Wednesday, 21 October 2015

WEDNESDAY, 21 OCTOBER 2015

WEDNESDAY, 21 OCTOBER 2015

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Visitors

Kenya—Delegation, Parliament

Mr SPEAKER: I am sure that members would wish to welcome a parliamentary delegation from Kenya, led by the Hon Johnson Sakaja, who are present in the gallery.

Cook Islands—Delegation, Parliament

Mr SPEAKER: I am sure that members would wish to welcome a parliamentary delegation from the Cook Islands, who are also present in the gallery.

Business of the House

Business of the House

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): Following discussions in the Business Committee yesterday, I seek leave that the business of the House for Wednesday, 4 November 2015 be the consideration of Government orders of the day and that the business for Wednesday, 11 November 2015 and Wednesday, 2 December 2015 be the consideration of private and local orders of the day and members’ orders of the day despite Standing Order 76(1).

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

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I seek leave for the House to adjourn at the conclusion of the new Green member’s maiden statement on Wednesday, 4 November 2015.

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

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Overseas Investment—Overseas Ownership of New Zealand Land and Job Creation

1. ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Given his answer to Oral Question No. 2 yesterday, why doesn’t he want to see “excessive rural land sold to overseas buyers” and see New Zealanders become tenants in our own country?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): It is a matter of striking the appropriate balance. As I said, this Government wants New Zealand to be open to the world. We welcome investment that supports jobs and growth in New Zealand. At the same time we have protected New Zealand’s interests by allowing Ministers to consider a wide range of issues when assessing overseas investment in sensitive land and emphasising that jobs are in New Zealand’s economic interests. That is why we have seen the rate of approval for net land sales to foreign buyers fall from an average of 68,682.7 hectares per year under Labour and David Parker to 35,841.7 under this Government. We think our approach is more effective than setting up a new Chinese-sounding name inspectorate within the Overseas Investment Office.

Andrew Little: Given that in just 5 years his Government has approved the sale of land bigger than the combined area of Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Hamilton, Hastings, Napier, Palmerston North, Tauranga, Wellington, Whangarei, Invercargill, and New Plymouth twice over, how much more land does he expect to approve for sale in the next 2 years?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I suspect the Leader of the Opposition is making that up, because yesterday he came into Parliament and said that we had sold 250,000 hectares since July 2010. I suspect that is the basis of the diatribe he has just come into Parliament with, which is just plain wrong, because, by the way, it includes leases, not sales; rollover of leases; and where things are sold to a consortium including New Zealanders. The number is actually 40 percent of Mr Little’s made-up number, and it is half what Labour sold. The problem is not National—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The answer is now going on—

Andrew Little: Given that he has been in charge for 7 years, is it not time for him to take responsibility for his own actions, rather than acting as if he is playing in the playground?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: This is a Government that on a net basis sold half of what Labour did. This is a Government that in office actually sent new directives—

Dr David Clark: 7 long years.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yeah, well, there might be more if the way you keep going is having policies twice as bad as ours. So this is a Government that directed the Overseas Investment Office with two new considerations under the benefits test, including an economic interest factor and a new mitigating factor. Every time the Leader of the Opposition comes to Parliament he comes arguing about something we are doing when the record of Labour in Government was worse. You need to find—

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Andrew Little: At what point does he believe too much of our land has been sold? How much is too much?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: When David Parker is responsible for it and twice as much is sold.

Tim Macindoe: What reports has the Prime Minister seen supporting the role foreign investment plays in supporting growth and jobs in New Zealand?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I have seen a couple of reports in recent months, both strongly supporting the role foreign investors play in supporting jobs and growth. The first said: “Well, I’m not anti - foreign investment. I think we’re a country that’s been built on foreign direct investment.” The second report called for—get this—more foreign investment in manufacturing and in the regions. “Either State investment—Government investment—or foreign direct investment, yeah. I mean, both should complement each other.” That was Andrew Little before he became No. 8. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Supplementary question—Andrew Little.

Andrew Little: Thank you, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Hon Paula Bennett, if she wants to remain for question time, will stop interjecting when I have asked for silence for this question.

Andrew Little: Bringing the question back to the topic of the primary question, which is on land sales, what specific evidence does he have that the land sales that have happened under his watch have created jobs, in light of the fact that the Overseas Investment Office has failed to collect any evidence of job creation?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The first thing I would say is that it has taken place at half the rate it did under the previous Government. Secondly, actually, this is the Overseas Investment Office that is controlled by the Overseas Investment Act, which was actually passed by the Labour Government in 2005. Thirdly, I think it is plain for anyone to see that jobs are either created or saved, and I challenge the member to go down to the CraFarm farms and go and have a look and see whether Shanghai Pengxin has created more jobs or fewer jobs. Go and have a look.

Andrew Little: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That question related to the evidence that the Prime Minister had about job creation—

Mr SPEAKER: I am going to invite the question to be asked again.

Andrew Little: What specific evidence does he have that the land sales that have occurred under his watch have created jobs, in light of the fact that the Overseas Investment Office has failed to collect any evidence of job creation?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The applications that were lodged at the time the purchases were made.

Andrew Little: If he really thinks it is bad for us to become tenants in our own land, why is his Government doing nothing to prevent these sales, or is it just more hollow words from a hollow Prime Minister?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: This would all be believable if the numbers were the other way round, but this is the Leader of the Opposition whose Labour Party policies sold twice as much land. That is it. You do not need to know any more than that.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why is the Prime Minister hiding behind the defence that the information is confusing or not present, and yet he opposes New Zealand First’s far-sighted Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill, which has international precedent?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: We are not hiding behind any information. The information is clear: twice as much land was sold on a net basis under Labour.

Andrew Little: Is it the truth that he will talk the talk but he will not walk the walk, and that he does not actually care about us becoming tenants in our own land, and that is why he continues to rubber-stamp land sales?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Here are the facts: under Labour, net sensitive lands approved for sale was 68,682.7 hectares per year. Under National it has been 35,841. So why do we have this line of questioning this week? It is hardly the biggest line. I will tell you why: it is because Labour has invested some of its leader’s budget into a new pamphlet it has put out there because the Leader of the Opposition is on 8 percent and no one—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! You are deviating a long way from the answer now.

Economic Programme—Fiscal Strategy

2. ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement regarding the Government’s fiscal approach that “the Government will focus on what we can control and maintain prudent expenditure management—just as we’ve done to return the books to surplus”?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Yes, I do stand by the statement. Over the last seven Budgets the annual cost of new initiatives has averaged around $600 million. By comparison, the average cost of the last seven Budgets of the previous Government was almost $3 billion. Revenue will always fluctuate outside the control of the Government, and revenue flows are heavily influenced by international economic developments. Our focus remains on what we can control, and that is ensuring precious taxpayers’ dollars are spent wisely and effectively.

Alastair Scott: What impact will the current global and domestic economic outlook have on Government revenue?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: We have yet to see when Treasury updates its forecast prior to Christmas, but since the Budget forecasts in the middle of this year we have seen significantly lower dairy prices, very low inflation, and interest rates lower than were expected—and these are now expected to persist for some time—and a weaker world economic outlook, particularly in emerging markets. But because we are confident about the medium-term improvement in the Government’s finances, it is unlikely that changes in the growth forecast will change the Government’s fiscal approach. We are unlikely to cut services or income support, even if forecasts show lower tax revenue.

Alastair Scott: What steps has the Government taken to control spending?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: We do not set out so much to control spending as to make sure that each dollar is spent effectively. Much of the focus of our spending is on ensuring that we invest early to assist those who are more vulnerable and need more Government services, and that requires understanding our customers much better, understanding what works to meet their needs, and adjusting services accordingly. I must say that public servants are carrying out these sorts of functions extensively across the whole range of Government services and we are starting to get better results.

Alastair Scott: What other steps is the Government taking to ensure ongoing improvements in its books?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Government debt levels are driven not just by operating deficits but also by the Government’s capital investment programme, and we are making sure that we make better use of our capital. The Government’s share offer programme has provided funding for valuable public investment without more borrowing from overseas. As at Budget 2015, investments from the Future Investment Fund include $635 million in education, $684 million in health, and $990 million in transport.

Australia—Offshore Detention Centres

3. CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he believe his meeting with Hon Malcolm Turnbull resulted in positive human rights outcomes?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Not specifically, because human rights were not specifically discussed during my meeting with Mr Turnbull. However, as the member is aware, we did have a lengthy direct conversation about the deportation of New Zealanders and the holding of New Zealanders in Australian detention centres. I am pleased that Mr Turnbull pledged to put more resources into processing appeals, in order to accelerate them. This will help to clear the backlog of people in the pipeline for deportation. He announced also other steps to improve the situation for New Zealand.

Catherine Delahunty: Did he specifically ask Malcom Turnbull to bring New Zealand citizens being detained offshore back on to the mainland of Australia?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I raised the issue of detention centres and said that I did not think it was appropriate that New Zealanders were sent there. What I got was an assurance from Mr Turnbull that they would be upping significantly the resources so that New Zealanders will not have to go to detention centres, because they will be dealt with more quickly. But as Mr Turnbull pointed out, they are all free to come home to New Zealand and have their applications dealt with here.

Catherine Delahunty: Supplementary question. Did he—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have not yet called the member. Supplementary question—[Interruption] Order! Supplementary question—Catherine Delahunty.

Catherine Delahunty: Did he specifically seek an assurance from Malcom Turnbull that no more New Zealand citizens will be sent to offshore detention centres should they choose to remain in Australia while awaiting their deportation appeals?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I think that is the point. If they choose to wait there, they are free to do that. I cannot make them come home, but what the law does say is that they are quite free to come home to New Zealand and have their applications processed here.

Catherine Delahunty: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It was a straight question asking whether he specifically sought an assurance.

Mr SPEAKER: Can I just ask the member to look at Speaker’s ruling 187(4). It will inform the member that you cannot specifically demand a yes or no answer, which is clearly what the member wanted. The question was addressed.

Catherine Delahunty: Did he specifically seek an assurance from Malcolm Turnbull that New Zealand citizens who would have been entitled to legal aid in Australia will continue to get access to that legal aid if they choose to come back to New Zealand while awaiting their deportation appeals?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: There was no discussion about legal aid.

Catherine Delahunty: Does he support Australia’s bid for a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: You would need to direct that question to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Catherine Delahunty: Why, as Prime Minister, will he not rule out supporting Australia’s bid to the United Nations Human Rights Council given that Australia has been cited for 143 violations of the very body that it is seeking election to?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: In the first instance, that is a matter for the Minister of Foreign Affairs to provide advice to me and to Cabinet.

Catherine Delahunty: Does he believe Australia’s treatment of detainees—New Zealanders and others—and the forced deportations that split families up should preclude it from a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: All I can say is, and it is not my job to speak for Malcolm Turnbull, the Australians do not believe that there are human right abuses taking place in their detention centres, and if there are any that New Zealanders—

Catherine Delahunty: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Sit down. I have not finished. Sit down.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, Prime Minister, any member has the right to raise a point of order.

Catherine Delahunty: He is not answering the question. I did not ask what Malcolm Turnbull said—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I am trying to listen to the answer that the Prime Minister is giving. If, at the end of the answer, the member feels that the question has not been addressed, the question can be raised with me. I will then make a judgment.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: That is exactly my point. It is not for me to speak for the Prime Minister of Australia, but I can tell you that the position of the Australian Government is that there are no human rights issues taking place in their detention centres. But as I have said publicly and in this House before, if New Zealanders feel they have any concerns, they are free to take those up with the Foreign Affairs consular staff and we will have them investigated.

Catherine Delahunty: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It was a specific question: does he believe Australia’s treatment of detainees—not what does he think—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! On this occasion, I will invite the member to repeat the question, but can I just ask then that the member does not interrupt the answer, because it is very hard for me to then judge whether the answer addresses the question. We will have the supplementary question again.

Catherine Delahunty: Does he believe Australia’s treatment of detainees—New Zealanders and others—and the forced deportations that split families up should preclude it from a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: That’s a different question.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I say to the Hon Gerry Brownlee that the question is in order. I do not think it is substantially different. I invite the Prime Minister to answer it.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am not in a position to judge the treatment by the Australian Government in relation to other people detained for deportation. When it comes to New Zealanders, the position is quite clear: if a New Zealander feels there is a breach, they should raise it with Foreign Affairs.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wanted to wait until the end of that question exchange because I did not want to interrupt the flow of the questioning. The point that I want to raise with you is that when ruling on one of the points of order from Catherine Delahunty, you indicated that you were waiting until the end of the Prime Minister’s answer to see whether he addressed the question. The point that I want you to give some further consideration to perhaps is that Ministers need, in their answers, to confine themselves to the matter that they are being questioned on. The implication of the ruling you made is that Ministers can stand up and say what they like, and that providing they eventually get to answering the question at some point, that gives them carte blanche to say whatever they like. There should be a principle that they have to restrict themselves at least to the subject area that they are being questioned on.

Mr SPEAKER: I do not need assistance from members on this occasion. I have got to judge it in relationship to the question that is being asked. When I consider the question “Does the Prime Minister believe the Australians’ treatment of detainees, etc.”, it is a question of whether there is a responsibility of the Prime Minister in that regard in the first place. I then required some time to listen to the answer, because I do not expect it is an easy one for the Prime Minister to answer when he is commenting on another country’s treatment of detainees. So the judgment I will make will depend very much on the question that is asked. I appreciate that the member is raising a point generally, but I need to judge the length of an answer according to the complexity of the question—I guess that is the way I should put it.

Economy—Forecasts

4. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Has GDP per capita growth declined over the last two quarters, and what reports has he seen that this trend will continue for the next two quarters?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): No, and none.

Grant Robertson: Is it, in fact, correct that for the first 6 months of this financial year GDP per capita growth was minus 0.2 percent?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: It would be of some assistance to the House if the member could tell us whether he is talking about nominal GDP per capita or real GDP per capita, because they both fluctuate. They fluctuate because inflation fluctuates, and also, currently, because the population is growing so fast.

Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That was a very specific question about the first 6 months of this year. I gave him a figure—[Interruption] Well, you can answer either way, Bill, but you still have to answer.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! And the answer addressed the question, certainly, by asking for the question to be more specific. So I suggest that the member now proceed with a specific supplementary question.

Grant Robertson: Is it, in fact, correct that Treasury is forecasting growth dropping below 2 percent, and with immigration continuing at high levels, the economy will continue to fail to keep up, which will mean continuing negative per capita economic growth?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is quite possible that the economy could by the end of this year be growing at an annual rate a bit under 2 percent. The indicators are that next year it will pick up a bit, if you believe the services and manufacturing indices. In respect of population growth, it is surprisingly strong—there is no doubt about that. There has been a big turn-round in the number of people who want to stay home under this Government compared with the number who left under the last Government, and it would not be surprising if per capita incomes were flat to falling for a while.

Grant Robertson: In light of that answer, how then can he be satisfied with an economy that cannot generate the jobs or activity to match population increase?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, I do not think the Government has indicated it is satisfied at all. In fact, part of the key to this Government is its relentless dissatisfaction about what can be achieved in New Zealand. That is how we achieve a brighter future—by keeping at it. But it is good news that more people stay in New Zealand, and that we have had now the sixth month of a net inflow from Australia—something that has not happened since we have been measuring it.

Grant Robertson: How can it be good news for New Zealanders that unemployment is still up around 6 percent and that high levels of immigration are not being matched by economic growth, and, in fact, what they are leading to is higher housing prices in Auckland?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, both of those things that the member has pointed out are correct; that is, the measured unemployment rate is not dropping as fast as we would like—in fact, it may well be rising at the moment—because the number of people showing up to the labour market is growing faster than ever, and despite the fact that this economy is producing tens of thousands of new jobs a year, it needs to produce even more than it currently is if we are going to drop unemployment.

Grant Robertson: Will he do anything differently in the face of a slowing economy, or is he simply prepared to outsource to the Reserve Bank in responding to what is now a sluggish economy?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, the thing is, as I have pointed out to the member previously, and to Ministers, actually, the Government cannot chase quarterly or monthly economic figures. In fact, it cannot really influence 6-monthly figures. We focus on the longer term, as you would expect a Government with vision to do, and that is by funding the research and development and support for business that backs innovation, getting the levels of educational achievement up, particularly among those with the lowest levels of achievement so that they can be long-term contributors to the economy, and negotiating the kinds of free-trade agreements that Labour opposes, which will open decades of opportunities for our businesses.

Environmental Reporting—Environment Aotearoa 2015 Report

5. NUK KORAKO (National) to the Minister for the Environment: How will the Environment Aotearoa 2015 report released today strengthen the integrity of New Zealand’s clean, green brand?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): Independent reporting of how clean our air is, what the state of our waterways is, and the progress we are making in areas like marine protection is, in my view, actually really important to New Zealand living up to its “clean, green” brand. Actually, we were the only country in the OECD not to have a system of statutory environment reporting, and I think today’s report is a really important benchmark in terms of this being a country that does not want just to market itself but that is prepared to be open about areas where we are doing well and areas where we need to lift our game.

Nuk Korako: What was the origin of the new system, and how does it progress from today’s published report?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The policy of having regular independent statutory reporting was part of National’s blue-green agenda, which we developed in Opposition. In 2010 we went out with a Government discussion document to refine the model. Today’s report is a dry run of that new Act, which Parliament passed last month. We do want feedback on it in developing the regulations to support the new reporting systems. From there, there will be 6-monthly reports on each of the key areas like fresh water, marine, atmosphere, climate change, air, and land, and then once every 3 years there will be a comprehensive report like the one published today.

Nuk Korako: What areas of the report point to improvements in the state of our environment, and what areas are identified as requiring greater attention?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The report does note that we have made very substantial progress in the area of air quality, with a lot fewer New Zealanders dying as a consequence of particulate pollution, and, in fact, we have some of the cleanest air in the world. That has come about because we have tightened fuel standards. We have set a tougher mark in terms of vehicles in New Zealand, and there has also been a real programme of converting people’s heating systems, as well as this Government’s very aggressive programme around home insulation. If you take an area like the ocean area, it shows that New Zealand has made very good progress in reducing the number of our fishing stocks that are overfished—for instance, we have reduced by about 40 percent the number of seabirds that are killed in the fishing industry. The areas where—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The answer is miles too long.

Justice System—Name Suppression

6. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he have confidence in his Minister of Justice; if so, why?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes. The Minister of Justice is doing a great job of making our communities safer. The Better Public Services results show that total crime has fallen by 17.6 percent since June 2011, youth crime has fallen by a remarkable 37.3 percent, and violent offending has fallen by 9.1 percent. I am particularly pleased with the achievements of the justice sector in Northland. This area has seen a 30 percent drop in the number of people appearing in court in the last 4 years. I have great confidence in the justice Minister delivering for the people of Northland and for the rest of New Zealand.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How can he possibly have confidence in the Minister of Justice, who has failed to act in support of sexual assault victims Anne-Marie Forsyth and Karen Beaumont, who have had their own name suppression orders lifted in an attempt to reveal their attacker’s identity?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: My understanding is that that was a matter for the judge.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is he aware that name suppression was granted to the paedophile who assaulted Ms Forsyth and Ms Beaumont to protect only the victims’ identities and not the offender’s, and that as both Ms Forsyth and Ms Beaumont have had their own name suppression orders lifted, their attacker should no longer be allowed to hide behind a cloak of legal secrecy?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The matter of whether name suppression is granted or not is a matter for judges. This Government, however, has tightened up the conditions under which people can apply for name suppression.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: What is more important to him as Prime Minister, the rights of victims or the rights of paedophiles, and if it is the rights of victims, does he believe that the victims of paedophiles should have the right for name suppression orders in favour of paedophiles removed?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Clearly, the rights of victims, but that is a matter, on a case by case basis, for judges to determine. And, often in these cases, for a variety of reasons, they continue to allow to grant name suppression—for instance, if it would have a more detrimental impact on the victim, because of the closeness, potentially, of the relationship between the person who has been convicted and the victim themselves.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Given that the Minister of Justice has known about this and has failed to act, will he as Prime Minister support New Zealand First’s bill to give justice to the victims of paedophiles and have the Criminal Procedure (Removing Paedophile Name Suppression) Amendment Bill pulled from the ballot, to be read for the first time immediately after question time today?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: In answer to the last part, no. But if the member is really serious about this issue, he is always welcome to make an appointment and go and see the Minister of Justice and talk to her about it.

Crime Statistics—Trends and Reporting

7. SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill) to the Minister of Justice: What recent evidence has she received on trends in the New Zealand crime rate?

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): Several recent statistics all paint a clear picture that under the National-led Government, crime in New Zealand is falling. Among the recent results were the conviction and sentencing figures released by Statistics New Zealand last year. [Interruption] Listen up—you might learn something. These show encouraging trends, with the number of the adults—[Interruption] When they are ready. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The level of interjection is unacceptably loud. I will have to look for somebody to expel from the Chamber as a means of trying to get some cooperation. I hope that it is not—

Chris Hipkins: It won’t be me.

Mr SPEAKER: I appreciate the assurance from Chris Hipkins. Amy Adams, continue with the answer.

Hon AMY ADAMS: The Statistics New Zealand statistics show encouraging trends, with the number of adults who appeared in court now down 36 percent since its peak in 2009-10 and the number of young people down 61 percent since 2007-08. Reductions are seen across all genders, ethnicities, and age groups and show the real improvements in safety that this Government’s focus on reducing crime is producing. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is the last warning I will give to Sue Moroney in this question time.

Sarah Dowie: How do these results align with the Government’s Better Public Services targets?

Hon AMY ADAMS: Our Better Public Services targets track statistics different from the Statistics New Zealand figures, yet they also show a consistent result of falling crime. Our latest Better Public Services results, released in September, show that since June 2011 we have achieved a 17 percent reduction in total crime, a 39 percent reduction in youth offending, and a 10 percent reduction in violent offending. What this means is that under National, fewer New Zealanders are ending up as victims of crime.

Sarah Dowie: What gives her confidence that these figures truly represent a drop in crime rather than changes in reporting or recording practices?

Hon AMY ADAMS: These positive results are confirmed by yet a third source, the New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey. This survey looks at the way people experience all crime, not just crime that is reported to the formal justice system. It shows a similar trend to other statistics, estimating a 30 percent drop in crime, or up to 800,000 fewer crimes each year, since the survey was last undertaken in 2008. These figures once more reinforce that this Government is delivering on its promise to create a safer New Zealander.

Jacinda Ardern: Does she think it is acceptable that, overall, the crime resolution rates have declined since 2008, including sexual assault resolution rates, which have dropped from 64 percent in 2008 to 47 percent in 2014?

Hon AMY ADAMS: Of course we would want all cases to be resolved, and, as the member knows, we have made—and I have made—it a priority to ensure that the treatment of sexual assault cases and domestic violence cases is improved considerably in the court system. The fundamental and final decisions are made between the Crown prosecution service and the judiciary, and I am not going to engage in settling or trying to resolve any cases—that would be constitutionally quite inappropriate.

Broadband, Rural—Speed

8. CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) to the Minister for Communications: Does she agree with the current Mayor of Waitaki, Gary Kircher, who recently said that in his region “Internet speed in these areas is woefully inadequate with most connections being five megabits per second. This situation is a barrier to economic growth and creates an irrational digital divide between our central business district and productive rural area”?

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for Communications): What the mayor actually said was that in four small communities within Waitaki most connections were around five megabits per second. Actually, the majority of residents in Waitaki are able to access speeds of 100 megabits per second, thanks to our ultra-fast broadband programme. I do not consider—

Grant Robertson: Oh, he’s only the mayor! What would he know?

Hon AMY ADAMS: No, no—well, if the member quoted it properly, she would have got that. I do not, however, consider that five megabits is woefully inadequate, as it enables most uses—like high-definition streaming, and use of software as a service, like Xero—and it represents a twentyfold increase on what those residents were experiencing under Labour. But, like the mayor, I do aspire to better connectivity for all New Zealanders, which is why we have allocated a further $360 million in this year’s Budget to continue to improve connectivity, which I note that that member opposed.

Clare Curran: Is Jacqui Dean, the member for Waitaki, correct—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Every member has a right to ask a supplementary question, which now has been asked. I will allow, in this case, the member to ask the balance of the question, which will, effectively, rate as a second supplementary question.

Clare Curran: Is Jacqui Dean, the member for Waitaki, correct to say recently about broadband in her electorate: “Some rural schools have little to no access via modern communication systems. If they climb a platform, stand on one leg, and hold their mobile high enough, they may, just may, receive a level 1 signal.”?

Mr SPEAKER: The Hon Amy Adams—[Interruption] Order! Having listened to a very lengthy question, I now want to hear the answer.

Grant Robertson: Well, we all do.

Mr SPEAKER: Well, then, be quiet, Mr Robertson.

Hon AMY ADAMS: I tell that member that Jacqui Dean is a passionate advocate for her community, and, like most MPs, she is keen to see better rural broadband. It is unfortunate that Labour opposed it. What that member is talking about is around mobile connectivity, which is different to fixed broadband connectivity, and this Government is improving it—something that Labour continues to oppose.

Clare Curran: Is it correct that the Government Rural Broadband Initiative is a huge success, when 72 percent of people in Western Bay of Plenty say that their internet is unreliable or too slow for their current needs, or when just 14 percent of people in Northland are satisfied with their current connection, which is so slow it will not load the New Zealand Herald website and where almost half—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Bring the question to a conclusion. [Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! The question is miles too long. The first part can be addressed—the Hon Amy Adams.

Hon AMY ADAMS: Given that before the Rural Broadband Initiative programme 41 percent of rural connections were no better than dial-up, and now 90 percent of rural connections will be 5 megabits a second, given that we have tripled internet speeds, and given that we have moved from below the OECD average under Labour to now well above it—yes, I would say it is a tremendous success.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Before I call the member, I do hope this question is in line with the Standing Orders.

Clare Curran: Is Fonterra correct to say that “Slow internet connections lead to lost time, increased costs, cause significant farmer frustration, increased isolation, and are an impediment to attracting skilled staff to their areas.”? [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The conversation between two members down in the far left and right of the House will cease immediately. If they wish to carry it on, I can assist by inviting both those members to go outside to continue their conversation.

Hon AMY ADAMS: Actually, yes, they are correct, which is why this Government has prioritised putting $2 billion into improving it. I hope that Fonterra is aware that Labour consistently voted against improving rural broadband.

Clare Curran: Is it correct that the rural broadband scheme is a huge success for those in the Rangitīkei area, in which just 63 percent have the internet and it takes 10 minutes to download the MetService, or for those in Ruapehu, where during winter holidays and weekends the eftpos that runs the shops fails completely and makes it impossible to sell anything, and where 50 percent—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question is long enough. It can be answered.

Hon AMY ADAMS: For all the reasons that I outlined earlier, yes, I do think it has been a considerable improvement on where we started, because, as we know, under Labour, 41 percent of rural connections could not get more than bare dial-up service; now 90 percent of rural households will be getting 5 megabits a second, and this Government wants to go further—all of which Labour opposed.

Clare Curran: Given that her predecessor Steven Joyce said in 2011 that the Rural Broadband Initiative was “the best deal for creating a step change in broadband services for rural New Zealand”, and in August last year—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I have the question please.

Clare Curran: —that member herself said that the Rural Broadband Initiative—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. I will give her one brief opportunity to ask a supplementary question in line with the Standing Orders. If the member does not succeed in doing so, we are moving immediately to the next question.

Clare Curran: Does she accept that it is her bungling in the 3 years since she became Minister that has resulted in inadequate and snail-like broadband outside urban centres; and if it is not her fault, is she saying that it is Steven Joyce’s?

Mr SPEAKER: Either of those two supplementary questions.

Hon AMY ADAMS: I do not accept any of the member’s histrionics—they are about as accurate as her last press release.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I seek leave to table an email from the ITM Fishing Show based out of Kerikeri, saying that the service is so abysmal that it will have to relocate. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Mr Brownlee! It is a marginal call as to whether I will put the leave, because the point of it is to make a political point, but on this occasion I will favour the member and will put the leave. It will be over to the House to decide. Leave is sought to table that particular email. Is there any objection? [Interruption] There is. [Interruption] Order! I have now risen to my feet far too many times asking for some cooperation. I had complaints yesterday that all I am doing is threatening members. I am reluctant to show members out, but with that sort of behaviour continuing, the next one who continues to interject when I rise to my feet will certainly be leaving the Chamber.

Rt Hon John Key: I seek leave to table a picture of the fish I caught on the ITM Fishing Show, which I understand is larger—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, I will not be putting the leave. I do not think that will help.

Clare Curran: Point of order. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am dealing with a point of order, Mr Peters.

Clare Curran: I seek leave to table three documents. The first is the letter from the Mayor for Waitaki, Gary Kircher, which is part of a registration of response form—

Mr SPEAKER: Can you describe the second document.

Clare Curran: —which was a document included to the Ministry of Business, Employment and Innovation.

Mr SPEAKER: Is the information—

Clare Curran: No, it is not readily available.

Mr SPEAKER: OK. Can you name the other two documents quickly.

Clare Curran: The second is a letter from the member for Waitaki, Jacqui Dean, which was part of the same document, and the third document is a letter from Fonterra, which was part of the Clutha—

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table those three letters—one from the mayor, one from the local member, and one from Fonterra. Is there any objection? There is no objection. They can be tabled.

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

Youth Justice—Korowai Manaaki Youth Justice Facility

9. 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, when taken in context.

Darroch Ball: Does she stand by her reply to my written questions requesting the readmission rates and number of reported assaults on young people at Korowai Manaaki Youth Justice North facility, stating after 11 days that she “could not provide the information in the required time frame”?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Yes, I do. The member has asked for some quite detailed information that has to come from its records, and we will get it as soon as possible.

Darroch Ball: How can she state that “The ministry is investigating the allegations regarding Korowai Manaaki and any concerns are being addressed.”, when she is still clearly unable to provide important, basic statistics, which an investigating ministry would be expected to have readily available?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: As I have said to the member, the allegations that he made in September in the House about Korowai Manaaki are actually being investigated. That is what is happening, and I will continue to make sure that they are investigated.

Darroch Ball: What important data does the Minister actually have readily available on our youth justice facilities, or is the answer actually none, showing a blatant lack of oversight allowing these current issues to occur in the first place?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: The member has asked me in written questions for some quite detailed information about a number of our youth justice residences, and I have asked for that information. It has not come in time to answer a written question, so I have given him an interim answer to say that I will get that information for him as soon as possible, and I will do that.

Resource Management Act Reforms—Environmental Protection

10. EUGENIE SAGE (Green) to the Minister for the Environment: Will proposed changes to the Resource Management Act 1991 safeguard the life-supporting capacity of air, water, soil, and ecosystems as the Act requires; if so, how?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): Yes, because it is National’s longstanding policy not to change section 5, which specifically refers to “safeguarding the life-supporting capacity of air, water, soil, and ecosystems;”.

Eugenie Sage: Will his changes to the Resource Management Act improve water quality, given the results in today’s Environment Aotearoa 2015 report, which show total nitrogen levels have increased at 60 percent of the monitored river sites?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The first thing I would point out is the figure that the member uses is not accurate. It was not accepted by the Government Statistician because the data around swimming water quality is not of that standard, and that party repeatedly misuses data that both the Government Statistician and the Secretary for the Environment say does not match up. This Government does view water quality as a serious issue. That is why we introduced the first national policy statement under the Resource Management Act requiring improvements in fresh water quality. In the changes that we are proposing, we are also intending to implement National’s policy of requiring all cattle stock to be fenced off from waterways.

Eugenie Sage: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was about total nitrogen, not about E. coli levels.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question was adequately addressed. It also started earlier than that, with “Will the changes to the Resource Management Act improve water quality?”. The question was addressed.

Eugenie Sage: Can he assure the House that the forthcoming Resource Management Act changes will not harm the environment when previous changes have resulted in the loss of landmark trees in Auckland such as the giant pōhutukawa in this picture, which has become this picture?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Government’s changes to the Resource Management Act will streamline and simplify it for the very reasons that are covered in the Productivity Commission report published today, which points out how that Act is actually undermining the capacity for average Kiwi families to be able to access an affordable home. In terms of issues around specific trees, I would point out that it is up to councils—for instance, in the case of some of the specific tree issues in Auckland—to make decisions about what trees have the status of being protected trees and what trees they may decide to allow to be removed.

David Seymour: Does the Minister anticipate the reforms will increase the supply elasticity of housing and therefore help alleviate child poverty?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Absolutely. If we look at the Productivity Commission report today it shows that the price of land in Auckland has increased fivefold. If any member of this House is serious about the issues of family poverty and about increasing the affordability of houses, then we have to deal with the very high cost of land that is driving up housing costs.

Dr David Clark: So why have you done nothing in 7 years?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: To the member who asks across the House what we have done about it, we have done the special housing areas as a short-term measure—opposed by that member—and when that legislation expires next October we need to follow it on with further Resource Management Act reforms.

Eugenie Sage: Will the next set of Resource Management Act changes increase the protection for our indigenous habitats and wildlife when his proposed National Environmental Standard for Plantation Forestry allows indigenous vegetation and habitats to be cleared and replaced with pine?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I do not accept the member’s assertions around the national environment standard that is proposed for forestry. It does not make sense for that industry to have different rules in every part of the country. Forestry is an important industry for New Zealand, and I am satisfied that that proposed national environment standard will both improve the environmental standards—in some areas it involves a substantive step up on the environmental rules—as well as reduce the compliance costs from the hundreds of consents that are currently required for the forestry industry.

Eugenie Sage: I seek leave to table a report from the Ministry for the Environment and Statistics New Zealand showing that total nitrogen—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That information will be very available to members.

David Seymour: Does the Minister believe that conservation should be based on robust science; if so, what is the scientific basis for retaining paragraphs such as “the ethic of stewardship:”, “the maintenance and enhancement of amenity values:”, and “intrinsic values of ecosystems:” in sections 6 and 7 of the Resource Management Act?

Mr SPEAKER: The Hon Dr Nick Smith—either of those two supplementary questions.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Government has made plain that it does not wish to make any changes to section 5, in the original primary question. It is the Government’s view that there are significant improvements that can be made to section 6 and section 7. There are a range of views across different parties in this Parliament; my hope is to be able to secure a majority so that we can make sensible changes to those sections that will both protect the environment and also enable New Zealand to grow and to prosper.

Christchurch Anchor Projects—Metro Sports Facility

11. JOANNE HAYES (National) on behalf of MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery: What recent announcements have been made on the development of key anchor projects in Christchurch?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery): This morning I announced that interest is being sought from contractors wanting to be involved in the planning and building of the Metro Sports Facility in Christchurch. This follows last month’s release of tenders for architectural and engineering design services. The Government has also increased the funding available for the facility, to ensure that it is a first-class asset for Christchurch. Proposals are readily coming in from prospective designers. There is now real momentum in this development. It is a key anchor project that will cater for everything from recreational to elite sport.

Joanne Hayes: How is the Government working with Christchurch City Council on the Metro Sports Facility project?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The Government is working extremely well with the Christchurch City Council on a number of areas. Particularly we point to this project, where it is a shared responsibility. We have also worked with the council particularly on agreeing a funding mechanism, which has meant that the Government has provided a little more funding than initially proposed. The tender released today is a step forward to the development of that facility, which will be a great asset for Christchurch.

Overseas Investment Office—Reporting

12. STUART NASH (Labour—Napier) to the Minister for Land Information: When did the Overseas Investment Office last produce a document that collated the benefits of overseas investment in New Zealand farmland in terms of employment created by the 716 successful consent applicants over the past 10 years who promised to create new job opportunities?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Land Information): Individual applications have a threshold to pass in terms of benefit to New Zealand, one of which is new job opportunities. If an application is granted with a condition attached to it, it is then monitored. The Overseas Investment Office does not aggregate data on the dollar value or benefits that successful individual applications will have for New Zealand. This Government is focused on quality not quantity. That is why, on this side of the House, the amount of net land sold, over our side, has halved.

Stuart Nash: In light of this, does she agree with the Minister of Finance, who told Parliament last Thursday that collating this information was “part of its function under the Overseas Investment Act”?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: As I said, individual applications are considered on their merit and that is why there are conditions attached, and we assess and measure those benefits. An example for the House that may be useful is the commitment of 93 jobs in the Crafar sale. Actually, in 2015 that was delivering 105 jobs, which is additional benefit.

Stuart Nash: Is she suggesting that the Minister of Finance, who has ultimate responsibility for signing off on consents by foreign investors, does not know the law as per the Overseas Investment Act?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: The Minister of Finance, as we are very clear about on this side of the House, actually was concerned about the amount of land sold by the former Government and that is why in 2010 we introduced additional matters to protect New Zealanders’ interests, to stop significant vertical integration, and to ensure that New Zealanders’ economic benefits were preserved.

Stuart Nash: Will she issue an instruction to the Overseas Investment Office to start collating this information, or does she not think that knowing the value added by overseas investment is important?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: That very question from that member illustrates he does not understand or know the legislation of the Overseas Investment Act. First and foremost, it states it is a privilege for foreign owners to purchase land and assets. That is why we have significant tests that ensure the benefits must be substantial and identifiable for New Zealanders.

Stuart Nash: Does the Minister not think it is important that New Zealanders understand the overall benefits of foreign investment to this country?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Absolutely, and that is why I very proudly, in every individual application that is before Ministers, consider the benefits to New Zealand and whether they are significant or identifiable. If they are not, that application will not be approved.

General Debate

General Debate

KEVIN HAGUE (Green): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Yesterday in question time the health Minister, Jonathan Coleman, appeared to invite me to work with him to tackle the obesity epidemic that we face. I certainly appreciate the invitation. Perhaps, it could be argued, that it was a little late, coming, as it did, after the Minister’s announcement of his strategy, but had he asked earlier, the kind of thing I would have said to him is: “We actually need to face up to this problem with dramatic and bold action.”

The fact is that obesity is taking over tobacco as the No. 1 cause of preventable illness and death. We have a total health budget of around $15 billion per year. We right now have a situation where one in four adult New Zealanders either has type 2 diabetes or has pre-diabetes and is at risk of getting type 2 diabetes. We have a situation where we can now conservatively predict that by 2021, just 6 years away, the cost of treating type 2 diabetes alone will be in excess of $2 billion, absolutely swamping our health services. So the kinds of actions that we have seen from the Government in its 22-point plan are simply inadequate. This particular failure reflects two common failures, two common weak points, in the Government’s approach to so many issues. First of all, there is a reliance on individual actions rather than addressing the environmental or, as Sir Peter Gluckman calls them, contextual factors that drive action. Secondly, there is an almost pathological reluctance to in any way tackle the actions of industry, particularly through regulation.

Let me deal with those two things—first of all, this idea about individual actions. The evidence in the health field is extremely clear that the model that has individuals making rational choices about their behaviour based on the information that they receive simply does not hold true in real life. Responding to these problems simply by giving people more education or more information does not work, particularly for those who most need to be able to change their behaviour. We simply have to address the environmental factors. In the case of tobacco, the factor that has been the leading cause of preventable death, what has actually worked there? Has it been giving people more information about how tobacco causes lung cancer and has it been putting up more and more posters? No. What has worked has been increasing the excise tax, it has been the Smoke-free Environments Act, it has been the restrictions on where and how tobacco can be sold, it has been the displays bans, and it has been the almost complete prohibition on advertising and sponsorship. These are the very measures that the Government is refusing to use in relation to the obesity epidemic.

The environmental initiatives that are in the plan are basically two things: one is a review of the code of practice for advertising food to children—that is fine as far as it goes, but it is such a tiny thing—and the other is not really an action at all; it is just a statement that says that the food industry is keen to work with the Government on something kind of vague. Well, it would be, would it not? Actually, industry at risk of being regulated is always keen to work voluntarily because its incentive is to do the least that is necessary that might damage its profit, to obviate and avoid compulsory regulation. I predict that what will result from that is not very much at all. That is why I asked yesterday whether the tobacco industry would now be involved in setting the Government’s tobacco control plan. So I do not know whether it is the Government’s well-known links with the junk food industry that have caused this reluctance to regulate, or whether it is, as the Dominion Post asserts today, the fact that the Government is scared of being caught up in its own rhetoric about the nanny State. But the fact is that, as with climate change and housing and environment, the Government is once again responding to a serious challenge with gesture.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): A fortnight ago in New York the Prime Minister announced the establishment by this country of a new sanctuary in the Kermadec Islands that is the size of France, which was welcomed from London to New York, from one end of New Zealand to the other, and illustrates the commitment that this Government has to a balanced programme of not just ensuring that the New Zealand economy grows and creates jobs but that we are also responsible custodians of the environment.

Today we released Environment Aotearoa 2015. This is the very first independent, comprehensive report on the state of the New Zealand environment, made possible through the passing by this Government of the Environmental Reporting Act. In response to Mr Hague’s question, I note that next month we will be introducing a bill to the House that will see 500,000 homes in New Zealand retrofitted with insulation during the term of this Government. Let me give you the comparison—15,000 homes insulated under the 9 years of the last Government; 500,000 homes insulated under this Government. And the member on the Opposition benches has got the gall to refer to 500,000 as somehow being token!

But it goes far further than that. Look at the programme of work that my colleague Maggie Barry is pursuing through the Budget, with the saving of the kiwis and reversing their decline; the programme that she has initiated around the war on the weeds, things like wilding pines that are dramatically changing—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am not certain whether you heard that phrase, but my colleagues believe they did hear it and we think it is unparliamentary in the extreme and that the Minister should not be allowed to proceed on that basis.

Mr SPEAKER: I never heard any comment that I would consider unparliamentary in the extreme. If I missed something, I am sorry.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well, do you want me to elaborate?

Mr SPEAKER: Well, I think I—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: He asked whether somebody had the “so and so”. Frankly, that is not acceptable.

Mr SPEAKER: No, I do not think that is what was stated at all. Would the Hon Nick Smith continue.

Ron Mark: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Is it a fresh point of order? If it is not we will be moving on, but if it is a fresh point of order, I am happy to hear it.

Ron Mark: It is a fresh point of order. Not too long ago one of my colleagues got only two words out and he used the word “crap” in a question. He got sat down—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will leave the Chamber.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Later this year my colleague Simon Bridges—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I apologise. I am just waiting for this member to leave the Chamber.

Ron Mark withdrew from the Chamber.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: My colleague Simon Bridges, the Minister of Transport, will later this year be announcing initiatives by this Government in respect of electric cars. We could talk about the initiative of the Prime Minister in the national network of cycleways and the new urban cycleways that are now part of that programme. There is the fivefold increase that this Government is committed to in terms of cleaning up New Zealand’s lakes and waterways, with initiatives all over the country. My point is that this Government has a very practical and substantive programme around the blue-green issues that we campaigned on. The reason that we maintained the confidence of New Zealanders is that we say what we mean and we do what we say.

I particularly want to highlight Environment Aotearoa 2015, which was published today. Most New Zealanders would see it as an anomaly that New Zealand, a country that depends so much on its natural resources for its wealth-creating industries, is the only OECD country not to have produced reports like the one we published today. It is part of our Government’s programme of strengthening the institutions and the systems around the New Zealand environment.

We are proud of our record. We created the Environmental Protection Authority and its role in making sure that we manage that environment wisely. We are proud that we passed the legislation that enables that huge area of exclusive economic zone to be properly managed, and, again, I emphasise the progress that we have made with marine protected areas last year in gazetting a record 10 new marine reserves in areas like the Subantarctic Islands, the five new marine reserves on the West Coast, new marine reserves at Akaroa and at Kaikōura as well as, of course, that massive reserve in the Kermadec Islands, which I mentioned in my opening. To give you some idea of scale, it is 35 times larger than all of the 44 marine reserves that have ever been created by this Parliament and this Government. It is a global commitment to improved management of our oceans. This is a blue-green Government—a Government that is able to marry together good economic management with responsible management of the environment, and that is one of the reasons why this John Key Government continues to retain the confidence of New Zealanders.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to acknowledge the stunning election victory of Justin Trudeau and the Liberals in Canada. What a fantastic result, and with Stephen Harper’s demise another Tory acolyte of John Key bites the dust. First it was Tony Abbott; now Stephen Harper—

Hon David Cunliffe: The Key curse.

PHIL TWYFORD: It is the Key curse—it is the Key curse. It is the kiss of death—it is the kiss of death, getting close to John Key. Who knows how long Malcolm Turnbull will last.

Speaking of Malcolm Turnbull, what a sad, weak figure the Prime Minister cut at his joint press conference with Malcolm Turnbull on the weekend. The combined diplomatic powers of Murray McCully and John Key, the texts to Julie Bishop, the forthright conversation at the football—it all amounted to nothing, because the Prime Minister, in these matters, is weak. He rolled over for Malcolm Turnbull, and Malcolm Turnbull tickled the Prime Minister’s tummy.

See, our Prime Minister is the king of the selfie. He loves the selfie—all right? He has reduced international relations to a few rounds of golf. But when it matters, when the chips are down and Kiwis need someone to stand up for them, and be forthright, and tell a few home truths, where is the Prime Minister? He is nowhere to be seen. He is the golfing partner to the rich and famous. He wants to be everybody’s friend, but he could not level with the Australian Prime Minister and speak the truth.

Our Anzac mates are holding hundreds of Kiwis in detention centres, including on Christmas Island. They are deporting people who are guilty of even the most low-level crimes, people who have lived, in some cases, their entire adult lives in Australia. They have paid taxes for decades. They have raised their families and lived their lives in Australia, but they are being deported to detention centres and then shipped out of the country. It is wrong, it is not how you treat your mates, and it is certainly not how you treat family. So who will stand up for New Zealanders in this case? Who will? John Key will not. He is weak. He does not like to have the hard conversations with Malcolm Turnbull. I will tell you who will stand up for New Zealanders. Andrew Little will, Kelvin Davis will, and the New Zealand Labour Party will. Someone has to stand up for New Zealanders because this Prime Minister is not up to the job.

Not only will the Government not stand up for New Zealand, but it is actively selling out this country. Tim Groser and John Key went to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement negotiations and they traded away the right of future Governments in this country to legislate in the interests of New Zealanders. They gave away the ability of future Governments to ban non-resident foreigners from buying land and housing in this country. That sticks in the craw. It undermines our sovereignty. I can understand it if the National Party has a different view about what the best housing policy should be. You would expect that. But I do not expect the National Party to trade away the power and the right of future Governments to legislate in the interests of New Zealanders. Andrew Little’s Labour Party comes to this Parliament to make laws that strengthen our nation and improve the lives of New Zealanders. It goes against everything that we stand for that this Government would go to international trade negotiations and trade away this Parliament’s right to legislate in the interests of New Zealanders.

The Government has sold out this country. It has betrayed the people of New Zealand. By its own admission, it did not even try to carve out a protection for New Zealanders to implement this kind of policy in the future, as Australia did and as several other parties to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement did. The Government cares so little for the sovereignty of our country, our right to legislate in the public interest, that it just gave it away. What a damning, damning indictment.

Meanwhile, in the Auckland housing market, billions of dollars of land and housing are being sold off under the feet of New Zealanders because this Government will not stand up for New Zealanders. It stands on the side of foreign property speculators. It will not stand up to Malcolm Turnbull and speak up for the interests of New Zealanders in detention in Australia. New Zealanders deserve much better.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (Minister of Conservation): I rise with pride to talk about the very significant conservation and environmental gains of this John Key - led Government. I draw members’ particular attention to the report titled Environment Aotearoa 2015. As my colleague Dr Nick Smith has pointed out, this is a wonderful way of measuring, as a benchmark, the achievements of this Government and also the challenges that lie ahead. It is very important to measure these things—otherwise, how can we manage them? In common with many countries, New Zealand faces a biodiversity problem. Our species—our taonga—are under threat. As it says in this report, which was released today, something like 94 percent of our land is affected by rats, stoats, and possums. Then there are the wilding pines. There is no room in this country for any kind of complacency when it comes to our biodiversity.

I would like to draw the House’s attention to some of the measures that we are putting in place. My colleague has mentioned many of them, and I commend him for the work that has been done, in the environmental space, with the Kermadec Islands. It is, indeed, an international triumph, if you like, to have the courage and the tenacity to give such a large body of water and unique species protection in perpetuity. This is showing the sort of courage that we have. The work in the freshwater area is commendable, and it is on the right track.

When it comes to my own portfolio of conservation, the week after next is Conservation Week. Our theme this year is “Healthy Nature Healthy People”, because we feel as a Government that it is important to take a whole-of-Government—a cross-Government—approach. I have been in conversation with the Minister of Health about how we can look at various measures to ensure that New Zealanders help themselves with obesity and other health-related issues and, at the same time, are in closer touch with nature through our parks and green spaces, which are world renowned. Recent New Zealand Transport Agency modelling shows that walking and cycling—for just two examples—result in dollars returned to the health system. That is, $2.70 per kilometre walked and about $1.30 for every kilometre cycled. So in the same way that we are using statistical and scientific evidence to back up the policies that we put in place—and the measures that we put in place as well—we are also using cost-based efficiency measurements, because that is how we do things.

Battle for our Birds was an extremely successful operation last year. For the first time—and it was the largest-ever predator campaign in this country’s history—we successfully treated more than 600,000 hectares of conservation land. The aerial drops of 1080 poison were effective and they worked well. In the Dart River Valley, for example, the nesting success rates for the yellowhead—the mohua—was almost 100 percent compared with less than 50 percent previously. It is very unfortunate that we have a small alarmist minority that is intent on spreading half-truths about 1080. It is an essential tool that we need to be able to use if we are to win the battle and bring our birds, our snails, our bats, and other creatures back from the brink of extinction, and we will continue to use it. These groups breed extremists, and we have seen that recently in the Operation Concord arrest. As for the people who go on to threaten the lives of New Zealanders and destabilise our economy, their emotional claptrap and their unscientific arguments will hopefully amount to nothing when intelligent New Zealanders really assess the problem and what we need to do about it—and 1080 is a very important part of that.

There are so many other commendable things that are coming through when it comes to natural self-setting, resetting traps. Again, these are the kinds of things that are very useful, and the Department of Conservation is spending quite a lot of money on these sorts of developments to make sure that we are not reliant on just one method. We spend more than $150 million a year on natural heritage management, and over the past 5 years our strategic direction as a department has focused on also partnering with others—philanthropists to do with the NEXT Foundation, Project Janszoon, and Predator Free New Zealand. We want to be predator-free by 2050. These are commendable aims and we are well on track. We have a Threatened Species Ambassador who works within the Department of Conservation—again, drawing public attention and winning hearts and minds, in the same way that we are trying to do with the War on Weeds and the “dirty dozen” weeds, by engaging the people of New Zealand in the fight that needs to be had, because united we stand against these foes, and we will protect our ecosystem if we all act together led by this John Key - led Government. Thank you.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): Clearly, that speech by Maggie Barry is evidence that 1080 will not get rid of the bats. The border security of this country is lax and the biosecurity in this country is lax. We have had more people with sniffer dogs—that is, handlers—than dogs themselves, at a ratio of 2:1, and we have had cuts to the conservation and environmental expenditure in the country, and that Minister of Conservation has the audacity, in a cliché and drivel-ridden speech, to claim she is doing something. I will not waste my time because the last time I saw her it was up at a meeting in Dargaville and the whole meeting had to be stopped while the chairman told her to keep quiet.

Let us start by congratulating Jack Martin of Pahīatua who is turning 100 years old this weekend. He served as a sapper in the 10th New Zealand Railway Construction Company during his 4 years in the army—more than 3 of which were spent overseas. He was awarded the 1939-1945 Star, the Africa Star, the Defence Medal, the War Medal 1939-1945, and the New Zealand War Service Medal. Jack received letters from the Queen, the Governor-General, the mayor, MPs, and the President of the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services Association, B J Clark.

He also got a letter from the Prime Minister. I wish the Prime Minister could hear what Jack’s son said, because to quote him, he said: “It’s simple for Dad. He fought under the flag and sadly lost cobbers in World War II from as far back as his schooldays. ‘They shall grow not old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.’ From Dad’s room at the Waireka he can see the flagpole while sitting in his La-Z-Boy, looking out across the lawns. That flagpole was a bit tatty and had no flag. Bryan James, the Pahīatua RSA President, refurbished the pole in time for Dad’s birthday and a brand new flag was presented to the pole, in the ceremony involving soldiers from Linton Camp. Now Dad can see our flag flying proudly every day.”

That is the son’s testimony, and I hope people in the media and other parties will remember this: the real affection there is for our flag. I know that some people like Simon O’Connor, Stuart Nash, and—bless her cotton socks—the Hon Judith Collins agree with our campaign to keep our flag, but for the rest, shame, because they all joined the committee to go along with the Prime Minister’s fad.

One party did not, and that party is New Zealand First. It is not about politics. It is about doing what is right and decent for the 73rd anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein this Friday, the centenary of Gallipoli’s evacuation, which falls on 15 to 20 December, and there are significant dates from Palestine to Viet Nam. It is crass and insensitive for the Prime Minister to go along with this fad now. And, for the benefit of Mr Macindoe, returned servicemen and women—Ron Mark included—know that there is a silver fern on our graves but that it is a real fern on grey stone.

None of those flag options has the unique botanical silver fern. That is how naïve they are over there; it is not even offered to the people of this country. That is why New Zealand First is aggrieved that Mr Brownlee refused to grant a debatable motion on the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. He refused to grant it. Then he told the people of this country that the Prime Minister did not know about this report, when the Prime Minister did, and it was all available 4 days before the Prime Minister left for Iraq, but the media were never given it. It is a sham and the UMR poll is as clear as daylight on this matter: New Zealanders do not want to go along with the Prime Minister’s latest fad and his gross waste of $26 million—a gross waste of $26 million.

If you were watching Sky television today, out of Australia, there was a trade Minister talking about—1 minute to go; fantastic, it will be incredibly good—the free-trade agreement China has just signed with Australia. Compare that with the one we signed. Compare the advantages they have got with what we got. Compare what they are going to get with what we negotiated, and then explain to me, if you are so much for free trade, why the China free-trade agreement is being renegotiated by the Government as we speak.

David Seymour: Who was the foreign Minister?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I was the Minister of Foreign Affairs and I made it public and clear that we were not supporting it. So do not come here like a juvenile infant and make stupid statements like that, Mr Seymour.

Hon NICKY WAGNER (Associate Minister of Conservation): I am delighted to talk about conservation, the Bluegreens, and why I believe we get the very best outcome for the environment and conservation when the Government and the community work together.

New Zealanders are intrinsically linked to the environment. It is in our DNA, and we are proudly protective of it. We enjoy spending time in the great outdoors, at the beach, in the mountains, and enjoying the rivers and lakes, and more and more often these days, contributing to an environmental project is part of our kaupapa. National’s blue-green principles are close to our hearts and underpin the holistic view of New Zealanders that looking after the environment goes hand in hand with a healthy economy and the well-being and quality of life of all New Zealanders. More than a third of New Zealand’s land mass and of our marine environment, especially since the announcement of the fabulous Kermadec sanctuary, is now protected for its conservation values.

Conservation boards represent the people of New Zealand and give us all a voice in the management of our public land and sea. Since our review in 2013 conservation boards have become more diverse and better connected to their communities. They work hand in hand with the Department of Conservation but their focus is strategic—on planning and management and encouraging as many New Zealanders as possible to get involved with environmental issues, activities in national parks in conservation areas, and community conservation initiatives—and thousands do; many thousands do.

The Department of Conservation works with 1,216 registered community conservation groups, and they are involved in everything from killing pests, monitoring birds, planting projects, research, and generally contributing to better conservation outcomes. One of them is the exciting and high-profile Project Janszoon in the Abel Tasman National Park, which has just recently won the highest award by the United Nations for community conservation and environment protection. That is a fantastic achievement on their part. But there are many, many other groups that are much smaller and less high-profile but equally as important and valued in their communities.

On top of that, 15,000 volunteers work with Department of Conservation - facilitated programmes, and these numbers are growing every year. They are incredibly dedicated and hard-working people. Last year they contributed 30,000 work days, and, again, they do everything. They repair tracks, trap pests, and babysit seal pups, as well as some of the less glamorous things such as administration and data entry.

Over the last few months, I have been visiting groups that the Department of Conservation has supported financially though the community conservation partnership grants. That is all about seed funding. It is about giving a kick-start to new community projects—conservation work that local groups want to get under way. It is based on a powerful community action model of encouraging local collaboration around a conservation campaign, and delivering cumulative results—and it is brilliant.

People involved can immediately see how they can make a difference, and because they are working together they can see really meaningful results. A great example of that is the Brook Waimarama Sanctuary in Nelson. The Department of Conservation contributed $127,000 to that as a kick-start, but 37 other community groups, including schools and the local council, are getting involved and the project has morphed into a $500,000 project, connecting local communities. The aim of it, in the short term, is to increase the birdlife in the sanctuary, and, in the long term, the aim is to deliver a halo effect for all the neighbours across the city. Conservation is good for New Zealand.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): The Government is neglecting our regions. It is failing to diversify their economies. Regional New Zealand’s roads and internet services are languishing and are in desperate need of upgrades. We heard in question time about the comments the Waitaki mayor, Gary Kircher—who is no friend of Labour—made about barriers to economic growth. We heard the member for Waitaki, Jacqui Dean, talk about having to stand on one leg in rural schools to get a signal. We have even got the member for Clutha-Southland, Todd Barclay, who talks about the slow and unreliable internet connections in his electorate. We have heard from Fonterra, and we have even got Federated Farmers saying that the state of the existing telecommunications network is poor in many rural areas.

In my office I have got more than 40 responses from councils that are desperate to improve the internet in their areas. I had a mayor in my office today spitting tacks because the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment refused to meet with him. It was far too busy to meet with him to talk about the state of broadband in his region. He said the signals from the Government are that the rural sector does not matter. He said it is just pure arrogance, and he has had it.

There are projects being developed in regional New Zealand that need workers. They are areas in South Canterbury, Southland, Western Bay of Plenty, Manawatū, and Northland, to name just a few, but they do not have good internet access. He said to me: “What do we say when we advertise for workers in those areas? Shift here, we want you, but sorry we don’t have the internet.” He said that is why economists are starting to describe those regions as being zombie towns.

I have got some more examples. One is Culverden township, where someone had the bright idea of giving fibre access to the school. He said he would dig a trench and would provide access to the wider community. But Chorus said no, and why did they say no? He could not access that fibre because it is old fibre. It is not new fibre; it is old fibre. It is only one pair of fibres, and you cannot get access to the wider community. I have just received confirmation that of the 2,500 schools in New Zealand, only seven have been able to make a fibre connection available to their wider communities. Why only seven? Because it is too hard.

This is just an absolute travesty. Why does this matter? Because rural New Zealand has around 20 to 25 percent of our population. Outside of our three main centres, it contributes a third of our GDP—nearly $80 billion. In 2009-10 the Government announced it would roll out broadband. It said that 75 percent of New Zealanders in urban areas would get ultra-fast broadband—that is, solid, good connection. In the places in rural New Zealand where they have achieved a connection, 25 percent have only a 5 megabit connection. Where they have managed to achieve that, they have spent $300 million and it has made no difference to those communities.

That is why I have got 40 councils sending me their documents saying just how bad it is. After 5 years rural New Zealand is, understandably, intensely frustrated and angry about the situation for them. What they need, and what rural New Zealand needs, is a Government that is going to stand up for them. Our regions need and deserve to be treated better.

Who is going to stand up for regional New Zealand? Well, it is not going to be this Government. It will be Andrew Little. It will be David Clark, who is working on economic development strategies that include good connectivity. He will be looking at the transport investment that has been cut by $11 million in terms of the sealing of roads, at the closing of the Gisborne to Napier railway line, and at the fact that Otago is lagging by 10 percent in terms of its economic output.

There is a list that can go on and on. This Government is not standing up for regional New Zealand. It is not standing up for rural people. It will be a Labour Government, with Andrew Little and David Clark, with his economic development strategy, that will stand up for rural New Zealand.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): First of all, I want to thank the member opposite, Clare Curran, for her acknowledgment of the Waitaki electorate twice during question time and then again in her intervention. For a city-based MP such as herself to look out into the countryside and acknowledge the stewardship of members of Parliament such as me, I want to thank her most sincerely. I also want to wish her all the very best in her future endeavours, whatever they may be.

I am also very proud to be a “blue-greener”. I am so proud to be a blue-greener that, as I wear my rather stylish cast today, you will see, as I reveal the cover, it is in fact green. I am showing my true political colours. We are indeed blue-green and proud of it. I want to acknowledge Nick Smith, and the Hon Maggie Barry, and of course the Hon Nicky Wagner, who lead the Bluegreen team—but well supported by this caucus of National by Scott Simpson, who is the very, very able chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee—for the many initiatives that they have announced in this year’s Budget and in previous Budgets in the 7 years since we have been the Government, which have been to the benefit of conservation, the environment, but also sustainable development in New Zealand.

To illustrate that point, I just want to talk about a couple of initiatives, which have been in train in New Zealand since we have become the Government. The first one is the New Zealand Cycle Trail. My beautiful, large electorate of Waitaki, which I am so proud to represent, boasts not one, not two, but three cycle trails in the network—

Scott Simpson: How many?

JACQUI DEAN: Three cycle trails in the network throughout New Zealand. Of course the Otago Central Rail Trail was the first and no doubt was the model for the forum in 2009, which was the genesis for the Prime Minister getting behind the New Zealand Cycle Trail initiative. Now we have 14 completed cycle trails, and each and every one of those is providing an incredible boost to regional economic development. I have got three in Waitaki. There are cycle trails all around New Zealand. I can see on a daily—daily—basis what that investment by this Government into our regions is bringing to our small towns. Ten years ago when I first came into this role and I would travel through the townships of Clyde, I would go to Alexandra, and I would go all around Central Otago, and those little townships were struggling. Those little townships were growing smaller and smaller and smaller every passing day.

Now, in the 10 years that I have been travelling the highways and byways of Central Otago, what a difference. You cannot but fall over a decent-cup-of-coffee shop wherever you go. You cannot but go past the most wonderful small accommodation outlets. People are seizing the opportunity to start up businesses in the provinces, and the region has been transformed, just as it will be for the Alps 2 Ocean Cycle Trail, which is arguably the most magnificent cycle trail in New Zealand. Already, all the way down the Waitaki Valley, business people are pricking up their ears and thinking: “There is an opportunity for me here in Kurow, in Ōtematatā, in Ōmārama. There is an opportunity for me to showcase my special part of New Zealand to the travelling public.”

But what is even better than that, from the blue-green perspective, is that whole tracts of the New Zealand countryside are being opened up for people to enjoy—people of any level of fitness. It does not matter if you have not ridden a bike for many years, just as it is with the urban cycle trail initiatives, also funded by this Government. It does not matter that you have not ridden for many, many years. You only need to do a small amount of a cycle trail and New Zealand’s beauty will be revealed to you. Interestingly, my very last and most important point, I think, apart from the economic benefit that is being brought to the regions, is that people are noticing things now. People are noticing that, yes, we need to do something about our wilding pines and we need to protect and enhance our environment. Thank you.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Despite the hype and despite the spin, this Government should be ashamed. Its regional programme of development actually is not a roll-out of rural broadband; it is still operating in dial-up. That is exactly what is happening in our regions.

Let me give you an example. In the Bay of Islands they are really proud, the people in the Bay of Islands, that they will be receiving 30 cruise ships this summer—an amazing number of cruise ships. But what, sadly, has not happened in that particular region is there has been no development of the infrastructure—none whatsoever. They still arrive at the same wharf that was there when I was a kid and that did not receive 30 cruise ships. They still get off at that wharf and they cross, still, a one-lane bridge. A one-lane bridge in Northland—who would have thought it! After that they get over into Paihia, they get over into Waitangi, and into Ōpua, and not one new hotel has been built.

So how do we cater for these visitors? How do we make sure that tourism across the world, the high reputation of New Zealand in the tourism industry, is well protected? Well, I tell you how we do it. We must be serious about our development, our investment in our regions, and that is just one small example.

To continue on tourism, the tourism industry—and I have said this in this House before—was very clear about its opposition towards a tax, taxing our visitors. We have numbers that we have never seen before coming in and out of our country. Then all of a sudden a tax gets placed on that kind of travel. The industry was clear. It did not want it, but this Government still pushed ahead with its tax on travellers.

All of these things, I fear, do not bode well for our tourism industry. I want to congratulate those people because I think they have got there under their own steam. It certainly has not been by any great piece of legislation, any fantastic policies or strategies, but by the hard work of the people in the tourism sector. It has been brought up in this general debate, the kōrero, the conversation, around the detainees and, more important, our relationship with our younger siblings across the Ditch, the people in Australia, and the importance of this Government, and indeed anyone who represents this country, of representing New Zealand in the best way possible, wherever they may go.

It has been a huge concern to see how those people who are being detained on Christmas Island are being treated. Human rights issues—and I am proud of Kelvin Davis for heading over there, leading the charge, bringing up the conversation, a conversation that this Government has been trying to ignore. In fact, when I think about many of the people, our own citizens, over in Australia, and this might seem like a bit of a stretch, I think of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act. Te Ture Whenua Maori Act review aims to isolate Māori landowners, those with shares in Māori land, in Australia. It aims to isolate them over there, to silence their voice on the many boards and the many governance structures that are in place to look after Māori land. I am all for growing Māori development of their land—I am—to improve the economy, to improve the stake of Māori, but it must be done collaboratively; it must be done by engaging those landowners and those who hold shares.

The current reform that is going through at the moment does not do that. It isolates those people in Australia. It cuts them out from what we call in the Māori world ahi kā, or their home fires, and this, I think, is an absolute travesty, given the Minister in his dealing with this Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill ignored the expertise of all of the experts and all of those who are involved in the Māori Land Court process. He ignored them all and handpicked a small group that could push through this type of reform and that would do this to Māori landowners. This is an absolute travesty. I encourage all of those whānau in Australia to stand up for their rights, stand up for the shares that they own in Māori land, to make sure that their voice is heard. In conclusion, can I finish by saying “Go the All Blacks!”.

SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): We have heard this afternoon from the Government side some of the very competent blue-green Ministers and MPs who represent the National Party in this Parliament. It has been a delight to hear from the Minister for the Environment, the Hon Nick Smith, from the Minister of Conservation, the Hon Maggie Barry, and from the Associate Minister of Conservation, the Hon Nicky Wagner, because they have been setting out, along with Jacqui Dean, and others who will follow me, exactly what it is to be blue-green in the National Party in this John Key - led Government. It is a party that has done more for the environment in its term of Government than any previous administration in the history of New Zealand. I am very, very proud to be part of that Government, which is making such wonderful preservation steps and conservation steps on behalf of our precious environment.

I have the great privilege of representing the Coromandel electorate. It is by far and away the most beautiful part of New Zealand. It represents the most environmentally precious 4,500 square kilometres of New Zealand. It is a great privilege to represent the Coromandel in this Parliament, but I do so safe in the knowledge that as a National Party MP I understand completely the benefits that come from our blue-green approach. That means that looking after the environment, looking after conservation, and looking after our precious natural heritage goes hand in hand with careful, prudent management of our economy. The two are not mutually exclusive, as the Greens would have you believe. I am very proud that the announcement, only a week or 2 ago, of the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary is one about which my grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren not yet born will say: “That was a great decision made by this Parliament, by this John Key - led Government.”

This afternoon we have had released this very good report. It is the first that has been produced in the spirit of the new Environmental Reporting Act, and it is the Environment Aotearoa 2015 report. It is the first report of its sort that has been produced since 2007, and already Labour’s current environment spokesperson, Dr Megan Woods, has been quick to launch into the media, saying it is a disturbing read.

But what about Labour’s history of reporting on our environment? Well, you have to go back to the last report, which was released in 2007. I want to take the House back to the great chapter 13 scandal of 2008. For people listening, they will remember that one Trevor Mallard was the Minister for the Environment in the dying days of the Labour administration. A report on the environment was released, and what happened was that a whole chapter was simply deleted. Chapter 13 was simply removed, and why was it removed? It was removed quite simply because it reported some bad news about our environment, some bad news about our water quality. Rather than confront the issues and approach it in a sensible, transparent way, Labour and the then Minister for the Environment, the Hon Trevor Mallard, simply chose to delete chapter 13 from the report. Fortunately, the Greens were in receipt of a leaked copy of chapter 13, and they made it available to the public of New Zealand to see and to be viewed and cleansed by the spotlight of daylight. So Labour’s attempt to simply ignore and hide the truth about some of the more difficult, challenging areas in our environment simply did not work. That was their instinctive approach.

I thought for some time that it has been very obvious that Labour has had a string of lightweight environment spokespeople. Part of the reason that they have had that string of lightweight environment spokespeople is simply that they know that it is not worth a Labour member investing time in conservation or the environment because they know that if they were to do so they would have to trade it off for a Green Party member, who will almost certainly become conservation Minister and environment Minister in a Labour-Green Government. That surely would be a horrible thought for any aspiring Labour Justin Trudeau - type personality who might want to make a name for themselves—like Stuart Nash, for instance, who might want to make a name for himself in conservation or the environment.

I am very proud of the work that this Government and that these Ministers have been doing to protect, enhance, and secure the long-term future of our very precious environment. This is a great blue-green initiative Government, and Nick Smith, Maggie Barry, and Nicky Wagner are doing a great job.

JAN LOGIE (Green): The irony of following successive National Party MPs claiming how much they support the environment on the day that a report came out showing that 60 percent of our rivers have lost quality is beyond me. But that is not what I am wanting to speak about today. He broke his partner’s back, and used his power and influence to misrepresent his violence and discredit her. He is still using his power to minimise his violence, while refusing to take responsibility. Tony Veitch is sending men all around New Zealand the message that, hey, “hideous relationships” happen, but you can move on, with a continuing disregard for the person or people you hurt. No worries, mate! People might suggest you are abusive, but, really, you are the victim! Mr Veitch might say that I am a hater for saying this, but, actually, this is not a message of hate. I believe that Mr Veitch’s life would be a whole lot better if he was able to put himself in the shoes of his ex-partner. Sure, facing up to what he has done would be hard and might completely change his life, but it would be worth it. Even if it was not, it might just be for his ex-partner.

One in three women in New Zealand is likely to experience violence in their most intimate relationship. That reality is a call for action, for us as political leaders, and for all of us in this society. People are not born abusive—abuse is a choice, but one that is all too often supported by our society. The conviction rate for domestic violence sits below 2 percent in this country. Accountability is a prerequisite for rehabilitation, yet in most cases our justice system does not enable rehabilitation. We need men who use violence—and their partners and children—to know that change is possible.

Yesterday the Law Society and NGOs raised concerns about the inability of many women to access protection orders in this country because the threshold for getting legal aid is set below the minimum wage. Things are so bad in this country now that a philanthropic trust has had to give money to the Women’s Refuge to be able to help fund women to access protection orders.

Yet the counterbalance to that was that yesterday our media was preoccupied with Tony Veitch and his disregard for his own violence. Some people might say that it is unfair to target poor Tony Veitch—and I have seen the comments. I say that it is unfair that he continues to use his considerable wealth and power to undermine his ex-partner. That is not promoting the cultural change that we need as a society—the cultural change that he needs. Our cultural change that we so desperately need must be supported by institutional change, by an assurance of women’s access to justice that is not there now.

The Government has set a target to reduce crime, and we heard in the House today how well this Government is doing, yet it has put pressure on the police to reduce the number of recorded offences. Reporting is going up, recorded offences are going down, and the number of convictions is going down. That is not delivering justice. We have been told that the reasons for this are the Better Public Service targets for police prosecution guidelines. We need to look at those things as part of the review of our protection. We have a real problem with the very, very fundamentals of our system. There is an interaction between the system and our culture, and we need to work on both. The Government, I hope, will listen to the calls for the review of family violence to consider the issues of legal aid, the family court, and police prosecution guidelines. We need to do everything we can for this cultural and institutional change.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): I am very pleased to be talking about National’s approach to climate and environmental issues, particularly as I am a member of the National Bluegreens caucus, which does comprise a significant number of National MPs. National has been active in this space and rightly so. As the Governor of the Bank of England recently said, in the northern hemisphere over the last 30 years it has been the warmest since Anglo-Saxon times, and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are at levels not seen for 800 years. It is not surprising that insurance losses from weather-related events have increased from the 1990 levels of about $10 billion per annum to about $50 billion per annum over the last 10 years.

This Government understands this dimension and has put together a whole raft of measures to deal with climatic and environmental issues in New Zealand. My colleagues have previously talked about it, and the Hon Dr Smith talked about what we are doing in the freshwater and oceans arena, and around clean air initiatives, as well as other initiatives such as dealing with waste and cleaning up contaminated sites. Of course, we heard from the Hon Maggie Barry and the Hon Nicky Wagner about conserving our environment through an excellent range of initiatives around protecting our natural flora and fauna. I do like the terms “battle for the birds” and the “war on weeds”.

Hon Maggie Barry: Understandable for a military man.

ANDREW BAYLY: Yes. Today I want to focus on climatic changes and the initiatives that we have put in place around clean energy and electric vehicles. For the forthcoming UN conference on climate change in Paris we have already committed to a target for reducing gas emissions to 30 percent of 2005 levels to be achieved by 2030. This is meaningful—contrary to a lot of thought and comments. For instance, Canada put in place exactly the same targets, and Australia and the US have put in a target of 26 percent to 28 percent to be achieved in roughly the same period of time.

It is also interesting to note that our emissions as a country have risen from 71 million metric tonnes in 1995 to 85 million metric tonnes in 2005, but have decreased back to 81 million tonnes at the moment. Part of the reason for that reduction was that this Government put in place the new emissions trading scheme, which came into place on 1 July 2010. Although the emissions trading scheme system and the pricing has fluctuated significantly—although I do note that it is currently up, just under $7—the volumes traded on our emissions trading scheme have actually been relatively constant at about 18 million tonnes per year, which is quite a significant component of the 81 million tonnes that we generate every year. But, as most of us are aware, 50 percent of our emissions are generated by the agricultural sector, and it is pleasing and really good that this Government has invested heavily and shown a lead in terms of sponsoring research into emissions from the bovine sector.

It is also important in terms of carbon sequestration that the Government has committed another $22.5 million over the next 6 years to encourage new forestry plantations. The remaining 50 percent of our emissions largely come from transport and energy. We as New Zealanders should be really proud that roughly 80 percent of all our energy produced in New Zealand comes from clean energy sources, such as geothermal, hydro, clean, and photovoltaics. This puts us up amongst the top four nations in the world. The recent announcement of the closure of the two power plants at Huntly—the coal plants—and the gas-fired power station at the Ōtāhuhu South Auckland plant, will further help us to achieve our clean energy target of 90 percent by 2025.

When you think about the $1 trillion that has been invested over the last 10 years around the world, this is why it is important that New Zealand continues to encourage these new technologies. The other exciting area—that I personally find really exciting—is what is happening in the transport sector. Only just this morning the Hon Simon Bridges made an announcement that the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority has put in place a scheme to allow fleet managers to assess the total cost of diesel electric vehicles, and we have got good moves in New Zealand to implement and adopt clean energy in electric vehicles.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to Crimes Act 1961

Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): The Labour Party will be supporting this bill, including Part 1, because it does some things that are useful, some things that, in fact, we should have done years ago, and some things that are necessary for us to do—for example, to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, 11 years after we signed it. So if I was going to ask a question to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Maggie Barry—if she is familiar with the bill; I am not sure that she is—the question would be, after 7 years in Government, why has it taken this long to pass the legislation needed to ratify the convention against corruption that we signed 11 years ago?

There is nobody in this Committee, I think, who would not be in favour of some of the key provisions of Part 1. It talks about trafficking in persons, and it makes the law tougher in that area. We know internationally what trafficking in persons is doing, particularly in regard to the refugees, but we know that it is also a factor in New Zealand, particularly in some commercial areas such as the sex trade. Year after year, when the US Department of State does a report on the upholding of human rights, it is critical of New Zealand for not doing enough in this area. That might be a double standard on the part of the United States because there are a lot of criticisms we could make there, but I think that we have to accept that criticism that we have not acted fast enough. I would add to that that we have not gone far enough in what we are doing here.

This part of the bill also deals with organised crime and money-laundering. Organised crime and money-laundering is worth literally billions of dollars. There are billions of dollars each year being made by criminal enterprises out of money-laundering and out of organised crime, and particularly drug trafficking. Of course we would support anything in this bill, belated though it may be, that deals with those areas.

But what I want to say is that there is one huge area of weakness here, and that is in relation to what is called a facilitation payment. If I was to ask any member of the National Government what the difference is between a facilitation payment and a bribe, I would really like to hear what their answer is. Well, the answer is actually set out, unfortunately, in the Crimes Act 1961, section 105C(3). It says that foreign bribery offence provisions set out in this part of the Act do not apply if “(a) the act that is alleged to constitute the offence was committed for the sole or primary purpose of ensuring or expediting the performance by a foreign public official of a routine government action; and (b) the value of the benefit is small.” I support David Clendon’s Supplementary Order Paper 76 on this bill to repeal that provision.

The challenge I put to the National Government and the Minister in the chair is to explain to this House why a bribe is not a bribe simply because it is a small bribe. Of course it is a bribe. A bribe is a bribe, and if it is designed to ensure or expedite the performance by a foreign public official of an act, that is paying a foreign public official money that goes into his or her pocket, not the Government of that country, in order to facilitate something that you want from that Government. And that is a bribe. It should not be there, and it is not part of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.

Let me read from article 16 of that convention: “Each State Party shall adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as a criminal offence, when committed intentionally, the promise, offering or giving to a foreign public official or an official of a public international organization, directly or indirectly, of an undue advantage, for the official himself or herself or another person or entity, in order that the official act or refrain from acting in the exercise of his or her official duties, in order to obtain or retain business or other undue advantage in relation to the conduct of international business.” That article 16 of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption is very, very clear. So my challenge to the Minister is this: how are we not acting in contravention of article 16 by saying: “You can do it to get the advantage, as long as it is small.”? Because that is the thin edge of the wedge.

We heard some really important submissions before the Law and Order Committee on this particular point, and, in particular, we heard from Transparency International New Zealand, we heard from the Human Rights Commission, and we heard from other organisations. And these organisations, which set out the standard in New Zealand, which should be upholding a proud legacy of this country being one of the least corrupt countries in the world, said that we were letting the side down, that we were falling short of the standard that we should be setting, and that we were way behind what other countries were doing.

Let me refer to the Transparency International submission on this point, because it makes what I regard as four really important points. It makes the point, first of all, that if you were to make a small payment to a New Zealand official, there is no doubt about it that that would be a bribe. That would be a corrupt act. And the submission says that “a New Zealander who makes a ‘facilitation payment’ to a foreign customs official would face criminal penalties for making the same payment to an official here at home.” So why the double standard, Minister? Why the double standard that if it is a crime in New Zealand, it is not a crime if a New Zealander does that to a foreign official overseas?

Secondly, Transparency International makes this point. It says that we are perpetuating a corrupt system in those countries where our people are making those facilitation payments. It says: “Facilitation payments are [commonly] not recorded and go directly into the pockets of the corrupt government officials. Paying these low value bribes perpetuates a corrupt system; imposes additional costs on the host country’s companies and citizens and undermines efforts by the host country’s government to stamp out corruption in their public service.” So here we are, putting ourselves up on a pedestal, saying “This is how these countries should operate.”, and then we are contradicting it by saying that it is OK for our companies to undermine the laws in those countries.

Thirdly, the submission makes the point that in this legislation before the Committee that we are debating now, we are falling behind other countries that are like-minded countries. The United Kingdom has legislated against facilitation payments, Australia is likely to follow, Canada has prohibited facilitation payments, and the United States is also moving in that direction, and yet, in this brand new legislation before the Committee, we do not meet the standards of other countries that we would want to compare ourselves to, like the United Kingdom and Canada.

And fourthly, Transparency International makes the point that you do not have to make facilitation payments to actually do business in these countries. It quotes from a 2009 business survey conducted by TRACE International, which found that “76% of survey respondents believe it is possible to do business successfully without making facilitation payments, given sufficient management support and careful planning.”

So these are the concerns that were set out before the select committee, and my question to the Minister Amy Adams, who is now in the chair and is responsible for this bill, is why we are putting forward a piece of legislation that is second-rate in response to facilitation favours. That is what this is doing. Has the Minister read the Transparency International submission? Does she understand that the Serious Fraud Office is against this? Does she understand that it is not only contrary to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption but also contrary to what the OECD and APEC promote as proper practice? So I want to know from the New Zealand Government why we have fallen short of the standards of the organisations that we belong to and that we sign up to and of the countries that we would respect in terms of their being countries that are opposed to corruption and bribery. Why are we falling short of those standards?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I want to reinforce what the Hon Phil Goff has said in respect of facilitation payments. It beggars belief, I think, that we have got ourselves into the position, under this legislation, where we are not covering off and prohibiting facilitation payments. The influence of countries like New Zealand in the world can either be positive, or negative or neutral. I like to think that we are a country that would uphold high standards and help other countries to get their standards to be better by doing the right thing in New Zealand and encouraging improvement in standards in those countries. Transparency International is quite right: David Clendon’s Supplementary Order Paper ought to be supported by this Committee. If the Government does not support that Supplementary Order Paper, it should say why. Is it saying that the United Kingdom has got it wrong and that other countries that are banning facilitation payments have got it wrong? As the Hon Phil Goff has said, what is illegal in New Zealand is illegal because it is improper. Small bribes are improper and ought to be illegal.

Can I address a couple of other issues that I would like commentary on from the Minister of Justice. The first relates to the narrow definition of “foreign public official”. Members will be aware that currently there is controversy, which the Auditor-General is looking into, as to whether the payments that were made to the Al-Khalaf Group by the New Zealand Government amounted to improper payments. It is notable that the people to whom those payments were made, who exerted influence on whether Saudi Arabia acceded to a free-trade agreement in the Gulf, were not public officials themselves but were people of influence in Saudi Arabia who could block a free-trade agreement. In my opinion, the definition of whom New Zealanders should not be able to pay facilitation payments or bribes to needs to be wider than the narrow definition of “foreign public official” that is currently in the legislation, and I think that it is wrong that we in this Parliament have so narrow a definition that we would not catch the sorts of payments that we have been concerned about in respect of the Saudi farm debacle.

In that instance, we had a very powerful person in Saudi Arabia who was disaffected, first, with the Labour Government and then with the National Government for their having a ban on the export of live sheep to Saudi Arabia. That person was a close friend of the then Minister of Agriculture in Saudi Arabia, and there is no doubt that he has made speeches, which are a matter of public record, to say “Well, why should New Zealand come wanting a free-trade agreement?” and asking why he should cooperate with New Zealand’s getting a free-trade agreement in Saudi Arabia when, from his perspective, New Zealand was blocking the export of live sheep to Saudi Arabia for slaughter.

He made his protestations clear to the Labour Government, and we said: “No, we disagree. We’re going to regulate for what we think is the right thing in New Zealand. We’re going to ban that.” The current National Government may have created impressions that it was going to go differently—it probably did—but in the end, the current National Government said that it would renew those bans on the export of live sheep for slaughter, which was its sovereign right to do in New Zealand, and we actually think that it made the right decision. But this disaffected businessman was blocking the advancement of free-trade arrangements with Saudi Arabia, to the detriment of the New Zealand trading relationship.

That does not justify that person being paid off. That is what the Auditor-General is looking into at the moment: whether the allegation, which I think is made out on the papers, is the true, underlying nature of the payments that were made—whether a $7 million, upfront payment to the Al-Khalaf Group, which did not buy $7 million of value, was actually paid in order to buy the influence of that person in order to stop them blocking the advancement of free trade with New Zealand. That sort of payment is improper, and yet this piece of legislation does not cover it because the definition of the “foreign public official” in Saudi Arabia is too narrow and applies only to people who are, effectively, public servants rather than to other people who can exercise influence over those public servants. Again, in addition to the point that was made by Transparency International, which the Hon Phil Goff has also made, there is that point as to why this legislation does not go far enough.

I think New Zealand is facing more pressures relating to corruption than we used to, both within the country and outside. It is partly a consequence of the world becoming a more competitive, ruthless place. It is also partly a consequence of some of the different norms, if I could put it that way, of some of the more recent immigrant populations that have come to New Zealand. That is not to call all immigrants corrupt. That is not to call immigrants corrupt, but it is true—

David Seymour: Clarified just in time.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Actually, if you do not want to face the reality that there are higher levels of corruption in India and China than there are in New Zealand, then, Mr Seymour, you are naive. It is true that there are higher levels of corruption in countries like that than there are in New Zealand, and we have got to be very, very careful that we push against those practices becoming prevalent in New Zealand.

I have those comments made to me by senior members of the business community in Auckland, and these are pressures that we in this Parliament must guard against—we must guard against. The vast majority of immigrant populations from all countries, including India and China, are good people, but there are exceptions—[Interruption] Yes, Russia is another example where there are corrupt practices that are more prevalent than we want them to be here. We have got to guard against that sort of conduct becoming prevalent in New Zealand, including when we have trading relationships that are from New Zealand into those countries. That is why this sort of legislation is absolutely important—so that we push against those sorts of practices becoming prevalent in New Zealand.

Just in the last couple of weeks, we had the example reported in the newspapers—and this goes to clause 5 of the bill, which relates to trafficking in persons—where someone in New Zealand was passed a note by someone from an eastern country saying that this person was, effectively, being held in servitude in the prostitution industry and that her rights were being abused. I hate it when I read those sorts of things. I want our Government officials, our police, and our customs and immigration people to have all of the powers that they need to push against the sort of reprehensible behaviour where people are exploited and are, effectively, held in servitude. I was somewhat dismayed to see the response of the police to that. They would not even go in there and investigate the allegation, despite the fact that a New Zealander—at considerable risk to his own reputation, given that he had been visiting a brothel—actually said that he had been passed a note by a person in that brothel to say that that person was being exploited, having been brought in from an eastern country.

That sort of thing happens more often in New Zealand than it used to. It is not as prevalent as it is in overseas countries, but it does happen. The OECD has pointed out that it cannot believe that New Zealand is so free of corruption that we have never had a prosecution in New Zealand of a New Zealand business person accused of bribery of overseas officials. It says that it is unbelievable that even in a clean country like New Zealand we have never had occasion to find out and root out the low levels of corruption that we have. For those reasons, I want the Minister of Justice to answer why we have such a narrow definition of “foreign public official” in respect of who can be paid bribes, because we are effectively saying other people can be paid bribes, and just not foreign public officials as narrowly defined in this legislation. I want to hear also why the Minister believes that Transparency International, the UK, and, indeed, the United Nations Convention Against Corruption are wrong in respect of facilitation payments.

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I did want to take a call on this main part of the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill and just bring us back to the core purpose of what this bill is actually intending to do, which is significantly enhance the way New Zealand deals with, responds to, and prevents both organised crime and corruption. The matters within the bill are issues that New Zealand takes incredibly seriously. Let us just remember that this bill is about ensuring our protection against organised crime, against human trafficking, and against corruption is stronger than it will ever have been.

If you listened to the last few speakers from the Opposition you would perhaps, I think, take a few inappropriate conclusions from their contributions, so I just want to get a few things very clearly on the record. The first is that facilitation payments are not being authorised by this bill. They have been lawful in New Zealand for many years. The Crimes Act has provided an exemption for the payment of facilitation payments for many years. What this bill does is actually narrow that. We are narrowing the exemption and making it much more controlled and much tighter. We are ensuring that it can be applied only in situations where no undue benefit accrues to the person involved and in situations where businesses must record and keep detailed records of any such payments made, to ensure that we get the right balance, I believe, between ensuring proper high standards of business practice in New Zealand and protecting innocent New Zealanders against unintentional criminalisation. That is a serious threat, and we have worked through this in some detail.

I am going to come back to that point, but I want to make one other point very clear: this bill is in every way compliant with our international obligations. I heard most of Mr Goff’s contribution, and he, I think, left this Committee with the impression that somehow this bill would make us non-compliant with the United Nations Convention Against Corruption—it does not; it is entirely compliant with that—and that in some way it would make us non-compliant with the OECD anti-bribery convention. It does not. We are entirely compliant. I can also make the point that such facilitation payments are also legal in both the United States and Australia. So this idea that somehow we are doing something that the rest of the world has turned its back on, and that all of our international partners have rejected, is quite simply wrong.

The other point that I would make, actually, is that Transparency International New Zealand, the Serious Fraud Office, and Business New Zealand got together in 2014 and put up quite good seminars for businesses on how they should properly deal with facilitation payments. So this is not a new issue. It is one that has been in the lexicon of our oversight agencies for some time, and can I reiterate: this bill makes the exemption narrower and more tightly controlled.

Let me just walk through the thought process that I followed when I was looking at this issue, because on the face of it you wonder why any sort of payment might be able to be permitted. We have to be incredibly careful, but there are situations when a New Zealander quite lawfully going about their business will be in a situation where a foreign public official, effectively, says to them: “Look, you can go through the traditional track or you can have a priority service for the payment of a small fee.” That could be an entirely lawful, properly offered service. You are not receiving any material benefit; you are paying for a service in the normal course of business. It is a small payment, and you have no way of knowing, as that innocent New Zealander, what is happening behind the scenes. You have no way of knowing whether that payment is being properly accounted for, returned to the Government, and properly paid tax on, or whether out the back someone is pocketing it.

I am not going to see innocent New Zealanders who honestly believe they are paying a reasonable sum for a priority service that does not give them an undue benefit and is not a large amount of money suddenly become criminals.

The protections that we have put in place around that, I think, are very important. The first is that it must be a small payment. We are talking about very small amounts of money. The second is that it must be for a service provided in the ordinary course of business. So let me give you an example. If you were to arrive at an immigration counter and you could stand in a long line while you have—I do not know—screaming children or you are ill or whatever, or you could pay US$50 and go through the fast-tracked line, then that is absolutely an ordinary, course of business transaction. An immigration official is offering you an immigration service that is absolutely to be expected in the ordinary course of business. It is a small payment—and these are examples that do happen—and you receive no particular material benefit. You were going to go through immigration anyway and you are simply going through a priority queue. That is quite different from a situation where you make a payment to receive a contract being awarded to you, to stop someone else getting a contract, or where you receive a material benefit.

I absolutely will stand firm against New Zealand corruption either domestically or internationally, but I am very concerned—and I can think of many situations where innocent New Zealanders could find themselves in that situation of paying for what looks, on the face of it, to be a perfectly valid service that does not give them any particular benefit and then finding that because that official was pocketing it out the back, they have suddenly become a criminal. That is not the sort of thing that I am prepared to oversee.

The other thing is that, actually, as I said, facilitation payments have been lawful in a much, much wider context in New Zealand law for many years, and we are assiduous in overseeing them to make sure they are not abused. That will continue to be the case but, as I have said, under this bill not only will we continue to be assiduous in ensuring that it is not exploited but we have a much narrower selection of areas where it can be applied, and businesses in New Zealand will now be required to quite clearly account for it. I did spend quite a bit of time looking at this issue, working my way through it, and satisfying myself that it was the right balance between properly protecting New Zealanders against a situation that they can have no control over and no way of understanding and that we would not be passing a law to unintentionally criminalise innocent New Zealanders, and ensuring that we are tightening up any misuse of that provision.

Let me just conclude by reinforcing that this is entirely compliant with the United Nations Convention Against Corruption and does not in any way fall foul of the OECD convention against bribery. I absolutely understand the need to be very careful in this regard, but I, certainly speaking for myself, am absolutely confident we have that balance right.

This bill is an improvement on the law as it stands, and any party that votes against it will be voting, effectively, to keep a much wider exemption and a much wider hole for people to drive through, and will be rejecting the additional protections that this bill will bring into force. Thank you.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): Could I begin by thanking the Minister of Justice for that contribution. It was helpful. I was interested in her last comment about any party voting against this bill. To my knowledge, no party is intending to vote against this bill. The Greens are certainly not. The bill does some necessary and useful things. It does strengthen our position in terms of organised crime, money-laundering, people trafficking, and these sorts of unfortunate activities that none of us could possibly support. So we are quite happy to continue to support the bill.

It is an OK bill, but it could be a very much better bill, and it could be more likely to achieve one of its key purposes, if Supplementary Order Paper 76, in my name, was adopted and passed today. Why do I say that? The report back on the bill from the Law and Order Committee says: “The bill would enhance New Zealand’s compliance with a number of international conventions, and, when enacted, will allow ratification of the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC),”. The fact that we continue to have on our statute book a “get out of jail free” card in the Crimes Act, in a sense, around legitimating facilitation payments compromises our ability to stand tall and say: “Yes, we are compliant with UNCAC and therefore we can, hand on heart, ratify that document.”

I think it is worth referencing Supplementary Order Paper 76. It is very simple. It would simply insert one extra line into the bill, which would be to repeal section 105C(3) of the Crimes Act. What the Crimes Act does in that sense is in section 105C(2) it says: “Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years who corruptly gives or offers or agrees to give a bribe to a person with intent to influence a foreign public official in respect of any act or omission by that official in his or her official capacity …”—in other words, if anyone pays a bribe. Seven years is not a trivial sentence. I think our distaste for corruption at every level is reflected in the fact that that is quite a severe sentence—potentially up to 7 years’ imprisonment.

Unfortunately, section 105C(3) goes on to say: “This section does not apply if—(a) the act that is alleged to constitute the offence was committed for the sole or primary purpose of ensuring or expediting the performance by a foreign public official of a routine government action; and (b) the value of the benefit is small.” In other words, in everyday language, it excludes facilitation payments because they are only little bribes. I appreciate that there is a distinction between that and paying a bribe to a foreign official in order to secure a contract to export to a country, for example. That is barred. That is banned. Nobody allows that. That is illegal. What this does, though, is play around at the margins and say: “OK, having secured my licence to export, I’ll now pay a foreign official a bribe in order to get my goods across the border a little more quickly and to get them off the wharf and into market a little more swiftly.”

Let us reverse the situation. Let us imagine that foreign Governments have similar provisions on their books that allow foreign business people to come to New Zealand and behave in that way, and to slip one of our customs officers a couple of tickets to the rugby and a hundred bucks’ worth of beer just to make sure that their shipment got ahead and was first in the queue. We would not tolerate that, and nor should we. So why do we legitimate that sort of action in a foreign country by our business people who are operating internationally? There are several reasons why we ought to remove that provision from the Crimes Act, embed that change in this amended legislation, and, therefore, make it a better piece of legislation, a much more robust one, and a much more positive one. It is the right thing to do.

New Zealand stands tall as a country that is perceived as having a very, very low level of corruption. That gives us an ability to make moral statements on the world stage. We are perceived as being a country with very low levels of corruption, and I think that is legitimate. We are not squeaky clean and we are not perfect, but the corruption that exists is at a very low level. Generally, there is a very, very low tolerance for corruption in the New Zealand community, in society, and in the business community. Our abhorrence for corruption is, I believe, one of the reasons why New Zealand routinely rates very highly as one of the best countries in the world to do business in. Business people can come here and know that they are playing on a more or less level field and that they cannot be outbid by someone who is paying off an official to get a resource consent, to get goods across the border more swiftly, or to get permission to do something. This gives us the ability to encourage businesses to come here to do business and know that the legal landscape is fairly robust and will protect their interests and protect them against corruption.

The point has been made already that Transparency International has led the charge on this in terms of encouraging us to remove this exemption. I acknowledge—and the Minister was quite right—that this amendment bill we are debating today does not add a negative, but what it does do is it misses an opportunity to take away that blot on our statute book. I absolutely believe that that section in the Crimes Act is a blot on our statutes. It legitimates illegal activity overseas. I think that dancing around the margins and talking about undue benefit is relying on semantics and is simply splitting hairs.

The reality is we ought not to be indulging in this sort of behaviour. We certainly ought not to legitimate that behaviour by our business people overseas. One of the arguments I have heard is “Don’t be naive. It’s the way of the world.”, and a couple of our key export markets—typically China and India—get named as being countries with a culture of corrupt practice. You have simply got to pay the bribes to get your business done there. It is also true, however, that the Governments of those two countries have come out very strongly in their wish to drive that culture out of their business communities and out of daily practice. New Zealand is held up as a good example of a country that does not tolerate corruption. We go to China and we go to India, and if our exporters engage in this sort of behaviour, where, then, does it leave their Governments in their attempts to drive corruption out of their domestic business environment? It would be a case of: “Hey, New Zealanders do it, so it must be OK.”

We can stand proudly. I believe that if we remove this provision, if we make it illegal for our business people to operate in this way and offer bribes, then as a Government we can have a Government to Government dialogue and say: “Hey guys, you need to crank up your act. You need to make sure that our business people are not disadvantaged.” Would it not be great if we got a reputation as whistleblowers who would not tolerate corrupt practice? That would be a very strong statement New Zealand could, and should, make.

I confess that it puts our business people in a difficult position, but I believe that if we go to market with good quality products and good services and if we stand on an honest and good ethical base and legitimate that in our legislation, it would be to the advantage of our business of “New Zealand Inc.” and our progress as a country economically, as well as socially.

The Minister made the point that Australia does not have an absolute ban on facilitation payments, and she is right—it has not yet gone to the point we would like it to. It is also true that the 2012 UN review of Australia’s position in relation to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption called for the Australians to have a really hard look at that. It implied—and I do not think I am overselling it here—that the UN sees a dilemma in Australia’s continued willingness to accept the payment of facilitation payments by its business people. It just does not sit well. It does not mesh with Australia’s position of having ratified the convention.

We will face the same dilemma. Why would we want to do that? Why not put ourselves in a very clean position and say that we will not tolerate the payment of bribes, be they large or small, and we will not tolerate behaviour by our business people overseas that we would not tolerate here. That is a clean and a straightforward and an honest position. It is a principled position, and it is one that I do believe would advance our business interests in the long term.

We have the examples of the UK and Australia. The British position is that it will not allow facilitation payments. It will not allow its people working abroad to engage in that behaviour.

The Minister made the point—and quite legitimately—about unintentional criminalisation. I do not believe that a New Zealand business person operating overseas intentionally pays a bribe if they hand over some cash, thinking: “Oh, that is the way they do business here.” I do not believe that any New Zealand prosecutor or the police would be interested in taking that person to task on that. Certainly they might give them some information and they might advise them against that course of practice, but I do not believe that we will criminalise our own, if through naivety, they did that.

MAHESH BINDRA (NZ First): I wish to speak on this bill on behalf of New Zealand First. We need to make all facilitation payments illegal, as they are all small bribes. It was very disheartening and very disappointing to hear the Minister trying to justify small facilitation payments. Whether small or big, a bribe is a bribe, and that is what we need to address because what is at stake is our reputation as a clean, transparent country. We have a reputation for having businesses doing business above board, without bribery, and without those facilitation payments. We need to also work particularly on the facilitation payment side of it, and it is not a good sign when the Minister herself tries to justify small facilitation payments.

During the Saudi sheep debacle, where $11.5 million of taxpayers’ money was paid—we called it a bribe. Well, we got into trouble for that, but we still called it a bribe, and that is what it was—a bribe. There is no such thing as a harmless bribe. Whether you call it a bribe or you call it a facilitation payment, whether you call it speed money in some countries, whether you call it baksheesh, or whether you call it a hafta—there are various names for it but it is the same thing. It is a bribe. So you must also support the anti - human trafficking part of it because that has got more angles to it. It has got the human rights issue angle and it has got the corruption angle. Also, it is a punishable offence in most countries, including ours.

Coming back to the money-laundering part of it, we suggest that the high-value goods and services such as the lawyers, professions, and businesses dealing with real estate also should come within the purview of this bill and that any wrongdoing in that area should also be covered in the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill.

We have had a large number of submissions during our select committee hearings and I would like to quote one of them. In the words of one of the submitters: “Those facilitation payments are bribes, and by failing to address them we are enshrining bribery in New Zealand law.” That actually explains the whole thing in just two sentences.

David Seymour: What thing?

MAHESH BINDRA: Which one?

David Seymour: Which thing?

MAHESH BINDRA: OK—coming back to the facilitation payments. Facilitation payment—when that was made it was justified as a facilitation payment, whereas it was actually a bribe. Had Supplementary Order Paper 128, which David Clendon put in—we are going to support that because it addresses that particular issue. New Zealand First supports the notion that it should be illegal for New Zealand companies to make facilitation payments overseas. Facilitation payments are bribes, in the simple, no-nonsense language of New Zealanders. The United Nations Convention Against Corruption prohibits facilitation payments and the OECD has called for a prohibition on facilitation payments. The United Kingdom has prohibited them and Australia is looking to do the same. So we suggest that we should also be getting rid of this lacuna in the law, this little excuse for small facilitation payments. What is small for a National Party funder could be a big fortune for some of us, so who draws that line? What is small? What is big?

David Seymour: Careful.

MAHESH BINDRA: I think you need to be careful, Mr—

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I would like to make a short contribution on the facilitation payment aspects of this bill and the Supplementary Order Paper that has been put on the Table. This is a debate between those who measure public policy by its intentions on the one hand and those who measure it by its outcomes on the other. It is also a debate between those who would like to go and ingratiate themselves in the corridors of international agencies on the one hand and those who represent the interests of New Zealanders, and particularly New Zealanders doing business overseas, on the other.

What an absolute prohibition upon any kind of facilitation payment by New Zealanders to any overseas authority in those overseas countries would do is ensure that something we cannot quite define is illegal. It would ensure that anybody who gives any kind of payment that did not fit into the correct framework—a framework defined by a foreign country—is therefore an illegal payment, and, therefore, a crime has been committed. It is entirely impractical to achieve that. First of all, it places an onus on the person making the payment to determine whether or not the payment they have made is truly legitimate.

Let me just give you one simple example, relayed to me just a few weeks ago by a constituent in my electorate, who said: “Look, I was travelling overseas. I was told, in a very remote location, that were I not to purchase an additional visa I could not go any further.” So is it the intention of this Committee, by adding this Supplementary Order Paper to the bill, to ensure that that person would have to err on the side of caution—that the payment would indeed be considered illegal in the eyes of the jurisdiction they were trying to enter—and return home, impractically, from a remote location where they were not actually able to get any kind of safe passage or accommodation back? Is that really the intention of this Supplementary Order Paper? Or is it—as has been the experience of New Zealanders overseas, doing business in unfamiliar places with different legal frameworks from our own—a necessity to make payments that would maybe not be familiar or acceptable under our legal framework or that may not be legal or familiar under the framework of the host country, but none the less are demanded in that circumstance?

I put it to the Committee that it is an unfair prohibition to put the onus on New Zealanders in difficult circumstances to make those judgments. But even if we were to believe that it were true—and believe that we as New Zealanders could travel overseas and inspire foreigners to be more like us, and it is odd that there is a sort of cultural imperialism coming across here, some might say—then, of course, the New Zealand Government would find the onus would be on itself to make judgments about whether payments made under an unfamiliar legal framework, in an unfamiliar land, were actually legitimate according to the standards of that country. That, again, is highly impractical for the New Zealand Government to actually do. So we find ourselves in this conflict between those who believe in public policy intentions—and will sing them from the rooftops, because don’t it make you feel good—and those who tend to judge public policy by its outcomes, which are much grittier and more filled with practicality than the proponents would make out.

It is a conflict, as I said, between those who would ingratiate themselves in the corridors of international agencies, where such high-minded ideas always ring true, and those who experience the practicality of actually going about their business, and it might be that the British actually understand this a little bit better than other speakers have let on. David Clendon, very graciously, showed me a letter from Transparency International. I read all of the parts that he had highlighted in his letter, including the fact that the British have nominally introduced an absolute prohibition on facilitation payments. What I read under the highlighted part was that the British are not enforcing it because, as I have suggested with the proposal before us today, it is impossible for a Government such as New Zealand’s or the Government of the United Kingdom to enforce an absolute prohibition on such payments right across the world, in a range of unfamiliar environments. That is how I can stand here as a proud New Zealander and a New Zealander—

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): It concerns me greatly that in the contribution we have just heard from David Seymour and in the contribution from the Minister of Justice, both of those speakers seemed to be unable to differentiate between a fee for a service that is a service available to all those who pay the fee, and a bribe. Those are very different issues. It is a fairly clear distinction that I think anyone can understand, and it concerns me greatly that they are unable to distinguish between them.

I think it is very important that culture is taken into account. One of the cultures that we are trying to inculcate through the passage of this bill is one that is against corruption. I want to talk particularly about section 105F, “Trading in influence”, in clause 7, but before I do that I want to go back, right to the beginning of this part of the bill, to clause 4, which defines what is meant by a “crime involving dishonesty”. When we turn to the actual Crimes Act itself—the one that is being amended—it makes a clear reference to Ministers of the Crown and members of Parliament. The reason I raise this is that I want to bring into context the issue of what is a small payment versus what is a large payment. I want to use a very quick anecdote, by way of that.

I have regularly dined in establishments in my electorate and throughout the Wellington region where, when I have got up to leave, the proprietors of the establishments have tried to prevent me from paying for my meal. Then, in many other instances, I have been approached by those very same proprietors seeking assistance with a matter. It is normally an immigration matter, but there have been other matters as well. I can say to the Committee that I have always insisted on paying for every one of those meals that I have eaten. They are not significant amounts of money—we are not talking here about fine dining establishments—but I have always paid for the meal concerned because I have a standard that says that any payment of that kind could be deemed to influence me in the way that I act, and, therefore, I have made that distinction. That is a value that I hold dear. That is the culture, that is the value, that we need to be instilling through this kind of legislation.

When we get the Government saying that there is a difference between a small payment and a large payment, how small is small? For example, is the cost of one of those meals a small payment? I mean, we are talking about a small amount of money. It is not a very expensive meal. But I am covered by this law; we are all covered by this law. We are all deemed to be covered by the law that we are passing, and quite rightly so. This impacts on all of us. Is going out and accepting a free meal from someone whom you then offer assistance to—whether it be for an immigration matter or whatever else, and it is a small payment—a bribe? That is a question for Government members, and I think it is a legitimate one for them to answer. I would say that, yes, it is. If Government members would say “Yes, it is.” too, then how is that different from a small facilitation payment as they have defined it in the debate that we have had on this bill so far? I think that is something we have yet to hear from the Government on.

I come to section 105F, “Trading in influence”, and the point that I want to make here is that this section deals with only the influence of officials, but, actually, there are people other than officials who have significant influence on decision-making processes. By limiting this to officials only, we potentially narrow down the scope of the intent of this legislation. So what I would like to know from the Minister in the chair, the Hon Louise Upston, is whether the wording of this section and particularly “a bribe for that person or another person with intent to influence an official …”—what I would like is some more definition from the Minister on what is meant by “or another person”? Does that mean somebody who is basically paying a bribe to someone who they think will have influence over a decision-making process but who is not an official? Is that wording designed to cover those people?

It is not always a direct payment or a direct bribe to an official. There are other people who have influence on officials as well. I want to be sure that section 105F, “Trading in influence”, covers those people. If it does not, then, in fact, there is a real argument to be made that this bill will not achieve its stated objectives of ensuring that bribery—outright bribery—is illegal. If a payment can be made to somebody else who can then exert influence, then, in fact, I think that many of the other provisions in this bill are, therefore, redundant.

So the final point I want to make in this brief contribution to this debate is the one that I opened with: culture matters. The point of this exercise, the major thing that we have to be stressing as parliamentarians, is that we have a zero-tolerance culture when it comes to bribery and corruption. I am not sure that the messages coming from the Government members speaking on this legislation are contributing to that.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): I am pleased to take a call in this Committee stage. I want to acknowledge the Minister Amy Adams who, while on her feet before, mentioned that this bill is entirely compliant—entirely compliant—with our UN international conventions and treaties, on which this legislation is based. We know that the suite of amendments that are enacted under this bill all stem from a report from 2001, Strengthening New Zealand’s Resistance to Organised Crime. That report involved 18 Government departments. The proposals that were in this report were incorporated in this bill.

I am curious to know how cast-iron the Minister is in her assurance about compliance with the international conventions, because the report, which was written by the Ministry of Justice and is the foundation for this bill, had the biggest legal disclaimer that I have ever seen and have ever read. Basically, it was a cast-iron disclaimer that everything that was in the report—the ministry accepted no responsibility for its accuracy or any legal action that might eventuate on the basis of this report. So I am somewhat pleased, but I would like the Minister to elaborate a bit further on the assurance that this bill is compliant with all of the international conventions and fully compliant with all the treaties and other protocols that are included in this legislation—that it is cast-iron, and that she is not hiding behind any legal disclaimers that have been put to her by her officials.

It is important that the people of New Zealand know that in this bill we are not hiding behind legal-speak—we are not hiding behind disclaimers. If it says that we are fully compliant with UN conventions and the like, then that needs to be the case, otherwise we are actually fooling the public. So there is more than just the United Nations Convention Against Corruption at stake included in this bill. There is a host of others, and I would like the Minister to give that assurance that we are indeed fully compliant with all of those conventions as a result of this legislation.

Just a quick word now on the issue of facilitation payments. I understand that it is a very difficult issue. Just to give an example, prior to the enactment of the China free-trade agreement, which was championed by the Hon Phil Goff, our entire live lobster industry in New Zealand went through what was called grey channels through Hong Kong and into Mainland China. Obviously, the customers were in Mainland China and the financial transactions took place via Hong Kong for its banking system. However, the passage of all of the lobster that came out of New Zealand went through grey channels, which was basically the word for bribery, or greasing the wheels—greasing the access of those lobsters through to the importer. Everyone in the New Zealand industry knew about that. It was common knowledge. That is why hundreds of tonnes of product go that way. The reason that New Zealand companies exported that way was that was the mode of business. Sure, there were official tariffs that were in place in China, but everyone knew that the hub and the way that the importers circumvented that was through these grey channels, under the dead of night in darkness from Hong Kong into southern China.

Fortunately, the business has changed and it has become much more open and transparent. In southern China at that time there were massive billboards basically saying that “The success of this region is based on cooperation between the border officials, the importers, and the police.” It was blatantly obvious that it was all about some form of bribery to be able to transact that whole industry. The New Zealand industry does not operate in a vacuum, and so I just wanted to highlight the point that I guess it was based on who had knowledge. The actual knowledge and the actual grey channels were enacted and effected—

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I appreciate the opportunity to take a call, and although I absolutely agree with what my colleagues have had to say on early clauses in this part around facilitation payments, I actually want to focus my call on replaced section 98D of the Crimes Act, set out in clause 5—the provisions that relate to trafficking in persons.

The Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill in large part makes sure that we are compliant with international treaties and overseas obligations, and that stands true for this part as well. If we were to identify the problem that we have it is in respect of the United Nations protocol to prevent, suppress, and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children—otherwise known as the anti-trafficking protocol. New Zealand is a signatory of that particular protocol and currently we are not entirely compliant with it.

There are two areas we are meant to ensure that our legislation covers. Our legislation needs to clearly and precisely define the constituent elements of the trafficking in persons offence in order to distinguish it from other offences and enable the identification of trafficking victims, and we need to ensure the trafficking in persons offence reflects the three constituent elements of actions, means, and exploitative purpose.

So we have the situation at the moment where in New Zealand it is the Crimes Act that covers our trafficking requirements, and they are set out in section 98D of the Crimes Act. However, these provisions in the Crimes Act contain and express transnational requirement and—just to pull out the relevant part of the Crimes Act—that is that the offence requires in section 98D(1)(a) the “entry of a person into New Zealand”. In addition, the offence does not explicitly refer to an exploitative purpose as one of the elements of trafficking. So it does not allow there to be cover, currently in our legislation, of trafficking within New Zealand with an exploitative purpose and the definition is too narrow, based on what the UN would otherwise require us to do.

There are rankings internationally of countries and how they performed in the area of exploitation, and this is in the Trafficking in Persons Report. This is a report that puts countries on to different tiers. It is produced by the United States, and New Zealand currently is in tier 1. There is, however, a concern that we may lose our ranking within that report because of the way that we currently define the exploitation and trafficking of people. I have pulled out a section of the report—and I thought I would be very digital and “e” and use my laptop, but it is not really performing properly. But under the prosecution section of that report it states that in New Zealand: “The government moderately increased efforts to hold traffickers accountable for trafficking crimes. New Zealand does not have an anti-trafficking law that prohibits all forms of trafficking, but the Parliament passed a second reading of proposed amendments (which are part of the Omnibus Crime Bill) to conform the definition of trafficking to international law. New Zealand statutes define human trafficking as a transnational offense akin to smuggling and do not include exploitation as an element of the crime. The Crimes Act of 1961 criminalizes only some specified forms of forced labor. Slavery is criminalized, but limited to situations of debt bondage, and serfdom; this prohibition does not cover forced labor obtained by means other than debt, law, custom, or agreement that prohibits a person from leaving employment. The Dealing in Slaves statute and the Prostitution Reform Act criminalize inducing or compelling a person to provide commercial sex and, with regard to children, provide a broader prohibition to include facilitating, assigning, causing, or encouraging a child to provide commercial sex.”

So you can see from that reference that we do have specific provisions in things like the Prostitution Reform Act and our labour laws that might criminalise these areas, but, according to this report, that, of course, does leave some gaps and may not cover all situations and circumstances that we need to cover. So this bill seeks to remedy that situation and does so reasonably successfully, in my view, because if you think, first of all, about the issue at the moment of our Crimes Act requiring it to be a transnational trafficking situation, the amendment set out in new section 98D(3) states: “Proceedings may be brought under this section even if—(a) parts of the process by which the person was exploited, coerced, or deceived were accomplished without an act of exploitation, coercion, or deception: (b) the person exploited, coerced, or deceived—(i) did not in fact enter or exit the State concerned; or (ii) was not in fact received, recruited, transported, transferred, concealed, or harboured in the State concerned.” So explicitly there we are removing that transnational requirement and allowing domestic situations to be covered.

Let me give you an example. I heard a case not long ago of a woman who, under legitimate terms, came into New Zealand from Eastern Europe. I believe, from recollection, that she was in a relationship when she came into New Zealand. That fell apart. Her source of income fell apart. She found herself in a situation where, for money, she was working in prostitution, but she was in an exploitative situation with the person who was employing her in that trade. Because of her tenuous immigration status and the nature of her work, she was, essentially, being exploited by that individual.

She was not expressly recruited into New Zealand for that purpose, so technically, I imagine, under the Crimes Act currently, charges could not have been pressed against that person under that clause, but I would imagine—this is simply my reading of it—that the removal of the transnational factor would allow her exploitation to be properly covered when it comes to trafficking and exploitation.

But the question I want to raise is that even though we are changing these provisions in line with the Trafficking in Persons Report there are still some criticisms in that report that are not simply legislative. I will leave it to my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway to speak at greater length about this.

Iain Lees-Galloway: No pressure.

JACINDA ARDERN: At great, great length, I would hope. The report goes into some detail, and I will read some extracts about recommendations for New Zealand. It states that New Zealand should “Approve and enact the Omnibus Crime Bill to expand New Zealand’s current anti-trafficking legal framework; increase efforts to proactively identify victims through proactive screening of vulnerable populations, including women and children in prostitution, foreign workers, and illegal migrants; significantly increase efforts to investigate and prosecute trafficking offenses, especially offenses committed by recruitment agencies and employers who subject workers to debt bondage or involuntary servitude through deceptive recruitment, non- or underpayment of wages, and threats of deportation;”, and so it continues.

The point that I think is being made is that legislation is not enough and that even though we may have these provisions in place and we are enabling a broader set of references in statute, we are still relying on particular cases to be brought before the courts in order to allow these provisions to apply. But the point being made in this report is that we do not screen. We do not look for those cases. We do not proactively go out there and seek to protect those communities who are most vulnerable.

I myself have seen situations, and I know that Iain Lees-Galloway will probably have countless examples of foreign workers who have been in these situations. But I know, for instance, that when I had a case that was brought to me that was clearly exploitative, it was treated as a labour law case rather than under these provisions, and it relied on the affected people to bring the case forward.

When you are dealing with vulnerable populations like this, the idea that they will proactively come forward—particularly when they have come from countries where people do not have a trusting relationship with officials—and bring a case to someone like a member of Parliament is not only daunting and prohibitive but it is not seen as safe, I imagine, by a significant part of our migrant population.

So I do absolutely agree with the points made in the Trafficking in Persons Report—this legislation is one thing, but we need to be proactive in our screening.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am going to hear from David Clendon. He has two amendments.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): I would just like to make some further comments about this bill and this part. As I said earlier, it is an OK bill. It could be a very good bill if it adopted Supplementary Order Paper 76 in my name and inserted those words about repealing section 105C(3) of the Crimes Act.

I would like to respond to one or two comments that Mr Seymour made in his contribution. Firstly, he talked about what I think the Minister of Justice described earlier as unintentional criminalisation. He told us a cautionary tale of an innocent abroad who was coerced or intimidated or somehow persuaded to make a payment to a corrupt public official. No doubt that goes on. We hear many stories of people being stopped in vehicles and obliged to pay a “road tax”, which is actually going into somebody’s pocket. Why this bill would not capture that sort of activity, abysmal though it may be, is contained in the section of the Crimes Act that I quoted earlier, which very clearly and specifically puts this matter about facilitation in the context of doing business. It talks about obtaining or retaining business, or obtaining some improper advantage in the conduct of business.

Mr Seymour talked about operating in the real world—the practical matters that actually happen. The scenario he created is not one that would occur. There is no way, I believe, that in New Zealand we would prosecute a person who had been unknowingly, naively, the victim of a corrupt official. We would prosecute—and I think we ought to prosecute—people who go abroad and offer to make these payments in order to progress their business in a way that gives them some advantage. So I think that objection to the bill is not well-founded because the context for the change is clearly spelt out in the context of doing business abroad.

Mr Seymour also quoted briefly from Transparency International’s submission. He did not quite get it right. I acknowledge that he is a busy man. He must have read it in some haste. He told us that the UK prohibits facilitation payments. That is correct. He also told us that the UK Government is not enforcing that prohibition. That actually is not the case. To quote from the letter he referenced, the submission from Transparency International: “The UK’s Bribery Act 2010 prohibits facilitation payments and that these have always been illegal under previous UK corruption legislation.” It goes on to say that although the UK has a low level of enforcement, it is advised that the UK will soon take action against an international organisation in the near future. I paraphrase slightly. But it talks about a low level of enforcement, which is a very different thing from not enforcing.

It is entirely appropriate. I would not suggest for a minute that if we do pass this legislation and remove the exemption, the next day we charge out mob-handed and start prosecuting people en masse. That is not the way laws happen. We like to think perhaps that in this Chamber everybody is hanging on every word and that immediately that we make law, the public immediately know about it and understand it. I think the UK’s approach—I am inferring this—of a low level of enforcement would be entirely appropriate initially because we are working against a very long period of improper action. It would take time for the business community to get its head around the fact that this is no longer acceptable or legal.

So I think that the UK approach would be the appropriate one—have a low level of enforcement but then pick a good fight, find somebody who is overtly and on some large scale breaking the law, breaking the prohibition, and making these payments as a matter of course. Go after a big target and knock them down. That would send a message to the people who might otherwise engage in this sort of activity, illegal as it is in the UK. So I do think that Mr Seymour’s objections are not well-founded, and I do stand by the Supplementary Order Paper. I think it would make this better law.

Mr Seymour also mentioned the Australian situation. Certainly it is moving, I think, closer to prohibition. In terms of other organisations, the United States has been complimented by the OECD because it is also moving towards a position of prohibition, of eliminating these facilitation payments. APEC is another body that has spoken out against them and said that countries ought to move away. The opportunity here is for us to show something called leadership. Let us for once be at the head of the pack. Let us lead the way and take a clear, principled, unequivocal position.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): As was foreshadowed at some length by my colleague Jacinda Ardern, I would like to look closely at clause 5 of the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill, which replaces section 98D in the principal Act, the Crimes Act. Section 98D deals with trafficking in persons. Largely, the amendments contained in this bill enlarge on the original section and add some important aspects that, hopefully, will add some clarification and, hopefully, make it easier to prosecute cases of exploitation under this legislation rather than under some alternatives, including, for instance, our employment legislation. What is probably most likely to support that is new section 98D(4), which actually has some definitions around the word “exploit”. Exploitation includes “slavery, practices similar to slavery, servitude,” and, in particular, “forced labour,”.

This is what I want to concentrate on in this contribution, because the same report that Jacinda Ardern referred to, the Trafficking in Persons Report 2015, did identify some issues with our ability under current legislation and under section 98D as it is currently written to actually identify some forms of labour exploitation as forced labour and to prosecute them under the Crimes Act. The report identified things that are probably well-known to us, which are that “Foreign men and women from China, India, the Philippines, countries in the Pacific, South Africa, and the United Kingdom are vulnerable to forced labor in New Zealand’s agriculture, horticulture, viticulture, construction, and hospitality sectors, or as domestic workers. Some foreign workers are charged excessive and escalating recruitment fees, experience unjustified salary deductions, non- or underpayment of wages, excessively long working hours, restrictions on their movement, and have their passports confiscated and contracts altered.” None of this is news to us, but I think what perhaps has not been really recognised by the New Zealand public is that these actually constitute forms of forced labour, and the report identifies some examples.

One investigation revealed that an employer was exploiting Chinese chefs, but there was no prosecution of the defendants for forced labour. It was stated by NGOs and Government officials that there was a high evidentiary bar, and there was a failure to identify the behaviour as trafficking or forced labour as per international law. There was a lack of judicial support for prosecuting it as forced labour, or even an understanding of trafficking, and these were all identified as reasons for the lack of anti-trafficking prosecution of the employer of those identified victims. The report noted that “The Immigration Act prohibits retention or control of a person’s passport or any other travel or identity document, [yet] there were no prosecutions under that provision.”

So my hope is that—and I did not see anything in the commentary about this—by including forced labour as something that is explicitly defined as exploitation for the purposes of this section, we might actually have a better opportunity to prosecute some of those offences under this Act. I would think, and I would hope, that the penalties, which are imprisonment for a term not exceeding 20 years, or a fine not exceeding half a million dollars, or both—neither of those are new; those are, in fact, the penalties under the current section 98D, but they are significant penalties—are a far greater disincentive to conducting the type of exploitation that is identified in this report than the penalties that are available under our employment legislation.

There are other examples where New Zealand is currently failing to appropriately apply the laws that we already have. Again, an example from this report: “Labor inspectors reported visiting legal brothels to ensure working conditions were in compliance with New Zealand law, but none of these inspections resulted in the identification of trafficking victims.” I just do not think any of us in this Committee believe that that is realistic—that not one of those inspections actually identified any victims of trafficking. “Labor inspectors reported conducting routine audits in workplaces that employ migrant workers; they identified breaches of labor standards, but these did not result in investigations or prosecutions of forced or coerced labor exploitation.” So clearly there is work to be done, and this amended section 98D certainly appears, on the face of it, to go some way to addressing that. There is some rearrangement of the language, which again, hopefully, makes it clearer what is the evidential bar for recognising trafficking and things like forced labour and slavery, and, for that matter, other things that are identified in here like the removal of organs, or prostitution and other sexual services. These definitions now, hopefully, are much clearer and much easier for the judiciary to apply.

But we also need to see some enthusiasm for this approach from the judiciary. We need to see our labour inspectors properly resourced to be able to go out and identify potential cases of exploitation of this nature but also to be able to pursue those prosecutions, because there is no doubt that pursuing those does require quite a high test. There is a high evidential test. The labour inspectors will want to be sure that they are able to prove their case, and that takes resources—that takes resources. I would like to hear some assurance from the Minister in the chair, the Hon Louise Upston, that not only is the law appropriately written so that we can actually address some of these matters of forced labour but also the Government is prepared to resource the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the other agencies tasked with enforcing this legislation to be actually able to go out there, identify the cases, take successful cases, pursue them all the way, and not fall at the final hurdle if they are not able to meet some of the evidential tests that will be required of them.

Overall, in my view this new section 98D is a significant improvement on what we have in the current legislation, and it certainly looks to address some of the issues with New Zealand’s approach to these matters that have been identified by overseas agencies.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 58

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

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 76 in the name of David Clendon to clause 6 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 60

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

Noes 61

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 128 in the name of David Clendon to clause 6 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 60

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

Noes 61

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

Amendment not agreed to.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Amendments to other enactments

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): It is a privilege to be able to speak on Part 2 of the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill. This Part deals with amendments to other enactments. Whereas Part 1 was dealing with amendments to the Crimes Act, Part 2 deals with amendments to a variety of other pieces of legislation.

Subpart 1 deals with amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009. The principal Act came into force in 2009 in response to some pressure that New Zealand was being put under to join the international coalition of the willing, if you will, to put pressure on international crime organisations. I think that the nomenclature in terms of that legislation is probably a little bit over the top. Actually, it could have related to organised crime rather than the financing of terrorism but, nevertheless, restrictions on financing for any form of organised crime are certainly useful.

The significant amendments to that legislation are in clause 19 of this bill, which amend section 5. The “ ‘domestic physical cash transaction’ means a transaction in New Zealand involving the use of physical currency”. That has been amended slightly by the Law and Order Committee. I would be interested to know from members who were on the select committee why that change needed to occur. The original wording there does not look terribly difficult to interpret. I would be interested to know from members who were actually on the committee why that change was made. There is also an insertion of a new term, “international wire transfer”. That is a transfer where at least one of several New Zealand institutions is “(i) the ordering institution: (ii) the intermediary institution: (iii) the beneficiary institution”.

New subpart 2A, inserted by clause 23, refers to “Prescribed transaction reports”. New section 48A, “Reporting entities to report certain prescribed transactions”, reads “(1) Despite any other enactment or rule of law, but subject to any regulations made under section 154, if a person conducts a prescribed transaction through a reporting entity, the reporting entity must (as soon as practicable, but not later than 10 working days after the transaction) report the transaction to the Commissioner in accordance with section 48B.” This, I assume, is to improve transparency around certain prescribed transaction reports and to improve the ability to monitor the movement of certain monetary payments.

Subpart 3 is “Amendment to Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995”, and clause 39 inserts section 27(1)(d): “for the purpose of responding to a request under the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act 1992 if—(i) access to the information requested is authorised by the Attorney-General; and (ii) the request relates to an offence that corresponds to an offence in New Zealand that is punishable by a term of imprisonment of more than 1 year.” This has to do with information that goes into the DNA-profile data bank. These are a number of, I guess, what are technical amendments, but they are designed to improve the functionality of various pieces of legislation that relate to greater transparency around—

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): I am pleased to take a call on Part 2 of this bill. I would like to pick up on my remarks that I made during the debate on Part 1, where the Minister in the chair, Louise Upston, acknowledged that this bill is entirely consistent with our international obligations. I would like to ask the Minister, in relation to Part 2, whether the provisions in Part 2 are entirely consistent and compliant with our international obligations, because the actual proposals upon which this Part 2 are based were based on the Ministry of Justice and 17 other Government departments, and the proposals that were put forward were subject to the biggest legal disclaimer that I have ever read in my life.

Actually, I am amazed that the Government’s ministries—it was an all-of-Government approach to this legislation, and there was a monstrous disclaimer from the ministries on their own proposals, yet those proposals form the basis of this legislation and the basis of the enactments that are contained in Part 2.

I would like the Minister to rise to her feet and reassure the public of New Zealand that all of the international obligations—the treaties, conventions, and protocols, whether they be OECD or through the UN—that those international commitments that we have made are, as she has mentioned in relation to Part 1, entirely compliant. If her own officials have to hide behind legal disclaimers and not take responsibility for the advice that they give when recommending proposals for this legislation, then how can we, this Parliament and the people of New Zealand, be clear?

I know that genuine efforts have been made through the Justice and Electoral Committee to implement these provisions, whether it be through money-laundering Acts or through all of the other subsequent amendments that are being made to a host of other pieces of legislation—I believe it is 12 pieces of legislation in total. The bulk of those amendments fall under Part 2—but I return to the point.

This piece of legislation and the provisions in Part 2 that give effect to many different provisions around money-laundering and other legislative provisions are all based on New Zealand being compliant and ratifying the international commitments that we have made. I would like to ask this Minister, the Hon Louise Upston, to rise to her feet and reassure the public of New Zealand and this Parliament that indeed, in enacting this legislation, New Zealand is going to be fully compliant. If not, then how compliant are we?

This is no time for half-baked measures. If we are putting through this legislation and amending a host of various pieces of legislation that are addressing a very, very important topic around strengthening our laws around organised crime and corruption, we need to have that assurance that indeed this legislation does ensure that New Zealand fulfils its international commitments. We have signed up to these international commitments, and indeed it has been exposed by Transparency International New Zealand, in 2013 I believe, that New Zealand is falling short—we are falling short. So we are putting this legislation through to ensure that we are able to lift the bar, but I would like to know from the Minister: have we really raised the bar and are we fully compliant with our international commitments, which are the topic and which underpin the provisions here in Part 2? Thank you.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I have a question for the Minister in the chair, Todd McClay, relating to clauses 58 and 59 together, and I have a separate question in respect of clause 61 of the bill. Clauses 58 and 59 of the bill relate to amendments to New Zealand legislation to provide mutual assistance to overseas countries that are looking into the sorts of things that would be illegal in New Zealand.

The first question I have is in respect of clause 58, which inserts a new section 31 into the principal Act, which is the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act 1992. It says that “A foreign country may request the Attorney-General to assist in arranging—(a) the taking of evidence in New Zealand;” and the Attorney-General can authorise that assistance if “satisfied that—(i) the request relates to criminal proceedings in the foreign country; and (ii) there are reasonable grounds for believing that the evidence can be taken…in New Zealand:”. I can see why that power is necessary.

My first question relates to why it is that these rights go to the Attorney-General rather than sit with the police. It seems to me that these things ought not to be elevated to so high a level that in practice there are procedural impediments to actually cooperating with foreign countries trying to stamp out these sorts or corrupt practices. It may be that there has been proper thought given to that, and that the reasons for leaving that with the Attorney-General relate to the fact that it is the Attorney-General who through Crown Law generally exercises those prosecutorial decisions. But it also could be argued, I suppose, that in respect of lower levels of criminality, which none the less ought to be policed, it is generally the police that exercise those questions of discretion.

The second issue that I have not yet had an answer to from the Government—the Ministers in the chair—arises, again, in respect of clause 59, which also amends the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act. I raised this issue in respect of my contribution on Part 1, and it relates to the definition of “foreign public official”. You will see, in clause 59, that schedule 1 is amended by inserting into the list of offences against the Crimes Act section 105D, which relates to bribery outside New Zealand of foreign public officials. I asked why it is that we have got such a narrow definition of “foreign public official” that it does not capture the sort of controversy that we have currently in respect of the Saudi sheep issue. I accept that the Government does not accept the Opposition’s characterisation of the payments that were made to the Al-Khalaf Group—a $7 million cash payment, which the Opposition and the media—

Ian McKelvie: Not still talking about this.

Hon DAVID PARKER: I am still talking about this—that is the reference we have from the National Party. You know, irrespective of whether you think that the Labour Party’s characterisation of those payments is accurate in fact, I would have hoped that National would concede that if we are right in fact, then those payments are improper. If a $7 million payment really was to buy the cooperation of the Al-Khalaf Group in order to stop that person blocking the advancing of the free-trade agreement with Saudi Arabia, that is improper, in my book. You can have a factual disagreement as to whether the facts actually show that that was the purpose of the payment, but if that was the purpose of the payment—and I think it was—it was improper.

That sort of payment ought to be illegal under New Zealand’s law, because it is improper. But the problem with this legislation is that that sort of payment, even if it is made, is not made illegal, because you have got such a narrow definition of “bribery of a foreign public official” that it does not capture that sort of payment. So if Mr Al-Khalaf was paid that sort of payment, and it was improper, and he was a public official, it would be caught by this legislation, but if he is not a public official—because he is not a public servant, he is just someone who has got influence on public servants—it is not caught by this legislation.

We have yet to have an explanation from any Minister in the chair as to what the logic is behind that proposition. Having not had an answer on Part 1, I am hoping that we get an answer in Part 2, because it arises in respect of clause 59 of the bill where reference to section 105D of the Crimes Act is inserted into schedule 1, and what is inserted is relating to bribery outside New Zealand of a foreign public official. I make the point that the definition in this bill is so narrow that the situation that we have in respect of the Al-Khalaf Group would not be caught, because Mr Al-Khalaf is not a public servant or a foreign public official in that context. Irrespective of whether the Government agrees with my characterisation of what Mr McCully and his Government did, the possibility that you can make those sorts of payments legally under New Zealand law is, in my contention, wrong.

I turn to clause 61, which, funnily enough, is sort of the flip side of what I have been saying. Clause 61 inserts provisions relating to international policing and information sharing to assist the corresponding agency overseas. Can I just note a degree of caution here, which I hope that the Government has properly taken into account. We have had experiences in this Parliament in recent years—and not just under the current Government but also under prior Governments; this is not a political point—where overseas Governments that are not very good at preserving civil liberties actually at times take what are quite political prosecutions or attacks against members of their own populations for political reasons.

We have got to be a bit careful that we enable our police to pass a sniff test across what is being asked of them in terms of the pursuit of allegations of corruption in another’s home country, because sometimes it is not what it seems, and sometimes what can be happening in those other countries is actually oppressive of some of their own citizens. We have to retain a discretion on the part of the police as to whether they think they should be assisting their corresponding overseas agencies. On some occasions I would actually trust the New Zealand Police to say: “Actually, no. We don’t think we should be assisting in this particular prosecution, because this particular country overseas has endemic corruption within it, and we ought not to be letting them use the New Zealand authorities to assist with politicised prosecutions that aren’t grounded in actual corruption.”

That is a hard thing to do—to legislate for—and you actually cannot specify every eventuality in writing, but you do need to make sure that the police have a discretion, in my opinion. We need to trust the New Zealand Police to actually sort the wheat from the chaff, and to responsibly exercise discretion as to whether it cooperates with the overseas authority when that foreign country wants to have the assistance of the New Zealand Police in order to gather information relating to a prosecution in that overseas country.

MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Tēnā tātou katoa. It is my privilege to take a call on Part 2, “Amendments to other enactments”, of the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill. I have listened intently to all the contributions in the Committee tonight, and there are clearly some questions around whether we are meeting our international obligations, so I want to reinforce that point on this side.

When I look at the regulatory impact statement it says in the very front that a lot of the proposals that we are putting up in this piece of legislation are untested, and the point that I draw members’ attention to is the fact that we do not collect enough detailed data on the extent of organised crime in New Zealand. So that somewhat limits whether we can properly evaluate the proposals put in here.

I just want to preface my contribution tonight with that statement—that these proposals are untested. I think it is the intention as well, but like most things, it is the implementation. So it is to that end that I particularly want to draw the Committee’s attention to the DNA testing in clause 39 in Subpart 3, “Amendment to Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995”. Clause 39, which amends Section 27, amends the disclosure of information on the DNA profile databank. Hopefully, in the time we have got, the Minister in the chair may be able to give some assurances that—I guess, the extraction of DNA is important for many people—we are doing it in a way that is not only transparent but also safe, so that we ensure that the DNA samples that we are taking are for the purposes that we are taking them for. I would be interested in hearing from the Minister about how that is going to be conducted, who is going to be responsible for it, because we have had a history of DNA mixing in this country, and the outcome has not been very good, obviously, for those at the centre of it. So, just in respect of this part, I would invite the Minister to, perhaps, allay some fears around DNA testing.

The other one, in my time to contribute, in terms of Part 2 is the collection and monitoring of international funds transfer data. Just in terms of outlining, I guess, the problem that this piece of legislation is trying to address—you know, we talk about the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009, which I believe came into force in June 2013. It enhances the existing regime and establishes a new supervisory regime to better detect, deter, and investigate funds related to organised and financial crimes. In the 6-month period between 1 December 2009 and 31 May 2010, a total of just over 2,300 suspicious transaction reports were received by the financial intelligence unit from various financial institutes. The majority of these were from registered banks. Under the new Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act, banks, other financial institutions, and casinos—reporting entities—will be required to report suspicious transactions to the New Zealand Police’s financial intelligence unit. However, the information that is reported can be limited due to the subjective and disparate nature of reports that are based on suspicion. This can be a problem, because they are subjective, and they could be disparate.

So the first option that is proposed in this piece of legislation is to keep the status quo, so that under this option reporting entities would only provide reports of suspicious transactions to the financial intelligence unit. This option is not preferred, as debated by the select committee. Although suspicious transaction reports are valuable, on their own they are unlikely to fully address the high risk from wire transfer and cash deposits. Option two is that international wire transfers and large cash transactions be reported to the financial intelligence unit.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Tēnā koe e te Heamana o te Komiti o te Whare o ngā Māngai nei, nō reira, tēnā koe.

[So acknowledgments to you, Mr Chairman of the Committee of the House of Representatives here; greetings.]

I would like to just take a short call on this bill. I was not on the Law and Order Committee, but I did take the opportunity to read some of the submissions. I think that in this particular bill it is fundamental to this bill that we have a very strong banking sector, so I took particular note of the submissions from the BNZ and then the New Zealand Bankers’ Association. I think that in talking about money-laundering and the processes of banking, as I said, it is critically important that we do have a strong banking sector. In BNZ’s submission, what it is saying is that in determining issues around transfers of money, it is important that the systems of the Government align with its systems so that it can maximise and be able to ensure that it picks up everything that it is meant to pick up. It talks about the use of its SWIFT system, and so I think it is important for the Committee to recognise and acknowledge the submissions from the banks.

The other part I wanted to talk about is that when we are talking about money-laundering, money-laundering in itself is, of course, an offence, but they are proceeds from another criminal offence as well, otherwise there would be no need to actually launder the money. Actually, we are talking about two things that are happening here, so I just wanted to also acknowledge that this bill takes care of one part and partially takes care of where those funds actually come from, because with this being an omnibus bill, there are several parts that this bill is actually part of.

I think my colleague mentioned earlier that her device was not working. Mine is, and I just wanted to quote from one of the submissions. As I mentioned earlier, the international banking system uses a service known as SWIFT to make international wire transfers. This involves passing authenticated messages to settle payments from one financial institution to another. The SWIFT system uses standard codes—I am going to jump right through because it is quite long—and the definition of wire transfer in section 5 of the Act deems transfer and settlements between financial institutions acting on their own behalf not to be wire transfers. These types of transfers are made using SWIFT, and it should be made clear that these are not reportable—that last bit was the key message that I wanted to really make in this. So from what I am reading, it is that it is that last bit about it not being reportable—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

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

ADRIAN RURAWHE: I quoted BNZ before the dinner break, and I just want to quote Westpac as well, and pose a question to the Minister: how does the proposed legislation support what the banks are saying? “Westpac estimates that it will be required to report at least 2,000 transactions per day under the legislation.”, and it goes on to say: “To identify and electronically report this volume of transactions Westpac will be required to develop new IT systems and business processes.” So that was the question that I wanted to ask relevant to this piece of legislation.

Westpac also goes on to say that the legislation—[Bell rung] I have one last thing. Westpac goes on to say that the legislation must allow sufficient time for this to be done, and so I would like to ask the Minister that as well. That is all of my contribution. Thank you.

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I want to come to a part of the bill that has not been debated thus far, I believe, and that relates to the amendment to the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act in subpart 3. It is in Part 2 of the bill. I think that probably the fact that we are canvassing such a wide range of issues, from human trafficking to facilitation payments to things like the sharing of DNA information between countries, does demonstrate that this is indeed an omnibus bill. But in this part of the bill, which is the amendment to the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995, without seeing the context it is probably very difficult to see why such a requirement is necessary. That is why I wanted to canvass in a little more detail the problem that we have, just to ensure, I guess, that we have opted for the right options in updating our legislation, because five options have been canvassed by officials.

The situation we have is that periodically the police will receive requests from overseas agencies for DNA profile, and those are most likely to come from the Australian authorities—interesting, given the situation we are currently in—via Interpol. But there is an inability at present for New Zealand to legally provide information about DNA profile to our counterparts in Australia, and that is because the current legislation that governs the DNA Databank is the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995, which does not permit DNA profile information to be provided for an overseas agency for the purpose of investigation.

What is interesting is that we have had for some time a Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act. That was put in place in 1992. Our bodily samples legislation came in 3 years later, and yet, for some reason, that legislation did not factor in the fact that we had that mutual assistance agreement. What that means in practice—in an example that is used in the regulatory impact statement—is that the Queensland police investigating a homicide may take a DNA sample from the crime scene and may ask the New Zealand Police whether or not there is a matching sample in New Zealand’s data bank, but even if the police in New Zealand go ahead and carry out that analysis and they come up with a positive match, they are unable to disclose who the matching sample belongs to.

Obviously, that will seem curious to members in this Committee, but what still seems curious to me, given there was a 3-year difference between when this mutual arrangement was forged and when New Zealand put in place its bodily samples legislation to regulate the way we deal with DNA samples, is whether there was any reason why that was not explicitly dealt with. Obviously it is some time ago now, so it might be hard to demonstrate that, but I do wonder whether Parliament gave it explicit consideration and decided against it.

I do think in the context that we are now in, where we have greater information-sharing arrangements—particularly with Australia, which is where this provision will take the greatest effect—we are now sharing between countries information about detainees who, for instance, might have parole provisions that would apply to them domestically, but they are being sent back to their home country. We should have that information so that we are able to apply it. I would make the point, though, that that is very different to what we are seeing at the moment, and members on all sides of the House are advocating very strongly against the deportation of people who have, for all intents and purposes, taken on Australian citizenship.

But coming back to the bill and to subpart 3, there was a range of options to deal with this dilemma, and it seems that of the five options that were canvassed, a decision was made not to have a broader information-sharing provision within the Policing Act, but to come in specifically with an amendment to the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act. I think that is probably the right decision on the part of the Ministry of Justice. The ministry did want to make sure that it narrowed down the provision of this information-sharing agreement, and to do that it would be better to put it in the enabling legislation for the Act that regulates samples itself, rather than in something more broad like the Policing Act. But what is interesting is the role that the Ministry of Justice has recommended that the Attorney-General should play in decision making. I come to the specific—unless the Minister in the chair, Minister Finlayson, would like to make a contribution? No.

I come now to the way that it has been set out in the bill itself. It states under subpart 3 that this subpart amends the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act. Clause 39, “Section 27 amended (Access to and disclosure of information on DNA profile databank)”, inserts in section 27(1) of the Act: “(d) for the purpose of responding to a request under the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act …”—so we are still falling back on making sure that those requests do come via that agreement—“(i) access to the information requested is authorised by the Attorney-General;”—which is the important point here; the bill is very explicit that it must be via the Attorney-General that these requests are made, so that it is not the police who have the discretion to determine whether or not DNA profiling of a New Zealand citizen is able to be shared ad hoc with any counterpart in Australia that requests it—“and (ii) the request relates to an offence that corresponds to an offence in New Zealand that is punishable by a term of imprisonment of more than 1 year.”

I guess one of the questions I wanted to raise in light of some of the issues that we are seeing currently is whether this requirement for the Attorney-General to provide that information is specific to New Zealand citizens, or does it also apply to New Zealand - born individuals who may now hold citizenship somewhere else? So, to give an example, if Australia made contact via the mutual assistance agreement via the Attorney-General and sought DNA profiling of someone who was born in New Zealand but now holds citizenship in Australia, how would that be treated, for instance? This is keeping in mind some of the situations we are seeing in Australia at the moment, where obviously the Australian authorities are trying to build cases against people whom they determine to be New Zealand citizens but who, for all intents and purposes, have been raised in Australia as Australians.

The other point I wish to make is that in subparagraph (ii) it says “the request [must relate] to an offence that corresponds to an offence in New Zealand that is punishable by a term of imprisonment of more than 1 year.” It is obviously creating a threshold there that says we do not consider this to be a provision that should be used for things that have an offence that does not have a custodial sentence attached to it. We do not consider such an offence to be important enough, and we want to make sure that the threshold is reasonable. I think that is really important, but, again, it highlights the absurdity of the situation that we are seeing at the moment, where people who have been imprisoned for not even a year are being deported, and yet under this legislation a country cannot even ask for their DNA information if the threshold is that low. You could be deported for that offence and sent back to a country that you have not known for 20 years, but you cannot even have your DNA information shared between countries because the threshold has not been met.

That, to me, highlights the contradiction about what we are seeing in the way Australia is enacting its policy right now—that it will not give us information about these people, but Australia will still deport them for a lesser offence than what we have set in this law as the threshold. I think that demonstrates something quite critical. I am glad the threshold has been set there. We should not be just sharing information about New Zealand citizens willy-nilly for what the public in this country—and, indeed, probably the public in other countries as well—would consider to be minor offences.

From reading the regulatory impact statement, I am heartened by the level of analysis that has been gone through to come to the conclusion that of the five options, the bar has been set relatively high. The Attorney-General will be acting on the advice of Crown Law, will be assessing the seriousness of the offence in the context of the reciprocal arrangement, and has the ability to refuse the request. From the threshold that we have established in the legislation, the Attorney-General has the ability to hold that sovereign decision to say that either it is not an offence that we consider to be serious enough or it simply does not meet our standards. I think that is incredibly important.

I think it is important, also, to keep that decision making away from the police and put it in the hands of the Attorney-General. The police in New Zealand need to maintain their relationships with their counterparts via Interpol, and this is one way that they will not be caught between a rock and a hard place when Australian police ask for the information and they are the decision makers in that regard. I think it is a provision that demonstrates how much thought has gone into ensuring that we balance the need to cooperate at an international level whilst also preserving the rights of New Zealanders in regard to the information that is held on them.

And that is perfect timing, I think you will find, Mr Chair.

JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for this call on the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill. Strengthening our laws to combat organised crime and corruption is a worthy aim. This bill will allow us to meet a number of our international obligations and will enhance our compliance with various international treaties and conventions so we can better assist international efforts on corruption, on bribery, and on the activities of organised crime.

Part 2, Subpart 7, amends the Income Tax Act 2007. It seeks to ensure that bribes are not tax deductible. Clause 51 of the bill is designed to make taxation legislation more consistent with criminal legislation, and it replaces section DB 45 with a new section that denies deductions for bribes. The intention of this clause is to make it clear that no bribe payments can be tax deductible, whether they be bribes paid through intermediaries, bribes paid for the purpose of obtaining an advantage for a third party, or bribes paid to foreign public officials for acts or omissions in relation to the performance of official duties.

This amendment is another of those contained in this bill that will enhance our compliance with the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions and the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. However, in contrast, the Crimes Act amendments in Part 1 had a number of authoritative contrary submissions during the select committee because Part 1 actually permits facilitation payments.

Bribes paid to foreign public officials for the sole or primary purpose of ensuring or expediting their performance of a routine Government action where the value of it has no undue benefit or disadvantage seems to be A-OK, but there will be no tax breaks allowed. Well, clearly, such payments are not legitimate business expenses. Of course, we would not be advocating that we should resolve this inconsistent approach by allowing payments to grease the proverbial wheels to become tax deductible. No, I am merely pointing out that Part 2, in this respect, is not consistent with facilitation payments allowed in Part 1. Rather, the question for the Minister of Justice is: should we not be following the strong taxation approach and saying that bribery is not acceptable. A genuinely hard-line approach by this Government against corruption would be most welcome in this bill.

We are now slipping in the ranks of least corrupt countries in the world. In recent years we have seen a lessening of transparency from this Government. The Government arrogantly continues to look after itself and the privileged few at the expense of everyday, hard-working New Zealanders. Its “no rules apply to me” approach was revealed in detail in Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics book. The implications of a concerted campaign to undermine regulators like the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Markets Authority cuts deep to the heart of the integrity of our financial system. Public servants and many people from both sides of the Chamber have worked hard to clean up the mess from the finance company collapses and have attempted to restore some faith so that the public can invest with confidence again. We support clause 51 in Part 2 of this bill because it clarifies that bribes are not tax deductible. Thank you.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Thank you very much, Mr Chair.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Excellent choice, excellent choice.

STUART NASH: Thank you, Mrs Dyson. My learned colleague Jenny Salesa and I were on very much the same wavelength when we looked at this. I want to talk about DB 45 Bribes. Part 1 relates to a number of sections in the Crimes Act. The one I want to talk about in particular is section 103(2), but before I do, let me first also just go to the definition of bribes in the Crimes Act. This is the definition—I had it here 2 seconds ago; you would not believe it. This is the definition in the Crimes Act: bribe means “any money, valuable consideration, office, or employment, or any benefit, whether direct or indirect”. So we need to be pretty clear about what we are talking about here.

Section 103(2) of the Crimes Act, which DB 45 Bribes applies to, actually says “Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years who corruptly gives or offers or agrees to give any bribe to any person with intent to influence any member of Parliament in respect of any act or omission by him or her in his or her capacity as a member of Parliament.” This is quite an interesting definition. When I looked through this, I wondered what constitutes a bribe to a member of Parliament.

We all know that the Electoral Finance Act really tightened things up. So if we are given a campaign contribution over $1,500, then we have to declare that; we all know this. If it is under that, then this is fine, and it is not considered a bribe. But say, for example, a member of Parliament was given a car and told to promote something—just as a hypothetical example. Would that be considered a bribe—when they are trying to exert undue influence by driving around, let us just say, a badged car? When I look at the definition here, it would come quite close.

The thing I cannot find, though, is the definition—I am sure there is one—of corrupt. So this is 7 years for those who corruptly give or offer to give bribes. So I suppose what it is is it is about the intent of the person who gives the money or the good or the offer of employment to that particular MP. So what defines corrupt? Well, do they mean to mislead the public or do they want the MP to do something that he or she should not be doing or knows is morally wrong, as opposed to legally wrong? I am not too sure.

The Minister in the chair, Todd McClay, no doubt does understand the law a lot better than I do in this area, and I would not mind just a little bit of direction on this, because I think that in this day and age of increased scrutiny that MPs are coming under, we need to be incredibly clear about what constitutes a bribe so none of us get put in a situation where, unwittingly, we accept a gift or an offer of money or a car or something like that that may, by law, constitute a bribe.

There is one other clause that I would like to talk about if I may, and that is clause 46. This relates to section 209, “Offences in relation to importation or exportation of prohibited goods”. Clause 46(1) states: “is knowingly concerned in any importation or exportation of—(i) goods that are designed, manufactured, or adapted with intent to facilitate the commission of a crime …”. The interesting thing about this is that you could argue that a gun is designed to facilitate a crime. I mean, you have a gun so you can shoot something, whether it is a target, a person, or an animal. You could mount a strong argument that a gun is designed to actually facilitate a crime, and so how do things like guns or spears or shields, whether they are ornamental, whether they are African, whether they are Indian, whether they are new, whether they are old—how would you actually know, in fact, whether you are importing a prohibited good? The definition here of “prohibited good” is quite wide, I would have thought, and so a little bit more definition around that—all I am after is a little bit of clarification so that good, hard-working Kiwis do not get caught at the border when, in fact, they are bringing in stuff unknowingly. And as we know, ignorance is no defence when it comes to the law—of that there is no doubt.

The other thing also is paragraph (ii), which states “goods that, having regard to all relevant circumstances, can reasonably be considered—(A) part of, or involved in, an attempt to commit a crime involving dishonesty”. I suppose that is a little clearer, because there seems to be more of an intent test around that because it is talking about “involved in an attempt to commit a crime”, so there is a bit more of intent, whereas paragraph (i) talks only about goods that are designed or manufactured with the intent to facilitate the commission of a crime like, as mentioned, a gun, a spear, a shield, or any other thing that could be considered a weapon. And those of us who have flown will know that even a plastic fork these days can be used for disingenuous purposes.

TIM MACINDOE (Senior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 118 in the name of the Hon Amy Adams to clause 46 be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 118 in the name of the Hon Amy Adams to clause 2 be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 2 as amended agreed to.

The Committee divided the bill into the Crimes Amendment Bill, the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Amendment Bill, the Companies Amendment Bill, the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill, the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill, the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3), the Extradition Amendment Bill, the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill, the Financial Transactions Reporting Amendment Bill, the Income Tax Amendment Bill, the Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill, the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill, the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Amendment Bill, the Policing Amendment Bill, and the Secret Commissions Amendment Bill, pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 119.

Bills to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill

In Committee00DBHOH_BILL12851.1

Part 1 Amendments to principal Act

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. It is a pleasure to take a first-up call on this very significant piece of legislation. I am very proud to be a member of the Māori Affairs Committee—

Tim Macindoe: I do apologise to the member on his feet. I am sorry I was distracted. By agreement with the whips, I seek leave for debate on the Waitangi National Trust Amendment Bill to be taken as one debate with the voting on the parts to be taken separately.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Leave is put for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Parts 1 and 2, schedule, and clauses 1 to 3

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Picking up from where I left off, I am very proud to be a member of the Māori Affairs Committee. We gave very close consideration to this very important bill, which amends the Waitangi National Trust Board. Everyone knows that the trust board administers the Waitangi Treaty Grounds and associated lands and it is administered under a deed, which is part of the enacting legislation. That original legislation dates right the way back to 1932, so if my maths is right that is 84, or coming up to 85 years since the enactment of this legislation. So that is a long period of time in which this important trust has been in operation.

We know that the Minister, through the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, conducted a review between 2006 and 2008 that wanted to update and modernise, I guess, the composition of the trust. That is, effectively, what this piece of legislation does. It does update a few of the provisions. We are supporting this bill, but to my mind I do feel that the mana of Te Tiriti o Waitangi—the Treaty of Waitangi—and the mana of the national trust is somewhat diminished by the amendments that are included in this bill. Let us bear in mind that there is very, very little in the way of historical bricks and mortar of such significance that we as a nation own collectively, and the Waitangi Treaty Grounds are to Tai Tokerau, and to us Māori, very sacred grounds. So the amendments that are included in this bill change the ex officio membership of the Prime Minister and, I believe, the Minister of Conservation and the Minister of Māori Affairs, who were by virtue of their position ex officio members of the board, and now, through this piece of legislation, those Ministers are going to be part of a Crown Representatives Group. So they will not be formally part of the trust board, but they will maintain relationships with it and the board will maintain a positive relationship with the Crown.

As I mentioned, 84 years this trust has been in operation, and there have been no difficulties with the ex officio appointments of the Ministers on to the board in all of those years. Yes, there is reasoning that the board needs to modernise, but where does that leave ex officio positions of Ministers? I cannot think of any off the top of my head, but I am sure that there are ex officio appointments for ministerial positions in other bodies, right through our statute book. So I guess constitutionally—[Interruption] That is Paul Foster-Bell on the other side there. I know he is very much an expert on these matters. But where does this place ex officio Ministers now that this piece of legislation will be removing them into a Crown appointers group? It was deemed that there was a conflict between the constitutional roles that the Ministers have and their trustee roles as being on the board, but, as I said, it has not been a problem for 84 years, so I do not really see how that is a big issue.

As I was saying, I do feel that the mana of the trust is being somewhat diminished by these changes. We are now taking away having the Prime Minister, the Governor-General, and two Government Ministers as members on the board, and having backbench MPs appointed by the Government and the Opposition. That is quite a step down, I guess, from the esteemed positions of the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, and Ministers. Although we are modernising the trust, we know that the work of the trust is very important, and we would want to ensure that very close relationships are maintained. I also notice that the Governor-General now has the role of being an honorary patron of the trust board, which is new. But that is only if the Governor-General takes up that position. It is at his or her pleasure. Again, I feel that it is diminishing the mana somewhat by no longer having those esteemed office holders as part of the trust board. But, be that as it may, that is what the new composition of the board will look like.

Briefly—and I know other speakers will go into this—a major point of amendment that the select committee considered was around the four Māori whānau having the right to appoint their own representative to the trust board. We know that the three Pākehā whānau of the trust have always had that right, but the four Māori whānau—Tai Tokerau; chiefly, rangatira whānau—currently have to appoint only one board appointee. I am pleased that through the Minister and the select committee process there has been an agreement that that amendment will now be put into the legislation.

I would also like to acknowledge the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage for her willingness to undertake a review of the operations of the trust, which was another aspect that came out of the select committee. The Waitangi National Trust Board is a very, very important body. It has a long history. It has treasured taonga that it administers on behalf of the whole country. We do support these changes. We do lament the diminishing somewhat of the mana through the positions that will no longer be on the trust board. However, these are changes that are being made to modernise the trust’s activities. I know that other members in this House have a lot more knowledge and history and connection to this trust board. I am sure that they will be able to elaborate further—my whanaunga from up in the north.

Other than that, I want to make just one last point if I may, if I have got time. I understand there is no provision in the trust deed for gender composition, gender roles, gender balance, is there? I understand there is not. Perhaps that might be something that could be considered. As we are looking a whole lot of modernisation of these boards, perhaps consideration of gender balance and representation on the board could be something to be considered also. Kia ora tātou.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Thank you for this opportunity. Tēnā tātou katoa. I rise to take a call on the Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill in its Committee stage. In the second reading of the bill I spoke to the House and confirmed in the House my whakapapa and its association with the Waitangi National Trust. I have a pretty passionate view about the Waitangi National Trust and fully support its functions. In fact, you might be interested to know that hanging in my office is a photo of my great-grandfather Tau Hēnare and Lord Bledisloe at the ceremony gifting the land to this country. So I am pretty passionate about this.

There are some questions that I have about this bill. On the whole we support it, but I do have some questions. One of those is about shortening or at least defining the length of service that a board member can serve. For those who have already served for over 9 years, and there are several such members, what this particular bill is doing is allowing a provision for them either to step down or to serve no more than 3 further years. Some might argue that that is a good point in so far as it keeps the board fresh. There is this Māori expression of “Ka pū te ruha, ka hao te rangatahi”.

[When the old net is worn out and cast aside, the new one goes fishing.]

It is saying the old net is pushed to the side, and the new net goes fishing. Yes, that has some merit to it. But what is not captured in that particular part is that those people who have been serving for such a long time actually hold a lot of mana. They actually hold a lot of respect from the people whom they have represented on this particular board. They range from those who are descended directly from the families that are set out in this particular bill—but some of the people in those positions also come from other positions outside those particular families. One of those is, of course, Sir Tumu te Heuheu, whom I mentioned in the second reading of the bill, who has had a long association. Like I say, one might say “Oh well, he’s past his use-by date.”, but I beg to differ. He carries the mana of his ancestor Te Iwikau, who signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840.

You cannot replace this. You cannot replace this kind of knowledge. It is institutional knowledge, and it is right that these people carry it down. It has been handed down to them. So I do have a few questions still about the length of service that a member on the board can give. But, like I said, I do acknowledge that there is opportunity there for a bit of new blood and a bit of fresh thinking to be injected into the board. Sadly, for my part, that was really just a part of natural attrition with the loss of my father. But, you know, I still think that those particular positions should be kept, and that knowledge, the institutional knowledge, and the mana that they bring alongside it.

My esteemed colleague here, Mr Tirikatene, also spoke about those particular families who, by right through this bill, have descendants who have served on this particular board. I was part of some of the select committee discussions and debate about this particular bill. I know there was some real strong debate, that if the Pākehā families have a representative for each whānau, then why should the Māori families be sort of lumped together? There was some good debate. I think we have come to a pretty fair conclusion.

But I want to just look at the bill. New section 2(3) in clause 3A in Part 1 says: “When the term of office of the representative member holding the position first held by Riri Maihi Kawiti ends in accordance with section 10(2) of the Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Act 2013,—(a) that position is disestablished; and (b) the Board must appoint as representative …”; and it goes on. It goes on to say: “(ii) a member of the family of Maihi Kawiti;”. If you go back just a little bit further in that bill, you will find that the seat the Government is trying to disestablish was once held by Riri Maihi Kāwhiti. In this particular bill—and, according to our whakapapa, Riri Maihi Kāwhiti was the son of Maihi, and Maihi was the son of Kāwhiti, and they carry on the name like that. Therefore, his name was Riri Maihi Kāwhiti.

In this particular case it is going to get rid of that one, and it is going to appoint members from the families of Hone Heke, Maihi Kāwhiti, and a member of the family of Tāmati Waka Nene, and a member of the family of Pōmare. I wonder what kind of consideration was given to that, given that if you search the ancestral links of our ancestors you will find actually that Tāmati Waka Nene and Pōmare, as well as Maihi Kāwhiti and Hone Heke, were related—they were related. But we are thankful that in this particular bill it will continue the separate lines of Hone Heke, Maihi Kāwhiti, Tāmati Waka Nene, and Pōmare. I want to acknowledge one of the people who probably was the most vocal about this point and that is my matua—well, tuakana on one side and matua on the other side; it is how Māori whakapapa works sometimes. He was very vocal about the rights of the family from Pōmare. I too am a descendant of Pōmare and I am also a descendant of Kāwhiti and Nene, so I want to acknowledge that from Arapeta Hamilton.

Those appointments, when they come in and they serve their particular length of time, in this bill it says it is for 9 years—three terms of 3 years. I wonder whether there was any thought by the Government around the succession planning, because what we found in the submissions and in the debates in the Māori Affairs Committee was that it is actually not that easy to find those from the families who have the necessary skills and have the capabilities and also possess the whakapapa to fill those positions on the board. I wonder whether any thought was given to that.

Just in finishing up, just as it applies to the Māori families whom I have already mentioned in terms of their service on the board, I want to pick up the point made by Mr Tirikatene around the mana of the position of the Prime Minister, the Governor-General, and the like on the board. I think they are important because with their presence—and we have been fortunate in the past to have had Sir Don McKinnon and others involved—they actually bring a sense of honour and pride and patriotism from the wider New Zealand community not only to want to visit the Waitangi National Trust but in the operations of the Waitangi National Trust. So I am a little bit disappointed that perhaps some of that position will be lost. I know, having gone to every Waitangi Day for my entire life, that I have really enjoyed seeing them there and it gives me a sense of pride that the Government, as well as my tupuna, are taking this particular responsibility seriously.

In closing, I do want to say that I am slightly disappointed that Te Tiriti o Waitangi will not be returning home to the land of the Bay of Islands. However, the hope is still there amongst our people. Kia ora tātou.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Chairman. My apologies to my colleague Nanaia Mahuta. Tēnā koutou e te Wharenui. As the previous speaker, Peeni Henare, said, it is a good day for this kōrero, especially as we woke up this morning to the debate over He Whakaputanga me Te Tiriti o Waitangi and where they should be and where they should sit, and that is what this is about.

This is about honouring and treasuring Waitangi as a sacred place not only for tangata whenua but for tangata Tiriti as well, because for us of the Pākehā culture, without Waitangi we are here with no honour—we are here with no actual foundation; we are here as colonisers and invaders rather than as partners in a relationship—so this site could not be more important to us. It is vital for us, even though whakapapa obviously gives the people of the north—and I really want to acknowledge my colleagues here in the House from the north, te Tai Tokerau, not only for their commitment to the Waitangi National Trust but for their understanding of the complexities and history of looking after that place on behalf of the nation, through their whakapapa. So it is great to have a chance to speak about this.

I sat on the Māori Affairs Committee briefly, on one of the days we were having a lively debate about representation, and I was very privileged to hear that debate. I myself, unlike Peeni Henare, have been to Waitangi for only the last 15 years—every Waitangi Day—and so I am a new person, but each time that I go I learn something powerful about what that space and place is in the history of this nation, and it is a place of both challenge and of coming together and acknowledging one another. So legislation like this Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill is very important.

In some ways I feel ill-equipped to talk about some of the detail of the length of time for which people should be able to be on the board, let alone who should represent whom. But there are issues I am passionate about that we were debating at the select committee and that I would like to stand up for in a way that is possibly more superficial than you have heard. It was Arapeta Hamilton’s submission about fair representation. In many ways that discussion symbolised Te Tiriti itself because we had a situation where the Pākehā families all had a representative each, but the mana whenua families did not. To me that was a little like the ongoing struggle we have under Te Tiriti to actually create a fair, honest, and just solution to our history, and in order to do that we have to keep refining our ideas of what democracy and also rangatiratanga actually mean.

Sometimes there is a tension between the two. I think it is really good to acknowledge that in the concept of a board or a concept of representation we do not always acknowledge that there are issues of mana and issues of whakapapa and tikanga that operate within their own context, and they want to be strongly influencing the structure of the board as well as the traditional Pākehā mechanisms of who voted for whom and who represents whom. But I think that this bill came to a good place through the hard work of the select committee and people came to a good agreement around the submission of Arapeta Hamilton and around some of these other issues of representation. I am not sure myself whether the changes are lessening the mana and power of the Waitangi National Trust or not, but what I am sure about is that we need the continued commitment to reviewing the issues associated with Waitangi itself so that we continue to improve and get right the nature of the relationship that we signed up to in 1840.

So it was good to be at the select committee when the Minister came and spoke of her commitment to the review, which is excellent because I am one of those people who believe that Te Tiriti never finishes. It is not a matter of full and final settlement. And just like Te Tiriti not finishing, the improving and polishing and enhancing of a bill like this and the way in which the Waitangi National Trust, this taonga, is managed is an ongoing process. So this may not be the end, but it is important to acknowledge both the mana of the history of the Waitangi National Trust and also what it will look like in the future.

It was interesting to hear Rino Tirikatene talk about gender balance, which is obviously one thing the Greens are quite interested in. But again that kōrero needs to come into a context, and I am sure that the people of the north are the people who can lead on that context and on that issue as well. Certainly, there are many people in the north who could. Thank you.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato): In taking a call on the Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill, I am reminded of some of the discussions around the select committee table, and I am pleased that the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage is sitting in the chair, because she probably would have liked to hear the nature of some of the questions that we were asking ourselves. One of the things that came up was with regard to the review that was undertaken and whether or not it was broad enough to actually address the submission about having all the Māori families represented on the board. We wondered why that had not been addressed in the previous review. Did it come up at all?

There are specific questions that I have of the Minister and they are in relation to a matter that she knows well, and that is the term of office for a trustee. The point was made very well by my colleague Peeni Henare when he said that the issue of succession becomes a particular matter when we think about a legacy board such as this. Making provision for members of each of the four families, as we have done in the bill, Minister, I would like to seek your response to some of the thoughts that emerged in the select committee. We wondered, actually, if a whānau identifies for the purposes of this board—a legacy board regarding the Treaty—that even after three terms of membership they want to ensure that the expertise and contribution to the board is retained, would there be scope for that to happen?

I say this in a very serious manner, in that you need only look at many marae throughout the country and, out of necessity, the need to bring forward younger people to sit on the marae committee as a trustee and perhaps in positions such as this. You are actually finding a younger generation coming through. If you are going to look at succession, then you would want to try to retain that type of contribution, because, in some instances, whānau have to dive quite deep into the younger generation. So there is one question there.

The other question that you might want to clarify, Minister Barry, for the purposes of the Committee stage, is the provision for a representative of the Government and the Opposition parties to be part of the Crown group. Will the decision to choose a member of the Opposition be by convention, where the largest party is approached and then a consultation is undertaken, or is there another process that the Minister envisages might be useful in an MMP environment? I think that it is worth asking the question, although convention might prevail—I suspect that might be the response. In an MMP environment, on a legacy board such as this, it is worth asking the question. I make mention that this is a legacy board for the very points raised by the member of the Green Party.

This is, ultimately, about a trust that oversees a very important place of national significance for the country. From a functional point of view, the administering of the Treaty House and the property under its purview is what the board does, but it is actually so much more than that. I can remember the big debate and discussion around the level of investment to improve the Treaty House—whether or not a visitors tax should be charged, whether or not tangata whenua should be charged, and all of those types of issues. So it brings into play in our national place of significance all these types of real issues that challenge our sense of a spiritual homeland where this country was founded. I would say that, unlike other boards, this one draws particular attention.

I had to ask myself how I whakapapa to the particular issue, and then I was reminded, in looking at the history, that one of my tūpuna was an initial member of the board, but not for long. He was one of the first members, Te Rata Mahuta, and then he passed. He was appointed in 1932 and he passed in October 1933. It did indicate to me that early on when this board was established, it was envisaged that this board represent the interests of all New Zealanders, and, Minister Barry, I can guarantee that although most of our discussions around the committee table focused on the proportional representation of those descending from the original Māori whānau that were named, as well as the Pākehā whanau, they really centred on the equality of that representation. Our focus was actually on the nature, role, and responsibility undertaken by the board. I am pleased to see, even after some debate with your officials about whether or not it was in scope, that we have managed to secure the inclusion of those four family members on the board. I am sure that they will make an important contribution.

We were also reminded by our colleague who declared his interest in relation to this bill about some of the current day challenges, I guess, in terms of looking at how the board undertakes to manage its affairs going forward. Certainly in my mind, it brought up a question, which I pursued with officials, around the lands and the estates that were transferred not being made available for Treaty settlement purposes but remaining for the original purpose and intent and spirit of the gift of the Bledisloe family. We were assured, through our advisers, that that would indeed be the case, and I see that Minister Finlayson is nodding his head to give absolute assurance on that.

In terms of modernising the legislation, there were some antiquated references in the bill, and you could not help but laugh. One of the references was “Pay the actual locomotion-expenses incurred and disbursed by any member of the Board …”. Well, paying “reasonable costs of travel” is what it says now, and that makes absolute sense. We look forward to what I understand to be a broader review that may be undertaken with the trust board, in conjunction with the trust board. We look forward to hearing some of the plans that the trust board intends to undertake on our behalf as a nation and hear how it reflects our national place of significance—the Treaty House and the Treaty Grounds—to educate New Zealanders and those visitors coming here to our country. There are some must-see sights that people have in their minds when they come to New Zealand. I would like to think that Waikato is one of them, but I suspect that they bypass us for Rotorua, to some degree, and then shoot straight up north. That said, this is why this bill is so important. The role that the trust board is undertaking on our behalf to reflect the place of national significance, the place where the Treaty was signed and should reside—one day—can be a positive statement for us all.

Lastly, Minister Barry, could I urge you to take a call on those particular matters—firstly, how the Opposition parties might decide on the representative. Do you have thoughts there, or will it be by convention? Then, in terms of the issue of succession, which has been raised a couple of times by members on our side of the Chamber, would there be enough scope, in your mind, going forward, even if three terms were served, and especially if the whānau members have actually identified this as an area where we are growing a succession of leadership and things like that? Could they roll their particular representative over for another term? Kia ora tātou.

NUK KORAKO (National): Ā, kia ora e te Heamana o te Whare, e mihi atu ki a koe.

[So thank you, Mr Chair. I acknowledge you.]

I would like to take a short call as the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, and also as someone who does acknowledge and recognise that Waitangi is the birthplace of our nation and that its heritage status absolutely needs to be acknowledged and sustained. I believe that when looking at this bill, the Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill, the interesting thing is that the principal Act is over 80 years old, and so one of the important things here was that we really needed to bring it very much into the 21st century because it is not now entirely fit for purpose. That was one of the major roles of the Māori Affairs Committee.

I want to acknowledge our Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, Minister Barry, and particularly a lot of the input she and her officials had during the select committee process. I acknowledge the submitters as well. It was the submitters who brought a lot of the important changes that were necessary. But also our understanding is that on the Māori Affairs Committee there is always going to be a conflict of interest somewhere, and it was good that our kaumātua Pita Paraone actually did—

Pita Paraone: Kaumātua?

NUK KORAKO: Well, the esteemed, or the—

Pita Paraone: The member.

NUK KORAKO: Just out of respect—just out of respect to the New Zealand First member on the Māori Affairs Committee. But this is really just to say that he declared his interest, his perceived conflict, in the fact that he is the current chair of the Waitangi National Trust Board. We were dealing with that, and we were also dealing with—and this is the nature of Māori. It does not matter where you go, there is always going to be one conflict of interest. But we also had a number of our members that came from there, that whakapapa-ed into that whole area, so it was an interesting discussion we had.

But I truly believe, in looking at the work that we have done and what we are here to represent, that the fact is there are a number of changes that we have in the provisions that I think are really important. I think the idea, though, is that the trust itself—as we all possibly know here, but it is a wider field out there—is self-funding, so it maintains the Treaty grounds and all of that at no cost to the people of New Zealand. In saying that, we are bringing it into the 21st century, and particularly in looking at, you know, ways that it wants to and needs to—and that was one of the submissions—generate its own moneys, its own commerce.

It is interesting when we talk about the tenure of the members. The fact is that before this bill there was actually no statutory term limit for board members. That actually needed to be addressed, because the fact is that—as has been highlighted by members from the other side of the Chamber, members of the Māori Affairs Committee—there was a lot of talk about tenure and about the 9 years, and whether that is enough. If we put these provisions in, it would create a catalyst whereby succession needs to be thought about a long time before the term actually expires. In looking at this, what we were doing here with the bill was—the governance structure definitely needed to be modernised and brought into a generation where it actually can develop and maintain its own income.

The other one was that—it was definitely in the submissions—we needed to address the disproportionate membership. The way that we needed to do that was to look at the balance and to bring Māori whānau, particularly, into that trust board situation so that that balance had been addressed. I come from Te Wai Pounamu; our representative is non-Māori. There was a lot of discussion around that as well. When we look at the fact of the make-up of the board, I believe that the provisions here have actually been addressed now, even though we have made the board have more members on it—but at least we have addressed a major concern that the submitters submitted about.

The other part was addressing the ex officio membership. We actually really did look at that, because that was one of the bases of why, a number of years ago, this bill was first introduced into the House. The fact is that there were ex officio members and then also board trustee members. So we have done that, and we still want to maintain a very positive working relationship.

On that note, I believe that what we have brought here, after the select committee process, has addressed all of the major issues, and we believe and we really hope that this bill will be able to continue on its journey through the House. Kia ora.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. It is a pleasure to take a call on the Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill, or, in Te Reo Māori, Te Pire Whakatikatika i Te Poari Pou Tiaki ā-Motu o Waitangi, and I can tell you that if you put the comma in the wrong place, you could be fixing up the board not the legislation. So I suggest that there should be a comma after “Whakatikatika”, definitely not after “Pire”.

I also want to mihi to the four whānau that now, through this legislation, will have the opportunity to appoint a member to this board. Ā, e mihi ana ahau ki te whānau o Hone Heke, te whānau o Maihi Kāwiti, te whānau o Tāmati Waka Nene me te whānau o Pōmare [and so I acknowledge the families of Hone Heke, Maihi Kāwiti, Tāmati Waka Nene, and Pōmare], because it is a very new thing that they now, under this bill, will have the right to, as of right, have a seat on that board. I think it is really important that all of the descendants that had a part to play in gifting this piece of land to the nation have a right to sit on the board, so that they can have input into how it is governed and managed. The governance of such things is a very important thing, and, of course, that is the whole point of amending this legislation, so that it can be better governed.

I have taken note of the contributions from those members who sit on the Māori Affairs Committee. Although some have expressed concern about the removal of those Government members who sit on the board as of right from the position that they hold, I think it is a reflection of moving forward to a better place in terms of having those members who will now form the Crown representatives group in more of a partnership model rather than one that actually sits in a governance role. So I acknowledge that, and I think that from my point of view that is a really good idea because it maintains the relationship at a very high level between those members, without their having to actually be members of the trust board.

I also want to acknowledge that in place of that, there are going to be nominated members of the board: one nominated by the Prime Minister and one nominated by the Leader of the Opposition. I think that that in a way expresses the importance to the nation that the Parliament is represented on that trust board. So I just want to acknowledge that as well.

The contributions from the members on this particular bill I have really enjoyed. I think it is a fair reflection of our growing nationhood. I think it is a fair reflection of the relationship between Treaty partners, and I think, you know, we have come a long way, and I think we have got some way to go yet, but I think this particular bill is a good reflection of our Treaty relationship.

I do not want to carry on too long on this. The other thing I wanted to acknowledge is the term of appointment. That will be a maximum of 9 years. I also support that. I think it is a good idea to rejuvenate, to bring new people in. But I would suggest that the issue of continuity be addressed and worked out so that you do not have a wholesale change of membership after 3 years. I think that would be problematic. I think there is a case to be made where those appointments are staggered. Nō reira, kāore e roa tēnei tū, otirā, e tika ana kia tuku mihi atu ki te Whare nei. Kia ora, kia ora.

[This stand, therefore, is not a long one, but at the same time it is apt that I accord an acknowledgment to this House. Thank you, thank you.]

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I call “Matua” Pita Paraone.

PITA PARAONE (NZ First): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Pai atu e noho ana koe i konā, kia ahatia!

[Greetings to you, Mr Chair. How wonderful that you are seated there—but so what!]

It is a privilege to take a call in this Committee stage of this bill. I have heard it already said a couple of times that this bill changes the concept of the board—well, it has been implied that the changes that this bill makes is a major shift in the Act and the board itself. But all it does is it changes the membership. That is all this bill does.

Much of the discussion has been around the term of appointment. Having said that, I need to say that my great-uncle sat on that board for 49 years. At no time did anyone question his ability and the service that he gave to that board. Can I say that the only mismanagement that occurred during that time was when the Government was responsible for the day-to-day administration of the trust.

Before I go on, I need to declare my vested interest as the present chair of that board and a representative of the four Māori families that have been alluded to tonight. Can I say that it is a pleasure to serve on that board and to represent those four families. I am delighted that the bill does give the opportunity now for each of those four Māori families to have their own representative. I look forward to sitting at the table with representatives of those other three families.

I ought to say that the removal of the ex officio members does not mean that the Government and the ministry that is responsible for this particular trust will be lost to the board, because it is the intention to establish an official working group that will act as an adviser and assist the board in its task of caring for that estate.

I want to say, though, that in terms of looking at the present membership of the board—and this must be a very rare thing for legislation that has been in for over 80 years. This is only the second time that it has been amended. The first amendment was in 1958, for a similar reason: to allow an extra family to be appointed to the board. In my mind that suggests that the board, over the years, has done a very good job.

I think one of the reasons for bringing this bill to the House was the increasing commercial activities that the board was becoming involved in. To have Ministers sitting on the board, and most of all to have the Governor-General sitting as chairman—should those commercial ventures run off the rails, so to speak, then that would bring those positions into disrepute. Hence this bill will give the opportunity for the Governor-General to choose whether he or she will take up the position of honorary patron. If he or she does not, well, then, that is fine—we will continue to operate. When I say “he or she”, I should point out to the members who have expressed some concern about gender balance that over the years there has certainly been a fair representation of women on the trust as well.

When this bill came before the Māori Affairs Committee, mention was made of a review. My understanding was that that review was not to be a consequence of this bill passing through the House. I am a little bit disappointed that that review has not begun, because in my mind there really is no reason for it not to have started already, even though many of the concerns that the review will certainly bring up are already known to officials.

I also want to say that some mention was made about—and the word used was “appointment” of members of Parliament to the board, representing both the Government and the Opposition. My little concern in that area is that all other members are subject to scrutiny by the board. I am asking whether or not the two representatives from this House will be scrutinised by the board before they actually take their place at the table. I think that is something that we need to consider.

The other thing, just talking about the membership again—of course, during the second reading, we heard of the passing of one of our members. I just wanted to reassure the Minister that I have no intention of applying for the vacancy created by the passing of Mr Ērima Hēnare. I just wanted to reassure—I understand that the Minister may have had some concerns in that area.

I know that in recent years Governments from both sides of the House have expressed a concern about the length of time members sit on the board.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! It is getting a bit noisy over there.

PITA PARAONE: I have been on the board for 15 years, and probably half of that time has been as the board chair. I have not perceived any conflict of interest of either a personal nature or a political nature, but I sometimes think that my political opponents see that as a sort of conflict. I just want to reassure this Committee, and in particular the Minister, that Waitangi is too important to me, and I think that Waitangi is above politics. As long as we continue to see that and to adopt that approach, then I think that the nation will benefit from that approach, Minister.

I also want to say that the board has expressed its support for this legislation. There were a number of other clauses that we would have liked to see included in this bill. However, we have accepted that the review will, hopefully, bring up those concerns, because as a board that is restricted by the terms of the deed of gift, it is somewhat difficult for us to do the commercial things that we would like to do without contravening the deed of trust. I cannot overemphasise the need for the board to look at opportunities to be able to do the things that any other commercial enterprise has at its disposal.

One last thing I want to comment on is the membership of the Māori whānau. The legislation says “Maihi Kawiti”. I am a descendant of Te Ruki Kāwiti, Maihi’s father. I come from the older son. I have always wondered—and I have researched it—and I still cannot find an answer as to why the son’s name was put forward ahead of the father. So I just wanted to have that on record, again, and to say that it is a privilege to represent those families. But we will have some difficulty with a non-Māori institution like the board telling the Māori whānau who they should be selecting, or determining the qualities of the person who they put up for appointment—i.e., who are we, the board, to tell someone like Sir Tumu te Heuheu, an ariki, whether or not he is suitable to be retained on the board? Those are some of the issues that the chairman of the Māori Affairs Committee alluded to in his presentation. But I just want to conclude by saying that I commend this bill to the Committee.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage): I have waited and listened carefully to all of the kōrero in the Committee tonight around a bill that has been worked through very skilfully. I commend the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee for acting in the spirit of consensus, along with the other members, who acted in very good faith, and the three submitters, who talked about and presented their concerns around the wider issues that confront the trust board.

I know, having listened, that there are some concerns about the way that we are modernising this board in terms of its governance and membership. I would like to reassure people that it is not ever about questioning the integrity of any of the members of the Waitangi National Trust Board. That has never been the intention. This bill has a very narrow focus, and it is very much predicated on trying to ensure that the older ways, if you like, are put to one side and that there is an ability for the board to move forward. In the wider review, which I signalled at the first reading and which I am completely committed to, we will be examining the issues of wider concern of the board in terms of your financial sustainability for the future. It is important that the board has that ability to run it as a financially viable organisation, because that is what it needs to be to survive. The Crown is very much in favour of the trust running the area of the Waitangi Treaty Grounds and the wider other properties that are involved, in the best possible way.

The narrow focus of this bill is really about taking away the ex officio members, who have never really played an active part in the board—that is, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Conservation, and the Minister of Māori Development. As ex officio members, what this bill is doing is removing them from the board, but that does not in any way demean the mana of the board. In fact, the Governor-General and Ministers will be removed from those positions, but the Governor-General will become the honorary patron of the trust, if that is his or her wish, and the Prime Minister, the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, and the Minister for Māori Development will form a Crown representatives group. This I think is a very good thing for the future of the trust board because what it does is it ensures that you have a relationship with the Crown and the Government that is not too close. I think a clear separation between the Government and the board is something that the board has always wanted, and this is part of ensuring that that occurs. The creation of this Crown representatives group will, I think, strengthen in the best possible sense the contribution that the Crown can make at various levels to the decisions that the board takes.

Several people, including the member the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, have asked about the succession planning, and also Rino Tirikatene and others have also raised this. It is very important that this be addressed, and I think it is very important that when we look at succession planning we have that modern ability to ensure that whoever is a member of this board—and I understand that the board has looked for nominations through a public process of trying to get people to become new board members to replace the late Mr Hēnare, and here tonight in the Chamber I commend the work that he has done and the contribution of his son. But there have been a lot of applications. There are many people who would want to serve on this board, and without diminishing the mana of the people who have been on the board for 15 years or more—and going back to, what was it, 47 years from the relative of previous speaker, Pita Paraone—I think that the injection of new skills and a skill set that is going to enable the board to continue to contribute to its financial viability in the future is a good thing.

The issue of having two members of Parliament was also raised. One of them will be nominated by the Prime Minister of the day; the other member of Parliament will be nominated by the Leader of the Opposition. If you look at new section 4B(1)(b) in clause 6 of the bill, it says that the Leader of the Opposition will have to consult with “the leader of each party that is not in Government or in coalition with the Government.” So that I think gives a reasonable amount of flexibility to the Leader of the Opposition, whoever that might be, to ensure that the spirit and the intention of the House and the Opposition benches is well served. That nominated member will continue until the end of the parliamentary term in which he or she is appointed to the board, and that nominated member ceases to be a member of the board if they cease to be a member of the House of Representatives, so it is very much tied into that process.

I would like to make a short comment, if I may, on the Supplementary Order Paper that I have put forward. Supplementary Order Paper 122 is very much a technical amendment that was correcting an oversight that was missed in the draft surrounding section 3, which was the one that the select committee asked to occur. It is as benign as that; it is what needs to happen when legislation of this nature is put together.

I will reaffirm my undertaking that it is my intention as the Minister to start a review in this term, certainly, and it will take only 1 year or less, and that we will appoint a representative from the Crown. The board, as I understand it, has already nominated an individual from the board’s ranks, the Rt Hon Sir Don McKinnon, who will be a member of that board. It is my intention as well to get in a third representative. We are putting together the terms of reference of that review. I will be consulting on those.

We will make sure that this review is robust and that the by-laws, the offences, the penalties, and the financial capability that this board requires are ensured. If it is to continue to shepherd this very important place where the Treaty was signed and where so many important things have happened, that board needs to be fit for modern purpose. I believe this bill contributes to that, and so too will the wider review. I commend this bill to the House.

Part 1 agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 122 in the name of the Hon Maggie Barry to clause 10 be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Schedule agreed to.

Clauses 1 to 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to Part 1A

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): I can say from the outset that the Labour Party will be supporting this bill. As a former Minister for Building and Construction, I am one who I think has been followed by a litany of them—from both sides of the House to be fair. There is a political graveyard of building and construction Ministers from both sides of the House, who, to be fair to them all, in their various ways have attempted to try to address this absolutely tragic issue that has been around—

Chris Bishop: Oh, that’s very kind.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Pardon? Sorry? It has been around since 1994, and I think that to all of us who were members of Parliament through that period—Mr Bishop in his few months in the House may have dealt with the odd constituent who has had pretty tragic circumstances around this—this was a systemic failure right across the board.

In dealing with Part 1, particularly new section 125BB, “Eligibility for financial assistance measures”, in clause 5, I want to just ask the Minister in the chair, Michael Woodhouse, a number of questions. The first is that the then Minister Maurice Williamson, when this package was first announced, trumpeted it as a billion-dollar package—a billion-dollar package—on the back of, I remember, the taunts from the then Opposition spokesperson, Nick Smith, who when I was Minister was famous for, every time I would get up to answer questions on the issue, interjecting “Just write them a cheque.” That was his solution: “Just write them a cheque.” Then, again, as Nick Smith is wont to do, when he comes into Government, suddenly the scales fall from the eyes, and his position changes like changing socks. So I could say to Dr Smith in Government, why do you not just write them a cheque, as you said you would? However, the Government determined under Maurice Williamson that in terms of the package, it would be a billion-dollar package.

I am advised, Minister Woodhouse, that over the past 4 years the projections were that 16,000 victims of this would take up this package; I am advised that 86 have. My question is, although this package is well intentioned—and we all want a solution to this problem, and we all want these issues resolved for folk, and we have all had a crack over the years at trying to do it—the issue still remains as to why the uptake of this has been so low. Is it because, as I think is generally the case, people believe that they have a better chance of a swifter and more equitable resolution via the court system, where, yes, they would have to put up their own money, but they may well get a better deal than a 50 percent impost on themselves—matched, of course, by a 25 percent contribution from the local authority and a 25 percent contribution from Government.

But it was trumpeted as a billion-dollar package. It was estimated there would be 16,000, I believe, out of the estimate of around 42,000 cases, at a cost of anywhere between—the estimates were, in 2009, $11.3 billion. Other estimates more than double the number of claimants from 42,000 to 89,000, and estimate the costs could be around $23 billion. Again, I recall in Government the taunts from Dr Smith as he demanded quantification of the figures, and the truth is that none of us knew. And, as he has subsequently, I think, admitted in Government, none of us know. This is sort of an open-ended envelope. We do not know how far these difficulties go. The only thing we do know for certain is that there was a systemic failure right through the value chain, from the trades, to designers, to the local authorities, the drive-by inspections, etc., and this problem exists.

So I would like to know, firstly, does he have any updated projections on numbers of potential claims, and also what the latest costings would be? And if he could give us—you know, given new section 125BB in clause 5, and the previous provision with the eligibility criteria in it—some explanation as to why only 86 claimants have taken up the package, as opposed to the estimated 16,000, and, if there are any newer projections, or more updated projections, what they are likely to be?

As I say, we do support this. We genuinely hope it will work—we genuinely do. But the figures of those who are opting for it, the proof of the pudding is, if it is working—I had a go with the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service; some people opted for that. Others, in truth, again, saw the courts as a better remedy. This Government has had a crack at it, but, again, the figures tend to bear out that people are opting for the court system, which begs the question: is there a better way in terms of, perhaps, facilitating or assisting with court action? A 50 percent impost on people, depending on the size of their building, is a massive impost in many cases. It is a huge amount. And I note from some of the reports that are appended to this bill that the Government has said that it will assist in assisting weathertight homes folk in their liaison with banks, in terms of trying to get financial assistance of their own accord.

I would ask the Minister—that is all well and good, and, I think, very well-intentioned, but it would be helpful to know what that means in practical terms. I would doubt, given the language, that there is much the Government could do, unless it has struck a deal with the banks—and if it has, that would be great—in terms of encouraging the banks to lend to many of these folk. For many of these folk, of course, their capital investment has been gutted and destroyed. Their land is still there, but the value in their home has deteriorated because of the position it is in, and I know of many people whom banks simply will not look at to provide any finance at all, and then they are in a cleft stick. If they cannot come up with their share, they do not get the local authority’s share, they do not get the Government’s share, and they are back to square one. Many of those folk also cannot afford to get to court. I do not believe they get legal aid, because it is a civil matter to take these measures to court.

So there are some of the questions I think it would be helpful not just for Opposition members, and our learning as we go through this, but also to get on the record of the House—because these debates, of course, are cited in courts—to give people some certainty. I am glad the Government has moved on from the simplistic sloganeering of “Just write a cheque.”, because it was a pretty macabre response then, and it remains a pretty macabre response now, to people who are in grave difficulty around the country. At its simplest, people’s biggest asset generally, other than their family, of course—their biggest monetary asset is their home. They plough, over 20 or 30 years, all their resources into it—

Phil Twyford: 50 now.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: —or 50 years, in many cases, and many of these folk were let down.

I say this to the Government—and I said this when I was in Government, to be fair—the key responsibility lies, in my view, in the tradespeople, designers, or whoever. The building inspectors who—many of them specialised in what they call drive-by inspections, because a former building inspector told me that when I was Minister. The actual responsibility lies, ultimately and realistically, with those folk, many of whom have gone broke and done a runner. Equally, I have got to say, though, the National Government should remind itself of its conduct in the 1990s, when, of course, Dr Lockwood Smith then led the charge—in, I think, 1995—in deregulating the whole building industry. I said a couple of nights ago that, God help me, I could have strapped on a tool belt and called myself a builder, and I could not build a doghouse, let alone any other dwelling. People were just entering the trade without any quality control, not standing by their work, and doing extremely shonky work, and many of those people could not be pursued, because they went broke.

So I say, as we address Part 1, that those are the questions we would like the Minister to address, if he can, and I think it would be helpful across the board as we progress through this.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): You know, you cannot walk around or drive around any of the newer suburbs in Auckland these days without coming across a house that is surrounded by scaffolding and wrapped in white plastic. It is just a sign of the times, really—these houses that are wrapped up in white plastic. It looks bizarre, but it has become an emblem of the kind of legacy of what PricewaterhouseCoopers calculated was a $22 billion calamity that afflicted New Zealand, really, over two decades.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: 23.

PHIL TWYFORD: $23 billion, Clayton Cosgrove says.

I was baffled, just by way of a preamble to Part 1, by Paula Bennett’s recent comments that New Zealand has moved on and that it is over the leaky homes crisis, because this bill, and particularly Part 1, as we will see, makes changes to the qualifying criteria for the Financial Assistance Package. I thought it was baffling that she would say that and, in the same breath, would release her loopy rules task force report, which proposes that builders are able to self-certify—to sign off their own work. In the years since the early 1990s—1994, I think it was—when we saw the deregulation of the building sector, and all of the other factors that flowed through into the systemic breakdown that led to the leaky homes crisis, if there was anything that we should have learnt it was that clear accountability and a strong commitment to quality assurance and quality control is what is needed.

As my colleague Clayton Cosgrove pointed out, this Financial Assistance Package was trumpeted by Maurice Williamson at the top of the news bulletins and in the front pages of the newspapers as a billion-dollar rescue package—a billion-dollar rescue package—but it did not really turn out that way. What we actually have seen is that although the Government announced that the scheme was going to fix 16,450 homes, as of about a year ago, only 87 leaky homes had been fixed and the ministry said at the time that it had approved repair plans for another 364, and a further 3,000 had qualified for assistance. But one commentator after another—including people like Paul Grimshaw and Tim Rainey, two prominent lawyers representing the owners of leaky homes—made it clear that the Financial Assistance Package might have added another option for people who did not want to go through the courts and who felt that mediation or adjudication would not serve them very well. It gave them another option based on this concept of 25:25:50, with 25 percent of the cost to be picked up by the local authority, 25 percent to be picked up by the Government, and 50 percent to be picked up by the owner, or the claimant.

So what this bill does, fundamentally, is it sets out to provide a bit of clarity. It responds to a Supreme Court decision that we will talk about in a bit more detail, and in doing so it slightly extends the eligibility criteria and the number of potential claimants.

But I want to comment particularly about Part 1 of the bill. It basically deals with a lack of clarity that the courts have commented on in relation to the eligibility criteria. The criteria basically require that they exclude any claimant from eligibility where the claimant has initiated civil proceedings against a council in respect of a leaky home, or has entered into adjudication. So you cannot have it both ways: if you have initiated civil proceedings and you are in court, court action is under way, or there is mediation or adjudication going on, then you cannot also proceed under the Financial Assistance Package.

So the main change in Part 1—[Bell rung]—is that it takes those eligibility criteria that have—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Would the member like a call?

PHIL TWYFORD: Thank you, Mr Chairman. The eligibility criteria were contained in the Gazette notice, and what this provision does is it moves them into the legislation proper “in order to avoid any doubt as to the intended effect of the criteria” and “so that there is no question of inconsistency with the Act.”

I would actually be interested to hear from the Minister, or even if there is a member who was on the Local Government and Environment Committee who heard the submissions. It is not entirely clear to me, based on the written material available, why there was any lack of clarity in the criteria, those key criteria in the Gazette notice. So I would be interested to hear that, because there is not a heck of a lot in this bill—only a couple of parts—but this is one of them. It seems pretty minor and technical to me, but I would be interested in hearing an explanation about why it was worth addressing in Part 1.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I am going to make a small but, hopefully, useful contribution to this Committee stage. As I understand it, the need for the bill is really to tidy up some definitions and to allow for claimants to qualify where they may not have qualified previously. There are three main components that are contained within Part 1. The first, really, is around the criteria with which claimants may access the Financial Assistance Package. It is very clear from the work that has been done through the Local Government and Environment Committee that the definitions around the criteria are very much aligned with what stage the claimant is at in the process. So it makes it very clear that if you are engaged in any type of proceedings or legal process, you exempt yourself from the ability to then be part of the Financial Assistance Package.

Also, part of Part 1 is around identifying what the actual built date is. The definition is not within the primary legislation, and I just want to say that it is really important to ensure that we get the definition right, because the definition of the built date, which we have here as running for 10 years from the date on which the code compliance certificate for the building work for the affected structure was issued, has actually provided an opportunity for a larger number of claimants to now be part of a claim where they would previously have been excluded. So it is very important that the built date is secured and defined within the Act. Just going back to the criteria for the Financial Assistance Package, it is important to have this defined to avoid any doubt of who is actually intended to be part of that.

But the main part of Part 1 is around “qualifying claimant”. I do have a couple of questions to ask about this. The qualifying claimant definition, as I see from one of the submissions that was made by the Law Society, does include a greater set of claimants now potentially being able to access the Financial Assistance Package, but there also may be a subset of owners who were previously ineligible who may become eligible under the Act. I would like to know who they might be, because, potentially, some of them might not qualify for the Financial Assistance Package.

The other question I would like to ask is this. According to the Law Society, in the bill’s current form some of those who are affected claimants, specifically those who repaired their homes after their claim was deemed ineligible, will still not be able to obtain financial assistance under the Financial Assistance Package provisions. So I would like to ask the Minister whether there has been any work to ensure that those claimants who are currently going to be ineligible will become eligible—whether he has made any recommendations or has written any Supplementary Order Papers that would include that subset of claimants within the bill.

The other part of Part 1 is about the contribution criteria, and that really just sets out the relationship between the Government and the participating territorial authorities as to who has what role in ensuring that they contribute to that criteria.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): It is a pleasure to take a call on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. I was not on the Local Government and Environment Committee, which considered this bill, but I am very interested in the whole process of it. In particular, I want to acknowledge the Osborne family for their part in bringing this legislation into the House by their pure perseverance with this issue. I was reading the regulatory impact statement also, absolutely staggered at the numbers in here—you know, “42,000 homes … likely to be leaky and the total economic cost (including repairs and transaction costs) to remediate them could be $11.3 billion.”, which is an enormous amount of money in anyone’s language.

Speaking in particular to the parts that through this bill widen the definition for qualifying as a claimant, I think it is really important that those claimants who are affected by this unfortunate incident of having a leaky home, through no fault of their own, will be comforted that they are now included in this and come under this bill. So the meaning of a “qualifying claimant” in clause 5 is the particular part that I wanted to look at. Also, we have the bill and I also have a copy of Supplementary Order Paper 125, which wholly replaces section 125BA and—sorry—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Section 125BB.

ADRIAN RURAWHE: —section 125BB, thank you. I think it is important that—and the part that I was looking at in particular was the situation where a claimant has already applied for adjudication. So taking this, which is new section 125BA(2)(ii), inserted by clause 5, it makes it quite clear that “the claimant must withdraw from the adjudication in accordance with section 67” so that “if the claimant has applied for adjudication under this Act … whether the claimant has commenced mediation or adjudication) and the relevant participating territorial authority is named as a party in the application or later joined to the application, then—(i) the participating territorial authority must agree to the claimant receiving a financial contribution …”. I think that is the main part that I wanted to acknowledge within this particular clause here.

I think, overall, Part 1, in addressing these three main areas, is important to acknowledge. That is all I have to contribute to this bill. Kia ora.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): To be fair to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Michael Woodhouse, he is not the portfolio Minister, but I just wonder whether the portfolio Minister, Dr Nick Smith—who is, I am sure, here, although I cannot quite see all avenues of the Chamber—given that this is such an important issue, might be prepared to—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I think the member is aware that drawing attention to the absence of—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I did not say that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well, I think the member did indicate he is not in the Chamber, which is an indication that he is absent. So I will just ask the member to address the questions.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Well, I would hope, to put it this way, that the Minister in the chair, who, eminent Minister though he is, this is not his portfolio, can make a valiant attempt to answer some of these technical questions, which, ordinarily, given the gravity of this piece of legislation and the tragedy that we are dealing with—42,000-plus claims—I would have thought this was such an issue of moment that the portfolio Minister would, at least, take a call, wherever he may be.

I want to refer to the regulatory impact statement. I would like to ask the Minister a question on paragraph 4—and this covers the entire legislation; it is an interesting piece of prose—which says “Due to the sensitivity of the weathertightness issue and the negative impact speculation can have on leaky home owners to make informed decisions, and the impact [it] can have on ongoing discussion with territorial authorities and banks consultation has been targeted.” I can understand that to some extent. Then it goes on “Limited consultation means that the present analysis has to rely on limited evidence.”—well, that is self-evident—“Therefore there is uncertainty about the costs and benefits of the option(s).”

That is quite an interesting statement from officials. I will not name the official. I know the official. The official used to work in my office as my adviser—a very eminent official, actually. It worries me that an official of that stature would write this down on a piece of paper, and I take that official absolutely at their word. But it creates a whole series of questions around the cost and benefits when you have an official document—a regulatory impact statement—saying “Therefore there is uncertainty about the costs and benefits of the option(s).” I am sure others, for the avoidance of doubt for those who are following this debate who are subject to the difficulties that we are trying to address, would like an explanation from the Government in some way, shape, or form as to what that means.

I would have thought that this is an issue of such moment that the Government would have, despite the sensitivities, to quote this report, done extensive consultation, would have gathered extensive evidence, and would be able to put, quite definitively, estimates of costs, and say with some authority, based on evidence, that it was certain about the costs and benefits of the options. This raises a whole can of worms, because it is a document produced by the Government that says, in essence, if we take it literally “We don’t quite know whether this is going to, you know, have any effect at all, whether it’s going to be beneficial, whether it’s going to achieve what the Government policy wants.” If you actually look at the point I made before about the estimates of 16,000 claimants—and we have got 87, actually, in the system; I think I said 86, but it is 87—then that evidence would bear out the uncertainty contained within this regulatory impact statement.

So I say, with all seriousness, this is a serious issue that is raised in the regulatory impact statement, one that, on the one hand, we are clarifying through taking out the criteria from the Gazette notice and placing it within the legislation for the avoidance of doubt to ensure there is total clarity, which we all agree with, and, on the other hand, we have a regulatory impact statement that basically says: “We don’t know which way’s up. We’re uncertain about the costs and benefits of the options.”

I have been in the odd select committee, and when officials come in to see you—I think there was some Inland Revenue Department bill we dealt with earlier in the year—you ask officials: “Will this work?”. When I have been a Minister, the first question I have asked officials is “Will this work?”. If they look at you strangely and they cannot quite answer you, then you realise pretty quickly, if the old grey matter is working, that there is something wrong inherently. Now we are at this stage of this bill—we have been through the select committee and are into the Committee stage and it went right through the Cabinet process prior to that—and we have got a regulatory impact statement that says the Government is uncertain about the costs and benefits.

So I do not know whether the Minister could indicate—and, again, in fairness, he is not the portfolio Minister, and these are quite technical issues specific to the portfolio, and he has, obviously, sort of been dropped in it tonight, so I do have a bit of sympathy for him. But, perhaps, he could gain from his officials some answer. You know, he is the sort of guy with his shovel behind the elephant. Perhaps he could ask his officials, who are learned, whether they could pass him some notes and give us some explanations to put some certainty and dissolve some of the uncertainty that has been raised by the regulatory impact statements. It is on page one, it is in paragraph 4, it is sitting there, it is glaringly obvious, and when you read it, you think: “Well, you know, why are we here? Why weren’t these issues resolved well before this legislation was put to the Parliament and put through the select committee?”.

So this is not just an issue of politics; there are people, there are lawyers dealing with the victims of leaky homes, and there are victims of leaky homes sitting out there hoping that this will provide them some assistance. They will be looking at this going “Well, what does that mean if the Government’s own officials themselves aren’t convinced of the validity of this policy?”—[Interruption] Well, you may want to wind it up, Mr—I cannot remember his name, the one who stood for Wellington Central.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): “You” is not winding anything. Well, you might wind something up pretty soon, actually.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Not you, Mr Chairperson, the gentleman beside the junior whip. I cannot actually recall his name. But, you know, he may want to wind up this issue. He may want to go around, perhaps, Wellington Central and other places and visit some of those folk who are in desperate need of assistance. We are trying to act with some goodwill over here. That is why we would like—you know, I know the member is new—some answers to pretty serious questions. The member has been in Government. Maybe if he gets a report like this that says “We don’t know the costs and benefits of a particular policy—we’re uncertain about it.”, you know, in his little world, maybe that does not mean much, but to other people it is sort of “Hang on. Is this going to work?”. He may be happy to push through legislation whether it works or not. It may be a political stunt.

I actually have some goodwill for the Government; I think it is trying to make a genuine effort. So that member may want to go around and, you know, tap on a few doors and ask a few people how they are doing in respect of their leaky home issues, and then wind up. So I would appreciate some of those questions being answered and getting some of this stuff on the record so that we can do away with the uncertainty that this particular document now puts before us.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Consequential amendments, validations, and transitional amendments

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): One of the first cases of leaky homes that I had contact with after becoming an MP was a very, very unfortunate development called Pepperwood Mews. The building is still standing, actually. It is on Great North Road in Kelston, now in Carmel Sepuloni’s electorate. It had been a development that Housing New Zealand undertook in the mid-2000s, and Waitakere City Council was the local authority that signed off the work. Basically, what Housing New Zealand did was it did a deal with a developer and said: “We’ll sell you this land, and if you develop it, we guarantee that we will lease all of the dwellings from you.” It is, basically, a block of apartments. The developer built the building and sold off the individual units to a whole lot of mum and dad investors, who ploughed their retirement savings into this development. It was the most shonky, most dodgy, rotten development that you could imagine, and within about 3 or 4 years of being completed and signed off by the local council, Waitakere City Council at the time, the place was, basically, condemned. It was uninhabitable; it was leaky in the extreme, and since about 2010 that building has stood as sort of a rotting hulk on Great North Road.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I regret interrupting the member. I am sure there is a way of tying his story into this part of the bill, but since it has been going for nearly 2 minutes, I would appreciate him doing that, just to show that he is being relevant.

PHIL TWYFORD: It is very important to provide some colour for the discussion of Part 2 because—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): That would be nice, too.

PHIL TWYFORD: Part 2 is the other part of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill that deserves some specific comment in this debate, and what it does is—again, it is a pretty technical, minor tweak—it, basically, responds to a decision by the Supreme Court that is all around the definition of the word “built”. So let me explain that, if I may. To have a claim declared eligible under the Act, claimants must meet a series of statutory criteria, and we have discussed that in relation to Part 1. Those criteria include that the claim must be made within 10 years of the date on which the affected structure was built. What is the meaning of “built”? It is very vague, if you think about it. Until the case in question at the Supreme Court, Osborne v Auckland Council 2014, was decided, the interpretation of the word “built” was, essentially, the finalising of the building. What the Supreme Court held was that the meaning of the word “built”, in this case, would be the issuing of the code compliance certificate. The Osbornes of Auckland—not the Osbournes from television fame—took this case through to the Supreme Court. John and Helen Osborne had been arguing that the 10-year limitation on leaky buildings, basically, should start when the code compliance was issued; not when the physical building had been completed. They took it all the way through to the Supreme Court. The commentary at the time said that the effect of the ruling could mean that another 300 leaky homeowners could benefit from the funding assistance package.

I do not know what has happened. This was a year ago now, when the Supreme Court handed down that judgment. I do not know what has happened since. I do not know what has happened to the Osbornes. It would be interesting to know whether John and Helen Osborne have, in fact, sought to be registered under the funding assistance package and to get the benefit of this scheme. So that is, basically, what the bill does and the effect of Part 2 will be to slightly increase the pool of eligible homeowners.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I just have a couple of things that I would like some clarity on but, first, I do want to reiterate, as I said in my earlier contribution on Part 1, that this bill will seek to define what the built date is, which is not actually defined in the primary legislation. As I understand it, the built date is 10 years after the code compliance certificate is issued. But what I do want to ask—and it is unfortunate that we do not have the responsible Minister, Nick Smith, here, because there is an issue around the weathertightness of homes that has a direct relationship to what is happening within the Canterbury rebuild. That, for many of the constituents who come through the doors of my office and the Hon Clayton Cosgrove’s office and the other Christchurch MPs’ offices, is around the repair strategy that is stymied because of the implication that there might be weathertightness issues with the home. So a lot of Earthquake Commission issues are held up because of this type of issue.

What I would like to ask the Minister is: if that becomes part of the Earthquake Commission’s scope of works, the weathertightness issue, where do those residents in Canterbury fit into the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill? Is there going to be an opportunity for their concerns to be addressed within this bill? I know it is potentially slightly out of the scope, but it has a big impact on the people who are part of the Canterbury rebuild, and I would ask the Minister whether he has got an answer to that question. Thank you.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): It is a pleasure to take a short call on Part 2 in this Committee stage of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. This bill is yet another remedial action that has occurred because of the very serious situation around lack of weathertightness and the difficulty that claimants have had. As has been said by several colleagues, the purpose of this bill is to remove doubt around the eligibility of certain claims in the period in which they are claimed. The bill has traversed clauses 1B and 1C of the 2011 Gazette notice and has inserted them into the bill. As my colleague Phil Twyford has said, the bill aims to deem eligible certain claims that were not eligible as a result of the term “built” in sections 14 to 18 of the Act, arising from the Supreme Court case of Osborne v Auckland Council. That ruling has potentially allowed a number of additional claims to be eligible under the Act.

There are a number of Supplementary Order Papers on the bill, but before we get to that, I would like to turn the attention of the Committee again to some of the clauses in Part 2 and particularly the drafting amendments to section 164, in clause 7, which are the provisions that amend the 2011 Gazette notice, and to ask the Minister whether he would clarify why, in subsection (2), it says: “In clause 1, delete ‘To qualify for a contribution from the Crown, all of the criteria in this clause 1 must be met:’.” I assume, although it is not entirely clear from the revision-tracked version of the bill, that that clause 1 is subsection (1) of section 164, which is the section in which it appears. I may have misinterpreted that. It may be the original clause 1, but I would like the Minister, if he could, to clarify that, because it does have an important implication. If it is section 164(1), then we are dealing with quite a wide set of qualifications of Crown contributions, and that, presumably, has fiscal implications, and I would be very interested to know how they have been quantified.

The original estimates of leaky building syndrome were a Crown cost, if I recall, of about a billion and a half dollars. Recently, I have seen estimates as high as $25 billion. In the context of this clause, which raises the question of Crown indemnity, I think it is worth our while reflecting on the genesis of the issue, both design problems and, importantly, the use of untreated kiln-dried timber at the request of the industry and in the absence of effective regulation from the Building Industry Authority. That is vested here, in the increased exposure of the Crown to claims, and the need to make remedial amendments that clarify the importance of removing the ambiguity that has crept up. I guess that is typical—when you rely upon the common law processes, even when set up under an Act like this, and you have thousands of cases going through, there is going to be a whole lot of variation, a whole lot of special cases that the law did not foresee. There is an old saying in jurisprudence, which is that hard cases make bad law. As it evolves, the law stretches to accommodate them, and every now and again, Parliament has to re-intervene and tidy up the mess, as it is doing today.

The Labour Opposition supports this bill. We support Part 2. We think the amendments are necessary, and that is regrettable. But as with other pieces of legislation where we think it makes a positive difference for our community, we are not a party that would hesitate to say we support the Government—that is, we are not standing on ceremony, we are not standing on party tribalism; we are trying to do what is best for the country. We have no hesitation in saying that it is sad it has got to this point, that yet another set of remedial amendments such as section 164(1) are required. But it has got to that point.

The Minister may also wish to take a call and clarify section 165 in Subpart 9, “Meaning of affected claimant”. Here we are at the heart of the matter, because so many thousands of New Zealanders have been affected by it and there has been so much ambiguity about who can claim and who cannot. Just imagine that we did not have the residual liability of the consenting authorities—[Bell rung]

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The Hon David Cunliffe, but with a bit of a caveat. He has mentioned, I think for the second time now, a clause in the bill. It would be really good if he could focus on the bill now.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Thank you, Mr Chairperson. That is very generous of you. Section 165(a) brings in a person who has “brought a claim under section 9 in respect of the construction or alteration of a dwellinghouse for which—(i) 1 or more code compliance certificates were issued for the relevant building work;”—and for whom—“(ii) the certificate or certificates were issued before 1 January 2012;”. There are then a number of subsections that follow, that impose quite stringent conditions: “(b) the chief executive or the chair decided, within the period starting on 1 April 2007 and ending on 10 June 2014, that the claim was not an eligible claim;”, and that the sole reason for that decision was that the claim failed to satisfy the criteria in the various sections that are noted—sections 14(a) through to 18(c)—and “(d) in reaching that decision, the chief executive or the chair treated the date on which the dwellinghouse was constructed or altered as a date earlier than the date on which the code compliance certificate … was issued”.

Anybody listening to that rather long and tangled exposition will note that there were about five “ands”. So although this section broadens the eligibility of claimants by allowing some earlier claims between the period 2007 and 2014, I would say that the number of specific hurdles that such a claim would have to pass amounts to quite an onerous process. Certainly, in my own electorate of New Lynn, in those bushy but rather damp hills around Titirangi, we have had a number of very, very sad cases where apparently very good homes have had to be all but completely rebuilt because of the terrible effects of leaky building syndrome or a lack of weathertightness, and many of them would fit into the time period that we are talking about here.

In section 166 of the Act, “Affected claimants deemed to have eligible claims”, in respect of a dwellinghouse, if the Gazette notice as amended applies, the claim must be treated as eligible from the date on which it would have been eligible if the chief executive or the chair had originally decided in the claimant’s favour. So the subsection here retrofits the decision. If it passes those five conditions, the five gates that we talked about in the previous section, then, effectively, it reconstructs the decision and allows it through as if it had been approved originally. It is messy. It reminds me of the Inland Revue Department, of income tax or other tax law, because there are always amendments upon amendments upon amendments. We as a Parliament find ourselves once again taking up the time of the House with remedial legislation that is doing its best to put a patch over what is, in fact, a very serious and difficult situation. Those are the matters that I wish to turn the attention of the Committee to in respect of Part 2, and I thank the Committee for its time.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): In dealing with Part 2, I want to also return to the regulatory impact statement in respect of a number of matters. I just note—and the Committee and those listening at home should note—that the Opposition has raised a series of pretty serious questions in Part 1. There has not been one call from a Government speaker, and there has not been one call from the Minister in the chair, Michael Woodhouse, who is not the portfolio holder but none the less has a plethora of venerable officials behind him. There has been not one call, not one question answered, and that speaks volumes.

Either the Government or the Minister—and he could be, because he is not the portfolio Minister—is not confident in answering those questions but, you know, you do have pieces of paper, you do have eminent officials who could provide that. I am sure they are very willing to. In fact, I suspect they have written down on pieces of paper what the answers are. But there has been not one response to any of the issues raised, so one could be forgiven for thinking, as we go through Part 2 and raise further questions, that they will not be given houseroom by the Minister or the Government. That is how seriously they take this issue. Maybe they cannot answer the questions. But we will give it a go anyway.

In referring to the executive summary in the regulatory impact statement, one of the items that is cited is “Government provides assistance to owners to access bank finance for remaining agreed repair costs by way of loan guarantees to banks for loans made to owners eligible for the assistance and who can meet the bank’s lending criteria.” On the face of that—and my question flows from this—that is a good thing to do. I would argue that most of these homeowners could not of their own volition gain assistance from a bank, given the equity in their home or the value of their home has been destroyed. The question is, they are provided with some sort of loan assistance from the Government if they can meet the bank’s lending criteria.

My question to the Minister is that you cannot have one without the other—it is a bit chicken-and-egg—so what sort of lending criteria are there? It says in the regulatory impact statement that the Government has liaised with the banks and has spoken with the financial institutions, so what sort of special lending criteria might be put in place? Again, banks will be interested in having and securing some sort of value over the asset or the residual asset, so what, in essence, does that mean in practical terms? I commend the Government for promoting the notion that it is somehow going to stand—if we read this—as some guarantor or whatever, but I would like some explanation as to how that should work.

I also note in the regulatory impact statement that “Councils have identified the risk of being joined into litigation between the homeowner and other parties (e.g: developer, builder, architect) as a significant barrier to them agreeing to sign up to the scheme.” Have all local authorities signed up, is the question. If they have not, how many are exposed to litigation and therefore have been reluctant to sign up? This goes to the heart of Part 2 as we look at the criteria, as certain applications continue on the basis of amended law, as to whether affected claimants are deemed to be eligible in terms of claims. It goes right to the heart of it because if they cannot get their part of the assistance package up, then this is meaningless to them. It does not work.

I would be grateful for some sort of explanation as to what paragraph 10, third bullet point of the regulatory impact statement means in practical terms. What actually is the Government going to do? Is it going to stand guarantor for everyone? If it is, I would have thought that with the Government being the biggest entity in New Zealand, the banks’ lending criteria would be met absolutely. You cannot get any better security than a Government-backed guarantee. If the Government is going to do that, then what is the projected cost? Again, the regulatory impact statement does not make any reference to that. Is it an open-ended envelope for between 42,000 and 89,000—as per the advice we have—estimated claimants? What is the quantum? What is the exposure to the Crown? What is the fiscal risk? I think all these are particular issues that have not been addressed in any of the documents that lie on the Table or in the legislation I have seen.

Again, just to roll the dice and have another go, having faith in the Government, as sometimes we do, I would be grateful for an explanation that pertains to all parts—the whole legislation—as to what paragraph 4 in the regulatory impact statement means: “Therefore there is uncertainty about the costs and benefits of the option(s).” That pertains right across the legislation, to every clause, and I think that is a key issue. There are specialist lawyers who will be looking at this very carefully and they will want to know what that means.

The most cynical amongst us could simply say that the Government members, given that they are not interested in taking any calls—no one on the Government side has responded to any of the issues that have been raised—are not confident. Maybe the new backbenchers are not—you cannot blame them too much—but surely the Minister, backed by a department, is confident. He is duty-bound to put on the record of the House, in the Committee stage, answers to some of these questions. The portfolio Minister, I would have thought, would want to take a high degree of interest in this and answer some of those questions. After all, we know that Nick Smith is very good at bandying around slogans and slinging the proverbial when it comes to these issues in question time, and at other times in this Chamber, but when it actually comes to a surgical, precise examination of his legislation, the silence is deafening from the Government—completely deafening. Nick Smith may pay a price for that as he pushes this legislation through the House.

So out of goodwill, maybe the Minister might have another crack. I am looking at the officials, and they look like they are itching to provide some answers. That would be great. They cannot do that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member cannot refer to them.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Indeed. These answers can come only from the vacuum that is the Government, and at the moment the silence is deafening. Every leaky home owner would appreciate some clarity tonight. Every leaky home owner, I think, would look with goodwill at this legislation—Part 1, Part 2, and the whole shebang—hoping that it will assist them.

I just find it astounding that, after all Nick Smith’s rhetoric over years, when the rubber hits the road in the Committee stage, there are no answers. Either that says this is just a lot of political horse puckey, or a bit of propaganda, and there is not really a commitment to solving it—this is just a bit of a patch-up job—or maybe we have raised some pretty genuine issues that cannot be answered. If officials are saying they are uncertain about the costs and benefits of a proposal, that is a pretty heavy-duty statement for officials to make about legislation. Normally a Minister would leap to their feet and deal with that issue and extinguish it. Tonight we have had absolutely none of that—no explanation. Maybe we will get one; there are still 7 or 8 minutes to go before the final bell, and I think it would actually pay the Government to stand by its own legislation and, if Government members believe in it and believe it would work, provide that certainty.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): So, as we have been saying, there are three main provisions in the bill. The first deals with, basically, trying to deliver more clarity by inserting the qualifying criteria out of the Gazette notice and into the legislation itself. The second, as we have been saying, is a response to Osborne v Auckland Council and the question of definition of “built”. The third, which I do not think we have discussed sufficiently yet, is really about the issue of the qualifying claimant.

The point here is that for a claimant to apply for the funding assistance package under the Act, a notice to proceed must be issued. In order to get that notice to proceed, the claimant has to be considered a qualifying claimant, and there are a number of steps involved—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I regret that I have to interrupt the member. [Interruption] I am sure he does not regret it. The time has come for me to report progress.

Progress to be reported presently.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill with amendment and divided into 15 bills, the Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill with amendment, progress on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill, and no progress on the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.57 p.m.