Wednesday, 1 July 2015

WEDNESDAY, 1 JULY 2015

WEDNESDAY, 1 JULY 2015

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Motions

Clerk of the House of Representatives—Retirement

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I seek leave to move a motion without notice recognising the retirement of Mary Harris, the Clerk of the House.

Mr SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is none.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well, we will ignore Mary, so there is no objection from anyone else. I move, That this House recognise the retirement of the Clerk of the House, Mary Harris, and put on record our appreciation and thanks for her years of service to Parliament. Mary was appointed Clerk in December 2007. She began her career in Parliament in 1987. Before coming to Parliament, she worked for the Department of Statistics, producing the labour force statistics in the household labour force survey team. She was a professional violinist, captained the Wellington women’s cricket team from 1982 to 1986, and was vice-captain of the international 11 in the 1982 Cricket World Cup in Christchurch. She taught Brendon McCullum everything he knows.

Mary has had a varied career within the Office of the Clerk, moving her way up to be the Clerk of the House via the Select Committee Office, Clerk at the Table assisting the Clerk, reporting services, Deputy Clerk, and finally, of course, Clerk. During her time here, Mary has been involved with a number of important pieces of parliamentary reform. She was involved in the development of services for MPs in the first MMP Parliament and in bringing Parliament into the 21st century, with the upgrade of the parliamentary website. She led the implementation of the Clerk’s leadership development programme, has represented New Zealand and presented at numerous Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conferences, and has aided in the strengthening of democracy in the Pacific, notably the strengthening of the role of Parliament in Vanuatu.

Since Mary became Clerk in 2007 she has served three Speakers—Margaret Wilson, Lockwood Smith, and yourself, sir—all of whom speak very highly of her work and the leadership she has shown, in particular her focus on working with the Parliamentary Service to achieve common goals in the service of Parliament and parliamentarians. Mary’s last day is on Thursday, and I understand that she will be spending some time after that cycling around Italy before returning to build a new home in Ōtaki Forks and to focus on honing her goal of becoming an expert fisherman. I know that we all wish her well for retirement, and that we look forward to a booty of great smoked fish being delivered to Parliament and tabled when we can at the next opportunity.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): I am pleased, on behalf of the Labour Opposition, to support the Prime Minister’s motion on the retirement of Mary Harris, Clerk of the House. Thank you, Mary, for your years of service to our Parliament—28 of them, starting in 1987. Your experience, as the Prime Minister said, has been in most sections of the Office of the Clerk, from the Hansard Office to select committees to the Deputy Clerk of the House, and then 7 years as the Clerk. Some of us were here under the previous Clerk, Dave McGee, who was considered the foremost authority on the workings of a Westminster parliament. They were always going to be big shoes to fill, Mary, but you have filled those shoes, and perhaps your preparation for facing the googlies of this place came from the fact that you were in the 1982 Women’s Cricket World Cup, averaging 41 runs in that match against our old adversary Australia. I am told that Mary is a right-handed batswoman, and that is the only time that she has shown preference between the right and the left.

Mary is our first woman Clerk and our first non-lawyer as a Clerk, and she has led the House through a great period of change, particularly technological change, with the e-committees. Some of us are still getting to grips with those changes, Mary. She embraced change, but not at the expense of Parliament’s enduring values. She has shown a strong commitment to finding new ways for Parliament to be open and accessible to the people who elect it, and we are the better for it. With Mary’s guidance there have been some important changes in the procedures for the smooth running of the House, such as extended sittings. Under her leadership, the Office of the Clerk has been described as a “little gem”—I think that is probably a pretty good description of Mary herself, actually.

MPs have come to regard her as an impeccable and impartial source of advice, and, like her predecessor, she too is now widely respected in Parliaments around the world. For example, Westminster, the home of our type of parliament, sought her opinion on their governance arrangements earlier this year. An attribute so important in a Clerk is to have a phenomenal recall of long-forgotten Standing Orders, Speakers’ rulings, and the House proceedings, and Mary has that recall, matched only by our Trev. Her patience is legendary, and it was hugely tested during the drama of the Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill, which saw the tabling of over 30,000 amendments, mostly from Labour, and mostly, I have to say, proved to be right. Nine hundred and sixty-two of those amendments were voted on, with all the work that the Clerk’s Office and Mary put into that. Another less-known attribute is her ability to cover the distance between her office and the Chamber at breakneck speed, in a gown and high-heeled shoes, at the sign of any meltdown by members of this House.

In 2013 Mary was awarded the Companion of the Queen’s Service Order for services to Parliament, which was so richly deserved. It has been a privilege to work with you, Mary. We thank you and we wish you the best in the next stage of your full and interesting life. There is life after Parliament—I have just seen Eric Roy and he is 14 kilograms lighter. So you can look forward to fishing, cycling, whatever comes your way, but we thank you very much for the service you have given us.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): Tēnā koe, Mary. On behalf of the Green Party, thank you so much for all of the years that you have made a contribution to this Parliament. You have done an incredible job in the time that you have been Clerk of the House and in the years before that. It has been a real privilege to work with you, and with the team that you have built. Under your leadership I think we have seen a great deal of growth and progress in Parliament. It has been fantastic to have a woman in the role of Clerk of the House, and I am sure that many more women will follow in time as a result of your leadership and example. Parliament is so much more accessible to so many more people as a result of your work, and that is what makes our democracy so great; that is why we are all so committed to it.

You have always been very kind and very generous with your time and your knowledge to our staff, to our new MPs, and to new co-leaders, helping us navigate not just the process in this place but sometimes the very tricky politics that also apply in the process, and for that we are very grateful—thank you. You have also never been afraid to tell it like it is to anyone who needs to hear it, including MPs, and even just last week you made it quite clear, and rightly so, that perhaps we MPs need to grow up and get over ourselves somewhat, and not be quite so sheltered any more. Maybe it is time for our bad behaviour to be made more public and used for satire. I think that was a great statement to make as part of your process of leaving this place. We are, after all, all here as examples to our country of leadership, and we have been very pleased that you have shown that leadership yourself.

So thank you, on behalf of us all, for all of your hard work. We wish you really well for whatever comes next, whether it is retirement or something else. There are a great many more contributions that you can make to our country, so thank you.

We want to acknowledge, too, that David will be taking on the role of Clerk, and we look forward to his work and to seeing how he will step into your shoes, too. They are big shoes; no doubt he will do a good job, as well, but thank you, Mary, for all of your work over these years. Kia ora.

TRACEY MARTIN (Deputy Leader—NZ First): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. On behalf of New Zealand First, I rise to join with others in thanking Mary. I have not been here very long, but one of the things that I remember, and that I acknowledge and thank Mary for—and I know that our new MPs will, too—is the effort that she and her officers have put into supporting us. I have had the privilege to travel since I have been in this job, and one of the things that I have discovered, or rediscovered, is that, actually, politicians come and go, but it is the public servants and people like you who actually hold our democracy together. It is you—sorry, you, Mr Speaker, also, but Mary and her team—who makes sure that we follow the rules, because most of the time we spend our lives pushing against the rules and pushing those boundaries. We push you to your limits at times—both you, Mr Speaker, and Mary.

So, Mary, just very quickly, on behalf of us all in New Zealand First, we want to acknowledge the many things and the many years that it has taken you to get to that position. As a woman and a feminist I want to acknowledge you smashing that wee glass ceiling. I hope it stays broken. David, that is nothing against you; we expect to have great things from you. But to you, Mary, all the best. Nothing interferes with life as much as work. I am sure that there are so many more things and so much more that you will give to us as a country once you return from your cycling holiday in Italy, because you will not be able to help yourself. You are that type of person, Mary. So thank you, thank you, thank you, from all of us here. Kia ora.

Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL (Co-Leader—Māori Party): E te Māngai o te Whare Pāremata, otirā, ki aku hoa o roto i te Whare, tēnā tātou katoa. Kua huri au ki taku Reo Māori ki te mihi ki a koe, Mary. E pēnei ana taku kōrero ki a koe i te mea, ko koe te mea i whakatūwhera nei kia taea ai e au, a Māori nei, te whakatakoto ēnei momo kōrero ki mua i te aroaro o te Whare Pāremata e tū nei.

I taku taenga mai ki tēnei Whare, ā, arā noa i te taha o te Mana Whakawā tētahi e noho ana. Ko tāna mahi he whakapākehā i ngā kōrero Māori ēngari, i noho hōhā nei te Whare i te mea, ka kōrero ana au i taku kōrero i Te Reo Māori, ā, ka tatari ake kia kōrero Pākehā te tangata nā, hōhā katoa ana ahau ki te tatari kia whakawāngia taku Reo Māori. I hōhā katoa te Whare nā te roa o te kōrero ēngari, ka puta te kōrero a te Pāti Māori kia whakamanahia tō tātou Reo i roto i te Whare. Ko koe te mea i whakatūwhera nei te kuaha kia taea ai e au te tū ake ki te mihi ki tēnā, ki tēnā, ki te kōrero i te Reo o ngā mātua, o ngā tūpuna. Nō reira koinei au i whakaaro ake, he pai kē te mihi ki a koe i Te Reo Māori. Nā runga i tērā me te mahi i oti i a koe i ngā rā o mua, ā, anei te whakatinanatanga o tērā o ngā mahi.

Nō reira, koinei te mihi o te ngākau o te Pāti Māori, kaua nō māua ko taku tuahine a Mārama ēngari, he mihi anō hoki nō mai i a Tā Pita Sharples, i a Tariana Turia i te mea, anā, ko rātau i noho nei i raro i te korowai o te Pāti Māori. Ko koe tērā te ringa āwhina ki a rāua, otirā, ki a mātou katoa i te taenga mai ki roto i te Whare Pāremata; koutou ko David, tērā David kua puta ēngari, arā, ko tō hoa i tō taha i nāianei, ā, ko ia te tangata ka kawe i te rākau.

Ko tētahi āhuatanga kua kite nei au i ngā tau i noho nei au i roto i te Whare Pāremata, ko tō ngāwari ki te whakatau i ngā take. Kāre i puta he riri, kāre i puta he raruraru ko tāu, he ngākau ngāwari, ā-kōrero, ā-tinana, ā-wairua. He āhuatanga ātaahua tērā! Ko te wahine, ā, ko te wahine tērā! Ka mutu, i roto i Te Ao Māori ko ngā mea pēnā i a koe he tohunga tonu. Tēnei kupu ko te “tohunga”, ko ēra ko te nuinga ka whakaaro ake, ē ko te tāne ēngari, ko te tohunga nā te mea mōhio nei ki te whānuitanga o te mātauranga. Ko Te Ururoa i noho mataku nei ki te pukapuka Ngā Whakatau a Te Hunga Whakawā, me Ngā Whakataunga Tūroa o Te Whare Māngai. Mēnā he raruraru i puta, ā, kua haere tika tonu ki a koe. Ko tāu mahi, ko te āwhina i a mātou.

Nō reira, e kore e mutu waku mihi ki a koe, otirā, kia haere i tō haere me te mōhio anō hoki, ā, ko Te Reo Māori i tēnei rā, kei te kōrerohia i roto i te Whare Pāremata o Aotearoa, i whai wāhi koe i roto i tērā āhuatanga, me ngā mea i kōrerohia ake nei ēngari, ko au tēnei kei te kī atu, ē, ko Te Reo Māori kua mana nā runga i te āhuatanga o āu mahi i ngā tau kua hipa ake. Tēnā koe, tēnā koe—kia ora tātau katoa, he wai!

[I acknowledge you, Mr Speaker of the House of Parliament, and indeed all of you, my colleagues in it. In paying a tribute to you, Mary, I turn to my Māori language. I address you in this manner because you are the one who opened up the way to enable me, Māori, to place these kinds of statements before Parliament standing here.

When I arrived in this House here, hello, there was a person sitting beside the Speaker there. His job was to interpret contributions in Māori, but the House remained bored because when I made my address in the Māori language and waited for an analysis of my Māori language, the House was totally bored because it took a long time. But on the other hand, the Māori Party issued a statement that our language in the House must be empowered, and you played a pivotal role in opening the door that enabled me to stand up to acknowledge that person and that one, and to speak in the language of the parents and forefathers. And that got me thinking how fitting it would be to acknowledge you in the Māori language and, furthermore, the work that you did in the years past, and here is the embodiment of that part of your role.

So here is an appreciation from the heart of the Māori Party; not just from me and my sister colleague here, Mārama, but also from Sir Pita Sharples and Dame Tariana Tūria, who were here as well, under the cloak of the Māori Party. It was you who provided advice to those two and indeed to all of us when we arrived here in the House of Parliament; you collectively and David, the one who left and David, your colleague sitting there beside you now, who will take over from you.

An aspect of you I have observed in my years here in the House is the ease you portray when settling issues. There are no outbursts of anger, nothing is a difficulty; you are a person at ease conversationally, physically, and spiritually. What an admirable trait that is. Being a woman is merely being that! What is more, people like you in Māoridom are regarded as genuine experts. This word “tohunga”, according to a majority view, is for men who are recognised as experts in their field because of their profound understanding. I, Te Ururoa, lived in fear of the book called Speakers’ Rulings and the Standing Orders of the House of Representatives. If there was a problem, I would go directly to you, your role being to help us.

Therefore my tributes to you are endless, in that you will embark on your journey knowing full well and at the same time also that the Māori Language today is being spoken in the Parliament of New Zealand, and that you were involved in that phenomenon, and the things that I alluded to—yes, indeed. But I say to you that the Māori language has been empowered because of your deeds in the past years. Thank you, thank you—and to us all, let us have a song.]

Waiata

Kāti ake! Waiho mā tērā waiata koe e kawe ki ngā tōpito katoa o te motu, ā, kia hoki mai ki te wā kāinga kua mōhio koe, ā, e tika ana tērā waiata mōu, mā wai rā te marae e taurima?

[Enough! Let that song take you to every extremity of the country, and when you come back home you will understand that song sung for you, who indeed will tend to the marae.]

Who will look after the marae? It will be truth; it will be honesty; it will be integrity; and, above all, it will be love for one another. Haere i tō haere, e Mere [Go forth on your journey, Mary.]

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): I want to share the sentiments expressed by others in tribute to Mary for all that she has achieved as our Clerk over the last 8 years, and the 20-odd years beforehand that she was a servant of this Parliament. I have often thought that there are a couple of essential attributes that a good Clerk requires. One is an absolute poker-face—to be able to listen to all of the debates in this Chamber, absorb their content so that the Speaker can be advised to make appropriate rulings, but never, ever betray a hint of prejudice or interest one way or the other in the course that the debate is taking. Mary, over the years you have proved to be absolutely inscrutable in that regard, and I think it is a tribute to your professionalism, your impartiality, and your skill that at a time when passions have mounted greatly in this House you have been often the one calm voice of order amongst us, so thank you for that.

I think that the second attribute that a Clerk needs to possess is an extraordinary ability to assess the situation and to offer advice to the individual member, either privately or through the Chamber, seeking assistance on a particular point, again without ever revealing how stupid, trivial, extreme, or otherwise you think the question that you are being asked may be. I think all members would feel that you have provided advice that has been professional, that has been thorough, and that has often saved MPs from themselves in particular situations, and, again, for that we are grateful.

But I think you have demonstrated a third skill as well. It is fashionable outside this place these days to try to reduce the traditions and the history and the flavour of Parliament to being somewhat of a fiction. We have seen a succession of occasions over the years where external influences—philistines, in the main—have tried to treat Parliament as just another Government agency or just the same as a large corporate. Often it has been the Clerk, in particular Mary, who has stood against that degree of barbarism that has intruded into this place to try to uphold the good and proper traditions of a free and democratic Parliament, to try to say that there are issues that MPs need to be steadfast on, even if they may feel a little bit ambivalent themselves about doing so. I think your guidance, your determination, and your absolute commitment and love for this place have shone through on each of those occasions.

So we will inevitably be the poorer for your departure, and it is little solace to us, as we slave through the Order Paper, to know that you will be on a cycling holiday in Italy or fishing in the Ōtaki Forks. That is great for you and I am delighted that is the case, but Parliament will seriously miss your wisdom.

Hon Member: Jealous?

Hon PETER DUNNE: I am a little jealous, actually, yes. We will seriously miss your wisdom, your guidance, your input, and your steadfast hand quietly on the tiller of State. Having said that, can I say to David, like we probably said a few years ago when Mary succeeded, that you have big shoes to fill. We have every confidence in your ability to do so, but I am sure that only an email or a telephone call away will be some guidance and some assistance if you need it as you transition into the role.

Can I just conclude by making this observation: over the years this Parliament has been extraordinarily well served by its officers. I think often we take them for granted. Today is an occasion to pay tribute to one of our best. Mary, all the very best for your future. I hesitate to use the word “retirement”, because I am sure it will not be that. You have friends here who will continue to show an interest in what you are up to, love to hear from you, and look forward to whatever the next turn in your extraordinarily varied and interesting life may be.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): On behalf not only of myself but of all ACT members who have served here with Mary, I would like to pass on our admiration and gratitude for Mary’s relentless professionalism and, most important, wish her very, very successful fishing. Thank you.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour): I can assure Mary that we are nearly there, and her legendary poker-face will be able to relax in just a moment. It falls to me on behalf of the Opposition whips, those who have served on the Business Committee, the Standing Orders Committee, and all of the other committees around the House that make this place tick over to thank Mary for her years of service to the House. During that time, as has already been mentioned, there have been significant changes, and Mary has often been one of the advocates for the change and the modernisation of Parliament: the greater role of the Business Committee, the introduction of extended sittings to reduce the unnecessary use of urgency, a more themed and structured approach to the way we deal with annual reviews and estimates debates—all of those things are areas where Mary has been at the forefront of advocating for change whilst also ensuring that the traditions of the House have been appropriately upheld.

Mary has been a staunch advocate for the rights of members of Parliament, even when that has not necessarily been popular. There is always a tension in the House between efficiency and the rights of the minority to be heard. I think Mary treads very carefully down that fine line to ensure that the House operates as efficiently as possible whilst also ensuring that the very important work that we do here is respected.

Mary is one of the first people I heard argue that by design Parliament is inefficient and that that is the way it should be, because that is, in fact, the nature of the democratic process. Mary, we have respected your impartiality, the even-handed way in which you have dealt with all members on both sides of the House.

I did contemplate what the most appropriate way to end this contribution would be. I thought maybe I could use a visual aid. I thought I could seek some advice from the Clerk on whether, in fact, a visual aid would be appropriate, but then I decided that that would not be so good. I thought maybe I could seek some advice on whether, in fact, I could table it, but I also decided that that would not be appropriate. So, instead, we simply present these flowers to you, Mary, on behalf of the Opposition, to say thank you for your years of service. You have well and truly earned a break and an opportunity to smell the roses. Thank you.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I want to make a few comments as Leader of the House, and unlike the general comments that have been made in the House this afternoon, which I agree with, I want to make those comments on a more personal level. I think the working relationship between the Leader of the House and the Clerk is probably similar to, if slightly less than, the relationship between the Speaker and the Clerk. I have appreciated the Monday morning meetings, Mary, where you have given us gentle guidance on what the Government was hoping to achieve in any particular week. You will see that there is no poker-face there at the moment. That is largely because we on this side of the House have a lot of bright ideas that need to be contained. But one of the things about your term as Clerk, which I think cannot be stated enough, is the way in which you have quite quietly but very firmly protected the privilege of Parliament.

I think the privilege of Parliament is a concept that is often misunderstood. People seem to think that it is about how often you travel, what sort of arrangements you get for your accommodation, etc.—all those peripheral things to the work—when, in fact, it is about the protection that is provided to members of Parliament so that they can go about their representational work in the strongest way possible. There will always be those who want to pare that back. Over the last few years, there have been a number of occasions when the Privileges Committee has had to look at very difficult issues, and your guidance through that process—and the guidance of your office—has been very, very helpful, and I think it indicates, too, that in the role of Clerk, you have seen yourself as part of a continuum. Others have talked about there being big shoes to fill at the time you took over, and they are saying the same things to David, but the reality is that there was a seamless transition between yourself and the previous Clerk. And I hope that you will have left the office in a state that means that the same will occur this time round, and that will be a great tribute to you.

Can I just note that you were the Clerk who enabled the filming of Parliament. These cameras were not in here at the start of your tenure. That has been successful. Te Ururoa spoke about the translation service. That has been successful. Others have talked about procedural changes that have occurred during your time. So you have a very significant legacy that you have left us, but, above all, what you have left us with is a strong sense of the obligation that we all have to represent, as best we can, the people who sent us here. For that we thank you, and we wish you all the best in your retirement and in all the endeavours that have been spoken of so far, and in the many others that I am sure are to come over the years. Thank you.

Mr SPEAKER: Honourable members, I thank you all for those contributions. For me, this is a sad motion, for two reasons. One is obvious: Mary, I have treasured your counsel and your sage advice, and I will miss it. The second reason is that because of your physical position in this House throughout this motion, I have not been able to watch those facial expressions on that poker-face. Was it a display of frustration at the fuss that is being made, or was it a display of pride and a sense of achievement for what you have done for our democracy?

For your information, Mary, your personal assistant, Andie Lindsay, was aware of this motion today. She did not advise you of it, and she told me just before question time that she expects a very severe rebuking—and, in fact, she asked me personally to her funeral next week. But more seriously, Mary, you are a private person, you do not seek any prominence whatsoever, and you would have hoped that your retirement would pass through this House almost unnoticed. There was absolutely no chance of that. You go with our best wishes, and we thank you for your services to the democracy of New Zealand. [Applause] Members, you beat me to it.

Motion agreed to.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Social Bonds—Mental Health Services

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): My question is to the Minister of Health. How much has been spent by the Government on the Social Bonds Pilot to date?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would just like to point out that the question on the Order Paper says “How much has been spent by the Government on the Social Bonds Programme to date?”, so that is actually inviting a very different answer to the one that you just asked.

Mr SPEAKER: I am going to invite the member to ask the question again. [Interruption] Order! The member will repeat question No. 1.

1. Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister of Health: How much has been spent by the Government on the Social Bonds Programme to date?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): That is a totally different matter.

Hon Annette King: Well, answer it.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I am about to. The Government’s programme on social bonds commenced in 2012, with policy development led by the Ministry of Health, which produced a feasibility study and a business case for Cabinet in 2013 and the commercial procurement process, which commenced in 2014. Commercial negotiations on the first social bond, which will target better employment outcomes for those suffering mental illnesses, are expected to be completed later this year. I am advised that the total cost to date is $1.35 million over 3 years, which is approximately 0.0015 percent of the total social spend over that period.

Hon Annette King: Is payment by result with cash for outcomes once the service has been delivered and measured still a key component of the social-impact bonds pilots?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Yes, it is.

Hon Annette King: If payment for results is still a key component and the first project does not start until the end of this year or the beginning of next year, what are the Budget allocations from 2015 to 2017-18, amounting to around $29 million, actually for?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: As we have canvassed many times, there are four potential pilots there, the first of which is going to be this pilot around employment outcomes for people suffering from mental illness. We have been quite transparent. You can have a look at all the papers. We are so transparent about it that it is actually all up on the Ministry of Health’s website, so go and have a read.

Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I asked what the money was actually being spent on if it was still a component.

Mr SPEAKER: If the member is asking whether the question was addressed, the question was addressed. The way forward is further supplementary questions.

Hon Annette King: Does he recall being advised just a few weeks ago that for the social-impact bonds pilots it could be up to 7 years after service delivery commencement before outcomes are delivered and measured? Why does he need $29 million over the next 4 years?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: We get a range of advice on this. In the end, the delivery of the results and the timing of those will be tightly contracted for. So the member does not need to worry: we are not going to wait 7 years for results. We are going to pay once we get the results, and they will be in much shorter order than that.

Hon Annette King: Are ANZ and Westpac, the two Australian banks that are looking to get their hands on the $29 million payout, prepared to wait 7 years for their cash, or has he backtracked on the payment for results, and will he now be giving them expenses from the commencement of this service, in total contradiction to the social bond project he and Bill English announced?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The first thing is that we have not named any financial institutions. It is subject to commercial confidentiality. The second thing is that the way the model works is that a bank will be a facilitator between an NGO and a source of finance to bring the whole deal together. In the end, though, we are not paying until we get results.

Hon Annette King: Is he saying that the Government is prepared to spend $29 million over the next 4 years to procure for untried projects, while at the same time 20 district health boards in Budget 2015 received the same amount—$29 million in funding for mental health—to provide services for the entire country?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: No, that is not what I am saying at all, and the member knows it.

Hon Annette King: If he is so confident in the process being used to set up for the social impact bonds, why did a reputable organisation like the Red Cross withdraw from the process due to a lack of data availability about how it is going to work?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I do not have any information, particularly about the Red Cross, but there is a range of providers who are very interested in this. The programme will suit some and it will not suit others.

Joanne Hayes: What support has the Minister seen for social bonds?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Social bonds have attracted widespread interest and support around the world, with around 100 social bonds in development or under way. Political parties from the centre left have been particularly enthusiastic. That includes the UK Labour Party, which announced the first social bond in 2010; the New South Wales Labor Party; and President Obama and the US Democrats. In fact, I am aware of only one centre-left party in the world against innovation in the social sector, and, of course, there are no prizes for guessing—it is the New Zealand Labour Party.

Hon Annette King: I seek leave to table an update on progress and the next steps to the social sector reform leaders group, headed “Social bonds pilot”—

Mr SPEAKER: The source and date is? [Interruption] Order! If the member carries on like that, I will not even put the leave. I need the source and the date.

Hon Annette King: There is no date on it. I gave you the source, Mr Speaker. It is a report to the social sector reform leaders group.

Mr SPEAKER: Is it publicly available?

Hon Annette King: No, it is certainly not publicly available.

Mr SPEAKER: I will put the leave and the House will decide. Leave is sought to table it. Is there any objection? There is no objection. It can be tabled.

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

Darroch Ball: Will he give his guarantee that the social bond programme, once fully established within health, cannot be rorted whereby results are manipulated just for profit; if not, what measures will he put in place to prevent this from occurring?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The point is that through very tight contracting we are going to ensure that that cannot happen.

Interest Rates—Performance and Government Expenditure

2. MELISSA LEE (National) to the Minister of Finance: How is the Government’s programme of fiscal management helping keep interest rates lower for longer?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: Government spending is firmly under control. Core Crown expenditure has fallen from 34.1 percent of GDP in 2008-09 and is expected to drop to 30 percent of GDP next year. We have stuck to a $1 billion allowance in Budget 2015, but we are able to spend $1.5 billion per year on new initiatives because we have identified around half a billion in savings and reprioritisation each year. We have come from an $18.4 billion deficit 4 years ago to see steadily rising surpluses into the future. As the Reserve Bank has noted, that fiscal restraint is one of the drivers of current low inflation, which is helping to keep interest rates lower for longer.

Melissa Lee: How do low inflation and lower interest rates help New Zealand families to get ahead?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: In a low inflation environment, interest rates stay lower for longer. Mortgage rates are low, particularly when compared with floating rates of almost 11 percent in 2008. This means a family with a mortgage of $300,000 would be around $240 a week better off due to lower mortgage costs. Low cost of living increases—currently just 0.1 percent over the past year—mean that any pay increases go further. Average annual wages have increased by $5,700 in the past 4 years. Treasury forecasts that they will rise by a further $7,000, to around $63,000 a year, by mid-2019. So if we take the 8-year period as a whole, the average wage is expected to rise by almost $13,000, or over 25 percent, while low inflation of around 15 percent over the same 8-year period means that New Zealand householders and families are better off.

Melissa Lee: How do lower interest rates support New Zealand businesses?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Having low interest rates and solid economic growth creates stronger business investment. Annual business investment increased by 13 percent—13 percent—over the past 2 years, to record highs, and it is expected to increase by a further 15 percent by mid-2018. It is only when businesses invest another dollar or hire another person that we see economic growth, more jobs, and higher wages. That is why this Government is focused on getting the conditions right to encourage businesses to grow.

Melissa Lee: What reports has he received on the outlook for New Zealand businesses?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Yesterday the ANZ released its Business Outlook survey. This showed business confidence declining from recent highs. There are many challenges for business, and the global outlook, it has to be said, remains uncertain. However, employment intentions remain positive, with a net 15 percent of businesses intending to hire new people and a net 21 percent of survey respondents reporting positive residential investment intentions. Meanwhile, commercial construction intentions lifted to 32 percent. The ANZ noted long-term price trends favour New Zealand’s exports, interest rate and exchange rate buffers, and strong net migration, as New Zealanders come home or do not leave, which all moderate economic headwinds.

Phil Twyford: Is he concerned that the Reserve Bank’s statement of intent highlights that population growth, low mortgage interest rates, and increased investor participation are creating a significant risk in the Auckland housing market; if so, why has his Government failed to make a dent in any of the supply and demand factors in the housing market, which means lowering interest rates is simply adding more fuel to the Auckland housing market?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, I am not sure that I would be running the line that low interest rates were bad, but the member is simply wrong because we now have—officially this week—the highest rate of house consenting and, therefore, construction in Auckland in a decade—in a decade.

Phil Twyford: You’ve been reading Nick Smith’s press releases.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am reading Mr Smith’s press releases, but it is actually Statistics New Zealand’s survey that shows consenting of housing in Auckland is the highest in a decade, and Mr Twyford should chew that up and swallow it.

Phil Twyford: Is it not the case that had his Government acted to prevent the Auckland housing crisis sooner, the Reserve Bank would not have had to lift interest rates in the first place last year or introduce loan-to-value ratio restrictions, punishing homebuyers all over New Zealand for this Government’s failure to do anything about the Auckland housing crisis?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The difficulty was that we did not get elected until 2008, and in the 8 or 9 years prior to that, after the metropolitan urban limit was set up in Auckland, the previous Government twiddled its thumbs for 8 years and did absolutely nothing. In fact, it waved through its fellow travellers like Mike Lee and so on and said that they could actually continue to restrict housing in Auckland. This Government has moved very significantly, and there is now the highest house consenting in a decade, Mr Twyford—read my lips.

United Nations Security Council—New Zealand’s Credibility

3. METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement that “… we believe that New Zealand can make a positive difference to world affairs and provide a unique and independent voice at the world’s top table”?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.

Metiria Turei: Will the Prime Minister’s Government, as its first positive action as president of the United Nations Security Council, join the 135 other Governments globally that recognise the sovereign State of Palestine; if not, why not?

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

Metiria Turei: Will his Government make a positive difference to world affairs by increasing New Zealand’s refugee quota beyond 750 per year, which currently places us 90th in the world, per capita?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Not at this time, no. It will next be considered in 2016.

Metiria Turei: Does making a positive difference to world affairs include giving preferential treatment to Saudi Arabia by pursuing a free-trade agreement, even though it has beheaded over 100 people this year alone and has one of the most appalling human rights records in the world?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: As the Government has said on numerous occasions, we engage in free-trade agreements with countries with which we do not always share a like-minded view when it comes to human rights, but we think that by trading with them, it does give us a better platform to have those discussions.

Metiria Turei: Is his Government making a positive difference to world affairs when New Zealand’s contribution to the United Nations Green Climate Fund is just 60c per capita—lagging behind Sweden at $60 per capita, Britain at $19, the US at $9, and even Australia at $8?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: In answer to the first part of the question, yes, we are having a positive impact in the world.

Metiria Turei: When New Zealand chairs, later this month, the open debate on the security of small Island States, will the Prime Minister make a positive difference and convey his concerns that New Zealand’s net emissions are projected to rise 50 percent in the next decade, putting those small Island States at even greater risk from the effects of climate change?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well, during that open session, there will be a debate about climate change, and New Zealand will be talking proudly about its record and the contribution it has been making.

Metiria Turei: How does the Prime Minister expect New Zealanders, let alone the rest of the world, to accept that New Zealand will provide a unique and independent voice at the world’s top table when his Government has already failed at these four global challenges: Palestine, the refugee crisis, human rights, and climate change?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The member lives in a very, very negative world. If she took off her negative downgrading of New Zealand attitude and stopped being so down in the mouth and actually read Amnesty International’s press release, she would find it is actually very positive about New Zealand’s contribution.

Child Health Services—Free GP Visits and Prescriptions

4. PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National) to the Minister of Health: What steps is the Government taking to improve access to Primary Care for New Zealand families?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Fantastic news: from today, all New Zealand children aged under 13 will be eligible to access, as well as free prescriptions, free GP visits at any time of the day or night. Over 400,000 children will benefit from this announcement. Yesterday their parents had to pay to take them to the doctor and get a prescription; today it is free. That is on top of 35,000 under-sixes who already benefit from free GP visits and prescriptions. This policy will see about $120 million spent over the next 3 years in order to deliver high-quality health care for under-13s. The Government is committed to supporting families, and we want to ensure that children get the best possible start in life.

Paul Foster-Bell: What impact will this policy have on other areas of the health system?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Free GP visits for under-13s were rolled out in the Northland District Health Board 9 months ago—

Hon Member: How do you define a GP visit?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Shh—listen! That is good. Preliminary results from that district health board’s hospitals indicate that emergency department presentations by children aged between 6 and 12 have fallen by 10 percent since the policy was introduced, and the number of prescriptions filled has risen by 18 percent. This shows that parents are getting their kids treated sooner, which means better health outcomes for those children, with fewer presenting later and sicker, which, of course, also takes pressure off our emergency departments and hospitals.

Paul Foster-Bell: What other pleasant surprises are there for people who support the policy but who are concerned about its uptake?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I have seen concerns raised by serial health correspondent Mrs A King of Hātaitai, stating that although she strongly supports this Government’s policy, she was worried that the uptake of the policy would not be very high. She will be thrilled to know that although the level of uptake for the free under-sixes policy launched in 2008 was a solid 70 percent of GP practices, the day one uptake of the free under-13s policy is a remarkable 96 percent of GP practices, covering 98 percent of children, with 95 percent of children also receiving free ACC consultations. I am delighted to be able to put Mrs King’s concerns to rest, and I encourage her to continue with her liberal praise of Government policy.

Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I can assure you that my late mother-in-law, Mrs A King of Hātaitai, never wrote any of those letters.

Mr SPEAKER: That is hardly a point of order, but a fair response.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order. Mr Speaker—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I haven’t called the member yet. [Interruption] Order! This is a point of order. I expect to hear it in silence—the Rt Hon Winston Peters.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister seemed to be quoting from an official document about the uptake on day one. I wonder whether he would table it.

Mr SPEAKER: That matter is easily resolved. Is the Minister quoting from an official document?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, yes. We will be able to put that as an official document on the Table—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! It is a simple matter. It does not need further debate. If it is an official document and if the call has been made for it to be tabled, it will be tabled.

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

Economy—Commentary

5. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree with ANZ economist Cameron Bagrie when he says the New Zealand economy is “heading off-piste”?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I agree with a number of points in the ANZ Business Outlook that the member is quoting from, although not necessarily that one. I agree the medium-term outlook for the economy remains solid, despite some recent headwinds in agriculture and from overseas. I agree the economy’s fundamentals remain strong, long-term price trends are favouring New Zealand exporting and positive net migration as more New Zealanders stay or return home from overseas, and confidence is remaining firmly positive despite coming off recent highs. I have to say that if Mr Robertson thinks the economy is off-piste now, in 2008, when we came into Government, it had fallen off the mountain and broken both legs.

Grant Robertson: Does he believe business confidence turning negative for the first time since the Canterbury earthquakes means the economy is on the right track or the wrong track?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I think the economy is on the right track, and it is demonstrated by the fact that we have now had 17 consecutive quarters of GDP growth—that is, 17 consecutive quarters of GDP growth. I appreciate Mr Robertson is of the type who likes to panic at the first sign of a change of numbers, but this Government is concentrating on focusing on encouraging investment and growth, and with 17 quarters of continuous growth I think there has been a fairly strong endorsement of the Government’s approach.

Grant Robertson: Does the Westpac employment survey for June, which shows the proportion of workers who have received a pay increase over the past year is the lowest for 5 years and the number who expect to receive a pay increase in the next year is the lowest for 6 years, mean that the economy is on the right track, the wrong track, or just right off the trail?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I think to consider that you would have to consider the inflation rate over the same period, and the inflation rate is actually at historic lows of 0.1 percent. So to suggest that there should be bigger pay increases for everybody would be damaging to the economy when you have a very low inflation rate. Most pay increases that we are seeing are related to productivity, and actually pay increases are running ahead of inflation, as distinct from, say, 2008, when although nominal pay was going up, it was going up slower than inflation, so therefore people were going backwards.

Grant Robertson: Does the value of exports falling by 5 percent and dairy exports plummeting by 28 percent in the last year mean the economy is “heading off-piste”, or is this the trail he planned all along?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, the actual trend in exports has been strongly positive over the last 5 years. Yes, it may not have escaped the member that dairy prices have got softer. When dairy is 23-odd percent of your exports, that is going to lower the overall rate. The good news for the member is that other industries such as kiwifruit, tourism, wine, information and communications technology, international education, and so on are steadily growing. Although they have not completely offset the decline in dairy, they are actually a sign of a broadening and diversifying New Zealand economy, which I thought the member was in favour of.

Grant Robertson: Is it not true that, as the Prime Minister actually admitted yesterday, the economy is now being propped up by a Christchurch rebuild that is peaking and an Auckland housing bubble that can easily burst, and does he really think those two elements are a stable base for economic growth in New Zealand?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I think the member is both wrong in the way he quotes the Prime Minister and wrong in his assertions—

Sue Moroney: That’s what he said.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, I saw the reports as well, and actually both the Prime Minister and the Minister for Economic Development, I do believe, pointed out a number of other strongly growing industries. Given the member’s question, he probably forgot the previous answer, so let me run through some of those for him. The information and communications technology, the high-tech manufacturing industry, the red meat industry, the wine industry, the kiwifruit industry, the education industry, and the tourism industry, to name seven or eight, are growing strongly, and I think as a country we should be proud of them and not try to run the place down.

Trans-Pacific Partnership—Consultation with Māori

6. MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party) to the Minister of Trade: How many Māori organisations have been consulted during the last 5 years of negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement?

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General) on behalf of the Minister of Trade: I am advised that there have been numerous instances of consultation with at least five Māori organisations including Federation of Māori Authorities, Ngāti Kahungunu, the Māori Medical Practitioners Association, a Ngāpuhi group, and Te Kupenga Hauora Māori. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been active in engaging with a wide spectrum of stakeholders, including Māori organisations, which have received both briefings in person and regular email updates over the past 5 years. In 2009 hui were held on the proposed expansion of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement to include a wider range of participants. In addition, the New Zealand international treaties list, which includes an item on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, is circulated every 6 months to 143 iwi contacts.

Marama Fox: What analysis, if any, has been undertaken on the implications of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement for the Treaty of Waitangi?

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I am not aware of any direct analysis at this time. Of course, the proper time for that kind of analysis will be if and when any legislation to give effect to it is introduced to this House.

Marama Fox: Can the Minister guarantee that New Zealand will not ratify the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, as the United States has suggested, which is contrary to the rights affirmed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Wai 262 claim, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples?

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I challenge the basis of that question. It is a huge leap of logic to say that an international convention breaches Wai 262—it is not the claim but the report—the Treaty of Waitangi, and anything else.

Transport Investment—National Land Transport Programme 2015-18

7. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National) to the Minister of Transport: What recent announcements has he made on investment in New Zealand’s land transport network?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Transport): Yesterday I was pleased to welcome the release of the National Land Transport Programme. The $13.9 billion programme of investment over the next 3 years is the largest investment in land transport in New Zealand’s history and is a 15 percent increase on the previous 3 years. The programme is nationally consistent and regionally responsive. It will deliver on the Government’s priorities of increasing economic growth and productivity, improving safety, strengthening regional transport networks, lifting investment in public transport and cycling, and ensuring great value for money.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: What are some of the highlights of the 2015-18 National Land Transport Programme?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: There are too many highlights to list in the time that I have got, but I can tell the member that $6.3 billion is planned for investment in the State highway network over the next 3 year; $4 billion is planned for investment in local roads, which is a 6 percent increase; $4.2 billion is planned for investment in Auckland’s transport system and services; almost $2 billion is planned for spending on public transport, a whopping 21 percent increase; and investment in cycling will more than triple. All of these investments will help drive long-term economic growth through improvements to key freight and tourism routes, access to markets, journey times, and the easing of congestion.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: How does the 2015-18 National Land Transport Programme support regional New Zealand?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: It is a strong statement of the Government’s commitment to regional New Zealand. The Government’s accelerated regional roading package will be significantly advanced, with $197 million being made available to replace, for example, the Whirokino trestle bridge in Manawatū, replace the Taramakau road and rail bridge on the West Coast, make safety improvements to the Loop Road on Smeatons Hill in Northland, and make safety improvements to the Mt Messenger and Awakino Gorge corridor in Taranaki. We will also be making a strong start on our commitment to upgrade 10 single-lane bridges on Northland’s Twin Coast Discovery Highway over the next 6 years, and with funding approved already for the Matakohe, Taipā, and Kaeō bridges.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: In terms of total investment in all regions thorough the National Land Transport Programme 2008-09, compared with just last year, 2014-15, why is it that there is a massive drop in the Bay of Plenty, a massive drop in Northland, and a massive drop in the West Coast, if anything he says is halfway true?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I do not necessarily accept that, but what the member will know well is that this National Government has seen unprecedented investment in Tauranga—some $750 million completing the Harbour Link, the Tauranga Eastern Link, and very shortly, for example, the overpass near Bayfair. We are going to keep going because we are absolutely committed to supporting the great local MPs in that region.

Grain Industry—Imports and Biosecurity

8. RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First) to the Minister for Primary Industries: Is he concerned at the threat posed to New Zealand’s grain industry by the huge volumes of grain being dumped into New Zealand due to EU/Russia sanctions?

Hon JO GOODHEW (Associate Minister for Primary Industries) on behalf of the Minister for Primary Industries: I understand the concerns of any industry hit by fluctuating global commodity prices. However, there are both positives and negatives in this situation. There is a lot of grain available right now because of Russia’s trade sanctions. Some New Zealand farmers will see this as a low-cost input opportunity. Lower prices will be helpful to those who use maize as a supplementary feed, and some comfort to those facing drought conditions. Although not relating to my ministerial portfolios, any dumping claims may be addressed through the appropriate channels of the anti-dumping legislation.

Richard Prosser: Is he aware that the huge volumes of imported grains being dumped here because of the EU-Russia sanctions is being made into cheaper stock feed than that being supplied by New Zealand’s grain producers; if so, what is he doing to ensure the livelihood of the New Zealand grain industry?

Hon JO GOODHEW: I believe that the member is suggesting that we should implement trade barriers in response to this particular situation. In general, we are a trading nation and we do not believe in artificial trade barriers—

Ron Mark: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would ask you to review that supplementary question. There is no way that the Minister could say that she believes—and thereby read out a prepared statement; she has to answer any question in that same way.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I have no idea whether it was a prepared comment or not, but the issue was, in effect, that feed manufacturers are using the cheapest option. The Minister has got every right to respond to that. The Hon Jo Goodhew, if she wishes to continue.

Hon JO GOODHEW: It is a fact of life that our world-leading farmers compete against many other countries. Some of them even use subsidies and other trade barriers. That is why this Government places such a strong effort on securing new trade deals, which we have recently seen from Korea and Taiwan.

Richard Prosser: Is he aware that some of the 37,000 tonnes of maize imported from Bulgaria in the first quarter of this year was found to be infested with Noogoora burr seeds at the Ministry for Primary Industries’ Te Puke biosecurity transitional facility; if so, is he aware that it is an offence under the Biosecurity Act to propagate, sell, distribute, release, or spread Noogoora burr in the Bay of Plenty, where it was found, and in Canterbury, where 95 percent of New Zealand’s grain crops are grown?

Hon JO GOODHEW: I can understand any concern about Noogoora burr, because it is something that would concern farmers. However, that is why we have a very strict biosecurity regime in this country. Grain importation into New Zealand is highly regulated. Only approved importers are granted import permits by the Ministry for Primary Industries, and all imports must be accompanied by phytosanitary certification. However—

Ron Mark: You’re reading out a prepared answer—answer the question.

Hon JO GOODHEW: I am answering on behalf of another Minister. It is the reason I am well prepared with notes. However, all grain consignments must be examined—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Would the Minister just complete her answer.

Hon JO GOODHEW: Yes, I would like to. All grain consignments are treated upon import, and none of the seeds will be viable after that processing.

Richard Prosser: I seek leave to table two photos of Noogoora burr - contaminated maize at—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Can the member just start the point of order. I cannot quite hear what he is seeking to table.

Richard Prosser: I seek leave to table two photographs of Noogoora burr - contaminated maize—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! All I now need is the source of those photographs.

Richard Prosser: They were sent to someone in our office.

Mr SPEAKER: Sorry?

Richard Prosser: They were sent to someone in our office, by an observer.

Mr SPEAKER: On the basis they may well be informative to members, I will put the leave and they can decide. Leave is sought to table those two particular photographs. Is there any objection? They can be tabled.

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

Richard Prosser: Is he aware that Noogoora burr seed is poisonous to cattle and pigs; if so, can he assure farmers that the supplementary grain-based imported feed they buy is free of Noogoora burr?

Hon JO GOODHEW: Yes, I certainly can assure the member that because of the treatment of this imported grain when it arrives in New Zealand, in fact the processing means that the farmers can be assured those seeds will not be viable.

Richard Prosser: I seek leave to table a document, an AgPest fact page advertising that Noogoora burr seeds are poisonous to stock, particularly pigs and cattle.

Mr SPEAKER: Again, I did not catch the source and the date of the document.

Richard Prosser: The source is AgResearch. Again, it is a paper prepared by my office.

Mr SPEAKER: I presume if it is an AgResearch paper, it is easily available to members if they want it. I will not put the leave.

Richard Prosser: Can the Minister confirm to the House that any New Zealand grain or cereal exported to Australia has to be denatured, because Australia’s tolerance to contamination is zero, yet there is absolutely no such requirement like this for grains imported into New Zealand, and how does the Minister reconcile that confirmation with the principles of free trade?

Hon JO GOODHEW: I have prepared answers to importation requirements as opposed to any answers that I can give you regarding grain going to Australia, so I am not going to attempt to answer that question, because I do not know the answer.

Richard Prosser: I seek leave to table two documents. One is a Bay of Plenty Regional Council brochure describing Noogoora burr as an—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, that is freely available to members if it is produced by a regional council. The next document?

Richard Prosser: It is the same source.

Partnership Schools—Financial Performance

9. CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) to the Minister of Education: Does she stand by her statement “I am satisfied that all the contract funding to partnership schools will be spent on meeting the contracted outcome for each school, which is to deliver educational achievement”?

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Yes, I do stand by my full statement, which I gave in this House in February last year: “I am satisfied that all the contract funding to partnership schools will be spent on meeting the contracted outcome for each school, which is to deliver educational achievement. In exchange … partnership schools get greater flexibility to raise student achievement, are subject to a higher degree of scrutiny … and have greater accountabilities than schools in the mainstream system.”

Chris Hipkins: How can she claim that the funds being given to partnership schools are being used for education, when He Puna Marama Trust received $3.9 million in Government funding to the end of last year, yet its audited accounts show it spent only $1.4 million on education, leaving $2.5 million unaccounted for?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I think that the member is quoting selectively from the accounts. The first distinction to make is that He Puna Marama Trust is a trust that is the sponsor of Te Rerenga Parāoa Whangariki Te Rerenga Parāoa, and that is only one of the entities that it is responsible for. It also is responsible for 5 to 6 early childhood centres. It also runs an academy, and it is responsible for delivering outcomes, and I am happy to read to the member the 100 percent of National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 1 achievement that that school delivered. I will need to find the specific—something like 93 percent for National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2, which is what it is contracted to deliver. [Interruption] To educational achievement—at nearly 100 percent on all three.

Chris Hipkins: Does she think it is a good use of taxpayers’ money to provide He Puna Marama Trust with a grant of $1.8 million to set up a school, given it leased premises that the accounts show is costing it only $68,000 a year?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I am very happy to answer that question, because the member has failed to grasp, for some considerable amount of time, that partnership schools are set up on a different funding basis. It is cashed up, based on the inputs—[Interruption] Good, are we all following along here? Yes. So it is based on the inputs that we fund—schools—and is benchmarked against decile 3. But I can see that the Opposition actually does not want the intrusion of facts on its shouting. That is what happens with partnership schools. We take the formula provided for mainstream schools. We benchmark against decile 3. We cash it up. We provide it with a contract. That contract is specific and public, and then we report the outcomes, and perhaps the Opposition would like to shout with glee for the number of kids who have gotten great educational qualifications that otherwise they might not have gotten.

Chris Hipkins: If the partnership schools are indeed “cashed up”, as the Minister explains, where has the extra $2.5 million that He Puna Marama Trust was given to run a partnership school gone?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: A number of the partnership schools have been leasing properties while they prepare to build. That is the case in the particular school whose accounts the member is selectively quoting.

Chris Hipkins: How is it fair that charter schools are being allowed to make multimillion-dollar surpluses, or have multimillion-dollar amounts unaccounted for, while just down the road students and teachers are having to put up with classrooms that are increasingly covered in black mould, and other schools throughout New Zealand where parents are being asked to subsidise their kids’ education that the law says is supposed to be free?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: It is quite inaccurate for the member to suggest that there are funds that are unaccounted for. They are accounted for, but the member just does not like the way they are using their funds. They have a long-term contract. They have cashed up inputs based on the same benchmarking. They have all made different choices that this House has heard about before. Vanguard, for instance, has put over 50 percent of its funding into the employment of staff. Other schools have made choices about lease versus purchase properties. In the end, our interest is to ensure the well-being of the students and the education quality the schools are delivering. That is what the annual reporting represents.

Chris Hipkins: How many months has it been since she gave the Whangaruru charter school 1 month’s notice, and given the Prime Minister’s statement that if charter schools failed, the Government would be quick to close them down, why is that school still operating?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Because of both the operation of natural justice and its contract. I gave it a month’s notice, during which time I commissioned a review by Deloitte and the Education Review Office—

Chris Hipkins: In January.

Hon HEKIA PARATA: No, I gave them that in March.

Grant Robertson: More than a month ago.

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Yes, if you will just follow along with me, I will explain the process. So then I commissioned a report by Deloitte and by the Education Review Office, which I have received. Now I am in a process with that school, working through it.

Securities Market—NXT Launch

10. BRETT HUDSON (National) to the Minister for Small Business: What actions has the Government taken to encourage small businesses to list on the New Zealand share market?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) on behalf of the Minister for Small Business: Recently the Government welcomed the first listing on the New Zealand Exchange’s new securities market called NXT. NXT is a simpler, lower-cost securities market aimed at making it easier for smaller businesses to list and raise capital. Many small and mid-sized businesses require capital injections to innovate, grow, and, ultimately, create jobs. This new market will help firms do that. Last year the Government’s Financial Markets Conduct Act reforms came into effect. Through these new laws and regulations we made it possible for new businesses to access alternative, flexible methods for raising capital while opening up new investment opportunities for New Zealanders.

Brett Hudson: How will the NXT market make it easier for small and medium sized firms to raise capital?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: The new regime allows for simple, tailor-made listing and disclosure requirements, and will help firms to list publicly without needing to be prepared to list on the main NZX board. These reforms are just another part of the Government’s ambitious Business Growth Agenda, aimed at building confidence in our financial markets and giving small businesses the assistance they need to raise capital, grow their business, and, ultimately, grow our economy.

Swamp Kauri—Monitoring of Exports

11. KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau) to the Minister for Primary Industries: Is he aware of reports that local wood manufacturers have been refused the opportunity to buy swamp kauri from Kauri Ruakaka mill, which was formerly called Oravida and is allegedly involved in exporting raw swamp kauri, and what is he doing to ensure that this irreplaceable resource is managed responsibly?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment) on behalf of the Minister for Primary Industries: Firstly, the Minister was not aware of such reports, but he notes that there are about a dozen operators from which local manufacturers could get wood and that the Government does not interfere in commercial arrangements. Secondly, the Ministry for Primary Industries disputes claims that this mill is exporting illegally. Thirdly, advice from the Ministry for the Environment and the Northland Regional Council is that, generally, the resource is being managed responsibly. There have been some occasions when extraction from indigenous wetlands has occurred. In those events, there have been prosecutions under the Resource Management Act.

Kelvin Davis: How can Northlanders have any confidence that any new investigation, such as the one referred to in question No. 9 on 17 June, will not be another whitewash, like the 2012 swamp kauri investigation, which promised “closer monitoring of swamp kauri sawmilling and export participants” yet has failed to stop raw logs and slabs from being sent out of this country illegally, thereby denying Northland desperately needed jobs.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I would invite the member to talk to his colleagues, because in 2004 the previous Government relaxed the law and made changes to the Forests Act.

Hon David Parker: 13 years ago.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Indeed. Mr Parker, who interjects, was one of those who actually reduced the reporting requirements for swamp kauri that was being exported. The Ministry for Primary Industries remains of the view that the law is being followed. If the member genuinely believes it is not, why does he not test it in court?

Kelvin Davis: Has he discussed the issue of swamp kauri exports with Judith Collins, whose husband, David Wong-Tung, and good friend Stone Shi are directors in the chain of shell companies that owns the Ruakākā mill, the ultimate ownership of which is obscured by a lawyer’s nominee company?

Mr SPEAKER: In so far as there may be some ministerial responsibility.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I thought that this member was above getting involved in that sort of murk.

Kelvin Davis: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did ask a question, and it was not addressed.

Mr SPEAKER: Yes, and I said that the Minister could answer it in so far as there was ministerial responsibility. There was very little connection there with ministerial responsibility. I allowed the Minister to answer it the way he did, and that is acceptable.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is he denying what is well known to locals in Northland: that swamp kauri is being exported illegally and that his ministry’s lax enforcement of the law is because people high up in Oravida are major donors and players in the National Party; and there are the photographs of the logs, all being exported illegally?

Mr SPEAKER: Again, I will invite the Minister to answer if he sees ministerial responsibility.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The law in respect of the export of indigenous forests was passed in 1993, with that member’s support. It was softened in 2004 by colleagues adjacent to him, with his support. My advice is that the law is being followed.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. He cannot get up and accuse me of supporting a law when I was not a member of the Government. He did it on both occasions—1993 and 1994. We all know that. He is just telling lies.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] No, I do not need further help with that. That is certainly not a point of order. I will invite the Minister, if he wishes, to add further to his answer in order to complete it before we go to further supplementary questions.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I would invite the member to check the Hansard as to how New Zealand First voted in 1993 on the Forests Amendment Act, and, again, as to how the party voted in 2004 when the law was changed.

Mr SPEAKER: Further supplementary question—[Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! There is now too much interjection in this House.

Kelvin Davis: What does he make—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! We have now got to the stage where I have asked for fewer interjections and they have carried on. Mr Davis will now ask a supplementary question. If I hear an interjection coming from anywhere in the House, that person will be leaving the Chamber immediately.

Kelvin Davis: What does he make of a comment made to Northland Environmental Protection Society head Fiona Furrell by a transport company involved in the transport of illegal swamp kauri, which says: “You’ll never stop this while National is in power.”?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I would invite the member to check the parliamentary record and the law changes that were made to the Forests Amendment Act in 2004, which removed the requirement for the Ministry for Primary Industries to have to check that processed product was, in fact, processed in New Zealand. I invite the member to have a look in the mirror.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is the Minister saying that it is just mere coincidence that the Oravida company gave $30,000 to the National Party before the last election?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is absolutely no responsibility for that. I will rule that question out, but before I cancel it altogether, I will give the member an opportunity to re-ask a supplementary question that is in line with Standing Order 380.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why is the Minister saying that these logs are finished products when anybody with half a brain can see that they are not?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The law that was passed defines stumps of kauri, including up to 4 to 5 metres of the lower portion. If either that member or his colleagues adjacent think that there has been a breach of the law, I challenge them simply to test it in the courts. The advice from the Ministry for Primary Industries is that the law is being complied with.

Kelvin Davis: Given the players in the illegal export of unprocessed swamp kauri are confident that it will “never stop … while National is in power.”, what options do the people of Northland have to ensure that their taonga is used to benefit the people, not National’s mates?

Mr SPEAKER: The Hon Dr Nick Smith—and, again, just respond to the latter part of the question.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I just simply remind the Parliament that it was in 2004 that the law in respect of exporting indigenous timber such as swamp kauri was relaxed, that this Government has made no changes to that law, and that the advice from the Ministry for Primary Industries is that that law is being followed. In respect of the Resource Management Act, there have been some breaches, and where it has been breached, the Northland Regional Council has prosecuted.

Hon David Cunliffe: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would ask you to reflect upon the rulings that you have given in this question. You have ruled in scope the Minister’s repeated references to law changes that predated both his Government and two reviews undertaken by his Government, while at the same time you have ruled out of order questions that go to the current ownership and management practices of the company currently exporting—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I do not need assistance from anybody. The question that I ruled out of order was about an alleged donation to a political party. No Minister is responsible for that.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: On the question of alleged donations, I seek to table the document that sets out the two donations that the National Party—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will resume his seat immediately. That information is publicly available to any member who wants it.

Transport Funding—Rail Projects

12. JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green) to the Minister of Transport: What percentage of the National Land Transport Programme announced yesterday will be spent on new rail infrastructure?

Mr SPEAKER: Before I call the Hon Simon Bridges, I have been advised that this answer may be longer than normal.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Transport): In answering this question, it is very important to understand some context. The Government historically directly funds rail infrastructure, and that has certainly been the case under this Government. Investment in rail infrastructure typically does not come from the National Land Transport Plan. Of course, the National Land Transport Plan is funded by road users through petrol excise and road user charges, so investment primarily goes on matters directly related to road users. In rail, of course, the Government has directly funded over $3 billion on capital expenditure, including the biggest single investment in rail in decades in the form of Auckland rail electrification. In the 2015—

Julie Anne Genter: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I respect and I acknowledge that you advised that the answer would be longer than usual, but I know that—

Mr SPEAKER: So what is the point of order?

Julie Anne Genter: The Minister is not addressing the question. He is—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I would be grateful if the member would show some courtesy to the Minister and to the House. I announced at the start of the question that it would be a longer answer than normal. As I am listening to the answer, it maybe is a reason why a percentage will not be given. If the member would only listen to the answer before raising a point of order, I think we would all be far more grateful. Would the honourable Minister wish to continue with his answer.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: In regards to the 2015-18 National Land Transport Plan, we are investing over $2 billion in public transport regarding rail, some $380 million going on passenger rail subsidies, $40 million on park-and-ride infrastructure, and $172.6 million towards other rail infrastructure—about 1.5 percent. Of course, in Budget 2015 there is a further $210 million for KiwiRail and another $190 million signalled for thereafter. The member should stop being tricky, should stop cherry-picking the statistics—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Now the answer is quite long enough.

Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is a question that is on notice. It is a very straight question that the Minister has not answered—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! So what is the point of order?

Metiria Turei: That he has not answered the question of a very clear—

Mr SPEAKER: The member has not been listening like I have been listening. In my opinion, that question has, without doubt, been addressed. It may not be to the satisfaction of the member, but then she can make progress by further supplementary questions.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I was listening very intently and I want to ask you: what, then, was it that we missed about the percentage?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I think quite clearly what the member missed is that the National Land Transport Plan does not necessarily carry the funding for rail because it all comes from the excise.

Mr SPEAKER: I appreciate—[Interruption] Order! The member—[Interruption] Order! The member will resume his seat. What the member now needs to do is go back and study Hansard, and he will get the same answer that I heard too.

Julie Anne Genter: Given that rail is a form of land transport, and rail improvements can vastly improve the road network and take pressure off the road network, why will his Government not fund high-value rail projects from the land transport budget?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I think we have got a very proud record of backing rail. That is why we have spent over $3 billion on capital expenditure, that is why we have put the biggest single investment in rail infrastructure in many decades in the $1.6 billion electrification in Auckland, and that is why we have spent over half a billion dollars investing in Wellington rail. We back rail, and we are trying to make it as sustainable as possible so it has a very long future in this country.

Julie Anne Genter: In light of that answer, will he guarantee that under his Government electric trains will not be downgraded to diesel trains on the North Island main trunk line?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Of course, that is an operational matter for KiwiRail, and no decision has been made on that. This Government is busy not engaging in stunts like that member but actually working hard to make KiwiRail sustainable in every sense of that word—yes, environmentally, but also economically and socially.

Julie Anne Genter: So is he seriously saying that as the Minister of Transport and Associate Minister for Climate Change Issues, he is going to do nothing to ensure that New Zealand preserves and extends its fleet of electric freight trains?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I have already answered that, but let us be very clear. In regard to diesel trains, they are some 70 percent more fuel efficient than trucks, and so, actually, I think we have got to make sure that we make rail as a business sustainable in every sense of the word so it does have a long future here. That also means—and I appreciate this is not something the Green Party takes seriously—making it economically sustainable so that it is a profitable, sustainable company.

Julie Anne Genter: I seek leave to table an analysis of the National Land Transport Plan announced yesterday done by the Parliamentary Library, which shows less than 2 percent—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No. Such tabling does not provide information. It is being used by the member simply to make a political point.

uestion No. 11 to Minister

Q

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Just in regard to question No. 11, put by colleague Kelvin Davis to the Minister, the Hon Nick Smith replied, and I say that—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I just have the point of order, please.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: —the Minister misled the House—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is a serious allegation being made. [Interruption] The member will resume his seat. The member knows full well the process if he thinks that has occurred and it is not via a point of order. I think it is, from memory, Standing Order 359.

Question No. 12 to Minister

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Green): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wanted to—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member, the Hon Damien O’Connor, will stand and withdraw and apologise for that comment. [Interruption] Then the member will immediately leave the Chamber.

Hon Damien O’Connor withdrew from the Chamber.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: This is to do with the answer given by the Minister of Transport to question No. 12. I would ask you to look at the record of the Hansard, because the question on notice that was written down was a very simple, straight question and in the answer the Minister attacked the member asking the question, accusing her of being tricky and various other things. I think that is completely unreasonable, and I would ask you to intervene when a Minister does those kinds of personal attacks on a very straight question and, actually, hold the Minister to account for it.

Mr SPEAKER: That is a very fair point of order that has been raised. The Minister’s office advised my office just prior to question time it would be a longer answer than normal. The Minister, I think, genuinely attempted to answer the question. His last comment was to accuse the member of being tricky. That was a very unnecessary and, in fact, an inflammatory remark. As soon as it occurred I brought that answer to a conclusion. Answers like that from any Minister show a level of arrogance that does not show them in good light in this House.

General Debate

General Debate

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. It says everything about the National Government’s priorities that in a week when it has been hocking off State houses up and down the country it is wanting to find $11 million to buy a luxury apartment in New York for the diplomats working over there—hocking off State houses that everyday New Zealanders live in, although it can find $11 million for a luxury condo for the diplomats living in New York.

I want to know why Murray McCully does not replace Nick Smith and Paula Bennett in the housing portfolio, because then we may actually get some action on improving the state of State housing in New Zealand. If Murray McCully can bring peace to the Middle East, as we are now being told, why can he not sort out the New Zealand housing crisis? That is what we want to know.

If the Government cannot find money for the cold and mouldy school buildings up and down the country, why can it find millions of dollars for charter schools, which miraculously goes unaccounted for and no one can explain where it has been spent? If the Government cannot find money for teachers, nurses, the police, and the myriad of other public servants who, basically, have had their wages frozen for the last decade or so, how is it that it can find money for a wage explosion at the highest levels of the Public Service, where the managers are getting massive pay rises? If the Government cannot find the money to keep its promises to the people of Northland to build them 10 more bridges, why can it find $26 million for that great vanity exercise for the Prime Minister that is the referendum on the flag, which New Zealanders have said they do not want?

This is a Government full of self-importance that has become so arrogant and out of touch with New Zealanders that it seems to think there is one set of rules for the Government and another set of rules for anybody else. We have got Te Ururoa Flavell, who thinks that he can interfere in the programming decisions of Māori Television when there is coverage unfavourable to him and to the Government; we have got John Key, who sends the police in to raid media outlets when they behave in ways that are unfavourable to the Prime Minister; and we have absolute contempt from Government members when it comes to them doing their job, which involves releasing information. They ignore the Official Information Act, they ignore parliamentary questions, and they simply do whatever they want, with absolute contempt for the people of New Zealand, who deserve better.

Let us return to where I began, with the fire sale of State houses. John Key promised New Zealanders before the last election—and it was a promise in National’s campaign—that there would be no more asset sales if the National Government was re-elected. Nobody saw the fine print—except for the millions and millions and millions of dollars’ worth of State houses that it is going to hock off in a fire sale. First of all it said it was going to be to the community and voluntary sector because it was closer to the communities that those houses are there for.

That was the first promise. But oh no, the community and voluntary sector did not want them and could not run them, so now the Government is talking about hocking them off to the Aussies. Hocking them off to the Aussies is what we have come to under this National Government. We are not going to own anything if this current Government continues in office for very much longer.

The Government’s State house sell-off has been a boon for private property developers, who are picking up ex-State houses, demolished State houses, and vacant State house land at fire-sale prices, or, in some cases, they are even being given them, and they are making huge returns on the redevelopment process. What, of course, does the Government end up getting out of it and what does the taxpayer end up getting out of it? More private houses, but not more houses for people who cannot afford to buy their own home.

Let us not mention the surplus. Let us not mention that surplus, which was the cornerstone—

Dr Megan Woods: Don’t mention the surplus!

CHRIS HIPKINS: Do not mention the surplus, the cornerstone of the National Government’s re-election campaign. The Government did not say it was going to deliver a surplus; it said it had already delivered a surplus. The surplus has not arrived, it has not eventuated, and it is not even on the horizon.

This is a Government that has completely lost its way. It has its priorities all wrong. It is not a Government that is there for ordinary, everyday working New Zealanders who are trying hard to get ahead. It is a Government that is interested only in the top 2 percent. It is not interested in all the New Zealanders who cannot afford to live in luxury New York apartments or the New Zealanders who do not earn massive managerial salaries in the State sector—salaries that have blown out under this Government. No, it is not interested in those New Zealanders. It is time we had a Government for all New Zealanders and not just those in the top 2 percent.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery): That was an audition before Parliament by Chris Hipkins. This has been the week where we have seen the dance of the deputies. Earlier this week we had the issue of Ron Mark, New Zealand’s answer to George Speight, having a go at ousting Winston Peters. Everyone thinks it is Tracey Martin, but it is actually Winston Peters he wants to get rid of. Ron is one of those men who has got a lot of experience with a lot of parties. In fact, just 18 months ago he would have been part of any party that would take him, and we know that from discussions he had in all sorts of places around the country. So here we have, this week, poor old Tracey Martin coming under the pump from Ron Mark. The question is: what has Tracey Martin done? The answer is nothing, which is probably the reason why Ron is in that sort of situation.

But the most fascinating thing is that meanwhile, over in Labour, all of the deputies are starting to line up. We are seeing the parade of talent on the horizon. It is extraordinary, and hot off the press we hear that one of the hot contenders now is Carmel Sepuloni, making quite a strong bid. She is one of those experienced people who came back into Parliament just recently after a short burst some time ago only to announce to the whole Parliament: “Oh, the Committee stage—that’s new. When did that happen?”. It is that sort of discovery that could be useful for a Labour Party deputy leader, because they might accidently discover a little bit of caucus loyalty as well. Then there is the bolter from Christchurch—Megan Woods. I have to say, Megan, that that Kardashian-esque makeover screams ambition. Day after day this member comes into the House, gives very cogent, very passionate, and very—you would say—well-structured but completely irrelevant speeches. She offers her argument with the most beautiful enunciation and, frankly, day after day, week after week, she wins the 7th form debating prize over and over again.

It would be wrong of me to be too harsh on the next contender. I have to say a couple of things, though. Nothing screams leadership ambition like Hollywood headshots on the front page of a weekly magazine. I have to say: did not Jacinda Ardern carry it well? I have to say that a lot of people on this side thought she carried that well—in fact, so well that most people did not recognise her for some weeks after it was actually published. There is a problem here, because so far this year there have been over 19 questions asked in the House on the issue of small business.

Simon O’Connor: How many?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: There have been 19 primary questions asked in the House by the National Party. They were patsies, set up for the Opposition spokesperson. And what did we see? Utter failure—utter failure. Today there was an absolute sitter, and what did we get? Not a thing—nothing at all. So my advice to Jacinda is to break away from Grant Robertson and his strange sort of machiavellian, Walter Mitty - type world, strike out on her own, and see what might be possible.

Then there is the other candidate, the omnipresent and “omni-positional” Phil Twyford. One minute he is here in Wellington putting his arm around Grant Robertson in commiseration, and next minute he is in Auckland anointing David Cunliffe with the red rose of socialism. This guy is everywhere. No one can do a 180 like our friend over there: “The Government should sell State houses. The Government shouldn’t sell State houses. The private sector should engage in social housing. The private sector shouldn’t engage in social housing.” Then we heard the classic today: “Interest rates are too high for young people to buy houses. Interest rates are so low now that young people can’t buy houses.” This man has got so many positions and so many twists and turns to him that it will be no surprise that after the deputy leadership vote is taken, even when he loses it he will not believe it.

Hon Annette King: Gerry!

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I save the best till last. So where does all that leave the Labour Party in its deputy leader quest? Well, I look across at my old friend Annette King. She sits there loyally beside Mr Little—almost in agony sitting next to Mr Little. She is supposedly warming the seat for someone else. All I can say to her is that I am moved to predict: hang in there, baby; soon you will be a queen.

MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): That was quite entertaining. I was thinking to myself, before I got up, I wonder what I am going to talk about in terms of this wonderful relationship accord, this mana-enhancing relationship that we have. Then I listened to all the mana-enhancing statements that were coming from my good friend Mr Brownlee in reference to our Labour Party colleagues.

Actually, you know what? We have been able to do some things by being in a confidence and supply agreement. We were able put our hand on our heart and say that from this recent Budget there was $1 billion that the Māori Party could say we had influence over, to get gains for our whānau, and that is why we are here. That is why we are in this agreement.

I was asked on the weekend: “Marama, why do you do it if you disagree with so many things?”. Yes, there are some things we disagree with but we do it because we would rather be in and making a difference, than sitting on the cross benches, throwing stones and doing nothing. So what are some of the things we have agreed with? I have mentioned some of those today. Today we get to take our babies to the doctor for free if they are 13 years and under. Everybody is jumping up, putting their hand up, and saying: “But that’s our policy.” To be fair, our policy was for the under-18s, and we would like that to be the thing. We could not get that all the way through but we could make a change through the Ministerial Committee on Poverty, get a change, so that today under-13-year-olds can go to the doctor for free.

But there is one thing in recent weeks that we categorically disagree with, and that is the way in which these special housing areas have been determined without first having consultation with iwi, and that is what I want to talk about today. This morning we were in an extended sitting. The Māori Affairs Committee, a very hard-working committee, sat this morning to discuss the Treaty claims and settlement bills that are before the House. The Minister at the time referred to the right of first refusal, and given my generosity of spirit in the limited time available to us at the time I gave some of my time to my colleague Peeni Henare, who wanted to extend some of his time. So here I get my chance to address the right of first refusal. This is where we categorically disagree.

We believe that if you are going to have mixed-tenure areas on which you build a lot of houses that then get sold to private interests, and are not being used for State housing, that land is then open land that should be referred to iwi for right of first refusal. There is certainly some deficit theorising going on here. If the Minister does not think that the iwi are capable of building homes to the capacity that is needed in the Auckland area and therefore does not discuss with them the right of first refusal and the opportunity for those iwi to build homes that will help their people—not just because they can put people in them, but also because they can have apprenticeships and those sorts of things in a culturally intelligent and responsive way in order to build communities with community input—then that is deficit theorising and believing at the outset that iwi do not have the capability.

You need only to look, as the Speaker did a few weeks ago when we went to Christchurch with Kai Tahu, at the amazing opportunities that can come when communities come together and work together with iwi to develop housing areas that are culturally responsive, culturally intelligent, and supply homes for all ranges of people, and where green spaces and wāhi tapu are also acknowledged.

So that is the content of my kōrero today. Yes, we are here in the Government, working alongside it because we want to make a difference, and we can do that in a number of ways with Ministers, but we also have the independence and the right to disagree when we fundamentally disagree about something, and on this we disagree. We will continue to uphold the rights of iwi, and we will continue to push the rights of iwi as long as they knock at our door and require us to do that—I tell you now. Thank you.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (Minister for Senior Citizens): July 1: it is a great day to take the temperature on the health of New Zealand. A very impressive list of measures has come into being today. Free prescriptions and free general practitioner visits for all children under 13—that is going to impact positively on the lives of 750,000 New Zealand children. That is outstanding. How you treat the most vulnerable at both ends of life’s continuum is, I feel, a measure of a successful society. So I am very pleased, on a personal level, to see that we have a number of measures coming in today to really impact well on the end-of-life care of many New Zealanders. This John Key - led Government believes in targeted, timely funding of life’s fundamentals and in the difference that it can make not only to quality of life but also to the quality of life that is passing.

From today, an additional $13 million in funding will help hospices and rest homes to provide better-quality palliative care for those who are in those last stages of life. This is the first year of a $76 million commitment, and over the next 4 years some $16 million of that funding will be going into the Auckland area—for example, into my own electorate of North Shore, I am very proud to say, which is already an outstanding example of its kind with the North Shore hospice. It will definitely benefit from that additional funding, not only for the people who want to pass in a hospice themselves, but also for those who want to be at home for those important last times and last days. I know, very personally, how important quality palliative care is. I was the patron of Mary Potter Hospice, where my father died, and also I have been patron of Hospice New Zealand for many years. My mother passed away in a rest home, and the variation in the ability of those different places to deliver end-of-life care is something that I think we need to be very mindful of, but the hospice funding will certainly make a difference.

When I became a member of Parliament, back in 2011, I was a co-founder of the all party parliamentary group on palliative care. It is a complex area of medicine, but we wanted to be able to share with palliative care specialists and our parliamentary colleagues some of the impacts that it can make on the psychological, spiritual, and social well-being of the patients and of their families. In 2013 more than 15,000 people received care and support from hospice services, and hospice staff made over 145,000 home visits. Being able to have the choice to have your last breath at home is something that is very important to many people. An additional $3 million this year, rising to $7 million next year, and then on, will support the recruitment of 60 new nurse specialists who are palliative care educators and who will also perform other roles at hospices. These are the nurses who are going to provide a crucial role in helping to train, mentor, and support staff across aged residential care services, GP practices, and also home-based support services. Generally speaking, at a time when many countries are cutting back, freezing, or even cutting the amount of money that they put into health, National will be investing more than $400 million each year in public health services, and that is a tribute to the prudent economic management that is practised on this side of the House.

As Minister for Senior Citizens, I am very aware of the impact that our ageing population will have on this country, and we need to plan ahead for it. We need to be able to support palliative care in rest homes, and in the future we will need more specialist facilities for conditions like dementia. In 2001 there were some 48,000 New Zealanders who suffered from some form or degree of dementia. In the next 30 years or so, that is forecast to treble to around 150,000 of the population.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I can see one.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: The member opposite from New Zealand First may well make fun of it, as he is indeed closer to both of those target groups than anyone on this side of the House. However, it is not a laughing matter. We have put $47 million extra into dementia care since we have taken office, and it really does sit well with our annual investment in aged residential care. It is now over $985 million, and that is going to ensure that we continue to provide older New Zealanders with the very best care possible into the future. Our Budget has a number of measures to protect the vulnerable and to add to the health of New Zealanders and to their quality of life. I think this is proof again—as if we need more proof—that this is a Government that cares. We do deliver on the things that matter to New Zealanders. We are very mindful of our responsibility to rise above the petty politics of the people on the opposing benches and, instead, to deliver what New Zealanders need and want. Thank you.

Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): Today New Zealand assumes the presidency of the United Nations Security Council for the first time in 21 years, and only the sixth time since 1945. It is a matter of considerable global responsibility. This House should convey its best wishes to the delegation for a successful job. What might New Zealand aspire to achieve as president that might be in some way unique? There will be the usual tasks of the council involving United Nations peacekeeping missions around the world. It may be appropriate for the council to discuss the latest independent review of peacekeeping, the Horta report. This essentially updates the Brahimi report of 15 years ago. It makes sobering observations about the current effectiveness of UN peacekeeping, including the need to distinguish between peacekeeping when there is a peace to keep and combat when there is not. We shall not solve this fundamental problem in the course of July 2015. However, what we might be able to do is add value on the issue of climate change, and in a creative way that the Government may not quite yet have in mind.

New Zealand is convening an open debate on 30 July on the security of small Island States. It took effort to persuade the council to focus on small States, but it was wise to do so. We look forward to the debate, because the focus on the security of small Island States may come to define the council’s engagement with climate change in a way that New Zealand has not anticipated. I refer to the relationship between the onset of climate change and the council’s responsibility for international peace and security. Under the United Nations Charter, the council has primary responsibility to maintain international peace and security. This includes determining any threat to peace and formulating measures in response. In recent years, the council has broadened its scope of what constitutes such a threat, including internal conflict, terrorism, unconstitutional regime change, weapons of mass destruction, and even health epidemics. The way is therefore open to identify climate change as a threat to international peace and security.

In fact, the council has considered this. It first addressed the issue in 2007 without making any statement. In 2009 the Secretary-General advised the assembly that, in his view, climate change does constitute a threat to international peace. In 2011 the council issued a presidential statement that climate change is a “risk multiplier”. It stopped short of saying that is constitutes a threat, thereby avoiding any responsibility for action or mandating itself binding powers. In 2013 it organised an Arria meeting on climate. As is the norm, no statement was made that day, but to quote the leading scientist who gave the briefing to the council: “The council is where the world powers are convening and taking hard decisions, so it would be good if its members put their full weight behind the quest for a global agreement.”

The time has come to get this over the line. It is time now that the Security Council formally declared climate change to be a threat to international peace and security, thereby mandating itself to take whatever measures are necessary to avert global danger. The presence of our island neighbours in the chamber will convey to the council the existential threat that exists for them and, through them, for all of humanity. I appeal to the Government to draft a presidential statement for the open debate on 30 July declaring climate change to be a threat to international peace and security.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Land Information): I believe that 1 July 2015 will go down in New Zealand’s history. Before I explain why I just thought we would take a quick little history lesson. On this day in 1903 the first Tour de France race began, and Ghana became a republic on this day in 1960, and in terms of our history, on 1 July 1988 Bastion Point land was returned to Ngāti Whātua. But in terms of 1 July 2015 we saw the retirement of our Clerk, Mary Harris, recognising 28 years of service to this Parliament, so I am sure this date will go down in the history of our Parliament for that reason. I am not sure about it in terms of the history books of New Zealand First. It might go down as the day that the deputy leadership was a 10-way split and depending on where the arrow landed was whoever wound up with the job. Or it could be, as Minister Brownlee said before me, a 20-way split in the Labour Party for who became the deputy leader there.

But, anyway, on to more important matters. As the speaker before me mentioned, today the presidency of the United Nations Security Council was taken over by New Zealand, which is a very important day. But New Zealand families, hard-working New Zealand families up and down this country, will recognise today. Today will be part of our history because of the fact that GP visits and prescriptions became free for under-13s. In the election campaign last year this was the single most talked about policy announcement of this Government. It recognises that there should be no parent who has to think twice about whether or not they take their child to a doctor. So I am very pleased about the announcement and the introduction today, on 1 July 2015, that all children under 13 will have access to free GP visits and prescriptions.

It is estimated that more than 400,000 children will benefit from this scheme, which will take the number benefiting to more than 750,000 children. If I look at my own electorate of Taupō, around 20,000 children fall under the Lakes District Health Board and a further 60,000 under the Waikato District Health Board, and they will be very pleased to have access to free GP visits and prescriptions. We recognise how important it is to give our kids the best possible start in life, and so this is a great day for New Zealand families.

I want to follow on from the comments that my parliamentary colleague the Hon Maggie Barry made about the importance of additional support for hospices. If I look at my own electorate, additional funding for palliative care for the Waikato District Health Board and the Lakes District Health Board has gone up by $5.8 million. That is significant for the many families who have a very challenging time with their loved ones going through those last days, weeks, or months and I know that this is a huge announcement for communities large and small. But this is another policy that directly benefits our families.

Another announcement that actually came into force a couple of months ago and one that I am continuing to get strong feedback on as the Minister for Women is the paid parental leave increase. We are planning to increase it again by 2 weeks, to 18 weeks from 1 April next year. This is another policy that supports families, supports children, and is balanced exactly in the right place.

Another initiative that Minister Tolley announced today was news of the accommodation benefit rising to match the accommodation supplement. One of my priorities as Minister for Women is ensuring that women are able to participate in and gain further education and training to support them in work. This particular policy means that sole parents who are studying could be up to $165 a week better off. For some families that is the difference between having that parent studying or not, so I think it is significant. The more women who are able to get an education—and those who I believe are particularly vulnerable are sole parents—their ability to continue their education, improves not only their prospects in terms of employment but also the options and future for their children. Clearly on this side of the House this is a Government that is really delivering for New Zealand families, and I am proud to be part of John Key’s Government.

Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): At the end of question time today we heard the Speaker remind a Minister not to be arrogant. I am waiting for this to be entered into Speakers’ rulings because this is a Government that is arrogant, it is a Government that is out of ideas, and it is a Government that is out of touch. It is in small-term thinking, it is petty stuff, and perhaps that was no better exemplified than by the Hon Gerry Brownlee’s contribution in this House this afternoon. Gerry and I, we are both from Christchurch so I know that when he says these things he is actually being really nice. I never actually knew that Gerry felt that way about me and that this is his way of being nice. So to hear Gerry though—I mean it is really the equivalent of a sonnet from Christchurch’s own D H Lawrence. To hear Christchurch’s own D H Lawrence talking about deputy leadership we have to consider that Gerry was once deputy leader of the National Party. Gerry was the man who walked the plank with Don Brash. Gerry walked the plank with Don Brash so he knows a thing or two about being a deputy leader. But Gerry, to give him his due, has achieved quite some feats in Christchurch. The best is the memorial gate at Christchurch International Airport, the place that marks where Gerry broke the law and snuck through to catch his plane. It is a very difficult gate to navigate so it is quickly and colloquially becoming known as a Gerry-proof fence. It is certainly, I am sure, going to keep that Minister at bay.

But this is a Government that is failing. Let us have a look at them. There is Murray “Peace in our time” McCully, and my colleague David Parker has chronicled in this House many of the things that Mr McCully has been up to. But as my other colleague David Shearer might like to say: “Let him drink milk.” But Murray has a cunning plan. Murray knows that he is on the ropes and Murray knows that peace in the Middle East is not going to be enough. He is going to have to come up with something more to save his reputation, so he has come up with a doozy. A demonstration farm in a New York apartment complex is a beachhead for a new breed of sheep with straightened wool. That is his big thing. But he is still currently negotiating the facilitation payments and seeing what he can come up with—and coming up with straighteners. Let us think of this.

If there was ever a symbol of how out of touch this Government has got, it is a pair of $400 straighteners down at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. I am reliably informed that these are Cloud Nine straighteners. For the uninitiated in this House this is a brand of hair straightener—an offshoot of ghd to be specific. Cloud Nine exemplifies this no more. Word on the street is that these straighteners have now blown up. Someone left them on and they have now burnt out—much like this Government. But I have my suspicions. I am thinking that Steven Joyce snuck into the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment in the dead of night, aggrieved that the symbol of his reign of power was going to be a pair of Cloud Nine straighteners and he smashed those straighteners to get rid of them, because he never really did want his legacy to be a set of hair straighteners.

Then of course we have the other “Minister for Everything”—and goodness knows why you would give Nick Smith a pile of things and ask him to sort them out because none of them are sorted out. We have Nick Smith in housing crisis mode and we have his other portfolios absolutely suffering because he is distracted and unable to give them the attention. We literally have a tyre mountain growing in this country, which Nick Smith refuses to act on. My only suspicion is that Nick Smith is thinking: “If you leave enough of them to build up, I’ll be able to build some more houses there. I’ll call it Crown land, I’ll get a busload of journalists, I’ll take them around, and I’ll tell them that that’s where we are going to build some houses.” He has now dropped the ball on liquid and hazardous waste. I am going to resist the temptation to make jokes about what that might be because this is actually a very serious issue that Nick Smith has dropped the ball on. He is leaving us vulnerable. So if we wanted a symbol of waste in this Government, Nick Smith is literally giving it to us. This is a Minister who is failing to manage waste literally. This is a Government that is mired in sleaze. It is mired in scandal, it is out of ideas, it is out of touch, and its greatest legacy is a pair of hair straighteners.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I would define that speech by Megan Woods as a cream puff. She talked about what the Government lacks in ideas. Unfortunately, every idea that Labour has had in 7 years it has canned. I will not talk for any longer about that. I want also very briefly to mention the outgoing Clerk of the House, Mary Harris. It would be an unenviable job, listening to us, day after day, night after night. I was quite excited to hear about her fishing spot. I happen to know where she goes fishing. If she improves her fishing at that rate, no doubt I will catch a few more. But the other thing I was really intrigued with was her cricketing record. I have, for a long time now, had assisting me a couple of New Zealand cricketers who, in the words of a previous Deputy Speaker of this House, were women of substance. I am sure that that is how you could adequately describe Mary Harris.

I want to get on and talk briefly today about the region of the Horizons Regional Council—in fact, the Hurricanes region—both of which of course encompass the Rangitīkei electorate. What a fortnight it has been for that region. There has been significant flooding hitting the Wanganui and Rangitīkei areas earlier in this last fortnight, followed by a couple of decent thumpings that the Hurricanes have given their opposition in recent times. Of course the other end of my electorate stretches right into the territory of the Chiefs, who were the finalists at the end of this week, and the Highlanders of course gave them a good thumping in Otago last week. The Government’s response to the storm event in the Manawatū and Wanganui areas, in my view, has been outstanding. I was around at the time of the previous massive floods in that region, and saw the response of the Labour Government of that time. I think Minister Kaye—

Hon Annette King: And you praised us for it.

IAN McKELVIE: I did not criticise. You are absolutely right, Annette King. We loved George Hawkins coming to see us on a regular basis. I want to talk about the response of Ministers Kaye and Guy. Simon Bridges, Minister Bridges, is in for a bit of a fright, I think, when he gets his roading bill because there is some significant roading damage throughout that region.

I also want to talk just briefly about the performance of the mayors in that region, because it does give you a bit of a fright, as a mayor, when you suddenly see your territory decimated by something you have got no control over. I think Annette Main, Andy Watson, and Ross Dunlop have done a great job of keeping their communities together and keeping the Government interested. I think it is absolutely key in an event like that that you keep a Government interested. They have done a great job, and I think they should be congratulated on the work they have done. I think the region, although it has got some significant challenges in front of it, is over the worst of it and, hopefully, the weather will be kind to them in the next few weeks. I spent this morning in the lower part of my electorate, looking at some extremely badly damaged farms and houses. It was in a very small area, interestingly. This flood was very different from previous ones in that it has caused damage all over the place, but not in every place. There are isolated spots of significant damage.

The response from the Government, in my view, has been quick and effective. Taskforce Green is benefiting to the tune of $500,000 and another $310,000 is going into the regional disaster funds of one sort or another—whether they are mayoral funds or regional funds. As I said, Minister Bridges is going to get a significant fright when he gets the roading bill because it will be the biggest part of the clean-up for this job. The roads in rural Rangitīkei and rural Wanganui and in some parts of South Taranaki have had significant damage. There has also been $145,000 that has gone into the rural support network, which will help particularly the people in the rural areas who are under stress, and there are a number of them. The Minister for Social Development has put some money into that sort of support as well.

This afternoon Minister Guy announced another significant supplementary funding round going into the Horizons Regional Council sustainable land use initiative. After 2004 it did a significant amount of work right throughout the region, from coastal Hawke’s Bay to the mountains in the north, on dealing with fragile land that had been significantly damaged during the course of that 2004 event. This afternoon Minister Guy announced another injection of about $4.7 million into that fund. That will make a massive difference to Horizons Regional Council’s ability to continue the work of that fund. The basic work of it is to retire land that is fragile, a lot of which should not ever have been farmed. It should not have been broken in. But of course in our history we have had times where we have significantly subsidised the ability of farmers to break land in. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but probably some of that land should never have been broken in. This fund gives those farmers the opportunity to retire that land, to plant trees on it, to re-fence it, and to get it operating again. If you look at the Government assistance that went into the East Coast after Cyclone Bola and you look at the result up there, it has been significant. Thank you.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Can I acknowledge the outgoing Clerk of the House, Mary Harris, and thank her for her wonderful efforts through the years.

I want to talk about the Saudi sheep scandal. One of the things that the New Zealand population relies upon the Government to do is to hold up standards of decency, freedom from corruption, and fair dealing in the world. Those are very, very important to New Zealand’s reputation. Indeed, they are one of the reasons why we secured the Security Council membership that we are taking up just today. It is with great shame, I think, that Mr McCully has sullied that reputation through this Saudi sheep scandal, which we did not know anything about until 2 months ago.

From his perspective and from John Key’s perspective, it is just another deal. That is how they see the world. They have got no standards. They do not see this as being wrong, and that is why they make these fundamental mistakes that—

Paul Foster-Bell: What a load of rubbish.

Hon DAVID PARKER: What rubbish? Well, we have got the history of the Skycity deal, where they sold casino rights in a secret, behind-closed-doors deal, which was criticised by the Auditor-General. We had the Warner Bros deal. We are now living in a country where lobbying and special pleading gets you a special leg-up from this Government, and nowhere is this worse than in respect of this Saudi sheep scandal.

Two years ago, essentially, the deal was done. The Government approved some payout to Mr Al Khalaf and this so-called model farm in the desert, and, yet, we heard nothing about it until earlier this year, when Minister Guy went to this so-called model farm in the desert and said things that were preposterous, but none the less he talked it up. In fact he said, amongst other things, that it was going to be a model of the way we do farming. There is no model farm in the world that the Government has funded other than this one, and so the media started to pay attention. They thought that there was something fishy about this and they started to dig, and it was actually the media that got on to this story, before politicians did. I pay my respects to the fourth estate because I think it has done a good job on this.

The next thing that happened was that the $6 million figure paid for this bizarre farm in the desert turned into a higher figure, because someone leaked that the sheep had been flown to the other side of the world at the cost of $1 million. This is when we had the first of the cartoons starting to appear, making a mockery of the Government. It says: “Last time I’ll travel on this line … no deck quoits, no pokie machines, no mah-jong, no swimming pool …”. The Government was starting to be made fun of because it was just bizarre that we were flying sheep to the other side of the world.

Then, the day before this long-overdue Cabinet paper, which the Government has hidden since 2013, came out, Mr McCully said: “Oh, actually, the total is now $11 million.” What was the difference between the $6 million and the $11 million, other than the $1 million that the Government spent on flights? There was a $4 million payment, which has been unpicked as a facilitation payment to buy off Mr Al Khalaf. That is called a bribe in other countries. I am not suggesting that the money went into Mr McCully’s pocket—there is no suggestion of that—but it is wrong of this Government to bribe a foreign person who is getting in the way of a free-trade agreement, and that is what happened.

How have we proved that? We have proved that because initially Mr McCully, in this House, blamed the prior Labour Government and said that we had left behind a $20 million to $30 million legal risk. So the obvious question was: well, why did no one tell us that? Check with the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, former Ministers of Trade, and former Ministers of Foreign Affairs—that is, Clark, Cullen, Peters, Goff, Anderton, and Sutton. None of them have heard about it, because it was an untruth—it was an untruth. We unpicked that.

Then Mr McCully admitted that there was no live legal claim—in fact, none had been filed. Then the Prime Minister admitted that there was no cause of action. He admitted that to the National Business Review, and still the Government pretends that this was a payment for good value, rather than to get Mr Al Khalaf out of the way of the free-trade agreement. It was a disgraceful episode.

Then we had the bizarre thing where the Minister for Primary Industries said that the 75 percent lamb losses were caused by a desert storm. “Sandstorm” he said. I kid you not. This was a cause of more mirth amongst the media. We had this from him: “There’s a lot of sand in the desert, and the wind can get it up and that caused all those lambs to die. Yeah, that’s what I reckon happened.” That is what he said. They were all over the place. On the same day we had the contractors saying that they died as a consequence of a rain event.

MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Firstly, I would just like to acknowledge our secondary schools and colleges that competed in Stage Challenge, and in particular Ōrewa College, which won its open division. I would also like to just mention the RSAs in Warkworth, Wellsford, and Kerikeri, and in particular the president of Kerikeri, Frank Lewis, and the president of Wellsford, Terry Blakemore. Thank you for hosting the defence white paper meetings that we held there over the last couple of weeks.

Talking about the defence white paper meetings, we have to note that Major Ron Mark appears to be on manoeuvres this week—he appears to be on manoeuvres. Let us talk about that. I might have to use some military terms, but please bear with me. What did he use? He used the blitzkrieg. Major Mark used the blitzkrieg. This is an attack that uses concentrated force and rapid speed to break through enemy lines. But the deputy leader was quick to react. She had her colonels—she had Colonel Denis O’Rourke and Colonel Richard Prosser—and she mobilised them. She mobilised them into a blockade. A blockade is an attempt to cut off food supplies and war material.

But we are dealing with an experienced veteran here, who moved very quickly into a deception. He moved into a deception. A deception is a strategy that seeks to deceive, trick, or fool the enemy, and create a false perception in a way that can be leveraged for a military advantage. He then quickly moved into a feint. Mr Peters would know about this: a feint is to draw attention to another point of the battle where little or nothing is going on. And then—it did not end there—it was straight into a flanking manoeuver. A flanking manoeuver involves attacking the opponent from the side or the rear. But Denis and Richard were ready for this. They responded quickly; they responded with a human wave attack—a human wave attack is an unprotected frontal attack—and then quickly into an indirect approach. The indirect approach—dislocation is the aim of the strategy. Direct attacks almost never work. One must upset the enemy’s equilibrium.

But Mr Ron Mark is sensible. He knew that he was going to call on other fine examples of strategy in terms of a change of leadership, so he decided to call on the Labour Party’s divide and conquer. The divide and conquer is to induce rival states to engage in a protracted war of attrition against each other. But he realised that things were not going his way—not this time. It was not going to work this time. But let us give him credit. He tried one more manoeuvre. He tried one more; it was the turning manoeuvre. The turning manoeuvre is an attack that penetrates the enemy’s flank, and then curls into its rear to cut it off from home. He used the turning manoeuvre, but unfortunately it all came to an end.

The big guns arrived. The .50 calibre arrived, locked and loaded, ready to go—the Rt Hon Winston Peters. What did he use? Can anyone guess? He used shock and awe—shock and awe. He rolled out the shock and awe. That is right. That is an attack that penetrates—oh, no, sorry. I have already covered that one. The shock and awe—I have got to get this right—is a military doctrine using overwhelming power to try to achieve rapid dominance. That is what we saw unfold today. Thank you very much.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): New Zealand First has just been attacked by Wikipedia. First of all, from 1 July, free doctors visits is a New Zealand First policy. They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but a bit of old-fashioned honesty would have been a good idea.

Today Nick Smith got up in the House and clearly misinformed every New Zealander. If you go to the Forests Amendment Act 2004, section 67C—we are talking about section 67C(3)(a)(iii)—it is as clear as daylight: “the timber has been presented to a Forestry Officer for inspection and he or she has inspected and approved,”. Mr Smith misled the House. Damien O’Connor was precisely right.

Now we go back to Northland—well, before I do, why would they have meetings with the RSAs of Wellsford and Kerikeri without asking the man who believes, and whose party believes, in proper funding for defence forces? I mean, those guys up there are going to be told: “If you want some help, then there is one place to go to, and it starts with ‘NZ’ and it ends with ‘First’.”

Now, on Northland, Simon Bridges is a politician who will double-cross any bridge he comes to. On 8 March National’s candidate announced the 10 single-lane bridges that were to be replaced, and there it had this candidate surrounded by, of all people, the Minister of Transport, “Simple Simon”, and a man from down in Wellington who cannot get a seat, Mr Bishop. There they were. There they were at the election—all promising. It was 8 March. This was not as a rogue candidate. Then you had National promising up to $69 billion—

Chris Bishop: Billion?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —$69 million, I said—for these 10 bridges. So where is the money? Where is the money? Where is the Wellsford to Pūhoi roadway? Where are the plans? Where is the money? On 18 March Mr Joyce was asked to list the bridges for double-laning, and he had no qualms about listing the likes of the Darby and Joan Kauri Bridge. Everyone in Northland knows that that is manifest nonsense. It puts me in mind of the former president of Russia, Nikita Khrushchev, who said about politicians that they will promise a bridge where there is no river. That is what he said a long, long time ago. The Darby and Joan Kauri Bridge does not have a river, ladies and gentleman. For the umpteenth time: it is not a bridge.

Anyway, Mr Key said: “We are in Government and we can do things.” And then he got caught out. He said that the Government would spend up to $69 million on 10 bridges regardless of the outcome of the Northland by-election, the blitzkrieg about which Mr Mark Mitchell was being so effusive. A blitzkrieg—[Interruption] Oh, yes, it was! It was a blitzkrieg of truth and commitment to the people of the north. Then on 30 June Simon Bridges waded back, saying that the New Zealand Transport Agency had ruled out double-laning three of the bridges, including the Darby and Joan Kauri Bridge. That is what he said. So National announced three bridges yesterday, not 10. Are you confused? It gets better. Speaking to the Dominion Post yesterday, Mr Bridges said that despite most of the 10 bridges promised to Northlanders failing to make the $13.9 billion transport plan announced on Tuesday, National will keep the campaign pledge and fund them anyway. Really? When, where, and how? Oh, of course, that is the kind of thing responsible people do when they are in Government!

Someone must have been costing Mr English out, because Mr English was asked a question at a select committee. He got asked the question “Have you got costings for all of these things?”. This was 2 weeks ago. Mr English said: “Well, yes, there will be.”—yes, there will be. That statement was demonstrably false. But it comes back to this: we want Maurice Williamson back. At least Maurice told the truth. That is why Maurice tore into the Minister of Transport in the select committee, but National’s deceit will be known in Northland. My job—and, indeed, Mark Mitchell’s job—is to ensure that Northlanders know the truth, which is that they have been grievously let down again.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): It is an absolute pleasure to follow on from the right honourable member Winston Peters—the last remaining Privy Counsellor still sitting in the New Zealand Parliament. In the last week we have seen some very grave matters unfolding in the international scene. As chairman of the New Zealand - United Kingdom Parliamentary Friendship Group and the France - New Zealand Parliamentary Friendship Group, I want to put on the record here my personal condolences to the British people in particular, and to all of the countries that lost nationals in the attacks in Tunisia. The number of British nationals—in fact, 22 dead and others wounded—is the largest loss of British life since the 7 July London bombings 10 years ago. It has precipitated Scotland Yard’s SO15 counter-terrorism commands, the largest operation since those bombings, comprising over 600 police officers. The Home Secretary Theresa May visited the site yesterday and the House of Commons has observed a minute’s silence. I think it is very appropriate that we are mindful of our friends in democratic countries elsewhere who have been attacked, hurt, and killed, and the families and friends of those who have lost their loved ones in those attacks.

I would also like to mention the attack in France at Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, in which Yassine Salhi, an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist, decapitated in the most barbarous way an innocent man and rammed a company van into a gasworks, causing further injuries and damage. These attacks were coordinated. They were at the behest of ISIS senior leader Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, and they demonstrate why we as a Western democracy, proud of our tradition of peace and democratic governance, need to cooperate with our friendly, like-minded countries and allies and ensure that our own domestic and internal security processes are sufficient to prevent such outrages ever happening in this Realm of New Zealand.

I want to talk to perhaps more mundane, domestic matters now, having spoken about that. We have seen unfolding in the Opposition parties a drama that is perhaps equivalent to that recently released Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary The Killing Season, which depicts the internecine warfare within the Australian Labor Party between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. There are some chilling moments in that documentary where we see what can only be described as the sociopathy of Mr Rudd, but also the intense betrayal that he felt when his formerly loyal, or ostensibly loyal, deputy Ms Gillard put the knife in. In fact, I am a firm follower of that other TV series Game of Thrones, and what we are seeing playing out across this House reminds me, and I do not want to put any spoilers in here for the New Zealand public, but it is reminiscent, perhaps, of those end-of-series bloodbaths that we see in that particular show. I can only describe the Leader of the Opposition as New Zealand’s political equivalent of Stannis Baratheon, that dour but treacherous member of that particular show, up against the Lannisters—that is Mr Cunliffe—the well-moneyed, very eloquent, and smooth urban dwellers.

In the New Zealand First Party there have also been ructions. I want to put on the record in this House my respect and admiration for Tracey Martin. I have always found her a very, very good member to work with on the Education and Science Committee, and I admire any member who brings to this House a measure like the clothing for orphans measure that she has brought in. I can only say that the attempt by Mr Mark to remove her from that position must be the equivalent of a—well, let us call it the night of the short knives, given Mr Mark’s stature. So I hope Ms Martin does remain in place, because she has been excellent to work with.

We have had, on 1 July, some wonderful measures introduced by this Government—free doctors visits, free prescriptions, free after-hours care for under-13s. In the Wellington region our children will be incredibly well catered for. There are 46,000 children within the Capital and Coast District Health Board area who will benefit from this measure, and I was delighted to see Dr Coleman and the Prime Minister launching it today and choosing to do so in Karori in the Wellington Central electorate.

My colleague the Hon Maggie Barry also referred to the medical care that we provide at the other end of life; that is, palliative care for those who are ending or approaching the end of their lives. I particularly welcome the $4.6 million worth of the investment of the over $30 million that Minister Barry referred to that is coming into the Wellington region and will benefit those who are going through that very, very difficult stage of life when they are coming to the end of their life, perhaps suffering from a terminal disease. I think that investment will be very welcomed not only by the people in that situation but by their families. Thank you.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: It is tragic to interrupt the member before we hear the latest update on The Simpsons or SpongeBob SquarePants, but the time for this debate has expired.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed from 30 June.

Part 2 Land dealings (continued)

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Because more than half a decade has passed since this bill was introduced to the House, I think it is proper for this Committee to question whether some of the matters in Part 2 are still current. For members who were not here in earlier parts of this debate, this bill was originally introduced on 15 August 2008. I was a younger man.

Hon Annette King: You had more hair.

Hon DAVID PARKER: That is right—I had more hair. I was also the Minister for Land Information, and I was aware that this bill did things that were not particularly controversial. One or two were controversial to some. But the bill put right the various matters concerning the proper classification of lands in various parts of New Zealand, which were important to those councils, particularly, that were affected. I had an expectation that that bill would be referred back and dealt with pretty promptly by this House. Well, since then I think we have had three or four Ministers for Land Information. It was reported back to the House by the Primary Production Committee in 2009—it was not an undue delay—but then we have had approximately 6 years of delay while it has sat on the Order Paper.

One of the questions that I want to hear answered by the Minister in the chair, Louise Upston, is what cost that has caused to the people who are affected by the provisions in Part 2 and who have not had the clarification through this legislation that should have been through about 5 years ago. I have got one example that I would like some comment on from the Minister, and that relates to what is called locally the Forrester Heights land in Ōāmaru. That land was controversial in that the status of the land—it is actually called Lookout Point land in this provision but it is colloquially called the Forrester Heights land in Ōāmaru, and they will understand this debate if I refer to it as Forrester Heights land—was originally given to the council as endowment land, which meant that it was for monetary purposes for the council. If the council wanted to sell it and turn it into money and buy another piece of land or do something else with the money, then that was always up to it.

Through an accident in history, at some time the title was recorded in a confused way, which suggested that it was reserve land rather than endowment land. In the meantime the council had sold the land in the subdivision upon the land at the time of a price boom in Ōāmaru, which has long since passed, sadly, because the contracts for the sale of that land were at good prices for the council. There were some millions of dollars tied up in the sales, all of which fell over. Well, just about all did; maybe one or two contracts carried on, but my understanding—and Richard Prosser might know this, because it probably goes back to his time down there, when he stood down there—is that all of the contracts fell over because the council could not offer perfect title because this bill had not been passed.

So a consequence of this bill sitting on the Order Paper for so long was that the Waitaki District Council, which covers Ōāmaru, lost millions of dollars in potential sales of these properties. In the end the local member, Jacqui Dean, brought forward a local bill on behalf of the council to do what this bill was meant to do. But of course that was still too late to save the council the loss of millions of dollars and it also put the council to the cost of bringing forward a local bill. It had to pay a $50,000 fee, I think it was, to bring a local bill. Something like that—it is a substantial fee anyway. Someone can correct me if I have got that amount wrong. The council was put to that cost. Parliament was put to the cost of actually doing this as a separate process. Submitters who were opposed to it had to submit twice. Having already submitted once on this bill, they then submitted on the local bill.

In the end it was shown, to the satisfaction of the select committee, and to me, despite protestations from those on the other side, that it was properly endowment land rather than reserve land. But I am interested in the Minister telling the House how much money was lost by the Waitaki District Council and its ratepayers because of this delay.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): The thing about Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bills is that they come around, my understanding is, about once every 7 years. What happens is that they are supposed to be non-controversial. About once every 7 years there are enough changes to warrant a bill and a piece of legislation going through the House, and here we are. But, as Mr Parker has alluded to, and I think the Minister for Land Information alluded to this in her second reading speech—it was not in her first reading speech, because the Minister who gave the first reading speech was actually the Hon Richard Worth, who departed this House a while ago, I believe. The thing is we are now 7 years on from when this was introduced. So one thing I would not mind knowing from the Minister is whether she is going to put any Supplementary Order Papers forward, and whether there are any other parcels of land that should actually be included in this, because my understanding is we are about due for another piece of legislation along these lines, which will include all the other changes that councils and various local jurisdictions will want included in a piece of legislation.

The last thing we really want to do is actually delay legislation another 7 years, for a whole raft of reasons. First of all, it is the reason that Mr Parker outlined. If, in fact, this is causing economic cost to any sort of local authority for undue reason, then we need to mitigate that risk, because the last thing we want to do is impose even greater costs on our local councils. But the other reason is it is not good legislation. I mean, the legislation in itself is not bad, but what I mean is it is bad process. To have a bill like this on the Order Paper for 7 years—and let us hope that after the Committee stage it is not going to languish for another couple of years, because it might be Kelvin Davis who gives the third reading speech as the Minister, if it is in 2017. But anyway what I am trying to say is we need to get this piece of legislation through the House. One of the things that, again, my colleague Mr Parker talked about is the economic cost.

You know, when I look at the list of reserves and lands affected, obviously the first one is the Auckland Art Gallery development. At the time it was a development, but even at the time it was retrospective. The thing about this piece of legislation that we all acknowledge—and I do not blame the Minister for this, because I think there were even two or three Ministers before this current Minister who were in charge of this. But what was acknowledged was that this was not a good way. This is not good process in terms of allowing these chunks of land to be passed on to other ownership. The Auckland Art Gallery development—what this was about was that the Auckland City Council proposed to amend the definition of “Albert Park” so the Auckland Art Gallery could be extended. Now the Auckland Art Gallery has already been extended. I am assuming the ribbon has already been cut, so I do not know what would happen if this piece of legislation did not go through the House. I mean, we are supporting it. It will go through the House. But I am just saying that retrospectively is just not a great way to do it. In fact, I think at the time the mayor was John Banks. I can imagine the conversation that went on in the council chambers. He would have gone “Don’t worry about it. We’ll just whack it in a Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill. They come up about once every 7 years. It does not matter if it is retrospective; it is going to go through anyway.”

Well, again, we cannot have this sort of legislation going through retrospectively, because what it actually does is it perverts the course of democracy. By that I mean those who were opposed to anything in this bill—and I think there were around 30-odd submissions. I was not on the Primary Production Committee, but I think there were around 30-odd submissions. It is very difficult to present a submission against a piece of legislation when the process you are actually objecting to has already taken place. This is very much the case in this piece of legislation, and the Minister will be well aware of this, as are other members on the select committee. A number of the submissions were to do with the Auckland Art Gallery. Submitters came and they knew it was pretty much a waste of time. I do not mean that in a disrespectful way, but it was a waste of time their submitting on something that had already occurred. This is the problem we get into when we are looking at retrospective legislation, because it just rankles when it comes to the whole democratic process.

There were a couple of other things. The Auckland volcanic cones land—what happened here was that the Department of Conservation wanted to amend an Act so decision making in relation to volcanic cones in Auckland is with the Minister of Conservation, not the Governor-General. There were a number of concerns about this, because the department believed that if the decision-making process was given to a Government Minister, then what may end up happening is Government policy may end up having sway, when in reality what we need is an Order in Council from the Governor-General—[Bell rung]

Hon Louise Upston: Mr Chair.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I have already called Stuart Nash.

STUART NASH: Thank you very much. Actually, I am very pleased that the Minister is going to address some of these concerns. Like I said, the Minister does a good job in this area, so I am very keen to hear her contributions.

Carmel Sepuloni: What?

STUART NASH: In this piece of legislation—that is all; not in the other stuff. But on the volcanic cones land, as I was saying, what we did not want to end up with is a situation where a Minister of Conservation had pressure put on him or her by other Ministers of the Crown to undertake or to allow or to permit an activity to be undertaken that perhaps played into Government policy as opposed to what the community actually wanted. That was actually quite controversial.

Dunedin Octagon land—that was simply the case of the Dunedin City Council proposing to move a restriction regarding the erection of structures in the Octagon. That was non-controversial. It went through. Everyone understood what the council was trying to achieve there and everyone backed that. The Kahurangi National Park—again, this is the classic case of why we need these sorts of bills. The Department of Conservation just wanted to formalise the realignment of State Highway 6 through parts of the Kahurangi National Park. It will have gone through all the right processes—[Interruption] No, no, Mr Twyford, this was totally non-controversial. It went through the right process. This is the sort of thing we need to do every now and again to make sure that we are delivering the services to New Zealanders that New Zealanders expect.

But then Mr Parker talked about Lookout Point. This was controversial. I know that the cost of the land was severely discounted because this legislation had not gone through; the Waitaki District Council could not offer title. The other thing I understood—and I am not too sure whether I should be saying this, but someone did send me an email saying “You’re speaking on this …”—there was a perceived conflict of interest here. I might be out of line when I talk about this, so, yes, I am going to be a little bit careful. But someone said to me that when the local MP put up a bill to actually make sure this did go through the Reserves and Other Lands Disposals—well, a member’s bill, actually—her husband was the lawyer at the time, and there was just an impression there was a slight conflict of interest.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, no, well, you are right. You should steer well clear of that sort of reference, and just come back to what you were talking about.

STUART NASH: OK. The Māhinepua Bay reserve land—I think one of my colleagues might be talking about this because he knows a lot more about this. It was slightly controversial and there was a level of disquiet, actually, when the bill was presented, and I think there is a Supplementary Order Paper in place to actually withdraw those clauses—the Minister might know that—from the bill itself. Marlborough District Council—this was the Picton office land. This goes back to a 1903 transfer of the Picton office land and removes an antiquated interest on the title of the land. Again, this is the sort of clause that is in these sorts of bills that come to the House once every 7 years. I do not know how many of these things have been backed up. This goes back to 1903. That was a long time ago. I do not think even Winston was in the House back then. He might have been, but I am unsure. So it goes back a long time, and every now and again these things come up. I suspect that more and more and more of them are going to come up as councils are challenged to have a look at their balance sheets and say “OK, what is necessary, what is antiquated, how do we upgrade everything.”, because the level of governance requirements on local authorities is getting—I would not say more onerous, but ratepayers and the Government are expecting a higher level of engagement and a much greater level of accountability. So I suspect we are going to see a lot of these clauses where 1903 pieces of legislation or 1903 transfers or similar instances are going to need to be remedied, just to bring them up to 21st century standards.

The next one was the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board land. I had some slight concerns about this and I spoke about it in my second reading speech. This was where the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board wanted to remove any caveats around five titles of land the board holds. The caveats around these pieces of land were that they could be used only for district health board purposes. I was really unsure—and I had a good look at a lot of the material behind this—why those caveats existed. I suspect that what happened was that this land was given or bequeathed to a district health board in times past and part of the condition of that bequest was that the land could be used only for health purposes, otherwise the land would return to the owner or to the Crown or something along those lines. But, like I said, I am unsure, and my investigations proved fruitless, to be honest. It would be quite interesting to know. I doubt whether the Minister has the background on this, because it is quite specific. It would be interesting to know whether that is the case, because the last thing we would want to do is to get into a situation where two or three generations ago specific land was bequeathed for specific purposes—

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Land Information): I wanted to just take the opportunity to address a couple of the issues that have been raised. As members before me have said, Reserves and Other Lands Disposal bills are non-controversial. For those who are listening, it might seem unusual that there are so many different parts of New Zealand that are affected by a bill like this. There are two other ways that this sort of tidy-up work for the status of parcels of land or land titles can be enacted. It can be through a Statutes Amendment Bill. It can also be through a local bill, as the Hon David Parker explained with the Lookout Point land. But I do want to emphasise that they are generally non-controversial. They do go through a full select committee process, though, and I want to thank my parliamentary colleagues across the Chamber who participated in the select committee process. I thank them for their efforts, and I also thank the officials who have got us to the process today.

I did want to just clarify something, though. Two Opposition members have spoken about Albert Park. I just wanted to put on record and very clearly state the issues surrounding this. The Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill does not retrospectively approve the Albert Park development. This is not a retrospective validation of Auckland Council’s actions, because no validation is needed. There is no legislative change that has been, or is required, to authorise the Albert Park redevelopment. So, simply, what is happening with the clauses in this bill is that the management of Auckland Art Gallery will have less administrative difficulty in terms of operating the gallery as it is.

Clearly, anything that is beneficial to ratepayers and reduces some of the unnecessary administrative burden for councils is good for all ratepayers. So I did want to put on record very clearly that this is not a retrospective validation of the process that Auckland Council went through. I think it is fair to say that in the select committee process some concerns were raised by members about the process that Auckland Council undertook, but I do want to reinforce and put on the record that this is not a retrospective validation of Auckland Council’s actions.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I thank the Minister for Land Information. It is always much appreciated when the actual Minister is in the chair and able to answer questions. Yes, this is a bill that has been around for a long time, but in my short call I would like to talk a bit about Supplementary Order Paper 206, which is in Mr Williamson’s name. That Supplementary Order Paper is really important because it deletes provisions that the Primary Production Committee recommended be inserted. Those provisions would have allowed the Far North District Council to privatise the public esplanade reserve at Walls Bay in Ōpua. That would have allowed Mr Schmuck and his boatyard to take over much of the reserve for commercial boatbuilding. It has certainly been a long-running saga, which the Hon Damien O’Connor spoke about in an earlier reading. It has been in and out of councils, the Department of Conservation, and the court, and it has been to the Ombudsman. That saga has been largely because Mr Schmuck has wanted not just the right to move boats up and down the slipway in the reserve but also the right to, effectively, monopolise it for his boatbuilding business by doing waterblasting, by repairing boats there, and by generally using the reserve as part of his business.

So the Green Party has stood alongside members of the community in seeking to protect the esplanade reserve and public access to it. These esplanade reserves are important as part of the concept of the Queen’s Chain and ensuring that there is public access along rivers, lakes, and the coast. The Walls Bay Esplanade Reserve at Ōpua is an important part of the Bay of Islands walkway. There has been quite a lot of concern in the community at Mr Schmuck’s efforts to privatise it. I think that in one of the local media stories I saw, one neighbour pointed out that it is very difficult for people to go picnicking in the reserve if there is the waterblasting of a boat occurring alongside. It makes the whole area quite unattractive for public use. We were really concerned by these clauses being inserted in the bill because, potentially, they were setting a precedent for other business operators to seek to take over public lands, and esplanade reserve, and use those for their businesses. Maiki Marks, in her advocacy, called it a “modern-day land grab”.

So we are very pleased that the Supplementary Order Paper has been tabled and that it does delete these clauses from the bill. Certainly, the Department of Conservation was prepared to grant easements to allow boats to move across the slipway, but Mr Schmuck seems to have been quite litigious, and not been content with that, and wanted to challenge that at every opportunity. I think now we have the Mayor of the Far North District Council, the Hon John Carter, seeking to assist Mr Schmuck to get consents from the district council. I am not clear whether those have been granted, but it seems that it was his advocacy at the select committee that resulted in the clauses being included in the first place, so we are very pleased with the Supplementary Order Paper that removes them from the bill.

We are happy to support the bill, even though it does make a number of small retrospective changes to areas like Punakaiki, where land is being taken for a road opposite the Pancake Rocks walk. That is now being removed from the park. Similarly, other areas in Westland Tai Poutini National Park and Kahurangi National Park have also been taken for road widening. But I would be interested whether the Minister in the chair has any further information on where the Schmuck saga is up to, because it has certainly taken up quite a lot of time of this Parliament and other agencies. But we are very pleased that that is not going forward in the bill. Thank you.

RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I rise to take a brief call in this Committee of the whole House, as we debate the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill. It is a brief call because, in a material sense, not a whole lot has changed since we debated the bill at its second reading. During that debate, I gave notice that New Zealand First would be seeking to have the bill either withdrawn or sent back to the Primary Production Committee for re-examination, in the light of what is, effectively, a new age since it was first introduced to the House. New Zealand First opposes this bill, but we might be persuaded to support it if it were returned to the select committee where it might be able to be refurbished, as it were, in line with everything that has changed since the 49th Parliament first considered it back in 2009.

I say that because, as it stands, this bill is simply a mess. I go back to what the Hon Dr Richard Worth said about it during the first reading on 5 March 2009: “This bill has no fewer than 58 clauses covering 17 items.” Well, it did, but it does not now. I look at the Supplementary Order Papers relating to it. Of the two that have survived, between them they cover no fewer than 21 of those clauses, which are variously amended or deleted altogether. And there will be more. Of that we can be quite certain. Even with the Supplementary Order Papers as they are laid out, passing this bill in its present form—after the passage of so many years, with the loss of all the institutional knowledge and memory of all the fine members who were on that original select committee, who have now long since departed this House—will cause only as many problems as it solves. When I suggested during the second reading that the bill be withdrawn on the grounds that there was nothing so pressing as to require its passing, given the lack of priority that has been afforded it over these past 6 years, that drew the ire of some of the members from the Government side, who proclaimed, rather indignantly, that it was important for the people whose lives it had the potential to affect. Mr Parker, obviously, touched on that.

Well, that may be so, but obviously it is not so important to the Government that it has been bothered to do anything about it for the equivalent of two entire terms of Parliament. Now that it is finally going to do something, it is a safe bet—15 will get you 20—that they are going to get it wrong. I say that because of the sheer number of inconsistencies with existing legislation, as it has evolved over the years that this bill has languished on the backburner. Some of them we examined earlier; some are addressed by the Supplementary Order Papers that we have before us. I say again that there are going to be more. I say to the House: send this bill back to the select committee and let us make sure that we have everything right before we pass it into law and then discover all of the things that remain wrong with it, because when that happens, we will be revisiting it again, anyway.

I say to the House: is it not more sensible and a better use of the taxpayers’ coin—better in the long run, for the people whose lives are going to be affected by it—to get it right once and for all, rather than to just close our eyes and press the button and hope, knowing that in all probability there will be issues still unresolved and problems unsolved and things left uncorrected in what is now a rather tatty and outdated bill? Actually, my erstwhile colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor is the last man standing from the Primary Production Committee of the 49th Parliament, which has brought us this far, essentially. Everybody else who has had input into this bill is gone. Their knowledge, their memory, is not available to us.

In previous elements of this debate, we have touched on the Auckland Art Gallery and the volcanic cones, the Lookout Point Reserve in Ōāmaru, the Dunedin Octagon, the Port Chalmers Bowling Club, and the Otago Aero Club. These new Supplementary Order Papers include matters pertaining to the Wairau Hospital site east end, the Marlborough District Picton office land, the Māhinepua Bay reserve, some other reserve land in the Far North District near Ōpua, and the Waikumete Cemetery in west Auckland. So, by my basic maths, that is something like 11 of the 17 original items heralded by the good Dr Worth, and 21 of the original clauses that are either amended in some way or deleted altogether. And there will be more; I will bet the farm on it. In fact, I would bet the average National member’s mortgage on it—if, in fact, I was certain that they even had one. So I say to the House, once again, for the sake of the people whom this Government concedes may be affected by this bill, whose lives may be affected by it: let us get it right. Let us send this bill back to the Primary Production Committee—or, indeed, another committee altogether—and have a fresh set of eyes across it, because 6 years is a long time, and another 6 months to ensure that all of the bugs are actually ironed out is probably a worthwhile investment, under the circumstances.

As things stand, New Zealand First cannot support this bill, for the simple reason that we believe it will still contain undiscovered mistakes and we do not believe that it is responsible for Parliament simply to rubber stamp legislation into law with our eyes clamped shut and our fingers in our ears, just to make the thing go away. If this bill is to be done at all, it needs to be done right. The way to ensure that is to let a new set of eyes go over it and bring it up to date so as to make sure that we are not simply making things worse. New Zealand First does not support this bill.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): I intend to take a slightly different, in fact a directly opposing, view to the previous speaker, Richard Prosser. This bill is non-controversial, and it does need to be passed through the House. I do take on board what the previous speaker said, but some of these things date back many years—back, in fact, to the Picton Institute Act 1864, which had some land set aside for the Picton Institute. In 1903 that land was transferred to the Borough of Picton, and that was done illegally, as it turns out, because the last member of the trust that had that Picton Institute had died. So that land was transferred illegally to the Borough of Picton, which is now under the Marlborough District Council, which is a unitary authority. So it has been many years—that occurred in 1903—and here we are today, many years later.

I suspect that in many cases these councils have discovered only relatively recently that these errors occurred, and they are trying to get them tidied up. I take the view that the previous select committee—most of whose members, as has been pointed out, are no longer in Parliament; all except for one, I believe—did a good job on this bill. They put a lot of thought into it. The fact that they are not here today does not mean we cannot pass this bill through the House. There were several proposed amendments to this bill—nine by the Department of Conservation, six by local authorities, and one each by the Ministry of Transport and the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board. They all show a need to deal with these issues, and the clauses in this bill actually do deal with them.

I turn now to the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board. It has recently upgraded its buildings and, as part of this, applied to get some of its land dealt with under this bill. It has gone ahead and done its work, but the caveats on those titles really do constrain what it can and cannot do. Some of the board’s land is in French Pass and it was for a district nurses’ reserve. When that occurred many years ago, of course, transport was rather difficult. Now there is no need for a district nurses’ facility in French Pass. Although there are a good number of people who live out that way, and on Durville Island, they do not need that land now. It really is difficult for the district health board these days to deal with that piece of land, unless the relevant piece of legislation is fixed.

I have looked right through the bill, and I believe the clauses are all relevant. I do not see any particular issues with the clauses. Although I was not on the Primary Production Committee, I really do think all the members on that committee gave the bill due consideration. I think the bill is needed. We need to deal with it today, and as result of that I commend it to the House.

MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Tēnā koutou katoa. I am happy to stand in support of this bill. Obviously, we are in the Committee stage, and I want to acknowledge, I guess, the Primary Production Committee, and acknowledge a colleague of ours, the last man standing. He was so last-standing that he has got himself a yellow card and is not in the Chamber this afternoon, but I do—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! You cannot refer to the absence of members.

MEKA WHAITIRI: Apologies, Mr Chair. This bill is referred to as an omnibus bill, which is provided for under Standing Order 262(1)(e). I will refer to it as a “ROLD” bill. It attempts to make changes to a land status that cannot otherwise be dealt with easily. “ROLD” bills deal with authorisations, transfers, and validations of matters relating to Crown land reserves and other lands held for public or private purposes. Such bills can be used to correct historic oversights and errors, or to clarify and simplify issues regarding land status, particularly when determining whether a certain use or method of management is legally permissible.

I too want to note that this bill has been around for a long, long time. We did see that it was first introduced in 2008, but I think it has a sort of earlier introduction. I understand it is a mechanism to gather up parcels of land to move them to where they are most appropriately set. However, I note that it first was introduced in the House in 2008, and that the select committee—when I look at the lists of select committees, many of the people have gone—reported back in 2009. Like previous speakers have said, it is supposed to be a non-controversial bill. I guess the question I have, and hopefully the Minister could answer, is that there has been a 7-year lapse between the reporting back of the select committee in 2009 and where we find ourselves today. I query whether there are other land parcels around the nation that are worthy of being considered in this particular bill. I support my fellow member on the select committee, Richard Prosser, in probably asking whether it is timely to reconsider the bill for that very purpose—whether it has actually picked up existing parcels of land since then.

I want to draw the Committee’s attention to a part of the bill that talks particularly—and my colleague Peeni Henare might probably talk about this, given that he is from this area—about the Mahinepua Bay reserve. We note in Part 2 of the bill that clause 22 talks about the background of the reserve, what has occurred with this parcel of land, and that “the reserve land forms part of the bed of Mahinepua Bay. The land, formed by accretion, is a narrow spit just above mean high water mark. (2) In 1995, the Māhinepua Bay reserve land was declared a local purpose (esplanade) reserve under the Reserves Act 1997 … In accordance with a notice in the Gazette (2005) … it is currently administered by the trustees of the adjoining Māori reservation, Māhinepua B1 Block, known as the Māhinepua B1 Māori Reservation. (3) The Māhinepua Bay reserve land is accessible only over the foreshore or the Māhinepua B1 Māori Reservation.” It notes that “The local community (including local Members of Parliament, local authorities, iwi, local hapū, community representatives, and the trustees) wish the Mahinepua Bay land to be a Māori reservation for esplanade purposes for the common use and benefit of the people of New Zealand.”

Clause 23(4) of Part 2—and this is the part that particularly drew my attention—states: “The setting apart of the Mahinepua Bay reserve land as a Māori reservation under subsection (1)(a) must be treated as if it had been made under Part 17 of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993 and the requirements of that Part of that Act had been satisfied.” As we all know, consultations with iwi Māori around the country have just concluded.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Thank you very much, and I rise to take a short call on this, the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill. I thought it only fair, given my name had been called out several times in the previous speeches in the Chamber. It is no coincidence that this morning the House had the second reading of the Te Hiku Claims Settlement Bill, and why I mention that bill is the place that has actually just been referred to, Māhinepua Bay. The bay of Māhinepua is an absolutely fantastic place; I come from there, and it is steeped in history and also in archaeological history. It is a site of significance, and Māhinepua is a beautiful place.

I want to talk directly about that in terms of this particular bill, the reason being that this morning, after having the second reading of the Te Hiku Claims Settlement Bill—and we know that Ngāti Kahu have some reserved rights within the Te Hiku Claims Settlement Bill—I just wondered about, with regard to this particular bill, as my colleague Meka Whaitiri has already mentioned, clause 23(4), which says: “The setting apart of the Mahinepua Bay reserve land as a Māori reservation under subsection (1)(a) must be treated as if it had been made under Part 17 of the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act”. I have got some questions around that, and the reason for that is that, with regard to the Te Hiku Claims Settlement Bill and, I guess, the rights of Ngāti Kahu to this particular part of the land, I wonder why the bill—and even Supplementary Order Paper 206—mentions about removing Māhinepua from the Reserves Act and puts it into, invests the interest into, a Māori trust for the benefit of all New Zealanders. I wonder what implication this will have for the rights of Ngāti Kahu in light of the recent debacle around the right of first refusal, and I just wonder whether the Minister at some point in time or, certainly, the Committee can answer that question for me with regard to Māhinepua.

Secondly, and I speak about these issues because I know about them, the other one is, of course, as mentioned by my colleague from the Green Party Eugenie Sage, around the Ōpua esplanade reserve land. It has had a troubled past and it has trod along a very rough pathway to this point in time. There are still some questions about it. The questions that have certainly been raised already relating to the Ōpua esplanade are around the actual use of that place as a reserve for the public there. There are concerns that this particular legislation on that particular block of land in Auckland is actually extinguishing the rights of some of the people and, indeed, the public there in Ōpua. One of the reasons that is significant to me in particular is that it was my grandfather who placed a pouwhenua on the land there, actually right next door to that particular esplanade, stating the claim of mana whenua of the people of the Taumārere River to the place in Ōpua. So it is a site of significance, and I wonder whether this bill is actually another cheap attempt—because this Ōpua issue has been debated for decades now—at shifting, as the bill already mentions, one of those hard blocks of lands or those hard areas to deal with. Sadly, I do not believe that that actually deals with the issue, and that is of great concern to myself and the people in and around Ōpua.

I do want to mention my auntie Maiki Marks for her dedication to this particular cause. She has fought this all the way here, into the Primary Production Committee, into the Chamber, and in the halls of the local council in the far north; she has dealt with many members of Parliament, and this particular piece of the legislation, like I say, does not seem to deal with the issue but is just moving on with the responsibility. That is a concern, as mentioned there, around the Ōpua esplanade reserve land. Kia ora, tēnā koe.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): There was something that the Minister Louise Upston said when she was answering a couple of queries that I am not too sure about. What the Minister actually mentioned is that in this bill there are three clauses that deal with the issue of the Auckland Council, Albert Park, and the Auckland Art Gallery. What the Minister said was that this bill does not retrospectively grant the Auckland Art Gallery or the Auckland Council any rights that they did not have. I am a little unsure about this, and it is a shame that the Minister is gone. I may be a little bit confused. I am only a simple boy from the regions—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): You can’t refer to the absence of a member.

STUART NASH: Oh, sorry. I was just referring to it—I apologise.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, no.

STUART NASH: OK. The Auckland Council wishes to extend the Auckland Art Gallery, which is sited on freehold land, and it wants to extend it into Albert Park. What it says here, in clause 7(2), is: “The land over which that extension is sought is— (a) part of the reserve known as Albert Park;”, and I am not too sure how the Minister could say that this is not retrospective, because this legislation does actually empower the Auckland Council to erect the Auckland Art Gallery on part of Albert Park. So, to me, that is a little retrospective. The reason I say that is that in clause 7(3) it says: “The Auckland Improvement Trust Act 1971 prohibits the alienation of the whole or any part of Albert Park.”; hence, the reason why we are doing this.

I would just like to mention some of the things that a couple of other speakers mentioned before. Mr Prosser mentioned that New Zealand First cannot support this bill because it has to go back to the select committee. This bill has been around for 8 years, and it needs to be updated. I see merit in that argument. The argument for that is something I mentioned earlier. This has been around for a long time. We are about due for another piece of reserves and other lands disposal legislation—as mentioned, every 7 years. The argument against that is, of course: just let us get this thing passed. Let us get it out there, and then let us start the process of another bill, which will go before the Primary Production Committee before too long. The reason why it will go before the committee before too long is, as mentioned, that these things come up about once every 7 years, although, of course, the National speaker Stuart Smith almost contradicted himself when he stood up and said: “Let’s just get this through. There’s something that’s been on the books for, I think, 150 years, or there since 1903, and we’re just correcting a mistake that was made 112 years ago.” What I would say to that is: “Well, if they’ve been waiting for 112 years, what’s another 12 months?”. Obviously, it is not vitally important, because if it were, then successive generations of mayors would have forced this through a lot sooner than 2015. I suspect that in 1903 they did not expect that it would still be on the statute in 2015, let alone still being debated in Parliament. I do not know who the MP for that area was back then.

There are a couple of things I would just like to dig into a little bit deeper, to see whether I can gain a little bit of clarity on this. Clause 10 deals with the Auckland volcanic cones land. The background to this is that if anyone wanted to undertake any sort of earthworks in land that abutted one of the volcanic cones or that affected the nature of one of the volcanic cones, then what they had to do was actually seek the permission of the Governor-General. They had to seek “express authorisation from the Governor in Council”—now the Governor-General by Order in Council. What this clause says is that this has to go to the Minister of Conservation now, and this is on the recommendation of the Department of Conservation. What it says is that it is no longer appropriate for the Governor-General to make this sort of, almost, micro-decision. I get that; that sort of makes sense. But my question, I suppose, is: why would it go to the Minister of Conservation? Why would they not just say that instead of the Governor-General having to make this decision, let us put it in the hands of the Auckland Council, because the Auckland Council, for all intents and purposes, in my understanding, is responsible for the management of the Resource Management Act, which, as we all know, covers any sort of activity that alters the shape of land. It used to be the regional council; now it is the Auckland Council.

So, again, this just creates another anomaly in the governance of Auckland and in any area associated with any sort of earthworks in Auckland. Ordinarily, if you abut a volcanic cone and you want to put a garage up or a tennis court or whatever, you would assume that you have to go to the Auckland Council to get a resource consent. And you might have to—I am not sure. But what this says is that you actually have to then approach the Minister of Conservation.

MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Thank you, Mr Chair; I should have asked for a continuance the last time I was on my feet. I go back to the clause that I was talking about when I was last on my feet—clause 23(4), in Part 2. I started my contribution with a question—which maybe the Minister can answer—around the current review of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act. Subclause (4) talks about having met that test, in relation to Mahinepua Bay reserve land. The Government is currently reviewing Te Ture Whenua Maori Act. Consultations were completed just recently. I attended them. My point in raising this in the context of this bill is to ensure that whatever we are doing in relation to Te Ture Whenua Maori Act aligns with what we are being asked to consider in relation to the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill.

It is a major piece of work that is currently being promoted by this Government. I can assure the Committee that in the four consultation hui that I attended in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, with over 400 people in attendance, they did not see any value in rewriting Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993. I raise this simply because we make note of this Act in this bill, and like many bills that have correlations or references to other bills, we want to make sure that they are fit for purpose and future-proof, and that they achieve what this bill is trying to do, which is perhaps to fix some of the parcels of land that we have noted in this bill and ensure that they are used for the purpose for which they were intended.

I am keen to hear whether the Minister is able to give some assurances to the Committee that there will be a seamless alignment between what we have been asked to consider in this bill and what is likely to come before the House later in the year, in terms of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act review. I would be keen to hear from the Minister, particularly about what that review is intending to do with the concerns of Māori landowners throughout the country. I would be keen to hear from the Minister in the chair, Nicky Wagner, as to whether she has a response to that. Kia ora tātou.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much, Mr Chair, for a chance to speak to Part 2 of the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill. In this week of all weeks, it is very strange for a Wellington-based MP to come to the defence of the Southland and Otago regions. But I did want to point to clauses 56 and 57, which pertain to the Winton Racecourse, which is, I believe, about 50 kilometres north of Invercargill. Clauses 56 and 57 do change the ability of the Minister of Conservation to appoint trustees to the Winton Racecourse trust. At the moment, it is possible for only three trustees to be appointed to the trust, and the change in clause 57 says that the Minister of Conservation cannot appoint fewer than three or more than five persons to the Winton Racecourse trust.

As racing spokesperson for this side of the House, I understand that there are moves afoot to try to consolidate racecourses around the country. Winton Racecourse, being the fine harness racing venue that it is, may be one of those that could be earmarked for, I guess, what you could call “consolidation”. If the Minister in the chair, Nicky Wagner, could possibly enlighten the Committee as to why the move has been made to change the structure of appointing trustees to the Winton Racecourse trust, that would be useful, because I think that the locals, who have waited for a considerable amount of time, I understand, for this piece of legislation to get to this stage, would want some certainty about the future.

I do not know specifically, because I was not on the Primary Production Committee, which considered this bill, and I am not sure whether the select committee considered in any great depth the Winton Racecourse parts of the legislation, but I think that that local community—a regional community that has been neglected by this Government—would prefer to know what is afoot at Winton. As I say, I do not know. I grew up closer to Addington racecourse in Christchurch—another very good harness racing venue—but I think it would be useful if the Minister in the chair could enlighten us, in terms of clauses 56 and 57, pertaining to Winton Racecourse, as to why that appointment process in particular has changed and whether the parcel of land that we are talking about, around the Winton Racecourse, will remain as it is. I understand that it is the venue for a rather large race meeting in the summer—one that contributes economically to that local community. If that is one of the courses affected, I guess there will be a question mark or a cloud over it.

One question that may be asked is why this piece of legislation is changing the trust, or the board, of that racecourse? It may make it easier for the rationalisation of racecourses to be done, and that racecourse, in particular. Maybe the Minister in the chair could enlighten us about that, because I think racing communities around the country, not just that racing community, would be very keen to hear whether or not the Government is going to support a programme to change the way in which the network of racecourses is made up. I think there are a certain number of challenges that racecourses, racing boards, and thoroughbred racing boards around the country face in order to make sure that their sport is strong. I think there will be some question marks around this, as to whether or not it means that racecourses like the one at Winton could be sold off and what their future is. Just to finish up, it would be useful if the Minister in the chair could enlighten us and take a few calls on clauses 56 and 57.

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): I would like to take a brief call, in particular around clauses 7 and 48. I just want to cast my mind back to what must have been the first reading in the House in 2009. I did not really know what the omnibus bill was. I was just told it was non-controversial and to talk. So I did, and I do not think I made particularly much sense. I basically repeated the lines that it was non-controversial and we should just get on with it. I was surprised when Sue Kedgley, a member of the Green Party at the time, then stood up and tore a few strips off me. I would be interested to know what the Green Party’s position is now.

She said, actually, that this is not necessarily non-controversial. She said that you cannot take something like clause 7, which refers to the Auckland Council extending the Auckland Art Gallery—the land over which the extension is sought, which is part of the reserve known as Albert Park and is vested in fee simple in the Auckland Council under the Auckland Improvement Trust Act—and then have clause 7(3), which goes on to say that the Auckland Improvement Trust 1971 prohibits the alienation of the whole or any part of Albert Park. I took her point, really, that we should not just pretty blithely say that it is OK for us just to fix up these mistakes. Auckland Art Gallery wanted to extend itself out into Albert Park, and for that it just overturned the Auckland Improvement Trust Act 1971, which prohibits any alienation of the whole or any part of Albert Park. I thought that she made a very good point at the time.

The same goes for clause 48 of the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill, which is about the Waikumete Cemetery. It says: “(1) The Waikumete cemetery land is a part of Waikumete Cemetery. (2) Waikumete Cemetery is Crown land classified as a local purpose” site, and then in clause 48(3), it says: “In 1995, the Waitakere City Council, without lawful authority, disposed of the Waikumete cemetery land to a local authority trading enterprise.” We should not just skip over that as if it is non-controversial, because you cannot have a council just dispose of some land, without lawful authority, to a local authority trading enterprise, because that local authority trading enterprise in turn subdivided the Waikumete cemetery land and sold it to private owners as fee simple titles. So most of the land that was part of the Waikumete Cemetery has now got houses and flats and whatever built on it, when, really, it was given for the purpose of a cemetery.

So I would just like to make those two points. We can stand and say: “Look, this is an omnibus bill and it is non-controversial.”, but the reality is we are talking about land that was gifted for one purpose and now, by this bill, is going to be flipped over and used for another purpose. Just again, I would like to acknowledge the lesson I learnt back in 2009 from the Green MP Sue Kedgley, who said: “No, don’t just treat this”—like I say—“blithely, or like it really does not matter, because it does matter.” We have to really give due regard if we are going to actually change the status of land that has been given for one reason, and change the purpose and use it for another reason. Thank you.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Kelvin Davis made some very interesting points in his speech, and one of those was that we cannot accept that this is, in fact, non-controversial just because a member has said that it is non-controversial. He brought up some really good points, and there is one that I would like to bring up also, and that is clause 32, which talks about the Braemar Hospital site. I alluded to this in my second reading speech, but what it says is: “Braemar Hospital Site A freed of endowment and reservation”. Clause 32(1) says: “The endowment affecting the Braemar Hospital Site A is cancelled.” The concern that I have about this is, first and foremost, what led to the endowment of this parcel of land to the hospital, and if it was actually endowed by a private citizen who wanted to ensure that that land was used for health purposes only, I wonder whether there is, in fact, any documentation at all that says—which is often the case—that if the hospital board sells off the land or if it uses it for anything other than health purposes, then the land must return to the original owner or to the descendants of the original owner.

When I see this sort of thing, it does concern me slightly to wonder whether we have gone through the correct process, because, of course, the last thing that we want to do is end up back in Parliament trying to compensate retrospectively some descendant of the original owner who endowed it to the hospital site. We go down to clause 33 where, again, it says “Braemar Hospital Site B freed of trust and reservation”. Again, I ask the same question—and the answer may be completely innocuous—and that is: has the proper process been followed by the hospital board, in terms of consulting those who put this land into reserve or endowed it at some point in time?

The other thing that is also interesting is clause 39. This is one of those bills where you could look through every clause and say: “OK, that sort of makes sense. We get the reason why they are doing it.” But, again, it is about proper process. As I mentioned, the last thing that we want, or the last thing that the Port Chalmers Recreation Reserve wants, is to end up in a situation where there is a piece of legislation that has validated what they want to do and then they find the original deed of gift, or something, and say: “Oh, goodness me, we were supposed to offer this back.”, and the only remedy to that is actually to bring it back to Parliament or to have a member’s bill or something that allows for compensation. That is a worst case scenario. I am not saying it is going to happen, but I am just saying that it would be good to know whether the proper process has been followed.

If we look at Port Chalmers Recreation Reserve, what has actually happened here is that a parcel of land was granted as a reserve to the Port Chalmers Borough Corporation—which I am assuming does not exist anymore—as a domain in trust, with the restriction that the land cannot be sold or leased. But what happened was that in 2001, despite that prohibition, the Port Chalmers Borough Corporation actually leased the land out to a bowling club.

Kris Faafoi: Lawbreakers.

STUART NASH: Yes, so a bowling club was put in place, and this comes back to my whole point around the process. It would not have done this to be disingenuous, and it was not trying to be devious in any way, shape, or form. I am assuming all that happened is—well, I am making an assumption about what happened—that it did not understand, or it did not know, that this restriction was in place and so it granted a lease.

Kris Faafoi: Just give them a hand.

STUART NASH: Yes, and what happened is that at some point in time, someone was going through a whole lot of documentation and said “Oh goodness me, we weren’t allowed to do this. We’re going to be in a little bit of trouble here. Let’s put this into a reserves and other lands disposal bill.” just to bring it in line with the legislation, so that it is not doing anything illegal and so that an illegal activity is not still on the books. We get that. We are not saying that this is the wrong thing to do, but what it does highlight is that it is very easy—well, not very easy; what does happen at times is that local body authorities, or hospital boards, or even the Crown, which are often acting in good faith, are unaware without doing a little bit of research that these sorts of prohibitions exist. So what happens is they grant a lease, or something along those lines; a bowling club is established at great expense; and, technically, what could happen is they could say “So, we made a mistake. The lease is void because this was done under an Act of Parliament. Therefore, the land has to be returned to the original owner.”—i.e., the Port Chalmers Borough Corporation at that point in time. We do not want to see that happen, and that is why we have these bills, but I am just saying how these sorts of things can actually occur here.

So what we are doing now, with this piece of legislation, is we are saying that the lease was granted—[Bell rung] Mr Chair?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I am sorry, but the member has used all his calls.

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

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 206 in the name of the Hon Maurice Williamson to Part 2 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 88 in the name of the Hon Louise Upston to Part 2 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

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

Ayes 109

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

Noes 12

New Zealand First 12.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Clauses 1 and 2

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): We are talking about the title and commencement clauses. I think that the commencement date will come as a great relief to a whole lot of people who put submissions into this from 2008 onwards: “This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” The thing about that that concerns me greatly—not about the clause itself—is that this has been on the Order Paper since 2008, and I am not too sure when we are actually going to get to the third reading. Hopefully, it will be in this term of Parliament, because some people have been waiting, as we have heard, for 112 years for this to happen. The Port Chalmers Bowling Club has been waiting since 1977 for this to happen. There are developments that have come and gone waiting for this to happen.

So let us hope that the date that this comes into force is in fact 2015, and not 2016, because if it is 2017, it will be a Labour Minister who will be giving the third reading speech. It could be anyone. All we know is that if it is 2017, then there will have been the Minister Richard Worth, there will have been Maurice Williamson, and there will have been Louise Upston. In fact, this was introduced by David Parker, so already we are on our fourth Minister for Land Information. We could, conceivably—quite conceivably, due to the snail’s pace of the passage of this bill—be up to our fifth and, potentially, even sixth Minister, because if it is 2017 when it gets its third reading speech, then it could well be Minister Chris Finlayson who is giving the speech—

Kris Faafoi: Hey, hey, hey!

STUART NASH: Ha, ha.

Kelvin Davis: Kris Faafoi.

STUART NASH: —Kris Faafoi giving the speech. If it is early 2017, it will be Chris Finlayson; if it is after the election in 2017, it will be Kris Faafoi—the honourable Kris Faafoi—giving the speech. Who knows where this could end up? It could be 2020, and it could be the honourable—I do not know—Peeni Henare giving the speech. It could be anyone—or Kelvin Davis. It will be a long time. The other thing—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): It is sounding a bit repetitive. I ask the member to find something a little bit new to say.

STUART NASH: New to say? OK. Well, the interesting thing is that the title of this legislation, in clause 1, is actually the “Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Act 2008”. Maybe we could actually call it the “Reserves and Other Lands Disposals Act 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012”—who knows where it will end, because there is so much that could be in this.

Again, as one of the other National speakers said—and I cannot remember who it was—this could be called the “Richard Worth Memorial Bill”, because this is, I think, the last speech he gave before he decided to go—

Paul Foster-Bell: He’s not dead.

STUART NASH: No, his parliamentary career is well and truly dead, Mr Foster-Bell. Beware of Richard Worth—he provides a good example of what not to do. Even though he was an extremely good lawyer, it was a little bit of a waste of talent for him to enter Parliament. He started out as the MP for Epsom and ended up as a list MP who had to go and pursue other opportunities.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Come on.

STUART NASH: But, mind you, he did end up getting a PhD in this Parliament, so it was not all wasted.

Paul Foster-Bell: Doctor of Laws. LLD—Doctor of Laws.

STUART NASH: Well, no, he got a PhD. Richard Worth got a PhD.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Well, let us not debate Mr Worth’s legal career. Let us have a crack at this: clauses 1 and 2 of this bill. The whole 2008 thing was funny for only the first 15 times, so crack on.

STUART NASH: Well, what else can we call this bill? We could call this the “Port Chalmers Bowling Club (Thank God Our Lease Has Finally Been Ratified) Bill”. Its members have been waiting since 1977 to have that done. If there are any members of the original Port Chalmers Bowling Club still around, they will be raising a glass of sherry when this bill passes through the House.

Paul Foster-Bell: Which that party put the tax up on.

STUART NASH: Well, you never know. No, we are not going to increase tax on sherry, Mr Foster-Bell, but you never know. It could be the “Nelson Marlborough District Health Board Land Act”, because it has been waiting for the three parcels of land that were endowed to it, that were gifted to it, that were put in reserve, to come up again. But I think the most important thing is that we could call this the “Auckland Art Gallery Finally Being Ratified Bill”, because the Auckland Art Gallery, before the development went ahead, was supposed to get ratified any work it did in Albert Park. It was supposed to come through. It has not. The Auckland Art Gallery has been built, the ribbon has been cut, and a number of exhibitions have gone through. I think it would be horrified if this bill does not go through the House, only to find that—oh, my goodness me—it has to cut off half the gallery.

Or it could be the “Let’s Transfer Resource Management Responses From the Governor-General to the Minister of Conservation Bill.”—

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much for the opportunity to take a call on the title and commencement clauses of the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill. Mr Chair, I know that you are a Chair who looks for creativity in Committee stage submissions but I do believe also that we have to have a fair bit of discipline in this House, so I do want to back up what my colleague Stuart Nash said about the length of time that it has taken for this piece of legislation to find its way to this Committee stage. It was introduced in August 2008 under the Hon David Parker. It had its first reading in March 2009. The Primary Production Committee reported back with relatively quick speed in September 2009, and then we find ourselves debating the Committee stage here on 1 July 2015. That is a very long time for a piece of legislation to come through the House. I must add that a fair few people have been waiting for it to be passed—

Barbara Kuriger: We’re still waiting.

KRIS FAAFOI: Well, you can wait just another 3½ minutes longer. To back that up, you need to look at the membership of the select committee that reported back on this bill. There were some fine members: Shane Ardern, a member from across the Chamber; the Hon Jim Anderton; Brendon Burns, a member from this side of the Chamber; the Hon John Carter, who, I believe, is now the Mayor of the Northland region; Dr Ashraf Choudhary; Sandra Goudie; the Hon George Hawkins; Colin King; Moana Mackey; and the only surviving member of that select committee, the Hon Damien O’Connor, who had an earlier than expected end to his parliamentary proceedings today.

I hope that I am painting the picture that this piece of legislation should have got through this House much faster. I think that it is rather unfortunate that a lot of the communities that have parcels of land within this piece of legislation have had to wait this long for a relatively simple piece of legislation to come through the House. So I hope that I have dealt with the commencement date. I hope that this piece of legislation is passed as soon as possible, and I do note the interjection from across the Chamber.

Pointing to the title, currently the bill is titled the “Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill”. In my previous contribution on this bill, I talked about the region of Otago and Southland, which is taking on the Hurricanes this weekend in the Super 15 final. So I would like to make possibly one change to the name of the bill, and that is that we should rename this bill the “Highlanders Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill” because there are quite a number of parcels of land within this piece of legislation that pertain to the Otago region. We talked about the Port Chalmers—

Metiria Turei: Go Highlanders!

KRIS FAAFOI: OK, do not put that in the Hansard. There is a parcel of land—

Metiria Turei: It is now.

KRIS FAAFOI: Good one. There is a parcel of land in Taieri. There is a parcel of land that I mentioned earlier—the Winton Racecourse—just north of Invercargill. There is also a parcel of land that I understand is the Port Chalmers Bowling Club, which Stuart Nash referred to earlier. I think that we should take some of the load off the members of the Port Chalmers Bowling Club on Saturday night. They are obviously very weary of this piece of legislation. They want to get it through and enjoy a kick-off at 7.35 p.m. So let us just give them an hour and a half of grace to live life in an ideal situation where they are cheering on their Highlanders—one that will come to an abrupt end at roughly 9.20 p.m. on Saturday. Let us get this piece of legislation passed so that the good people of the Port Chalmers Bowling Club can enjoy Saturday night until about 9.25 p.m., and also so that all of the other communities that are depending on this piece of legislation getting passed will have peace of mind, despite having waited for about 8 years for this piece of legislation to get passed.

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

Motion agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

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

Ayes 109

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

Noes 12

New Zealand First 12.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

Standards and Accreditation Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Preliminary and key provisions

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Mr Chair, I promise not to mention the rugby—other than the mention I just made then. The Standards and Accreditation Bill, while sounding like a mundane piece of legislation, is actually a very important piece of legislation to ensure, I guess, standards so that the everyday things in life that we do are uniform and things work. As Labour’s minority report within the commentary on the bill has noted, Labour is not going to support this piece of legislation. We hold some major concerns, notably around the lack of independence of the new Standards Approval Board, which this piece of legislation provides for, and also because of the potential damage to our international reputation because of that lack of independence.

To point towards that international reputation, can I point to clause 7 of the bill, which talks about the functions of the New Zealand Standards Executive. If you would allow me to just read clause 7, which states: “(1) The functions of the NZ Standards Executive are—(a) to assume responsibility for New Zealand membership of international standards organisations, including the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission: (b) to ensure New Zealand attendance and representation at meetings of international standards organisations:”.

Throughout the select committee process, the Commerce Committee heard from a number of submitters who have a lot more experience in this field than I have—and, certainly, I think, more than anyone around the select committee table has—about the new structure and the loss of our international reputation. A structure that was outside a Government department, independent of the New Zealand Standards Council, is to be placed within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

One of those submitters was a woman by the name of Diane Baguley, who has been a member of the joint New Zealand - Australia committee on standards for 20 years now. She is someone with immense experience in this area. If I could read a portion of her submission to the select committee, really to highlight the dangers of the path that this country will be going down if we change the structure of our standards formation, as we are going to do with this piece of legislation. Diane Baguley said in her submission that “I oppose the disestablishment of the Standards Council and Standards New Zealand. I do not consider that the provisions set out for the establishment of the standards function within MBIE can adequately control the risks associated with the new structure, whether to the management of standards development or the reputation of New Zealand in the international standards community.” I will just read that last bit out again, and that is around “the reputation of New Zealand in the international standards community.” She went on to say that “The model proposed in the Bill, if realised, might even be used as an example by countries without robust government systems, with undesirable results. New Zealand is well respected in the international standards community and an argument that ‘New Zealand does it this way’ could be influential.”

We would have hoped that maybe the Government members on the select committee may have fed some of this feedback from the submitters to the Minister, and maybe that is one question that I will pose to the Minister—whether they seriously did ponder whether the structure as it stands now was the correct one. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is becoming a rather large Government department, and whether or not it is making the right decisions needs to be questioned, given some of the recent headlines around that ministry. But, certainly, when we are looking at the functions of our Standards Council being morphed into the ministry, we certainly have some serious reservations about that.

I would like to draw on another submission presented to the select committee, and that was from another woman called Patricia Cunniffe, who is a consumer representative on standards committees both here in New Zealand and overseas. Her submission was in a similar vein to that of Diane Baguley. If I can take the opportunity to read her submission, she said: “I remain unconvinced that placing New Zealand’s national Standards body within MBIE will indeed ensure that the Standards system is viable and well-functioning, …”. The current bill is predicated on consumers being the recipients of standardisation, not participants. She went on to say that “Clause 3(a)(iii) gives one of the purposes of the Bill as being to: ‘protect the health, safety and well-being of the public, but gives no place for the public to define their own acceptable levels of health, safety and well-being.” So I think Patricia Cunniffe agrees with Diane Baguley, but takes things to another level in terms of the safety of the public. I guess this is just another example of the submissions to the select committee that I think throw up some serious reservations and concerns as to what the Government is doing with this piece of legislation.

It has obviously been a well-formed argument that New Zealand has a very strong reputation with some of these international organisations through some of our work with standards, and there is serious concern from some of our most experienced and expert people in the field as to whether or not we are doing the right thing here as well. I think that some of the motivation, or most of the motivation, for this piece of legislation is to ensure the financial viability of the standards process. I think, having listened to some of the concerns in the select committee, that that was a real concern for those in that sector already. We do not believe that the changing of the structure will go any way to ensuring that the financial viability of the standards process will be any better than it was previously. We would like to know whether the Minister in the chair, the Hon Paul Goldsmith, could clarify some of those issues. We would certainly be thankful to know whether or not more work has been done around that financial viability. I hope that the Minister in the chair will take a call.

There were also concerns from the industry around representation and also some concern around conflicts of interest and funding. I do note there has been some amendment during the select committee process around the potential for conflict of interest, and I think that is a good thing. As to whether or not it has gone far enough there is still a question mark, and maybe that is something the Minister can address as well. But I believe that there are people, especially those in our trades, who are very concerned about what the bill proposed at the beginning of the select committee process, and they might still share those concerns at the moment.

Another joint submission that came through the select committee process was from the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand, the Association of Consulting Engineers New Zealand, the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia New Zealand Division, and the New Zealand Institute of Architects—bodies that I do not think I would certainly have too many arguments with around the technical aspects of their work. Their joint submission said that “we believe industry consultation is vital to ensure the prioritised programme of work is appropriate. This will also ensure the continued buy-in and contribution by the key industry players” that wanted to ensure that “industry consultation be a mandatory requirement under the Bill.” I believe some of that may have been addressed, but I am not sure whether it has been addressed in its entirety. Hopefully, that is something that the Minister might be able to answer if he does decide to take a call during the Committee stage.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): If I could just state the obvious and summarily go through some of the parts to begin my contribution tonight, we are looking at repealing and replacing the Standards Act and the Testing Laboratory Registration Act. We are told that we are looking to consolidate legislation—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I am sorry to interrupt the member, but the time has come for us to suspend for the dinner break.

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

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Members, the House in Committee on the Standards and Accreditation Bill is resumed. Before the dinner break we were debating Part 1. Fletcher Tabuteau had the call, and he has 4 minutes and 35 seconds remaining, if he wishes.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: It would be my special delight to carry on speaking after dinner. What I had started saying was that the intent of this bill, when you look at it on paper, is wonderful. It says something to the effect that the New Zealand standards and accreditation system functions well, it meets the need of business, regulators, and consumers, and we are going to consolidate and conform and make it all work well. That sounds fantastic, but actually we are at a stage now where we have come to the Committee of the whole House, and despite good, respectful, and intelligent contributions from the public, from industry, and from experts, I would assert—and I will go through each part point by point—that the Government has not listened. It does not seem to have taken any of that good advice on board.

So we stand here today, and the meaning and the essential nature of this debate is so important tonight because the Government and its members need to hear that there are still issues. For example—and it was spoken of earlier—one of the key concerns centres around the lack of independence of the New Zealand Standards Approval Board and the renamed Accreditation Council. It was raised in the Commerce Committee. Many submitters spoke to the apparent lack of independence and they spoke about how it has been absorbed into the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment structure. Just as a commentary on the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment structure, it was a laudable goal to bring all these disparate parts together and try to create some synergies with this kind of superministry, but it is a disparate conglomeration of dysfunctional parts. If we add this to that Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment structure, I do not think that you will—and I assert strongly that you will not—achieve what the Government sets out and puts down on paper.

There have been no substantial changes to the appointment process. This was raised many a time. I spoke on it myself. Members of the Opposition spoke on this repeatedly and said that the Minister has too much power. The Minister is in charge of the appointment of every single person on this board of this committee. It is not good enough. Ministerial appointments and the orders of council bypass the democratic process. New Zealand First asserts that we are bypassing the democratic process and we are not giving each and every New Zealander their say. There was a part in the legislation where it speaks about how the Minister can appoint on advice from the industry, but that is an option—it is not absolutely required. It is still too much power for the Minister. It is reflective of much of the National Government’s legislation of late, where more and more of the selection of panels, advisory committees, or boards are in the hands of the Minister and seem to bypass a good, reasonable, and fair democratic process in terms of selection and, therefore, in terms of representation.

We continue to be concerned about statements made by the regulatory impact statement that if the new body sat within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, there would be cost savings. Although the legislation speaks about recovering costs, actually, when you do the analysis of those parts, it is pretty hard for the Government to prove that. Yes, actually, it is in the legislation that we will recoup our costs, but it has not been proven. The analysis on the advice given still suggests that this Government actually is not creating efficiencies and it is—

David Bennett: Why didn’t you vote for Ron?

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Ha, ha! You have thrown me, Bennett.

New Zealand First strongly believes that our much-valued international reputation regarding safe accredited standards for goods and services processes or practices will not be upheld. One of the submissions was from one of our Australian counterparts, and the Australian standards authority—excuse me if I have got the name wrong—spoke very clearly about clause 20 of the bill and how there was a lack of clarity in terms of understanding just what the legislation sets out to achieve. So we are being advised by comparable bodies, comparable groups, from our brother across the Tasman there, our cousin across the Tasman, and they are telling us that there is ambiguity in the legislation. They are suggesting that it needs to be tightened up.

That was clause 20, but all parts of the bill—for example, in clause 3 we are replacing the word “public” with “individuals”, and it has been discussed. It was about a definition and it was about accountability and it was bringing it down, literally, to the individual so that we knew what we were trying to achieve. What is the “public”—what does that mean—whereas if we are dealing on an individual basis, we have some clarity; we have some understanding. There was a lot of debate around the definitions used in the legislation, in clause 4(1). So, for example, “accreditation” is a term that was essential to the purpose of the bill, but “testing” and “testing laboratory” are adequately defined in other pieces of legislation. So there is redundancy in the legislation and it just adds to the confusion, because actually the bill itself is confusing as a whole.

The next clauses, clause 4(2) and clause 17, talk about conflicts of interest. The proposed amendments would target those with a personal conflict that was so large as to have a real bearing on the carrying out of the undertaking as a board member, as a committee member, or in the expert role, but I think what we should do here and what we acknowledge is that the approach taken in clause 17 as introduced could have cast its net more broadly than intended and may have excluded some experts with knowledge crucial to the standards development committee. So although we applaud on the one hand the recognition that there is definitely the possibility of a conflict of interest, and it needs to be addressed, the definition in the legislation is actually perhaps too broad, it was suggested, and, actually, experts themselves might be considered as being defined as having a conflict of interest, so they would not be able to contribute to the discussions as per relevant standards.

It was recommended in clause 16A, which requires nominees to declare any personal interests at the time of nomination, that this could be part of the solution—provide more detailed functions of the committee chairperson so that you understand exactly where the conflict of interest might lie. Those were just some suggestions presented to the select committee. Again, there does not seem to have been any movement and there does not seem to have been any attempt to listen to the advice provided. It was recommended that clause 7 would require the Standards Executive work programme to be published to make clear that access to archive standards, so that there was access to the standards so that we would see what the decision-making process was. It is technical but, in terms of your standards and accreditation, how else are you going to go back and understand what it is that has come before and what it is that you are trying to achieve? Clause 20—

BRETT HUDSON (National): It is with absolute pleasure that I rise to follow Mr Tabuteau, after that rather professorial dissertation. I would like to talk right at the moment, as we are on Part 1, about this issue around independence. I am drawn back to paraphrasing Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who noted—and I will paraphrase so as not to bring the Chair into this debate—that the member is entitled to his own opinion, but he is not entitled to his own facts. The facts are very simple around independence. Both the Standards Approval Board and the Standards Executive are granted statutory independence under this proposed amendment.

I would draw members’ attention particularly to clause 7(2) for the Standards Executive, and I will go to that clause and read, for their edification, that in the discharge of their duties, and in the functions of the New Zealand Standards Executive: “In performing the functions referred to in subsection (1)(a) to (j), the NZ Standards Executive must—(a) act independently; and (b) have regard to–(i) the value of standards: (ii) the legitimate use of standards: (iii) the importance of maintaining expert input into the standards development process:”. Similarly, in clause 12(2): “The Board must act independently in undertaking its functions under subsection (1).”

So members opposite can talk about independence until the cows come home. The fact of the matter is that both the Standards Approval Board and the Standards Executive are conferred with statutory independence under this bill. Parliament cannot confer any greater independence than that. Having worked in the private sector, I can tell you, Mr Chair—because it is you, and other members present—that, actually, co-locating in an office is not necessarily conducive to the collaboration that a private organisation might want to see. I have worked for multinationals. If you want to actually foster collaboration, it is not achieved simply by putting people in the same building. So we confer independence on the people who need it most. They will work in an organisation for reasons that support—and I will now go back to Part 1 of this bill—why we are actually making these changes.

I draw members’ attention back to clause 3, the purpose of this bill: “The purpose of this Act is to—(a) make provision for standards and conformity assessment systems in New Zealand that—(i) are consistent with international practice; and (ii) facilitate trade; and (iii) protect the health, safety, and well-being of individuals.” Why are we bringing this function or these groups into the agency or environment of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment? Because that is the agency that is tasked with business development and helping us to understand how we can help businesses position themselves to grow in and outside New Zealand. It actually makes sense. If you are going to have standards that are going to help us to conform and to sell our products both in New Zealand but particularly offshore, then actually having businesses working with the ministry that is tasked with helping to build innovation, scientific progress, and business development outside New Zealand makes extremely good sense. It makes extremely good sense to have these functions in the ministry.

I will turn back for one moment, because real-world examples are fantastic things. I am just going to return very briefly to the issue of independence. Within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, where the Standards Executive will reside, we see today three extremely good examples. We have the Official Assignee, we have the Registrar of Companies, and we have the Commissioner of Patents. All three are independent bodies, through statutory independence, that reside in the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. Not a single member opposite—and not a single submitter—raised any question as to the real independence of those bodies, albeit they reside in the same ministry that this bill would have the Standards Executive go into. Again, if you just look at simple evidence—the member is entitled to his own opinion, but he is not entitled to his own facts. Thank you.

Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): Put simply, the problem that we were supposed to address with this bill was a lack of funding. That was the issue that came up again and again at the Commerce Committee. It was an issue that officials acknowledged was significant in the setting of standards and so on. It was a question that was legitimate to ask. But what we got, and what we have, with this bill is the answer to another question: what structure would make it look like we are doing something without addressing the real issue—the real funding issue? That is what we have got here in this bill. We have the answer to a different question—to a problem that may not even have existed in the first place.

We have heard members opposite saying defensively that just because you bring an organisation inside another organisation it does not mean that it loses its independence. That was the argument that we have just heard from Brett Hudson, the member opposite. We did not hear why you should bring it inside another organisation. We just heard that somehow when you bring one organisation under the purview of another, it does not hamper its independence. Well, I think that man—to paraphrase someone else—doth protest too much. I think that here we are in this Chamber debating a few sideshows when we avoid the real issue of funding that sits at the basis of the future of good standards and accreditation in this country.

Many of the submitters whom we had in front of us in the select committee expressed concerns about risks from the change in the model. Of course, there were concerns about being within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. We know from recent weeks that the culture that the Minister is setting within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment may not be in the interests of many business people in this country. I refer, of course, to the details that have come up about the expensive $70,000 sign out the front, and so on.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, no—

Dr DAVID CLARK: This is germane to my argument, and I will come back to it, but I will try to make it clear so that I do not stray too far from the bill. This is about whether or not that department is independent enough and acting in the interests of those whom it is supposed to be serving. It is clear that the Minister has set a tone for that department that is about the interests of the big end of town. It is about $260,000 sun decks, it is about $140,000 TV screens, and it is about $76,000 reception desks.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

Dr DAVID CLARK: The Minister has sent a message that he is concerned with the big end of town. Those who would have standards and accreditations granted that are relevant and interesting for New Zealand businesses are often smaller businesses—those who are trying to grow in the economy, those who are trying to diversify our economy, which is desperately needed in an economy that is under threat from being too commodity-focused and from not having enough diversity and enough other industries to share the burden of growing our economy, which leaves it all to the primary sector. So we do need businesses to be thriving.

Part of what we learnt at the select committee, and part of what those who came and gave their time and wisdom—those who were involved in the standards and accreditation process—said to us was that, actually, one of the most important things is that we have representation in international fora where international accreditation and standards are agreed. When those standards are agreed, they can be agreed in the interests of some countries or in the interests of other countries, naturally enough. One example that was brought up in the earlier stage of the debate was a simple power switch in the wall that you charge your phone with or that you plug your heater into. That could be said to be in an international standard at some stage in the future. If there is a debate about that, who stands to gain from a particular standard that is set? It is probably the country and the manufacturers in that country that win the battle about what the standards or accreditation should look like—the ones who have the existing patents and the existing abilities, structure, and so on to manufacture those devices in that particular way.

Up until now, New Zealand has enjoyed a particularly good international reputation by virtue of having many hard-working people who have served on international committees to ensure that New Zealand standards are a part of that debate, so that New Zealand industries can compete in the international market because the standards are set in such a way that New Zealand businesses can compete. So it does seem important that we continue to have that international representation in the standards and accreditation - setting process. In the select committee, when these concerns were raised, I have to say that I was not comforted that in the new model there would be sufficient emphasis placed on maintaining those international connections, on having the strong international voice in that standards-setting process. It was something that came up again and again, and it seemed that the focus had shifted, and it was more about efficiency gains within the ministry and so on.

The previous speaker brought to our attention this idea that they should be acting independently. Well, I would like to read from a couple of paragraphs further down in the same bill, the one we are debating. In Part 1 here, clause 8(1), it says: “The NZ Standards Executive may delegate to any employee of the Ministry any of his or her powers, or the performance of his or her functions or duties, under this Act or any other enactment.” I want to ask how that would work in practice. What we see there is a ministry that, as we already know, I think, is under the thumb, under the micro-management of Steven Joyce, who chooses the colours and layouts of the documents he prints. We have officials there, who of course want to keep their Minister happy, but who are likely to have delegated tasks that include carrying out functions that the Minister would like to see in the standards and accreditations. That statutory independence is not as easy to guarantee when you have the employees in a ministry as a subset of the ministry carrying out these tasks, rather than a truly independent, industry-led body.

So I think that this is a legitimate concern to raise, and it is one that was raised again and again and again by people in the industry, those people who have been involved in the standards and accreditation - setting process up until now. Members opposite may say that they know better—that they know better—than those who were involved in standards and accreditation - setting up until now. Some of those who came to speak to us had been involved in the industry, and had served it over decades. But I would say to members opposite that if they think that they know better and do not even have to take those considerations into account, then they are showing just how out of touch they have become on that side of the Chamber. That is what we see here.

Once again, also, we see here something that was designed as a cost-cutting measure, as well, without an eye to the bigger picture, without saying: “How does this reflect upon us in the international setting? How does this forward our international interests? How does this grow our exports?”. We know that the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment is not meeting the Government’s target of 40 percent of our GDP as exports. In fact, under Minister Joyce it started around 32 or 33 percent; it is now down around 27 percent, and it is projected to drop further. I would suggest it is not the ministry that is at fault; it is the micro-managing Minister, who has this programme going on, then wants to select the pamphlet colour, then wants to turn the document round, then wants to reword his own text. My heart goes out to the officials who have to work with that Minister, who is proving to be ineffective but is also chasing things down the wrong track. Here we have an example where we have had plenty of advice from the public, plenty of advice from experts that we should do things a certain way, but the Government has blocked its ears and said: “We know better, we are going to do it our way, and bother the public and those pesky people who work in the industry.”

So my submission is that what we have here is the answer to a problem that does not really exist. That problem is around funding; it was not with the structure. That is what we heard from submitters, and in fact we had additional risks within the new structure. One of the points I have not raised yet is that there is no worker or consumer representation in the new structure—again, something raised repeatedly by submitters and given no convincing response from officials. Again, my heart went out to the officials, because one could see they had their riding instructions. They were given a clear picture of how things should be, and it was very difficult to come up with legitimate explanations as to why it should be that way.

So this is a bill that we will oppose. We do value input from the industry. We value having New Zealand on the international stage setting those standards, helping to shape the future of the world markets—those markets that we want to be competitive in. Goodness knows that under this Government exports are plummeting as a proportion of GDP. We need it to be going in the opposite direction, and we believe we need to actually get alongside industry instead of always knowing better than industry. I do not know why members on that side of the Chamber hate business, but they seem to persist with telling business that it is wrong.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): An extraordinary contribution from the previous member there, Dr David Clark. It has been an interesting debate.

I think it might be helpful just to go back and just outline the rationale for the changes proposed by this legislation. If we go back to 2012, the standards and conformance infrastructure review identified that the Standards Council, as it was, was not financially sustainable over the medium to longer term, that the development of standards was not as responsive as it could have been to the needs of firms, regulators, and consumers, and that there was much potential to strengthen the contribution of standards to the Government’s desired outcome in the areas particularly around innovation, productivity, international trade, and safety. So officials considered, and the Government was persuaded, that three underlining problems were constraining the existing model.

They were, first, tensions existing between the Standards Council’s statutory function of developing standards and promoting standards and standardisation throughout the economy—the difference between being a focused service-delivery organisation and an advocacy organisation. The second area was the distance from Government inherent in a Crown entity model, making it difficult for the Standards Council to maintain its relevance, visibility, and credibility within other parts of the Government. We saw that other parts of the Government were not using the standards to quite the extent that they could have. Also, finally, there were difficulties of a small, stand-alone organisation with a limited client base to achieve the flexibility and the scalability required in a dynamic environment. So those were the things that we were dealing with or concerned about, leading into the legislation.

We have heard a lot of talk from some members around whether the new proposals would be sufficiently independent, and absolutely they will be independent. The New Zealand Standards Executive and the Standards Approval Board are required to act independently under this new legislation when undertaking their functions. The board will indeed make decisions based on transparent criteria outlined in the bill, and the balanced standards development committees, comprising experts from relevant sectors, are required to be used to develop the actual standards. So you still retain the experts from industry to help develop standards, but the New Zealand standards system will continue to operate in accordance with international expectations and directives from the International Organization for Standardization and from the International Electrotechnical Commission.

So I do not have any doubts at all. If you look around the world, there are all sorts of arrangements. Some countries have their standards systems developed within a Government agency and some are stand-alone, so I think there is a lot of overblown talk about New Zealand being completely out of sync. There are lots of different ways that this is done, and this way the idea is to have the New Zealand Standards Executive operating within the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment.

Will the new arrangements be financially sustainable? Well, absolutely. The bill strengthens the current cost-recovery model for standards by providing a fee-setting and cost-recovery framework for the standards, and I think that is very important. The bill provides for the full life-cycle costing of standards, including the development, the approval, the maintenance, and the access to standards. So the New Zealand Standards Executive and those commissioning the standards can negotiate a balance between upfront development and approval costs, and ongoing access and maintenance costs. So that is the core of what this bill is about—trying to establish a more financially sustainable system. On that basis, I think it makes absolutely good sense. Thank you.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Well, I think everything that the Minister has just said right now has actually confirmed why Labour is opposing this bill and has some fundamental problems with it. What I did not hear the Minister do tonight was address what lies behind his Supplementary Order Papers 90 and 96 on Part 1—what the rationale is for them and what he is trying to achieve. I am hoping that during the debate tonight we are actually going to hear a bit about that, because when you put a Supplementary Order Paper on the Table and you expect it to be taken seriously, then you should be able to get up and talk to what its purpose is and how it is going to enhance the bill—this bill that we see as being fundamentally flawed—and try to give us an explanation as to whether it improves the bill in some way.

We have a fundamental problem with this bill—and can I say, and I think I said it in the second reading, that when we went into this process it seemed like a reasonably straightforward bill. It had gone through a process of review. We were not expecting there to be controversy around it. But every single professional body that came before us in the Commerce Committee—and I did not hear the Minister refer to any of them in his speech just now—had some serious issues with this. The serious issues were around the lack of checks and balances within the bill by removing the Standards Council and absorbing it into the great whale of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—absorbing it into a big Government department and its checks and balances—and by the potential for the watering-down of standards rather than the strengthening of standards.

We could talk until the cows come home about the lowering of standards generally by this Government, but what it is attempting to do here is fundamentally driven by the attempt to save money. That is one of our major problems with the bill. The Minister admitted it himself when he just got up. He read directly from the departmental report about what it said. In the regulatory impact statement, at paragraph 22 under “Problem Definition”—which is what my colleague David Clark was referring to—what was the problem that this was trying to fix? One of the main issues was that “the Standards Council is not financially sustainable over the medium to longer term …”. We do not have an issue with that as being a problem, but the way to fix it is to look at how to strengthen the body and ensure that there are checks and balances, rather than to absorb it into a great big Government agency that has its own problems and where there are lots of questions around decisions that are being made.

The standards body is a fundamentally important role that goes to our international reputation. It goes to our ability to maintain our credibility across industries like electrical engineering and building and construction. For buildings that could be affected by major events, we have to be able to stand up to international scrutiny on such things, and things like water safety and a whole lot of other issues.

There was a troop of submitters who came before the select committee and gave very, very strong, credible evidence as to why they had serious issues with the direction that the Government was taking with this piece of legislation. We sat there and thought: “Well, you know, they’ve got a point.” Unfortunately, despite our concerns, and despite the concerns that were raised over and over again about this—they fell on deaf ears. That goes back to what the intention was—what was the real intention behind this legislation? Was it to try to ensure that there was a strong, credible body that was independent?

And you talk about independence—you know, the member over there got up and talked about the fabulous independence. Well, checks and balances within a Government agency, when you absorb an entity like that—there are significant issues that have not been addressed. Our big concern is that we are going to see a watering-down of standards, a lowering of standards. There is a question around whether or not the standards that are being developed are standards that are being developed according to an agenda rather than being driven by the entity itself. I would like to hear the Minister get up and say whether his Supplementary Order Papers on Part 1, clauses 10 and 13, are relevant to that argument, whether they are going to strengthen those checks and balances, and, if so, how.

In the regulatory impact statement the concern was raised that some stakeholders had indicated that there was a risk that experts may no longer be willing to participate on standards development committees, given their perception that the independence of standards would be eroded under the proposed changes. We consider that experts will continue to have incentives to participate. However, the actual impact is uncertain. The regulatory impact statement was produced before we had the stream of submitters before the committee. When they did come before the committee, we were still unsure as to whether those independent experts would still continue to have incentives to participate, how they would feel about continuing to participate, and what those impacts were going to be.

If you are proposing to create a new entity within a Government agency, then there has got to be a really careful process gone through in doing that, and you need to take the stakeholders with you. Unfortunately, in this process that has not happened, and we have ended up with a situation where the Government is pushing this legislation forward. It seems to be largely driven by a desire to cut costs.

We have got concerns around independence. We have got concerns around the probity, and also around what kind of review mechanism there is going to be as to whether or not this new system is actually going to be working. I would not mind the Minister answering that question, as well. What is built into the legislation around providing a review to show that the legislation is working as it says it is intended to, rather than as is expressed by the concerns of those who submitted?

So, therefore, Labour cannot continue to support this bill. We are at a loss as to what added value the amendments in the Supplementary Order Papers are going to add. We would like to hear from the Minister on that. We look forward to hearing his explanation.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I find it quite surprising that Mr Hudson and the Minister in the chair, the Hon Paul Goldsmith, have stood up and talked about independence in the way they have. I want to clarify that there is a difference between independence and competence. I am not suggesting that those who are going to be appointed will not be competent, but I am suggesting that they will not be independent. I point to clause 6: “The chief executive must appoint a suitable employee of the Ministry to be the NZ Standards Executive.” Immediately, the New Zealand Standards Executive is beholden to the chief executive officer. He is an employee of the ministry.

Under the “Functions of the NZ Standards Executive”, in clause 7(3), it says: “In performing the functions … the NZ Standards Executive must … act under the direction of the Minister and the chief executive.” To me, that does not suggest in any way, shape, or form that this is an independent position or a person who has been given a mandate to act independently. It actually states in the legislation that they must act under the direction of the Minister and the chief executive. As mentioned, I am not saying that this person will be incompetent in any way, shape, or form—in fact, they will probably be highly competent—but independent? No, I do not buy that. What I would also like to talk about is the fact that this New Zealand Standards Executive may in fact delegate authority to anyone within the ministry, as well. Again, that just flies in the face of what constitutes independence.

What I would like to talk about briefly, though, is the New Zealand Standards Approval Board. The board is the governance role of this whole process. Clauses 11 and 12 talk about the functions of the board, but first of all I want to go to schedule 1, which talks about the appointment of board members. The Minister in the chair said that absolutely there will be experts in this field, and therefore there is nothing to worry about. Well, in schedule 1, clause 1(2) it says: “The Minister must only appoint a person to be a member of the Board who the Minister considers has adequate skills and experience to perform the functions of the Board …”. The English language is wide and varied and there are many words that we can use that describe a person’s competency, expertise, or experience, and “adequate skills” is not one of those. To me, the term “adequate skills” does not denote expertise in any way, shape, or form.

The other thing I would like to say is that when we look at the nomination of board members—this is schedule 1, clause 2(1)—it says: “If the Minister considers it appropriate, he or she may invite public or private nominations before appointing a member to the Board.” So, again, I do not know at what point in time, or how, we quantify what “appropriate” is, but the other thing this actually says is that the Minister may in fact shoulder-tap someone and say: “Come along, I want you to put forward your nomination to be a board member of the standards authority.”, and that is not independent in any way, shape, or form. I will go back to the point: it does not mean that the person may be incompetent, but if there is a private process where someone is being shoulder-tapped by the Minister, I think that flies in the face of what constitutes independence. If we do not get this right in terms of independence, then all it does is it devalues the work that the standards authority and the standards board undertake, because if there is a perception of cronyism—and I do not use that word lightly—then, even if it does not exist, the ability of this board to gain the credibility needed will be greatly diminished, and that will be a real shame.

The other thing, if I go to clause 3 in schedule 1, is: “The Minister appoints or reappoints a member of the Board, and a chairperson of the Board,”. So, again, this is not independence; this is the Minister determining who is on this board and who is chairing this board—so, who has the most powerful position. Clause 4 in schedule 1 says: “The acts of a person as a member or chairperson of the Board are valid even though”—sorry, this is another thing that I do not quite get, and I am not too sure where this leads from. Clause 4 in schedule 1 actually says that if a person on the board has been elected or nominated through an appointment process that is defective, then they are still able to sit on that board. I am not too sure how that comes about or where, again, is the independence, let alone the validity or the mandate, because the board is a very important part in terms of this whole process.

The board has the ability to “approve or decline proposed New Zealand Standards:”, to “adopt or decline … other standards organisations’ standards [as standards for New Zealand]”, to “approve or decline modifications to New Zealand Standards:”, to “advise the Minister on any matter referred to the Board …”, to “advise the Minister on the currency of New Zealand Standards,”—I mean, you get the point. What I am actually saying here is that the board has a very important role to play, and yet the legislation says that the board members have to have only “adequate skills”. I am hoping that what the Minister is going to do is stand up and let me know, or give a feel for, what the definition of “adequate skills” is.

I will go back to a point that I often make in this Chamber, and that is that we are held up in the global market place as a country that stands for something, a country that has really robust processes around our standards, around our export quality, etc., etc. If we do not get this right, then what we end up with is a devalued brand where people begin to question the efficacy of what we stand for. That is why this is so important. And the shame of all this is that, as Ms Curran alluded to earlier, as a Parliament we have the mandate, and we actually have the responsibility, to get this right.

I know in these sorts of circumstances that Labour is always willing to work with the National Government in the select committee process to ensure that the processes and the legislation governing such an important area are done in a way that gains credibility not only for our Parliament and our country but for us on the international stage. It is such a shame that the Government did not take up the opportunity for all MPs to work together to get this right. In fact, yesterday, I think, I spoke on a bill for environmental reporting standards where, again, the Labour Opposition offered a way through where the Government could work with Labour to come up with something that was a robust and responsible piece of legislation.

The thing is that I actually believe that the people of New Zealand expect us to work together. We are not here to get in the way of the Government when we are putting forward this sort of legislation, because we understand how important this legislation is. We are not not supporting this because we do not believe that standards are important. We think standards are incredibly important, but we will never support legislation where we think it is not the right thing to do. So to the Minister in the chair I would like to say that this is a real missed opportunity.

Some of the wording in this bill greatly concerns me. When Mr Hudson stood up and said: “Of course these people are going to act independently”, I think that is a little naive, with all due respect, because if you are beholden to the Minister for your appointment, or if you are beholden to the chief executive officer of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for your appointment, then you are going to undertake the sort of direction that the Minister or the chief executive officer puts on the table and purports to represent. That is the concern I have. It could have been better, it should have been better, and it is a shame it is not. Thank you very much.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much for the chance to take a second call on Part 1 of the Standards and Accreditation Bill. I would like to take just a few moments to respond to some of the comments made by the Minister. With this bill, you get the distinct feeling that the Government is taking a “burn the village to save the village” approach, because the Minister said, in some of his remarks, that one of the concerns about why the changes in this bill needed to be made is that the Standards Council lacked visibility, and that is one of the reasons why we need to make the changes and the structural changes within the council.

The Government’s recipe for curing that lack of visibility within the New Zealand Standards Council is to morph it into the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—probably the biggest Government department in New Zealand. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment engulfed about five or six different ministries, and currently it has a reputation for not necessarily managing its money very well. Morphing the process, the body, and the structure of the current New Zealand standards process into the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is the Government’s solution to that problem. Well, I do not think that makes sense. I do not think that makes sense to people on this side of the Chamber, and it does not make sense to a number of the very, very experienced industry organisations that came and gave submissions on this piece of legislation.

One of the interjections from across the Chamber was in response to our argument about the independence—or lack of it—in this bill, and it was to read the legislation. And to give Mr Hudson his due, there is provision—fleeting provision—in this bill to give a degree of independence to the New Zealand Standards Executive. But what happened during the select committee process was that we had a number of submitters come through—a lot of them industry people—and their voice, their concerns about independence, has been completely and utterly ignored. I think that is really important, given that we thought that the Government members on that select committee might listen to those submitters—that they might take those messages back to the Minister and say: “Hey, we may have got it wrong here, Minister. A lot of the industry submitters are saying that this is not the right thing to do. We may have to rethink the structure.”

So we may have expected some Supplementary Order Papers to amend the bill wholeheartedly, but that is not in front of us. The two Supplementary Order Papers that we have in front of us are purely technical ones changing very small technical details within the bill. So I think that it is appropriate, in this Committee stage, for members on this side of the Chamber to give those organisations within the industry their voice, to make sure that we can flag that they have said this is the wrong thing to do. I would like to take one example, and that is the New Zealand Building Industry Federation—an organisation that I hope the Government would have listened to, in its concerns about this bill. In the opening comments of its submission, the Building Industry Federation said: “The intent of the Government to move Standards setting from an independent body with a high level of private sector governance input to one administered by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) was not greeted with enthusiasm by many in the building industry.” If I were in the National Government and the New Zealand Building Industry Federation had said that in the opening line of its submission on this bill, I would be a little bit concerned. It is not a small organisation, and it covers a very important function in our country, so I would be a little bit concerned by its opening remarks.

Then we get to its comments around independence. Mr Hudson has said that, yes, the bill does cater for independence, but let us look at the reality of what may be the case within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. I think that this was a very brave submission for the Building Industry Federation, because it went on to say in its submission that with the New Zealand Standards Executive, the: “International best practice has historically been to allocate the Standard-setting function to industry. The required technical expertise is principally found within the ranks of day to day practitioners within the sectors to be covered. Further, Standard-setting should not be subject”—

CHRIS BISHOP (National): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 58

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Papers 90 and 96 in the name of the Hon Paul Goldsmith, and the following amendment in his name, to Part 1 be agreed to:

in the cross-heading above clause 26, replace “legislative instruments” with “regulations”; and

in schedule 2, clause 4(4), replace “this Act” with “this Schedule”.

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

Ayes 61

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

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Miscellaneous provisions

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you for allowing me to take some calls on Part 2 of this Standards and Accreditation Bill. I would like to focus on clause 40, which is the “Disestablishment of the Standards Council”. It is only a two-line clause, but the Standards Council, continued under section 3 of the Standards Act 1988, is disestablished.

That sets up the ability for this Government to set up a new body that is housed within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and this is the NZ Standards Executive. This is the body that will be replacing the Standards Council, and it is that lack of independence because of its housing within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment that we have a problem with. Just as I was saying on Part 1, there is massive concern that we are losing the Standards Council and we are having a new entity within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the NZ Standards Executive.

I just wanted to continue with some concerns from the Building Industry Federation around losing the Standards Council. In its submission, again, and quoting from it—and I want to say that it is a very brave submission from the Building Industry Federation—it says that this bill, to the extent that it “breaks with this historic global practice the Building and Construction sector was, and is, concerned that the position of Executive is now to be filled by an executive of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Development (MBIE) appointed by the Chief Executive of that Ministry.”

The Building Industry Federation in its submission to the select committee, which is the public’s opportunity to come and have its say, says: “The industry does not question the integrity of the Chief Executive of MBIE but is concerned that the appointment process and the subsequent administrative tenor of the appointee will be influenced significantly and dominated by public sector and government requirements at the expense of industry requirements and needs.”

Why has this Government, which always claims it is close to industry and in touch with industry, completely and utterly ignored the many voices of industry when it came to this bill at the Commerce Committee and completely and utterly ignored their concerns around independence and around whether or not the new structure affords itself to cover costs? It has completely and utterly ignored it, because it has made no amendments to this piece of legislation—or no substantive amendments to this piece of legislation—at all after it left the select committee. They have been ignored, and I think that that is a mistake and a missed opportunity from this Government to make sure that this piece of legislation was as good as it could have been. It is a missed opportunity and one that the Government should have seen coming at the select committee consideration.

Clause 40, again, is around the disestablishment of the Standards Council. The main aim in doing this was to deal with the lack of financial viability of the New Zealand Standards Council. Again, in the select committee process we heard from a number of submitters who questioned whether the new structure within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment would actually solve that problem. A number of my colleagues have raised this issue. I think Dr David Clark did, and my colleague Stuart Nash certainly did.

Also, this issue was raised by Diane Baguley, and I have quoted her submission extensively through this debate. She is someone with around 20 years’ experience in this area, and she has grave concerns not just about the financial sustainability of the standards process but also concerns around the independence, which we share. Ms Baguley sent her submission to the Commerce Committee on 1 January; so concerned was she about this piece of legislation that on New Year’s Day she thought she would send her submission in. She said in her submission: “There is no guarantee that the new structure will, in the long run, save public money rather than merely shift it from one part of the budget to another. The effect on overall expenditure will be difficult to determine, given that there will be practical limitations to the specificity of financial reporting within MBIE.”

There is another clear reason there why this Government should have taken heed of a number of the recommendations from the submitters at the select committee. Clause 40 does provide for disestablishing the New Zealand Standards Council. A number of submitters said we should not have been doing this. The arrogance of the Government to not see that and to push on through—

Chris Bishop: Ha!

KRIS FAAFOI: Mr Bishop can laugh, but his members sat around that table and listened to the industry submitters come along, and for them it was an important chance to have their say. It is an important part of the democratic process—scrutiny of legislation by the people who are going to be most affected—but this Government did nothing. It pushed on and did not listen to people with decades more experience of this sector than the people sitting around that select committee table. I am glad to say that we, on this side of the Chamber, did listen to those concerns. We hoped that the Government was going to make changes through a Supplementary Order Paper that the Government may have brought through, but to this date we have seen nothing and to this date we will probably continue to vote against this piece of legislation.

This is a missed opportunity for this Government. I think that earlier on the Minister in the chair, Paul Goldsmith, said that the Standards Council, which is being disestablished under clause 40, was not visible at all, and that was one the problems that the Government was trying to solve. As I said in relation to Part 1, the solution that the Government had to that problem was a novel one. It was not to continue to keep it independent. It was not to give it more funding to ensure that it was financially sustainable. It was to morph it into a department that is probably the biggest department in the country—the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. It has taken in five or six other Government departments: immigration, labour, building, housing, and economic development. The problem was visibility, so this Government said: “Well, if it’s not visible, let’s put it in MBIE where it will be even more invisible.” I do not think that those organisations that came to submit and were concerned about the disestablishment of the Standards Council will be impressed. They were not impressed, certainly, at the select committee hearing. I think they left hopeful that the Government would listen, but it did not. There is nothing in this piece of legislation that in any way goes to meet the concerns that they had at the select committee, and those have been well traversed.

This is a Government that is actually, in most areas, trying to push responsibility away, whether it be social bonds or whether it be social housing. Government members are trying to say that less Government is better. But in this instance, they are saying: “That’s an independent body. Let’s morph it into the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.” That does not make sense to us. It means that because we are trying to solve one problem around costs, we are creating another fundamental problem around independence, and the industry wants independence to make sure that we have credibility on the international stage when it comes to our standards setting.

We have got huge credibility there—we have—and we had submissions to the select committee, and they did have concerns. I will just quote one more of those. It is from Diane Baguley again. She said: “I oppose the disestablishment of the Standards Council … I do not consider that the provisions set out for the establishment of the standards functions within MBIE can adequately control the risks associated with the new structure.”

This is a case where this Government has burned the village to save the village. We are not convinced it is going to solve the issue around costs, and we certainly know that it has created another issue around independence, one that is fundamental and one that puts our reputation in this area seriously at risk.

Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I want to make my first contribution focused on Part 2, clause 41: “Transitional provisions”, which are, actually, surprisingly interesting. I challenge members opposite to have a look through these transitional provisions, because there is some cracker stuff in here. There is some stuff that tells us a bit about what the Government is on about here, and it is buried in the related schedules, which are referred to in this part of the bill.

Clause 41(1) refers to schedule 2: the transitional provisions relating to the transfer of the functions, work, and employees of the Standards Council. One of the things that is immediately obvious in there is that the assets, records, liabilities, and debts of the existing Standards Council will transfer and become vested in the ministry. With that comes both opportunity and risk, of course. I am not familiar with the detail that is recorded in those records, and I do not know whether they will capture all of the intellectual property that goes with the existing members of that council or a portion thereof, and exactly what grace there will be in the handover of that, given the fact that the members on that council will be feeling a little like they have not been listened to and like their contribution has not been valued for what it was and is currently. The opportunity lies in there, though, for the Government to learn something from it.

I have already expressed concerns around international connectedness, representation in international fora, and having New Zealand represented at the table when standards are set to ensure that New Zealand industry interests are protected, as well as New Zealand interests more generally and the relationships that are built around that. I want to skip from there to clause 4 of schedule 2, which talks about determining whether each subcommittee’s work will continue or not. This is a crunch issue, and it will be in these decisions that we see where the Government’s agenda lies—which things it wants to flick on, which things it wants to continue with, and where its funding priorities lie. I suspect strongly that we will see that it will focus on those industries that are already wealthy and can afford to fund the development of standards readily, and focus less on those industries that are nascent, that are full of entrepreneurs, full of people who wish to make a mark on the world stage, the young and growing enterprises that we would want to encourage to ensure an increasing diversity in our economy.

The diversification issue is one that comes up again and again around this Parliament. We know that we are too reliant for our wealth on the primary sector. We know that we are incredibly grateful for the efforts of the primary sector, but this Government is content to blame them when it goes wrong, and it seems to have no strategy for diversifying the economy. Here we will see, in this particular handover, in these transitional arrangements, just where its priorities lie. We will see whether the Government chooses to continue on with the work that would diversify our economy, or whether it focuses instead on those industries that are already entrenched. So this is where the rubber hits the road—Part 2 is an incredibly important part of the bill, but in this part of my contribution I am focusing just on that clause, because there are other clauses I wish to speak to.

The next thing that leaps out at members here, and will outrage some, of course, is clause 5(3) of schedule 2, and I will read it out for members, who will not have read it before, I am sure: “This clause overrides Part 6A of the Employment Relations Act 2000.” It is a very short clause, and—

Hon Ruth Dyson: Say that again.

Dr DAVID CLARK: It says: “This Act overrides Part 6A of the Employment Relations Act 2000.” This is the protection for vulnerable workers that is in the legislation. The Government has, in a schedule at the back of this very thick bill, shoved in a clause that overrides the protections for vulnerable workers. It is right here. Why? Why in this bill of all places? It just goes to show that the real agenda of the Government is tucked away here, and I would be very interested to hear from the Minister just why this clause is so important. How many people who work at the Standards Council are vulnerable workers? There are probably one or two cleaners, maybe, and some part-time workers.

I am not sure, but the Minister has it in for them. He has put in a clause specifically to ensure that they are not protected in this transition. And it goes on in clause 6, where it talks about terms of employment of transferred employees being treated as continuous employment. It states: “The employment of a transferred employee by the Ministry is to be treated as continuous employment for the purposes of any enactment.” So if they are transferring people, they do not want to be giving any special privileges. They do not want to be making any redundancy payments first or carrying over, or anything. It is all in the interests of the ministry and in the interests of this particular Minister, I would suggest. It is an outrage that that can be put in the schedules, at the back, hidden away, to be discovered only when the fine print is read on this bill.

These transitional arrangements tell us a lot about the Government. They will be where the rubber hits the road, as I have said, in this bill. There are also clauses in here about the Government Superannuation Fund, and what people are entitled to. It specifies what they are not entitled to quite precisely because the Government does not want people to be better off for this shift. This is a Government that is so mean that in the subclauses of the bill it overrides the vulnerable worker protection that we have ensconced in our legislation in this Parliament. I consider that to be an outrage, and it shows just how out of touch this Government has become if it thinks it can get away with hiding these things away in the fine print and not have it noticed in the debate.

This is certainly something that was not brought up at the select committee. I think there would have been something in our minority report had we spotted that particular schedule at the time. I do not think we spent much time on the schedules at the back of the bill. But it is something that has leapt out at me right now in this debate. I would be interested to hear whether the Minister would consider making an amendment to that at the last minute, because it is certainly within his powers to do that.

But, as I said at the outset, one of the other tests will be when we see what the ministry transfers, what work it carries on with, and what work it does not carry on with. These are the things that will matter for the industries that are seeking the support of standards that are in their interests as they develop products and want to put them out on the international market. Can the New Zealand products and the New Zealand manufacturers be guaranteed that the international standards will be easy for them to reach in terms of the manufacturing techniques and varieties available here, or will they be standards that play to the interests of whoever is in the room, with an excluded New Zealand component, because it is just not a priority for this Government? The funding, as I said at the outset, has not been a priority. It will come down to this “where rubber hits road” section, and we will see that it is also not a priority, and that is signalled clearly by the fact that the vulnerable worker clause overrides existing legislation here in the schedule at the back of the bill.

Of course, Mr Faafoi has already noted the overriding of the concerns of industry members in the select committee—I suspect that those same concerns will be thrust aside in the transitional arrangements as the Government tries to give its handover and says that this is the valuable work of the Standards Council—these are the international fora that are the most important that we attend, and this is where we have got the most traction and where we have the relationships that can ensure New Zealand’s interests are protected. On the track record of what we have seen so far, this Government has blinkers on.

The Minister is dead set on doing things a certain way, of drawing more into his mega - multi-enterprise, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment monolith, with the big sign outside. It is a power grab, and there can be no mistake about that. This is an attempt to bring more under his control, to direct officials, to skew it towards the interests that he is interested in, and as we see these transitional arrangements I am sure we will see more of the same.

So my submission to this Committee is that it would be very good if the Minister would explain why the clause in the legislation that protects vulnerable workers needs to be overridden in this schedule. Whom in particular is he trying to target here and why, and, also, why is it being so specific around any payments that are carried over and any arrangements around employment? It feels a little bit like the Government is being mean-spirited in targeting a small group of individuals who made a genuine and lasting contribution to New Zealand’s economic development, and there is a deep irony in that coming from a Government that is driving down exports as a percentage of our GDP. That is, unfortunately, making life hard for small businesses, with fewer small businesses being created under this Government than the previous Government. That is the irony, I guess, in this bill: we have a Government obsessed with controlling the transitional provisions to ensure that no one—no one—is looked after in the transition. Thank you.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I want to take only a very brief call on the Standards and Accreditation Bill because I basically have a few questions for the Minister in the chair, the Hon Paul Goldsmith, and I am sure that they are ones that he will be able to deal with relatively quickly.

Sitting here in the Chamber tonight, I picked up a copy of the bill and I read Part 2, clause 39, which is the regulation-making powers that the bill provides. There are not many people in the House who get excited about regulation-making powers in bills, but I am one of them—I am one of them. As a previous member of the Regulations Review Committee, I am one of the people who find regulation-making powers quite interesting. Clause 39 states: “The Governor-General may, by Order in Council, make regulations providing for any matter that is contemplated by this Act as necessary—(a) for giving it full effect; or (b) for its administration.” Those are incredibly wide-ranging regulation-making powers, and, although I have looked at a number of regulation-making powers in bills, I do not think that I have seen ones that are quite so broad.

So my question for the Minister in the chair, really, is what the justification is for there being such a wide regulation-making power in this legislation. We have established over a long period of time the primacy—the sovereignty—of Parliament when it comes to establishing the laws of the land. The Regulations Review Committee has typically taken a very dim view of legislation that creates uncertainty by giving overwhelming regulation-making power to the executive, which this very, very broad clause seems, on the face of it, to do. The current approach to regulation making tightened up significantly after the Muldoon Government because, back then, Rob Muldoon would frequently pass laws through the House that basically gave him regulation-making power to, effectively, make new laws without reference back to the Parliament.

Chris Bishop: The Economic Stabilisation Act.

CHRIS HIPKINS: Chris Bishop is very excited about that. He works for Steven Joyce—or he used to work for Steven Joyce. I think that is a regulation-making power they would have loved to have, and he would have loved to have when Chris Bishop was working for him.

The reality is we frown upon those, and we frown upon those because we have an established principle that it is the Parliament that should be making laws, not the executive. While the executive proposes laws to the legislature, it is not solely responsible for their passage. The House has that prerogative. We put them through a select committee process and we make sure that they are robustly tested, and yet this clause here—clause 39—seems to give the executive the power to make any nature of regulations under this bill. That does seem incredibly broad.

So I guess the question that I have for the Minister in the chair is: why such a broad regulation-making power? Have I misinterpreted that? But I do not think I have, because I have looked at many regulation-making powers provided for in bills and in legislation, and I have never yet seen one that is as broad as this one. So I think it is important that where the House is giving such wide regulation-making powers to the executive, that is tested.

I note the Regulations Review Committee has provided feedback on another part of the bill, which is clause 2, the commencement clause. I am sure the debate on that will tease out the concerns of the Regulations Review Committee on that, but I notice that it has not provided feedback on that particular clause. It may well be that there is a good explanation for why such a broad power is being allowed, but I would very much like to hear it. I hope that the Minister in the chair will give the Committee the benefit of that argument and that information before we vote on Part 2, clause 39. Thank you.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): May I begin my contribution by picking up where our chief whip has left off? As chair of the Regulations Review Committee, I too would seek an explanation from the Minister about why the Government has introduced a part as sweeping as clause 39.

Let me read it again: “The Governor-General may, by Order in Council,”—which, of course, is dictated by Cabinet—“make regulations providing for any matter that is contemplated by this Act as necessary—(a) for giving it full effect; or (b) for its administration.” So the regulation-making power is very, very broad. It allows, essentially, the Governor-General, on advice from Cabinet, to make regulations. That means basically that the Minister is ordering up regulations, as the Chair knows, on any matter that the Minister sees fit.

I turn then to a partner provision under clause 7 of schedule 1 of the bill, entitled “Removal of Board members”, which provides that “The Minister may at any time remove a member of the Board from office.”, by written notice and publishing in the Gazette. Once again, it is an almost unfettered power by the Minister to remove any member of the independent standards board. How very interesting.

Then I turn to the regulatory impact statement prepared by the Government—by Treasury and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—and what I was curious about, as a non-member of the Commerce Committee that considered the bill, was the fact that the Labour Party had supported the bill’s referral to the select committee, but on the weight of submissions received by the select committee we are changing our vote and are now opposing the bill. This, I say for the benefit of people listening, is quite unusual. Sometimes an Opposition will oppose a bill’s referral to a select committee and then be reassured on the points that are of concern and vote for a bill thereafter. It is more unusual for us to vote against a bill on the weight of submissions, having got it to a select committee in the first place.

So what is it that is the core problem with this? Well, let us start with what the problem is that the legislative process is designed to solve, because this reform programme has been under way since the current Government canned the previous Government’s 2008 reforms in 2012. That is a 3-year ride to get to the point where we are today. So the problem definition is, at No. 1, that the current arrangements of an independent statutory board are too unwieldy and too expensive, and one reading between the lines might add the phrase “too independent”.

A range of options was considered for different aspects of this, but the key conclusion is in paragraph 30 on page 6 of the regulatory impact statement, which says: “One of the key issues identified was the sustainability”—they mean the financial stability—“of [Standards New Zealand]. MBIE”—that is, the Government Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment reporting to Minister Joyce—“have considered the current funding model and consider that it remains appropriate,”—here is the punch line—“where regulators and industry … are able to exercise choices about the use of Standards and … their development …”.

So the Government’s officials, and the businesses that are being regulated, are able to exercise choices about what standards are developed and how. That way they can cut out the ones they do not want and get only the ones they do want, and that will be cheaper because the body will be doing less. The way to ensure that is to insource Standards New Zealand executive and board within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, reporting to the Minister—the same Minister who can write any regulation he or she wants and sack any board member he or she wants under this bill. It is insourced within a Government ministry. Any pretence of independence upon which New Zealand’s international reputation for effectiveness in this area was built has gone out the window. Not surprisingly, that is exactly what submitters have told the select committee.

National has chosen to go for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment embedded option for regulation of standards against the run of the public comments supporting full operational independence. I will boil it down again. Under the guise of addressing issues of financial sustainability—i.e. can we pay for the thing on its current budget—the Government has sneaked through a Trojan horse, which is to remove the statutory independence of the chief executive and the board to bring them under a Minister within a Government department where the Minister can write any regulation he or she chooses and can sack any board member upon notice. There is a line official within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment who has day-to-day operational responsibility for the development of standards.

Well, that has got to be a backwards step, and that is exactly what the weight of submissions has said. They go on and on and on—the negative submissions criticising the Government for this Trojan horse move. They warn us that not only will it trash New Zealand’s international reputation in the standards area but it could lead to other countries, perhaps developing countries with less robust systems of governance, adopting the New Zealand model to their detriment—adopting the New Zealand model to their detriment. These are very disheartening words to hear. Why would the Minister, why would the Government, want to have more control, direct control, over standards? Well, it is lovely to see the Minister entering the Chamber at this moment, and I hope that he will take a call and address himself to that matter.

Here is what the New Zealand Building Industry Federation—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Come to Part 2.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —said in direct relation, Mr Chairperson, to Part 2. It said: “Standard-setting should not be subject to direct political influence by the government of the day.” Part 2 contains the schedules, which contain the ministerial regulation-making power and the “fire’em, sack’em, or back’em” power. A consumer representative on a wide variety of standards committees, Patricia Cunniffe—no relation—said that she was completely unconvinced that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment embedded model was either viable or well functioning.

And there were many, many, many more submissions in a similar vein. Diane Baguley, a member of the joint Australia-New Zealand committee since 1995, one of the international leaders in this area, criticised it for its lack of independence and robustness. Here is a Government that is making a name for the decline of standards: the decline of broadcasting standards, the decline of expenditure efficiency standards, the decline of swamp kauri standards—the decline of standards all around the country. Maybe there is no surprise that it would want to have a tamer, more compliant, more malleable, more directable, more sackable standards body than currently exists.

Under the guise of financial stability, here is a Trojan horse by which this Government—which is always going for the short-term, high-control solution—is ebbing away our independent institutions; ebbing away, corroding away our independent institutions. This is another step along a road vested in Part 2 of this bill, which is leading to ultimately more risk, more fragility and, down the track, greater costs, because if we get standards wrong we increase our insurance premiums, we increase health and safety problems, and we may have inter-operability problems that become more pressing in an interconnected world.

I see the Minister of Health opposite. The Minister well knows that New Zealand’s 22 district health boards find it difficult to talk to each other online because they do not have and have not had a common set of inter-operability standards. That is a living, glowing example of the importance of standards. If we want to shift patient data from an operating theatre in Northland to the family GP in Southland, oftentimes it is very difficult to do it because the standards are not as robust as they should be. If we had had more standards of mining regulation, we might not have had Pike River. So there are many practical examples about why standards matter.

The gist here, in conclusion—I see you are leaning forward for your time button, Mr Chair—is this. It is a matter of regret that we are insourcing the standards independence within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. That is a backwards step.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): I move, That the question be now put.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Well, taking up from where my colleague David Clark left off, around the impact of the Standards and Accreditation Bill on vulnerable workers, and Part 2, with the clause that he referred to earlier, I say that this bill will also affect consumers and vulnerable consumers.

I want to specifically refer to a submission from the Barrier Free New Zealand Trust, which is committed to ensuring that the built environment is accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. Its submission was quite an important submission, because what it brought home was why it is so important to have good standards. It talked about consumer confidence, and I want to broaden that out into further consumer confidence, but, for this group—it believes that independence and balance in standards committees is absolutely critical and that there has to be consumer confidence.

One of the things about this bill that really worries us on this side of the Chamber is that what this bill is doing is moving away from a system where consumers can feel confident. I think we have raised enough issues tonight, and through other speeches about other parts of this bill, to actually really red flag what is actually being achieved through this bill. The entity is being taken away from being an independent Crown entity. It is being weakened, watered down, and absorbed into a major Government department, where there is an appearance of independence but where the extraordinary checks and balances that were in the original entity are not replicated in the new entity.

The Barrier Free New Zealand Trust says: “Our concern is that should the Standards development and approval process be manipulated in anyway by virtue of its operational requirements sitting within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, then this could be lost.” I think its submission is actually quite important. I think that if you have got a consumer group that is vulnerable like this, it should be significantly listened to.

I want to also refer to another submission, which was from the Fire Protection Association. This is a completely different organisation. But what it said was: “We are concerned with the very poor quality in thinking and analysis and the lack of even the most rudimentary data evident … MBIE’s apparent (to our mind) obfuscation of its thinly disguised attempt to (to use its own words) ‘capture’ the Standards system—either for its own ends or in response to a very influential lobby …”. It went on to elaborate on those concerns. When you have got that kind of a body saying those kinds of things, then there should be major red flags being raised. In Part 2, with the disestablishment of the Standards Council, which is going to be replaced with the New Zealand Standards Approval Board—we do not believe that the test has been met for the independence and the probity of the new organisation that will actually ensure that it will provide consumer confidence, that will provide industry confidence, and that will alleviate the concerns that have been raised.

Another submission—I also refer to Patricia Cunniffe’s submission, where she talked about consumer confidence and consumer concerns in standardisation. She used some illustrations to raise the issue of how important it is to continue to develop certain standards. Another one of the concerns that was raised was around whether there will be a continuation of the standards being developed that need to be developed to provide that consumer confidence and that industry confidence, and also to maintain our international reputation. She uses the example of the standard currently in use for medical alert systems, which is a 20-year-old Australian one, and says that there is no willingness by any Government department to update this standard as it does not fall neatly into any particular department’s bailiwick. I ask the Minister in the chair, Paul Goldsmith, tonight: will standards like this be updated under the new regime?

The second example is from technologies being developed in isolation, with insufficient regard to their interaction. She uses the example that it is known that implanted defibrillators are adversely affected by scanning equipment. Scanning equipment is used not only in airports; it is commonplace in supermarkets, for example. The interaction between the two is dealt with by warnings, rather than by standardisation. So will we have work being done on those things, where new technologies are having impacts on people’s health and where standards need to be developed?

The third case was in the building sector, where the building code has been developed with insufficient regard for those most at risk, in that there are incompatibilities between the code and NZS 4121, the standard relating to requirements for people with disabilities—going back to that issue again. The Malatest report from June 2014, which was Access to Buildings for People with Disabilities, considers that “Lack of leadership and coordination has contributed to missed opportunities, duplication of efforts and inefficiencies, and gaps in knowledge.” I ask the Minister in the chair what he has to say about that. What confidence can he stand up and give this Committee that consumers and those sorts of standards will be looked at under this new regime?

Just to conclude, two devastating events form the backdrop to this bill and also to the health and safety reforms before Parliament: the Pike River mine explosion in 2010, which killed 29 miners; and the collapse of the CTV Building in February 2011, which killed 115 people. I would just like to remind everybody that Standards New Zealand was established after a similarly shocking tragedy, which was the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake, which had a death toll of 251 people. Following that event, Standards New Zealand was tasked to ensure that future such events did not result in the same loss of life. Well, I put it to you, Mr Chair, and to the Minister in the chair, that this bill is not going to maintain that standard and maintain that level of scrutiny, of independence, and of surety for New Zealand consumers and for industry bodies that are trying to maintain their own reputations and build economic credibility and economic development. Also, our international reputation will be affected, will be watered down by the impact of this bill. Therefore we cannot support it.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I move, That the question be now put.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I am just looking around a process issue. There was a late amendment tabled in my name because of something that was discovered during the debate. I am seeking the call to see whether we could take an opportunity to highlight that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I am sorry; I have put the question.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 58

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 90 in the name of the Hon Paul Goldsmith to Part 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 75

New Zealand National 59; Green Party 14; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 46

New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Amendment agreed to.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I am just clarifying whether there is going to be a vote on the amendment put in by myself.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): That comes in schedule 2, which is yet to be put.

KRIS FAAFOI: Apologies, Mr Chair.

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

Ayes 61

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

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Schedule 1

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

Ayes 61

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

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 96 in the name of the Hon Paul Goldsmith, and the following amendment in his name, to schedule 2 be agreed to:

replace “this Act” with “this Schedule”.

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

Ayes 61

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

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Kris Faafoi to schedule 2 be agreed to:

omit clause 5(3).

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

Ayes 60

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Noes 61

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

Amendment not agreed to.

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

Ayes 61

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

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Schedule 2 as amended agreed to.

Schedule 3

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 96 in the name of the Hon Paul Goldsmith to schedule 3 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 61

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

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That schedule 3 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 61

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

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Schedule 3 as amended agreed to.

Schedule 4

A party vote was called for on the question, That schedule 4 be agreed to.

Ayes 61

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

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Schedule 4 agreed to.

Schedule 5

A party vote was called for on the question, That schedule 5 be agreed to.

Ayes 61

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

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Schedule 5 agreed to.

Clauses 1 and 2

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much for the opportunity to have a discussion around clauses 1 and 2, the title and commencement clauses to the Standards and Accreditation Bill. This is an opportunity when we can seek alternative titles to the bill that is being debated. A very simple change to the bill as it is is that we just change it to the “Lower Standards and Accreditation Bill”, because that is exactly what this bill does. It does lower the standards and accreditation of New Zealand’s processes around this, not just in the eyes of the people who practise here in New Zealand but also in the eyes of the international community, which should be of major concern to this Government but it does not seem to hear about that.

A number of people and organisations came to the Commerce Committee and made that very point: that if we change the structure of our standards and accreditation process, New Zealand would be looked at in a much dimmer light in terms of our international reputation around standards and accreditation. You would have thought that the Government would take that on board because it was not just one or two of the around a dozen and a half submissions that came to us. It was a very strong vein of opposition and concern around our international reputation.

You would think that the members on that committee would have taken that feedback to the Minister and said: “Minister, we think we’ve got a problem here. We have got all these people with much more experience than us in the industry who actually do this day in, day out, and they say it is a bad idea. Do you think we should do something about it?”. But, no, they did not do that. They completely and utterly ignored the submissions from those submitters, like the Building Industry Federation, which I do not think we should ignore, to be frank, and many other submitters who were mainly from around the construction industry who have serious concerns around what the Government is doing. Their submissions were that if we do this, things will get worse.

My alternative title for the bill is that it should be the “Lower Standards and Accreditation Bill”. These are not just my words. I am not being in opposition just for opposition’s sake, which you think the Government will have a shot at us about—“Why are you guys being so negative? You always oppose everything.” Well, that is not the case in this case. There were many submitters who came to us who made the point that I have been talking about.

One of them, and I want to quote from her submission, was Diane Baguley, who has been a member of the joint New Zealand - Australia committee around standards since 1995. It is a long time, 20 years. Twenty years is a long time to be an expert in something. So when Diane Baguley turned up we were paying attention, but it seems that the members on the opposite side of the House on our select committee did not really care about Diane’s 20 years of experience and expertise around standards, because she did have concerns around lowering standards through this bill. To quote Diane Baguley—who I think is a submitter who spent her New Year’s Day putting her submission together, which is, I think, a commitment to the cause—she said: “I do not consider that the provisions set out for the establishment of the standards function within MBIE”—which is the loss of independence that we are talking about—“can adequately control the risks associated with the new structure, whether to the management of standards development or the reputation of New Zealand in the international standards community.”

When someone with 20 years’ more experience than me in the standards sector says that, I think we should listen to it. We think that the Government should have listened to it, and maybe the Minister in the chair would like to take a call as to why he did not listen to it and why his party did not listen to it, therefore lowering the standards of the standards and accreditation process here in New Zealand.

Diane did not stop there. She went on to say more about this piece of legislation. She said: “The model proposed in the Bill, if realised, might even be used as an example by countries without robust government systems, with undesirable results. New Zealand is well respected”—she may use that in the past tense now—“in the international standards community” and an argument can be made that other countries may say “Well, if New Zealand does it this way why don’t we do it this way” and that could be influential. Diane Baguley is directly saying that because we do this and we have got a good reputation, other countries that do not have such a good reputation may say: “Well, you know, look at New Zealand. They have been the shining light”—have; past tense—“so why don’t we do what they do? If they don’t think independence is important any more, then we’ll do it too.” We do not think that is the kind of example that New Zealand should be setting. We want to make sure that our systems are robust and that they continue to be looked upon by the international community as some of the best, if not the best.

But we think the changes within this bill lower the standards, which is why I offered up a cheeky—well, not too cheeky—alternative title to the bill. An alternative title—and a good alternative title that you should take because I think it more accurately describes the bill as it stands at the moment. It was not just Diane Baguley; there were other submitters who had concerns about the lowering of standards and also about the amount of political influence that could now come in to the setting of standards. It was the Building Industry Federation, which I quoted extensively earlier in the Committee stage that said, quite simply, in one sentence: “ … Standard-setting should not be subject to direct political influence by the government of the day.” We could not agree more with that, and why the Government ignored that, I do not know. Maybe the Minister in the chair, who, I think, has taken the time to answer some of the questions that we have posed, might take a call in this late stage of the Committee of the whole House to answer some of the questions that we have posed here.

It is lowering standards because the Minister, in that contribution that I mentioned earlier, said that one of the problems he is trying to solve is a lack of visibility for the New Zealand Standards Council, which, for a short period of time, will continue to be the body that looks after standards in New Zealand. His novel approach to curing the visibility problem that he pointed out was to put the new body within the uber-ministry run by Steven Joyce—the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. From my reckoning, taking a small, independent body that lacks visibility and putting it in a ministry that has eaten six other ministries, that has thousands of employees, and that cannot seem to spend money wisely is not the right solution to that problem. If you want something to be more visible you do not put on camouflage. So I think the Minister may want to revisit his thinking behind that because, to me, that does not make sense. If you want something to be more visible—as you know, Mr Chairperson, health and safety is very important; it is something that we all think is important—you put something on that is more high-vis so you can stand out. But in this case the solution to a visibility problem is to put camouflage on the new body, and to put it within a ministry that has, as I say, taken on so much responsibility that it cannot control itself.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Title and commencement.

KRIS FAAFOI: So the title of this piece of legislation should be the “Lower Standards and Accreditation Bill”. This Government has lowered standards because it has not taken on a lot of the recommendations that have come through the select committee process: to keep independence, to make sure that there is a viable financial model, and to make sure that we do address the issue of whether we can properly cost and fund the standards process. This is another example of the Government trying to solve a problem, and where it has not solved the problem that it is trying to solve, it has actually created others.

So we will watch very closely whether our predictions of our international reputation being even more dimly viewed by the international community will come to fruition. We believe they will, and I would like to say to the Government: you were warned—by about 19 submitters who all said the same thing—that this lack of independence will lead to our international reputation being affected. In the end we will have lower standards in our standards and accreditation processes. It is a missed opportunity for the Government to have done something properly, and it is a really wasted opportunity. Thank you very much.

Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): That act from Mr Faafoi is going to be a hard one to follow, with his excellent suggestions for alternative titles. I, however, wish to attempt a few of my own, and one of them is to draw attention to the fact that we discovered in the fine print of schedule 2—in a Supplementary Order Paper that we did not really have an opportunity to discuss at length because of other pressures—a concern that vulnerable workers’ rights are removed in this bill. The ability to contest the nature of employment, with the transitional arrangements, is not protected in the bill. It is explicitly ruled out in that schedule, so we may actually say that this is the “Standards and Accreditation (And, By the Way, Removal of Vulnerable Workers’ Rights) Bill”. The slipping in of that particular little line there is rather mean-spirited, I think. Some of my colleagues have agreed with me, and I suspect many people watching at home will agree, that targeting those who formerly worked for the accreditation committee that will now transfer to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and ruling some of them out from taking any action based on what they perceive to be an injustice in the transfer, is a pretty mean-spirited step. So we may give it that alternative title, just to make people aware that that is part of the Government’s agenda here.

Part of the Government’s agenda beyond this bill, I would suggest, is to remove the protection for vulnerable workers. It really is a shame, and there is no need for it, I would suggest, in this bill. Some of the other provisions in it are designed, in part, to cover that off, but just to make it perfectly clear, the Government put a special clause in there to say that Part 6A of the relevant employment legislation does not apply—i.e., vulnerable workers cannot go back to that protection if they feel hard done by in this transition. So we could make that point by putting that in brackets in the title of the bill.

To raise another thing that has been brought up in the debate, the “Detraction from Our International Reputation and Influence Bill” may be another title that we could adopt, given that we have seen in the bill that the change in structure will interrupt the existing successful arrangements we have whereby members of the existing committee participate in international fora. We have seen in the submissions process in the select committee that that will be less highly prioritised. So we may choose a title for the bill that reflects that change in emphasis, that focus on collecting of fees for the setting of standards and accreditation from successful existing industries, and the likely lower priority given to new and emerging industries as this Government seeks to protect entrenched interests over those that are coming through—those that would diversify the economy; those that may actually grow the economy in a way that protects it and ensures that our future prosperity is protected.

I would be interested in the Minister in the chair, the Hon Paul Goldsmith, taking a call on this, because he has not addressed this problem in the debate, in my view, and he could probably quite well address it in this particular title and commencement debate, which lends itself to a quite wide-ranging debate within the confines of the nature of describing a bill, but none the less wide enough that the Minister in the chair could give, I am sure, an illuminating response, if he had one at his disposal. But we shall see. That test will remain.

We could also call it the “Standards and Accreditation (And, By the Way, ‘Henry VIII’ Clauses Slipped In As Well) Bill”, because that is another point that has been well made in the debate—that there are clauses that are very wide ranging in this bill that appear at the end that give the Minister the ability to hire and fire, and that allow the Minister to make some quite significant changes. They were referred to by my colleague the Hon David Cunliffe in his contribution to the debate. So we have seen that in this legislation there are many things that reflect the Government’s wider agenda, and that sense of being a little bit arrogant, a little bit out of touch. It thinks it can pop things in here that wipe out protection for vulnerable workers. It thinks it can slip things in here that give the Minister or others rights to do away with the usual parliamentary process, with the “Henry VIII” clauses, when it wishes. Also, we have seen here that arrogance in the ignoring of the advice to select committees from industry representatives—that sense of being out of touch with where industry is today.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I would like to take a call on the title and commencement clauses and, in the prevailing theme of my colleagues, suggest a new title for this bill, the Standards and Accreditation Bill 2014, as being the “Watering Down Consumer Confidence Standards Bill”. I just, I suppose, reiterate the fact that there are numerous issues with this bill that have watered down and lowered down the standard of what a good standards system should be. Consumer confidence is a really important measure of that.

Unfortunately, we have heard from the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs only once during this debate. He basically read out tracts from the ministerial report to justify the rationale for the bill before us tonight. He has given us no indication of what the purpose of his amendments are, and has, essentially, given no response to any of the issues that have been raised. So I suppose what that tells you is that another alternative name is the “Usual Arrogance and Out of Touch Nature of the Government when Developing a Standards and Accreditation Bill”—

Kris Faafoi: Usual—usual.

CLARE CURRAN: Usual—arrogant and out of touch, as usual, and that is the syndrome to which we are all becoming accustomed. The issues that lie behind our criticism of this bill go to the issues that lie behind so many things that this Government is doing. It is removing independence. There are suggestions of conflicts of interest, there are impacts on our international reputation, there are impacts on consumer experience and consumer confidence, and this is just one of numerous—it is a trend in Government legislation that is coming before this House. If anyone is listening at home tonight, at 9.30 p.m., or watching this on the TV, then I imagine they will be shrugging their shoulders and saying “Well, what’s new?”. We think the bill is deeply problematic and that it is going to need a review by this side of the Chamber when we become the Government. We are going to have to come back to the drawing board on this, and we are, you know, signalling that. The work that was done by officials on this—there has been a lot of work done on this bill, and thank you to the officials. However, we are not convinced, and we are not convinced because of the very, very strong weight of concern that has come from reputable industry bodies and people with long history and credibility in this area.

We know that the standards framework needed a review. Everything needs a review, and it is important that we do that, and so that was undertaken. We know that there were financial unsustainability issues, but is that a reason to water down and suck an independent entity into a great, big amorphous beast that is called the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment? It has its own issues in terms of how it operates and the consumer confidence of people, particularly with regard to ensuring that there is good management of processes around health and safety. And here we are—we have created another entity within that. So to consumers listening tonight, people out there: be a bit afraid about where our standards are going and how well they are going to stand up internationally. We do not believe that it is independent. We believe that because it is inside—

Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): The majority of the contributions on the title and commencement clauses so far have focused on the title, and I want to applaud my colleagues for their creativity in producing titles that describe the debates that we have had here in the Chamber. There have been some lively debates and there have been some genuine concerns raised, and some frustration from this side of the Chamber that the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, has not made more contributions to perhaps justify the direction that has been taken in putting this legislation inside the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment when the independence in the past has served us so well.

I wish to focus my contribution on the clause that relates to the commencement of the bill and suggest an alternative date for commencement, and suggest that new subclause (2) of clause 2 be amended so that the effect of it is that the bill comes into effect in April 2018. That would allow, of course, for a more sensible decision-making process by a more sensible Government. I am hopeful that in 2018 we will have a more sensible Government that will actually listen to the submitters on select committees; a Government that listens to the people. That is something that we on this side of the Chamber would like to see.

The feedback I am getting from across my constituency—in fact, across New Zealand as I go and make small business visits and so on—is that the Government is no longer listening. It is a Government that has said: “Goodbye. Farewell. We’ve got our own agenda, and we’re implementing it. Here we go. We’ll listen to your submissions with beans in our ears. We’ll sit in the select committee, we’ll nod, we’ll shuffle our feet, but we won’t really listen, because we are under instructions from Minister Joyce to get on with it, to subsume everything into the massive monolith of ‘MoBIE’, which has its great big sign outside, its $140,000 TV screen, its $260,000 sun deck with barbecues, its hair straighteners, its $23,000 fridge. That ministry should absorb everything.” That is Steven Joyce’s agenda, as we have seen—to create this monolith. This is another aspect of that empire that he is building. He is pulling the standards-setting procedures inside that.

No doubt within a matter of months he will be choosing the colours of its brochures. He will be saying to the standards and accreditation committee: “You’re not communicating with the public the way I like. Set your brochures out in landscape format—landscape format. I’ve had enough of this portrait format; we need some landscape format.” That will be Steven Joyce. You can guarantee it. He has got a track record on this stuff. He will be rewriting the submissions. He will be controlling the whole jolly thing. We will still see exports falling as a percentage of GDP, as they have continuously with this Minister.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Title and commencement—title and commencement, remember that.

Dr DAVID CLARK: Title and commencement. And so, if we push this out to 2018, we would see more sensible decision-making. We would not see this particular aspect of our important arrangements pulled into the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment under the control of Steven Joyce and his mega-ministry, which is appealing to the multinationals. We would see it focused more nearly on the interests of small and emerging businesses—those businesses that are going to diversify our economy and those businesses that are going to bring future prosperity to our country.

We need a Government with vision. We need a Government that makes sensible decisions and that listens to submitters. Therefore, if we push the commencement of this bill out until April 2018, we hope that we will have such a Government—a Government that listens to the people, a Labour-led Government, a Government of the future that is looking to diversify the economy. That is why my submission is that we should change that clause to ensure a more sensible decision-making process. Thank you.

BRETT HUDSON (National): I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

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

Ayes 61

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

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Clause 1 agreed to.

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

Ayes 61

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

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill

In Committee

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): I seek the leave of the House that the debate on the next bill be taken as one question.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? The question will be put as one question.

Clauses 1 to 6

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Well, 6 years it has taken for this modernisation and futureproofing bill to come before the Committee—6 years; 6 long years. In the debate on the second reading of the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill there was much discussion about the importance of Radio New Zealand National and how much we all valued it. But it took this Government 6 years to get this piece of legislation to this point of the debate in Parliament.

The review of the charter is supposed to be conducted every 5 years. As a result of the 6 years that this legislation has been sitting on the Order Paper, it has actually skipped a review. And so my first question tonight to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Amy Adams, is, in her, hopefully, comprehensive contributions on this bill, to ask for some clarity to be given to the Committee on what the legal status is of the Radio New Zealand charter, given that it has actually skipped a review that should have taken place some time within the last 6 years. Instead, we are now voting on legislation from a review of the charter from back in, I think, 2006—it might have even been 2005. So that is the first question that I have got for the Minister in the chair tonight, because I am sure she will have received some advice from officials.

However, there is no doubt that this bill is worthy of support, and Labour has supported it because of the importance of Radio New Zealand National and the Radio New Zealand charter. We believe, though, that the Government should be highly embarrassed for treating this bill and calling it a modernisation and futureproofing bill. We note that there is a Supplementary Order Paper before the Committee tonight. I am looking forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about it, but, ultimately, the fact that it has taken 6 years to get this bill back to the House shows the disrespect for Radio New Zealand, the fundamental disrespect for Radio New Zealand and the disrespect that this Government has for public broadcasting generally. We believe that that is just another example of the arrogant and out-of-touch nature of this Government.

It was 3 years ago this week, actually—the Committee might be interested to know, and certainly the people listening at home will be interested to know—that New Zealand’s only attempt at a true non-commercial public television broadcaster, TVNZ 7, got the chop. That was shut down due to the National Government’s refusal to continue its funding. TVNZ 7 was the brainchild of the former Clark Labour Government—and it made an extremely good fist of managing, with a reasonably small amount of funding, to bring us many jewels of programmes. However, the Government, as soon as it could, decided that it was going to discontinue that and give it the axe, and it did. Around that same time, the Government was under fire because it gave a $43 million handout to MediaWorks. It came under a lot of criticism for that. That was around the same time that it was axing the only public television broadcaster—the point of this is the attitude in general that this Government has to public broadcasting.

At the same time—around that time, if a little bit earlier than that—New Zealand On Air had been embroiled in a big controversy because of the appointment and the behaviour of one of its board members, who happened to be the Prime Minister’s electorate secretary, Stephen McElrea. He had questioned the timing of a New Zealand On Air - funded documentary, Inside Child Poverty, which was broadcast just 4 days before the 2011 election. Fast-forward 3 years, and there are now allegations of editorial and political interference swirling around Māori Television, the behaviour of the chief executive, and the impact on the current affairs programme Native Affairs.

Meanwhile, Radio New Zealand, New Zealand On Air, and Māori Television have endured—endured—a 7-year funding freeze, with the inevitable shrinking of New Zealand - made quality content. What is the impact of that? It is a huge impact. Here we have a bill that has taken 6 years to get before this Committee, 6 years to reform, review, and look at how its charter can be improved. That charter, and the improvements to that charter, we have no issue with; we have no problem with. We support the bill. What we do have an issue with is the way that the Government treats public broadcasting in general. It treats it with disdain and disrespect, and we ask how long—how long—can Radio New Zealand continue on under its current funding regime and still provide the quality service that it does?

A few months ago its own chair said in the select committee, in response to a question from me about the possible cuts as a result of the funding freeze, which is, essentially, a 25 percent funding cut over the last 7 years, “Clare, you’re right. The impact of inflation has eroded the purchasing power, but we are getting to the point where those limited rations are getting more difficult to handle. And I am quite happy to go on the record on that.”

That was the chair—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Come back to the charter.

CLARE CURRAN: In relation to this bill, which is about the supposed modernisation and futureproofing of Radio New Zealand, the Minister of Broadcasting has Supplementary Order Paper 94 on the Table. Before I talk to that I am hoping that she will get up and explain to the Committee what lies behind that. Labour has also got three amendments on the Table tonight as amendments to that Supplementary Order Paper, which we will talk to during this debate. We hope that that will be a constructive discussion. We support the Supplementary Order Paper as being the only indication that we have seen in the last 6 years of a desire by this Government to actually show that it is about modernising and futureproofing Radio New Zealand.

We have got just a few concerns with some of the clauses in that amendment and how they can be interpreted, and that is why we have put up some suggestions for some amendments to that Supplementary Order Paper. In general we support this bill. We think that Radio New Zealand is one of our most treasured parts of our broadcasting environment, and we think that the vast majority of New Zealanders support it. It has very high listenership and support in the community, and that is due to the fact that it is commercial-free, that it puts the public interest first, and that the people who work and create the content for Radio New Zealand are absolutely committed to telling New Zealand stories and to doing it in a way that is providing a high degree of editorial integrity and high-quality standards. We heartily support that and put on record our support for Radio New Zealand and all that it stands for.

TRACEY MARTIN (Deputy Leader—NZ First): Kia ora, Mr Chair. I just want to take a quick call on the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill. New Zealand First will be supporting the bill. There is no reason why not.

It has taken a long time to get here. If I look at my notes, the review began in 2005. It was completed in 2006, but it did not result in legislation during that Government’s term. It resulted in a review in 2009. It is now 2015. There you go.

There is Supplementary Order Paper 94 now on the Table with regard to this bill. New Zealand First, again, will support the Supplementary Order Paper. We think it makes sense. We did check with the Minister of Broadcasting’s office earlier this morning about this Supplementary Order Paper. It allows Radio New Zealand, once it has broadcast its main programming with taxpayers’ dollars and it has broadcast it free and commercial-free for the benefit of all New Zealanders, to sell it to, let us say, America or somewhere that wants to pick up that programme. We think that Radio New Zealand should quite rightly have the opportunity to sell it to them. We do not think that New Zealand taxpayers should subsidise the American radio market.

However, we did want to make sure that it did not affect in any way, shape, or form Radio New Zealand’s delivery to the Pacific. We just wanted to make sure that there was no way that that was going to commercialise or interrupt the supports that Radio New Zealand is required to do and is doing into the Pacific. We were assured by the Minister’s office—I have it in writing, so I will use it if I need to—that it does not do that.

All in all, it is time. It is time to pass the bill. It is time to get on with it. It is time to give Radio New Zealand the charter that it needs and the direction that it needs. It probably needs more money. I will just go as far as that, Minister. Perhaps we can look at that next year. But all in all, there is no reason to hold up the legislation. New Zealand First will support it. Kia ora.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): I thought the House had not had enough of my dulcet tones tonight, so I thought I would take a call on this Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill. I do want to point to new section 8, which sets out the charter for Radio New Zealand as we know it.

New subsection (1) says it must be an independent and commercial-free public service broadcaster, new subsection (2) says that it has to have freedom of thought and expression around the foundations of a democratic society, and new subsection (3) says that it fosters a sense of national identity. I think they are very laudable principles to have as a public broadcaster. They should be defended at every opportunity, and not just from anything that is a real risk. So if there is a risk of lack of—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I am sorry to interrupt the member, but the time has come to report progress to the House.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill with amendment, the Standards and Accreditation Bill with amendment, and progress on the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.