they can traverse a wide area of information, and buried in the middle of them can be something significant. Submitters who might be interested in one piece of legislation will not, through the general notification that goes to members of the public from Parliament, be alerted to the fact that there is a change in the law that could be significant to them. The public, therefore, does not have the ability to raise the issue, the fourth estate does not get over the top of what might be a significant issue, and this Parliament could, therefore, in a pre-emptory way make an unwise change to legislation.

For that reason, omnibus legislation is frowned upon, but there is one exception, and that is through a statutes amendment bill, where Parliament agrees that there are technical amendments that are needed to lots of little pieces of legislation. It is generally in the nature of housekeeping, sometimes it will be a drafting error, and other times there will be a non-controversial thing that has arisen just through changing circumstances over time. All parties in the House are canvassed as to whether they think that the items are non-contentious. If any one party at any stage in the proceeding says: “Look, we’ve changed our mind. We think there is something controversial here.”, then the custom is—and, indeed, it might be a Standing Orders requirement, I think, rather than a custom—that that provision has to be taken out of the bill so that we truly are left with non-contentious matters. That is where we have got to here. The reason that the provisions that were recommended for amendment by the select committee are coming out is for that reason.

The committee did not think it was wise to introduce into the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act a definition of “legal professional privilege”. One of the reasons that the committee has come to that view is that upon reflection—and I suspect it may have had a submission from someone to this effect at the select committee, but I was not sitting on it. Effectively, the select committee is saying that the definition could be interpreted in a way that restricts legal professional privilege to only circumstances where court proceedings are in train or contemplated, which is but a subset of legal professional privilege, which perhaps should apply more broadly to the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987. Therefore the introduction of a narrower definition than the wider definition of “legal professional privilege” might have had the opposite effect to that which was intended. So by defining it more narrowly, it might have been overriding a wider legal professional privilege that already applied. So I can see the logic in that, and I think that it is wise to pull that out of the Act.

Similarly, I think that the amendments that are made in respect of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act are appropriate. In respect of that issue the committee said the update to the legislation—which, as the Minister said, was recommended by the Law Commission, I think, as a consequence of changing practices over time—is uncontroversial, but the introduction of a discretion, if you like, for the local authorities to say in respect of an oral request for information that it should be particularised in writing was too general and could have been used by local government to obstruct people getting information in even the most mundane of cases. So if someone was coming in with an inquiry and the authorities said: “No, we are not going to give that to you today.” and the person then stood on their right to get what was public information and said: “I am making a request under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act.”, someone who was being obstructive in the local government office could say: “Put that in writing.”, even though there is no need to put it in writing. So the committee, as I understand it, has made some amendments to limit the discretion of the local authorities to always be able to say that routinely, and that seems pretty sensible as well.

The other Acts that are amended are listed in the bill. I do not propose to go through all 33 of them in detail. With those comments, I record that the Labour Party is happy to support the second reading of the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4).

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this omnibus bill—again, another technical bill. These bills do seem to sit with the Government Administration Committee. As a member of that committee along with the member opposite, Ruth Dyson, who is the chair of it—I guess we must have the brainpower for these very technical bills, so it is wonderful to be speaking on this bill.

I note that it has cross-party support, and that is fantastic. It is fantastic that these changes to the interpretation of these Acts will be made expediently and will allow clarification. Obviously, the aim for laws and statutes is that they are read in plain, simple English and that anyone can pick them up and read them and that it does not become a legislation-fest for solicitors.

But I would like to just focus my comments on one part of this bill, and that is the changes to the Official Information Act 1982. When I used to work for the Department of Conservation, obviously official information requests were very important. They kept us, as officers of the Department of Conservation, honest and accountable. This Act plays a very important role in doing that.

Just starting from the beginning, clause 72 clarifies that the request for official information can be communicated in any form, including orally. Quite frankly, this was often the way that official information requests were communicated to us. It is only fair that people be allowed to request information in that way. Obviously, it helps to clarify that request when it is put in writing, but by using your emotional intelligence skills, you can talk to the requester, delve a little deeper, investigate what they want, take notes, and let them request that information in an oral manner. I think that is fair.

Clause 73 of the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) clarifies that partial transfer of official information is permitted, and that is fair enough too. While at the Department of Conservation, especially in the concessions realm, I was dealing with quite a lot of information and lots of printout reports from a computer database. Often, it was time-consuming to collate that. Often the requester would need that information as soon as possible and that is actually part of the legislation—that Government departments deal with the requests as expediently as possible or, at the very least, within 20 working days. So the partial transfer of information allows that requester to obtain the information earlier than, obviously, waiting for the entire request to be processed. It means that they can act on that themselves in an expedient manner.

With regard to clause 74, this clarifies that if a request for official information is amended, then that revised request is to be treated as a new request. Again, while working for the Department of Conservation, I found that often requesters would change their minds, which would change the nature of the request, and that could be quite a significant change for officers dealing with that information, especially if it was a great deal of information at the other end. So it is only fair that the officer gets a fresh time limit to deal with that information at that time.

Clause 75 of the bill puts beyond doubt that official information is able to be released electronically. That saves on cost, especially when there are quite a few reports being generated in those requests. It means that the requester does not have to pay for the information; it can be just emailed to them, and they can flick through that relatively quickly and get the gist of the information that they need. Again, I think that is pretty pragmatic. It has probably been going on for some time, but it now just sets that straight in the legislation so that there can be no challenges.

In respect of clause 76 of the bill amending the Official Information Act 1982, it clarifies that an agency must make reasonable efforts to locate the information before refusing on the grounds that the information cannot be located. I can speak firsthand from working for the Department of Conservation that it has screeds of information generated back—for 7 years, I think it has to keep the information. There are files upon files and it can, in some ways, become onerous for it to check for that information. But it is accepted that the Official Information Act is about transparency, it is about accountability, and hence those officers must exhaust their efforts, and use reasonable efforts to locate information that is requested.

In respect of clause 77 of the bill, this clarifies that the Ombudsmen can notify the Chief Archivist if a request is refused on grounds that may indicate that the Public Records Act 2005 has not been complied with. Again, this is a check and balance that is required in respect of the Official Information Act.

Finally, clause 77 of the bill clarifies that the Ombudsmen can hear complaints under the Act that an agency has failed to decide a request as soon as is reasonably practicable. So again this is another important check and balance in respect of the Official Information Act, which is so important in our democracy to maintain that transparency and accountability.

It is with pleasure that I speak to this technical bill. It is an expedient way to deal with a number of changes that do have cross-party support. It allows us to get on with more pressing business but allows things to be tidied up under these Acts so that—to coin a phrase—you cannot drive a wedge through that legislation. It goes to the intent of the primary legislation and certainly helps us to deliver better public services for New Zealand. So with that, I commend the bill to the House.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): At this peak viewing and listening time there is always fierce competition for a member to get the call, and I am just so delighted that you chose me ahead of my friend and colleague from Christchurch Denis O’Rourke. He will have a much less interesting time, with far fewer listeners and viewers, I am sure, when he is able to take the call.

Like others, I am pleased to be able to talk in the second reading of the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4). It is a bill that the Government Administration Committee, which I am privileged to chair, had the opportunity to scrutinise. I want to acknowledge three members of that committee who are no longer on the committee, two of whom are no longer in Parliament: Eric Roy, Chris Auchinvole, and, of course, Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi. Kanwaljit Bakshi is still in Parliament but, unfortunately, no longer on our committee. The member who—very bravely, I think—subjected the House to a 10-minute speech on a bill that everyone agrees on should also be commended. I am enjoying working with Sarah Dowie, the current deputy chair of the Government Administration Committee, and I hope to do so for many years to come.

As has been pointed out, this Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) has the agreement of Parliament. It is interesting to notice, then, that this bill is being filibustered by the National Party members of Parliament. They are filibustering a bill that every single member of Parliament agrees with. We could not get the Government to give us a vote on sending 140 young New Zealanders to Iraq, but here we are filibustering a bill that every single member of Parliament agrees with. It is all about priorities; it is all about what is important. I would have thought having a robust debate on what has to be the biggest responsibility of a Government—deciding to put someone else’s life at risk; not your own life, but someone else’s—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

Hon RUTH DYSON: So we did not get a vote on that, but here we are filibustering on this bill at 10 o’clock at night.

Some of the statutes that this bill amends are really interesting, and again it is all about priorities. I notice that one of them is the Antarctica (Environmental Protection) Act 1994, and, again, it is about priorities. Here we have a Queensland fruit fly infestation causing huge concern to the communities that my colleague Damien O’Connor spoke about in question time today. There is nothing on the Order Paper to boost up biosecurity for our own country, but here we are amending legislation to give better protection to Antarctica. I am pleased that we are doing that—I am pleased that we are doing that. I just wish that the Government had not cut back millions of dollars and lots of staff from our own biosecurity teams, because that protection is one of the most important things that New Zealand can do. Again, it is a core Government responsibility to protect not just our citizens—the young people who serve in our defence forces—but also, of course, our agricultural and horticultural sectors.

There are 33 Acts that are amended in this bill. I think about half of them were previously the responsibility of the Hon Judith Collins before she was moved out of Cabinet. I know that members generally talk about how these statutes amendment bills are progressed to allow for minor technical changes, but actually they are mistakes that previous Ministers have made with legislation. I have had some in my own name that I have been responsible for, and I have thought: “How on earth did that get through?”. Well, it is because you do not take enough care, to be honest. That has happened with 33 pieces of legislation in this statutes amendment bill, which is far more than you would normally expect. It goes from the Animal Welfare Act in Part 1 right through to the Wildlife Act in Part 33. Every one of those amendments has got what are sometimes quite substantive changes, but not substantive enough to breach the requirements that our Government Administration Committee rigorously adheres to in terms of appropriateness for inclusion in a statutes amendment bill. Also, obviously, the amendments do not concern any policy matters. Otherwise, they would not be able to be in this bill. Policy matters cannot be in a statutes amendment bill.

It is unusual to have this many changes in one piece of legislation, but I certainly look forward to its further progress. Mr Assistant Speaker, you have the air of someone who is about to curtail my contribution to this debate, and I do not want that to happen. I was keen on making a full contribution, as has every member—

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

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.