Thursday, 27 August 2015
Volume 708
Sitting date: 27 August 2015
THURSDAY, 27 AUGUST 2015
THURSDAY, 27 AUGUST 2015
Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.
Prayers.
Business Statement
Business Statement
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): Next week, while the select committees continue their business and MPs deal with constituency business, the House will take a 1-week adjournment. When the House resumes on Tuesday, 8 September the Government intends to progress a number of bills on the Order Paper, including the Taxation (Land Information and Offshore Persons Information) Bill and the Passports Amendment Bill (No 3).
Oral Questions
Questions to Ministers
Children, State Care—Reviews of State Care System
1. DARROCH BALL (NZ First) to the Minister for Social Development: Does she stand by all her statements?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): Yes, in the context in which they were made.
Darroch Ball: How can she stand by her statement “Our … vulnerable kids deserve the … best support we can provide,” when New Zealanders are sick and tired of years of the same empty words and bureaucracy of process and paper, and just want for once the children in State care to be safe?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I would say to that member that I share the concern, and that is why earlier this year I set up an expert panel with the express terms of reference to make a substantial change to the system that manages children in State care.
Darroch Ball: Does her statement in reference to the 15th review/overhaul that “This time we’re going to do it properly,” imply that for 7 years her Government has been getting it wrong?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: The comments that I made about the 14 reviews were that I was not doing a 15th review and that I was doing a substantial overhaul of the system—and that is the difference. I am absolutely determined to make sure that the new system that, hopefully, we are able to start implementing from next year will put children and children’s needs at the heart of whatever system we have.
Darroch Ball: How does the Minister explain that 117 kids were abused in care last year despite her Government’s relentless reviews, green papers, white papers, action plans, and overhauls—10 of which in 7 years have achieved nothing?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I agree with the member that 117 cases are 117 too many and we have to make sure that whatever system we put in place has the needs and the welfare of those children, who are the most vulnerable in our communities, at the very centre of the system.
Darroch Ball: How many more kids in Child, Youth and Family services care, according to her ministry’s statistics, will be abused by the time the next paper rolls out in December, and what commitment will she make now to stop that happening, or is she just another Minister for Social Development delivering diddly-squat?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: This is a very serious issue that affects thousands and thousands of New Zealand children, and I take the responsibility, as a Minister, extremely seriously. I want a system that actually delivers better outcomes for those children we take into State care, so I am not going to rush into a knee-jerk reaction. I have appointed an expert panel that is looking at designing a complete overhaul of the Child, Youth and Family system so that we get good outcomes for those children.
Economy—Resilience and Employment
2. ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa) to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received that expect the economy to deliver more jobs and higher wages for New Zealand families over the next three years?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I have seen a recent report from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research that makes some good comments about the New Zealand economy—if I could just find my answers—and says that it will continue to grow, continue to add jobs, and continue to lift New Zealanders’ incomes in the years ahead.
Alastair Scott: What is the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research’s assessment of the outlook—
Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr SPEAKER: I hope that it is a sensible point of order.
Grant Robertson: Oh, it is a very important point of order. I just wanted to give the Minister a little time to find his laminated—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not a point of order. [Interruption] Order! That is the sort of point of order that actually creates more disorder.
Alastair Scott: What is the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research’s assessment of the outlook for various sectors in the economy?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Although the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research notes that the fall in dairy prices has had a significant effect, a range of industries continue to support growth. Construction activity remains strong, supported by much higher levels of house-building activity in Auckland and increased non-residential construction. Wool, kiwifruit, pipfruit, and meat are all undergoing a revival. Kiwifruit export volumes are soaring. Business investment and hiring intentions remain solid. The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research reports that tourism and manufacturing are benefiting from a lower New Zealand dollar and higher global demand, and the lower New Zealand dollar and the high US beef prices are providing some relief to dairy farmers who are culling unproductive stock.
Alastair Scott: What reports has he received showing that increasing exports are supporting growth and resilience in the New Zealand economy?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: This is very interesting for the House. Yesterday Statistics New Zealand released its report on overseas merchandise trade for July. The value of goods exports was $4.2 billion in July of this year, just over half a billion dollars or 14 percent higher than in the same month a year earlier. Meat exports were up 24 percent, led by beef, and that was up 40 percent due to higher prices alone. Fruit exports increased by 32 percent, to $311 million, and the value of dairy exports was up slightly, by nearly a million dollars, to $932 million, with increases in cheese, dairy spreads, and milk protein offsetting the fall in milk powder exports.
Julie Anne Genter: Can he confirm that 52,000 more people are unemployed now than when he took office—that is, 54 percent—and why does he think that the policies that he has been implementing over the past 7 years will give a different outcome over the next 3 years?
Mr SPEAKER: Hon Steven Joyce, either of those two supplementary questions.
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The member may or may not be aware that, actually, the number of people employed is significantly higher than it was 7 years ago because the labour market has expanded substantially over that period. Of course, again, the member may not be aware that we had the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes, which caused significant dislocations to our employment market over that period. The Government is confident that New Zealand is continuing to deliver very high levels of employment—I think, from memory, about the fifth highest in the OECD—and that that is continuing to improve over time through the careful stewardship of the economy, which encourages investment and growth.
Alastair Scott: What steps is the Government taking to support the New Zealand economy in uncertain times?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Government is continuing to undertake a range of measures as part of its plan to support a resilient, growing economy. The Government’s fiscal constraint is taking pressure off exchange rates and interest rates, which supports less borrowing and higher national savings. We remain on track to surplus and to begin paying down debt. We are reducing costs through ACC levy reductions. We have lowered taxes for work and savings. We are boosting business research and development funding. We are on track to deliver $110 billion of investment in infrastructure over the next 10 years. The Government’s Business Growth Agenda is helping businesses to have the confidence to invest and is supporting regions to take advantage of economic opportunities.
Julie Anne Genter: Has he seen any reports, such as that from President Obama, that job growth in the American solar industry is 10 times higher than in other industries, and what specific actions is his Government taking to remove the barriers to growth in low-carbon industries?
Mr SPEAKER: Again, the Hon Steven Joyce may answer either of those two supplementary questions.
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Government is making a considerable effort to make sure that there are no regulatory restrictions on the development of new industries. But where I would probably differ from the member is that we will not be planning big new subsidies for new industries either, because that would actually be a drag on the New Zealand economy rather than encouraging growth in the New Zealand economy. This Government is focused on growing the New Zealand economy. Of course, the good news for the member is that renewable energy is probably higher in New Zealand than in most of the developed world.
Julie Anne Genter: Supplementary question. [Interruption]
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am just waiting for the colleague.
Julie Anne Genter: How can he claim that his Government does not want to pick winners when Ministers in this House are constantly standing up and talking about the support that they are giving to the dairy industry, the wine industry, and the fossil fuel exploration industry; and why would he not support renewable growth, as that is going to not only grow jobs but also help us—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Hon Steven Joyce, either of those two supplementary questions.
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Where the Government does make a contribution—and the member has identified some areas—is in the area of research and development in particular, through such things as the Primary Growth Partnership, through the Callaghan Innovation research and development growth grants spend, and so on. The member may be interested to know that industries such as information and communications technology and high-tech manufacturing are seeing very considerable growth in research and development and in activity generally, in terms of the development and diversification of New Zealand industries. That is fine; in fact, that is available now to all of the renewable energy industries that the member talks of. But what we are not prepared to do is go further than that and subsidise, for example, the price or the uptake of a particular industry.
Health System—Performance
3. Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister of Health: If Government health expenditure has not kept up with all inflationary pressures, as he admitted on 29 July, what impact has this shortfall had on patients?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): The central premise of the member’s question is wrong. Inflation is currently at 0.3 percent. Cost pressure funding for 2015-16 for health is around 0.6 percent. Extra investment of over $4 billion under this Government is delivering free GP visits for under-13s, 50,000 more operations, 60,000 more first specialist assessments, and 5,500 more doctors and nurses. It is only a National Government that can both handle the country’s finances and deliver more services.
Hon Annette King: Can he explain why, after his claims of all that extra spending in health, we have failing emergency departments unable to treat the number of patients arriving and seeking help, with many of them sitting or lying in corridors, with or without fluorescent lights, because the hospitals—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Bring the question to a conclusion.
Hon Annette King: —are running to capacity?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: No, that is totally incorrect. The member is having flashbacks to her own tenure. What she knows is that 95 percent of patients are in and out of our emergency departments within 6 hours. The service is much, much better than it was a whole decade ago, back when Mrs King was the Minister. I am really surprised that she has got the gall to get up and ask that sort of question, but she can continue to do so.
Hon Annette King: Would his answers about how much money he has put into the health system be much comfort to Mary, who reported on 11 August 2015 that she sat for hours with a severe leg infection, unable to get a bed in the emergency department, while five other people sat beside her with intravenous fluid drips in their arms, waiting to get out of the corridor?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: That sounds more like 15 August 2005, not 2015. But, as Mrs King has said before, it is better to help patients rather than use them. I am very pleased to see that Mrs King’s views on the health system have changed substantially over time, because back in 2002 she said that New Zealand is not rich enough to have the kind of health system found in Australia. Yet only last week she was saying—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The answer is now almost as long as the question.
Hon Annette King: Is it acceptable to him for a person with renal colic to sit in a jam-packed corridor outside the emergency department on a chair for hours because there were no beds available—so overcrowded in the corridor that the doctors and nurses were bumping into each other and had difficulty taking blood from the patients?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: You will notice that Mrs King gives no names, no dates, and no hospital. I do not think you could possibly believe that. I think it is probably fiction.
Hon Annette King: Does the Minister realise that rather than constantly dodging direct questions, failing to give direct answers, and then harking back with selective figures from—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I just have the question.
Hon Annette King: —10 years ago, he needs to focus on what is happening in emergency department corridors today, which, according to a member of Parliament, is described as—
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Who—who?
Hon Annette King: —wait till I tell him what they said—
Mr SPEAKER: You had better hurry up.
Hon Annette King: —“It makes them look like some sort of makeshift refugee camps.”?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: This is all scaremongering and rumour. The member gives no details. The only facts we know are that she doubled the budget and delivered 7,500 fewer appointments and 2,000 fewer operations. As they said in the Dominion Post in September 2005, how can a Minister spend so much money yet make the system worse? That was Annette King—no record to stand on, I am afraid.
Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Although this is unusual, the Minister did say: “Who was that record a quote from”—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I just want the point of order.
Hon Annette King: I would like to table Hansard, 6 March 2008—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will immediately resume her seat. There is no need to table Hansard in this House.
Hon Annette King: When he railed against people waiting in corridors under the previous Government when hospitals were at capacity, calling it unacceptable and a failure of the health system, did he envisage that he would be hearing under his watch about a man with cancer who waited for hours in the ambulance bay beside the emergency department without a pillow or a blanket?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: To be honest, if all this was true, Mrs King would be giving names, naming hospitals, and giving dates. I believe she is just making it up and, frankly, you have got no credibility unless you give details. It is better to help patients rather than use them, Mrs King.
Hon Annette King: Is he aware that the increase in those getting a first specialist assessment since 2008-09 averages out at an increase of just 3.8 percent a year—which Professor Philip Bagshaw, who knows a thing about people waiting in pain and disability, described as absolutely inadequate—and reflects the $1.7 billion missing from the health budget under this Government?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The only fact in all this is that Mrs King doubled the budget twice and actually delivered 7,500 fewer appointments and 2,000 fewer operations. All the rest is Mrs King making it up. If it was not made up, she would be citing—
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: —names, dates, hospitals. She cannot do it.
Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did cite a name, and that was Professor Bagshaw. Can I seek leave—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not a point of order, but I will have the point of order that you are getting to.
Hon Annette King: Can I seek leave to table where I got the direct quote from? It is from a newspaper, but Dr—
Mr SPEAKER: No, no. [Interruption] Order! The member will resume her seat. We are not about to table newspaper articles in this House.
Bail Decisions—Family/Whānau Violence Reports
4. JONO NAYLOR (National) to the Minister of Justice: What initiatives has she announced to support judges making family violence bail decisions?
Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): Yesterday I announced that from 1 September a pilot will begin in the Christchurch and Porirua courts, under which judges will receive a detailed new report on a defendant’s family violence history when making bail decisions in family violence cases. The new report will show all recorded family violence incidents involving a defendant in an easy-to-read, summarised form. It was developed in partnership with the judiciary, the Ministry of Justice, and the police. Bail decisions are critical in family violence cases. Giving judges a clear picture of previous patterns of offending when they are making a bail decision will help to protect victims from further harm. After a trial period and a review, it is expected that the summary report will be rolled out nationally from early 2016.
Jono Naylor: What other work is under way to provide the judiciary with the information it needs to keep victims safe?
Hon AMY ADAMS: It is becoming increasingly apparent to me that we need to make it easier for family and criminal courts to be able to share information in family violence cases. Currently, specified family violence information can be shared between the courts only if there is a protection order in place when the family violence offence happened. In my view, the Family Court should be able to access sentencing notes from the criminal court to help understand the severity of previous offending, and the criminal court should be able to get information such as the reasoning given by the Family Court for granting protection orders. I will shortly be announcing further changes to ensure judges in both criminal and family jurisdictions have more comprehensive information available to support family violence decision-making.
Jono Naylor: What other initiatives are in the pipeline to contribute to better sharing of information in family violence cases?
Hon AMY ADAMS: The discussion document I have launched recently reviewing all family violence legislation specifically raises concerns about deficiencies in information sharing across and between all agencies involved in family violence cases, the Government, and NGOs. For example, I am seeking views on creating a presumption that where there are family violence concerns, all relevant information should be disclosed. We have seen numerous death reviews and coroners’ reports highlighting the need for better sharing of information if we want to make inroads into our horrific family violence statistics, and this will continue to be a feature of the Government’s work programme in this regard.
Children, State Care—Funding
5. JAN LOGIE (Green) to the Minister for Social Development: Will she make an emergency one-off injection of funding into Child Youth and Family to address concerns about the safety of children in State care raised by the Children’s Commissioner today?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): No. Budget 2015 allocated $8 million extra to help Child, Youth and Family meet current demand and $5.8 million to develop and test a new operating model. Since 2008 the baseline for Child, Youth and Family has increased by $90 million, with no apparent substantial change in the outcome for children in State care. Throwing money at a system that is not working is just plain ridiculous. That is why in April I appointed an expert panel to design a complete overhaul of New Zealand’s child protection system to ensure that we get better results for children in care and to ensure that money is invested in the areas that will make the biggest difference for our kids.
Jan Logie: Given that the Children’s Commissioner has said that these 5,000 children cannot wait for these initiatives, what will the Minister do today to action any of the report’s 53 recommendations?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I think the member completely misrepresents the comments from the Children’s Commissioner. He is entirely supportive—he makes that very clear in his report—of the work that we are doing here with an expert panel to completely overhaul the system. The member should make sure that she accurately quotes the Children’s Commissioner.
Jan Logie: Given that the Children’s Commissioner is doubtful that children are currently better off in State care after being removed from their family, what is the Minister doing today to ensure that placements that are made tomorrow will be safe?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Again, the member is misrepresenting the Children’s Commissioner in his report. His comments around not knowing relate to the lack of data. If she looks at page 61, I think it is, of the report, he makes that very clear. I am also concerned at the lack of data following the progress of children after they come into State care, and that is one of the issues that the expert panel is looking at. In fact, all the recommendations of the Children’s Commissioner are incorporated in the review that the panel is doing.
Jan Logie: Given that National has been in power for the majority of these kids’ lives, will the Minister accept responsibility for her Government’s systematic under-investment in Child, Youth and Family and these children?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Well, there has not been under-investment. As I said, an extra $90 million has been put by this Government into Child, Youth and Family alone. The previous Minister led a large piece of work that had a green paper, a white paper, a Vulnerable Children Act, a Children’s Action Plan—all designed around maintaining children in their families and helping those children so that they do not need State care. So there has been a huge amount of work that has gone in. What we are going to do now, though, is get to the very heart of the matter, as the Children’s Commissioner talks about—the system that is needed to put children and their needs at the centre of the State’s care.
Jan Logie: Has the Minister seen last year’s report from the Chief Social Worker that the most common request from case workers within Child, Youth and Family is for more staff?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Yes, I have. I have also heard the voices of children who say that the most important thing for them is a safe, stable, and loving home. Their first placement needs to be the best placement for them, so that is what I talk about. This is a very complex issue. We are not going to have a knee-jerk reaction. The Children’s Commissioner is very supportive of the work that this Government is doing with the expert panel in designing a complete overhaul of the Child, Youth and Family system.
Jan Logie: Is one of the recommendations that she is taking to Cabinet next month to outsource any responsibility for child protection to private businesses?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Cabinet papers are, of course, for Cabinet. What I am taking to Cabinet next month is a very high-level report from the expert panel. I do intend to make that public following Cabinet’s consideration of it.
Jan Logie: Will the Minister commit to keeping Child, Youth and Family services within the Government’s direct control and our collective care?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Where the Government takes children into its care it has an absolute responsibility to make sure that those children have better outcomes in their lives, and I am determined to make sure that that happens.
Jan Logie: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did not hear my—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question was definitely addressed.
Marama Fox: Given the response to your first question, were you impressed by the finding in the Youth Services Strategy case study that young people on placements who are connected with a Whānau Ora provider that could connect the person through to their marae had “much better experiences and reported better outcomes as a result of”—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I have the question, please.
Marama Fox: Yes, and here is the question: that being the case, will she make an emergency one-off injection of funding into Whānau Ora to ensure much better outcomes for tamariki and rangatahi Māori?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Yes, I was impressed, and yes, I am committed to continue to work closely with the Minister for Whānau Ora to look at ways that the Ministry of Social Development and Whānau Ora can better deliver results to at-risk New Zealanders. I note that Budget 2015 provided a $49.8 million boost for Whānau Ora navigators, and they are making a valuable contribution to other Government initiatives, including the four children’s teams that we have already rolled out.
Question No. 6 to Minister
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I raise the point of order under Speakers’ rulings 168/3 and 168/4. There are two parts to the point of order I am raising. This question was set down to the Prime Minister and asked him whether he stood by a statement. That statement was made in this House. There is no dispute that the statement was made—it is in Hansard.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I just have the point of order.
GRANT ROBERTSON: The point of order is that I believe the transfer of the question undermines the integrity of question time. I do not understand how the Opposition can hold the Prime Minister to account when direct quotes that he has given in this House are transferred. If you will indulge me, the second part of my point of order is that the option that then gives the Opposition is to simply ask the Prime Minister: “Does he stand by all his statements?”. That is a ridiculous situation because that question would not be transferred, we then lose valuable supplementary questions, and the opportunity is opened up for the Minister answering to say they do not have the material available to them. I think this kind of transfer undermines the integrity of question time.
Mr SPEAKER: I do not agree with the member. [Interruption] Order! If I felt for one minute that it did, in transferring, undermine the integrity of question time and, effectively, it was an anathema to the justice of the question time system, then I would not allow the transfer. I think there are—in regard to the second point made by Grant Robertson—ways that this question could have been worded in such a way that it could not have been transferred, and that includes ways that are more general than just: “Does the Prime Minister stand by his statements?”. I suggest that, if he wants advice on the wording of that, he takes some advice from, perhaps, the Office of the Clerk to help him in further wording of questions so that it is more difficult for the transfer to occur. But in this case the transfer is the right of the Government, provided it does not in any way mean the shifting of responsibility does not allow for a fair chance of an answer. The question, in essence, is around KiwiSaver. That responsibility is in the hands of the Minister of Finance, and I think the question can proceed, if the member wishes to continue.
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr SPEAKER: If it is a fresh point of order, I will happily hear it.
GRANT ROBERTSON: The ability for a Minister—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I just have the fresh point of order.
GRANT ROBERTSON: The point of order is this: how is it not anathema to—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Now the member is questioning a ruling I have just given. I have been quite clear about it. If the member wants to raise a fresh point of order, I will hear it, but—[Interruption] Order! The member may want to resume his seat. We get to a very disorderly state in this House if members then continue to relitigate, particularly when they lead me to believe that it is a fresh point of order and, as they get into their so-called fresh point of order, it is simply a chance to argue the case with me. That is unacceptable. I have made a ruling. The member can shake his head and say that he does not agree with it. I think there are frequent opportunities for members to disagree with rulings that I make in this House, but, at the end of the day, they must accept them.
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I seek leave of the House for this question to be transferred back to the Prime Minister.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I invite the member to look at Speaker’s ruling 169/5. I am not putting that leave.
KiwiSaver—Enrolments and Government Contributions
6. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by the Prime Minister’s statement that “the removal of the $1,000 kick-start contribution will not make a blind bit of difference to the number of people who join KiwiSaver”?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: Yes. This was based on advice from officials that stated: “This change is likely to have only limited effect (if any) on enrolment rates in KiwiSaver among the legislated target population because other subsidies and employer contributions remain in place.” Incentives for people to join KiwiSaver include auto-enrolment when starting a new job, the 3 percent employer contribution, and the member tax credit of up to $521 each year, all of which significantly outweighs the $1,000 kick-start payment when taken together.
Grant Robertson: Why did the Prime Minister tell his House that “the formal advice from the Inland Revenue Department” was that sign-up rates for KiwiSaver would not be affected by cutting the kick-start, when the Inland Revenue Department’s regulatory impact statement on cutting this kick-start includes paragraph 44, entitled “Lower numbers of KiwiSaver members (particularly among the self-employed and children)”?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The paper and the regulatory impact statement make a number of comments. I draw the member’s attention to paragraph 56 of the Cabinet paper, which says: “This change is likely to have only limited effect (if any) on enrolment rates in KiwiSaver among the legislated target population because other subsidies and employer contributions remain in place.” In terms of the regulatory impact statement, which is available online to members, paragraph 32 says a number of things, including “Therefore removal … of the kick-start would reduce fiscal costs without reducing savings rates …”.
Grant Robertson: How does he justify his belief that the cut to the kick-start for KiwiSaver will not make a blind bit of difference when the Inland Revenue Department statistics for the month of July show there was a 45 percent net decline in the number of new members compared with the monthly average for the previous year?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I caution the member about 1 month’s figures in relation to this.
Grant Robertson: 2 months.
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: But the member talked about the July figures. The key thing to note is that the numbers are, of course, dropping each year anyway. The reason they are is because so many people have signed up—2.5 million New Zealanders are now in the scheme. In 2009, 25,000 people a month were signing up, last year that was closer to 15,000 a month, and this year it is dropping again. It would be expected to, as increasing numbers of New Zealanders are signed up, because there just are not as many New Zealanders left to sign up.
Grant Robertson: That’s such a load of nonsense.
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No, it is not nonsense, Mr Robertson; it is called mathematics—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Minister can resume his seat to await the supplementary question.
Grant Robertson: Why did his Government use Treasury’s analysis to justify cutting the kick-start, when that analysis has been described by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research today as being wrong because it used data from a short time period affected by the global financial crisis, compares the wrong groups of people, and ignores evidence that young people tend not to save without incentives?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am not sure that saying the period 2007 to 2010 or 2011 is a short period—in fact, it covers a period prior to the global financial crisis as well. Actually—
Grant Robertson: Right, so it’s all fine? It’s all fine, those stats?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Just shh for a minute, Grant—you are getting carried away.
Dr Megan Woods: Have you lost your cards again, Steven?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Just wait and I will answer the question for you.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Just finish the answer.
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The reality of it is that if you look at the comments by the Financial Services Council, it talks about how KiwiSaver has been beneficial with some income groups, and the Government absolutely agrees. KiwiSaver has been beneficial. The earlier Treasury report talked about a lift in saving rates overall. In fact, the greater impact of lifted savings rates has actually come through the tax reductions that the Government introduced in 2010, which the member does not understand, because the entire Labour Government was high-taxing New Zealanders throughout the 2000s and then wondered why people were not saving.
Grant Robertson: Does he agree with Treasury’s advice that KiwiSaver is poor value for money and only marginally adding to New Zealand’s national savings rate?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I think it is fair to say that it is only marginally adding to New Zealand’s savings rate because a fair amount of the savings that are occurring is transferred from other potential savings, including a reduction in people’s—
Grant Robertson: That’s exactly the opposite of what the NZIER report says.
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, with the greatest respect, the report was sponsored by the Financial Services Council, which likes to be subsidised for savings. I understand that, but that is the council’s perspective. Again, for the member’s edification, the reality is that KiwiSaver has not lifted a lot of savings rates overall. It has definitely helped in some income groups—there is no doubt about it. The Government is supportive of it and retains very big incentives for people to belong.
Grant Robertson: So, for the record, can he confirm that he continues to believe that the cut to the KiwiSaver kick-start has not made a blind bit of difference to the number of people in this scheme, despite the fact that there are now 2,000 fewer zero to 17-year-olds in the scheme today than when he put that in?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Minister did stand by the Prime Minister’s statement. The point for the member to understand is that, actually, there has been a lower number so far of zero to 18-year-olds, which you would expect because they are not actually in the workforce. But the primary reason why we are continuing to see a decline in the overall numbers of people in the KiwiSaver is that—
Grant Robertson: Just admit it—he was wrong.
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Mr Speaker, he just keeps up a commentary the entire time I am trying to answer his question, which makes it quite pointless, because, actually, he does not want an answer. What he does not want to know—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The Minister will resume his seat.
Rheumatic Fever—Prevention Initiatives
SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): My question is to—[Interruption]
Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Sarah Dowie, question No. 7.
SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): My question is to the Minister of Health. Can he confirm that rheumatic fever rates have dropped—[Interruption]
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am now giving a last warning to the Minister Steven Joyce. If he continues to interject like that and cause disruption, I will be asking him to leave the Chamber. Sarah Dowie, could we start that question again.
7. SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill) to the Minister of Health: Can he confirm that rheumatic fever rates have dropped 24 percent since 2012 following the Government investing more than $65 million on a range of initiatives to combat the disease?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Yes, I can. The Government is committed to making progress on issues that affect vulnerable children. In the past few years, we have made great progress on reducing the number of first-episode rheumatic fever hospitalisations, by 24 percent since 2012, including a reduction of 36 percent for Māori children and 31 percent for Pasifika children since 2013. This morning I visited the Porirua Union and Community Health Service, which operates a sore throat swabbing drop-in clinic. It was great to hear the stories of families whose health is benefiting from these new services. They are doing a great job there at that health centre.
Sarah Dowie: What are some of the initiatives that the Government has invested in to reduce rheumatic fever?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: To achieve these reductions, we have established 300 drop-in clinics and 200 school-based services, covering 25,000 children. We have reached over 3,000 families per year with the Warm Up New Zealand: Healthy Homes initiatives in all high-incidence areas, and we have engaged 30,000 Auckland and Wellington Pasifika families through home visits and community events to raise prevention awareness. These initiatives are making a difference, but there is more work to be done towards achieving the Better Public Services target of reducing rheumatic fever by two-thirds by June 2017.
Barbara Stewart: Can the Minister confirm that the June 2015 Better Public Services interim target of a 40 percent reduction in first-episode rheumatic fever hospitalisations was not met, and, in fact, only a reduction of 14 percent was achieved?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: New Zealand First always wants to rain on the parade, but—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Just answer the question.
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: This is a tough-to-achieve target that no other Government has ever tried to tackle. Last year there were 135 new cases, and the year before that there were 175. That is great progress, and the member should be celebrating and supporting it.
Barbara Stewart: I seek leave to table a Ministry of Health report titled Rheumatic Fever Prevention Programme update, stating that over—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is no need to add any more. I just need to check whether that is a report that is available for members to get on the web?
Barbara Stewart: No.
Mr SPEAKER: On the basis that the member said it is not—[Interruption] Order! I will accept the member’s word. The member said that it is not easy to obtain that report. On that basis, I will put the leave and the House will decide. Leave is sought to table that particular Ministry of Health report on rheumatic fever. Is there any objection to it being tabled? There is objection.
Dementia Care—Funding
8. BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) to the Minister of Health: Does he agree with Alzheimer’s New Zealand’s Catherine Hall that “dementia is one of the most significant healthcare challenges facing us globally and in New Zealand”; if not, why not?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Yes, Alzheimer’s disease is a big challenge, both globally and here in New Zealand, especially as our population ages. That is why this Government launched our plan the New Zealand Framework for Dementia Care in November 2013. This national plan was developed in consultation with the sector, and it provides comprehensive guidance on supporting people living with dementia. The Government has backed this up with a series of funding increases in recent Budgets, including a $40 million package for residential dementia-level care and to develop dementia care pathways, and another $44 million package over 4 years to support people living with dementia.
Barbara Stewart: What funding priority signals are you sending to district health boards for dementia services over the next 3 years, in view of the fact that the number of New Zealanders experiencing dementia is increasing at a faster rate than previously expected?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I think that we covered this pretty comprehensively in the first question, but I will quote directly from that answer. This Government has backed this up with a series of funding increases in recent Budgets, including a $40 million package for residential dementia-level care and to develop dementia care pathways, and another $44 million package over 4 years to support people living with dementia.
Barbara Stewart: Does the Minister agree that having only a 3-year strategy to combat dementia is very short-sighted management of this long-term issue, and that Alzheimer’s New Zealand is correct in stating that “We urgently need a national dementia plan.”?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: No, I do not. As I said in the first answer, we launched our plan, the New Zealand Framework for Dementia Care, in November 2013, and it looks out far further than 3 years—that is the plan.
Truancy—Rates
9. CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) to the Minister of Education: Does she stand by her predecessor’s statement in 2010 regarding truancy that “We cannot sit back and do nothing. These figures are really shocking and we need to get serious about tackling this problem”; if so, by how much has the truancy rate increased since then?
Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): I do indeed stand by my colleague’s statement and wholeheartedly support her sentiment. Since 2011 there has been a 0.6 percent increase in unexplained absences. One unjustified absence is one too many—we want kids to be in school and learning. What we saw under the previous Labour Government was a 41 percent increase in the rate of unexplained absence, and it was so complacent that it measured truancy only every 2 years. Under this Government we are working hard, and that is why since 2011 we have had an electronic survey every year to encourage a more regular collection of data and give us a better understanding of who the kids are who are not consistently attending school and how we can keep them at school and learning.
Chris Hipkins: Does the Attendance in New Zealand Schools 2014 survey result show that one in every 78 students regularly bunked school in 2013—a 30 percent increase on the number the year before?
Hon HEKIA PARATA: No, it does not. What it shows is that the frequent truant rate increased from 1 percent in 2013 to 1.3 percent in 2014, while—[Interruption] I am glad the Opposition takes so much pleasure in checking—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Just complete the answer.
Hon HEKIA PARATA: So we are working very hard to keep kids at school, and playing with percentages may be what the Opposition wants to do but we are focused on getting kids to school.
Chris Hipkins: Why is a 30 percent increase in the number of students regularly skipping classes acceptable, and what confidence can parents have that she is dealing with the issue, given that after 7 years of a National Government the problem is getting worse?
Mr SPEAKER: The Hon Hekia Parata, either of those two supplementary questions.
Hon HEKIA PARATA: What the Attendance Service deals with is chronic truancy. What the member is referring to is overall truancy, which, of course, is a partnership between parents and schools and the Government. The Government is doing its part to get and keep kids at school. That is why we have introduced Positive Behaviour for Learning in 600 schools. That is why we have introduced Kia Eke Panuku, which has seen Māori attendance and suspensions halved in the time we have been in Government, and also Pasifika absences have decreased since we have been in Government. But, overall, truancy is a partnership between parents, their children, schools, and the Government.
Chris Hipkins: Is it acceptable that students were absent for almost 10 percent of their classes last year and thousands of students—thousands of students—were wagging school on a regular basis?
Hon HEKIA PARATA: Of course it is not. It is not acceptable, and that is why we have introduced a new attendance service, we have increased the funding to it to $9.5 million, we have introduced 24 new providers across the country, we are working with six social sector trials, we are engaging with parents to see that their kids are at school, and we are providing more engaged pathways through the vocational pathways, 5,250 trades academy places, 10,000 fees-free places—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Bring the answer to a conclusion.
Hon HEKIA PARATA: We are working hard at this.
Chris Hipkins: Has she seen the comment: “In a country as small as ours it is ludicrous to think we can’t keep proper track on where our young people are. We can do much better for our young people because if we don’t there will be more mindless murders like that of Michael Choy.”; if so, and if everything is going so well, as she says, has Bill English—the author of that comment—asked her to explain why truancy continues to go up after 7 years of a National Government?
Mr SPEAKER: Again, either of those two supplementary questions.
Hon HEKIA PARATA: I, along with other Ministers, are constantly scrutinised because we believe in transparency and self-review on how well we are doing. I have not once said that I am complacent about this. What I was demonstrating was that we are investing significantly into this area so that we get consistent attendance. Can I just draw the member’s understanding to the distinction between kids being sick and therefore not being at school, kids coming from families dealing with mental health illness and who are not at school, and kids who are chronically truant. There is a difference between the surveys that have been reported today.
Tourism Industry—Reports
10. MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister of Tourism: How is the Government supporting growth in the tourism sector?
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Associate Minister of Tourism) on behalf of the Minister of Tourism: Tourism growth has been a priority for this Government. Since taking office in 2008 we have invested an unprecedented $730 million in tourism and tourism promotion, including of course the $89 million to build and maintain the cycle trails, supporting businesses through the Tourism Growth Partnership, and joint-venture marketing efforts with regional tourism organisations. Tourism, of course, makes up 4 percent of GDP, and the Minister of Tourism, of course, is doing a fantastic job at that.
Matt Doocey: What recent reports has the Minister received about the number of visitors coming to New Zealand?
Hon PAULA BENNETT: Good news for the House. For the first time ever a record 3 million visitors came to New Zealand in the past year, a 7 percent increase on the previous year’s visitor numbers.
Richard Prosser: How many of them bought houses?
Hon PAULA BENNETT: As tourists, yes—this is a tourism question. Even better is the fact that they spent a total of $8.7 billion—$8.7 billion. That is up 28 percent on the previous 12 months, with nearly half of this spent outside our major three cities.
Matt Doocey: How is the Government supporting efforts to encourage growth in overseas visitor numbers?
Hon PAULA BENNETT: This year’s Budget included $2.5 million in additional funding for Tourism New Zealand’s promotional efforts. Campaigns promoting New Zealand as an outstanding visitor destination generated 22,000 stories and reached more than 1.2 billion people globally last year. The equivalent advertising value of the media generated was approximately $490 million—more than four times the whole of Tourism New Zealand’s total annual budget. Promotional efforts are also targeting more high-spend visitors, and the 19 percent increase in average visitor spend shows that Tourism New Zealand’s work is paying off.
Children, State Care—Children’s Commissioner’s Report
11. CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston) to the Minister for Social Development: Does she agree with the statement by the Children’s Commissioner that “we don’t know if children are better off as a result of state intervention, but the indications are not good”?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): Yes. I have been concerned at the lack of data that tracks children through and beyond State care, and that is why in April I appointed an expert panel to lead a complete overhaul of New Zealand’s child protection system to ensure that we get better results for children in care and to ensure that money is invested in the areas that will make the biggest difference for those children. I also note that the Children’s Commissioner’s recommendations line up with the expert panel’s terms of reference.
Carmel Sepuloni: Does she agree with the Children’s Commissioner, who said that to develop a trained, skilled, and supported Child, Youth and Family workforce “will require considerable new investment”?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Yes. I am expecting the expert panel—and I know that it is addressing the needs of the workforce. One of the concerns that I have and that I have conveyed to the panel is that we are asking social workers to deal with increasingly complex needs of children that they are simply not qualified to deal with. We should be employing more child psychologists and, perhaps, psychiatrists, therapists, etc. So I am expecting that the expert panel will be recommending a wider range of specialist services to support our excellent social workers.
Carmel Sepuloni: Is she prepared to place that considerable investment into developing a trained, skilled, and supported Child, Youth and Family workforce; if not, will she take full responsibility for cases like the one where a child was removed from their home and then shifted an additional 60 times by Child, Youth and Family?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I do not want to get ahead of the process, and, as I said earlier in the House, the Children’s Commissioner is very supportive of the work that I am doing with an expert panel to completely redesign the Child, Youth and Family protection system. I think we should wait until we get that full business case to see where we need to invest more to get the best outcomes for those most vulnerable children in our communities.
Carmel Sepuloni: Does she agree with the Office of the Children’s Commissioner’s finding that having poorly trained care staff in residences can increase risk for both young people and staff; if not, why not?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Yes, I do agree with him.
Carmel Sepuloni: Given that she agrees with that question, and given that Child, Youth and Family’s goal is of having 100 percent registered social workers by 2015, is she happy with the fact that there are still 500 Child, Youth and Family social workers not registered; if not, will she be supporting my member’s bill, given that she has said there is nothing in it that she disagrees with—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Bring the question to a conclusion.
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: As I told that member earlier today, I will not be supporting her bill.
Hon Nanaia Mahuta: Does she agree with the Children’s Commissioner that Child, Youth and Family is particularly failing the 58 percent of children in care and 68 percent of young people in Child, Youth and Family residences who are Māori, and what will she be changing immediately to address this issue?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I think that the member needs to be careful what words she is putting in the Children’s Commissioner’s mouth. His recommendation No. 5 is about improving cultural capability. In actual fact, that was also addressed by the review that the Chief Social Worker did, and a great deal of work is already happening within Child, Youth and Family practice to make sure that every Child, Youth and Family office has that cultural capability. In addition to that, we have memorandums of understanding with five iwi, and just this month a trial of a new way of working with iwi began with Tainui. That is entitled Mokopuna Ora, and I look forward to the results of that 6-month trial.
Marama Fox: Given that answer, is the Minister able to expand on how that cultural capability can be improved in the residences and not just in the Child, Youth and Family offices?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: As I said, the review done by the Chief Social Worker, which is the work that forms a part of the internal Child, Youth and Family modernisation process, is certainly addressing all of those issues in Child, Youth and Family offices, in residences, and in youth justice facilities. Child, Youth and Family is being considerably helped with that by its relationships with iwi and the different partnerships that are being explored in terms of the way we can work together to make sure that our mokopuna and tamariki are well connected into their Māori communities and to the larger whānau.
Housing—Supply
12. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Minister for Building and Housing: Does he agree with the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank that the key problems with housing supply are “a limited supply of land ready for building; restrictive planning processes, and a lack of coordinated planning in infrastructure development”?
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing) on behalf of the Minister for Building and Housing: Yes, that is why we have a significant programme of work under way to speed up land supply and address planning and infrastructure issues. In respect of land supply, we have established 129 special housing areas across New Zealand that will yield more than 51,000 new homes. We are also reforming the Resource Management Act to provide the more long-term solution required to deal with restrictive planning processes that currently impede land available for housing.
David Seymour: Is it—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Call for a supplementary question, then I will give it. [Interruption] Supplementary question, David Seymour.
David Seymour: Is it the case that New Zealand has run out of land and that a whole generation will be confined to live in apartments over train stations?
Hon PAULA BENNETT: No, there is quite a lot of land in New Zealand and still quite a lot of land that can be used for the supply of housing, and we can see both the brownfield and greenfield developments in Auckland. I must say, though, that some of my neighbours in New Lynn are doing a pretty remarkable development down by the train station. I am equally enthused by apartment living and its opportunities, but I think the great thing about this country is that we can give people housing choices, and that means they can also have the availability of living in homes as well.
David Seymour: Does the Minister expect to see substantial reform of the Resource Management Act passed in this term?
Mr SPEAKER: The Hon Paula Bennett, in so far as there is ministerial responsibility.
Hon PAULA BENNETT: The answer unequivocally would be yes. He absolutely does think that, and we, certainly on this side of the House, understand the importance of making changes to the Resource Management Act to free up land and make that building available. It seems that we have still got a bit of work to do across the House.
Urgent Debates
Office of the Children’s Commissioner—State of Care 2015 Report
Mr SPEAKER: I have received a letter from Carmel Sepuloni seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the State of Care 2015 report on Child, Youth and Family from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. The release of the report is a particular case of recent occurrence. The report deals with Child, Youth and Family, which is the service arm of the Ministry of Social Development. The report raises many very serious concerns about the care of vulnerable children by the State. It recommends significant changes to improve outcomes for children. Having carefully considered this application and having read the report, I believe that it does require the urgent attention of the House. I therefore call on Carmel Sepuloni or an alternative member to move that the House take note of an urgent matter of public importance.
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think that we may be in new territory here. When members normally seek the leave of the House for a debate on such matters, they put their signature to it because they want to speak to it. In this case, where someone else is filling in for someone who was here earlier in the day, I think it is a little poor.
Mr SPEAKER: No, this is not the first time that this has happened. It is quite possible that a member can put in for an urgent debate, that it can be considered and a decision can be made, and that if the member is not here for any reason, it can equally be moved by somebody else.
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) on behalf of Carmel Sepuloni (Labour—Kelston): I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. The report that we have before us today is an absolute indictment, and it is only right that this House give its time and consideration to what can only be considered some of the most important issues that we have a responsibility to address as members of this Parliament. There is no statement in this report that captures the seriousness of the issues more than the statement by the Children’s Commissioner that “We don’t know if children are better off as a result of State intervention, but the indications are not good.” To hear from the representative and advocate of children in this country that we cannot even guarantee that a child who is potentially being abused and neglected and who is subject to an intervention by the State will be better off necessarily as a result of that intervention—what an absolute indictment it is on this country, that we are in this situation.
The commissioner lists a range of areas specifically where we are failing our most vulnerable, and they are our most vulnerable. More than 50 percent of these children are under the age of 10, and 5,000 of them are the care and responsibility of this State. The State is their parent. The State has become the only stable thing, which the Government has determined needs to take over so that the safety and security of those children can be assured. Yet what is happening to those children after that intervention? We have the case of one child who had up to 60 different placements. What message do you send to a child who has experienced abuse and neglect at the hands of their own family or caregivers if you then shuffle them around into up to 60 different placements? We have got records of caseworkers constantly changing and of a lack of stability, care, and support for those children—a lack of support when transitioning not only between care but also out of care. Let us remember that “out of care” in this country means to be 17 years of age. This is one of the youngest ages in the developed world at which to exit care. And even then, we are not supporting those young people. There is the horrific number of more than 100 children who are experiencing further abuse and neglect even once they are removed. What long-term hope do they have when only 20 percent of those children are then reaching National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 or higher. All of this paints a damning picture not only for the State but also for the children who are experiencing this.
It is true to say that we have had issues arise before in an area such as this, where you have wickedly complex problems. Labour members had to deal with this when they came to office in 1999, and what did they do? Straight away we recognised the under-funding and under-resourcing of the department. We increased the baseline funding for that department by more than 50 percent. I will say that again: when Labour last took office, we increased support for baseline funding for Child, Youth and Family Services by more than 50 percent. But even then, as the years went on, we recognised that we needed to do more, particularly with the workforce. We undertook a baseline review. That piece of work was completed by the Hon Ruth Dyson. And before that, we also made sure that we started the registering of social workers, and now we say that it is time that that becomes mandatory. We improved relationships with the community sector, and our 10-month baseline review resulted in $111 million in operational spending going into Child, Youth and Family Services. Why? Because it did not have the resources that it needed in order to do its job.
When that happens, you have got to have the courage to stand up and acknowledge that you are in Government, and that is what we are calling on this Government to do. As much as the Minister for Social Development stands up and says “We can’t just throw money at the problem.”, well, Minister, the last time that we looked at whether this department was sufficiently resourced was 13 years ago. The last time that a baseline review was done of Child, Youth and Family was 13 years ago, and a lot has changed since then. Reviewing these issues again is not “chucking money at an issue”; it is good practice to check whether your social workers have the support that they need to do the work that they are doing.
What has changed? We do not have a static picture when it comes to vulnerable children in New Zealand. Let us just look at the numbers. During the year to 30 June 2014, Child, Youth and Family received 146,657 notifications of possible abuse or neglect—146,657. That is enormous. That is 17 percent higher than just 5 years ago—80,000 notifications were made back then. That is just a massive increase in a short space of time. The Minister will claim that not all of those notifications are substantiated, that we might have false reporting, and that it is just a case of more people knowing about the vulnerability of children. Some of that will be true in part, but not all of it. In fact, we know that roughly a third of those notifications are coming from police, who know that those children are witnessing domestic violence, and we know the impact that that is having on those children.
We also know from the police that a lot of those notifications are in fact substantiated. In fact, the recorded number of cases where children have been abused has gone up to 5,397 offences. That figure is 56 percent higher than it was in 2009. So in that short space of time, the workload on Child, Youth and Family and the increase in harm against children has absolutely been documented. And what has happened to staff? What have we done to make sure that they are able to cope with those dramatic jumps? How many more social workers would you expect to be dealing with 66,000 more notifications in 5 years? How many more staff? Well, in that short space of time, there have been 76 new fieldworkers—76 new fieldworkers. Crudely, that is 877 cases per new social worker. That is phenomenal. There is no way anyone in this House can claim that that is sufficient to deal with the extra demand that this department is dealing with.
Yes, some issues in Child, Youth and Family have cut across Governments—absolutely; there is no denying it. But there is no denying that right now, in the period of time that this Minister in this Government has had responsibility for, the changes to Child, Youth and Family have been enormous. The Children’s Commissioner put it like this: “The ability of CYF’s current workforce to improve the outcomes experienced by children in the care system is constrained in various ways: limited resources, high caseloads … and the need to invest in training …”. The Minister cannot put her head in the sand. She must support her department as part of answering these issues. I wonder whether the Minister could, in fact, respond even to the body who represents social workers, when they said, and I quote from the Public Service Association: “The Government must address these issues of underfunding and capability, otherwise there will be no improvement for those most in need.”
I do not want to hear a contribution from the Minister that says that chucking money at this problem is not the answer. No one has said to chuck money at anything. We said: “Invest in the people that you have charge of. Make sure that they are equipped to do the job.” It is a hard job, and at the moment, all of the indications are that the cracks are showing in what they are having to deal with. No one knows this better than the Children’s Commissioner. Even he has had static funding, so much so that he has closed his Auckland office. He cannot do an annual visit to all of the residences that he is meant to monitor—that has moved to every 18 months. He is struggling under the weight of an under-investment in this sector. He will not say it, so we will say it on his behalf.
The one area that the Children’s Commissioner has said that Child, Youth and Family is doing a good job at focusing on is that first intervention—the moment when it is first told that there is a potential issue with the safety of a child. In fact, this is how he states it: “Our analysis is that Child, Youth and Family is very focused on keeping children safe and managing the intake and assessment processes at entry to the system.” I will say that again—at entry to the system. He said: “They’ve lost sight of what children need while in care and what they need to receive to ensure they thrive once they’ve left. That concerns me.” That beginning is incredibly important. It is the triage phase. It is the point where we make sure that a child is not in immediate danger. Interestingly, it is also where the political risk exists. As Social Service Providers Aotearoa stated in its response to the report: “CYF’s staff are extraordinarily challenged by the dual expectations of managing both political risk and the risk of abuse to children.”
Very few social workers ever speak out of turn—they are very professional. But I will never forget when I had a Child, Youth and Family social worker who retired and came to see me and said that they are required to keep a political risk register—not a register of harm to children, not a register of risk to family; a political risk register. We all have to take responsibility when a department starts focusing on politics instead of focusing on children. That is an absolute indictment, and it is part of the problem. It is part of what must change if we are to focus on outcomes for kids.
What have we lost sight of? The Children’s Commissioner put it clearly: transition into placements, support for caregivers, and focus on residential care. I want to touch on residential care. The Minister knows that she has had problems with residential care—that is, Children, Youth and Family residences, including youth justice residences run by the department. How do I know that? I have Official Information Act information to prove it. I have never used these statistics in the House, or anywhere in fact, but there is a youth justice facility in Christchurch that the Minister has been briefed on almost continually for a couple of years. And why? Because, based on the Official Information Act information that I received, that facility had more than 600 dangerous incidents between July 2014 and April this year.
Hon Nanaia Mahuta: How many?
JACINDA ARDERN: I will say that again. Between July 2014 and April this year, a Christchurch-run Child, Youth and Family facility had more than 600 recorded serious incidents, including serious assaults, drug use, and self-harm. The police have been called to the centre numerous times, and in the past 2 years, as the Children’s Commissioner pointed out as part of the problem, it has had 16 temporary staff and five different residential managers. I have briefings that show that the Government knew about the problems at this residence, and, indeed, it knows about the problems within Child, Youth and Family more broadly. What have we had from that Government in response to these kinds of issues? We have had a white paper, we have had a green paper, and we have got a Children’s Action Plan. The Minister places a lot of weight on children’s teams, for instance. Apparently they are going to help 20,000 kids. Where is that resource going to come from? I will tell you where—from Family Start. The Minister is reprioritising resources that are already in the field of early intervention and is shifting them to her new action plan.
That whole exercise had the goodwill of the community sector behind it, but it did not address the core issues. What we should be looking at is putting children at the heart of all of the decisions that we make around them. We should be focusing on early intervention. This means that Ministers and the Government will have to look at deprivation, poverty, and inequality in our communities. That is at the heart of many of these issues that we are dealing with. It needs to join interventions in the home and continuity of care back together, because they have been separated. It needs to focus on ensuring that its department is resourced properly, trained properly, and supported properly. It needs to guarantee that it will not privatise the bits of the system that it is scared are falling over and causing accountability issues for it. We have all heard rumours about Serco sniffing around youth justice facilities. We need the Minister to rule out that that will be her answer and her way of getting this issue off her plate.
What we also need to do is ensure that young people who are in care and protection right now—the kids who are in the facilities, the kids who are in care, and the kids who are in foster care—are used in order to come up with the answers. They should be part of this discussion. Not only did the Minister’s expert advisory panel not even include a social worker but also it did not include a young person who knows care and protection better than anyone, and those are the kids who are in it.
Labour will use those voices. Labour will use the voices of social workers. Labour will use the community sector that works in this space. Only collaboratively will we come up with solutions, and that includes Māori and Pasifika as well. Yes, some of these issues go beyond just the past 7 years, but this report absolutely has to be taken on board by this Government, and responsibility has to be taken by this Government right now to repair the damage that has been done to children’s lives. We should expect no less.
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): As the Minister for Social Development I welcome the release of this report, and I thank the Children’s Commissioner and the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. I know that a great deal of work has been put into it. I have said publicly that it makes for pretty grim reading, and I stand by that, but it is not news to me. In fact, over the last almost 12 months since I have been the Minister I have had reports from the Children’s Commissioner as he has been out and about, doing the job that we task him to do—inspecting residences and family homes. I have met with him, and we have talked about a number of the issues that he has raised in the report we are debating today. One of the reasons I welcome his report is that the report itself highlights the concerns that led to my decision earlier this year to appoint an expert panel to lead a complete revamp of the Child, Youth and Family Service, and I have said that earlier in the House.
We have had 14 reviews of Child, Youth and Family over the years. Some changes have been made, a large amount of money has been put in, and extra social workers have been added, but at the core of it the experience of young people in care has not changed significantly. I say that because although we do not have the data to show that—and that in itself is a concern—I have had 3 years as the Minister of Police and as the Minister of Corrections, and I know that almost 70 percent of the people in our prisons have had contact with Child, Youth and Family. I think that that is a terrible indictment on a system that is supposed to protect the most vulnerable children in our communities. It takes those children out of their families to keep them safe, and then does not give them better lives. I think the most important work I will do as a Minister is change that system, so that we can all be proud of a child protection system that indeed protects our most vulnerable children and gives them better lives when the State steps in and takes them from their families.
Before I go to the recommendations from the Children’s Commissioner, can I just say to the House that there are no quick fixes here. That is why I say that chucking a bit more money in and throwing in a few more staff is not going to make the systemic changes that we need to make. So it is not going to happen overnight, but by the end of this year the expert panel that I have appointed, working with a team of up to 50 people drawn from across the Government agencies, will have designed a new system to be put in place for Child, Youth and Family. There may well be legislative changes that will come to this House next year, but we are determined to make sure that we redesign the system, resource it properly, and focus it properly on what is most important in the system—that is, the children.
I come to the recommendations of the Children’s Commissioner. His first recommendation is that we set clear expectations. I have to say that when I first became the Minister, the agency was already working on a modernisation programme. One of the very first queries I had of it was as to whether it really did understand its core business. If you look at the terms of reference that I have given to the expert panel, that is front and centre: what is the core purpose of Child, Youth and Family? I was delighted to see that the Children’s Commissioner had set that as his No. 1 recommendation: clear expectations, child-centred practice, and a direction for Child, Youth and Family, and then he outlines some particular parts of that.
Recommendation No. 2 is that the service be fully child-centred. I have set up, as part of this process, an advisory group of eight young people aged between 15 and 23 who have experienced State care. They are amazing young people. There are incredibly heart-rending stories that they tell of their experiences. Some stories are good and a lot are not so good, yet they have come through that process and are prepared to get involved with redesigning a system that is about them—it is about them, their siblings, their families, and the children who come after them. That is what I saw in Europe when I went there earlier this year to have to a look at what other jurisdictions are doing. That was one of the key things that I noticed we were not doing here. We talked a lot about having a child-centred system, but the way it was operating was all about processes.
The Chief Social Worker’s review showed that our front-line social workers were spending less than 15 percent of their time face to face with children and more than 50 percent of their time with paperwork. That told me that our system was not child-centric. We talk about it but it was not so in practice. I was determined that we were going to have that in our system, so there were two things that I did. First, I brought out a man from Scotland to be part of that expert panel. Duncan Dunlop is the chief executive for an organisation in Scotland called Who Cares? Scotland, which is an agency that is independent of the Government and works on behalf of, and with, children who have been in State care. It lobbies the Government. It lobbied the Scottish Parliament to lift the age at which children need to be supported while they are in State care to 21, and it is going for a maximum age of 25. It provides activities and identity for children who have been in State care.
So in order to ensure that we have those children at the heart of whatever system we redesign, I asked Duncan Dunlop to be part of that expert panel. When I talk to his fellow panel members, that is what he has been driving. We have made good use of him. He has been up and down New Zealand, meeting and talking with young people, caregivers, and organisations that are working with these children, and talking about that. So I am confident that we will end up with a system that will be child-centred.
Recommendation No. 3 is that we invest in children in care placements. Again, this was something I saw in other jurisdictions. We increasingly have children with high and complex needs that are not currently being well supported in foster care places, simply because those foster care parents, even though they are well-intentioned, do not have the support and certainly do not, in many cases, have the skills. We need think to carefully about those placements. The children themselves tell us that.
I had a young girl tell me that she and her sister were taken into care. Her sister was very disabled both intellectually and physically, and although they were put into care together it became very obvious very quickly that the foster parents could not cope, particularly with the really disabled sister. There is a good news story, in part, with those two, because even though they were separated, the young disabled sister is getting very good care. The sad part of the story is that they have not talked to one another, seen one another, or been in contact with one another for something like 7 or 8 years. So we do need to be very careful about the in-care placements and we need to invest in those properly.
One of the concerns that I have is whether we are putting children back into some very financially stressed families who are unable to cope, so that another placement happens, and that churn is what the children talked to us about. They are being pushed from pillar to post, and all they really want—what they tell me they want—is that the first placement is the best placement, the right fit for them, so that they can settle down and get on with their lives.
Recommendation No. 4 is about addressing capacity and capability issues. We talked about that earlier in the House. The Chief Social Worker is leading an internal process around the ongoing development of good practice and the sharing of good practice around the country. In addition to that we do need to look at the support that we give to our social workers. I have been around the country and talked to Child, Youth and Family staff, and they desperately need the support of some of those specialist services—the child psychologists, the therapists, the cognitive development help. They need all those specialist services to deal with the traumas and the complex needs of these children.
Recommendation No. 5 is about improving cultural capability. I think I talked in question time today about the considerable work that is happening. Fifty-seven percent of the children whom Child, Youth and Family works with are Māori. When you talk to the children you find that their cultural identity is important. They want a connection with their hapū and their whānau. They want to know that they have a place that they can identify with, which tells them who they are, and there is a lot of work happening there.
Recommendation No. 6 is the classic. If we do not have good data about what happens to these children, how can we learn from their experiences? There is not good data. I have been amazed as a Minister at the paucity of data on what happens to children whilst they are in State care, and that will be changed. I welcome the really good emphasis that the Children’s Commissioner has put on that. We need to monitor the health and the education progress of these children. We need to know whether they are doing well at school so that we can put in the extra resources. I have stood in this House and talked about national standards for all kids in education. Well, it is even more important that at an early stage we follow what is happening for these children and what extra help they are going to need.
Finally, there is recommendation No. 7. It deals with setting clear expectations for other State agencies. I am delighted to tell this House that I have already begun talking with my colleagues in the social sector, in education, in health, and in justice, and we are all determined that we are going to work together to make sure that these children, the most vulnerable children in our community, get top priority, get the resources they need, and get the opportunities they need, and deserve, to live full and successful lives.
This is a good report from the Children’s Commissioner. I welcome it as part of the major piece of work that this Government is doing to ensure that we treat every child who comes into State care as if they were our own.
JAN LOGIE (Green): The Green Party wants to see children at the heart of all our decision making, so in this report, although it was not an entire surprise, it was nevertheless shocking to read of the experiences of young people within our collective care. Although I do hold this Government and, potentially, Governments before it, responsible, I do see the fact that these children are in State care, which is our care. We all have a duty to ensure those children are safe.
I have heard from the Minister for Social Development today that she has been reading the 14 reviews that have taken place, that there has been more funding put in—$23 million, even though the Ministry of Social Development last year indicated it needed $60 million—and that she has put more staff in, even though the caseloads and notifications have increased by 67,000 and the increase in the number of staff is only 76.
You could listen to her without hearing the other side of the evidence and think: “That’s reasonable. They care. They’re doing the work. They’re looking at this in the long-term interests of the country.” But then you come back to the question: is the investment matching the need? And the answer is no. Is the Minister treating this with any urgency? The answer is no. Despite what the Minister has said, we have had clearly written in here a message from the Children’s Commissioner that waiting on the Child, Youth and Family review and for the children’s teams will leave the children now in care without a structure to ensure their safety.
It was not a comment solely about the data, despite what the Minister said, because the Children’s Commissioner said: “Do we know whether children who are being lifted out of really dangerous situations”—and believe me, as somebody who understands that domestic violence is not even a threshold for a Child, Youth and Family intervention, how difficult and extreme this situation must be for Child, Youth and Family to take a child into its care. For the Children’s Commissioner to say he cannot even guarantee that children in care are safer than they would have been in that initial situation, and the indications are not good that they are safer, is an absolute indictment of a systemic failure in child protection in this country. I believe that that kind of information requires a really strong and urgent response from the Minister, not for her to say: “Well, the Children’s Commissioner thinks we’re doing a great job.”
The Children’s Commissioner has evaluated and looked at what is happening and has said that what is in train now will not protect those children in care now. That, to me, indicates we need a degree of more urgent action and at least an urgent review around the placement process that is happening now. I know the Minister is doing a Child, Youth and Family review and that the announcements are going to happen around that, but that is a different thing. When we are hearing from the Children’s Commissioner as well that we cannot guarantee children are better off and he is saying that there is a culture of “dump and run”—I know many people are interpreting that as a criticism of the staff within Child Youth and Family. I did not read this report in that context. I read this report as saying that where the resources are going in, at the assessment stage, is where the political risk is, and I think that point has been made in the House already.
So for the social workers, as well-intentioned as they may be in wanting to stay in contact and ensure that those children, once they are in a placement, are safe and that the family who is looking after them also has the resources to be able to bond with them, adequately care for them, and help them to have a better future, there is just simply not the resource. Therefore, because of the funding structure and the systems within Child, Youth and Family, this has resulted in a “dump and run” culture. That makes sense, considering how short-staffed we know the Child, Youth and Family social workers are.
The workload and casework review that was done by the Office of the Chief Social Worker in May of last year told us many of the same issues. It clearly said that we needed, in the short term, to change the expectations and clarify the expectations of social workers. Now we are hearing from the Minister, over a year on, that this Child, Youth and Family review panel, which includes one social worker, I think, from overseas—not one domestic social worker and not one person who works as a Māori social worker—is going to come up with a rework of the system. Yes, part of that will be expectations. This is over a year later, and these people do not have the expertise that is grounded in the experience of this country. It does not stack up. It is not good enough, basically.
When we read the words—I do want to take it back to some of the particular value I found in the Children’s Commissioner’s report, the voices of the young people themselves, and really highlight the urgency of this. There was an example from a participant in one of their youth voices workshops. They talked about the highs of having been in care as having got a job, got a car, they went flatting, and they raised their dog. That was out of the long-term outcomes for them. The lows were abuse at home; sexual, physical, and verbal abuse in foster homes; going from home to home to home; being separated from their twin; shit social workers who never listened or followed through with promises; constant change; Bible-bashers; being expelled from school; going on the run; depression; drugs; police anger-management courses; and alcohol. This is the experience of a child in our collective care. That is how we have looked after a child in our care.
When we asked the Minister earlier today whether she would rule out the privatisation of any child protection services, she did not. My real fear is that this Government has been running down Child, Youth and Family services and has consciously not invested what it is told needs to be invested—that is on the record—that it has seen this organisation under such pressure because of the Government’s policy and funding decisions, and that now it is going to do what it is doing to Housing New Zealand, and say: “Look at the state of our children. Look at the state of our houses. We can’t deal with this collectively. We will have to open up the opportunity for a business.”
I too have heard the rumours about Serco and youth residential services—looking at that as an option. I do remind this House of Serco’s international track record, including having children behind bars in detention camps in Australia and the very clear harm that we are seeing in our prisons being managed by Serco.
It is important that we take responsibility as a country for the welfare of these children, and that means we need to ensure these services stay within our collective control. That means they need to be provided by the State, because that is the most direct mechanism for us to ensure the quality of services. Once something is privatised and provided by a business, it is much harder for us as a country to have oversight. It is much harder for us to ensure that that profit-making motive does not undermine the fundamental care of our children.
I will finish by again reminding the House that this is urgent. This is about the 5,000 children—a number the size of a small town—who are currently in our collective care, whom we cannot guarantee are safe.
DARROCH BALL (NZ First): I believe that this is one of the most important debates we have had in a while in this House, because I do not believe that there is anything more important than ensuring the safety of our most vulnerable children. That is up there as priority No. 1.
What I am going to do is actually go through a few of the numbers that fall out of the report. What those numbers do is actually give a cold, hard, sobering slap in the face about what is actually happening with the real people out there on the ground. Also, I have got a few articles here that will give a little bit of commentary on the issues that fall out of it, and most of those issues New Zealand First has with this entire review.
So I would like to start off first, actually, with the front page of the New Zealand Herald. The first two words are quite apt. It says “Our shame”. If the Minister has not read this article—I am sure that she has—she needs to read only those two words in the headline, and that is the position that we are taking. We should be ashamed of where we are right now.
David Seymour: You should be.
DARROCH BALL: Mr Seymour may want to make a joke of this. You may want to giggle and laugh over there, but this is quite serious. What I am going to do is read to Mr Seymour four numbers, and we will see if he is laughing after that. One hundred and seventeen—that is the number of children who were abused last year in the care of Child, Youth and Family services. Sixty—the system is so stretched that children have had upwards of 20, 40, and, in one case, over 60 care placements. Is that winning or is that failing, Mr Seymour? Fifty-eight—Māori make up a growing share of all children in care, up from 52 percent in 2010 to 58 percent in 2013 and 2014. The last number here is 5,133—the number of children who were in State care last year. One-third of them were unhappy at not seeing their families.
What it says there is that it is a startling figure. Well, not according to the Minister for Social Development. The Minister says this has been happening for quite a long time and that this is not news. The Minister said that it makes for pretty poor reading or pretty bad reading—
Hon Anne Tolley: Grim—“grim” was the word.
DARROCH BALL: —grim reading—but this has been occurring for a while. This is New Zealand First’s perspective. This is the problem that we have got. This has been happening for the entire time that the Government has been in power, and it has not reacted to any of the situations that have occurred throughout the entire 7 years. That was the basis of the questions that I had in the House today, which the Minister could not answer.
What has happened so far—the Minister has mentioned the 14 reviews, actions, or papers that successive Governments have gone through. But, actually, since 2011 there have been 10 papers, reviews, or actions that the Government has taken or attempted to undertake to deal with Child, Youth and Family services. In 2011 there was a green paper on vulnerable children that was released.
In 2012 the Children’s Commissioner announced the formation of the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty. Again in 2012, the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children submissions were released. We had Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty options. We had a White Paper for Vulnerable Children and the Children’s Action Plan, which was released in 2012. Again, we had the final report of the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty.
Moving on to 2013, we had the Government’s response to the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty. In 2014 we had the Children’s Action Plan, children’s teams, and the Vulnerable Children Act. Now we have an independent panel established to review the Child, Youth and Family services. Well, the question that we have is: when is this going to stop? Let us get one thing straight: the Minister is talking about a complete overhaul of Child, Youth and Family services, but what this is—we are waiting until December for just the review, so that then the Minister and the Government can have a look at the review and decide from there what is going to start happening.
On The Paul Henry Show this morning, actually, the Children’s Commissioner was asked how many children will be abused between now and December. It is around 50. What the questions in the House from Labour, from the Greens, and from New Zealand First were asking was what the Minister is going to do to help the children who are in care of Child, Youth and Family services right now, whom the Children’s Commissioner has highlighted as the issue.
The Minister refused to put any more investment in, to put any more money in—
Hon Anne Tolley: Not true. We’ve got a whole lot of money in the Budget.
DARROCH BALL: —and to look at what the solutions are. We could talk about the Budget, but the Budget is not working. The Budget is not working. It has not worked. It has not worked over the last 7 years—it has not worked over the last 7 years.
David Seymour: The member’s confused.
DARROCH BALL: Oh, I am not confused, Mr Seymour. The white paper and the green paper in 2011 and 2012, as New Zealand First is saying, has been an absolute waste of time. In fact, it is an absolute schmozzle. The Children’s Action Plan responds to the white paper, and is based on nearly 10,000 submissions sent in on the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children. And part of that is that it was showing—this was back in 2011—that best practice kept children safe from harm. That was back in 2011 and 2010.
So what has happened between 2010 and 2011 and now? Nothing has happened. Of course there needs to be an overhaul of Child, Youth and Family services. There needs to be a detailed review of what has happened, and we need to have a look at it and we need to be putting investment into it. We need to prioritise things.
Hon Anne Tolley: That’s what I’m doing. Isn’t that what I’m doing?
DARROCH BALL: Why has that not happened? Why has it not happened? This is the question that New Zealand First has. Why has it not happened? Why has it taken this long? Why has it not happened? Why is it taking this long—7 years? The Minister stood up in the House today during question time and said that she wants to put the vulnerable children at the heart of State care and make sure that the safety of these kids is a priority. Well, why has it taken 7 years? That is the question that needs to be answered—that is the question that needs to be answered.
One of the other things that have been mentioned, also, is the possibility of privatisation. There is no doubt that that is absolutely an option on the Minister’s table at the moment, because I have asked the Minister twice whether she can absolutely guarantee ruling out privatisation of the social services sector and using companies like Serco, which she answered questions on and was quite positive about before the whole Department of Corrections debacle occurred. So that is one of the concerns from New Zealand First, also.
I have also got a statement here from the chief executive of the Ministry of Social Development. What this shows is a chronic underfunding of the social services sector. This is just a manifestation of its underfunding. It states here—this was on 27 May 2014—that he said that “We’ve seen a six-fold increase in notifications into Child, Youth and Family in recent years. … The pressure of this demand is considerable and right now Child, Youth and Family holds the lion’s share of responsibility for what happens to these kids.”
The reaction from the Minister to that statement from chief executive Brendan Boyle was to come up with an idea called the children’s teams. I have asked the Minister in the Social Services Committee what extra funding these children’s teams will have, and the answer is zero. The Minister said that there would be no extra work for the NGOs involved in these children’s teams, so I actually went out and asked the NGOs themselves what they thought of the proposed children’s teams.
The thing that they said to me was that the only thing it was going to achieve was to have more hoops to jump through and more bureaucracy, and that will act as limitation. It will act as a limitation to what their job already is. It is not accounting for any more work that they could do, for example, with children. All it does is it shifts, and if it shifts that means that it leaves some children out.
I just want to finish this by reiterating what New Zealand First’s concerns are. This has been happening, and occurring, and a problem, and an issue for this country for years. The Government cannot sit there, and the Minister cannot sit there, and say: “This is the saviour. This is the solution. We are doing a good thing for the country.” when it has taken 7 years for this Government—which has been in power—to react. It has taken too long.
ALFRED NGARO (National): I rise to take a call in this urgent debate in regard to the State of Care 2015 report by the Children’s Commissioner, and one of the things I would like to declare is my conflict of interest in the sense that I have previously been part of many of those reviews. So when they have talked about 14 reviews, I have actually been part of some of those 14 reviews, all the way back to Pūao-te-ata-tū. We also know about the baseline review. There were many—the Mick Brown report—that talked about the sector.
So I want to just say that out of that whole speech, Mr Ball, the one point that I absolutely agree with you on is that this has been happening for a very long time. Let us not take away from that fact. This is not a new issue. The issue of abuse and neglect of our children, whether in custody or in care, has been an issue for some time. It has perplexed and challenged many Governments and many institutions, so I do not think it is the right thing to turn round and to actually blame just this Government for what it has been doing. I think the challenge is, however, the responsibility of whoever is in Government to be actually held to account for what it is that they are doing. That is absolutely right, and that is the right thing for us to be able to do. So this report, the Children’s Commissioner’s report, does that.
But in particular, I want to say that the focus of this report is around children, young persons, and their families. The reason I make that point is that we have just had some comments from the previous speaker, Darroch Ball, about the green paper, the White Paper for Vulnerable Children, and all of the initiatives that have come out of that. Those forms of consultation and engagement with the whole of the sector were for the whole sector. Those initiatives, if the member wants to look through them, were about not just engaging; they were statutory roles and responsibilities—that is, children, young persons, and their families. It is about those who are community providers, it is about those in local government, and it is about those who are actually in the community delivering services. It is the whole of the community and the whole of the sector, so those still stand as initiatives, so that all of the issues of concern are raised by the whole sector.
So I do not think it is appropriate to actually bring those initiatives up to hold us to account. They hold us to account at the moment. The green paper, the White Paper—the actions that have come out of those are the Vulnerable Children Act and also the children’s teams. We know that those initiatives are currently in play as we speak, at this moment. So those are put to the side. What I will address, then, is the issue in this report, which is to hold to account the statutory roles and responsibilities that are part of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act.
The first thing that I want to state, as has been stated by the Minister, is that we welcome this report. We do not shy away from it, we do not turn round and hide from it; in fact, it is this sort of report that is important because it will hold us to account as to the direction and the vision of both the Minister and of the Government and our intent to address this very key issue.
One of the points that was put up by Jan Logie was about the sense of urgency about this. In fact, she attacked the Government, saying there was not enough urgency about this and, in particular, about some of those recommendations. It is quite clear that when we talk about the current report—people keep using it as a review. We know that there have been 14 different reviews. At the moment there is not a review that has been commissioned and initiated by the Minister or by the Government; it is called an overhaul. Here is the difference: a review is when you will go out and you survey, you will research, you will talk about things, and you will come back and you will look at some recommendations. An overhaul—and, coming from a trade, OK, it is like when you want to overhaul a car, right? You do not just turn around and sit and talk about it and analyse it; you get on with the business of taking it apart and putting it back together so that it actually works as it has been intended to. That is what an overhaul is about.
What this Government is doing and what this Minister is doing is commissioning an overhaul. It started, by the way, in 2014—last year. The conversation began then. Then it was sent to Cabinet to get approval and was initiated at the beginning of this year, prior to this report. So I can actually, absolutely, say with confidence that this Minister and this Government have commissioned that initiative—not of a review; not another one to add to the 14 and make it 15. It is called an overhaul. It is a practical application to look at how we need to fix what has been put wrong. We know that is what is happening there, so we think that is absolutely important as well.
The other point that I want to talk about is the seven recommendations. There are seven recommendations here. Again, I want to reiterate that, actually, these recommendations have already been taken up and have already been addressed by the expert independent panel. This expert independent panel has already been looking at these. So what the report does is it actually validates the initiative, the conversation, and also the recommendations that are already coming out of the independent panel work that is happening at the moment.
In the report, when one looks at the opening remarks, there is a whakataukī that has been quoted by the Children’s Commissioner, Dr Russell Wills. He simply states this: “This whakatauki urges us to let the uniqueness of the child guide our work.” In other words, it is the voice of the children, the concerns of the children, and the thoughts of the children, so that they would be included. Again, I want to state that the Minister has already had an independent youth panel of children and young people from the ages of 15 to 23, who are already out there looking at the way that we engage in the panel and in the organisation of the Child, Youth and Family Service—that is already happening. So what we want to say is that we welcome this report because it confirms the direction and the initiation of things that are happening.
Here is one of the things that came out of those conversations with those young people: what do they desire most? They most desire being someone in a place of belonging, where they have a connection and a sense of safety and well-being. That is what they desire most. The whakataukī here from Dr Russell Wills is leading and guiding the direction of the work that is already happening—again, it is not a review, but an overhaul of the system—so it truly does meet the concerns that have been raised. We think that is really important.
I also just want to engage in regard to the investment in this. There were some comments that were made by Mr Ball in regard to the fact that we are not putting in enough money. Can I say this: having been part of the system previously—as I have declared, my conflict of interest—having been a practitioner in an NGO service that provided the very services, whether they were parenting or family services, and having worked in areas of abuse and with the vulnerable in our community, I say that the issues are not just about more resources. Actually, it is not just about more money. The resource issue is important, but what is just as important is the ability of those who are practitioners at the front line and the ability to allow the system to be flexible enough to deal with the complexities of the issues that are there. Those are just as important.
Just to prove to that member Darroch Ball and others out there who may say that this Government and this Minister is not taking this matter urgently—and again, this was in the 2015 Budget—prior to this report, $90 million of extra funds were put in; $90 million.
Darroch Ball: Why wasn’t it in the 2009 Budget, then?
ALFRED NGARO: Mr Ball, you may want to hear this. In fact, I could even actually give you the Budget. You may not have read the Budget, Mr Ball, but I guarantee to the public who are out there listening to this debate that they can have confidence that there has been an extra $90 million that was put into the baseline funding to ensure that those services are also adequately resourced for what they need to have.
So let us summarise that. First of all, we have got an overhaul of the system happening. We think that is important. Secondly, we know that seven of the recommendations—in fact, there are only seven; but all seven of those recommendations—have already been taken up by the independent review panel. Thirdly, we know that the voice of the children is factored into this whole process. Why? Because there is a youth panel. It is not just talk; there is actually a youth panel of 15 to 23-year-olds who have been factored into this report. And, finally, we also have an extra resource of $90 million. Prior to this report, that resource had already been invested to ensure that our children and our young people are cared for.
We do take this seriously, in answer to what Mr Ball said. We do take this seriously and we know that this is not just words; this is about actions. I want to remind the House of this: this is not a day to turn round and to blame the Government; this is about taking action out of concern for the issues that are here. I commend the actions of the Minister and I commend the vision of this Government to ensure that we address and deal with the most vulnerable.
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato): It gives me great pleasure to be able to make a contribution to this particular debate. I join with other members of Parliament in congratulating the Children’s Commissioner on releasing a very sobering report about the state of care in New Zealand. I do not think that any family or community is immune from knowing some of the most difficult and challenging issues confronting some of the most vulnerable families in our country, but it was not until I got to this part of the report that I got a real sense of how desperate the need is to do something more with Child, Youth and Family and with the legislation that it operates under, and, more important, to enable communities to respond in a real way that can address those most difficult issues. When the commissioner said today that we do not know whether children are better off as a result of State intervention but that the implications are not good, how can we but sit up and say that more must be done?
I absolutely agree with the Minister: there are no quick fixes; this will take some time. But what are the critical things that could happen now that could make a fundamental difference? We understand that those children in care deserve our attention now to ensure that they do not get sucked through the pipeline that will mean that they will end up in youth justice facilities, that will mean that they will end up without an education, and that will mean that they will end up in our prison system with no hope at all. We cannot let that happen, so there are some immediate priorities that must be addressed, recognising that a review is taking place and recognising that the Minister is trying to initiate some change at the grassroots level. Here is where the rubber hits the road for many community service organisations that are in this space now and that are trying to ensure that no more children get into a system that is already broken—get into a system that is already broken.
I do not accept that this issue is not about resource, because I hazard a guess that the Minister has a number of contracts that are actually operating in this particular space on her desk right now ready to be renewed or turned over. The challenge at a community level is whether we have got the networks of support right to be able to intervene in the vulnerable risk end of the spectrum, where intervention is needed now. I am not sure whether or not the Ministry of Social Development is providing the type of advice that could help those decisions to prevent children getting into the system so that the major amount of attention can go into fixing what we know is broken—Child, Youth and Family. I am concerned about that.
The other thing is that we did hear a number of members in the House talking about the ministerial decisions that are currently under way. We all know that when services are picking up vulnerable children, it is actually through the way that they are able to share information so that you are able to red flag all the way through the system that things are happening here. When Plunket goes into a household and recognises something, does that particular service have the ability to red flag across a range of providers that there is something happening in this family? They are not saying that it requires legislative intervention, but they are saying that there is something happening—“Five Eyes”. All the reports that I hear back from good social service providers say that although they are picking up vulnerabilities, the ability to share critical information so that other interventions can take place is a little bit clunky, and in order to ensure that it can happen, we really have got to put some attention there, because the legislative obligation of Child, Youth and Family actually makes it far more difficult to have the type of necessary preventive responsive support for those who are most vulnerable.
How do I know this? Because I have sat in on family group conferences. Oh my gosh! You know, when families are asked “What is the solution here? What can we do?”, often in some communities there is not actually the service provision supports able to direct families into areas. The other thing is that I have been in a situation where a grandparent has intervened and has picked children from their wider whānau because they do not want their mokopuna sucked into the system. But do you know what? Once those children transfer over to the grandparents, Child, Youth and Family steps back, and the grandparents are trying to scramble with the Ministry of Social Development, saying: “Well, what am I entitled to to be able to look after these mokopuna?”. They do not want them to go into the State system. They want to be able to look after them, but all they have got is the pension. And what is happening with these kids? These are some real-time examples, Minister, that I know that you are aware of, but I know that the system does not allow for the level of responsiveness that is required if we want to ensure that more children are in whānau care.
It is a worry to me, Minister, that 58 percent of children in care and 68 percent of young people in Child, Youth and Family residences are Māori. It tells a very chilling story. Many of us in the House know how complicated whānau lives are at the moment. There are a lot of whānau living in blended situations—multiple relationships, with a number of children in the household. There are a number of sole-parent households, a number of households where one of the parents is incarcerated, and a number of households where the impact of financial problems, drug and alcohol abuse, and all of that cause all these vulnerabilities that start to impact on those most vulnerable in our society—the children. And who picks it up? The schools. They will know pretty quickly whether or not there are some things happening at home that need to be addressed. Nothing can happen in terms of the learning environment of a child unless all of those other vulnerabilities are responded to. Social Workers in Schools helped to make some of the change, but the Minister said herself that more dynamic settings are required in today’s society, with all these complexities, to be able to respond to the needs of children. I agree with that, and I do believe that schools are a place to start. However, again, not enough is happening. Not enough is happening for these particular children.
I want to pick up on a point that Alfred Ngaro raised with regard to Pūao-te-ata-tū. That really sits on and is underpinned by the cultural responsiveness recommendation path that the Children’s Commissioner is, I think, leading the Minister for Social Development’s thoughts down. If iwi are in a position to be able to provide an integrated support system that can work alongside the providers, the schools, the kōhanga reo, and the early childhood centres, as well as those State agencies, to be able to ensure that children do not get sucked into “the system” and are able to lead full and positive lives within their whānau setting, then actually that should be embraced. That should be supported. The question I have, which I have asked before of the Minister, is: what type of alignment is being envisaged with regard to Whānau Ora? Some of the very best elements of Whānau Ora that are working have got good integrated models here. I am a little bit concerned that perhaps the situation is that Whānau Ora is operating in isolation from some of the very necessary work that is happening in this particular space.
Minister, there does need to be legislative change—there does need to be legislative change to the extent that will ensure that more of the focus goes into the preventative end, and then the statutory end is for only those most severe cases, knowing that we are trying to stem the pipeline of actually opening the doors of kids getting in to Child, Youth and Family. It concerns me so much when I hear in neonatal intensive care unit centres—certainly in my own area—that there is an absolute fear of young parents who are having children. Then they get somebody snooping around to say: “Oh, gosh. Here is a young Māori parent. They are vulnerable. They might get reported and their kid might get picked up.” It concerns me that that type of culture could be something that is more the norm than is not, but I have heard that it is the case. Again, if this is what the legislative mechanism is creating, it is a real fear amongst people who want to be parents but are really fearful of how the legislation might actually go over the top of them, and that is not going to be the way to go either.
Finally, can I say that there are a number of service providers, social workers, and community and voluntary organisations that know this space better than any one of us in this House. What they are saying is that, sadly, yes, it is, actually, about resources. It is about a bit more fluidity in the system. It is about ensuring that the legislative mechanism actually defers to the well-being of the child and the reintegration of children back into their whānau and about ensuring that those supports are measured and monitored or looked at along the way until the child is in a good place of care. We cannot have them in prisons. We need to do more.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Marama Fox—5 minutes.
MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): I think it is unfortunate that I have got only 5 minutes to speak, because there is so much to talk about in response to the Children’s Commissioner’s report. I am grateful for the opportunity that this debate has brought to the House and for the wisdom of the Speaker to allow us to have this debate at this time. I have three papers here and a Facebook feed, because there are whānau sitting at home watching this who have been sending me messages saying “Marama, we need to do more.” What they are saying to me is that, actually, this is not just a whole-of-Government approach that needs to happen. This is not all on the shoulders of just our Minister for Social Development. This is on the shoulders of this nation. Darroch Ball was correct: it is our shame, the shame of this country, because there is a group of people who have historical claims of abuse while in State care. There are 900—and more—historical claims still to be listened to.
I have messages here from Mate Tangitū, who is a voluntary worker for the advocacy group known as Te Roopu Haurongo in Ngāti Awa. It sits in Te Kooti Rangatahi and provides advocacy and support. She has given me her top five priorities, and I would like to share them with you. First, acceptance of why this is happening to our tamariki and mokopuna—our whānau need to also step up. Second, education—we get trapped into these cycles of abuse, and they continue from parent to child and parent to child. That education will help us get out of that. Third, counselling and other services need to be implemented, because mothers have been victims, she is saying. Fourth, money is not the only answer here. She does this for nothing. She is a voluntary worker, and there are many parents and grandparents, as Nanaia has pointed out, who take up the slack when our children are being victimised and abused. Fifth, we need to strive for independence from, not codependency on, the State. I take all of her points to heart, because I think she makes some valid points.
I am very concerned from this paper about the levels of Māori who are being subject to abuse in our system. Twenty-two percent of New Zealand’s young people under the age of 20 are Māori, and 58 percent of the children in Child, Youth and Family’s care are Māori. This has a huge impact on our people, and we need to do something. We have been trying, with previous Governments and with this Government, to interact, as the Minister pointed out in question time today, through iwi and cultural involvement, because our young people need to be secure in their language, culture, and identity. It helps them grow independent and strong and face up to some of the issues that they struggle with.
The report Pūao te ata tū – Daybreak, which came out in 1998, actually said—and I am just going to quote from this, actually, because I think this is fundamental—“funding should be directed to the Maatua Whangai so that they can channel direct to the families rather than going through the rigmarole of going from one section of Social Welfare to another.”, and “If the programme is to get the support of the people then it must come back to the whanau base, and when I say that, it must come back with all accountability.” That was a quote from the group who put Pūao te ata tū – Daybreak together. They had a major influence in the development of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act in 1989 and they made a whole lot of recommendations. The children and young person’s family, whānau, hapū, or iwi group should participate in making the decisions. More and more we have seen over recent times that that is no longer happening; that actually has been taken off the marae. Our young people and our families who are most vulnerable are being separated from their cultural connection. We need to ensure that that continues to happen. Some developments have occurred within the welfare system to increase responsiveness to Māori. Whānau Ora provides a unique opportunity to do that. I welcome the engagement with the Minister that she has offered, to ensure that that continues and grows. Kia ora.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Chris Hipkins—5 minutes.
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Normally I would say that I welcome the opportunity to participate in a debate. I have to say that today I do not particularly welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate, because I think that every one of the children whom we are talking about, every one of the cases that we are talking about, is a personal and individual tragedy. I want to begin with a quote from the Minister for Social Development herself, who said: “If the state takes them into their care then they have the responsibility to make sure those kids live better lives and I don’t see the evidence and the Children’s Commissioner report doesn’t see the evidence that this is happening.” That is a damning indictment on the system. I do want to compliment the Minister on her candour and on being so abrupt and honest about the situation, because, as I said, this is an absolute tragedy for all of those children and we all have a responsibility to do something about that. I want to also acknowledge the enormous weight of burden that we place on the people who work at Child, Youth and Family. I have come into contact with them on multiple occasions, as just about every member of Parliament will have, and I can say that they deal with the most difficult, complex, heart-wrenching situations that you could possibly imagine. They often find themselves in situations where no matter which way they turn, they are confronted with problems. I want to really acknowledge that and say that I think, by and large, they work so hard and they try to do such a good job, and it is very, very complex and very, very difficult.
I want to also acknowledge, though, that we need to look at alternatives in some cases. I think particularly of the debate that we had several years ago around special residential schools. Many of the kids who attended those schools had been in Child, Youth and Family care or went into Child, Youth and Family care at the end of it, and I tell you what: I went into that with a view that those schools would not have a place in the future of the education system. I visited them and I came out with a completely opposite view. I spoke to many of those kids, and, you know, the thing that struck me about it was that they got in there and they were allowed to be kids. They were allowed to play. They were allowed to learn. They had the freedom to actually grow up and to be kids and to be loved, and it was the most supportive and nurturing environment that I could imagine for them. Many of them had never had that outside of that special residential school environment, and now only two of those schools are left. I think that there is a place for that kind of intervention in the system, and we need to rethink whether the closure of those types of facilities was the right thing to do. I actually think that they do provide an alternative to foster care for some of those very vulnerable children, and they did have, by and large, a good track record in recent history. I know that there were historical issues, but in recent history they had a very good track record, and I think we need to re-examine whether, in fact, there is a greater role for those sorts of organisations and those sorts of facilities.
The other point that I want to make is that Child, Youth and Family deals in a space that is still incredibly disjointed, and many of those kids and families find themselves coming under the jurisdiction of and being subject to probing by multiple Government agencies, whether it is Child, Youth and Family; the police; various health services, including mental health; and it is simply that those families get lost. Often in cases of child abuse, yes, there will be a perpetrator, but there will often be other victims, including the children, and it is such a horrific experience often for families to navigate their way through that system, and we must do a better job of supporting those vulnerable children and families through the system so that we can get better outcomes. It is not just about Child, Youth and Family; it is about actually getting all of the agencies involved in dealing with these vulnerable children to work more collaboratively together to get better outcomes. A number of times when I talk to a parent of a child who is involved with Child, Youth and Family—and often they will not be the parent who has caused the child to be involved with Child, Youth and Family—they will talk about speaking to Child, Youth and Family and being told: “Well, you’ll have to talk to the police about that.”; speaking to the police, who say: “Well, you’ve got to talk to Child, Youth and Family about that.”; speaking to mental health services, who say: “Well, you’ve got to talk to someone else.”, and they just get lost in the system. That is how kids fall through the cracks. We have to do a lot more about that.
Finally, I want to say that sometimes we think that this is about other people, that these are other people’s children. I can say that no one is immune from this. No one knows when they are going to come into contact with someone who ends up being involved in these kinds of situations. We should all care about this. These are all going to be kids who are going to enter into our community. We should care about this. We have to get it right.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. Matt Doocey—5 minutes.
MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on the State of Care 2015: What we learnt from monitoring Child, Youth and Family report. When I look at the numbers for such a small country, the care and protection process summary in this report outlining the numbers, there are reports of concern at 63,000; further action at 43,000; substantiated abuse findings at 16,000—emotional abuse, neglect, and sexual and physical violence abuse at 16,000. At any given time we have 5,000 children and young people in care, and 2,000 go into care each year. It is amazing when we hear a statement that we do not know whether these vulnerable children are better off because of the State care they receive.
I had the privilege of working in the mental health field before I took up this new role, and I had the opportunity to work with many young people in care. Working with these very vulnerable people is very complex and challenging. There is a range of ways of working with these young people in a therapeutic context, whether it be motivational interviewing or cognitive behavioural therapy. The one that I took most heart from, in working with these young people, was solution-based therapy. It was working with young people who had been through a lot in their life and saying: “Actually, describe your perfect day—what would that look like?” That is not about diminishing the experiences and the harm they have been through, but it is looking to the future about the way people want to live and want to move forward.
I acknowledge the stance that the Minister has taken on this report and I urge everyone, all New Zealanders, to think about the future and where we want to go with this modernisation of Child, Youth and Family. At the end of the day, it is about standing up for the ideas we believe in, debating the ideas. Yes, we can debate the past and debate the politics of what has happened, but it is the ideas that will drive Child, Youth and Family forward to take the action to support young people now and young people in the future, because the reality is that it is adults who have let these young people down. Then they go into care, and it is the adults in care who again let these young people down. What we need to do is advocate for and focus on prevention and early intervention. Yes, we need to focus on what happens in care, but let us remember that we should be working to ensure that young people, children, do not go into care.
I had the ability and the opportunity to talk to the Chief Social Worker, who outlined some clear areas in the family environment that contribute to a young person or child going into care. It was the dangerous combination of mental health problems, violence, alcohol, and drugs. I think we all have a responsibility in New Zealand to focus on those areas to prevent those young people going into care. I acknowledge the work that the Government is doing in setting up Children’s Teams to focus on these children at risk before they go into care. We know that children and young adults are at an important part of their life course—in the developmental stage.
We also need to be progressive. We need to modernise. When I worked with young people in care in London I had the fortunate experience of being part of a programme about reclaiming social work. We need to free up social workers to not just care plan, not just write bits of paper, and not just do administrative functions. We need to embrace and we need to upskill our workforce to provide therapy to these vulnerable, complex, and challenging young people—therapy that will change behaviours and therapy that will move them on to go on to be productive people in New Zealand. Thank you very much.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Jono Naylor—5 minutes.
JONO NAYLOR (National): I perhaps will pick up a little bit on where my colleague Matt Doocey just left off, but, firstly, I just want to say that this report is the whole reason why we have a Children’s Commissioner. It is important that we have somebody who sits externally to the system who can provide some commentary on the system, can provide some advocacy, and can provide some autonomous accountability in terms of the plight of children in New Zealand. That is the role of the Children’s Commissioner, and that is what this report has done.
In some sense there is no new news here. These are things that have already been identified, I guess, but it is useful, when you have a report like this, to put them all in the one place and then to be able to move on. It is, I think, a really difficult thing for us to address. It is a difficult thing for us to realise, all of us who are involved in the Government or Parliament, who are ultimately responsible for the way the Child, Youth and Family system works and how it is treating our most vulnerable young people.
This report is, I guess, very confrontational in terms of the things that we need to address, but I think it will, ultimately, provide a better outcome. I think it has again been highlighted today that this is something that the Minister for Social Development has already been identifying. It confirms that she is on the right track with establishing her Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty and with establishing her Youth Advisory Group. If this were simple to solve, 14 reviews would have solved it in the past. Any one of those 14 reviews surely would have identified a simple answer had it been available, but these are deep and long-entrenched issues that we need to address.
The Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989—I think it was just the Children and Young Persons Act originally—was groundbreaking in its time, but it is certainly time that we look at a complete overhaul as to the way that we do this. I spent a short period of my time as a Child, Youth and Family social worker. I can recall a particular instance in 1997, effectively, with eight social workers and two police in a scene that I could describe only as storming somebody’s house and uplifting four children aged 5 to 12 from their mother and stepfather a week before Christmas while they were sitting around in front of their Christmas tree. The images of that scene are etched firmly in my mind 20 years later, and I can only begin to imagine how firmly they are etched in the minds of those children as to what happened. There were good, sound social work reasons for us to take that action. All the evidence pointed towards us taking that action, but to this day I am not entirely convinced whether the emotional harm that we inflicted on those young people in dragging them out of their house in the way that we did was any less than perhaps what they might have experienced had they remained in that household.
The difficulty is that our social workers, as Mr Hipkins said earlier, are in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. If they do not act and something happens, you can bet your bottom dollar there would be another snap debate in this House and there would be a big public outcry, and then when they do take action people say they are over the top. We have got to make sure that we protect young people and children to the best of our ability. We also need to make sure that we give those dedicated social workers the very best system to work within that we can, so they can do the very best that they can.
The biggest protective factor for young people that I have ever identified in probably 20 years of youth and social work is that they feel connected to something that is bigger than themselves, whether it be their family, a sports team, a drama club—whatever it is. When we bring children into the care of the State for their own protection, that is the hardest thing for us to replicate, because we have a bureaucracy, because we have structures, and because we have a certain way of doing things in order to provide appropriate, I must say, accountabilities. I have full confidence in this Minister and I have full confidence in this Government to do this overhaul of the Child, Youth and Family to ensure that we will do the very best for these young people.
The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.
Third Readings
Third Readings
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) on behalf of the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: I move, That the Health and Safety at Work Bill, the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill, the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill, the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2), and the WorkSafe New Zealand Amendment Bill be now read a third time. The Government is committed to improving health and safety at work. This legislation is an important part of that commitment and will play a major role in helping us to meet our target of reducing New Zealand’s workplace death toll by 25 percent by 2020. But robust and effective legislation is only one part of this. We all need to change how we see our involvement in and responsibility for work health and safety to truly have a lasting shift in our safety culture.
The legislation delivers a system that gets the balance right, focusing effort on what matters by ensuring critical risks are managed while reinforcing proportionality. What businesses have to do depends on what is reasonably practical, given their risk and their level of control. The legislation recognises the complexity of modern working arrangements, made up of diverse workforces. Moving away from the narrow employer-employee focus, this legislation ensures that everyone, irrespective of their roles within the workplace, has an appropriate level of obligation to make sure their health and safety and that of others is not adversely affected by the work.
This begins with the person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU), who must do what they reasonably can to help keep their workers and others affected by their work safe and healthy. In practice, duties can overlap and PCBUs need to work together, doing what they can within what they are able to influence and control, to take action that is reasonable and proportionate to the risks. This does not mean duplication of effort. Collaborative approaches will act to improve health and safety and have high potential to drive improvements in productivity.
Separate from the PCBU’s duties, officers of a PCBU must exercise due diligence, taking reasonable steps to ensure their PCBU complies with their duties and obligations. Unlike the current law, officers cannot be made liable for their PCBU’s failure. Rather, officers are liable only where they fail to perform their own due diligence duties. The legislation makes it clear that officers will be people holding specific positions, such as company directors and those who have a senior governance role, allowing them to exercise significant influence over the management of the business. This is appropriate. One of the key changes this legislation will help to bring about is a positive health and safety culture. It is those senior leaders who have the real ability to influence the health and safety direction of an organisation, and they should. Officers can ensure the PCBU proactively manages and addresses health and safety and how the business operates.
The legislation also takes into account the officers’ roles and responsibilities in the business when determining the extent of their duties. Workers and other persons at the workplace also have duties. They will be required to take a reasonable degree of responsibility for their own health and safety and ensure that they do not adversely affect the health and safety of others.
Changes have been made to the legislation to ensure that volunteering, which plays a large and important role in our communities, is not negatively affected. The change means the coverage of volunteers will remain as it is under the current law. Yet the legislation continues to ensure appropriate protection for everyone, including volunteers, from the risks associated with the work of a PCBU. Community-purpose volunteer associations that do not employ anyone will continue to be excluded as a PCBU under the legislation. As under the present law, volunteer organisations that do employ people will have duties to those workers and in relation to the work that the organisation does. A distinction between volunteer workers and other casual workers has also been made, yet this does not mean that casual volunteers are not covered by the legislation. PCBUs have an enforceable duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that no one is put at risk from the work of the business. This includes casual volunteers.
The revised legislation also provides greater certainty for parties that manage large areas of land so that they continue to provide public access, ensuring recreational and leisure pursuits can continue on as they always have. Under the legislation, a “workplace” is defined as a place where work is being undertaken or usually takes place, including “where a worker goes, or is likely to be, while at work.” This makes it clear that places are not necessarily workplaces all the time.
There has been much comment during the Committee of the whole House stage about changes made to the worker representation aspects of the legislation. Having health and safety representatives or committees was never mandatory. Workers had to first request them. Rather, what has always been and remains central to the legislation’s approach is that all PCBUs, irrespective of size or risk, have worker engagement and participation duties. All PCBUs must engage with their workers and must have effective, ongoing participation practices. This ensures flexibility and innovation. Businesses and workers are free to have practices that work for them. The legislation does not exclude small businesses that are not high risk from having to engage and have worker participation practices. Also, despite some reports to the contrary, it does not exclude these businesses from the main duties. These duties will continue to apply to all PCBUs. Part of a PCBU’s duty is to engage with workers on the development of worker participation practices so that all workers will be able to express their views and contribute to the establishment of their worker participation practices. An issue resolution mechanism also applies, and the regulator can still be contacted with any concerns.
I would like to thank members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee who considered this legislation, as well as those who submitted on it. Overall, the changes to the legislation have acted to clarify how the legislation works, providing an effective legislative framework in which everyone can recognise that they have part to play in responsibility for health and safety at work. Regulations and guidance are also an important element of this, and will ensure that a robust and effective system exists. I commend this legislation to the House.
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): After all the conjecture, after all the debate, after all the commentary, and after all the work that has gone into this legislation, the Government has gone out with a whimper, and that whimper was Paul Goldsmith. It is no surprise at all that the Government has put up that junior Minister to come and read out a speech prepared for him at the third reading of these bills because in the hands of Michael Woodhouse the legislation arising from the Health and Safety Reform Bill has gone from being a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rectify New Zealand’s appalling rate of death and injury at work to being a debacle, a farce, a shambles, and an embarrassment for the Government.
Before the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety got his hands on this legislation, before the National MPs on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee got their hands on this legislation, it was a good piece of legislation. It was based on evidence. It was based on international best practice. It was based on the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. It was based on the recommendations of the Government’s own Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety, and it was based on Australian health and safety law, which is has been working well for 10 years. It was based on things that work. It contained things that work. It was a piece of legislation that could have led the culture change that New Zealand so desperately needs, because with or without Pike River it was becoming screamingly obvious that National’s ideology of deregulation was failing New Zealand workers and it was killing New Zealand workers.
Compare New Zealand with any other developed market economy, and our rate of death and injury at work is appalling. It is shameful, and that is why the Government had to act. It introduced legislation that honoured the Pike River 29 and their families and all other workers who have needlessly lost their lives at work. That is what this legislation should be remembered for—a step change and an opportunity to acknowledge that for too many years we have been doing it wrong and we have been killing too many people. Instead it will be remembered for declaring that worm farming and lavender growing are high-risk industries, while sheep, beef, and dairy farming—which kill more workers every year than any other industry—and industries like building demolition are going to be defined as low risk. That absolutely undermines this legislation.
This legislation has no credibility in the public’s mind. It has no credibility in employers’ minds. People are utterly confused about what this legislation will do because the Government’s messaging has been muddled. It has had its own MPs out there fearmongering about what the impacts on business would be. People like Maurice Williamson, Judith Collins, and Chester Borrows have gone out into the public and actively undermined this legislation and actively undermined Michael Woodhouse. So employers and the public have no faith in this legislation. The Government has done an appalling job of working with employers to help them understand the implications of this bill for them. That is a result of rampant fearmongering from the Government. That is why we have got schools saying that they are going to rip up their playgrounds and stop sending their children on school camps, because this Government has failed to get alongside employers and help them to understand what this legislation is all about.
What the Government has done instead is that it has gutted some of the most important provisions in this legislation. We know why, and the numbers that we released today tell us quite clearly what this is about. If there had been just five more serious injuries on farms per year, then farming would have been defined as high risk. In other words, when the Minister went looking for where he should draw the line about what is a high-risk industry and low-risk industry, he drew it in just the right place to exclude farming.
Hon David Parker: Don’t farms under-report?
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Indeed. Farms do under-report. We know that WorkSafe has told us repeatedly that the rate of injuries on farms is dramatically under-reported. So, actually, if we knew the true figures, farming would clearly be high risk. There is no need for this ludicrous definition of what is a high-risk and what is a low-risk industry. This is a fix from a National Party that has been bent over by the farming lobby. It should never have had to include this.
The simple answer is this: let every worker in New Zealand have access to health and safety representatives if they want them. There is nothing onerous about this for businesses. If small businesses have good health and safety systems, if they are working with their employees, and if they have regular conversations about health and safety, it is highly unlikely that those workers in those businesses are going to put their hands up and ask for health and safety reps. But so what if they do, because having a health and safety representative is not an onerous thing. A health and safety representative is not someone in a high-vis vest with a clipboard, like some in the National Party would like to believe. A health and safety representative is a worker who has specific, mandated responsibilities for health and safety. Their everyday job is to be an employee or a worker in that business, doing that business, knowing that business—knowing it inside out and knowing what the risks are and being able to identify those and to work with their employer to improve the health and safety systems in their workplace. What is so onerous about that? Why is it that this became the flashpoint for this legislation? Why is it that that Government listens to the employers who do not want to change, who do not want to improve practices, and who do not want to kill and maim fewer people in their workplaces? Why did it listen to them? Why has this become the flashpoint for this legislation? Why has the National Government and the Minister, Michael Woodhouse, allowed this legislation to be so undermined over such a ridiculous issue?
The simple fact is this: we should trust employers and workers to be able to figure out what works best for them. If having health and safety representatives is what works best for them, then we should say: “Go for it. You can have them. You can ask for them, even if you’re in a small business.” But, instead, that choice has been taken away from people working in small businesses by the so-called party of choice, the National Party. It does not get it. Improving health and safety, improving workers’ rights, and improving pay and conditions for working people just is not in the National Party’s DNA. So when push came to shove and a call had to be made, was it going to support working people or was it going to support fringe employers who do not have an interest in health and safety for their workers? The choice was easy for that Government; it went with the rogue employers, not the working people and not the mainstream employers who came and submitted to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and said the legislation was in good shape as it was.
This is a mess that never had to happen. We had good legislation. It could have been made better and more robust at the select committee, but, instead, because the National Government has pandered to special interests, this legislation has been undermined, the public has no faith in it, and the public has no faith in the Minister, Michael Woodhouse, or in this Government to secure working people’s rights, to keep them safe at work, and to deal with New Zealand’s appalling rate of death and injury at work. The National MPs should hang their heads in shame.
JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am pleased to point out that even in this past year we have seen some dramatic improvements in the severe injury and loss of life in some of the industries that we would consider to be particularly high risk. One of those is forestry. We have also seen a significant reduction in workplace injury and fatalities in the area of agriculture. All of that goes to show us that even discussion around this subject has created a change of thinking and a change of practice, which is, essentially, what the legislation arising from the Health and Safety Reform Bill is about: to change the way people think. It is not just about ticking boxes; it is about changing people’s attitudes, their behaviours, and their interactions. When I talked to the Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum executive, when they wanted to know where the bill was, of course I could not tell them, because it was with the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, but they conveyed to me that their bottom line, the issue that they felt was incredibly important, was worker engagement and participation. We have lost the message of that in this big debate just around health and safety reps.
I know that health and safety reps are important. I am not denying that. When we have workplaces that have over 20 people, the complexity of relationships and information and engagement tends to show us that having somebody coordinate is going to be beneficial. When there are high-risk industries with higher complexities and difficulties around managing the health and safety regime and issues, then that person is going to be beneficial. But there are businesses and workplaces and there are sole traders where that position does need to be there in order to develop and have a successful and effective health and safety regime. It is important for us to understand that the most important element of this new regime is worker participation. It is the top-down, bottom-up engagement between persons conducting a business or undertaking and the workforce, and anybody who enters that workforce, that ensures that across the board there is engagement, understanding, discussion, decisions, and the identifying of hazards and risks. That is the most important thing.
When the previous speaker, Iain Lees-Galloway, said that the bill that came to the select committee back in March 2014—quite some time ago—was in great shape, well, I would probably disagree with that. I know that the issue that Labour has been particularly activated on is the issue around health and safety representatives. That is only one particular area of amendment this legislation has seen from the original piece of legislation. I, like many members of this House, have seen bills come to this place where, especially in the second reading, we have seen a commentary of all the changes attached to the bill. Most of those commentaries run for five or six pages; the commentary on this bill ran to 30 pages—30 pages of amendments and change. One of those amendments was around health and safety representation for those businesses with fewer than 20 employees that are low risk. So I would say that this bill came to this Parliament—yes, and it was embraced and there is a strong commitment to it—quite raw. We needed the process of receiving many submissions—and over 105 oral submitters came to the select committee—over the space of probably a year, because there was an election between the process of receiving this bill into the House and now this third reading. We listened to people. We did not always agree, and certainly across the House we have not always agreed, but there has been a lot that we have agreed on. There has been a lot that we have talked about and discussed, I believe, in good faith. We have adopted amendments into the legislation from the Opposition. It has not been political—
Sue Moroney: That’s not true.
JONATHAN YOUNG: Not as many as the Opposition would like—yes, granted. But we have certainly done that.
I would say that with the support of the officials—whom I believe did a great job, and I want to acknowledge them here today—I believe that we have worked very, very hard for the workforce and the public of New Zealand. I know we have been accused of watering down this and undermining that, but, I think, with good faith we have certainly worked our best and our hardest to get a regime that is workable, and that is going to work for every workplace and every size of company, whether they are high risk or low risk. In regard to the classifications, they are going to go out for consultation. I am sure there are going to be changes—I am sure there are going to be changes. They are not cast in iron. So for those sorts of concerns that people have—there is still opportunity for those to be reviewed. I would just like to say thank you very much to all members of the committee, to my colleagues here, and also to colleagues across the House. Thank you for the hard work that you have done in bringing this legislation to where it is now. Thank you.
SUE MORONEY (Labour): When it comes to health and safety at work, when corners are cut people die. This Government is cutting corners with this law. People will die. It is as simple as that. People will die because that Government could not help itself—it could not help itself. In the face of the evidence from the royal commission, in the face of all of the hard work that had been done by its own independent task force that it had put in place, it still could not go through with putting the very best protections in place for working people. This bill in its third reading shows the National Government reverting to type—absolutely reverting to type.
When this bill came into the House for its first reading it had consensus right across Parliament. That is highly unusual, but everyone—everyone—put politics aside because we believed that we wanted to do the very best to protect people in their workplaces. So that is where we started from. But through the process National clearly decided to put politics before people. It clearly made that decision.
I was on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, which heard this piece of legislation. I saw the moment that politics entered the room. I saw that precise moment. In fact, I did a tweet. I did not know at the time how forward-looking that tweet was, but I tweeted something like: “Whoa, Hurricane Judith just entered our select committee room. She caused a storm, and then she walked out and calm was resumed.” That is, effectively, what it was like. That is exactly what it was like because Judith Collins, who was not actually a permanent member of the committee, came on temporarily, saw what the select committee was doing—its very good work in developing a comprehensive law around health and safety—and started attacking the Minister, started attacking the officials, and had a go at everyone in the room.
Then the next thing we know, National is starting to back-pedal on putting the very best provisions and protections forward, as recommended by the royal commission and the independent task force. We know that National has decided to put politics ahead of the safety of people at work, because it is absolutely obvious what happened next. The decision in the National caucus room was to try to remove health and safety representation for groups of workers in their workplace.
I want to spend a little bit of time just reminding people what we are talking about here. We are not talking about a business having to spend any more money employing any other person. We are not talking about a business having to get a health and safety specialist in, or a consultant in, or any of those things that businesses are actually busy doing right now because of the hash that this Government has made of that bill. We are talking about workers, if they wanted to, deciding to elect one of their own—someone already doing the job, someone already paid by the employer to do the work, who understands what goes on day in and day out in that workplace—to be elected as a health and safety representative and then for that person to get 2 days’ training so that they could understand what their role is, understand the legislation, and ensure that the workers had a voice when it came to their own health and safety in that workplace. What is so hard about that—what is so hard about that?
But here is the worst thing about this story. All the international research and evidence says that this is the real key to it: getting genuine worker participation where workers can have a voice in what goes on in their workplace. That is the key to good health and safety in the workplace. But this Government could not help itself. It could not help itself, and it got rid of it. But it did not get rid of it for everyone, so we are reduced to arguing about who is deserving of the very best protection at work and who is not. What that Government decided was that people who work in workplaces with fewer than 20 employees are not deserving of having the very best health and safety participation in their workplace. That is what it decided.
But then it made another gaffe—it made a further gaffe. The Government decided that, oh, this might look pretty bad for it, because a lot of the workplaces with fewer than 20 employees are actually in our most dangerous industries—forestry, mining, contracting-out companies, and farming. And so it decided: “Well, we won’t. We’ll make sure that the high-risk companies, no matter how many employees they have, will have to have a health and safety representative if the workers ask for one.” That is where it really started to unravel, because in the Government’s determination to make sure that its support base in the farming sector was excluded from this requirement, it went about manipulating the data and finding a figure that worked for it so that it could find a threshold that excluded farming. Well, what a shambles, because in doing that it ended up including a whole lot of areas that clearly were not very high risk at all, and excluding a whole lot of areas that were high risk.
The Government made a complete shambles of it. It is the Government’s own fault and no amount of consultation is going to fix up that problem, because what went wrong is that it put politics before people—it put politics before people. No amount of tweaking that bit of nonsense is actually going to make a blind bit of difference to the problem that exists from the outset. Everyone in every workplace—no matter what their industry, no matter what their occupation, no matter how many people are employed in that workplace, no matter in what part of New Zealand—should have the best access to health and safety in their workplace. That is what we should have learnt from the Pike River mine situation.
During the course of the debate I was criticised for daring to bring a replica urn into the Chamber while we debated the issue, because some of the members opposite believed it caused them offence. They felt offended at having a replica urn in the Chamber while we debated this issue. I acknowledge that they felt offended, but imagine the offence caused to those families who have lost their loved ones, who believed that this legislation was going to fix the problems so that no other families would go through what they had gone through. Imagine how offended they felt. Imagine how offended they felt as they sat up here in the gallery and listened and watched that Government weasel its way out of providing the best health and safety representation possible for workers in workplaces. That is genuine offence—not having to debate an issue because a replica urn is in the Chamber.
I am wearing today, as are many of us, a yellow ribbon. I hope that does not cause offence to anyone. This is the yellow ribbon that actually reminds us about the 29 men who died in the Pike River mine. I once saw the Prime Minister wearing this yellow ribbon—around the Pike River mine. I have not seen him wearing it in the last few weeks while we have been debating this issue, but he should have been, because this is a yellow ribbon that reminds us that those families want their men home. They want to bring their men home, and it is this yellow ribbon that symbolises that.
There was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get this right. When I spoke at the first reading on this bill, I recalled speaking last year on a piece of legislation that this House passed that we did all agree on, I believe. It was designed to regulate the mining sector, and it has Pike River mine in the name of that Act of Parliament now. I remember standing up at the time and saying: “Please let us never forget. We’re all in agreement now, but please never let us forget that deregulation at work kills people. Never let us fall into this trap again of thinking that deregulation is a good thing in our workplaces, because it kills.” I thought at the time that I was saying to Parliament: “Look, you know, let’s not have amnesia in a decade’s time. Let’s not get it wrong as time goes on.” I am gobsmacked that, just a year later, we seem to have forgotten the lesson already. This bill could have been so good, and, sadly, the Government has trashed it.
ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): This legislation is very good. This legislation is already leading cultural change in the street, in the workforce, and in our communities. This legislation is the step change that New Zealand has been looking for. And why is that? It is because it involves everyone. The responsibility for the health and safety of the workers is the responsibility of everyone, from the person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU)—the boss, the officer—but, most important, it is the responsibility of the worker. That is all outlined in the legislation.
A lot of discussion has been on clause 65(3) of the Health and Safety at Work Bill, which is about the health and safety representative. That has been discussed, but I would like to reassure the Opposition that there are a lot of other clauses in this bill that should give strong assurance that the health and safety of workers is a priority.
Clause 30 makes it compulsory—these are obligations, these are not options—and obligatory to take action to ensure that the PCBU must ensure the health and safety of the worker. Clause 39 outlines the obligation of the officers to turn their minds to health and safety. Clause 40 outlines what workers must do. Workers must turn their minds to health and safety for themselves and for their co-workers. Clause 61 outlines what a PCBU must do. They must engage with workers. And clause 64 tells us what a worker must do. They must participate in the health and safety of themselves and of the workplace.
Clause 86A lets small businesses create committees, whether they are five people—it does not matter what size the business, they are able to create a health and safety committee. And there is a resolution process. If there is a rogue employer, there is a resolution process in this legislation. So I would like to reassure the House that this is a game-changing, step-changing piece of legislation. I commend it to the House.
DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take a call on the third reading of legislation arising from the Health and Safety Reform Bill, which, of course, has been split into five parts. I do so with a heavy heart because the reform that was so badly needed is not realised in the legislation that we will be passing today.
The starting point for this bill was that we supported it. In fact, all of us in this House supported it because we agreed that we had had 20 years of the previous regime, and there was cross-party agreement that the law needed to change. It needed to be upgraded because our statistics are pretty appalling. We have had a woeful health and safety record in this country. Just under 300 people have died on the job over the last 5 years. According to the 2013 Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety, the annual death toll is around four in every 100,000 workers, and around 500 to 800 more people die every year as a result of chronic diseases caused by the conditions of their workplace.
In addition to that, ACC receives 200,000 claims annually from workplace accidents. New Zealanders are twice as likely to die in a workplace than Australians. They are three times more likely to die in a workplace here in New Zealand than people are in the UK. The stark truth is that the citizens in those countries are safer at work than the citizens in our own country. As a result of this appalling track record, we agreed with the Government and its ambitious targets that it set in 2012 of reducing serious harm accidents and fatalities at work by 25 percent by 2020 and, as an interim measure, by 10 percent by 2016. But the question is: does this legislation deliver that? Will it deliver that? I remain totally unconvinced that it will.
Behind all these numbers are the people—the people who are sons, daughters, husbands, lovers, mothers, and dads. They are the people who went to work one day and did not come home. They are the people behind the numbers. And then there are the families of these people. In the last week or so we have met some of them. They were brave. They came here and they sat in the gallery, and their grief was palpable. Yes, sometimes it really did feel like a tangi, and rightly so, because these families came to this House to ask that the legislation that we are about to pass today be strong enough to prevent future deaths and injuries. They came with their raw grief, saying that if we could make safe and healthy workplaces, if we could make the law stronger and keep people safe at work, then their loved ones would not have died in vain. That is what they were asking for.
We heard from the Pike River families. We heard from Kath and Bernie Monk, who wanted this Government to keep at least one of its promises. The promise that they wanted it to keep in this instance was about the recommendations from the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy, which claimed the lives of those 29 men at the Pike River mine. Both that royal commission and the 2013 Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety said that to improve health and safety culture we need businesses to show leadership, we need a strong regulator for enforcements, and, crucially, we need a system where workers are able to participate in their own health and safety systems in the workplace. This is a sound recommendation, and this last recommendation about workers’ participation is backed up by absolutely every piece of international evidence that you can find.
The main gap in this bill is that, of course, it applies to some people but not to others, to some businesses and not to others. People who work for small businesses with fewer than 20 workers do not have the right to elect a health and safety representative, let alone a health and safety committee. The thing is, workers in small businesses are 35 percent more likely to have accidents, according to the department of labour. Many of the men who died at Pike River worked for small businesses, and the department of labour figures do show that 97 percent of New Zealand’s businesses are small businesses. Some of them may be deemed to be low-risk industries, and these are the workplaces where the workers will be excluded from asking for and having their own health and safety representative.
We have this whole ridiculousness about what is a low-risk and what is a high-risk industry, with, you know, minigolf, butterfly breeding, and worm farming being high risk, and dairy farms, cattle farms, and sheep farms being low risk. In agriculture alone over the last 5 years there were 104 deaths.
There are 28,000 people working on dairy farms in this country, with most of the farms likely to have fewer than 20 employees, and these people are not entitled to elect a workmate designated to look out for their health and safety. And why is that? Because, as we were ending the select committee process, which was a very long process, and after we had heard the hundreds of submissions on this bill, National played politics. It was lobbied—or at least one of those members was lobbied—and caused a big hissy fit. It was lobbied by, I do not know—a small minority of small businesses. We do not know who it was lobbied by, but, no doubt, whoever it was was worried. They were worried about what it might potentially cost small businesses, and, I do not know, maybe they were worried about rampant militaristic unions suddenly running rampant through their doors. I do not know.
But the thing is, the existing law, the law that we have had for the last 20 years, the Health and Safety in Employment Act, had already empowered people in small businesses to elect a health and safety representative if they wanted to. And guess what? The sky did not fall in; there was no opening of the floodgates. So those businesses that lobbied the Government’s politicians—I really have to ask them why. What were they trying to hide?
Where worker participation is outlined in this legislation, essentially it is participation on the boss’s terms, and I predict that this legislation will not deliver the change needed in the culture around health and safety—that change from a “she’ll be right” attitude to one where health and safety is front and centre of the minds of every worker in that workplace. Given the climate that we have here at the moment—where some people feel lucky even to have a job, where they will not rock the boat because they may lose their job within 90 days for no reason at all, or have their hours cut or even be rostered off—workers in this environment are unlikely to raise a health and safety issue on their own terms because, essentially, they need to raise it with the boss’s approval. When the Greens get the levers of Government, we are going to roll back these changes so that there is true democracy at work and workers can raise health and safety issues without fear of punishment.
Finally, one of the key roles of Parliament in a modern democracy is to be the arbiter between competing interests in society. In doing this, a Parliament must carefully consider these interests and must ultimately be guided—we have to be guided—by ethics and morality, and there is no morality in depriving some citizens of the best protection for their health and not ensuring their safety at work. No ethical basis exists for that. The nurses in our hospitals, our cleaners, our caretakers, the fishers who brave the seas to bring the food back to our plates, and the foresters who harvest the wood so that we can build our houses deserve much better, and with this legislation we have failed them.
CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Today I have removed my yellow ribbon, which I have been wearing for a week, and put on a blue ribbon—partially because it is a bit of a sad day, I think, for New Zealand, with this legislation arising from the Health and Safety Reform Bill about to be passed in the House, given the numbers that the Government has in support to put this through. Also, it is partly to acknowledge the importance of being aware of prostate cancer. We are wearing the ribbons a little bit early to think ahead and, to avoid a Freudian slip, I think it is important to go for those annual check-ups and make sure you keep yourself safe. It is a very sad day.
The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—I have really enjoyed the last 11 months working with a number of colleagues. It was great that Judith Collins removed herself and went to another select committee. I thought that we got more work done and it was far more productive. But I think many times we left that chamber and those discussions a little bit bewildered and confused—and certainly I was—about the lack of common sense that the Government was showing, a little bit of ignorance perhaps, around what constitutes health and safety.
I have heard from only a few members in the Committee of the whole House with regard to what makes up New Zealand’s workforce. Mr Bailey, I think you summed it up beautifully when you said that 97 percent of New Zealand business is actually made up of small and medium sized businesses. That works out to be around about one-third of the entire workforce of people employed in New Zealand who are employed in those small and medium sized businesses—30 percent. The reality is that 30 percent of people under this new legislation will not have any new safety conditions imposed on them, and there will be no ground-up culture change within those businesses to actually help those businesses look after their workers.
In actual fact, if we look at the existing bill as it sits at the moment, had we gone back and had the foresight to adjust and change that legislation, we would actually see that it needed some serious tidying and titivating, and the reality is that we would get better engagement from workers, and we obviously need some better funding to ensure that we have those health and safety inspectors. I think that this Government has sold itself short. It is a yeah, yeah, nah kind of new piece of legislation. It is same-same but different in the reality of things.
Mr Ian Lees-Galloway, I have to say it was a very, very powerful speech and I absolutely support where the Labour Party has been, although I would have to give you a bit of a smack and say that the reality is that you are talking about harm minimisation in the workplace—
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Suggesting that you might give me a smack is probably not a good idea. It has got a bit of history.
CLAYTON MITCHELL: I do apologise, Mr Assistant Speaker. I was of course talking metaphorically, and I certainly was not referring to you, Mr Assistant Speaker. The reality is, though, that there was an opportunity for the Labour Party members to stand up and support one of our amendments—a very powerful amendment—which was to reduce the numbers of workers required in a workplace in order to get engagement for a health and safety representative. There was an opportunity to reduce that from 20 workers down to 10 workers, which would have had a massive impact on those small and medium sized businesses and would have actually got it down to only 10 percent of the working population who would not have been eligible for a health and safety representative. Yet there was no noise—there was no noise from this side of the House or from the Greens to support that balanced situation.
Then again, I would like to commend Labour for its support of our amendment in relation to getting the Government to front-foot the cost of health and safety representatives. We in New Zealand First understand that the right way to get proper engagement and a culture shift from the bottom up is to have those health and safety representatives. But there is an ever-increasing cost of running these small businesses that I think we could have avoided by simply getting the Government to fund the cost of the courses for health and safety representatives and by covering the travel and the fair and reasonable costs associated with their training. In fact that is a minor cost, but front-footing it would make a huge difference.
The intention of this legislation is to reduce the amount of fatalities—work-related fatalities—and harm in workplaces by 25 percent over the next 5 years. But why not by 40 percent; why not by 60 percent; why not by 100 percent? Why can we sell ourselves so short and be so short-sighted as to actually not think about what would make a real difference to all workplaces in this country, and set the bar so low that we think only 25 percent could be actually achieved? At the same time, we could achieve those much lower fatalities in our workplace. It does not have to be at the expense and the cost of small and medium sized businesses, which will be feeling the extra cost of compliance and the squeeze on them.
Let me run you through another one of our amendments on Supplementary Order Paper 110. This would amend clause 28 to remedy the issue around personal protective equipment. Under current legislation and under this new legislation, no levy can be imposed on a worker for their personal protective equipment. Again, we absolutely commend that. They should not have to cover the cost of their personal protective equipment. But, again, we say: what about personal responsibility? What about putting an amendment in to ensure that those workers look after that equipment? That is not too onerous—to expect a worker to look after their safety goggles, hats, work boots, and high-vis jackets, and if they do not, a small levy or charge to be imposed to cover the cost of that personal protective equipment. But no, the National Government did not support our amendment. It was gone into the ether, and that, I think, will come back in spades against this Government with this new legislation.
Again, when I look down at the number of amendments that we have suggested—I would like to just go through those. The amendment to remove clause 29AA—currently this will have a massive effect. Clause 29AA absolutely removes the right of an employer—or a PCBU, if you want to use your acronyms—to actually protect themself on a financial basis. The reality is that if you are going to be seconded on to a board, where you might have 200 or 300, 500 or 600 staff—
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!
CLAYTON MITCHELL: Mr Assistant Speaker, I apologise.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Yes. The member has been here for some time now, and I think he has just got to get out of that habit of bringing the Speaker into the debate.
CLAYTON MITCHELL: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I shall refrain from that term. The reality is, if you can—you nearly got me again, I tell you. I can see you. Right. To remove clause 29AA would make a huge difference, by making it possible to indemnify a board member who sits on a board. To have that clause there now makes it very difficult for, and very onerous on, people taking on those responsibilities of large organisations like council-controlled organisations. That, I think, should not be in this legislation, and it is one of the things that makes it very difficult for us.
In fact, we were so close to supporting this. We thought that if we could get to the point where some of these amendments were agreed to by the Government, we would actually be 100 percent behind this bill, but we might as well be a million miles away. We are so far away because we have missed out on so many of the positives that we could change.
The next clause that I come to is clause 43. This is going to largely affect all of those spouses—husbands and wives—and partners in a farming situation. In the situation where a husband is out on the farm and has an accidental death and loses his life—it might be because of a quad bike or it might be because of a tractor; we do not want to go into the details—under this new legislation, the wife, as a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) and as a worker, will be legally culpable and could be up for some very hefty fines. Ultimately, this legislation could leave the spouse without a farm, as well as be left without a husband. This is one of the very important unintended consequences of this bill that we tried to remove by amending clause 43.
Then we go down the page on Supplementary Order Paper 110 to the insertion of clause 65AA, which we have spoken about. Clause 65AA was to cover the training costs. We said that if there were going to be no costs incurred on the employer, then we would support there being no limit on when there can be engagement with a representative, and had it got through we would have supported Labour in terms of 100 percent engagement.
Clauses 65 and 66 are about the work groups. This is a minor amendment. In a situation where you have a disagreement between a worker and the boss, and they cannot decide what is going to constitute a work group, we have simply said it would make sense to get an independent arbitrator in to actually determine what that work group is going to be, and that arbitrator would be WorkSafe.
Just to finish off, I would like to say that we are also very concerned about the unintended consequences of well-intentioned voluntary acts. Say you have got a farmer. He has just finished off for the day. He has clocked out and he is heading home, and on the way home he sees some animals on the side of the road, and he wants to get them back into a pen. In the event of an accident occurring with the stock running on to the road and causing an accident, or vice versa, we want to protect those small businesses and those farms. Unfortunately, we cannot support this legislation in the way it sits in the House today.
SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): It is my pleasure to take this very short call on the health and safety reform legislation. This legislation, when it is, hopefully, passed, is the framework for a step change in health and safety. The principles of the bills mean that everyone needs to engage in health and safety, promoting a top-down, bottom-up approach to integrate health and safety into their businesses. But this is in balance. It is acknowledged that there is not one size that fits all, that there are different types of organisations out there, and that health and safety needs to fit each business. In saying that, we want a step change, and we have put in place WorkSafe to work with these businesses so that they will put health and safety measures in place. But we do not want this legislation to be overly bureaucratic, either. We want innovation to continue and we want productivity to continue, but we want the step change.
To end with, I just want to acknowledge the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, especially the Government members on this side of the House. We have had to sit here and listen to attacks in respect of our commitment to health and safety and in respect of our compassion and our motivation towards health and safety, and I want to say to the left that you do not know us. You do not know what has gone on in our lives, and we are committed.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): If the member will resume her seat—I think she has been in the House for as long as Clayton Mitchell has, and she should know that she should not bring the Speaker into the debate.
SARAH DOWIE: My apologies, Mr Assistant Speaker. I want to say that we—the Government members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and the Government MPs on this side of the House—are committed to health and safety, committed to balanced legislation, and committed to health and safety moving forward in this country. With that, I commend these bills to the House.
KEVIN HAGUE (Green): Over the past 5 years I have stood often in this House to speak about the tragedy of Pike River and the reasons for it. I have laid the blame, fair and square, on the error of deregulation from the 1990s—the withdrawal of the State from ensuring worker health and safety, the dismantling of the underground coalmining regulations, and the abolition of the check inspectors. The Green Party has worked tirelessly to expose this systemic failure, the reasons for it, and we have worked to find solutions. We take some significant credit for the High Hazards Unit, for the royal commission of inquiry, for the independent taskforce, for the re-regulation of underground coalmining, and for the return of check inspectors. It is scandalous that it took all this time and the deaths of 29 men in the Pike River mine for these changes to occur. All of the Governments since the 1990s, I am sure, now must feel some sense of discomfort, even shame, that it has taken that long. None of those changes would have come naturally to this Government. It is against its political nature. It has made those changes only because it judged that it was politically not viable not to do so.
But the years have passed, and now we find that the legislation that is intended to overhaul the health and safety legislation, which underpins all of those things, comes back to the House for its final reading in diluted form. I do not know whether that dilution has occurred because the National Party’s donors and sponsors objected to the legislation in its original form. I do not know whether the reason was, instead, that there was a resurgence of the neo-liberal members of the National Party caucus. But what I do know is that the issue that we should be focused on in this House is not the worm farming and the minigolf—a farcical situation created by the National Party trying to carve out an exemption for its mates. Instead, what we should be focused on is the fact that the legislation that is being passed today in this third reading—
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Sorry, I am going to interrupt the member. It is a longstanding series of Speakers’ rulings that have indicated that members cannot allege that bills have been changed to please parties’ donors. The member has done that, and I ask him to withdraw that comment.
KEVIN HAGUE: I withdraw it. What I am saying to the House today is that the issue that we should be focused on, as a House, is the fact that the legislation that will be passed today does not honour the right of all workers to a safe workplace. That is the issue that we should be focused on.
My colleague Denise Roche has already mentioned that small workplaces, in some situations, are more risky than large ones. Members of this House will know that in smaller workplaces the personal relationships between bosses and workers often create a situation where it is not viable for workers to raise their concerns. In those small workplaces the principle that the Government members have spoken about today and throughout this debate, of worker engagement and participation, is meaningless if their right to representation on health and safety is not honoured, as it is not in this legislation.
In 2011 I listed in this House members of the Government who had been members of the House back in the 1990s when the changes to health and safety legislation that I described were passed. I can tell you that the Government members in 2011 did not appreciate me doing it. Members of the Government benches in the 1990s spoke about balance, as, indeed, Government members in this debate today and throughout have been saying. That is the balance between the rights of employers and the rights of workers.
West Coast regional councillor Peter Ewen has written a book about Pike River, which he subtitled Death by Parliament. I have a sick feeling that at some time in the future an Opposition member will be standing where I am today, reading out the names of the members on the Government benches who are passing this legislation today. Thank you.
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): After the period in this country’s history, only 5 years ago, when there was a sense of unity around fixing issues of health and safety that led to tragedies like the tragedy we saw at Pike River, we now find ourselves in a situation some years later where that sense of unity and sense of collaborative purpose from this Parliament has been lost. It has been lost for a very good reason. Essentially, along the way, too many compromises of politics, compromises based on interest groups, and compromises that were ultimately unnecessary and could ultimately lead to harm have all found their way into this piece of legislation, and led us as a Parliament to lose that opportunity that had been borne out of what was an extraordinary tragedy. Perhaps that is why you see the symbolism of a Parliament that gathered together to share in the grief that those families at Pike River had so many years ago, to a situation now where, when those families come to Parliament, that unity seems to have been lost.
It is a regret, therefore, for the Labour Party, that we are unable to support this legislation. And there was a point where we thought it might have been possible. We supported the bill as it was introduced into Parliament. As my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway, who has worked tirelessly on this bill along with colleagues like Sue Moroney, said, it was a bill that was based on sound international evidence. It was based on a law that had demonstrated that it could work well in places like Australia. It was based on the recommendations of two really important reports—including the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy and the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety. It was built out of evidence we should have listened to in this House, and evidence that could have created a pathway for us to come to a collective cross-party agreement.
And it was an overdue piece of work. Unfortunately, workplace health and safety had become an area that was somewhat demonised. You would often hear minor abuses of health and safety legislation that made it sound like health and safety had this “PC gone mad” element to it. That is wholly unfortunate, because beneath all of that, people were dying in our workplaces. I feel particularly strongly about this. I have a family member, a wonderful relative of mine whom I love dearly, who works in the forestry industry. I fear for him, and I have talked to him about this situation that we have in New Zealand. He is vehement that we need change to protect the workers in that area.
So underneath all of this perception that had been built up over the years—unfortunately, for ideological reasons—that we had gone too far in health and safety legislation, deaths were occurring. People were being harmed in our workplaces. The time had most certainly come for us, as my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has said, to take and make use of the opportunity of a lifetime—of a generation—for this Parliament to make changes that were lasting and that would make a real difference.
We saw, though, the National Party implode over this piece of legislation. What we saw introduced changed dramatically, we lost the ability to work cross-party, and all over what? Well, we saw, for instance, exemptions put in around small businesses. As soon as you create exemptions, you create inconsistencies. You create scenarios that do not quite make sense. Even from a small-business person’s perspective, inconsistences can be as problematic as just being compliant with a law that applies to everyone. As soon as you employ that one extra person, suddenly you are in. You are up from 20 to 21 and suddenly you are included, and you need to know a whole lot of extra additional information. Well, I can tell you now, as the small-business spokesperson for Labour, I speak to a lot of industry associations, a lot of small-business representative groups. Not one of them raised the issue with me about being concerned about having to have health and safety reps—not one. Yet the National Party carved it out unnecessarily—unnecessarily, in my view.
We have got a situation where agriculture exemptions and everything that has been canvassed in this House has created a mockery, and we did not deal with corporate manslaughter—another lost opportunity. We lost sight of our purpose around this health and safety legislation, and I share the absolute disappointment of my colleagues for that lost opportunity. But, more important, I share the disappointment of the families who have experienced failed legislation.
ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): I just want to briefly touch on a couple of the key issues in this legislation. First of all, we have introduced a triumvirate of responsibility between the person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU), the workers, and the other co-workers in the workforce. That is a powerful combination. Secondly, what we have done is we have set in train a very prescriptive process for engagement between the PCBU and their workers, although we have provided some flexibility for small businesses. Thirdly, we have learnt from the Christchurch experience, where we have got multiple PCBUs on the one site, and we have made sure that they consult, cooperate, and coordinate their activities on that one site. Fourthly, we have listened to the issue around farming and acted in a pragmatic fashion where we have put a boundary around each of the houses on those properties, and we have introduced a new concept around customary workplace. Fifthly, we have listened to the issue around volunteers, and we have excluded them from the provisions of the bill.
And, finally, we have imposed some additional requirements on WorkSafe to make sure it is very clear and transparent about the type of investigations it undertakes and to have it report back to everyone on those investigations that it has undertaken. I commend this legislation to the House because I believe it is a good piece of legislation.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I intend to address two issues, the first being the ludicrous change at the last minute to those workplaces where employees are not entitled to a workplace representative, and the second being the inappropriate provisions relating to trials that have abrogated the civil liberties of New Zealanders in a way that has been criticised by the New Zealand Law Society.
The first point, as has been said by prior speakers—the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy, the special consultative group that the Government set up, and overseas practice all show that having worker representatives who have a right to call for a formal process in their workplace is a fundamental ingredient of safe workplaces. We know that we have got a very poor record in New Zealand of serious injury and death, and we know that a core recommendation of the royal commission and the consultative group was that that be remedied by having workplace representatives.
What are the media saying about the contortions that the National Party has put itself through? I want to read from today’s Dominion Post: “All workplaces, irrespective of their size and the industry they are in, should be entitled to ask for a health and safety rep.” Then they talk about the 20-person staff limit and the current definitions of what is high and low risk. They say: “There’s no logic to it and some of the defences of the exemption for dairy, beef, and cattle farmers have been ludicrous.” As my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has already pointed out, the definition seems to be constructed deliberately so as to leave out dairy farming and cattle farming, and we know from evidence that I think is incontrovertible—no one has disagreed with it—that even those statistics are under-representative of the true rate of accidents on farms. So even if you take that into account, their ludicrous definition would be breached.
Then the idea that these farms are some sort of hayseed, unsophisticated, small enterprise is just wrong. These are multimillion-dollar enterprises. Dairy farms—the cows would be 750 kilograms, three-quarters of a tonne, the weight of a small car. As others have noted, no doubt, we have many quad bike accidents. We have electricity, electric fences, the means of powering those fences, electric boom gates to move the cattle along, large irrigators—there is a lot of dangerous equipment on a farm. And we have itinerant workers, and seasonal workers who are inexperienced, coming to these risks every year. A lot of the staff are working in workplaces where the owner of the farm is not there. It is quite often a sharemilker or another contractor who is conducting the farming operation. These are large, multimillion-dollar organisations with high risks, and there is really no case for them to be exempted. I think that is a woeful mistake in respect of this legislation. I am not going to say any more than that, because I think those issues have been well covered by others.
I do want to address in some detail the concerns of the Law Society, which I think have been somewhat brushed aside, in respect of the process that was introduced at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. We know that in respect of legislation that comes before this House, if there is something that infringes, or potentially infringes, civil liberties, the Attorney-General has to, under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, produce an assessment of it—the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet. That does not happen in respect of the changes that are made at the select committee or in Supplementary Order Papers that are tabled in the House during the Committee stage.
In this case, very late in the process, the Government, at the select committee, after submissions had been called for and had closed, introduced some changes in respect of the way in which trials would be conducted where there was classified security information involved. The Law Society was not told about it. The Council for Civil Liberties was not told about it. They were surprised when they found out about it. There was no mention of it in the second reading speech from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety. There was no mention of it by anyone in the third reading speeches today. There is a scant, two-line reference to it in the select committee report back, and it does not actually describe the nature of what has been done. The Law Society wrote a letter to the Minister on 21 August complaining about it. The society noted that this was, in its opinion, a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.
I want to remind the House that the Act, at section 25, says that the minimum standards of criminal procedure include the right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial court; the right to be present at the trial, and that is abrogated in some circumstances by these provisions; the right to present a defence, which is undermined by these provisions; and the right to examine the witnesses for the prosecution—all of which are absolutely basic rights set out in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. In addition, the Law Society points out that these provisions, which abrogate those rights, have been inserted without any public consultation, any right of submission, and no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet. It is true that there was a minor amendment to the wording that the Law Society had previously seen put in place by the executive, effectively, by Supplementary Order Paper just yesterday or the day before. But the effect of that is not to cure the problem.
The legislation as amended is torturous to read. I have read it 10 times. I am not sure what it means. I have spoken with Austin Forbes QC. He has read it a number of times, and he cannot make clear sense of it either. But what is clear is that the later parts of schedule 2A of the Health and Safety at Work Bill, which give instructions to the court to be able to hear certain types of evidence, without the accused and the accused’s lawyer hearing it or being present in court when it is given, have no meaning at all unless they apply sometimes.
So the Attorney-General cannot have been correct when he implied to the media—or this is what the media took from his comments—that the change meant that these were no longer problematic. It cannot be right, because those provisions sometimes apply. I know that Austin Forbes thinks that the effect of the change to new clause 1 of schedule 2A is that, effectively, where you have a proceeding that involves classified security information, although it is not saying it in that clause, the rest of that schedule applies. So it is not an exclusion of prosecutions from the rules in schedule 2A; it is just saying that it is subject to the provisions of that schedule.
The Law Society make the point that the breadth of evidence that can be covered is far too wide. If you are going to have a truncation of the normal rights to a fair trial, you should do it as narrowly as possible. I am not even convinced that it is ever necessary in respect of a prosecution under health and safety legislation. But let us assume for the moment that it is—which I do not accept—you should do it as narrowly as possible. The sort of information that comes within the definition of “classified security information” is far too wide and goes against the Law Commission’s recommendation, which says that in these cases you should really be dealing only with matters of national security, and that a distinction should be made between national security and broader notions of international relations or economic interests. I agree that we have not had the opportunity to have that discussion. This is very poor legislation.
For the Attorney-General to then criticise the Law Society and say that it was somehow misinformed and getting it wrong is, in my opinion, beyond the pale, and I do not think that the Attorney-General should have said those things. This is an inappropriate breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and of the ability of people to have a fair trial, and I do not think that we in this Parliament have properly protected that fundamental interest.
I also note that we have taken away from the court the general discretion to oversee this. If it is dealt with under the Criminal Disclosure Act 2008, the court has the ability to actually say: “Well, the police might claim that that should be confidential but we don’t agree.” That jurisdiction of the court has been ousted. It is wrong. It applies to the police, not just the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau. This is far too broad, it is wrong in principle, and I cannot see how it can ever be justified in respect of health and safety reform legislation.
Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): This is great legislation, and I support it and commend it to the House. Thank you.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The question is that the Health and Safety at Work Bill be now read a third time. Those of that opinion will say Aye; of the contrary opinion will say No. [Interruption] Can I just remind members that I have to declare a result before people can ask for a party vote. The Ayes have it.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Health and Safety at Work Bill be now read a third time.
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.
Bill read a third time.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 109
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.
Noes 12
New Zealand First 12.
Bill read a third time.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 109
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.
Noes 12
New Zealand First 12.
Bill read a third time.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time.
Ayes 109
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.
Noes 12
New Zealand First 12.
Bill read a third time.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the WorkSafe New Zealand Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 109
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.
Noes 12
New Zealand First 12.
Bill read a third time.
Bills
Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential Land) Bill
First Reading
Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education) on behalf of the Minister of Revenue: I move, That the Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential Land) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Finance and Expenditure Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 22 October 2015 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday during a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 191 and 194(1)(b) and (c)—
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I regret that the time has come for me to leave the Chair. This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 8 September 2015.
Debate interrupted.
The House adjourned at 6 p.m.