Wednesday, 11 November 2015

WEDNESDAY, 11 NOVEMBER 2015

WEDNESDAY, 11 NOVEMBER 2015

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Privilege

Reflections on the Speaker—Comments by Andrew Little and Chris Hipkins

Mr SPEAKER: Honourable members, I propose to vacate the Chair in favour of the Deputy Speaker in order that he might rule on a matter of privilege.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members, two matters of privilege relating to comments about the Speaker, reported to have been made by Andrew Little and Chris Hipkins, have been raised as matters of privilege by Tim Macindoe. Because the matters relate to the Speaker, he has asked me to consider and rule on them. It is suggested that the comments complained of could each amount to contempt of the House in that they reflect on the Speaker in his capacity as Speaker.

In two news articles, Mr Little is reported to have stated that the Speaker has “a reputation in short order of acting politically in the way he handles question time” and “National has clearly had a word in the Speaker’s ear, leading him to make an unprecedented decision to stop the bill being read this year”, and, further, “the ruling raises serious questions about political interference.” A news article reported Chris Hipkins as saying “the Speaker is interfering on their behalf to ensure the Government does not face that embarrassment” and “[t]his is massive political interference in the parliamentary process by the Speaker”.

The matters of privilege raised are significant ones. The Privileges Committee, in its recent report, stated that “reflections against the Speaker or other presiding officers, and in particular any comment that alleges that they have been biased in performing their duties, are among the most serious reflections that can be made about members.” I have considered the matters raised and considered their degree of importance. In my view, allegations that the Speaker acts on the instruction of the Government and interferes in parliamentary process for political reasons are serious matters that suggest that the Speaker is not only biased in performing his duties but is open to partisan manipulation.

The comments complained of were not made in the heat of debate but were premeditated. As experienced politicians, they went to the media. The members concerned have not withdrawn the comments or resiled from them in any way, but have sought to mitigate them by making comparison with comments by other members on other occasions. It is for the Privileges Committee to determine whether such comments amount to contempt. Consequently, I rule that a question of privilege does arise from the comments reportedly made by Mr Little and that they may constitute a reflection on the Speaker in his capacity as Speaker. I also rule that a question of privilege arises from the comments reportedly made by Mr Hipkins in that they may constitute a reflection on the Speaker in his capacity as Speaker. The questions therefore stand referred to the Privileges Committee. I will now vacate the Chair—[Interruption] I am not seeking applause—for Mr Speaker to conduct the general business of the House.

Speaker’s Rulings

Personal Reflections and Unparliamentary Language—Procedure for Objections

Mr SPEAKER: Honourable members, yesterday, following points of order in question No. 1, I undertook to review the Hansard. I have now done so. I have, on this occasion, also watched a video replay of the proceedings. Although the interchange between members was a robust one, there was a point at which the Prime Minister made an unparliamentary remark in saying “you back the rapists;”. I did not clearly hear the comment at the time because I was on my feet calling for order. When order was restored, I then admonished the Prime Minister sternly, telling him that when I rise to my feet, I expect him to resume his seat. Had I heard the remark properly, or had it been drawn to my attention at the time, I would have ruled it to be unparliamentary and required the Prime Minister to withdraw it and apologise for it. Though I accept that members might have been offended by the remark, no member raised an objection at the time.

Approximately 4½ minutes later, Grant Robertson took a point of order on the remark made by the Prime Minister, claiming that those words had been repeated. There is no evidence of that remark being repeated. My rulings then addressed more the subsequent comments by the Prime Minister, which, though very robust, were not unparliamentary. When I hear a remark I consider to be unparliamentary, I must deal with it. Yesterday I did not; I should have. However, if I do not do so, it is always open to members to test a particular remark with the Speaker, according to Speaker’s ruling 60/4. But I do ask that members raise unparliamentary comments or remarks at the time they are made. It is difficult to deal with them when they are raised much later.

I will also take this opportunity to remind Ministers of Speakers’ ruling 196/7: “Ministers, when replying, should address the question, and refrain from making comments that are not relevant to the question that was asked; without terms of abuse being part of the answer.”

There is one other matter of yesterday’s behaviour that I wish to comment on. This debating chamber and the select committee rooms are the proper places for robust political debate to occur. For such robust political debate to be taken outside this Chamber and to public areas of our parliamentary complex steps into an area of danger. I would hope that members would consider this carefully in the future.

JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you for reflecting on that, Mr Speaker. We were hoping that you would ask the Prime Minister to rise and withdraw his remark and to apologise for it. He did say on a number of occasions that he felt that not just the Labour Party but Opposition MPs, including Green Party MPs, were backing rapists, and I would ask that you ask him to—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I gave serious thought. First of all, I disagree that there were a number of occasions at which that comment was reported. As I said in my ruling, I have studied it very carefully. It was a comment, but it was stated only once. I cannot ask a member to withdraw a comment subsequent to the event if it is not dealt with at the time. We had a very good example of that when only last week there were allegations made in this House that some people claimed to be racist and I was then asked, in hindsight, for that remark to be withdrawn. I cannot do that. That is the point I am making in my ruling. I want to deal with these matters at the time. It is important that I jump on them, but if I do not, then you as members must jump to your feet at that occasion so we can deal with it at the time. If a withdrawal and apology is demanded, then I can exercise that. [Interruption] Order! To the Leader of the Opposition, I am on my feet.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My point of order is just to understand the chronology. As the Hansard is printed on the parliamentary website, Marama Davidson asked her oral question and the Prime Minister then responded with an answer that ended with: “If those members want to protect sex offenders, rapists, and murderers, go ahead.” Mr Robertson then stood up to take a point of order. You dealt with a number of points of order with Mr Robertson and Mr Hipkins, as is expected, and then I raised the exact point of order with you, saying that we took offence to that comment. There was no sooner opportunity to do that. We did so at the time, and you refused to accept it.

Mr SPEAKER: I was hoping I had made it more clear in my ruling. The comments to which the member then refers I do not consider to be unparliamentary. I totally agree that the earlier comments, which I quote in my ruling, are unparliamentary. The problem with the situation yesterday is that it was 4½ minutes after those comments were made before any member suggested that offence was taken.

JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Just in reference to your ruling about what was and what was not unparliamentary, in 2003 a Speaker ruled that it was unparliamentary to allege that the Opposition was supporting gangs. That was under Speaker Hunt in 2003. So I find it odd that it is parliamentary language to say that the Opposition is supporting rapists and murderers but it is not parliamentary to say that it is supporting gangs. There are some other examples of unparliamentary language, such as “angry smurf”, “shag spiders”, “Barbie doll”, “bigot”, “chicken”, “monkeys”, “sewer rat”, and “gutless”, and they—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Bring the point of order to a conclusion.

JAMES SHAW: —have all been ruled unparliamentary. I find it extraordinary that you could say that it is parliamentary to say that members of the Opposition are backing rapists and murderers.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I invite the member to go back and carefully study Hansard. The words that he has quoted are in fact Metiria Turei’s interpretation of the words as she felt they occurred. [Interruption] Order! I do not want to start by asking members to leave the Chamber. When I am on my feet I expect silence from all members. As I have ruled, when I interpret the other comments that were made, though they were robust, I do not consider them to be unparliamentary. The first comment, the one at which offence was ultimately taken, was unparliamentary. I should have dealt with it. I did not. It should have been raised with me at that time.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I just note that question No. 4 quotes the comment that the Prime Minister made, which you have now deemed to be unparliamentary. I just want to seek some reassurance from you that as that comment has not been withdrawn, and remains part of the parliamentary proceedings and parliamentary records, the Opposition is still able to question the Prime Minister on that, and in fact quote from it, because as long as it has not been withdrawn then it is still part of the parliamentary proceedings.

Mr SPEAKER: I can give an assurance that the question is in order. Those words are now part of the parliamentary proceedings, so the question can be asked. I will be hoping for a fair amount of quiet so I can very carefully listen to the answers from the Prime Minister, but if the Prime Minister intends to attempt to repeat such words, then I will be acting accordingly.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I hope I can ask for your indulgence, as the member who raised the point or order, to clarify a matter. I raised the point of order after the Prime Minister used the phrase “protect”—and there were other things, but he used the phrase “protect the rapists”. You, Mr Speaker, I take it, are drawing a distinction between using the phrase “back the rapists” and “protect the rapists”, because you could perhaps understand why both of those phrases would be, I would have thought, unparliamentary and certainly offensive. But I just want to clarify that that is the distinction you are drawing—“backing” is unparliamentary; “protecting” is not.

Mr SPEAKER: No, no. Again, the member needs to actually quote the words that were said, and I happen to have them. The Prime Minister, towards the end of the answer, says: “If those members want to protect sex offenders, rapists, or murderers, go ahead. I am not going to.” I see nothing unparliamentary in that, as I have already stated categorically. [Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! I am on my feet.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave that the House request the Prime Minister to withdraw—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No. Again, that was ruled on only yesterday. You cannot seek leave on behalf of another member.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: I just want to check—[Interruption] Order! I have a point of order from Metiria Turei. I just want to check that we are not spending more time relitigating a ruling that I have already given.

METIRIA TUREI: No, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Fresh point of order—Metiria Turei.

METIRIA TUREI: As the victim of a sexual assault, I take personal offence at the Prime Minister’s comments, and ask that you require him to withdraw and apologise.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Prime Minister, whilst I have been in the Chair, has not said a word today. I cannot ask him to withdraw and apologise when he has not even made a comment today.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In response to the last point of order that I raised, you mentioned that I was seeking leave on behalf of another member; I was in fact seeking leave that the House request the Prime Minister to withdraw his interjection from yesterday.

Mr SPEAKER: That is not within the Standing Orders.

JAN LOGIE (Green): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. As a victim of sexual assault and an advocate for survivors—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! No. This is a point of order, so I say to members on my right-hand side that I will hear it in silence. I apologise to the member.

JAN LOGIE: As a victim of sexual assault and an advocate for survivors, I would ask that the record expunge the comment from the Prime Minister.

Mr SPEAKER: Again, as I have attempted to explain, that cannot be done. What happened yesterday happened yesterday. Collectively, it was not addressed well at the time. The time has passed.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do accept that you have made a previous ruling with regard to the comments of Ron Mark—that as they had happened previously, they could not be withdrawn—and, indeed, you have made a similar ruling with the Prime Minister’s statements yesterday. I wonder whether you could indicate to us which of the Standing Orders you are drawing on in making that ruling, because we have had a good look through the Standing Orders and can find no Standing Order that prevents you from asking anybody to withdraw and apologise for a comment because it happened on a previous day.

Mr SPEAKER: Was there a further point of order also from Poto Williams? I will hear them all and then rule.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. As a victim and survivor of family violence, and an advocate for victims of violence, I take personal offence at the comments of the Prime Minister—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No—we are now getting to the stage when there could be a series of these points of order. I have ruled that—[Interruption] Order! I do not want to ask the junior Labour whip to leave, but—

Carmel Sepuloni: I didn’t say anything.

Mr SPEAKER: I saw the member say something.

Carmel Sepuloni: I didn’t say anything.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member did. I saw it. I am trying to allow members to stay in the—[Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order!

Sue Moroney: It was me, Mr Speaker, and I am happy to go—I am really happy to go.

Mr SPEAKER: OK.

Catherine Delahunty: Point of order.

Mr SPEAKER: No, I just want to deal with Chris Hipkins. If I am assured that it is a new point of order and not the same one, then I will hear it. Chris Hipkins, it is a matter of custom in this House that, as with any issues such as these, if offence is taken then it must be dealt with immediately. It cannot be dealt with subsequently, otherwise we would have all sorts of campaigns in here with people going over their Hansards weeks and weeks in the past, taking subsequent offence, and then expecting a withdrawal to be delivered. I will hear from Catherine Delahunty on the assurance that it is a fresh point of order, and not in any way the types of points of order—

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is a fresh point of order; it is not a campaign, Mr Speaker. As a victim of sexual—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will resume her seat. [Interruption] Order! No. I am moving on from here. I was assured that it was a fresh point of order; I have just been let down by Catherine Delahunty. I will hear from the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, but I certainly hope that she is not flouting the rules of this House.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. As a trustee of the Waikato Women’s Refuge, Te Whakaruruhau, I take personal offence—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat immediately. I now will require any member who takes a point of order along the same lines to immediately leave the Chamber.

MARAMA DAVIDSON (Green): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. As a victim of—

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

Marama Davidson withdrew from the Chamber.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. As somebody who has experienced an attempted—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I now require the member to leave the Chamber.

Clare Curran withdrew from the Chamber.

Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I take offence at the Prime Minister’s statement—

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Dr MEGAN WOODS: —and require that he apologise.

Mr SPEAKER: Then the member must also, for consistency, leave the Chamber.

Dr Megan Woods withdrew from the Chamber.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is a completely different issue, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: I have been assured that a few times this afternoon, but I will take the member at his word.

CHRIS HIPKINS: It is a very different issue. In the considered ruling that you gave at the beginning of question time, you also referred to another incident that occurred outside the House, prior to question time yesterday. What I would like to seek from you is an assurance that no member of Parliament whilst in a public place in the parliamentary complex, or proceeding to the debating chamber, will be in any way impeded in their parliamentary business by any security service, either parliamentary or otherwise—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a—[Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order!

CHRIS HIPKINS: I am raising a point of order.

Mr SPEAKER: This is a point of order. [Interruption] Order! If we want to see a few gaps on this side, I can assist. Quiet—silence please, through the point of order. Would the member complete his point of order.

CHRIS HIPKINS: I am seeking an assurance from you that no member of Parliament will be impeded in any public place, or while proceeding to the Chamber, by any security service, whether they be parliamentary or otherwise.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Deputy Leader of the House): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: I will hear from the Hon Simon Bridges.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I accept what the member says in his seeking assurance. Of course, I also seek an assurance that other members of Parliament, while they are also coming to Parliament, are not impeded by other members of Parliament unduly and unreasonably in the way that they do their job.

Mr SPEAKER: To—[Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! I am expecting silence from my right, as well. I give the member an absolute assurance that if any example was given to me whereby a member was impeded from making progress to this House for parliamentary business, I would take a very dim view of that. The point I made in my earlier ruling was that I think we need to make sure that we concentrate our political debates here in this Chamber and in select committee rooms, and make sure they do not move to the public areas of Parliament; otherwise, I can see occurrences like this happening not only on the way to question time but potentially in places like Copperfields. I think that would be a very sad day for this House.

Points of Order

Leave to Move Motion Without Notice—Armistice Day

RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to move a motion without notice and without debate on the 97th Armistice Day today, it being the last day—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Let me put the leave, and then the member can move his motion if leave is given. Leave is sought to move that motion. Is there any objection? There is objection.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Economic Programme—Incomes and Employment

TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland): My question is to the Minister of Finance and asks: does he stand by his statement that building a more productive and competitive economy that supports jobs—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! If I hear that level of interjection from the Hon Ruth Dyson, she will leave me no choice but to ask her also to leave the Chamber. Would the member please start his question again so I can hear it.

1. TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement that building a more productive and competitive economy that supports jobs and higher incomes is one of the Government’s priorities?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Yes. Wages are up 3.1 percent in the last year, with inflation of just 0.4 percent, meaning a real lift in the spending power of New Zealand households. Beneficiary households with children will on 1 April receive a $25-a-week increase—the very lowest-income families, something the Labour Party never saw fit to do in its 9 years in office with very large surpluses.

Todd Barclay: What overseas reports has he received showing New Zealand’s resilient economy is well placed to continue moderate growth despite international uncertainty?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The International Monetary Fund issued its concluding statement about the New Zealand economy. It says that the economy is flexible, “underpinned by strong policy frameworks”, and “is well-positioned to weather the recent slowdown … and manage financial stability risks.” It says that medium-term prospects for the economy are positive, with “Business and consumer confidence [having] recently picked up” and net immigration remaining strong. It points to a number of risks around the world, but says that the “strong public sector balance sheet … underpins confidence in New Zealand’s economy.” This outlook is consistent with moderate growth in jobs and moderate growth in wages.

Grant Robertson: What does he say to the people of Gisborne, where there are now one in 10 people unemployed, about whether or not jobs are a high priority for his Government?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Gisborne is fortunate to be a resource-based economy, and the lower exchange rate and low interest rates are supporting businesses there to invest, to expand their exports, and therefore to employ more people. That is backed up by the Government’s comprehensive approach to economic development in the regions.

David Seymour: Does the Minister of Finance still stand by his statement that the Government faces no trade-off between the age and level of entitlement to New Zealand superannuation?

Mr SPEAKER: The Hon Bill English—that is some distance from the original question, but I will allow it.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes. As I pointed out to the member yesterday, it is Government policy to maintain the age of eligibility and to maintain the current rates of payment. As I pointed out yesterday, the rate of national superannuation payment has grown twice as fast as inflation over the last 7 years. So inflation since this Government has been in power has been 15 percent; national superannuation has risen by 30 percent.

Todd Barclay: What steps is the Government taking to support employment through increasing exports and innovation?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government takes every step it can to support businesses to do employing, because the alternative is that the Government would have to employ everybody. These are some of the things we are doing to support businesses: creating a Trade Single Window for exporters and importers, which reduces barriers to exporting and importing; improving the Export Credit Office products and services to help support exporters who are bidding for new contracts in difficult markets; signing free-trade agreements with Malaysia, Hong Kong, Korea, and ASEAN, and negotiating a free-trade agreement upgrade with China; and, hopefully with the support of the Labour Party, signing off on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. But who would know whether the Labour Party is for it or against it?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could the Minister advise the country as to which sector is the biggest contributor to New Zealand’s gross external debt, thereby retarding a more productive economy and slowing jobs and higher incomes?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I suppose the sector that is the biggest contributor to that would be the one that borrows the most. That appears to be New Zealand households. Of course, it might be a bit difficult to say to New Zealanders that they cannot have access to borrowed money, because actually for a quite a few of them it helps them to buy a house and it helps them to finance their business. We believe New Zealand is gradually improving its external exposure—that is, its proportionate external debt is actually dropping a bit. The current account deficit is progressively a bit better than expected year after year, and New Zealanders’ savings have been positive for 5 years, which has not happened for the last 25 years.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I seek leave to table evidence from the Parliamentary Library that it is the banks that are borrowing $117.9 billion—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The document has been described. It is a very marginal call, from my point of view, but I will put the leave and let the House decide. Leave is sought to table that information from the Parliamentary Library. Is there any objection? There is none.

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

Todd Barclay: How is the Government supporting jobs growth through investment in infrastructure and by improving links between education and employment?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: In respect of infrastructure, easily the largest investment is in extending ultra-fast broadband and rural broadband. That is part of a very extensive spend on infrastructure over the next decade. But to improve the links between education and employment, the Government has launched over recent years a large number of schemes that assist the progress of young people from education into jobs. One of the results of that is we now have the lowest rate ever of young people not in education, employment, or training. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! To Darroch Ball—when I rise to my feet I expect the member then to cease his loud interjection.

Australia—Deportation of New Zealanders

2. ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements regarding New Zealand - born Australian detainees in Australia?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): That was not actually the question.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Listen, I think it was close enough, and, frankly, that is a matter for me to attend to. I would prefer the Prime Minister to answer it.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes.

Andrew Little: Does he stand by his statements on Radio New Zealand this morning that he has not been told how many New Zealand - born Australian detainees on Christmas Island have convictions for rape or murder?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes, at the time that I made that statement. What I can say is that Minister Amy Adams’ office was today, actually, presented by the Australian Government with a very detailed list of the sorts of offences committed by New Zealanders who are on Christmas Island. It is unlikely for privacy reasons that she will be able to release that, but I can give you a flavour of the types of people. [Interruption] I can give the House a flavour of the types of people—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I ask the Prime Minister to resume his seat. I would have thought that there was interest in this answer, but it is not going to be heard if the level of interjection continues from my immediate left.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I can give the House a flavour. Some of them are offences that I do not think even the House would want me to read out, but others include, for instance, indecent treatment or dealings with a child under 16; the murder of an individual or manslaughter of an individual; armed robbery and robbery with actual violence; aggravated assault with weapons against their own child; assaulting a police officer; common assault and family violence; drug supply and possession; grievous bodily harm and weapon possession; and stalking. That sits on the back of the information we have from Australia that, as of 31 May 2015, 585 New Zealanders are pending visa cancellation. Of those, 50 are involved in rape, sex offences, or child sex offences.

Andrew Little: Given that of the 199 detainees on Christmas Island, roughly 130 have convictions for offences such as prison for cannabis supply and a fifth conviction for shoplifting—in this case worth $1,300—and that the vast majority are of sentences at the low end of the scale, how does he justify his disgraceful statements in the House yesterday?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Because they have the advantage of being true. I do not know where the member gets his information, but we have the information by name, by offence—I can read them out again if the member wants. But let me quote from the Minister of immigration in Australia, who gave an interview to the Australian media yesterday and said about the detainees on Christmas Island: “It is a hardened criminal population that occupies the immigration detention centre on Christmas Island. They are people whose risk profile is based not just on conviction but on their activity within detention, or within the community as well. It may be that they’ve threatened officers or they’ve carried out acts against other detainees. There are a number of reasons why they’re there. The vast majority of people within the Christmas Island Detention Centre are serious criminals.”

Andrew Little: Given that most of the detainees are people who have lived virtually all their lives in Australia, why should New Zealand shoulder responsibility for these people? [Interruption] Why doesn’t he stand up for what is right, pick up the phone and talk to Malcolm Turnbull?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Because we have a legal obligation to take them back to New Zealand, but let us just understand this one point: if you were a New Zealander who went to Australia prior to 2001, as a resident you had a pathway to citizenship, which would mean that if you gained that citizenship, you could not be deported to New Zealand. One Government and one person stopped that. It is called the Labour Government and Helen Clark—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order!

Andrew Little: Does he accept that, for the majority of New Zealand - born detainees whose offending is at the lower end of the scale, their best chance of rehabilitation is to stay close to their families and the community they know, which is in Australia?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Firstly, from the information that I have, the 585 New Zealanders, as of 31 May 2015—

Dr David Clark: Answer the question.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well, just allow me to and I am happy to do it for you, mate. OK. So of the 585, as of 31 May 2015, here are the sorts of characterisations: murder, 22; child sex offenders, 34; rape, 16—

Andrew Little: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did not ask for the statistics, which are being massaged by the Prime Minister. I asked him: does he accept that for people in the circumstances I described it is better for them to stay in Australia than come here?

Mr SPEAKER: As I—[Interruption] No. I do not need assistance.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Speaking to the point of order.

Mr SPEAKER: No. I do not need assistance from the Prime Minister. As I recall the question, it was: accepting that the majority are there on relatively minor convictions, does he not accept the best chance of rehabilitation is by remaining in Australia? The Prime Minister is rebutting part of that by saying that he does not feel that many of them are there on minor convictions. That—

Andrew Little: He’s not giving us the proportion—misleading.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No. Listen. My job here is to adjudicate as to whether the question has been addressed. On that occasion the question has been addressed—I accept, not to the satisfaction of the member. The way forward then is further supplementary questions. Andrew—

Rt Hon John Key: Mr Speaker, I just want to carry on my answer.

Mr SPEAKER: No, well, I have heard enough. [Interruption] No. Order! The Prime Minister will resume his seat. The answer has been given.

Andrew Little: Why did his Government take no action in December 2014 when he was first told Australia was going to deport hundreds of New Zealand - born Australians for committing lower-level crimes such as shoplifting and driving offences?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The Minister of Justice informs me the direction was signed on 22 December, at the first available meeting I had with the Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott. We did that in the bilateral in February. We have continued to have those discussions the whole way through. The Ministers of Justice and Immigration have talked the way through. We have been working through the memorandum of understanding. When the Opposition says the Government has done nothing, let us get a few facts right. We have got an assurance from the Australian Government that deportees can be sent to New Zealand and have their assessment done for their appeal in New Zealand. We have doubled the resources there. We have added the extra resources there. We have made sure there is a memorandum of understanding. We have made a significant number of representations. Actually, the Leader of the Opposition met—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, the answer is now going on too long.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can the Prime Minister tell us what his response is to former National Government Minister Hugh Templeton’s call for him to display some leadership and statesmanship on this matter?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The member will appreciate Hugh Templeton goes a long way back in the New Zealand Parliament and I was not here then, so maybe he would like to remind me of the context of it all.

Andrew Little: Why has he said that New Zealand - born Australians detained in Australia at the completion of their sentences are free to return at any time, but now says that he has not even got the legislation ready to manage their return and it can take up to 20 weeks for them to get here anyway?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Firstly, I have never said it could take up to 20 weeks. The member has said that, and it is not correct. Mr Dutton confirmed once again last night—yesterday—that they can come within 2 weeks if they are at the absolute worst end of things. The legislation is going to be ready in the House next week. I hope the members vote for it.

Health Research Sector—Centres of Research Excellence

3. PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National) to the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment: How is the Government encouraging New Zealand’s medical technology sector to grow and contribute to the economy?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment): Recently I opened the Medical Technologies Centre of Research Excellence, which is based at the University of Auckland and has been allocated core funding of $23.6 million through to the end of 2020 to bring together clinicians and industry in partnership to develop new health technologies for the prevention, early diagnosis, and management of disease and improve the health and well-being of New Zealanders. Medical Technologies will also help accelerate the growth of New Zealand’s emerging medical devices and health IT sector of around 150 companies with an estimated value of around $1 billion. Medical Technologies is assisted by a partnership that includes the Auckland University of Technology, Callaghan Innovation, and of course the University of Auckland but also Canterbury University, Otago University, and Victoria University.

Paul Foster-Bell: How are centres of research excellence supporting health research?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Overall, four of the 10 centres of research excellence funded from now until 2020 focus on health research. Medical Technologies is the second of two new health centres of research excellence (CORE) I have had the opportunity to launch this year, the other being the Brain Research New Zealand centre of research excellence, co-hosted by Otago University and Auckland University. These are joined by two other health-related COREs: of course the Maurice Wilkins Centre for molecular biodiscovery, which develops cutting-edge drugs and vaccines and tools for early diagnosis and prevention; and the Riddet Institute, which focuses on food and material science, novel food processing, human nutrition, and gastrointestinal biology. Including centres of research excellence funding, New Zealand spends a total of around $300 million on health research and development, with about two-thirds of this coming through direct Government and higher education funding and the other third coming from business.

Paul Foster-Bell: What else is the Government doing to encourage high-quality research in the health system?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Yesterday my colleagues the Minister of Science and Innovation and the Minister of Health, Dr Jonathan Coleman, announced a new health strategy that will be developed to focus on and align the economic and health goals of the health research sector. In addition to improving health outcomes and quality of care for Kiwis, health research is a strength for New Zealand in terms of scientific quality, which generates new high-value knowledge-intensive companies. The new strategy will help to enhance the impact, relevance, and uptake of health research and maximise the contribution of health science to New Zealand’s economic growth and the well-being of New Zealanders. This afternoon the Minister of Science and Innovation opened the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment contestable research fund for research proposals. This fund is worth about $35 million a year and is available for investment in excellent mission-led research that has the potential for long-term impact for New Zealand.

Prime Minister—Statements on Sexual Violence

4. METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement, “Well, you back the rapists …”?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.

Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. As the victim of a sexual assault, I take offence at the Prime Minister’s refusal to deny his statement of yesterday.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! It is put down as a question on notice. The Prime Minister then has to answer it.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Is this a fresh point of order?

Chris Hipkins: It is a fresh point of order. It just relates to the general principle of the issue, which is where something is ruled unparliamentary and a member then reaffirms whatever it was that they said that was unparliamentary—does that not then bring it back into the current debate?

Mr SPEAKER: Unfortunately, to some extent, yes. The question has been accepted. It has been ruled in order. The Prime Minister now has a responsibility to answer it. He answered it with “Yes”. That in itself is certainly not unparliamentary. We have now got to move forward with a series of, I hope, helpful supplementary questions. If the Prime Minister was then to repeat such remarks, as I said earlier, I will deal with that issue.

Metiria Turei: Would he agree that when he made jokes about the convicted murderer and molester Phillip John Smith, he was backing the rapist and not the victims of his sexual abuse?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No.

Metiria Turei: Would the Prime Minister agree that when he said of the Roast Busters case that “These young guys should just grow up.”, he was, in fact, backing those alleged rapists and not the alleged victims of those young men?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No, but I think the member is trying to raise a defence to absolve herself from the fact that she has now learnt that 50 of the people whom they have been interested in are—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I remind the Prime Minister of my earlier ruling and Speaker’s ruling 196/7. The question was asked directly. The next part of the answer is not necessary.

Metiria Turei: Does the Prime Minister now consider it appropriate to apologise to Tania Billingsley, given his Government’s interference in a case that involved an alleged rape against her?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No. What I find disappointing is that in all of this debate, the victims of these crimes in Australia and in other parts have never been represented by Opposition parliamentarians—only the actual people who have perpetuated these rapes, these murders, these abhorrent acts. Unfortunately, that is the reality of what has happened in this Parliament in the past few weeks.

Metiria Turei: Does the Prime Minister think that in light of his own comments, where he has joked about rapists and child molesters, where he has backed alleged rapists of young women—

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

Metiria Turei: —it is now time for the Prime Minister to show some leadership on the serious issue of sexual violence in New Zealand and apologise for his comments from yesterday?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do like to show leadership on that issue, but I am not responsible for other people who may advocate for people who commit crimes, not for the victims of crimes.

Hon Member: He’s reaffirming the same thing.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Again the member is interjecting. She may not realise it, but she is.

Metiria Turei: Will the Prime Minister apologise for his comment directed at the Opposition yesterday, in light of his own comments where he has clearly backed rapists and alleged rapists?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I utterly refute the last part of the question, and no in terms of the first part of the question.

Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister has consistently supported his statement of yesterday. He has—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I just—[Interruption] Order! [Interruption] I remind the member that when I stand, it is time for the member to cease speaking. That is not a point of order. The Prime Minister, in his answer, has said nothing that is unparliamentary in that answer.

Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Having perused the—

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

Metiria Turei: There is nothing in the Standing Orders or Speakers’ rulings that puts a time limit on seeking a withdrawal and apology. The Prime Minister has affirmed his commitment to this—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will resume her seat. We spent quite some time at the start of question time today with my pointing out to the member quite clearly that if it is a matter of an unparliamentary comment made at the time and objected to at the time, I can deal with it. If it is raised subsequently—and in this case 24 hours later—the time has passed.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Jacinda Ardern: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Chris Hipkins first.

Chris Hipkins: It is simply to ask you to reflect, perhaps with a considered ruling, on the matter of effective repetition. I am not going to re-traverse it here, but I would like to ask you to reflect, in light of your earlier ruling today, on whether in fact the issue of effective repetition should be reconsidered and whether a member—maybe not using the exact words. In the case of the Privileges Committee, where there was an issue of a member repeating a comment outside the House, all they said was “I stand by my comment.” and the courts deemed that to be an effective repetition.

Mr SPEAKER: I will certainly, as I always do, go back and review today, but I have been listening very carefully to the answers that were given, and, as I said to Metiria Turei, I do not think there are any words in the answers that were given that would concern me as being unparliamentary. The question was put down and the question was accepted; the question, therefore, had to be answered, and none of the supplementary questions that were answered were ruled out of order either. So I will review it, but I will not promise to the member that I will come back with a considered ruling. Is there a further point of order from Jacinda Ardern?

Hon Simon Bridges: Speaking to the point of order.

Mr SPEAKER: No, I have dealt with that matter.

Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would seek your clarification on this matter. You have ruled that the Prime Minister’s statement cannot be relitigated today, because Opposition members did not raise it at the first opportunity yesterday. You have seen the Hansard, as have I. I raised that issue with you at the very first opportunity, and as a result of your denying that, you are now justifying not requiring the Minister—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No. I invite the member herself to take the time that I have taken to go back and watch the video clip. The comment was made. It is 4½ minutes later that it is raised on the first occasion. My point, strongly to this House—and I am surprised that we are still having to explain it—is that it must be dealt with immediately. That makes my job a lot easier. When it is then dealt with subsequently—and, in fact, there are a lot of other comments that are made in the meantime—it is difficult for me to then demand an apology subsequent to the event.

Health Services—Elective Surgery

5. Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister of Health: Are health patients getting access to publicly funded health services as prescribed by their health professionals; if not, why not?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Yes; for example, in the last year we have completed 88,000 elective day surgery procedures, filled 43 million prescriptions, and seen and treated over 1 million people in our emergency departments. But there is always more we can do, and that is why we are implementing further initiatives such as the Local Mobility Action Teams, which will work with community health providers to better diagnose and manage musculoskeletal conditions. Our ability to treat more patients comes from the Government’s ever-increasing health budget, which now stands at almost $16 billion annually, a $4.1 billion increase since 2008.

Hon Annette King: If patients are getting access to the health services they need with the additional money being put in, why has the Auckland District Health Board lifted the threshold at which patients can get hip and knee replacement surgery from 50 points in June 2012 to 70 points in June 2015?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The district health board has an ever-increasing budget. I mean, in Auckland it has gone up $1.248 billion over the last 7 years, and it is also doing more operations all the time. So in the last 7 years it has increased its annual elective discharge output by nearly 5,000 operations per year. There is always more we can do, and the district health board has to decide how best it allocates the funds to deliver the services that it thinks appropriate.

Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The question I asked is—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I listened to the question, and the member was right until the very end of the answer. The question was not answered at the initial part, without doubt, but at the very end the Minister did address the question.

Hon Annette King: I seek leave to table an Official Information Act request from the Auckland District Health Board setting out that the points for getting hip and knee surgery is 50 points. That is dated December 2013. The second one is an Official Information Act request dated 20 August 2015 saying it has been lifted to 70 points.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table those two documents. Is there any objection? There is none. They can be tabled.

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

Hon Annette King: Why have 13 of the 20 district health boards lifted the threshold at which patients can get hip and knee surgery since June 2012, including Counties Manukau, Hawke’s Bay, and Waikato, right down to the West Coast, Nelson Marlborough, and South Canterbury?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Because each year they have to decide how they best allocate the funds that they do have. But overall they are doing an extra 50,000 operations more than they were 7 years ago.

Hon Annette King: Has he seen correspondence sent to patients who were denied orthopaedic surgery, even though they are in considerable pain, that states that they are being adversely affected by funding limitations; if so, why does he keep denying there is a serious problem with access to surgery for thousands of New Zealanders?

Mr SPEAKER: Either of those two supplementary questions, the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I think I am aware of the specific letter she is talking about from a Hawke’s Bay surgeon, but the fact is there is always more we can do, and that is why we are doing more. That is why we are doing an extra 50,000 operations a year, an extra 60,000 appointments for surgical appointments, and also an extra 60,000 medical appointments on top of that.

Hon Annette King: If patients are able to access public health services they desperately need, why have more than 650 appeals been started by patients, their families, and their friends this year alone, begging for money because they have got nowhere else to turn to get help for their health problems?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Right throughout history we have not been able to give every patient every treatment that they would like. It happened under the Labour Government, and it is a factor in all medical systems throughout the Western World. The fact is, though, the answer to unmet need is to do more, and we are doing more all the time. If you look at pharmaceuticals, we are funding more, more New Zealanders are getting access to the medicines they need, and we are doing more all the time. That is the answer.

Barbara Stewart: Are health patients in Auckland getting appropriate access to emergency health services when Auckland District Health Board emergency departments have been at or above full capacity for 8 out of 10 days so far during 2015; if so, why?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Yes.

Barbara Stewart: I seek leave to table an Official Information Act request from the Auckland District Health Board, dated 7 October 2015, outlining exactly how many days that Auckland emergency departments—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The document has been well described, in light of the question. Leave is sought to table that particular Official Information Act request. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.

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

Housing New Zealand—Condition of Properties

6. JONO NAYLOR (National) to the Minister for Social Housing: What reports has she received about the impact methamphetamine use is having on Housing New Zealand’s ability to house people in need?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): I have recently seen a report from Housing New Zealand about an increasing number of its properties that are having to be decontaminated or even demolished because—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I apologise to the Minister. I cannot hear the answer because of interjections from my immediate left.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I was just ignoring the angry man. Last year 229 homes had to be decontaminated, up from just 28 a year earlier. Fourteen houses were actually so badly damaged that they had to be demolished. Being in a social house is a privilege that comes with a huge subsidy from the taxpayer, and it also comes with responsibilities. It is simply unacceptable that some people are abusing that privilege by using meth, leading to delays for others.

Jono Naylor: How many houses currently cannot be used because of methamphetamine contamination?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Currently there are 322 Housing New Zealand homes that are sitting empty because they are contaminated or suspected of being meth infected. Those homes could house 7 percent of the people currently sitting on the social housing register. Houses can take months to decontaminate, meaning that those in real need are having to wait longer, of course, which is simply unacceptable.

Andrew Little: What steps is the Minister taking to remove the offending substances in the house of Jaymie Tihore and William Aue in Porirua, whose child is suffering so far incurable respiratory diseases because of her failure to fix up the mould and damp in their State house?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: In February this year, actually, $16,500 was spent on that home in ensuring that it had thermal curtains and carpeting. Housing New Zealand also put a heat pump in—

Andrew Little: Kids are sick. The kids are still getting sick.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I am answering your question—I am actually answering your question.

Andrew Little: No, you’re not, Paula.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Settle down; you are getting a little angry.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question was asked—I think it was a good question. I want to hear the answer.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: That house, before it was tenanted in March, had more than $16,500 spent on it. Housing New Zealand upgraded the kitchen. It actually repainted all the walls. It put a heat pump in, and thermal curtaining, and it put carpet on the floors. Housing New Zealand also informs me that it has been trying to get hold of the family in the last couple of months—and has been unable to—to look at some of the phone calls it has had from them. We have actually spent more than $400 million on maintaining and actually building more homes, and we have got the Warm Up New Zealand programme, which is really working to try to heat up those houses. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Jono Naylor: What is it costing Housing New Zealand to deal with the meth contamination in its homes?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Last year alone—[Interruption] Goodness gracious!

Mr SPEAKER: I have given a specific warning to that member once already. I will issue now the very final—final—one.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Housing New Zealand has spent $2.3 million on decontamination, retesting, and remediation—more than three times what it spent in 2013. Each decontamination can cost up to $16,000, and, of course, a demolition means that that whole house needs to be rebuilt, and that takes time. Housing New Zealand spent a record $400 million on home maintenance and upgrades just in the last 12 months alone.

Overseas Investment—Silver Fern Farms

7. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all his statements regarding Silver Fern Farms; if so, why?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Yes, in the context in which they were made.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How can he stand by his comment that farmers should put their money where their mouth is when farmers thought they were getting a $261 million investment and when that, instead, is going into a separate company controlled by a Chinese State-owned enterprise?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The commercial arrangements between the investors are not really the Government’s business. I have noticed, though, that a number of hardened, long-term shareholders in Silver Fern Farms, many of whom I used to represent, turned up to meetings and voted overwhelmingly in favour of the transaction. I prefer to back their judgment on it over the member’s.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: What substantial and identifiable benefit is there from the Chinese paying only $57 million for Silver Fern Farms when Silver Fern Farms has announced revenues of $2.45 billion, a 28 percent surge in operating profit to $86.9 million, and a reduction of debt of $168 million?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Getting into a discussion with him about the accounting would be, I think, as the member used to say, like going into a battle of wits with a one-armed opponent. So I do not intend to do that. I think we can rely on the correct processes, and that involves the shareholders—who, after all, have a more vital interest in this than we do and have supported the transaction—the Overseas Investment Act, and a screening regime through which the transaction will need to pass.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How is it possible that Silver Ferns Farm, a Coda company, is allowed to sell half of its share-backed assets without a special resolution to shareholders; and the sale of half of our largest meat exporter is not a major financial transaction as defined in the Companies Act?

Mr SPEAKER: So far as there may be some ministerial responsibility, the Hon Bill English.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: In the same way as having a duel over the accounting might not work—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! David Bennett. Order!

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have not called the member yet.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I suspect that we are beginning to hear a repeat of the insult in the last supplementary question in terms of the Minister’s answer, and he is not allowed to do that. I just want him to tell me what the answer to my question is.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! And I am quite keen to hear the answer as well, but I do point out that with both this question and the previous one it is difficult for me to actually decipher the responsibility of the Minister of Finance in regard to that matter. I have allowed the questions to be asked, and now both of us should wait for the answer.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: In the same way as the discussion between myself and the member about the accounting may be fruitless, I suspect that a discussion between us about the legal definitions applied to the transaction might be fruitless. I cannot help but think that he is heading in the direction of the ferry bottom that scraped Cook Strait—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not going to help. [Interruption]. Order!

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I never said that his bottom was scraped by anybody.

Mr SPEAKER: And I have not been here that long either. Would the member now ask his supplementary question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Will the Government now investigate this legally questionable deal, designed by Goldman Sachs, along with the $7 million payment to the Silver Ferns Farm board, which, given its profit announcement, smells to high heaven; if not, why not?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: No. The parties to the deal have every incentive to ensure that it is a good deal, and, actually, every incentive to ensure that it is lawful. I am quite sure that the bankers, accountants, shareholders, and company directors have an interest in complying with the law. That member may have more wild allegations, as has been his wont, but we have found from experience that it is best that those are tested properly.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. With the greatest respect, I am relying upon your own rulings on this matter. He should not be allowed to do a detour or a roadblock on his answers by insulting the questioner. I asked him a plain question.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, the member asked two questions. The first one was answered immediately—“Will there be an investigation?”—and the second supplementary question, which in my generosity I allowed to go through was: “If not, why not?”. I do accept the member’s final point, though—where the Minister was then going with the last part of his answer is not going to add to the order of this House.

Hon Damien O’Connor: How will the National Government ensure that the benefits claimed by Shanghai Maling when it takes over Silver Fern Farms will be delivered, given the absence of any Overseas Investment Office reports to assess the merits of any other overseas business investment in New Zealand?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: In the first place, the best monitors of the benefit will be the shareholders and the suppliers of Silver Fern Farms, who, from my knowledge of them, apply a forensic and intense scrutiny to everything that the company does. Secondly, it is part of the role of the Overseas Investment Office to monitor investments after the fact, and it will be doing so in this case.

Housing, Auckland—Commentary

8. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree with Reserve Bank Governor, Graeme Wheeler, that there are increased risks to financial stability arising from the dairy and housing sectors?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): It is up to the governor to make his own assessments about financial stability, but I can agree with the governor’s full statement, which reads: “New Zealand’s financial system continues to perform well despite a deterioration in the outlook for global financial stability and increased risks related to the dairy and housing sectors.”

Grant Robertson: Is the Reserve Bank Governor correct to say that “House prices now exceed nine times gross income in Auckland, placing it among the most expensive cities in the world.”?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: If the Reserve Bank Governor made that statement, he would simply be repeating statements that have been made any time over the past few years about the relative expensiveness of Auckland house prices. In fact, that is why the Government initiated the Productivity Commission inquiry into land pricing, I think 2—if not 3—years ago, and why it has taken a raft of measures to try to make progress with more supply of housing into the Auckland market.

Grant Robertson: Does he accept any responsibility for the increase in the price-to-income ratio for Auckland housing going from 6 in 2011 to 9.2 in 2015?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The responsibility lies with the decision maker, which was the Auckland City Council, and we are reaping the rewards of 20 years of misguided planning that was designed to stop the city growing. Secondly, the responsibility lies with the people buying the houses. At a time when we have 50-year lows in interest rates, clearly the buyers believe that they can afford those prices. I agree that that ratio is far too high, and I look forward to the support of the Labour Party for further measures to help to reduce it.

Grant Robertson: Is the Minister telling the House that he does not accept any responsibility for a 9.2 price-to-income ratio for Auckland housing, given that we have heard the news this week that his special housing areas, brought in by his Government, have created a grand total of 102 houses?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member is simply wrong about special housing areas—and I am not surprised, because he almost never does his homework properly.

Grant Robertson: Was he correct to say that his 2010 tax change would shift the economy towards savings, investment, and exports, and away from the over-investment in housing of the past decade, given that 5 years later the IMF says that we have “chronically low national savings” and the Reserve Bank says that rising house prices present a significant risk to the New Zealand economy?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes, I do stand by those statements, and here is one reason: because of the changes made in that tax package, we now collect around $800 million more tax off landlords. So whatever the house price rises in Auckland are, they may well have been more if we had not made that tax change, and we have got the revenue to show for it.

Aquaculture Industry—Marlborough

9. JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany) on behalf of BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country) to the Minister for Primary Industries: What recent reports has he received on the contribution of aquaculture to the Marlborough economy?

Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries): This week I attended the launch of a New Zealand Institute of Economic Research report on the contribution of aquaculture to the Marlborough region. The report highlights that aquaculture generates around $276 million of export sales revenue for the Marlborough region, or nearly 6 percent of its economic activity. There are 859 local Marlborough jobs supported by aquaculture, and the Government is working closely with the industry to reach its aspirational goal of growing to a billion dollars by 2025.

Jami-Lee Ross: What are some of the ways in which the Government is supporting growth in the aquaculture industry?

Hon NATHAN GUY: The Government is supporting aquaculture through enabling greater market access and also supporting research and development. The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement will be a major boost for this industry. All tariffs will be eliminated on seafood exports to those 11 countries, resulting in an estimated saving of around $8 million for the industry. The Government is also co-investing with the industry into the Primary Growth Partnership. A great example of this is the local SPATnz programme. It is improving the quality and quantity of mussels, and could increase exports by $80 million by the mid-2020s.

Education, Ministry—Special Education Funding

10. CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) to the Minister of Education: Is she confident that her Government is fully resourcing the Ministry of Education to provide quality support for schools and students?

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Yes. My focus is not just on how much money is being spent, but also where it is being spent and how effective it is being. We should be using taxpayers’ money efficiently to provide support and assistance for those students who need it most.

Chris Hipkins: Did the Ministry of Education fail to meet three out of four special education services performance targets; if so, how is that an indication that they are being sufficiently resourced in order to ensure there is equality of support for schools and students?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: There was indeed a $3.6 million underspend in special education. Mostly it was outside the direct control of the ministry, as two-thirds of it—$2.4 million—was in expenditure by schools. The remaining fund of $1.2 million was an accumulation of amounts underspent in the network contingency, the intensive wraparound service, and the Incredible Years teaching programme. Despite these underspends, the ministry has, in fact, helped an additional 2,818 children with early intervention services over the target set for that year.

Chris Hipkins: Why has the Ministry of Education cut 41 front-line special education staff since 2011?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I am not aware that the Ministry of Education has cut front-line staff of that description. I am not aware that the ministry has cut those—

Chris Hipkins: They’re her answers. She gave us that material in written answers. Don’t you read your own answers?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I am not sure whether you want to hear me answer, or you just want to shout over the top of me. So the employment decisions are made by the Secretary for Education. We have increased funding for special education by 26 percent. We are currently undertaking an update of special education because there does need to be improvement in the way that services are provided to kids who need it most, and that is why the ministry has been conducting this year over 157 workshops with parents and school communities, to understand how that service can improve.

Chris Hipkins: Is she satisfied that at the same time as the Ministry of Education has cut the number of special education advisers, speech and language therapists, and early intervention teachers, the amount of spending on public relations staff at the ministry has increased by almost 200 percent; if so, why?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Although that is true, the order of expenditure on both those items is significantly different. Special education is $530 million and has gone up 26 percent. The communications budget is $2 million and has gone up by the amount the member speaks about. That has largely gone into improving and integrating the websites, of which there was a proliferation, in order to ensure that parents and educators had quick and easy access to the information they require. It has resulted in a 2-weekly newsletter with principals, which they greatly appreciate, and in being far more responsive to the concerns that schools have raised.

Chris Hipkins: By how much has the Ministry of Education spending on press secretaries and communications advisers increased during that period of time?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I cannot give that specific—

Chris Hipkins: Oh, so she doesn’t have that information.

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Ha, ha! Are you feeling happy as a result of that? I cannot give the specific figure for that, but what I can tell the member is this: the employment decisions are made by the Secretary for Education, not by me.

Climate Change Agreements—New Zealand's Obligations

JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): To the—[Interruption] I am sorry? Speak up.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption]

JAMES SHAW: Speak up.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I require less interjection from my right.

11. JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green) to the Minister for Climate Change Issues: Does he stand by the Prime Minister’s statement that “New Zealand can hold its head up high when it comes to climate change”?

Hon TIM GROSER (Minister for Climate Change Issues): Yes, because no other country in the world has established an international research institution devoted solely to trying to find real solutions to 14 percent of global emissions—I am referring, of course, to the Global Research Alliance on agricultural emissions; because when the member joins me and other New Zealanders in Paris, and we are looking forward to that occasion, if there is a deal of a new, comprehensive agreement, it is highly likely, he will discover, to be based on the New Zealand proposal on legal form; because he will also be invited to a special event in Paris where we are hosting people celebrating the huge political success we are having in combating the $500 billion of wasteful subsidies on fossil fuel subsidies; and because we spent $100 million helping South Pacific countries convert from diesel to renewable energy.

James Shaw: When he has saved the planet, how high will the gold statue be to himself?

Mr SPEAKER: That question is not in order.

David Seymour: Why has the Government ceased to allow the redemption of international units to fulfil New Zealand obligations, and what has that done to the cost of emissions for New Zealanders vis-à-vis those in other countries, such as those where international units can be redeemed to fulfil such obligations?

Hon TIM GROSER: We did this because international carbon prices collapsed. The member is well aware of the history of this, and it was designed to give a better signal to New Zealand emitters to get on the path towards a lower-emissions economy.

James Shaw: Given that strong action to prevent climate change means we will have to stop burning fossil fuels in the foreseeable future, what advice has he given to the Minister of Finance about protecting people’s pensions against the risk of stranded assets in fossil fuel companies?

Hon TIM GROSER: I have given no advice, because the Minister of Finance does not need advice, but our party and Government’s position on this is crystal clear. We have a number of public agencies that have investment charters. They are expected to follow, and do follow, responsible codes of conduct very closely aligned to the United Nations principles on this, and we do not interfere with their decision-making process.

James Shaw: So is he then saying that as the Minister for Climate Change Issues he bears no responsibility for policies to rein in the causes of climate change?

Hon TIM GROSER: No, I am not saying that at all. I am just saying that if Mr English were to ask my advice I would give it, but I do not bother giving Mr English advice on matters where he seeks no advice, because he does not need it.

James Shaw: So has he seen the Business New Zealand survey results released yesterday—[Interruption] I am sorry? [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

James Shaw: Has he seen the Business New Zealand survey results released yesterday that showed that businesses want to see cross-party agreement on policies to address climate change; if so, why does his Government keep opposing the practical policies that the Green Party brings to the table?

Hon TIM GROSER: Yes, I have seen that report. I read it yesterday, in fact, and I took it to be—perhaps this is a little unkind on my part—a very veiled criticism by Business New Zealand of the Green Party for trying to jettison the cross-party support we have that the emissions trading scheme, not a carbon tax, should be the main vehicle.

Question time interrupted.

Points of Order

Leave for House to Request Apology—Unparliamentary Language

RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Pursuant to Standing Order 4(1) and Speaker’s ruling 1/2, and recognising the limitations of Speaker’s ruling 1/5, I seek leave for the House, being the master of its own affairs, to request rather than require of the Prime Minister that he withdraw comments that other members have taken offence to.

Mr SPEAKER: Can the member please repeat the Standing Order he is referring to.

RICHARD PROSSER: Standing Order 4(1).

Mr SPEAKER: 41?

Hon Member: Speakers’ rulings.

Mr SPEAKER: Oh, a Speaker’s ruling, not Standing Orders?

RICHARD PROSSER: Standing Order 4(1), Speaker’s ruling 1/2, and Speaker’s ruling 1/5.

Mr SPEAKER: It is very confusing to understand what the member is doing. Can the member just state it again clearly. I will consider whether it is in order to put the leave, and then I will put the leave if it is in order to do so.

RICHARD PROSSER: In your response to my colleague Denis O’Rourke earlier—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can we just have a repeat—[Interruption] Order! I am going to help the member. Can the member just repeat slowly and clearly what he said earlier, so we can all look at our references. If the leave is in order, I will then put the leave; if it is not, I will not. If the leave is in order, I will put the leave, and it will be over to the House.

RICHARD PROSSER: I seek leave for the House, being the master of its own affairs, to request rather than require of the Prime Minister that he withdraw comments made yesterday to which members took offence.

Mr SPEAKER: I am going to put the leave. I think it will be dealt with. Leave is sought to take that course of action. Is there any objection? There is.

Question time resumed.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Cycleways—Land Designations

12. JOANNE HAYES (National) to the Minister for the Environment: What steps is he taking through the Resource Management Act 1991 process to support cycleways and to facilitate their design and construction as quickly and economically as possible?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): Today I have approved the New Zealand Transport Agency’s application for requiring authority status under the Resource Management Act for cycleways. This puts the agency on the same status for cycleways as for motorways, for railways, for telecommunications, and for other facilities, and that requiring authority enables it to gain access to and acquire the land necessary for cycleway construction around New Zealand. This decision will better enable the Government to deliver on its ambitious plans for safer and more convenient urban and rural cycleways.

Joanne Hayes: What specific initiatives will be assisted by this decision, and when will they take place?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: In June the Prime Minister and the Minister of Transport announced 18 urban cycleways and additional funding of $100 million. This is on top of the $50 million that was committed by the Prime Minister to the network of rural cycleways. This requiring authority status will help the delivery of all of those across the country. The new impact will come into effect on 17 December and enable the New Zealand Transport Agency to have access to these new, streamlined processes.

Joanne Hayes: How will the approval benefit cycleway initiatives across the country, and which particular cycleways will be helped by this decision?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The requiring authority status is particularly helpful in urban areas—

Andrew Little: How much is it going to cut the unemployed numbers by? Oh, no, you don’t care about that.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —where it cuts across a large number of urban authorities. I hear Mr Little does not particularly support this initiative; I think New Zealanders do. They will be particularly pleased that it will enable the advancement of cycleways and the SeaPath project on the North Shore, which I know my colleague Maggie Barry has strongly advocated for. It will improve safety on Tāmaki Drive and access to that cycleway, and, of course, in the capital it will enable them to get on with the Hutt Valley to Wellington cycleway—projects that I think all members of this House support.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can the Minister please explain to rural New Zealand why cycleways are a bigger priority for National than 31,000 kilometres of unsealed roads, over 3,000 of them being in the electorate of Northland, along with 778 single-lane bridges? [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Hon—[Interruption] Order! So that we can hear the answer.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I would be happy for my colleague the Minister of Transport to provide a long list of rural projects in constituencies like mine, on the West Coast, in Marlborough, in Bay of Plenty, and in Northland that are being constructed. But I would also say to the member that there is very strong support in rural and provincial New Zealand for the Prime Minister’s national network of cycleways.

Questions to Members

Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill—Purpose

1. IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) to the Member in charge of the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill: Why did she draft the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill?

CARMEL SEPULONI (Member in charge of the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill): I drafted this bill because I belong to a political party, Labour, that believes in creating viable pathways for New Zealanders off benefits and into work. This bill strikes at the heart of what Labour stands for, and that is jobs, that is jobs, that is jobs.

Iain Lees-Galloway: What evidence has she seen that her bill is necessary?

CARMEL SEPULONI: The major evidence can be seen in the Government’s employment programmes that are failing. The number of people participating in the Ministry of Social Development’s employment programmes has dropped by 60 percent since 2011-12. The number of people returning to a main benefit 8 weeks after the end of employment contracts has increased from 15 to 23 percent. For the year ending September 2015, less than half of job seeker benefits were cancelled for the reason being obtained work—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Answers to these questions are to be brief.

CARMEL SEPULONI: OK, I will just wrap it up.

Mr SPEAKER: No, no, the member has had her opportunity to wrap it up.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I went back—because I suspected this issue might well come up—and I timed the average length of a ministerial answer to a—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am not interested at all in this point of order. When we have questions to members, there are quite different standards for those compared with questions to Ministers. This is not a chance for a party political broadcast. I listened to the answer for quite long enough. The answer has been addressed. That is the end of the matter.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Is the member—

Chris Hipkins: It is a fresh point of order.

Mr SPEAKER: A fresh point of order. I am delighted to hear it.

Chris Hipkins: I wonder whether you could point out which of the Standing Orders you are referring to in making that ruling.

Mr SPEAKER: No, I cannot, but I will come to the member. [Interruption] Order! When I am on my feet, the member is to be silent. I will come back and refer him to Speakers’ rulings that will help. I will come back to the member with that.

Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Can I just, again, clarify: is this a—

Hon David Parker: I am trying to assist—

Mr SPEAKER: No, I do not need assistance. I need to know whether—[Interruption] Order! The member will also resume his seat. If the member attempts to relitigate what we have just covered, I will be asking the member to leave the Chamber for the rest of the afternoon. If he wants to raise a fresh point of order, I am only too happy to hear it.

Hon David Parker: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Perhaps you could provide clarification as to whether there is a difference between members when there is a question to members asking a question about a bill that is before the House, which I would have thought is an issue on which this House would want substantive answers, and other procedural matters. These are questions that go—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member is now relitigating exactly where we have been, and that explanation has already—the member might find it amusing; I do not think it is. I have already taken time. If the member goes back and has a look at previous comments I have made, I see quite a substantial difference between questions to Ministers and questions such as this, which are to members who have legislation about to come to the floor of this House. I accept that they are allowed under the Standing Orders. I have said in this House before that I think the value of that exercise is questionable. Question No. 2, Sue—

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Can I, again, just clarify. It is—

Chris Hipkins: It is just to do with the very last part of your ruling, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: No, that is relitigating. If the member wants to relitigate it, I will be asking him to leave the Chamber. But if he wants to—

Chris Hipkins: Well, you apply the Standing Orders as they exist now.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have made a decision. If the member wants to relitigate it, he can certainly do so, but I will be asking him to leave the Chamber. I have made a decision; the member does not have to agree with my decision, but he must accept it. Does the member wish to raise a point of order?

Chris Hipkins: No point.

Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill—Support

SUE MORONEY (Labour): My question, for what it is worth, is to the member in charge of the Social Security Pathway—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. The question has been accepted as in order. The question can be asked; it does not need comment from my right-hand side. Would the member start asking the question, which is in order.

2. SUE MORONEY (Labour) to the Member in charge of the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill: What indications of support has she received for the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill?

CARMEL SEPULONI (Member in charge of the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill): I have had numerous encounters with New Zealanders, ordinary New Zealanders, who come and tell me and my staff that the current abatement rates are prohibitive to their moving off benefits and into work. I have spoken to social service agencies, budget advisers, beneficiary advocates, and, importantly, employers, and they have all told me the same thing: this bill will make a huge difference to helping people to get off benefits, out of poverty, and into work.

Sue Moroney: What reasons have supporters of the bill given to her as to why they are supporting it?

Mr SPEAKER: Briefly, Carmel Sepuloni.

CARMEL SEPULONI: These Kiwis want to get off benefit and into employment, but the current system creates a barrier for them being able to do so. Employers have told me that the bill creates incentives for beneficiaries to remain in employment and not to go back on the benefit. Social service agencies have told me that the bill removes a structural barrier to getting people off benefit and into work—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I advised the member at the start of her answer that it was to be brief.

General Debate

General Debate

ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): I will move the motion, but before I do I will move the glasses of water out of the way to avoid an inevitable risk. I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Parliament has become very shabby in the last couple of days, attributable almost entirely to the conduct of our Prime Minister and his fellow members opposite. They will not stand up and provide the leadership that this nation expects and demands. We now are in the shocking situation of a Prime Minister of 7 years’ standing trivialising sexual abuse in this country and around the world.

Kiwis are sick and tired of a Government that is interested only in playing parliamentary parlour games and not in the issues that count for New Zealanders. Yesterday our Prime Minister chose the low road, as he so often does—the easy road. It was a so-called punchline to him there, and an insult to others there. It is the road of cynical, nasty politics. He had the opportunity today to rise up above and—

Hon Paula Bennett: Kettle black, mate. Kettle black.

ANDREW LITTLE: I have got news for you, Ms Bennett. I have got something about you, Ms Bennett. You will be part of it, too. He could have stood up and shown the leadership and statesmanship that this country is so long yearning for, but he could not bring himself to do it.

When we are dealing with New Zealand - born Australians who have lived virtually all their lives in Australia—lived their lives, worked there, got families and support networks there—and have committed crimes and done their sentence and are now being detained indefinitely, he could have got on the phone to Malcolm Turnbull and said: “Malcolm, I know we had a great time in Government House in Auckland a few weeks ago. I know we funned around with our rugby ties, and it was very funny, and we won. But, mate, you’ve got to do the right thing.” Because what Australia is doing, and what Malcolm Turnbull’s Government is doing, is the wrong thing.

When it comes to people who have lived virtually all their lives in Australia, those who have offended at the low end of the scale—the shoplifters, those who have got drink-driving convictions, and those who have got petty offences, even a number of them—their best chance of rehabilitation is not coming back to the country where they have got no support, no networks, no nothing, but is being back in the country that is the country of their upbringing. They are Australians in all but the place where they were born, and if our Prime Minister were a leader, he would be on the phone to Malcolm Turnbull and he would be making that point.

Well, what the Prime Minister has done, because he will not stand up to that issue, is just weak. He will not stand up to his mate and do what good mates do, and say: “Mate, on this occasion, it’s not right.” But it is hardly surprising. Look at the standards at which his Government operates. We have a chief whip, the Government’s desk monitor, who, rather than trying to allow debate on important issues like the appalling state of our State houses—which Paula Bennett is responsible for—or healthy homes, runs off and plays tittle-tattle. Here we have the Dominion Post now highlighting the very point that my Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill is all about—young children still, after 7 years of this Government, suffering and going to hospital. And we are trying to have that debate, but the desk monitor opposite—the man of great Christian virtue, who leads the prayer breakfasts in Parliament—has not an ounce of Christian charity to allow these people to at least have a chance. That is how appalling it is—that is how appalling it is.

But why would that surprise us when you have a housing Minister, or at least one-third of a housing Minister, sitting opposite who has gone down in world history as the world’s worst Minister in charge of a social policy ever. Not only has she failed Housing New Zealand tenants, not only has she failed to get decent-quality housing in New Zealand, but she was the one, as social development Minister, who presided over the nastiest piece of legislation ever to pass through this Parliament, whereby cancer patients who cannot continue to work have to go on a job seekers’ benefit and prove to our social agencies that they are looking for work as they are trying to cure themselves of the dreadful cancers that they have. And, when they cannot prove that they are working, she insists that they have to produce a medical note, at their expense, from their doctor. What a nasty Minister. What a dreadful, appalling, nasty, uncompassionate Minister.

She sits there embarrassed, as she should do. Well, it is all right, Paula; just say sorry. Just say sorry to the cancer sufferers of New Zealand, and say sorry to the State house tenants, whom you just do not care about. The only embarrassing thing about this, and I will have to send a word to the Dominion Post for backing us politically, is they have got to stop being so biased. It is embarrassing that they should be so—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Mr Speaker, tēnā koe o te rā; tēnā tātou o Te Whare nei. It is a privilege and honour to stand on behalf of the Government 7 years into our Government, led by a Prime Minister of exceptional character and leadership. Seven years ago, when we came into Government, we were shortly to become acutely aware of the global financial crisis and, 2 to 3 years later, of the Christchurch earthquakes. And here we are, 7 years later, the first Government in 43 years to provide benefits to families living in hardship.

Although the Opposition has a currency of personal attacks, this Government is focused on the issues that matter. Whether it is investing in raising the benefits for those families in hardship, or establishing the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary, and all of the policy achievements in between, this Government stands proudly on its track record. We have put children and their families squarely at the centre of all of our policies. We have turned the books around. We have returned—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The level of the interjection now is too loud. It must quieten down for the general debate.

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I can assure—

Sue Moroney: She’s got to stop telling lies—

Hon HEKIA PARATA: —the House that contrary to Sue Moroney’s accusation that I am telling lies, we have an evidenced track record of making a difference. We have—[Interruption] Mr Speaker, is there any possibility I could give my speech, rather than Sue Moroney? We have returned the books to surplus. We have a strong economy—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will now resume her seat. I have now given a specific warning to Sue Moroney that the level of interjection is too loud. It is a general debate, it is a robust debate, and I expect some interjection, but the level of noise—and she is not the only member, there is another one sitting to her immediate right who has now got the same bad habit developing. I do not want to see—[Interruption]. Order! I do not want to see any more members having to leave the Chamber this particular afternoon, but if it continues at the sort of level that it creates disorder, it is not fair on the member delivering a speech, and my only recourse will be to ask a member to leave.

Hon HEKIA PARATA: We have delivered across-the-board tax cuts as part of the biggest tax reform in 25 years. We have increased benefit rates, as I have already talked about. We have increased paid parental leave. We have made doctors visits free for under-13-year-olds. We have made breakfasts free in every school that wants or needs them. We have done real, compassionate, practical deliveries for the kids and families who matter, and we are proud of our record.

Moreover, I belong to a caucus and a Cabinet that is absolutely full of ideas for the future. We have got 7 years behind us. We know what makes the difference, and so do New Zealanders. They want an economy that works for them. They want to be able to get jobs, which we are increasing. How? Because we are investing in skills. We are focused on regional economies. We are focused on the overall economy. Mortgage rates are the lowest they have ever been. People want to be able to get into homes. They want to be able to bring up their families. They do not want to be told how to do it by the Opposition. We understand that, so we are focused on how do we create an environment where opportunity and choice are the closest travelling companions of New Zealanders, and I am proud to be part of a Government that does all of that.

As the Minister of Education, we have seen more children participating in quality early childhood education than ever before.

Sue Moroney: There’s no quality—not quality.

Hon HEKIA PARATA: It is quality. For every dollar the parent pays, the Government pays $4.38. It is far more than ever happened under that Government. We have got more kids participating, more kids getting National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2, which is the minimum qualification—

Sue Moroney: Lower quality.

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I am sorry, Mr Speaker. It defies intelligence that you can look at evidence and still argue the opposite. But it would appear that that is the problem with the Opposition. The evidence is clear. We are part of an effective 7-year-old Government, and we are here to do more. We are fresh. We are energetic. We are alive to the possibilities. This is a small, smart, sassy nation and it deserves the kind of leadership that we want to give it. So I am proud, very proud—very proud—to be a part of the John Key - led, National-led Government of New Zealand.

SUE MORONEY (Labour): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member who just resumed her seat—

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

SUE MORONEY: —has referred to evidence that she had of good quality early childhood education. I ask that she table that evidence.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I will check with the member whether she had such evidence during the general debate. I would be surprised. Did the member quote from official documents? No.

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): No, but I said—

Mr SPEAKER: Thank you, that is all I need—[Interruption] That is all I need.

JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): The last couple of days have been a very sad time in this Parliament. Given that the last speaker, the Hon Hekia Parata, spoke about the quality of leadership provided by our Prime Minister and some of the statements that he has chosen to stand by, to not resile from, and to not apologise for, I am just going to read out a few other quotes of his that I think he may want to stand by in the future as well: “He made a very significant contribution to our caucus.”, “He’s a loss in terms of the contribution I’ve seen him make as a politician.”, “I’m very happy for him to continue in the position that he does.”, and “He is a fully functioning member of the caucus.” Those are in relation to the former member for Northland. So when we stand accused of backing rapists and murderers we take great offence.

Alfred Ngaro: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Those comments—that current issue is actually before the courts and so I would like to take a point of order about it being sub judice.

Mr SPEAKER: I think on this occasion those remarks are OK within the general debate. I will listen more carefully. If there is any reference to a matter that is before the courts, that would of course be out of order. At this stage the speech is in order and it can continue.

JAMES SHAW: So when we stand accused of backing rapists and murderers and paedophiles, I say that those who live in glasshouses should not throw stones. The quality of leadership—so-called—that has been provided by our—

Mark Mitchell: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I just want to draw your attention to the fact that in the member’s speech he spoke about the member for Northland and then immediately started talking about rapists and drawing the Prime Minister into the debate. I do not know whether that is appropriate. I do not think it is because he is trying to link the two together.

Tracey Martin: Point of order.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, I do not need assistance from the member. It is a dangerous territory that we are in. At this stage I have ruled that the speech can continue. If it moves to an area that is before the courts, then I would cease the speech immediately, because I am very conscious of the responsibility—that Parliament has the responsibility that the judiciary has. In future if any members wish to get close to this line, the Standing Orders are quite clear that you need, in writing, to take this matter up with the Speaker so he can be better prepared. But I have ruled that the speech at this stage, and certainly where it has now moved to, can continue. I do not want further objections unless we go into an area of territory that is dangerous, and, frankly, I will be listening very carefully, so I will be the first on my feet, I suspect.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: I have ruled on the matter. Is it a fresh point of order?

Chris Hipkins: It is a fresh point of order. I will try to be very careful in doing so. It is that where members suspect that the particular Standing Orders that you are referring to—and I think we all know what they are—are being transgressed, I think we get ourselves into some difficult territory, which it may be useful for you to provide some further guidance on to the House. Members may interpret a comment a member is making as traversing that material that either was not intended or so on, but in raising a point of order they may themselves actually introduce material that links comments that either were not intended or were not intended in that way. I wonder whether you can give us some clarity on how members can raise that without themselves getting into the difficulty with the courts.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Well, I do not think there is any guidance I can give on that, but I accept the point the member is making. The issue now has been highlighted by the points of order raised. That is, effectively, what the member is saying. As I said, I have not ruled anything out at this stage, but I am listening carefully. I invite Mr Shaw to continue his contribution.

JAMES SHAW: When we stand accused of backing rapists and paedophiles and murderers, we take great offence—particularly those members who have been the victims of rapists and paedophiles and murderers and who have fought for years and years and years for the rights of those victims. I find it absolutely extraordinary that the Prime Minister has chosen to distract from his own troubles by choosing to go on the offensive and to say—for some inexplicable reason—that the records of members on this side of the House in fighting those fights are somehow the exact opposite. That is what he is accusing them of. That is an extraordinary thing.

I mean, the lines that he is using—I get that they have been dreamt up in the Australian offices—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Crosby/Textor.

JAMES SHAW: —of political consulting firm Crosby/Textor, because they have been trotted out here and in Australia. He wants to look tough on crime, and I know it is a dog whistle to the kind of red meat brigade who consistently vote for National. But it is absolutely unacceptable in this House to accuse members of the Opposition of backing rapists and murderers. It is completely unparliamentary. It lacks leadership. It brings this House into disrepute. It is quite clear that until an apology is made for those comments and until they are withdrawn, this House will continue to see a high level of disorder.

Mr Speaker, I would like you to reflect on your own rulings. I recognise that you have made a number of rulings in relation to this matter over the last several hours and looked at the events of yesterday, but you have to accept that because of the nature of those rulings we are going to see continued disorder. Essentially, what has happened is that the members of the Opposition now have no confidence in the procedures of this House and no confidence in the Chair.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will stand and withdraw that comment.

JAMES SHAW: I withdraw and apologise, Mr Speaker—unlike our Prime Minister, who does not have the grace to do so.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Just carry on with the speech.

JAMES SHAW: What we have seen here is that the Opposition has been attempting to hold the Government to account on its human rights record and attempting to hold our Australian friends to account for their transgressions of human rights. What has happened is that in order to distract from that issue and in order to look tough on crime and boost the poll ratings amongst the sort of “Stamp them on the neck until they stop what they’re doing” crowd, the “Lock them up and throw away the key” crowd—I think it is the Prime Minister who should be locked up.

The extraordinary thing here is that they have just gone on the offensive and decided that in order to distract from all of that, they are going to lay it on this side of the House—that for some reason members who have been abused, members who have stood up for the victims of abuse for their entire career, are somehow backing rapists and murderers and paedophiles. It is utterly absurd. It is completely offensive. It lacks leadership. It is unparliamentary, and it brings into disrepute this House and our proceedings.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): This Government has a plan that is working. From 2011 and a debt of $18 billion, we now have a small surplus. In 2009 Treasury expected a net debt of 60 percent of GDP. Now it is just over 25 percent, and it will come down to 20 percent in the coming years. Also, interest rates have been low for 7 years—they are at a 50-year low. Interest rates are going to stay low for the coming years. In the past 4 years we have also created 200,000 new jobs. This is a Government that has been focusing on economic growth.

There are two key components to our plan. One is, of course, to manage our finances responsibly. Secondly, we have a growth-driven economic plan. To have growth in the economy, we need to focus on trade. Trade is particularly important for New Zealand, simply because we are a small country with just over 4 million people. That is a lifeline for our economy. Trade with China has been growing extremely fast. In 2008 our exports with China were just over $2 billion; now they are close to $10 billion.

Trade also means more investment. Trade and investment—the two often come together. For example, last Friday I attended the opening ceremony of Yashili in Pōkeno in North Waikato. This company invested over $220 million in the plant. Eventually it will employ 85 people from the local community, and also the output will be 52,000 tonnes of formula products. So this is the kind of investment that we need for our New Zealand economy. The Mayor of Waikato said: “Look, the Waikato region is growing fast.” Also, there is another company—the Yili Group. The Yili Group in Glenavy in South Canterbury has invested $236 million. The plant cost $236 million and will produce 33,000 tonnes of milk powder. In the coming 5 years the group is going to invest another $400 million. By 2019 the group is going to have expected revenue of $700 million.

These are giants—the big businesses in New Zealand—but we also support small business in New Zealand. For example, I came across a couple of young people. They are doing cross-border e-commerce. The business that they set up 2 years ago has been growing by over 1,000 percent each year. They are very, very optimistic that we are going to see more small business in New Zealand, simply because we now have more channels through the internet. That is why the Government has been trying hard to encourage more and more business people to come into e-commerce.

Overall, the Government needs to have business growth in its mind. That is why the Government has been trying to focus on business growth. Another thing is that this trade with China has been doing so well that we are having more free-trade agreements. For example, we are going to have a free-trade agreement with South Korea, and also the Trans-Pacific Partnership. If we have the Trans-Pacific Partnership and also the South Korean free-trade agreement, that means that we will have free-trade agreements with our top five trading partners, including Australia, China, the United States, Japan, and South Korea. This is a Government that has been focusing on economic growth. Trade, I emphasise again, is particularly important, and we are doing well. The country is moving in the right direction. Thank you.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): We heard today that the National Party is part of a 7-year-old Government. Well, I say to Hekia Parata and to members opposite that the country is getting the 7-year itch. You know what happens when the 7-year itch comes—along with it comes divorce. Mr Deputy Speaker, I have been here for some time, as you know. I know when a Government is reaching the end of its time, when the time is up, and when the public starts to say: “Time to move on.”

Chris Bishop: You’ve been saying that once a year for 7 years.

Hon ANNETTE KING: And that will be particularly for you, Mr Bishop. It will be time for you to move on.

That time is when there is chaos in the House, when there are points of order after points of order, when there is anger, when there are recriminations, and when there are accusations. When the answers from Ministers are nothing more than sledging, when the Prime Minister loses the respect of the office, when the Prime Minister acts like a clown, when everything is a joke, when the most important issue of the day is what tie he is going to wear in the Parliament and what tie the Prime Minister of Australia is going to wear in this Parliament—when this House is reduced to that level, you know that it is a Government that is on the way out.

Those who say the Prime Minister’s position affords him respect, I say to them that they are wrong. You earn respect in that position. That is what happens in that position. You earn respect, and this Prime Minister has lost it. He has lost respect. He has lost dignity. He has lost decency. He has lost compassion. And he has lost interest in human rights, as we have heard here over the last 2 days—if he ever had any interest in human rights. He still is the only person I have ever met in my life who did not know what side he was on on the Springbok Tour—whether he was for apartheid South Africa or not. But I noticed he was pretty quick to get over to the funeral of Nelson Mandela.

I have a sense of déjà vu, and I think the Rt Hon Winston Peters will have it too. There was a party that took a breach of privilege against a member, Winston Peters, who should never have had a breach of privilege taken against him. It spent a year crucifying him, only to find that the public found it despicable. That is what I find despicable from the chief National Party whip, who is such a big “boo baby” that he cannot take a little bit of sledging that happens in politics. I have heard much worse things said in this House, I can tell you—much worse. In fact, I think Trevor Mallard has said worse things than that in this House and he has not appeared before a Privileges Committee hearing.

I want to start my contribution to this general debate today by saying that the National Party members hate the provinces. They hate the provinces. I remember last Wednesday’s debate. There they were, one after the other, sneering and scoffing and ridiculing because the Labour Party members were going to Palmerston North for their conference. National members thought it was a laugh. They thought it was hopeless. They did not see that we had the foresight to go to the mighty Manawatū, to the city of Palmerston North, one of the great provincial cities of New Zealand that has been wise enough to return a Labour member decade after decade.

I want you to compare our conference in Palmerston North with the National Party conference in the Skycity Casino—the Skycity Casino. There they were, holed up with dozens of security guards, scared to death because there were a few protesters outside wearing high-vis vests. They were surrounded by the usual blue-rinse and pearls brigade, and they were surrounded by a whole bunch of arrogant Cabinet Ministers who were there telling them what they ought to do. They made an awful lot of effort to keep the old unwashed out of that conference, did they not? Goodness me! They might have made a mess if they had got in and told them the truth.

Well, I think the National Party has become one big Ya Ya Club—one big Ya Ya Club. If you do not know what a Ya Ya Club is, it is one of these new, elite clubs for the super-rich, privileged kids of Auckland. I can tell you that the Ya Ya Club is now the National Party. That is what we are seeing—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank the member for her insight, but her time has expired.

Hon JO GOODHEW (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector): Well, I rise to take part in this general debate. What we have seen an absence of this afternoon from the Opposition is debate on the issues that New Zealanders really care about. New Zealanders really care about their own lives and what this Government is doing to assist them.

So after a busy 7 years I am able to report, just like my colleagues have said before, that there is still so much to do. We are absolutely energetic about it, but it has been a very busy 7 years. It has been a challenging 7 years at times. But we are still completely focused on New Zealanders and how we are going to make their lives better. That will be about a well-performing economy. It will be about more jobs—not Government-created jobs but business-created jobs. It will be about lifting their incomes and providing the essential services that support them and their families.

So when a New Zealander is considering their own bank statement, what do they want to know? They want to know that the Government is responsibly managing its own bank statement. They want to be able to trust in the Government not to be profligate spenders and not to promise and deliver vast arrays of spending without any thought about whether they are getting value for money.

New Zealanders also, if they are in business, want to know that the Government is focused on making their business lives better, that they are going to be more productive, they are going to add to an economy, that the Government is focused on, for example, free-trade agreements, so that they can sell their products overseas if they wish, that the Government is always looking to a higher prize. And that certainly is what our Business Growth Agenda is all about.

New Zealanders also want to know that when they pay tax those tax dollars are being used to good effect and that we are not squandering their tax dollars, and that, certainly, is not what we are doing. However, I do have to say that we have now a record $25 billion going into our health and education expenditure. That is good news—that is all good news—and I want to move on to some more good news. In fact, this is breaking news. Members of the Parliament, this is breaking news.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Heartbreaking news.

Hon JO GOODHEW: Oh, well, I do not think you will find it so, Mr Peters. This is the Charities Aid Foundation World Giving Index for 2015. It is in its sixth year. It is a leading authority on global generosity.

I think that people who feel good about their lives often are generous as well. The index shows a picture of charitable behaviour across the world, comparing 145 countries. New Zealand is third. New Zealand is third, behind Myanmar and the US. New Zealand is in the top three. We have moved up two places. That does not sound like a country that is feeling down in the dumps to me.

We have been volunteering our time in greater numbers than ever before. So we are the fourth, with 45 percent of our 15-year-olds and over volunteering their time, and sixth when it comes to giving away money, if you are over 15 years of age. I think that is fantastic news and I just know that that is not a sentiment that would happen if this country was in the doldrums. No, this is a country that has confidence in the John Key - led Parliament.

But then there is more good news. I have more good news for the members of the House. I want to talk about the fantastic numbers of products in our supermarkets right now with front-of-pack labelling. It is not a new idea; we introduced it about 18 months ago. There are 600 products in our supermarkets that tell you at a glance, so that you can compare across products, what is the healthier product. What a radical idea that is!

This has also meant that the companies have reduced their sugar and their salt in their products in order to get more stars. So between half a star and five stars—five being the best—70 percent of New Zealand’s breakfast cereals have reformulated to be healthier. Gosh, that was easy; it was all voluntary. How did that happen? I cannot believe it, but it did happen. The bulk bins in the supermarket are going to be there. People say “Oh, you only buy on price.” but, in fact, the cheapest products—the home brand products—are right up there: 500 by the end of the year. So I can say that this is a success of this Government: healthier products for our New Zealanders.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): My colleague and deputy leader, Annette King, reminded us that this National Government is 7 years old. It reminded me that it is in fact just a few months younger than my 7-year-old son. That boy, he is no angel, but I can tell you what: he has got more self-control, more maturity, and more dignity than John Key and the entire National front bench combined.

But I want to say to the House that it does not matter how deplorable the Prime Minister’s behaviour has been over the last few days, it does not matter how much he has brought this House into disrepute, I am on a bit of a high and nothing the Prime Minister can do can bring me down. It is a fantastic time to be a member of the Labour Party and it is a fantastic time to be the member of Parliament for Palmerston North.

The Labour Party has just had a tremendous annual conference in my city of Palmerston North: 530 delegates came from across the country to catch up with each other, to discuss policy, and to talk about how we are going to get our party into shape to take down this Government in 2017 and to form a Government that will put people first.

I heard last week the Government putting down my city and I was appalled. I thought that the National Party members still believed that they could actually take the Palmerston North seat. It is all I have heard for the last 8 years—how they were going to take out Palmerston North. And do you know what? They have given up because they know they cannot ever take Palmerston North off the Labour Party. The way they were talking about Palmerston North last week, putting down the regions, putting down a fantastic centre like that, which can host such a wonderful conference—I know that the National Party hates Palmerston North, and they have given up on ever taking it back.

But I want to talk about the positives. I want to talk about the wonderful conference that we had, and the wonderful discussions that we had. Delegates were walking down George Street, enjoying the sunshine. They made the most of the cafes and restaurants and bars, and we had some fantastic speeches. We had some great speeches not only from our leader, Andrew Little, but from Annette King and from Grant Robertson as well. They were laying down how Labour will approach the economy, how Labour will approach the health system, and then we ended with that amazing tub-thumping speech from Andrew Little in the magnificent Regent on Broadway, with a full theatre, standing room only in the Regent on Broadway—

Hon Annette King: Over 800?

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Over 800, actually, Mrs King. That theatre seats well over 800 people. It was a wonderful time, and it was a wonderful time to be in the Labour Party.

What Andrew Little said was that the Labour Party is putting a stake in the ground. We will not tolerate poverty in New Zealand in the 21st century. We will not tolerate poverty. This is not just about making sure that we get more people into jobs and that we back the regions so that the increasing unemployment rate in regional New Zealand, under this National Government, is reversed. It is also about making sure that when people get into work they are paid a decent wage and they are paid enough to be able to get ahead.

It is appalling that under this Government two out of five of the children living in poverty live in a household where there is at least one adult earning a wage. Two out of five of our children living in poverty live in households with at least one adult who is in work and earning. That is a deplorable reflection on this National Government and we simply will not stand for it on this side of the House.

We believe that the way out of poverty should be through work. That is why we have a focus on creating jobs, on creating jobs, on creating jobs—in the regions and across New Zealand; jobs that pay well. We are not satisfied when AgResearch cuts jobs in Palmerston North and in other parts of the country. We are not satisfied to see the regions on a steady decline as they have been since 2010 under this National Government. Over the weekend the Labour Party demonstrated unity and happiness and a sense of purpose, heading towards 2017. We are united in the belief that it is time for this 7-year-old childish Government to go, and we will win in 2017.

ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): I am very pleased to hear that Mr Lees-Galloway is on a high. I am not sure what sorts of drugs he has been on, but he has been taking an overdose, because we have heard from the Leader of the Opposition, the deputy leader, and now Mr Lees-Galloway and we have not heard a single policy. I mean, what conference did they go to? There was no conference, there were no ideas, there were no fresh ideas—except that they have dropped the capital gains tax and they have gone away with this silly Marxist idea of a centralised electricity buying and selling platform. Those are the only two things that they came out with over a whole weekend of coffee drinking, bar cruising, and drug taking. I would like to suggest that the jobs that they want to be created are being created. There have been over 200,000 new jobs created under this Government in the past 4 years.

As for regional New Zealand, I can tell you that my electorate is doing very well—very, very well. Carterton is one of the fastest-growing towns in the country. Masterton has had a GDP growth of 6 percent in the past 12 months. Aucklanders are thriving. Aucklanders are coming, Aucklanders are visiting us, and they are staying in the beautiful place that is the Wairarapa. Regional New Zealand is doing well. Masterton is one of seven towns that are 100 percent rolled-out with ultra-fast broadband. This ultra-fast broadband stuff connects people with the world. Infrastructure between Wellington and Masterton allows Wellingtonians to live in the beautiful Wairarapa and work in Wellington. This is good for the regional economy of the Wairarapa.

Loan-to-value ratios are another thing that have helped regional New Zealand, encouraging people to borrow and build houses in the Wairarapa as opposed to Auckland. The signals are working. People are moving from Auckland and they are coming to the Wairarapa to live, to set up their businesses, and to raise their families. Immigration credits also favour regional New Zealand. An immigrant applying to come to New Zealand is treated more favourably if they choose to live outside Auckland. Our other towns in the Wairarapa are well on the way to pitching for the second round of ultra-fast broadband, including Martinborough, Greytown, and Carterton—Waipukurau and Dannevirke amongst them. Last summer regional Wairarapa had record numbers of tourists—record numbers.

Across the country, we have fewer people not in education, tertiary education, or employment. The lowest number ever. This effects regional New Zealand. Tonight I am going to be going to the Copthorne Hotel and Resort Solway Park Wairarapa to award people from the Wairarapa with apprenticeship and industry training awards. Those trainees and those apprentices are being supported by National Party policy supporting 20,000 new apprentices across the country. These people are the future of the Wairarapa; these people are the future of New Zealand. These will be the future leaders in our industries and our trades.

Wairarapa is an older electorate. We are overweighted in superannuitants, and, since 2008, superannuation has gone up by 31 percent—inflation, comparatively, by 15.3 percent. You heard Minister English say those numbers this afternoon. This is the policy that supports regional New Zealand. I could talk about the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I am waiting for these guys to support it because that is the fundamental policy that will support the regions. That is the fundamental difference between this side of the House and that side; we support jobs in the regions, we support a growing economy, we support families, and we will be here for a very long time to come.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): Everybody is moving to the Wairarapa, excepting Alastair Scott, the local MP. I went down the main street of Masterton and I asked 10 “Wairarapans”—I said to them: “Who’s your local MP?”. Nine could not tell me, and the tenth one was his branch chairman.

Will Rogers once said: “I don’t make jokes; I just watch the Government and I report the facts.” And the effective takeover of Silver Fern Farms proves it. We know Silver Fern Farms tried to meet the Minister of Finance months ago but he was too busy to meet with our largest meat exporter. If he will not meet them and if he will not see them, what guarantees does Fonterra have in its hour of need? What is for certain is that this supposed bent Chinese deal for Silver Fern Farms needs the sunlight of investigation.

The apologists would have us believe that Silver Fern Farms was a financial train wreck, but on Monday, only 3 weeks after its board recommended a half fire sale to the Chinese, Silver Fern Farms announced a 28 percent surge in operating profit, to $86 million. This was off the revenues for New Zealand of $2.45 billion. It slashed debt down from $288 million to $120 million, and by the end of June next year it will be down to $89 million.

The farmers were told they were going to get $261 million because they were led to believe all that by soothing words. They have been conned by a board that should have resigned and by Goldman Sachs questionable legal chicanery. Shanghai Maling, this Chinese State-owned enterprise, is getting the corporate heist of the century. It is paying only $57 million for half of Silver Fern Farms, with $40 million for the shareholders, $17 million retained by the co-op, and a very fishy $7 million earmarked for future co-op directors’ costs. This smells. There is another name for this, and it is called a golden parachute for corporate quislings.

And what do the Chinese get in return and why? They get control of everything, from Silver Fern Farms’ assets to intellectual property, including taxpayer-funded research and development. All of it gets poured into a new company called Silver Fern Farms Ltd. In this company, the co-op and Shanghai Maling may have five board seats apiece, but Shanghai Maling gets to appoint the chairman and hold the casting vote on matters that deliver complete control of the company to the Chinese Government—things like appointing the chief executive officer, setting the budget, business planning, and the timing and amounts of dividends. All those five things are in the control of the Chinese, and that also includes control over the much-touted $261 million, meaning it is, in reality, just an internal transfer of funds from one Chinese Government - controlled agency to another. And if Chinese control affects stock procurement policy, leads to plant closures, or moves value-added processing to China, there is nothing the co-op half owner can do about it.

What on earth is provincial National Party MP representation doing? Why, nothing. They do not want to know. They just do not want to know. This deal is rotten, and a lot of National Party people are saying so, and a lot of intelligent farmers are saying so as well. They say: “Oh, you’re going to go and supply the Alliance Group.” Oh, yes? If there is a price war, guess who is going to win? It will not be the Alliance Group.

There is also a certain issue about Shanghai Maling’s overseas-person status—something well outlined in the National Business Review by lawyer and Silver Fern Farms supplier David Boswell. When it comes to certain transactions, it will need Overseas Investment Office approval, telegraphing the fact that Silver Fern Farms is not 100 percent pure New Zealand. Aside from China having a back door into Mr Key’s much-vaunted Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal that US House Republicans now say will not be signed in 2016, our farmers end up exposed to whatever China does domestically and internationally. You could not see a worse deal.

We are caught now. Should the Spratly Islands, for example, or pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong explode, we would be finding ourselves in a diplomatic straitjacket, typically taken there by somebody from Merrill Lynch who knows nothing about international circumstances, or foreign policy for that matter. In any crisis, Silver Fern Farms’ profits go to a Chinese State-owned enterprise and it does not sit well with the United States, the biggest importer of our beef. But perhaps the biggest concern is the way that the Takeovers Act and the Takeovers Code are being side-stepped almost as expertly as Nehe Milner-Skudder.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): It is a great privilege to be able to stand up on behalf of the Bay of Plenty region, one of the strongest-performing regions in the country. The first thing that underpins that is, of course, the recent free-trade agreement that we announced. I want to acknowledge Tim Groser in particular. He is a phenomenal advocate for New Zealand’s interests overseas—not only has it been the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and it will soon be the EU free-trade agreement but also it has been the Korean free-trade agreement. So well done to Tim Groser—an absolute leader.

But as I look across the House and I look at the Opposition—I am going to ignore New Zealand First, which is always opposed to connecting ourselves to the world—I was absolutely surprised that the Labour Party particularly, which has for the last 20 years held a view that we should be connected in the world, and that, particularly in respect of trade, we should be shoulder to shoulder, no longer does under this leadership under Andrew Little. What I find is there is a portion of the Labour Party members I would expect that from: those who are unionists, those who are academics, and those who have never put a dollar of their own capital at risk to sell anything to anybody who is overseas and actually demands value. But there are four or five in that party—and I am looking at two of them: David Parker and David Shearer, but I can add Damien O’Connor, Phil Goff, and Clayton Cosgrove—who for the last 20 years have said “Look, in respect of trade, we’re going to be bipartisan, because we understand the benefit to New Zealand when you actually drive a decent and strong deal.”, which is exactly what Tim Groser has done. Over the last 10 years and, indeed, when it was in Government, Labour was for the Chinese free-trade agreement. In fact, Labour sat here on this side, supported by Tim Groser, when there was only us as part of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement and tried to imagine how we could connect this small country at the bottom of the world, with hardly any trade leverage, into part of a large economic trading bloc. Labour was part of that thinking, and, indeed, it pursued it with vigour. We managed to get the approval, of course, of the Chinese for that Chinese free-trade agreement and that has been of significant benefit, not only to the country but, particularly, to where I have come from.

To now hear that Labour members are sitting and opposing this is absolutely disgraceful—absolutely disgraceful. They knew, and particularly the Phil Goffs and the Clayton Cosgroves knew, that from a small position we needed to negotiate hard. Yes, we have high principles but, ultimately, we are just one of many, and we had to negotiate from the position that, of course, we find ourselves in. I believe that they know, in their heart of hearts, that if they were given the same opportunity to negotiate with 12 other countries, they would have landed the same deal, and, in fact, I am sure, David Parker, that I have heard you say that. So it is absolute nonsense that they now have to swallow their history and their involvement with free trade and be part of a caucus that says: “No, we’re not part of the world. We’re not part of the largest trading bloc in the world. We’re going to oppose it.” It is absolute nonsense, and they know, in their heart of hearts, these few good men, that this actually has a whole lot of value for New Zealand. The truth of this is that this delivers—particularly the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement; worth $2.7 billion, with tariff savings of $259 million, and that is all on the assumption that we do not sell any more and that the price we sell at in those markets does not improve. They know the truth of this deal. The problem with that side of the House is that they just cannot handle the truth, and they cannot take that argument and win it in their caucus, and it is a disgrace, bearing in mind their 20 years of free-trade pedigree.

In our town, in Tauranga and in the Bay of Plenty, we know the value of this deal. When we can talk to the kiwifruit industry, we are talking about $14,000 per orchardist—$14,000. Yes, New Zealand First, you can smile; it is a lot of money. And these are direct benefits to the kiwifruit industry, to New Zealand, and, particularly, to the Bay of Plenty. That continues to drive one of the most extraordinary growth stories that is occurring in this country in my area. There have been 4,700 more jobs created in the last 12 months—up 138 percent. It is the fastest-growing region in New Zealand, and I am absolutely proud to be part of a Government that puts real issues on the table, grows the economy from that base, and sends decent investment to people who need it. That is leadership, and the nonsense we have had to put up with for the last 2 hours from the Opposition members will condemn them to stay there for the next 10 years.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Ā, tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. “Kia whai korōria, hariruia ki a Ihoa o ngā mano tūāuriuri, whaiōiō, kī tonu te rangi me te whenua i te nui o tōna korōria.” Ka huri aku w’akaaro ki te tino kaupapa o tēnei rā w’akahirahira, te rā tohu rangimārietanga mō te ao katoa, arā, Armistice Day. E kore e warewaretia, e kore e warewaretia, nō reira, e Te Rangatira o Te Whare Pāremata, tēnā koe.

[So thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. “Glory and hallelujah to Jehovah of the innumerable thousands; heaven and earth is filled with the greatness of his glory.” My thoughts turn now to the great event of this wonderful day, this day of peace for the whole world—in other words, Armistice Day. It will never ever be forgotten, so acknowledgments to you, esteemed one of Parliament House.]

I can confirm that Palmerston North is a great Labour city. Not only does it elect a great general MP in Iain Lees-Galloway; it elects a good Māori electorate MP as well, I have to say, and together, along with the local people, we had a great conference in Palmerston North. If I was to summarise the outcome that is important to my people, it is that we will not tolerate poverty. When we are in Government we will put action on poverty at the very heart of everything we do.

I too—like Todd Muller, the speaker who has just resumed his seat—am really concerned about what has been said in this House over the last few hours and, indeed, the last 24 hours. I stand in solidarity with the members of this Parliament who have stood in this Parliament to attempt to give their testimony and to ask the Prime Minister to apologise for his statements in this House yesterday. It is a great shame that he does not have the courage or the fortitude to be able to stand up in this House and to do—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! It is unparliamentary to call into question the fortitude or courage of another member, and the member should know that.

ADRIAN RURAWHE: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I withdraw and apologise for that—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you.

ADRIAN RURAWHE: —because that is the courageous thing to do. That is the correct thing to do when one has made a mistake, and I will stand in this House to do that. I think it is important that all members of this Parliament do so when they have done something incorrect. Sexual violence is not a joke. It is not to be mocked.

This is an issue of justice—justice for those who are detained in a country where they have chosen to live. They are New Zealand - born Australians, and when I have heard in this House that they should go home, well, home is Australia. We should be helping those families and those men and women who are detained on Christmas Island and in other facilities. It is in their best interests that they should be able to have justice, and we stand here in support of them.

But I go back to my initial statement and say I commend those members who stood in this House to say some very personal things to this House for their courage. It should not be underestimated as to how much courage that actually took.

I can faithfully report to the House that we on this side of the House believe that Labour is on a roll. We are in our 100th year of being a party—the oldest party in this country. We are the party that will deliver on the aspirations of all New Zealanders—for example, owning a home, having security for our families, looking after the environment, and having safe and secure work. This is the Kiwi dream, and when we on this side of the House occupy the benches opposite, we will do everything we can—and New Zealanders should, rightfully, expect nothing less from their parliamentarians.

I would further say that the National Government is surely failing on these issues. Might I add that the debate yesterday on the Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential Land) Bill was one example of where this Government is failing.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): What a depressing weekend in Palmerston North it must have been for those members opposite. We just heard from Adrian that Palmerston North is a sea of red. Well, I have to say that it might be a Labour city now, but it is a Labour city surrounded by a sea of blue. Let me just say to members opposite that Iain Lees-Galloway’s words will come back to haunt him—they will come back to haunt him. He said that the National Party will never ever win Palmerston North. Well, I have a message for Iain Lees-Galloway: Jono Naylor is coming for you. I am coming for Trevor Mallard in Hutt South—[Interruption] Nuk is coming for you in Port Hills, Ruth Dyson. We are all fighting hard for those seats, so those words are going to come back to haunt the Labour Party. Iain Lees-Galloway’s numbers are about as shonky as Grant Robertson’s. The size of the Labour conference in Palmerston North on the weekend was about the size of a National Party regional conference—and it was Labour’s national conference.

No more talk about members who are irrelevant. I want to talk, in my brief contribution, about the big divide in New Zealand politics. Actually, the big divide in New Zealand politics these days is not between conservatism or liberalism. It is not about the rural and urban divide. It is not even about left or right these days. The real divide in this Parliament is between what New Zealand’s attitude should be to the outside world. The question is this: does New Zealand’s future lie as an open, confident trading nation connected to the global economy, knowing that welcoming foreign capital and labour drives increased prosperity and lifts our living standards, or does New Zealand’s future lie instead in lifting our shutters to the outside world, denying even the reality or the benefits of globalisation, and practising a form of protectionism that manifests itself at best as economic vandalism and at worst as a form of bigotry and even racism?

As my colleague Todd Muller pointed out, for 30 years there has been a bipartisan consensus in this House about the reality of the outside world and about the dismantling of Fortress New Zealand, and it is one of the Labour Party’s greatest legacies to New Zealand that it started that process from 1984 onwards. Labour dismantled protectionism. It got rid of tariffs. It got rid of subsidies on agricultural products. It opened New Zealand to the outside world. Well, how times have changed. It started back in 2008 with the outrageous decision by Labour to change the investment rules on a whim to stop the Canadian pension plan from investing in Auckland Airport. It continued when Labour was in Opposition and turned its sights on foreign investment and farmland under Phil Goff’s leadership, forgetting that foreign farm sales under Labour were four times what they were under National and forgetting the enormous benefits that foreign investment brings to New Zealand.

The nadir of this attack on foreign investment and on foreign migrants was Phil Twyford’s utterly disgraceful and disreputable attack a few months ago on people of Chinese ethnicity. It was the absolute nadir. This was from the party that in 2002 apologised to Chinese New Zealanders for the poll tax back in the 1860s. Well, what a disgrace. It is no surprise that the Labour Party has stopped talking about this recently. In some ways it is inevitable that the Labour Party would do this—that it would capitulate to its own worst instincts. It is under attack from the Green Party, which has never supported free trade and has never supported an open New Zealand, despite the fact that it likes to come down here and preach about internationalism and those sorts of things. It has never supported actual openness with the outside world. The Labour Party has been under attack on its left flank, so it is no surprise that it would capitulate, but it is very disgraceful.

The modern-day Labour Party is, I believe, no more than the political wing of the organised protest movement—the type of people who think an argument is just saying “Neo-liberalism, neo-liberalism” over again; the type of people who think that you start an argument by talking about Crosby/Textor; the type of people who opposed the Chinese free-trade deal and who opposed the agricultural subsidies and tariff removal of the 1980s; the type of people who no doubt opposed Closer Economic Relations in 1983; and the type of people who do not want us to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, which is the apex of trade and diplomacy in New Zealand foreign policy for 30 years.

This is the important point, and this is the critical question that confronts the Labour Party in this Parliament today: which way is the Labour Party going to go on the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Is it going to back openness; is it going to back globalisation; is going to back connecting New Zealand into the global economy; or is it going to give in to its worst instincts, continue to be a non-responsible party of Government, and back the protest movement and people who have never had New Zealand’s best interests? It is absolutely, fundamentally, in our best interests that the Labour Party signs the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is a critical question for this Parliament and for this country as to whether or not the Labour Party goes for New Zealand or it goes for protest.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Electricity Industry (Small-Scale Renewable Distributed Generation) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed from 14 October.

RIA BOND (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Electricity Industry (Small-Scale Renewable Distributed Generation) Amendment Bill. The energy sector, in New Zealand First’s opinion, is essentially broken. There is a great deal of detail that needs to be debated in this House. However, as time allows only a simple summary of these issues, it is to state the very real fact that electricity prices have risen in real terms nearly 50 percent in this country.

Originally, the energy sector was publicly owned and democratically accountable. The industry aims were motivated by this question: how do we best benefit the people of New Zealand? Now electricity is not viewed as an essential service; instead the market system would rule where the question of profit maximising or even profiteering became the motivator of the individual organisations.

Today this debate is about a fundamental question: what is the future of energy here in New Zealand? Is it the private sector? Is the private sector not, in fact, worried about the future of its core business? Is it worried, and if it is worried, is it supportive of empowering other businesses? I would like to quote from Gareth Hughes’ letter exactly what the intent of this bill will do: “This bill is a simple amendment of the Electricity Industry Act to empower the electricity authority to amend the electricity industry code and to act as an independent umpire.

The reality is that New Zealand needs legislation like this. In fact, it is only a start. In New Zealand we have plenty of sunshine hours, and on average per annum we are looking at 2,000 hours. I also want to point out that New Zealanders want a choice in whom they decide to spend their money with. I acknowledge that in today’s world consumer needs are much more diverse, and consumers want more options.

In Rotorua there is a marae generating its own electricity through geothermal, hydro, and solar-panelled energy sources. What it struggled to do was find somebody to buy back its surplus when the time was right. When it did find a retailer, it excitedly signed up, only to see its bucks drop down, month by month.

New Zealand First supports this bill because homeowners want to make environmentally and financially sound investments. This bill seeks to create fairness in the market; it seeks to address a real imbalance between the retailers and small independent generators. [Interruption] Sorry, I am just finding my piece of paper. I have so much to say on this that I actually got lost in my paperwork. So, in simple terms, this bill seeks to amend the Electricity Act. If the Electricity Authority was independently empowered, then the three tasks this bill sets out to achieve are a fair and reasonable buy-back rate, standard contracts, and standard connection frameworks across all regions.

I find it odd that currently the power retailers are the very people who sell this power to the consumers, and are also the very people who are buying back the surplus from those very consumers. If the Electricity Authority was independently empowered with these tasks, and this bill seeks to achieve this, then as a country we would be supporting renewable energy use.

Minister Brownlee voiced his concerns that this bill will encourage consumers to go off the grid. The intention of this bill, as it shows, seeks to set a fair and reasonable buy-back price. Mr Brownlee also described the need for balance, but the retailers are drifting that balance in their favour as the big players look to protect the infrastructure.

To ask the Electricity Authority to act as an arbitrator is reasonable. Examples of this exist overseas—models that actually work. New Zealand First supports this bill being referred to the select committee so that New Zealanders can come along and let their voices be heard, and that is what a good democratic process needs. New Zealand First supports this bill.

BRETT HUDSON (National): I rise in opposition to the Electricity Industry (Small-Scale Renewable Distributed Generation) Amendment Bill. In doing so, we reflect on this member’s bill. First, I ask myself, will the bill deliver the purpose that it claims, and is it actually seeking to address a real issue—so is there any point to it, and will it do it?

In this case, let us first look, because the purpose of the bill says—and I will just quote a portion of it—that it is to “break down existing barriers and provide a fair regime … to encourage greater renewable distributed generation.” So the claim is that there are barriers and that the situation is not fair.

Let us first turn our attention to the so-called barriers. Solar photovoltaic energy doubled between 2013 and 2014, and the trend has remained upwards. So if we look at the number of installed control points around the country that are photovoltaic, on 31 August 2013 there were 1,205 of those. On 30 June 2015 there were 6,161. For the member’s benefit I will just point out that that is a 500 percent growth. So to claim that somehow there are inherent barriers is to go against what is actually happening and what people are choosing of their own volition to undertake across New Zealand.

Secondly, let us look at an issue of fairness. If there is not such a great barrier, what is the fairness to be addressed? Our point would be that if the member is going to subsidise generation for one form, which is in an otherwise competitive market, then we are actually just interfering unnecessarily in that market, and creating distortions. Because what the member is seeking to do is to set not only terms and conditions of contract but a price for the buy-back of excess generation into the grid for a period of 10 years. Unfortunately, that will require retailers to purchase electricity often at a price that is greater than the wholesale price they could otherwise pay. In other words, the marginal cost of electricity will be higher under their model than it would be on the open competitive market that we have today. You see, New Zealand has already got 80 percent renewable energy. The additional megawatt, kilowatt, or watt that is provided at the moment is most likely to be provided from a renewable source.

So, in fact, all the member’s bill would do is two things: one, it would displace other renewable generation—that other renewable generation that is cheaper than the cost that the member would demand retailers pay for these small-scale generators—but it would also undermine the competitiveness that we already see in the market today. Because today there is amongst the retailers a range, a mix of prices on offer for excess generation. Some, it is true, might pay less than the wholesale price as they would see it, but there are some that would offer more. So really what that tells us is that people should be focused on looking at the options that are available to them and choosing the best one for them.

So what I would say in conclusion is that although, at a semantic or theoretical level, the idea of encouraging additional photovoltaic energy generation and helping to incentivise people to do it through a fixed price might sound good, if you actually look at the way the market has been working and the growth that we have seen in the installation of such generation, all it would do—all it would achieve—is to negatively distort a market that is working and has been growing on its own.

I simply think, and I would say to the sponsoring member, that if the bill were to succeed and go ahead, this idea that the bill would give certainty to small-scale generators of a certain amount of price for them would come merely at the cost of every other consumer of electricity. They would have to pay more for the generation of those small-scale generators, rather than the marginal cost on the next watt, the next kilowatt, the next megawatt through what are almost certainly otherwise renewable sources. I oppose this bill and I call for members across the House to do likewise.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am very pleased to speak in the first reading of the Electricity Industry (Small-Scale Renewable Distributed Generation) Amendment Bill, and I want to begin my comments by congratulating Gareth Hughes. He is a very hard-working MP; he is also one of the luckiest MPs in terms of getting member’s bills drawn. I do not know what the trick is—I do not know whether he is a betting person or whether he does Lotto—but every time he has had a member’s bill drawn it has been worthy of debate at least, and, I think, worthy of referral to a select committee, as is this one.

I want to briefly comment on the member who has just resumed his seat, Brett Hudson. It must be very fortunate for him—lucky, perhaps—that he has come to this House after just a year with so much knowledge about so many things that he is able to give a 5-minute speech saying why this bill should not just be rejected but should not even be considered by the Parliament because it is not perfect. I just think that demonstrates a lack of confidence and a lack of commitment. I think that members should have the courage of their convictions to send a bill to a committee, where it can be debated, and if their view is correct, well, they may well want to offer some improvements to the legislation or, if they totally reject the principle of it, then they will win that debate in the court of public opinion as well as in a House where they know they have got a predetermined majority.

So put it to the test, National Party members of Parliament. Let it go to a select committee, because we know that members of Parliament in the Opposition do not have the advantage of having a huge department at their disposal, where they can say “I’ve got this brainwave of an idea.”, as clearly some Ministers do, and then they get their department to draw up the legislation. We have to do it pretty well on our own. But usually there is a germ of a good idea that can be built on, and we should at least have that debate, because we know that the biggest challenge facing our planet is climate change, and we know that we have a lot of capacity that is not yet captured in New Zealand to increase our use of solar power. So if that is an agreed problem—I should not pre-empt the member. The member who just resumed his seat may well be a climate change denier, but most people on our planet think there is an issue with climate change, and this is one of the many contributions that could be made towards our contribution to a fair response to climate change.

So the current situation is that electricity companies have the sole ability to say at what price and under what conditions a small-scale power generator can feed their surplus electricity into the grid. That is called the feed-in tariff or the buy-back rate. At the moment, electricity companies are the sole determiner of that position. What this bill seeks to do is address that issue, because it is clearly not a balanced position. Energy companies can change the buy-back rate at short notice. They do not have any independent oversight of that. They do not have to explain why they have changed the buy-back rate; they can just do it. Although, to be fair, some of them do and give good reasons, but they are not required to.

So what we have got is a lot of uncertainty in this area. People who are planning to install solar do it on what the current market assumptions are, but not knowing whether those might change within an hour or a day or a week. Or people who have already installed it might say “We don’t know what the future position is.”, so they are buying a product without knowing what the repercussions are. This bill just has a very simple amendment to the Electricity Industry Act. It empowers the authority to amend the code so that there is a mandate to act as an independent body in terms of setting prices, the terms, and the conditions for those buy-back contracts.

As I said at the beginning, I want to commend Gareth Hughes, not just for this bill but for the consistent work that he has done in this space. It is something that New Zealand can do better. I think we should take every opportunity to say: “What are the options available to us?”. For members of the Government, they should say: “Well, we don’t think this is a perfect solution, but we have the courage of our convictions to send it to a select committee and have it debated.” But instead of that, all we have had from Government members is: “No, no, no.” I do not think that is the sort of response the New Zealand Parliament should be giving to a good idea. We should be supporting it to a select committee, debating it, and let us see whether we can make some progress on these really important issues.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Amongst that confusion, it seems that not only are Government members tired of saying no but also they just seem too tired to debate this particular bill.

Carmel Sepuloni: They’re just tired in general.

PEENI HENARE: They are just tired in general. Maybe they need to consider more ways of renewable energy—something to get them a bit more proactive in the debate in this House.

Can I echo the sentiments of my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson towards Mr Hughes for his fantastic work and, indeed, the entire Green Party for your continual work in this space around making sure that we leave a taonga and we leave an environment for our tamariki and for our mokopuna. So I rise to support this bill in its first reading.

The bill amends the objective of the Electricity Authority to include the line “to promote … greater use of renewable energy, including from distributed generation sources,”. We will break that up into two parts. The first one is “to promote … greater use of renewable energy,”. I am well-connected in the Māori circles and I visit many marae across the country. I know of many discussions across marae around the country, all around how do they involve themselves in the market of renewable energy. They are looking for better ways to utilise their natural resources, from water to wind and, of course, to capture the great sunshine that we have.

So anything that incentivises our people to get involved in more renewable energy sources I think is a very good thing. Although the member opposite mentioned how we are already functioning at around 80 percent of renewable energy sources, well, what is wrong with aiming towards 100 percent of renewable energy sources? So that is a good thing to be able to promote, particularly amongst our Māori communities—the ability for them to get involved in renewable energy sources.

What kinds of benefits does this bring? It obviously brings benefits. As the tourism spokesperson, I can say that those in the international community look to New Zealand. They look to New Zealand for leadership in this particular space. They also look to New Zealand because of our beautiful environment. Most people who come here want to go to see our beautiful mountains. They want to swim in our beautiful rivers, which, sadly, at the moment is just a little bit harder to do than it was when I was a child. They also want to come here to water-ski on the lakes and to go on bush-walks and track walks and even on cycleways.

They want to be able to do all of this, and I think if we can move our country into a focus on our environment, which I believe is just one part of this bill and what it tries to promote, then that can only mean good things for our tourism industry—but with a word of caution there, that it must be managed and it must be maintained in a clear plan to make sure that the boost in visitor numbers does not have a negative impact on our environment. But I digress.

My colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson talked about the distributed generation sources. The bill talks about the fact that if you establish a renewable energy source and you have excess power and you want to redistribute your power to the national grid then you should be able to do so, and you should also be able to do so at the market rate. As it stands currently it seems that the bigger power companies, which have a very big strong stranglehold on the industry at the moment, get to dictate and determine what that looks like, without any real sort of independent authority or oversight. So I think that this is a particularly good bill. I want to just echo Labour’s support for this bill and also to congratulate Mr Hughes. Kia ora tātou.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Could I begin by agreeing with some of my colleagues in paying tribute to Gareth Hughes for bringing what I believe is a well-intentioned bill. This House, at its best, exists to improve public policy for all New Zealanders, and I think that is what Mr Hughes has sought to do with this bill. I have actually corresponded with him at some length about the bill and how it might work, and whether or not its intentions, which are good, might be matched by good results. I felt that, as Parliament’s only electrical engineer, I should come and explain why I think the results of Gareth Hughes’ bill may not match the good intentions.

I think the question that we should ask ourselves when making legislation or when we regulate as Ministers is: what is the problem definition? What is the market failure that we are seeking to allay by taking this action? As far as I can understand, there are a number of concerns that Mr Hughes has. One is that there is collusion. He is suspicious that the prices that different retailers offer for buy-back have moved somewhat in sync in recent times. That is not unusual in a commodity market. The whole point is that there is really only one type of product, and the price is fairly uniform across the market. If indeed there was collusion occurring, it would be an open-and-shut case for the Commerce Commission under existing law, so I do not think there is a problem that justifies action there.

The next concern gets a bit technical: the idea that for distributed generation the call on distribution networks is somewhat smaller than what it is for other forms of generation. As the member has put it, we are really just sending electrons next door to the neighbour’s house. That is not quite accurate. It is not so much the electrons that move; they drift at about 7 millimetres per second. It is the wave of energy that energises the grid that moves, and it does so almost instantaneously. The point of transmission and distribution networks is that they are, with very small line losses in general, equally useful wherever you may be. That is the point of a network, and if you wish to have access to that network then you must pay for using it, wherever you may happen to be.

I think there is an argument that other reforms should take place, that there should be more time sensitivity in the price charged for access to distribution and transmission as it becomes technically feasible to measure the time of use, or at least cheaper to do so. But it is simply not the case that because your dependence on the grid is perhaps more fleeting than others—the fact is, if you still want to be able to access the grid, then you have to be able to pay to access it.

Finally is the idea that there simply is not enough certainty in what the future price will be. Well, I agree. That is a problem that all generators face. The Hon Ruth Dyson brought this up. Whether you are Mighty River Power or whether you are Mr Speaker or whether you are, perhaps, Gerry Brownlee, who tells us he has a solar panel, you face that uncertainty. But, again, there is no market failure here. There are actually solutions already emerging in the market to insulate people against that uncertainty. People will allow you to have solar panels installed owned by a third party, and they take the risk away from you, so there are already market solutions to this perceived market failure. It seems that the market failures that the legislation is supposed to be addressing either do not exist or are already well addressed by market mechanisms.

However, there are unintended consequences. What we are ultimately saying is if there is going to be some sort of fairness in a deal then some authority has to know what a fair price is and be able to enforce that it is charged over time. There are really two ways you can get a price wrong: too high or too low. If it is too high it will actually discourage retailers from entering the market, which would be disastrous for the whole intention of Gareth Hughes’ bill; if it is set too low then, of course, you are going to end up starving retailers from being able to actually serve the market that way. Whichever way you get it wrong, you are going to actually counteract the intention of the bill.

So I am opposed to this bill. It has very good intentions, but for all the reasons I have laid out the results will not be good enough to match those good intentions. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call on Gareth Hughes—5 minutes in reply.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. This bill about to be voted on is about fairness, it is about certainty, and it is about power. It asks the questions: who has the power—is it the electricity industry, or consumers as well? It asks who the electricity system works for—just the big companies, or for everyone? It also asks a fundamental question of our electricity grid: going into the future, will the industry continue to discourage solar Kiwis, thereby forcing them into batteries and off grid, or will it work with them and harness the national and network benefits they bring?

In this speech I would like to outline the solutions the bill brings, but also address some of the objections. First, I would like to thank all the dozens of homes, schools, businesses, farms, and maraes that opened their doors to me, let me up on to their roofs, and proudly showed me their solar panels. I would like to thank the clean energy industry in New Zealand, particularly the Sustainable Electricity Association New Zealand. I would like to thank Grey Power, and I would like to thank the New Zealand Labour Party and the New Zealand First Party for their support for this bill.

I drafted this bill a few years ago as a common-sense, pragmatic solution to the real issues facing Kiwis. My bill, in a nutshell, simply empowers the Electricity Authority to act as an independent umpire, to standardise contracts, and to set a fair, reasonable, non-subsidised buy-back rate. We are seeing Kiwis go solar in record numbers, but what they have found out is that it is the power companies that have all the power, and this is the problem definition that David Seymour asked me about.

One of the problems is that they face ridiculous regional red tape. Across the country there are 29 different regional rules, forms, and fees. For solar installers, of the 60-odd days it takes to install a panel, 59 are to deal with paperwork. Remember this: the people across the country who are part of small businesses installing solar panels and the people shelling out money to invest in solar will remember the parties that voted to continue this ridiculous red tape.

Currently solar Kiwis do not have a choice. The only choice they have is between a range of seven retailers that offer them similar low buy-back rates that seem to move in concert. They tell me they feel ripped off because they know their surplus solar electrons are being sold at the full retail rate. This is an average of 26c across the country, considerably higher in some regions, yet they are offered rates as low as 4c. They feel hard-done-by because they can get less than the wholesale rate, yet the retailer sells it at full whack. It sells it as if the entire electricity grid were behind those electrons—or waves, David Seymour—flowing to the neighbours.

These people cannot trade on the spot market. They do not have teams of lawyers to argue the contract terms, and in many cases it is the retailer that has all the power and sets the terms. It offers no rationale in return, and it can change it again at short notice.

This bill supports a fair, reasonable non-subsidised buy-back rate that is not set by politicians, and it is definitely not set by the power companies. It is set by an independent umpire, and it would take into account the generation costs, the avoided transmission and distribution costs, network benefits, and other aspects like administration.

In the debate we heard Gerry Brownlee say that it was all about higher prices. No, it is not. It is not about subsidies. It is about a fair and reasonable price, set by the National Party’s own authority. Then Mr Brownlee said that it would be too complicated. Perhaps I have a little more faith in the Electricity Authority than the Minister who established it. Then he called it price control. What we have at the moment exactly is price control. It is a small number of very large and wealthy companies that dictate the price—there is no say for the little person—and this bill breaks into their cushy old business model of simply selling more electricity.

Melissa Lee said: “Well, it’s not solar’s time yet.” Well, that is not what Deutsche Bank said about New Zealand this year, nor is it the experience on the ground. Kiwis in record numbers are going solar because of record-high power bills and record-low solar costs. They are voting with their wallets, and investing their own money. They are simply asking for more certainty and a fair go.

The Electricity Authority says that it is wasted and that it is the poor old electricity industry that is getting a raw deal from customers. The same argument is analogous to saying that someone who does not drive during the day, only at peak hour, and rides a bike the rest of the time is subsidised by other motorists. It is a red herring. It is not the solar customer’s fault that that is the current distribution pricing model adopted by the industry. I think it is deeply unfair to decry consumers for ignoring the same price signals that the power industries ignore.

What we see is a clear choice between shining a little sunlight on the issue and hearing from all these people—continuing the discussion around the select committee. This is my question to members: will they stand with the big old power companies, or will they stand with the little people of New Zealand, who want a little bit of fairness, a little bit of certainty? Kia ora koutou.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Electricity Industry (Small-Scale Renewable Distributed Generation) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

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.

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill

First Reading

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I move, That the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services Committee to consider the bill. This weekend just gone our leader, Andrew Little, gave an incredible speech—in Palmerston North, a wonderful place that this side of the House recognises as a wonderful place, unlike the other side of the House. In that speech he said that under his leadership the Labour Party has three priorities: jobs, jobs, and jobs. Under Andrew Little, Labour is the party of work in this country. We are the party of a stronger economy and of economic opportunity for everyone, with a chance for everyone to live for the Kiwi dream.

Unfortunately, National is the party that is sticking up for those already doing well, and throwing up barriers that stop other people from getting ahead. I remember really clearly that before the 2008 election National was running that message of aspiration. Well, what we have come to realise on this side of the House—and a lot of New Zealanders are now recognising this as well—is that National is aspirational only for those who are already there. It is not aspirational for those who are just trying to get ahead and need a little bit of help with that journey. My bill is about jobs. It is about opportunity. It is about smashing the barriers that stop people from finding work and cut them off from the opportunity to get ahead.

We all know that under National the economy is struggling. Unemployment is rising. In fact, we have lost 11,000 jobs in just the last 3 months. We only need to look at the Government’s attempts to try to get people off benefits into employment, and we can see very clearly that it has been failing abysmally. If we look at the number of people participating in the Ministry of Social Development’s employment programmes, we see that that has dropped by 60 percent since 2011-12. We can see that the number of people returning to a main benefit 8 weeks after the end of an employment contract has increased from 15 percent to 23 percent—more people ending their employment contract and going back to benefits. For the year ending September 2015, less than half of job seekers’ benefits were cancelled for the reason of having obtained work. People are not leaving benefits and going on to work, yet that Government would have us believe that they are.

We have seen other trials. There are employment trials for sole parents. There are employment trials for mental health consumers. All of those employment trials, all of these schemes, are failing under National. This bill helps get people on benefits a pathway back into full-time work by raising the number of hours they can work part-time without having their benefits cut. Actually, I want to mention that when I met with the Minister for Social Development, Anne Tolley, she said to me—her exact words were something along the lines of “Oh, if we put more money in these people’s pockets, or if we give them a financial incentive, then it would be a disincentive for them to go back to work.” Just like all of the National Party’s policies, what she was saying made no sense. If we incentivise the opportunity to go back to work financially, then more people are going to want to take up the opportunity to go back to work.

When we look at the abatement rate threshold, it has barely been lifted in at least the last 17 years—I think since I was on a benefit back in the 90s. In fact, for the jobseeker support beneficiaries it is still set at $80 before you start getting penalised. For sole parent support beneficiaries it is still set at $100, and when you start earning $100 you start being penalised. Those thresholds are too low. They are not even a full day’s work for someone on the minimum wage. What this bill does is it raises the threshold so that those people can go out and earn a little bit more money without having their benefit penalised. They can earn up to $150 without having any money deducted from their benefit. What is wrong with that, National Government?

Right now this Government is actually penalising people who want to find more work. That is right—it is taking money out of the pockets of people trying to get into work. It is backing rules that mean it pays better to be on the benefit rather than to find work, and it is wrong. We can do better. In fact, in many ways this bill is not only a new policy but also playing policy catch-up because of the fact that those thresholds have barely been lifted—at least over the last 17 years, if not longer. Under this bill people will have a pathway back into work. They will have a chance to get work experience and get a stable job. It makes sense to us. It makes sense to most employers. It makes sense to the many benefit advocates and social services that I have been out there talking to. Why would we not encourage people to get out there and, where possible, take up a full day’s work? That is a pathway back into work. That is a pathway towards full-time work, and that is what we want to see.

On that side of the House over the last few years we have seen welfare reforms that have introduced work obligations, social obligations, a whole lot of obligations—a whole lot of stick, but, actually, very little carrot for these people. This bill is actually a carrot. We need to bring a little bit more balance back into our welfare system, actually, because that side of the House has created a completely imbalanced system that stigmatises beneficiaries and assumes—assumes—that these people who are in a position where they need to access welfare do not want to go out there and work. They do want to go out there and work. I have seen some research recently from the Growing Up in New Zealand study. They broke it down for me and they did a comparison of the parent who is parenting alone—so the sole parent—versus the parent who is in a relationship raising children. Actually, the findings are really interesting, and I think that side of the House needs to read them. Actually, the sole parent had more of a desire to go back to work than the parent who was in a relationship. Not just for financial reasons, so that they could provide for their family, but for the obvious reasons that many of us know of—things like wanting to be in the company of adults.

Members on that side of the House have always underestimated beneficiaries, and if they choose to vote against this bill then they will be continuing to underestimate beneficiaries, continuing to put the boot in and implement punitive measures—lots of stick but no carrot. This bill is a test for the Government: does it have the moral courage to do the right thing and help lift people out of poverty? Does it have what it takes to back job creation? Currently, we have 305,000 children living in poverty.

Hon Member: We just create jobs.

CARMEL SEPULONI: Jono Naylor says: “What does that have to do with it?”. What that has to do with it, Mr Naylor, is that, actually, of those 305,000 children 60 percent of them come from households where a parent is not working—60 percent of them come from households where the parent is not working. So why would we not support the parents of these children to be able to get back into the workforce? Why would we not say: “Well, actually, take that first step and we will make sure that you are not penalised in the process of doing it.”?

With what we are proposing, those families of the 60 percent of the 305,000 children—so let us say 181,000 children—those parents could potentially be $50 better off than what they are currently. That is a lot more than the $25 that is being offered through the children in hardship package that the Government has proposed. Actually, that amount of money will go a lot further in lifting some of these children out of poverty than the $25 per family that that Government has proposed in its children in hardship package. If the Government votes against this bill I think Kiwis will see clearly that this is a Government that cannot be trusted to get people into jobs and that does not want to lift people out of poverty.

What we have seen recently is a Government that does not care. We have heard from the finance Minister, Bill English, his response to the worsening unemployment figures, saying that the Government does not intend to do anything specific to tackle that rising unemployment. The Government is negligent in not doing enough for this country in respect of creating job opportunities and offering incentives to get into work. I am not surprised, in some ways, that National is not supporting this bill. If recent events are anything to go by, it cannot be trusted to back New Zealanders. There are lots of different examples that I can use there. Labour has clear and practical plans to help Kiwis get ahead, to restore opportunity, and to rebuild the Kiwi dream. I am hoping that the other political parties in the House will see that and vote for this bill.

ALFRED NGARO (National): It is a surprise that that member Carmel Sepuloni would actually go back to the 2014 election, especially when the Labour Party had the worst result at 25 percent of the party vote—the worst result in 92 years. So for that member to turn round and talk about this Government and its policy—

Hon Annette King: Remember 2002, Alfred? Worst result in your whole history.

ALFRED NGARO: That is right. Look. Hey, as Annette King said, 2002—we will own that.

Hon Annette King: We owned ours.

ALFRED NGARO: We will own our history, but at the same time too you might want to talk to that member so that she owns her history as well—25 percent, 92 years, how about you own that as well? All right? I do not hear them saying that there.

So let us talk about this brighter future, but let us put the member out of her misery. The truth is the Government will not support the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill—all right? That is the truth of it. The Government will not support this bill and here are the reasons why we will not support this—

Carmel Sepuloni: No courage.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No, you cannot say that.

ALFRED NGARO: —bill. This bill is attempting to increase, obviously, the income threshold for those who are seeking to earn before their benefit rate is reduced by abatement rates, and this is the attempt by the member to so-called solve the issues and the problems of those in our communities—the poverty issues. For those who are struggling, this is not the silver bullet. This will not solve things and here are the reasons why. This is what this Government is doing. Under the welfare reforms we have reduced the future expected time on main benefits by an average of 1.2 years for sole parents and 2.8 years for youth beneficiaries. If we talk about the results of what this Government is doing to be able to decrease those who are benefit dependent, these are the things that we are doing. We are reducing the expected costs of supporting current beneficiaries over their lifetime by $7.5 billion a year. There are 42,500 fewer kids living in benefit dependent homes compared with 2012. That is right. Miss Annette King is on record as saying that when the children were in poverty in the 9 years of their time as a Labour Government it was a job unfinished.

Iain Lees-Galloway: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is fascinating to hear the member talking about the previous Labour Government again, but I would like to hear about the bill.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Well, there was a bit of latitude with the mover of the bill, so I am listening carefully. [Interruption] Order! I am on my feet and I am listening very carefully.

ALFRED NGARO: Well, you know that the truth hurts, and that is what is coming forward here. Why? Because we know when we are talking about this bill, a pathway to work; we know when the member was talking about 305,000 children in poverty; we know that Miss Annette King when talking about poverty in regard to a pathway to work and opportunity—her words were “a job unfinished”. But that is not the goal of this Government. The goal of this Government is to finish the job, to increase the opportunities that are there for our families who are dependent. There are 7.2 percent fewer single parent families dependent on welfare since this time last year—19,000 fewer compared with 3 years ago. That is right.

Here are the facts—I am just going to say them. They are hard to accept, I know. We are moving closer to the tougher, what you would call Better Public Services target of a 25 percent reduction of people receiving a benefit—that is, 295,000 people at June 2014 to 220,000 people at June 2018. These are the efforts. These are the reasons why, when we look at this bill, this bill will not support, we believe, those who are on benefits, those who are sole parents who are wanting to transit into part-time work and into full-time work—by increasing this threshold. We believe that we already have that provision there. If you are a job seeker, there is $80 that you can earn before the abatements actually come into place. If you are on sole parent support or supported living payment, it is $100. We know that is making a difference. I am going to summarise with just one example. If you are a 25-year-old and if you work 31 years on the minimum wage, you will still be eligible for a benefit and that is the reason why we believe that the threshold rates that we have are sufficient. They are balanced. We know that they make the difference. This bill, even by increasing the threshold to $150, does not meet what we believe are the targets for reform, for our families who are in need. We do not support this bill in the House.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Well, that was a poor effort indeed from Alfred Ngaro, and I suspect his heart is not in it. I suspect that the member actually sees the merit in this legislation. I am, frankly, surprised that the National Party is voting against this, for a couple of reasons. One is that it incentivises work. I do not know how many times I heard my opponent across the House saying during the election campaign that he believed that the way out of poverty and to prosperity was through work. Fair enough. I think we can all agree with that. But the question is: what is the Government actually going to do to incentivise work? This is absolutely a way of encouraging people who are on a benefit to pick up more work.

What is unreasonable—I ask the members opposite to explain—about a person being able to do 1 day’s work a week on the minimum wage and still retain their benefit? What is unreasonable about that? I want to hear an explanation from those members—

Jono Naylor: It’s not all of it.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —because that is what this legislation will do. I am afraid, Jono Naylor, you are wrong. You cannot work a full day, even on the minimum wage, and retain your full benefit, currently. That is what this legislation would allow for.

The other reason why I am really surprised the National Party is not voting in favour of this legislation is that what it does is it reduces high effective marginal tax rates. I do not know how many times over the years I have heard National MPs railing against policies that create pockets of high effective marginal tax rates. I would have thought the ACT Party would be right in behind this bill because it actually reduces the marginal tax rate for people who are shifting from a benefit into work. Of course, what happens when you are in that transition—when you are picking up a few more hours and you are losing your benefit as you pick up work—is you are, effectively, being taxed at an incredibly high rate because you are losing income that you would have otherwise had. There is a long National Party tradition of railing against such things, and yet here is a bill that would reduce effective marginal tax rates for people on the lowest incomes, and the National Party is going to vote against it. I am surprised. I really am surprised—well, maybe I am not so surprised, because it is fine to rail against a high tax rate for people on high incomes, but it will not do anything about high tax rates for people on low incomes. That, fundamentally, is what the National Party is all about.

We heard from members opposite about what this Government is doing to create jobs and about how there are fewer people reliant on a benefit. Well, the fact is that less than half of the people on a job seeker’s benefit who had their job seeker’s benefit cancelled had it cancelled for the reason of obtaining work—less than half. So, actually, what the Government is doing is pushing people off benefits, into poverty, and down to the food bank. It is not putting them into work. This is a bill that would support people to get into work, and the Government is voting against it.

In the last 3 months the number of people employed has reduced by 11,000. Unemployment has now hit 6 percent across the country. It is 7 percent in the Manawatū-Wanganui region and it is higher in other regions as well. That is what is going on under this Government. And here we have a bill that would encourage people to get into work, encourage people to pick up more work, give people the opportunity to work one full day a week to demonstrate to an employer that they are sound and reliable and capable of picking up extra work, to put themselves in a position where they could move from part-time to full-time work—all the things I hear the National members talking about. But when they get the opportunity to vote for something that would actually do it, they are going to vote against it.

And that is the truth of the National members. They are in here to support their rich mates, to support foreign corporations, to support big capital. When it comes to an opportunity to actually vote for something that would make a tangible difference for the people who are doing everything right and struggling to get ahead and create opportunities for themselves—when they have that opportunity, they vote against it. Ladies and gentlemen, the New Zealand National Party.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): That was quite a theatrical flourish. I stand to oppose the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill this afternoon. I find it absolutely extraordinary just listening to some of the sentiment expressed in this debate thus far—when you compare it with the comments from the Labour Opposition only 24 hours ago, when we were talking about a bill that actually delivers a real increase to our beneficiaries for the first time in 43 years and the Labour members opposed it every step of the way.

When you look at the general policy statement that supports Carmel Sepuloni’s bill, the first two sentences are: “Part-time work is a proven way to transition from unemployment into full employment. Labour wants to promote pathways into full employment for all of those supported by social security, where the persons are capable of being employed full time.” That is from the same member who said 24 hours ago that part-time work takes away people’s choices and who said 24 hours ago that they oppose the Support for Children in Hardship Bill because it will end up with beneficiaries being worse off financially than when they were on welfare—so, therefore, they oppose it, and they opposed increasing 15 hours to 20 hours.

It is absolutely extraordinary that we have to listen to some of the comments that Carmel Sepuloni has delivered in support of her poorly thought through piece of legislation. In fact, Carmel, can I suggest that you look at the Productivity Commission’s report on more effective social services, where it says absolutely clearly that, fundamentally, it is not about the money. Fundamentally, it is not about putting more money in the system, because we have a higher percentage per GDP—

Carmel Sepuloni: He’s talking about social services and the amount of money we inject into social services, not into the pockets of human beings.

TODD MULLER: —in social services than the OECD. It is about system effectiveness. I think you will learn if you listen more. What this Government has is a track record of actually delivering for those who are beneficiaries, by providing the pathways to work—175,000 jobs in the last 3 years and 150,000 jobs over the next 3 years. It is an economy that is working.

Carmel Sepuloni: 6 percent unemployment.

TODD MULLER: To use your own words and philosophies back to you, part-time work is a proven way to transition from unemployment and poverty into employment and contributing effectively into society. I oppose this bill.

JAN LOGIE (Green): It is with pleasure I rise to speak on this bill, the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill, in the name of Carmel Sepuloni. Firstly, of course, I need to offer my congratulations to the member on getting this bill drawn. Every time, I stand with envy—I am still waiting. But it is always a good day when we get to debate and discuss ideas that offer positive solutions to genuine problems. I thank you for bringing that to this House.

Next, I would like to just address some of the points raised by the previous speaker, Todd Muller. He raised a criticism that some of us in this House have raised concerns about the misnamed Support for Children in Hardship Bill because that bill increases the requirement for sole parents to be seeking 20 hours of work a week, which pushes them off benefits and into a position of precariousness in relation to the tax system and their employer, and from the age when their child is only 3 years old.

The Green Party believes that parenting is a job. We believe it should be valued. We support those parents. There is, as Carmel Sepuloni raised, plenty of evidence that sole parents want to also be in the paid workforce and they are looking for those opportunities where that suits their family. A huge number of them are actively doing that.

Our opposition is to the Government taking the choices away from those families and, effectively, saying that if a parent recognises that their child has specific needs for them to be in the home, that choice is taken away. We absolutely do not support that. This bill actually supports those families where it is right for them and their family to be increasing their hours in the paid workforce, and that is worth supporting, because at the moment families are being penalised.

Currently. if you are on job seeker support you can earn only $80 a week on top of your benefit, which is the equivalent of about maybe 5 or 6 hours a week on the minimum wage, before you lose 70c from your benefit for every dollar you earn. The effective marginal tax rate of that is extraordinary. And, as was also mentioned by another speaker, we have heard quite a bit on this side of the House about how terrible these high effective marginal tax rates are, but, obviously, only if you are rich, not if you are poor.

So what this bill does is say that a job seeker can earn $150 a week before that abatement rate kicks in and they start losing that money. That is in recognition also, in part, that these abatement rates and thresholds were set at a time when most of the jobs that were in existence were full-time jobs. So the system was to encourage to be on a benefit or to be in full-time work.

Sadly, and significantly due to policies of preceding Governments, that is not the structure of our workforce any more. We have a huge number of part-time jobs and casualised jobs. We have 100,000 people in our workforce currently looking for more hours. So we need to actually acknowledge that this transition and this complexity exists and to support people to have decent wages and a decent income while they are doing the work that they are managing to get and support them in that.

If only a few hours are all that is available, actually let those people get the value of that work. Do not cut it out from under them because you are trying to incentivise them to be in full-time work that does not exist. That is the point at the heart of this bill and that is why it is a really good bill to be supporting.

I think that the Government has a wider problem in penalising work. I would like to draw the House’s attention to a really interesting article that was written by Simon Collins in the New Zealand Herald in August this year. It is titled “Counting the cost of going back to work”. He compared New Zealand’s abatement in tax rates and loss of subsidies for entering work with the OECD averages. New Zealanders are doing it hard in international terms. They are being unfairly penalised by the policies of this Government.

JONO NAYLOR (National): Firstly, I just want to acknowledge, because I want to give credit where credit is due, that the Labour Party can, from time to time, make a good decision—for example, last weekend they made a good decision. They came to Palmerston North on a beautiful, fine sunny day and had a good time. However, this bill is not one of their good decisions, and it is not going to achieve everything that they think it will. I agree that it is kind of well intentioned, but, actually, it is not really going to make the difference that people want it to make.

I am concerned about what I have heard from members on the other side of the House when referring to this bill today. I am concerned because, actually, they have been saying that all we need to do is offer people a bit more money and that will give them the incentive to go to work. If you think of the underlying premise of that, it is almost like saying that people will not bother to go to work unless they are absolutely going to make lots of money out of it. That is the underlying assumption that seems to come out of that, from what I have heard from the other side of the House. What we do know is that if people actually get themselves into work, they improve their own opportunities for further work and otherwise. That should be a good enough reason for anybody to want to get out and work.

Yes, we go to work to earn money. We receive benefits if we are unable to work. But simply to say that the only reason why people want to get into work, other than being on a benefit, is that the abatement rate is too high I think underestimates those very people who are on those benefits, who want to get into work, who want to be able to restore some pride to their families, who want to be able to get out and provide for their families and then contribute to society and contribute to their families, and also who want to be able to further their chances for ongoing work.

I am not going to support this bill. If I thought that it would achieve what it is setting out to do, then maybe I would. But it is ill-conceived, it is badly drafted, and it is not going to get us to where we want to go. We will not be supporting it.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill. First of all, congratulations to Carmel Sepuloni, who has been lucky enough to get another bill read, and congratulations on her work on this bill as well. As I stated, New Zealand First will be supporting this bill through to its next stage. What I want to concentrate on is the two different arguments that have been placed before the House today. They are the incentives versus the disincentives.

As Carmel Sepuloni has already mentioned, this bill is, at its basic level, a policy catch-up. For the most part, that is true. At the moment with the way that the welfare system has been set up, the current pathways into work are concentrating on the disincentive side, rather than on the incentive side. I have got an example of that. Funnily enough, there was an article that came out in the New Zealand Herald today. The title is “Part-time daycare worker better off getting benefit”. This is Jan Berry, who is around $40 a week worse off than if she was on the benefit. At $15.50 an hour, she earns $387 a week, or $331 after tax, and she also gets $107 a week in the accommodation supplement and disability allowance. But when her income rose after she increased her working hours, those extras were cut, leaving her around $40 a week worse off than she would have been on the benefit.

So in that way the whole system is revolving around the disincentive pathway, and to ensure that it is concentrating on the incentive pathway, there needs to be a lot more done. Carmel Sepuloni’s bill does go some way towards doing that, but not completely.

I did some quick calculations, and hopefully Carmel will be able to correct me if I am wrong on these. Up to the $150 mark, currently, if someone works the number of hours up to being able to earn $150, they will receive only $129 of that, due to the abatement rates. Carmel wants to change that to $150. That is working for around 10 hours a week extra, so that is $21. If you go further, to the higher abatement rates—up to $200, which is around 13 hours’ extra work a week—instead of the $185 that you would be earning under Carmel’s bill, currently it is $164.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Can I just interrupt. The member must always use the full name—

DARROCH BALL: Sorry—Carmel Sepuloni’s bill.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): —as opposed to just the first name.

DARROCH BALL: I will say “the member” from now on—the member’s bill. It is currently $164. The third amount is $179, instead of $220. So, over the week, working up to around about 17 hours a week is an extra $41. Like Carmel Sepuloni said, that is a policy catch-up. It is the bare minimum at where we need to be.

But if we are looking at turning it into an incentive, we need to start looking at a pathway that is multi-pronged and multifaceted, and it needs to be a framework rather than one-off policies. I did a bit of research today and had a look online. There was a Pathways to Work Government policy statement from Ireland in 2014. Ireland had similar issues, and it wanted to look at taking a better approach to how the State actually engages with and supports the unemployed back into work. So there were five strands that it had. They were “more regular and on-going engagement with people who are unemployed; greater targeting of activation places and opportunities; incentivising the take-up of opportunities; incentivising employers to provide more jobs … and reforming institutions to deliver better services to people who are unemployed.”

Like I said, we will be supporting this bill through to the next stage, and hopefully it gets there. But this is the potential for the start of a more multifaceted framework for a pathway into work by concentrating on the incentives, rather than what it is now, which is more the disincentives. Thank you.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill, in the name of Carmel Sepuloni. I am taking this call to oppose this bill. I am opposing this bill because I believe that it is not going to do what it claims to do. Instead, it will do the opposite. If we look at our welfare system, it is working fine because of the National Government’s welfare reforms. It is giving us results. Our focus is to get people off benefits and into work. There are clear obligations for people on benefits. We have intensive management of teens on benefits, because we know that if people go on benefits at a younger age, then they are more likely to stay on them for a longer time. Benefit numbers are falling. The number of sole parents on benefits is also reducing, and thousands fewer children are now in benefit-dependent families. Actually, the benefit numbers are dropping for all main benefit types.

To me, this bill is saying that people should stay on benefit while there is work available. This does not make any sense to me. Actually, our focus should be on children in low-income families, and that is why this National Government has allocated $790 million in Budget 2015 to help children in low-income families. We are also strengthening the work obligations for sole parents. If we look at the labour market data, it shows continued job growth, wages are rising faster than inflation, and for people on benefits to move into jobs, they need jobs. This National Government is creating the environment that helps to create more jobs, by signing free-trade agreements with, for example, Korea and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. These businesses are going to invest more and create more jobs. New Zealanders are working hard, the system is working fine, and people are working hard to get off benefits and into work. I do not see that this bill is going to do what it claims to do. I oppose this bill. Thank you.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I start by commending the member Carmel Sepuloni, who is passionate about the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill and its objectives, for bringing a substantive member’s bill to the House. I was lucky to have a discussion with her about the objectives of the bill and about how it might work, and I am afraid I cannot say I can support it. Very briefly, I think the reason for that is that we all agree we would like to give more money to the poorest people in New Zealand, yet the question is—

Iain Lees-Galloway: No, we want them to be able to earn more money, David—earn more money.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, the member is right, actually. They are not mutually exclusive, you see. Thank you for that, but the fact is that whether or not you have good intentions, the real issue is whether this policy is the best use of available resources. All tax and transfer schemes face a trade-off between the amount of income someone receives at zero market income, the abatement rate—the reduction in how much they receive as their market income increases—and the level of market income where they no longer receive the tax or transfer.

This bill, essentially, just shifts part of that line and shifts the effective marginal tax rates at their highest further up the market income scale. It is not obvious why that is better than what we have now. Unfortunately, the member has not demonstrated why this particular area of expenditure is better than any other possible options. So for that reason I cannot support it, and as a final indication of why this bill may be misguided, the best person the member’s party could come up with to speak second was a King’s College old boy who probably thinks poverty is having the old shape of Beemer. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Carmel Sepuloni—5 minutes in reply.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I really do want to thank the parties that have spoken in support of the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill and I want to just acknowledge all the speakers for their contributions, even if I strongly disagree with some of the contributions that were made. I just want to reflect on some of the contributions and use this as an opportunity as a right of reply, I guess, just to finish off the debate on this bill.

The previous speaker to me was the ACT Party MP, David Seymour. Thank you for meeting with me, David Seymour. Thank you for showing me a graph and talking to me about—I am not really sure, actually, what you were talking to me about when I came to your office, so I am not going to pretend that I did. But I will say this: the ACT Party member says that I have not demonstrated why this is a good use of expenditure. I just want to say that every welfare reform that that Government has put through is not backed up by any evidence whatsoever. We have asked that Government and we have asked the Ministry of Social Development on numerous occasions what evidence they have to support the welfare reforms and the decisions they have made and the response we get back is: “There is no evidence.” So please do not question whether or not this is a good use of expenditure—whether or not putting money into the pockets of the poorest New Zealanders is a good use of expenditure.

We had Parmjeet Parmar reaffirming a previous line that was run by National MPs—that is, that money is not an incentive to work. I do not know whether any New Zealander would listen to that and think: “This is a Government I can have confidence in.” Of course money is an incentive to work. Money is the biggest incentive to work. That member also said that this bill is a disincentive to work; by giving more money to go out to work it is a disincentive. In the same speech that person had the audacity to then turn round and say the focus should be on children. So here we are talking about putting money in the pockets of some of the poorest New Zealanders, some of the poorest New Zealanders who are looking after 60 percent of the 305,000 children living in poverty, and that member still says that the focus should be on children, but they will not support my bill.

We had Todd Miller launching an attack on me for my opposition to the Support for Children in Hardship Bill. But Todd Miller, we are supporting the Support for Children in Hardship Bill; we just disagree with certain aspects of the bill—aspects like the fact that with no evidence that Government is saying you must go back to work when your youngest turns 3, rather than 5. There is no evidence to support that. We also disagree with things like the fact that the Government is pushing the part-time work obligation from 15 hours a week to 20 hours a week, when there is no evidence to support that that is a good thing for those parents or those children. Those are the elements of the bill that we are not supporting, but Todd Miller, we are voting for—

Hon Members: Muller.

CARMEL SEPULONI: Muller, sorry. Mr Todd Muller, we are voting for the Support for Children in Hardship Bill. We are just voicing our concern about elements of that bill.

We had Jono Naylor—again a line that was repeated by Parmjeet Parmar; she really needs to learn whom to take advice from—saying that money is not an incentive to work. That is coming from a man who claimed two salaries for a number of months as he transitioned into work in this place—lest we forget—and he is not one of the lower-income earners in this country. So it is OK for the National Government to support certain members of society—certain members of society—to have tax cuts, tax breaks, and yet here we are considering a piece of legislation that would provide a break to some of the poorest New Zealanders, that would provide some incentive to go out and work, and it has the potential to have an impact on the 305,000 children who are living in poverty.

I think the National Government members should be ashamed of themselves for not supporting this bill. I say this one more time: I do hope that the other parties in the House will have a little more sense and will at least support this bill to select committee so that we can have the debate and discussion there.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

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.

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Climate Change (Divestment from Fossil Fuels) Bill

First Reading

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Is some member taking the call on behalf of James Shaw? I call Gareth Hughes.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): I rise on behalf of Green Party co-leader James Shaw with his bill formerly in the name of—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No, no. I am sorry, the member must move the bill first. If you do not have that information, maybe you might come to the Table here. You have to move that the Climate Change (Divestment from Fossil Fuels) Bill—someone might like to give you a copy.

GARETH HUGHES (Green) on behalf of James Shaw (Co-Leader—Green): I move, That the Climate Change (Divestment from Fossil Fuels) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Finance and Expenditure Committee to consider the bill. This bill is part of the Green Party’s priority climate-change campaign. We want to make sure that kids growing up in New Zealand and all around the world can have a safe and stable climate future, but when we have the public’s investment assets dedicated to fossil fuels we are actually counterproductive. Globally, there is $620 billion invested annually in subsidising fossil fuels. We see it in New Zealand with tax breaks, direct subsidies, and direct promotion benefits for the oil industry and for the fossil fuel industry. Globally, there is a debate as to whether the climate charge, through an emissions trading scheme or a levy, should be $25 a tonne, but according to the International Energy Agency the current global fossil fuel subsidies are the equivalent of a plus $100 charge. When we are debating this—particularly under the Government at the moment, where we have a minuscule carbon price—$25 seems far away. But when you are already $100 behind—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry—Mr Shaw must leave the Chamber while someone else is speaking on his behalf.

GARETH HUGHES: It is hard when you already have those global fossil fuel subsidies. When it comes to the public assets in our public ownership, these belong to all New Zealanders through the Superannuation Fund. We have seen some phenomenal returns, but when you look globally at the economic and financial analyses of sovereign wealth funds and of other investment funds, there is a clear correlation between those investing in clean energy and green technology and their performance. They significantly outperform fossil fuel investments. We have seen, this week, the writing on the wall for the lowest coal use in modern history.

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

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Kia ora mai tātou. Tēnā tātou katoa. Members, when the House adjourned for the dinner break it was the first reading of the Climate Change (Divestment from Fossil Fuels) Bill. Gareth Hughes was speaking on behalf of James Shaw, who has 7 minutes and 30 seconds remaining to speak, should he wish to avail himself of the opportunity.

JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Tēnā koutou katoa. He mihi nui ki a koutou. I wish to pick up where my colleague Gareth Hughes left off in introducing this bill in my name. As he was saying, we in this House share a deep ethical responsibility to act to protect the livelihoods of our children from the worst effects of climate pollution. One of the ways that we can help them is to divest from the companies that are at the forefront of destabilising our climate and polluting our atmosphere. In so doing, we can also begin to invest in a clean, low-carbon future, attracting new businesses, creating jobs, and building a stronger future—divest and invest.

Our publicly managed funds are the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, the ACC fund, and the Government Superannuation Fund, and they are already regarded as some of the most ethical sovereign investment funds in the world. They have shown how to make good returns while maintaining some of the highest ethical standards in investment. The $28 billion New Zealand Superannuation Fund is the best-performing sovereign wealth fund in the world, according to a global study by JP Morgan. Adrian Orr’s team has generated returns of more than 17 percent a year over the past 5 years, easily beating all other sovereign wealth funds that publish their figures, yet they have made these outstanding returns within a strong ethical framework that prevents them from investing in companies that manufacture nuclear weapons, companies that harvest and process whale meat, companies that manufacture tobacco products, companies that manufacture cluster munitions, and companies that mine destructively. Being ethical has clearly not compromised their ability to also be profitable.

This bill sets out to extend the current exclusion list to those companies that now represent the biggest threat to our children’s future prosperity: those companies that are directly involved in the exploration, mining, and production of fossil fuels. Our bill would exclude around 200 publicly listed fossil fuel companies, which are about 2 percent of our public funds’ current investment portfolios.

Here is why: our atmosphere can afford to have only a quarter of these companies’ known fossil fuel reserves burned if we want to avoid runaway climate change. That means that at least three-quarters of all known fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground—effectively becoming stranded—if we are to have a safe, secure climate. This bill draws a line in the sand for fossil fuel investment, and it will direct our public-fund managers to divest within 5 years. The 5-year time horizon empowers our fund managers to divest in a sensible and disciplined fashion. I expect that they will start with the highest-risk thermal coal companies, which represent the biggest risk to climate stability and also to clean air and clean water.

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund is already actively moving towards full carbon disclosure and reporting. But the ACC fund appears to have done little to acknowledge climate change and manage the significant investment risk it faces from its exposure to the carbon bubble. This bill will deliver greater consistency of risk management across our public funds. Capital freed up from divestment can flow into developing the clean energy alternatives that we need in order to prosper and to thrive. This is already happening. The Superannuation Fund’s commitment to invest $540 million in clean energy is its clearest signal yet that it is taking climate change seriously.

Divestment is supported by the United Nations, the World Bank, and many of world’s major investment funds. Today around $67 billion in fossil fuel company stocks have been divested in 180 different organisations. Storebrand, a $100 billion financial services group in Norway, began divesting from coal and oil sands companies saying that these stocks will be “financially worthless” in the future. Storebrand’s announcement coincided with a decision by Rabobank, one of the 30 largest financial institutions in the world, to cease lending money to unconventional extraction projects involving shale, gas, and tar sands.

In September 2014 the $860 million Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced plans to divest from all of its fossil fuel assets, amounting to 7 percent of its total assets. Funds director Stephen Heintz said: “We are quite convinced that if [JD Rockefeller] were alive today, as an astute businessman looking out to the future, he would be moving out of fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy,”. In Australia one of the biggest public sector pension funds, the Local Government Super, announced in October 2014 its intention to sell its holdings in coal companies, saying that climate change is an unarguable scientific reality and posed a very real investment risk. This year the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, Norway’s $1.2 trillion Government Pension Fund Global, began an orderly divestment from 114 companies on environmental and climate grounds. Interestingly, the fund made no mention of ethical issues in its announcements. “Our risk-based approach”—they said—“means that we exit sectors and areas where we see elevated levels of risk to our investments in the long term.”

The business world is moving on the climate, but will this House? Finance Minister Bill English has publicly said that National would not support any intervention in the way that fund managers make investment decisions. The question then is what that means for the existing ethical exclusions that we have on tobacco, nuclear weapons, whaling, and cluster munitions. I ask the members across this House who are not actively supporting this legislation whether it is socially responsible to invest in companies that are actively undermining our future. It is time for this House to do everything that we can to stop damage to our climate. Supporting this bill is one small but positive step in this direction. Thank you.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): The National Party opposes this bill. The main reason is that—

Chris Hipkins: Oh, what a surprise! The party of no.

DAVID BENNETT: You got a problem over there, mate? Oh, no, the party of no. I will indulge in the Opposition for a little while. I think the first thing to indulge in is the Green Party. The Green Party has never been right when it comes to fossil fuels. I remember Green members used to stand in this House and talk about peak oil. Peak oil was the big thing the Green Party had. They said that oil would run out. That was the big thing for the Green Party 10 years ago. Look through any speech on that side of the House and they mention peak oil day after day.

What has happened to the oil market? Tell us about peak oil now. Tell us about the Green Party and your amazing vision of how the oil market would work out. Tell us about the Green Party and your understanding of economics. Tell us about the Green Party and what actually happened in the oil market, because oil has never been cheaper. Oil will never be cheaper. It will probably get cheaper in the future, but it is at a very cheap point at this time because there is a plentiful supply of oil. There is no such thing as peak oil. The Greens were wrong. The Greens misled the New Zealand public and the world for many years talking about peak oil. When we look at the Greens, they have never been right when it comes to cars, transport, and oil.

I remember that we had the Road User Charges Amendment Bill in this House just a few years ago. I spoke on that bill, and I said that this was a good bill for New Zealand and it was important that we support electric cars going forward. The Green members abused that speech. They said that electric cars had no future in New Zealand because they did not see them then becoming relevant in this country in the near future. The Green Party was wrong once again when it comes to transport, fossil fuels, and those kinds of issues. And we will wind you up—yes, the speakers from the Green Party—because you have never been right in this area.

How could we trust it then to pick the economic things that we should invest in for our superannuation funds? Why would we give the Green Party the ability to determine what New Zealand should invest in for the superannuation of our future citizens and for the ACC payments of our future citizens? Can we trust those people to make the right economic decisions on investments in those areas? They surely have not got it right with regard to oil in the past. They surely have not got it right with regard to electric cars in the past, and they will never get it right, because they are based on fundamentalist socialist economic policy that will never work, and that socialism will never work because—

Hon Member: Oh, here we go.

DAVID BENNETT: Here we come; yes, that is true. I say to that party there: if you are right, then come to this House, but do not come to this House if you are completely wrong, as you have been in the past in this area. It is important that we invest in the roads of New Zealand. It is important that we have electric cars. It is important that we have an economy going forward, because there is no such thing as peak oil. There is no such thing as an oil market that is going to disintegrate.

James Shaw: There’s no such thing as climate change.

DAVID BENNETT: We are getting “climate change” from that member. That member is a new member of this House. I remember that when he became a co-leader of the Greens, the first six or seven questions he asked in this House were all about the climate. Then the polls went down for the Green Party. When it lost 2 percent in the polls, he went back to the economic policies of Russel Norman and attacked the rest of the country in other ways. We have not seen climate change questions from that member in this House recently, have we? No, he has given up on climate change. He has gone away from it because he knows he is losing in the polls. He is going away from the traditional things the Green Party should stand for. So it is pretty rich for the Green Party members to come to this House and talk about climate change tonight when they will not even ask questions in question time about climate change because they have given up on it. They know they cannot do what they want to do in the public eye.

Carmel Sepuloni: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member has been speaking for at least 5 minutes, I think, and he has not even touched on the content of the bill.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you for your point of order. I think you will find that there was a graceful brush with the bill early on, but I take the member’s point and suggest to the member who has the call that he could get a little bit closer to the bill in his delivery and contribution.

DAVID BENNETT: The bill, basically, says that the Green Party would make a direction to the ACC fund, the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, and the Government Superannuation Fund on where to invest. The Green Party has been shown to be incorrect in any of its potential determinations with regard to this area in the past, and that is the point I am making. We cannot trust it to make investment decisions, because it has always been wrong. It will always be wrong, because it is guided by ideology rather than looking at what investments are in the best interests of New Zealanders going forward. That is something that we must be aware of, and that is at the heart of why National will oppose this bill.

Funds like the Superannuation Fund are independent bodies, and the last thing we need is 10 members of the Green Party who have never done a day’s work in their lives making decisions about what New Zealanders should have their money invested in. That is the problem when you—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member is getting a bit repetitious. I suggest he find some new material or sit down.

DAVID BENNETT: I would like to mention also that all the public funds that New Zealand has are in a responsible investing programme, which is closely aligned with the United Nations principles for responsible investment, which you would think the Green Party would support—being a big supporter of the UN of course. There has been a long history of involvement in investment and things that are in the nature of climate change and risk in that area, and so there is a responsibility now upon those investment vehicles to take into account these issues. There has been a long history of involvement with many of the organisations that are involved in that area. The independence of those funds cannot be compromised by a bill like this in this House.

The Green Party has been wrong and always will be wrong in this area. We do not need to give the Green Party the power to make the wrong decisions when it comes to New Zealanders’ money. That is hard-earned money that New Zealanders need for their retirement, and we cannot trust the Greens. We should never trust them, and it is in the best interests of New Zealand that this bill does not pass. Thank you.

Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a call on the first reading of the Climate Change (Divestment from Fossil Fuels) Bill and signal that Labour will be supporting this bill’s referral to the select committee.

There are important questions that we need to ask. Let us stop and rationally consider what we are talking about here, unlike that last speech, which I have to say was one of the most disturbing contributions in this House that I have heard. That was a speech from the chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, a man who is charged with leading the select committee of this Parliament that examines the economic questions. That would have to go down as one of the most economically illiterate speeches I have heard.

What I put back to the Government members of this House is that their Government has signed up to a 50 percent emissions reduction target by 2050. If this is not a plan for part of our way to reduce emissions, then what is? What is the plan? This is why Labour is supporting this piece of legislation. We have very clear policy—we have to take climate change seriously. We have said that we are committed to a low-carbon economy and that we have to have requisite planning in place for us to get there. We think that this bill offers a really interesting way for us to examine whether or not this is the way for us to do it.

Of course there will be questions we will ask at the select committee, as we do with any piece of legislation, like the hard-working, diligent members of the committee we are. We will ask whether this is the way for us as Labour members to achieve a just transition. We will ask the questions around whether this is the right piece of legislation to help us achieve what we want to see, and it is a goal that we share with the Greens. I would have liked to see that it is a goal we can share around this Parliament without it being caught up in the petty party politics that we have just heard from the previous Government speaker.

We need to reduce our emissions. We have to take climate change seriously. At the moment, our planet is on target for a 3 to 4 degree rise in temperature unless we as a global community do something about this. We are seeing climate change denial smirks all around the House—I can see that—but we need to do something. We are going to Paris in only a month, and we as a country will have to show what part we are going to take in the world’s efforts to address this. New Zealand recently won a seat on the Security Council by saying we were going to take a leadership role in the Pacific. Well, there is no greater leadership role that New Zealand needs to take for its Pacific neighbours than a leadership role on climate change. This is a real and present issue for our region, for our country, and for our neighbours. If we idly sit here and refuse to do anything, such as the previous Government speaker was indicating, we will end up exactly where this Government is, and that is with no plan. The Government set targets. It failed to meet them. There is no planning, no budgeting, and no plan as to how we are going to cut emissions.

I am fearful about the costs we are leaving to future generations. I want a Government member to explain this to me: if not this, then how are we going to meet the 50 percent reduction by 2050, which the Government has signed up to? Where are the costs going to fall, and how are we going to manage that over the next 50-year period unless we start taking action now? The contribution from that Government speaker seems to be the only solution we got. There was absolutely no alternative. It was just no, no, and no to this bill. But how is the target going to be achieved?

There are good questions that need to be asked about this bill, and Labour is happy to examine it at the select committee and take part in what I hope will be a very constructive conversation around how we can be planning for our future. Thank you.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to the Climate Change (Divestment from Fossil Fuels) Bill.

Stuart Nash: Do you want an economically illiterate speech?

DAVID SEYMOUR: I am sure Mr Nash will get up at some point, speak in favour of it, and reflect on that as he flies home for the weekend. I want to thank James Shaw for bringing a substantial bill with noble intentions to the House, but I have to say that I think it fails on a couple of measures. One is that he claims one of the advantages is that it is fiscally prudent for New Zealand investors not to invest in certain areas because they may end up with stranded assets. Now, if it is true that James Shaw and the Green Party have that sort of foresight, in respect of the financial markets, I have got a simple solution for them: start shorting those assets. The Green Party could fund its entire campaign—it would not have to go and ask people for donations; it would not have to do fund-raising drives; it would not have to sell sausage sizzles or anything else; it could make all of its money just by shorting assets with the foresight that it used to design this bill. But, of course, we all know that that is hogwash. It has no such foresight, as it has demonstrated with peak oil over the last decade.

Secondly, let us imagine for a moment that we are not going to delude ourselves that this is somehow fiscally prudent, but rather we believe that this is a very important issue to address, and ethically we—the nebulous “we” that the previous member, Megan Woods, kept talking about—must stop supplying capital, or at least raise the cost of capital to these industries that we see as being a threat. The problem with that is that you have created a conflicting objective for those who manage the fund. On the one hand, they have to maximise return to taxpayers for the purposes that taxpayers have, and on the other hand, they have to pursue this secondary ethical objective. It is never a good idea in politics, in business, and in life to have one organisation with two diametrically opposed objectives, which is what they would have. It is far better to tax or disincentivise the consumption of carbon-heavy materials, services, or goods at the point of consumption.

But, of course, the real difficulty is that all the 40,000 people flying off in jet planes to Paris to talk about this next month will not be able to solve the fundamental coordination problem in that they cannot get every Government in the world to agree on a price level for carbon. Until you solve that problem, nothing in this bill is going to help the security of New Zealand’s investments or have any significant or measurable impact on global carbon emissions. So with those few comments and caveats, I again commend the member for bringing the bill, but I cannot agree with its intentions or what its results will be, and so I have to oppose this bill. Thank you.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First agrees with the Green Party where it says that climate change is the most challenging issue of our time, and that how we respond to it will define us and determine what kind of future we leave for our children. We also agree that there is an urgent need to transition our economy to a cleaner, more sustainable future. We acknowledge this, and that action on climate will require that we move away from the use of fossil fuels.

We think that the most effective way of doing that, to reduce the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere—primarily, of course, carbon dioxide and methane—is to progressively phase out the burning of fossil fuels, and to move much more towards the use of renewable energy such as wind power, photovoltaic electricity from sunshine, geothermal energy, and, yes, even more hydroelectric power. A progressive phase-out of fossil fuels is possible if New Zealand develops appropriate strategies and plans. We think that each citizen—even the ACT Party and some people in the National Party will be included—and each country has a duty, and, in fact, a self-interest to work to this end to reduce the damage to our planet that we as a population are currently doing and which is not sustainable.

Another consideration is that the major overseas economies that New Zealand trades with will increasingly require proof that our exports are produced sustainably. As a trading nation we cannot afford to sit on our hands in that respect. To do so would be to put our trade and our primary industries at risk. So, with all that in mind, New Zealand First’s policies oppose the use of direct economic instruments to achieve and move away from fossil fuels, and that includes the emissions trading scheme. We think it is counter-productive to pay polluting companies large taxpayer subsidies, with no requirements on them to actually reduce emissions. We also oppose the direct taxation of carbon.

What we would do is develop those strategies, plans, legislation, and the regulation to achieve the emissions performance that we all seek. We would do that in consultation with all New Zealanders, and especially New Zealand business, because without their cooperation we would have no chance of achieving emissions reduction objectives of any kind. We would make transport a first target and we would require much more use of rail for heavy freight and for urban passenger transport.

New Zealand First has a comprehensive policy, which we call “railways of national importance”, as opposed to the roads of national significance promoted by National. We would actively encourage the use of hybrid and, especially, zero-emission vehicles, including fully electric vehicles, and, very soon, fuel cell vehicles that are beginning to come on the market as well. We would ensure better public transport including the large-scale introduction of light rail in the main population centres. We would provide local government with clear guidelines and information to assist in its planning functions to achieve a consistent standard throughout New Zealand.

But this bill is highly prescriptive. In clause 7 it says “A fund manager must dispose of any investment that the fund has in the mining or production of fossil fuels.”, and it has got to do it within 5 years. It imposes very onerous obligations on fund managers about identifying climate change implications, and to measure, manage, report, and so on.

New Zealand First cannot support the bill, for three reasons. New Zealand First will not support it because we do not agree with the imposition of unnecessary and effective costs, taxes, or impositions on any part of the New Zealand economy or New Zealanders. We do not support these sorts of cliff-face proposals, which are seldom practical or effective. Instead, as I have already said, we would rather see a transitional approach, with Government incentives and regulation where that is actually required.

So we cannot support legislation of this kind. We do not believe that we should be paying the piper and playing the tune. It is over to those managers to decide how to invest and, in fact, that includes not just those considerations.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): It is a pleasure to be talking on the Climate Change (Divestment from Fossil Fuels) Bill, because this is something that is really important to New Zealand—that we do deal with climate change in a responsible manner, and, of course, we are. We have got a very good target that we are going to take to Paris in December next month.

I think that everyone in this House will agree with the overall sort of general intent of what this bill is trying to achieve. However, in my view, it is totally misdirected. The first thing is, why is this bill just focused on New Zealand Superannuation and ACC, the Accident Compensation Corporation? I think of all the issues to be worried about, and all the entities to be worried about, they are perhaps two of the least worrisome entities that the Government has on its books.

I think if the sponsor of this bill had actually picked up the phone and maybe rung Adrian Orr at the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, as an example, or even the investment team at ACC, then they would have been absolutely horrified—Adrian would have been horrified at the thought of this bill—

James Shaw: He was quite supportive, actually, when we spoke to him.

ANDREW BAYLY: —because they are already applying a very strong, ethical approach to way they invest in their investments around the world. I have actually spoken to Adrian about this bill very recently, and I got a slightly different view, which is that the New Zealand Superannuation Fund is very focused on achieving good outcomes, and it is very focused on ethical investments, and it is already applying some of the proper principles for investment.

But why this bill is totally impractical is that it is an issue of how you define what the entities that should be precluded from being invested in are. There is a general sort of clause, but, for instance, entities or investee companies that are using, for instance, a high use of coal—and a previous speaker was talking about transport—that is probably just as concerning as investing in certain other types of companies. How far do you stretch that definition? I have not seen anything in this bill that would go anywhere towards giving the clarity that the investees or the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation, as an example, would be able to apply.

The second thing is that the bill actually cuts across good governance, and we have been debating in this House over the past few months about permitting the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to actually invest through funds. Actually, there are four issues that we have been debating in this House, but one of them is the ability, and quite rightly so, to be able to invest in funds, and not only in New Zealand but offshore. They are a very standard, fund-to-fund type of approach, and here you are.

By implementing this bill, you would then start to preclude how the New Zealand Superannuation Fund can invest its money, and of course, it has got a very substantial portfolio. So, it may be a very small part of a very large fund that would be therefore excluded, or the New Zealand Superannuation Fund would be excluded from investing those types of funds.

I just think that lack of practical application and that constraint on the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and ACC achieving their outcomes is so ill-defined in this bill that it would actually become quite meddlesome. And, of course, it raises significant issues for the Minister because, no doubt, that lack of clarity will require some issue of support from a Minister, and that is a difficult issue. And, on that basis, I cannot support this bill.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): As Megan Woods pointed out, we are supporting this bill to the select committee. I would say that the last member to speak, Andrew Bayly, made some very good points, and those points are that this could become quite confusing. But the reason why we are supporting this bill to the select committee is that the way Parliament tends to work is that we come up with these great ideas, very good bills, and we take them to the select committee. Then the experts come in and they nut out these difficult decisions—these troublesome points that the last member brought up—and if there are solutions to them, which I have no doubt there are, then we can incorporate them in the legislation.

As Mr Shaw will tell you, the form this bill is in at the moment does not necessarily have to be the final form that comes back to the House, but I actually believe that we are beholden to members who put up members’ bills to actually take them to a select committee and get them tested by the absolute experts. And the experts will say to us “No, this just isn’t practical because it won’t allow us to do that.”, “Governance will be difficult to implement.”, or “It may put us in a conflicting situation.”, but until we actually know that, all we are doing at the moment is making assumptions. So I actually think we should be sending this to a select committee, and I would love to hear what the experts have to say.

One of the reasons I am supporting this to the select committee is that there are a myriad of domestic and international investments at the moment that the Superannuation Fund or the ACC fund or any other fund have the ability to invest in. Like you, I have immense respect for Adrian Orr and the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation, because they are extremely clever investors. They have proven themselves to be very, very prudent, and I am assuming that if we gave them direction from Parliament that there are certain investments that we consider, as a country and as a Parliament, to be unethical, then they would say: “That’s fine.” They would remove that from their portfolio, and they would go forward into other investments.

But there are a couple of implications of this. The first is, what does New Zealand stand for? This cuts into our global image. We have got to be seen to be walking the walk, not just talking the talk. Mr Groser told us today in question time that we are going to Paris, and we have done all this, and we are going to save the world, as Mr Shaw said. Well, if that is the case let us go to Paris and let us tell the other countries that New Zealand believes that this is a real issue, and, in fact, not only do we believe it but these are the actions we are taking. It is an easy thing to do in this case, and this is why we should send this to the select committee. I must admit, I do smile sometimes at the ACT member when he stands up and says: “This is a noble bill with noble intentions.” I say to him: then support it. Take it forward, and, again, let us see what the experts have to say.

I do not believe that it creates a conflicting objective in any way, shape, or form. In fact, if we have a look at what our Superannuation Fund has done—let us just talk about the Superannuation Fund for a moment—the facts say that the superannuation fund instigated by the Kirk Government, if it were still around, would be worth about $242 billion in today’s money. Muldoon cut it—illegally, as it turned out. It seems that this Government is making the same mistakes that the Muldoon Government made. It has cut contributions to the Superannuation Fund at a time when the Superannuation Fund is making extraordinary returns. What I would first love to see is, in fact, contributions to the Superannuation Fund started again, and then let us have the argument around what constitutes ethical and unethical investment. Let us have the conversation about where we want to move as a country. Let us have a conversation as a Parliament, but wider. Let us have a conversation in the general public about where we see our country, perhaps, in 2050, and how we get there, what the objectives are that we want to achieve, and what role the Government can actually play in achieving these objectives.

One of the roles that we can play as a Parliament is representing the will of the people. I would not say that this is the most challenging issue. I think the most challenging issue is actually sustainable economic development and jobs—and throw into that inequality—but it is certainly a very important issue, the issue around climate change. It has reached that tipping point where it is not just a bunch of—I was going to say greenies—environmentalists concerned about this. This is the wider community, and we get it wherever we go. We get the question: “What are you doing about climate change?”. This bill is just one of the pieces in the jigsaw to address the conversation. I think we should have sent it to the select committee. I absolutely support sending it to the select committee, because there are people there who are a lot more intelligent and a lot more competent than all of us here who would have provided answers to the questions we had. Unfortunately, now that is not going to be tested, unless the Nats vote for it. Thank you very much.

TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): I must admit that I am surprised to hear Mr Nash supporting this bill, because he is normally one member of the Labour Party who likes to see himself as one of its more commercially savvy members, and what is important to note is that this bill actually cuts across what I would have thought to be a principle that he would believe in—that is, the importance of the independence of fund managers in New Zealand.

Let us be under no misapprehension. This particular bill, which I think is a bizarre contribution from the Green Party, would, effectively, ban public fund managers of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, the ACC fund, and the Government Superannuation Fund from investing in companies that are directly involved in the mining and production of fossil fuels. Well, we have always not only valued but also really upheld the importance of the independence of these publicly managed funds, and I think that one of the really important things for us to take on board is that these particular managed funds are regarded as some of the models internationally. They are amongst the most ethical sovereign investment funds in the world at the moment, and they have shown how to make good returns while maintaining these high ethical standards. These high ethical standards include a genuine respect for sustainability and best environmental practice.

Here we have a bill that is, effectively, about the Green Party saying: “Let’s just secrete all the funds into our pet projects”—because that would actually be the end result of what it is wanting to do here tonight—“and take away the independence of some very experienced, commercially astute fund managers.” Well, I for one think that that is an outrageous suggestion. It would not serve the interests of our environment, it certainly would not serve the interests of our economy, and I cannot support this bill.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am pleased to take a call in the first reading of this bill, which we are supporting. I do endorse the remarks from my colleagues that this bill is worthy of consideration at a select committee, and I do commend James Shaw for bringing this bill to the House.

This ultimately comes down to what is ethical, but also it is about responsible investment and it is about fiduciary duties: acting in the best interests of beneficiaries. The New Zealand Superannuation Fund, which we have talked about quite a lot this evening, is an absolutely outstanding performer and it actually operates within a responsible investment framework. The Superannuation Fund itself has been able to generate absolutely outstanding returns, and it operates within this responsible framework that is aligned to international principles that are agreed across the investment fund industry worldwide. In fact, the New Zealand Superannuation Fund is a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment.

So we are seeing that responsible investment and environmental, social, and governance considerations are already central to a lot of the activities that the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and, indeed, ACC and others already undertake. So it is not actually a huge step forward to concede that we can include the ambit of this bill within the current activities of what the New Zealand Superannuation Fund does already. Case in point: the New Zealand Superannuation Fund has already laid out exclusions of particular companies and industries, sectors that it will not invest in. The Superannuation Fund does not invest in tobacco companies. It does not invest in cluster munitions companies. It does not invest in nuclear arms and related types of companies. So those exclusions are already public; they are already part of the investment mandate and the investment imperatives by which that fund operates.

So this bill definitely fits squarely within the current operations of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, and therefore it is not too far a stretch and should be given some proper consideration at select committee. We should get in the investment professionals. We should bring in those people who are involved in the management of institutional funds to present their views. As I see it, the responsible investment framework is only evolving. It is getting bigger and bigger, and it is expanding across the world. Obviously, business and industries do not stand still. Things evolve; technologies develop; the world moves on. Therefore, the investment sector has to be cognisant of that, and, ultimately, we need to be aware of the well-being of our planet.

Again, that goes to the fiduciary role that these sovereign funds play, and so I do commend this bill. I believe it is worthy of further consideration, and I do hope that this House can indeed refer it to a select committee so we can get some very much informed contributions and submissions on the merits, or not. Because, ultimately, the New Zealand Superannuation Fund is already operating responsibly. It is signed on to international conventions that are aligned to this bill, and ultimately it is accountable to New Zealand law, which we can change through this bill. Kia ora tātou.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): In a previous contribution on a different bill I talked about the two types of members’ bills there are. There are the sorts of political bills out there—the bills that, essentially, exist to get the name of the bill into the parliamentary ballot. I think Jacinda Ardern’s proposed bill about child poverty eradication would fall into that category. No one is really opposed to eradicating child poverty—eradication and reduction, I am sorry: the Child Poverty Reduction and Eradication Bill. No one is opposed to eradicating child poverty. In fact, everyone in this House is all in favour of eradicating child poverty, but, of course, that bill literally just sets up a commission to examine the issue. It is a bit like her bill to get the Law Commission to draft a bill to legalise gay adoption—you know, the point of the bill is just to have the bill.

So there are those sorts of bills, and then there are the serious bills. The House on a members’ Wednesday does consider serious bills, and I would classify the bill that the House has considered a few moments ago about solar energy, the Electricity Industry (Small-Scale Renewable Distributed Generation) Amendment Bill, as one of those serious bills. It was well-intentioned—I understand it was defeated at first reading, but it was a serious bill to deal with quite an interesting issue in the electricity market.

So how would I classify this bill? Well, I would say it is more sort of a halfway house bill. It is quite a political bill and it is quite a simple bill. I have to say that James Shaw is a well-intentioned guy and I think the bill is well intentioned, and it is a somewhat interesting issue that the House is dealing with.

Mr Tirikatene just before made reference to fiduciary duties, and trusts having to act in the best interests of beneficiaries. I am not sure that was wholly on point with the bill, but I do agree with him that the purpose of the funds that the Government has—like the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and the ACC fund—must be to maximise returns for taxpayers and maximise returns for the people of New Zealand. I do agree with the comments of my colleague David Seymour about how if we were to pass this bill it would unnecessarily shackle the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation with that very tricky dual mandate. It would make it difficult for them to discharge their responsibilities.

The House only last month, I think, considered Government legislation to allow the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation to use something called fund investment vehicles—or FIVs, in investment parlance. That was a technical change to allow the guardians to use those vehicles to maximise returns for taxpayers. Everybody in the Parliament was at great pains to talk about the importance of the independence of the Superannuation Fund, how wonderful the Cullen fund was, and how Michael Cullen had the enormous foresight to set up this independent fund that would be at arm’s length from politicians.

Hon Phil Goff: And all of those things are true.

CHRIS BISHOP: Yes—Phil Goff says all those things are true. Well, those things are true—that is exactly right. Michael Cullen also, incidentally, did not support the Government resuming contributions to the Superannuation Fund, or he did not support the Government borrowing billions of dollars to put into the Superannuation Fund. In fact, he explicitly said that when he legislated for it at the time, which is contrary to Labour Party policy currently. They tend to go back and forth on that, depending on who the leader is, and that changes about once a year. But anyway, that is just a side point. The critical point is that everybody was at pains to talk about the independence of the fund and how it was important that politicians were at arm’s length from it, and that is exactly right. That is exactly the point, and that is exactly why this bill should be defeated. Thank you.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call James Shaw in reply.

JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): I would like to start by responding to some of the criticisms of the bill that have been outlined with greater or lesser coherence by previous speakers. David Bennett started by saying a number of times that the Green Party was wrong about everything, and that this bill requires that the Green Party decide where the Superannuation Fund and the other Government funds put their money. It does not; that is simply a lie. What it does do is that it says that—

David Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That member is doing that on purpose to use that word and he should not be allowed to do that, so I ask him to withdraw and apologise.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member makes the point that it is unparliamentary language to accuse—[Interruption] Sorry, I am speaking. Do I need to stand up for the member to sit down? The member makes a valid point in his point of order. It is unparliamentary to accuse another member of lying. I am sure the member understands that; we will not hear it again.

JAMES SHAW: It was a gross and intemperate error; I apologise and withdraw. What the bill does do is it requires the managers of those three Government funds to divest from the fossil fuel industry directly. A number of the Government speakers have said that we have been wrong about this, but I would just like to point out again that the $100 million financial services group Storebrand has divested; that Rabobank, that rather large, Dutch-based global bank, has ceased lending money to unconventional fossil fuel projects; that the $860 million Rockefeller Brothers Fund has divested; that Australia’s Local Government Super fund has divested; and that Norway’s $1.2 trillion Government investment fund has divested. So if you do not want to take my word for it, take their word for it.

Another of the criticisms was that this in some way disrupts the independence of the directors of the funds, but I want to point out that we are actually already divesting from a number of categories. We do not invest any more in tobacco, although I understand that some members of the House would be OK with it if we continued—or resumed, sorry, because we actually used to have those funds invested in tobacco, but the fund has actually pulled back. It has actually divested from tobacco—the New Zealand Superannuation Fund divested from tobacco. It also is not investing in nuclear weapons. It is not investing in whale meat, it is not investing in cluster munitions, and it is not investing in companies that mine destructively.

It does all of that and it still manages to make 17 percent returns. So when Tim Macindoe says that we have these ethical investment firms and that they get these great returns, he is absolutely right. That was how I started my speech. If he had been listening, he would have heard me start by acknowledging how they are incredibly ethical; globally recognised for doing so, and, at the same time, world-beating. This legislation would not affect that; this would not affect that at all. In fact, the other firms that have divested around the world actually have greater returns than the market average, so, again, if you do not want to take it from me, then just take it from those trillion-dollar funds around the world that have already divested.

The thing is, there is an ethical dimension to this. The ethical dimension is that New Zealand has committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels. What has happened, in fact, is that our emissions have risen 23 percent since 1990. In fact, in the lifetime of the current Government our emissions have increased 12.4 percent—they have gone up since 2008. We have no plan. We are standing completely in variance with our own commitments, and one of the worst things that this Government has done is it has played fast and loose with New Zealand’s global brand over the last few years, endangering the multi-billion dollar asset that is our “clean, green” brand internationally.

Today the National Party has had the chance to vote for the environment on two occasions, one with the Climate Change (Divestment from Fossil Fuels) Bill and previously with Gareth Hughes’ “Fair Go For Solar Bill”, and it has voted against the environment on both occasions, putting a lie to its so-called blue-green credentials. But this is what we have come to expect from this Government, and so I look forward to it voting against the environment once again tonight. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Climate Change (Divestment from Fossil Fuels) Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 48

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

Noes 73

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 12; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Amendment Bill

First Reading

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I move, That the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Government Administration Committee to consider the bill. The year 2013 was a tumultuous year for New Zealanders, as we faced the realisation that the interception and electronic surveillance capacities of our secret service agencies had expanded enormously. It was the year that Edward Snowden revealed to the world just what the US was capable of and was actually doing, and it was the year that the “Five Eyes” relationship came under intense scrutiny. It was the year that this Government introduced two pieces of law to give the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and Ministers expanded powers, and it was the year that civil society, including the Human Rights Commission, spoke up loudly about the importance of privacy and balance in our security laws. Labour strongly opposed both those laws; we did so for many reasons.

During the debate around the introduction of the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Bill and the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill, otherwise known as “TICS”, in 2013, there were numerous submissions from civil society, the legal profession, and the telecommunications and internet sectors calling for there to be greater independent oversight of the new powers being provided for in both pieces of legislation. During the debate on the “TICS” bill, a number of submitters urged the Government to include a technical advisory board to act as an accountability buffer for the GCSB and the Government Minister exercising powers over the commercial decisions by our telecommunications networks with no independent oversight. In clause 48 of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill, which is now an Act, these powers include any decisions by a network to buy or acquire “any equipment, system, or service that falls within an area of specified security interest; or (b) any change—(i) to the architecture”—or design, ownership, control, oversight, or supervision—“of any equipment, system, or service that falls within an area of specified security interest;”. These are enormous powers. If the GCSB decides to intervene and the network challenges that decision, the issue goes to the Minister responsible for the GCSB. There is no other check or balance in the system.

After the Act was passed without the inclusion of any independent oversight mechanism, I placed a bill into the members’ ballot to rectify this. After more than 2 years, my bill has been drawn. This proposed amendment to the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act establishes a technical advisory board to which matters must be referred in instances where the Minister will be required to exercise his or her discretion or to prescribe an additional area of specified security interest. One of the serious concerns around “TICS” is that it will create a chilling effect on New Zealand technology companies, as the powers for surveillance agencies to interfere in business decisions are too broad and the compliance regime too rigid and secretive—it created broad, sweeping powers likely to result in an increased risk of invasive surveillance on a mass scale—and that it failed to provide sufficient oversight or checks and balances on the new powers granted to Ministers. We considered that the bill was poorly drafted, with the Law and Order Committee finding that the powers were not clear or were too broad.

My bill cannot and will not address all of those issues, but what it does is establish a mechanism for there to be expertise to assist the Minister and to assure New Zealanders that relevant information is being considered when critical decisions are being made about network security and consideration of proposed mitigations. The bill will require that any matter—any matter—where a Minister exercises their discretion or recommends prescribing an additional area of specified security interest be first referred to the technical advisory board for analysis and recommendations. That board will comprise equal representation from Government and the industry, with an independent chair. Why is it needed? Because there are things that the network or telecommunications companies get asked to do by the GCSB that are either technically unfeasible or expensive. The GCSB does not have the capacity to understand the rapidly changing technology and the impact on wider industry. If it is delaying decisions being made by our industry to become more agile and responsive to the needs of customers and businesses, then this has an economic impact.

I want to refer specifically to the submission to the 2013 bill, made by the Telecommunications Carriers Forum, otherwise known as the “TCF”, which is a respected body that represents most of the telecommunications networks in New Zealand. It said that it recommended “that additional protections are put in place, relating to the issuing of Directives. We consider that an additional step in the process between the security agency and the Minister should be inserted into the consideration process, to appropriately address these concerns.” They considered that the UK approach, on which their submission was based, achieves this well. They went on to say that an independent expert panel should consider any directive proposal from a security agency and submissions from impacted parties before providing its recommendation to the Minister. That panel would be balanced by an equal number of security-cleared security specialists from telecommunications providers and representatives from security agencies, with an independent chair. All participants would have secret-level, Government-sponsored security clearance. This is eminently sensible. It is measured. It was supported in the select committee by all of the other major telecommunications companies in New Zealand, including Chorus; Enable Networks, which is rolling out our ultra-fast broadband networks; Telecom, as it was then, which has now been divided into Chorus and Spark; Ultrafast Fibre, another infrastructure company rolling out fibre; Vodafone; and also Google.

In summary, what this bill does is set up a technical advisory board. It will improve relationships between the security agencies and the telecommunications companies. It will ensure that businesses are not burdened with unnecessary costs. It will reduce the likelihood of mistakes by all of those involved parties such as the GCSB, the Minister, and the telecommunications companies. It is not going to impede security. All of the panel must have top-level security clearance, and they are advisory only—they do not have ultimate decision-making power; the Minister would still make the final decision if necessary. There is no harm in ensuring that the Minister making these decisions is as fully informed as possible before they make a decision, and this has an overseas precedent. It is based on an existing UK model that has had no issues.

The underlying principle is that New Zealanders must be reassured that measures to ensure the security of our public and our private sector entities are balanced by measures to protect their privacy. The creation of this independent board with technical knowledge and expertise is widely supported by the industry and internet and civil-society organisations. Since 2013, I have been advised that this existing Act has caused significant costs and delays for companies making business changes and entering into new contractual arrangements. Surely, if there is a low-cost, simple, and effective measure that can be put in place to mitigate this, why not do it? It is a sensible bill. It is aimed at making our surveillance laws more efficient and effective. It has got a wider set of principles around mitigation against the economic impact of tightening our security laws, while ensuring the best possible advice is being given to the decision makers, whether that is the GCSB or a Minister. I ask the House to support this bill to the select committee.

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): I rise in opposition to this bill, the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Amendment Bill 2015. As we have heard from the member opposite, the sponsor of this bill, Ms Clare Curran, this bill seeks to set up a technical advisory board to advise the Minister of increasing expertise in network security and to consider proposed mitigations. What she did not mention, or failed to mention, was that on the back of the chronology of events that she had mentioned, the parent Act, the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act 2013, went through a robust consideration process here in this House including at the Law and Order Committee and that advisory board was denied. As part of that parent Act, it set up a new framework for the Government Communications Security Bureau, for network operators and Government to work together in respect of matters of network security, where it has bearing on national security and the country’s economic well-being. But also, as part of that, it set up a comprehensive enforcement and compliance regime—one that we believe, on this side of the House, has sufficient checks and balances in respect of governing the Minister’s duties in relation to his or her decision making.

What this bill seeks to do is add in another level of bureaucracy; that any time when the Minister wishes to use his or her discretion in respect of interception obligations this process would need to be put to the so-called technical board. I see that the board, under this bill, would comprise equal representatives from Government and from industry with an independent chair, but it is hard to see how a board could necessarily have all of the expertise under that umbrella when we are talking about a technology that is advancing at a rapid rate, innovation, competition, and, of course, looking at compliance costs. As part of those mechanisms, when the Minister and the Government talk to network operators the Minister is required to consult with affected parties as to the effect of any decision made with them. Again I note that that includes the implementation, the cost of that implementation, innovation, and competition. Those affected parties have the opportunity to speak directly to that decision maker.

I have worked in law, I have worked in business, and I have worked for the Government. When you have policy that affects people, when you make decisions that affect people, they wish to speak to the decision maker. They do not want to speak to some middleman who would sit there in the middle and muddy the waters. They want to make sure that they have a fair hearing and that they speak to the decision maker to have their case heard. That is the appropriate mechanism for that. As part of this Act, the 2013 Act, all processes are still subject to judicial review and that is the same for any other legislation. It is working well. We have not heard of any complaints so far. All this does is add another level of complexity and it would also add to the cost of the process.

So look—to end with—our way of life here in New Zealand does not happen by accident. We have a range of various agencies that look after us. We have liberties and freedoms here that we enjoy, which other people round the world do not enjoy, but again that does not happen by accident. What come with freedom and liberties are obligation and responsibility. With some of the threats out there such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and the way that these terror groups are evolving, we need to keep ahead of them to protect our way of life. The 2013 Act does that. There are appropriate checks and balances, but we do need to protect our freedoms. As such I think the 2013 Act is working well and I oppose this bill.

Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I do not know what it is about this Government. All it does is oppose, oppose, oppose. You would think it would come up with some constructive debate about an idea that is a very good idea. Sometimes I get very tired with the negativism of this Government.

I did have the opportunity to hear the submissions on the original Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill back in 2013. Sarah Dowie clearly was not in the House at that time, so she did not have the benefit of listening to what the companies themselves told us. I am sure if she had listened to those companies then she would not have made the comments that she did. She said that the bill adds a level of bureaucracy, but the key point that the commercial companies made was that the directions that would be given by the Minister to them would not take into account commercial realities and would not have the level of technical understanding to ensure that the ministerial directions on the private companies made sense and were the right way to go about it. So, actually, this is not about adding a level of bureaucracy; this is about protecting commercial companies against bureaucratic decision-making when those bureaucrats do not always understand the compliance costs, the way in which their decisions will impede innovation and competition, or that what the Government might do through the ministerial directive actually has huge commercial implications for the companies.

I listened to a whole range of those companies. I listened to Vodafone, to what was then Telecom, to the Telecommunications Users Association, to InternetNZ, to Google, to Facebook, to the New Zealand Law Society, and to Microsoft. Every one of those organisations had difficulty with this legislation that was rammed through Parliament at the time. So I congratulate Clare Curran, because I think that what her legislation is doing in the House today is dealing with a problem that the companies themselves identified and the Government of the day then refused to respond to.

I would like to talk a little bit about the Vodafone submission. Here it is—an important company. It runs my telephone network and that of many of the members in this House. It actually asked specifically for what Clare Curran’s bill provides for, which is a technical advisory board. Vodafone pointed out that this idea was an idea that has been implemented successfully in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has similar legislation that imposes obligations on telecommunication companies, but it had the wisdom to say: “Before we start directing these companies in a way that goes to the heart of their commercial operations, let’s have a consultation process. Let’s have an equal number of technical representatives from the communications industry and the security agencies, with an independent chair.” If that is good enough for the Mother of Parliaments to pass through in the United Kingdom, why not adapt this idea to New Zealand?

The powers that the Government has given itself are incredibly intrusive. A private company has to notify the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) about procurement decisions. They have to engage with the GCSB on design, build, and operation of networks. They have to get the permission of the GCSB when they want procurement. So what Vodafone was saying is that in order to make sure the Government gets its decisions right, for heaven’s sake give the private sector the chance to have an input before the bureaucracy and the Minister—who may know nothing about the commercial implications of their decisions—so they do have to take into account what the private sector’s concerns might be. This is not about adding bureaucracy; this is protecting the companies against ill-informed bureaucratic decisions.

What the National Government is saying in the House tonight is that it wants to keep on ignoring the private sector. Creeping socialism by the National Government—it wants to control the private sector without giving the private sector the benefit of being listened to about the implications of Government decision-making. People are getting more and more fed up with the arrogance of a Government that says it has all of the answers and that will now tell a private company every detail about how it should run its operation without having any reciprocal obligation to listen to what that commercial entity has to say. I think this is a very good bill, and I commend it to the House.

BRETT HUDSON (National): It is a pleasure to rise in opposition to this bill. I thank the member who has just taken his seat, Phil Goff. I do not think in my life I have witnessed someone be so wrong in such an impassioned way. I am going to speak to this bill, in a moment, as a member who worked in the very telecommunications industry that he is trying to tell this House works a certain way—I can assure the House that it does not.

But let us look at what Ms Curran’s bill is looking to do. The idea has some theoretical merit—the idea is that you get some technical experts to advise so a Minister can make a better decision. That is a smart thing. However, you do not necessarily need to have a board if, instead, you have some very sound business processes that achieve the same outcome without one.

I chose to look at the process for procurement of telecommunications equipment that could have some implication for national security. There are about eight steps—eight very clear milestones and decision points in that process. Every one of them offers an opportunity for technical input, either from the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) or even, more important, from industry. So there is not a technical advisory board, but there is absolutely opportunity for technical experts, both within the bureau and from without, to have their input.

Let us look at why we did not make a board. Well, it was reflected upon by a select committee. Submitters might have said one thing, but it is the committee that decides.

The committee decided that the board would have to make decisions that would have to consider matters that involved classified information. So you are not just talking about representatives from Spark or Vodafone; you are talking about people who have to have requisite security clearance. So the committee felt that the board, even with the best intentions, would simply be ineffective in most of its decisions. This would relate to both commercially sensitive decisions it could not make and also to potentially classified information that it should not be party to.

So on the basis that the bill was considered and this particular board was seen as unnecessary, the process already permits for the technical expertise to be rendered to, first, the GCSB director, and, later, to the Minister in that decision-making process.

The third and perhaps most important test would be to reflect now that the legislation has been in place for 18 months. So let us count the number of complaints or issues that have been raised since this legislation has been in place.

Simon O’Connor: How many?

BRETT HUDSON: Zero. So what we see in practice is that the model that has been adopted offers both the input from industry as well as from other experts within the bureau. It has been in place for 18 months, and there have been no issues. It was a sound decision by the House in the first place, and there is no need to change it. I oppose this bill.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): The Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act was passed in 2013 alongside its sister bill, the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act. Those two pieces of legislation were expressly designed to increase the powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) to engage in large-scale spying on citizens of this country and other countries.

I just want to be really clear about what we are talking about here. The original legislation, which this bill before us wants to amend, was designed to increase the surveillance powers against New Zealanders and others. The original legislation gave the GCSB greater technical ability to spy on New Zealanders and to allow other foreign agencies to use the GCSB to do the same. At the time the Greens and others fought very hard, alongside thousands of New Zealanders, against increasing the powers of the spy agencies, in large part because the spy agencies could not be trusted to use those powers wisely. They could not be trusted to follow the law appropriately. Even though 2 years have passed since this original legislation was passed into law, and despite the fact that the discussion then was that these agencies could not be trusted to follow the law, and they were told to do so—and they promised to do so; that they would be much better—we have now seen subsequently that the New Zealand SIS, at least, is still failing to follow the law.

So the Green Party supports Clare Curran’s bill because, although a modest bill and a small change, it is a bill that helps provide the oversight the New Zealanders are demanding of our spy agencies because they are proving time and time again to be untrustworthy and to fail to follow the law. The New Zealand SIS example just recently where it is required by the law—and I guess this is one of the warnings, even about legislation like that before us today, that you can put these provisions in place in the law but if you have a Minister who does not understand his own legislation and you have heads of agencies who do not care for the oversight that they are required to provide, they just do not do it.

The latest example with the New Zealand SIS is classic. The SIS is required, when it issues a visual surveillance warrant, to provide that to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. The director of the SIS did not do that. The Minister who signed off the warrants did not bother to check and make sure that she had followed his new law. He did not find out that she had failed to follow the law until after the inspector-general had presented her report to the Prime Minister, a week after. You can put in place important safeguards, but if you still have a failed Government that does not understand the importance of both privacy and the necessity to uphold the law, then sometimes these things will fall through.

But none the less, despite the failure of this Government to make sure the law is followed when it comes to spy agencies, and despite the failure of, in this case, the Director of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service to undertake her legal obligations under new law, we would support any legislation, such as Clare Curran’s, to increase the oversight of the spy agencies—in this particular case the Government Communications Security Bureau. We would do so in the name of the thousands of New Zealanders who understand there may be a need for agencies like this, who recognise that there are threats that need to be dealt with and that some powers may be required, but who want to have a proper balance of proper oversight over those agencies to ensure that they follow the law, just like they are expecting other New Zealanders to do. To have these agencies of the law breaking the law because there is poor oversight over their operations is unacceptable in a modern democracy. I applaud Clare Curran’s bill. It is a modest change, but it is a step forward and the Green Party will support it. Thank you.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): The idea of establishing an independent technical advisory board is not feasible, simply because the board would be ineffective in most of the decisions. Most of the decisions would relate to commercially sensitive matters. So it is not a feasible idea. Also, a technically focused board would not be able to address the broad range of issues that the decision maker needs to address.

At the moment we do have checks and balances in the current Act. All decisions to increase the interception obligations require consultation with the affected parties and also must take into account the effect on these parties. Affected parties already have the opportunity to submit advice to the Minister on the technical implementation. The current legislation is sound. We do not think it is necessary to add another clause to cover what has already been taken care of.

Also, since the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act came into effect, we now have 140 registered network operators. Prior to this, New Zealand had no record of the numbers. I oppose this particular bill. Thanks.

TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. New Zealand First will be supporting the bill, not because it actually—and I choose to disagree with Metiria Turei—provides oversight. [Interruption] Minister, I am speaking and it is really interesting. You probably should listen.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The Minister should sit down.

TRACEY MARTIN: It is not because it provides oversight. New Zealand First was very, very clear when the sister legislation to this bill went through that there was a major defect in that particular legislation at the time. It was around the oversight of the regime, and the regime for the surveillance of New Zealanders. It was around the warrants that were issued. New Zealand First felt that there should have been a three-person panel to review those warrants within a certain time frame, to make sure that New Zealanders were still being protected.

But we are going to support this legislation because, unlike the National Party, we are not so arrogant as to think that we know everything. We are not so arrogant as to say—and it did not take Ms Dowie long; it certainly did not take Ms Dowie long to actually start to do the scaremongering about terrorists. What we are talking about here is a body of experts in their field being there to advise a Minister of the Crown. That is what they are there for. It did not take Mr Hudson very long either to suggest that we do not need an actual panel of experts to advise the Minister. The Minister can always ring up a mate. The Minister can always ring up somebody or a company that the Government prefers, and that is what we are seeing a lot of.

It may be why, Mr Hudson, there have been no complaints, because business knows how anti-business this Government has become. Business knows that if they get offside with this Government they will not get any more contracts. Business knows that if they get offside with this Government—Ms Dowie could not tell us how. She went on about the point that there was no middleman between the decision maker and business, that they would have full access, and that they could talk about it. But Ms Dowie did not actually answer the question as to how. Ms Dowie does not know. The reality is that if you annoy this Government, you do not get an appointment. That is why, Ms Dowie and Mr Hudson, there is a need for this legislation to go through, at least as far as the select committee, 2 years after—2 years after—to make sure that these companies are not being disadvantaged through the arrogance of this Government, which thinks that it knows best.

Ms Dowie quite clearly said, how could it be expected that all the technical knowledge required be inside a panel of experts from industry, yet the Government argues that the Minister does not require the experts’ advice. So they obviously believe that, somehow, being elected a National Party Minister makes you an expert beyond all those out there in the industry, and that you do not require their advice. That is why the Government is opposing this bill. There are only two reasons for that—either those are the notes they have been given—and they have to follow the notes they have been given—or they are delusional. One of those options is what you could pick.

From a New Zealand First perspective, what would possibly be wrong with supporting this bill to the select committee if Mr Hudson and Ms Dowie are so confident that there have been no problems in the last 2 years around the Government Communications Security Bureau being able to dictate to New Zealand businesses what they will buy, whom they will buy it from, when they will buy it, and how it will affect their balance sheets? If they believe that there is nothing wrong with that and there have been no complaints, then send it to the select committee and prove it. Send it to the select committee, support Clare Curran’s bill, and prove it.

But they will not. They will not send it to the select committee. Maybe there is a reason for that. Maybe they know that if this bill got to the select committee, the very things that they say that we should not be worrying about, the very things that they say are not a problem for industry, may just surface. They may just come forth. We all know that Mr Hudson does not get many telecommunication companies in his firm, and we all know that there is hardly any telecommunications access in Invercargill. Even though the National Government says there is a massive roll-out down there, hardly anybody can pick up a phone down there. Ms Dowie surely does not get telecommunication—

Sarah Dowie: I’ve got one.

TRACEY MARTIN: You are in Wellington right now, Ms Dowie. That is why you have got bars of signal. We know, we can be confident, that Ms Dowie and Mr Hudson actually do not see the telecommunications companies. We can be confident that this Government is denying this bill having any oxygen because it is frightened of the companies that may come forward and say: “We now have to pussyfoot around a National Government that is throwing its arrogant weight around when it comes to contracts; that only rings us if they are the ones that”—

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): Tēnā koe e te Mana Whakawā. Tēnā koutou katoa e ngā mema o te Whare. It is a matter that I take very seriously—speaking about a bill that has anything pertaining to the interception and securing of our country’s telecommunications network.

So in rising to speak on the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Amendment Bill in this first reading debate, I want to, initially, say that I will be opposing this bill, but it is something that I have read very closely. As we are in the Remembrance Day period, where we are mindful of the fact that people have laid down their lives that we may live in a free country, with protections of our privacy and our right to be free here, it is something that we should all take particularly seriously.

There are a couple of issues that my colleagues on this side of the House have particularly addressed. One that I want to touch on is the comparison with the United Kingdom example that I think the member is trying to make. The United Kingdom version of the technical advisory board has a very, very different scope to what is being proposed in this bill. In the United Kingdom it focuses on interception obligations, but not on the wider network security that is at risk from the hackers and the people who would seek to damage our economy by disrupting the critical infrastructure that we rely on in this country: the phone networks, online banking, and air traffic control; all of those things that are now networked.

I am afraid this is a bill that I, personally, cannot support, and I think for very good reason other members on this side of the House have highlighted that there are significant issues with it. I will not be supporting it further.

STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I rise in support of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Amendment Bill. It is, as my co-leader Metiria Turia said earlier, a token towards getting some decent transparency around the security agencies in New Zealand.

I recall not so long ago when the original full bill went through, and we worked through it in the select committee to try to get some decent oversight into the telecommunications aspects of security. We tried to get oversight so that the community could have some confidence around what was going on. We have heard already tonight the raft of shortcomings that have happened even since then.

What is very, very concerning is how industry is forced to open the portals of communications to security agencies and into private communications in such a way that, effectively, human rights abuses could occur. People’s privacy—and industry’s privacy at times—should not be looked at. They should not be being peered at by those with interests beyond genuine—genuine—security for New Zealand. There has been a raft of shortcomings in the activities of both the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and the SIS and when members of the community wanted to know whether they were affected—whether they were one of the ones who had been looked at illegally—that was supressed. Yet the Government came through with its “Five Eyes” bills—the “TICS Bill”, the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill as we call this one, and the GCSB bill—to align with the US and its foreign policy aims and objectives, and for their big corporates and for their major military machine.

It is absolutely critical that we get more oversight, and this bill, thanks to Labour member Clare Curran, goes some way to do that. So we congratulate her on trying to get some more oversight, some fair representation of industry—for looking at that aspect of the agencies that are working underneath the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act.

It is concerning, and the National Party members may sort of nod or be carrying on while New Zealanders’ privacy is actually threatened, and while industry has to jump through hoops for the security agencies, at its own expense, and at the same time working against its own customers. So the Greens will be supporting this bill, and we congratulate again the member who has brought it to the House. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Clare Curran—5 minutes in reply.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Well, it is a great pity that the members on the National Party side of the House could not do their homework and read the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act to actually understand how the process works for directives and then have a look at how the UK model for a technical advisory board works in practice. It is a pity that they did not put up speakers who actually knew what they were talking about. Most of what they said was nonsense and ignorant and they should really have done their homework.

The Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Amendment Bill is a modest bill. I think Metiria Turei described it as a modest bill. It certainly is, and I do not resile from that. It certainly does not seek to address all of the issues that Labour had and continues to have with the actual Act. A technical advisory board is a mechanism and it is a practical, sensible, modest mechanism that has been and is being used successfully in the UK to enable its legislation to work more effectively. It is sensible and is supported widely by the communications industry.

One of the main points to make tonight, which is rather curious, is that it is Labour here that is sticking up for the private sector, it is Labour that is sticking up for the communications industry, and it is Labour that is trying to make our surveillance laws work more effectively and with the least cost impost on commercial activity in our own country, while ensuring that the functions for security law can be carried out effectively.

The National Party members claim that this Act is working well. They say there are no problems, that this would create a new level of bureaucracy, and that—irony upon irony—the select committee process worked well. Well, to deal with that one first, the select committee process was largely a farce. The National-dominated select committee voted to block the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) from coming and giving evidence, so therefore we could not ask the GCSB questions about its technical competence in making recommendations and decisions about decisions that networks make about procurement, about changes to the network—about all of those decisions that it now has very wide-ranging powers in. We were not able to ask the GCSB those questions, so the select committee in that sense was an absolute farce.

Labour members on the select committee asked the telecommunications companies to come back with an idea of the cost implications of setting up this new regime. They did, and they were extensive. Just to set up the mechanisms to put in place the ability for the GCSB to come in, it was more than $20 million—and that was just to establish these mechanisms. As to whether or not there have been any issues since the Act—well, it is security law. We are not exactly going to get reporting in the House on how many times the GCSB has created delays and cost implications, but I do know that there have been delays and cost implications.

What this bill, which is a simple, modest, practical and reasonable piece of legislation that can go through reasonably easily, would do would be to set up a mechanism that provides oversight—much needed oversight—that is based on a United Kingdom model and that works well now with the UK security law. It was asked for specifically by all of our communications industry. It was backed by other submitters. The only opposer of it is this Government, which ultimately used this legislation as a power grab to ensure that a Minister would have the ultimate power to make decisions about our telecommunications networks.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 58

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

Noes 63

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

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Affordable Healthcare Bill

First Reading

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I move, That the Affordable Healthcare Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Finance and Expenditure Committee to consider the bill. The primary goal of the Affordable Healthcare Bill is to rebalance New Zealand’s health care system. Our public health service is increasingly under pressure with growing debt, longer waiting lists, rationing of services, and a more than anxious Governor of the Reserve Bank, as evidenced at the select committee today. There is no doubt that health costs will escalate with a growing and ageing population.

The Affordable Healthcare Bill is a three-part omnibus bill that supports that public health system by encouraging those New Zealanders who can afford it to contribute to their own health care costs. Primarily, health insurance allows clients elective surgery, which shortens public waiting lists and gives greater choice of health care for the majority of New Zealanders. You would expect that to be music to the National Party members’ ears. The Affordable Healthcare Bill—we might try and be positive and helpful—introduces three initiatives targeting costs to New Zealand’s health care system: specifically, because of a larger numbers of older migrants, the cost to our economy of sick days taken by workers, and senior citizens giving up their health insurance at the very time they most need it. Business and Economic Research Ltd, BERL, has provided cost-benefit reports on all three aspects of this omnibus bill.

First, there is a requirement for all parent reunion category immigrants to take out 10 years’ compulsory health insurance as a condition of their residency. The minimum requirement is cover for elective surgery. New Zealand approves, under this Government, 4,000 to 5,000 parent category migrants every year. There are well over 4,500 to 5,000 parent category migrants every year and most are older migrants over the age of 60. They have to be in good health and pass financial requirements so there should be and would be, if the system was operating as the Government claims it to be, no barriers to taking out health insurance. This requirement brings New Zealand in line with other countries’ health insurance requirements for retirement visas. Business and Economic Research’s cost-benefit analysis says this measure would yield net benefits to New Zealand of around $10 million in the first year, rising to around $100 million after 10 years. New Zealand would avoid bearing the elective health care costs of an additional almost 5,000 parent category migrants every year, year upon year. Most of these migrants are well over 60 years, when their health costs rise rapidly.

The fiscal costs of administering this measure are negligible despite National MPs claiming it would be difficult to manage. Health insurance companies will create the product to suit, as they have abroad in other countries, and it would only be an extension of what is already offered. Remember that insurance does not cover primary, acute, emergency, or community care, which all escalate for elderly. Primary, acute, emergency, and elder care will still be paid for by the taxpayer. A ridiculous conclusion was made by the Attorney-General—you know, the Lord Denning of New Zealand and the Pacific and the finest legal mind that has ever come out of any university in this country! A ridiculous conclusion was made by him. He commissioned a report stating that compulsory health insurance for migrants contravened the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Migrants have a 2-year stand-down period for sickness and unemployment benefits as well as other welfare benefits. Migrants also have a stand-down period of 10 years for New Zealand superannuation. Is the Attorney-General saying, in effect, that there should be no stand-down periods in principle because they are contrary to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act? No, he is not, because he is talking humbug. Private health insurance shifts elective surgery from public waiting lists on to the private health system, shortening elective surgery waiting lists for all New Zealanders.

Second, this bill proposes the removal of fringe benefit tax on employer health insurance provision. We could not put it better than a quote made by a certain man not so long ago. He said this: “At the moment any employer who offers health insurance gets hit by fringe benefit tax. I think that’s crazy. The more we can encourage employers to provide wholesale medical insurance for their staff the better. … Elimination of the [fringe benefit tax] on health insurance in the workplace is a good start.” Does that have a ring about it? You know what they say: “Plenty of pre-sales talk but no after-sales service.” Who was that man? Why, nobody other than the Prime Minister of this country, John Key. To the National Party over there, your leader claims to be supporting this, or he did when he was out there trying to win the vote. But then, like everything else, as soon as the election is over he has forgotten it. That is why so many businessmen are getting sick and tired, because the guy is all talk. Go to a chamber of commerce, go to the business community around this country, and they say: “When is he going to do something?”. Well, the answer is probably never, but on this he should do something, and do you know what it is? Just keep his word.

The Prime Minister made these statements as National’s finance spokesperson. More recently in August this year—surely he can remember things for 3 months—he reiterated his support for wiping fringe benefit tax on companies that pay health insurance for employees. Business and Economic Research’s report on removing fringe benefit tax on workplace health insurance assesses the immediate savings of $150 million to Government coffers. This should be music to the ears of the National Party members. The Business and Economic Research cost-benefit report states that removing fringe benefit tax on health insurance can be justified on both fiscal and non-fiscal grounds. No wonder New Zealand First is getting a name for such marvellous policies, because we go out there and ask the economists, and they like it. Not only would this measure deliver clear fiscal benefits by giving workers access to fast elective surgery but it reduces pain and suffering while awaiting medical procedures for those on long, long, long waiting lists.

I reiterate that the cost savings are twofold. First, removing fringe benefit tax on health insurance would give significant cost savings by shifting elective surgery from public to private hospitals. Hear that? “Private”—there should be a resounding echo from that side over there—so shortening waiting lists for everybody. Second, removing fringe benefit tax from health insurance would also increase GDP and tax revenues by reducing the amount of time people have off work or working less productively because they are waiting for hospital care while still trying to work. Ill health affecting the country’s workforce results in a loss of about $10 billion off GDP each year. This equates to around $2.7 billion of tax revenues lost. Attending or waiting for medical procedures is the third most common reason for absenteeism, a huge economic loss to the country. Weeks, months, even years of being on hospital waiting lists also accounts for presenteeism. They all wonder what that word means but all my colleagues know what it means. It is when workers come to work despite illness or stress and they work at jobs with less productivity. Encouraging employers to participate in workplace health care, the same way as ACC gets workers back to work faster from illness, will lead to higher productivity and cost savings for business.

The final part of this omnibus bill is a SuperGold 25c rebate on health insurance premiums, up to a maximum of $500 per annum. Many seniors will love this because they want to keep paying, but it is getting harder for them to pay with all the other costs—rates—

Ron Mark: Power.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —power, food, and Government charges—all going up. Expenditure on elective surgeries is around $700 million per year and the estimate from Business and Economic Research says that this could double by 2031, so it is a serious goer.

To close, this Affordable Healthcare Bill aims to rebalance the health system of this country. The OECD average for private health spending is 28 percent, with a target of 30 percent. Australia is 35 percent. New Zealand’s private health spending has decreased to 17 percent. We trust that Parliament will seriously consider this bill, which will boost uptake and retention of private health insurance. This will alleviate the burden on public health by freeing up resources and reducing waiting lists. I say to my National Party colleagues that things are looking bad. We just got the latest polls. They look real bad. Not for us—not for us. There is an enduring, unending picture that is emerging now month upon month, but they might just save some of their members if they went for this bill. We look forward to support from the National Party in view of the Prime Minister’s previous statements on wiping out fringe benefit tax. Thank you.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): It is great to see that Mr Peters and his cult have come down to the House this evening. We have got the same lines we have always got about polls and things like that, but you never listen to Mr Peters, because that is the stuff he always comes to this House with.

This bill is another example of Mr Peters and New Zealand First being anti-immigration. That is all this bill is about. It is not about money. It is saying no to people coming to New Zealand. That is the anti-immigration party, and this is another anti-immigration bill put forward by that party. It is a disgrace to this Parliament to see that party in this House, and we know exactly what it thinks about immigration. That is something that is against the good nature of all New Zealanders. We have a free and open country. We are a country that wants to take its place in the modern world. We have a country that welcomes people to this country and welcomes their families, and we do not discriminate against our migrants like the New Zealand First Party wants to.

We have always had in New Zealand an immigration process and a policy of treating all migrants the same, where we give them the same opportunities and abilities. We do not discriminate, and that is something that that party over there seeks to bring into our legislation. It seeks to discriminate against people on the basis of age. It is seeking to discriminate on the basis of the parent category of immigration. That goes against the fundamental principles of this Parliament and of this country, and New Zealanders do not believe in that approach, because New Zealanders are fair-minded people who want to welcome migrants and give them a fair opportunity to be here, unlike the New Zealand First Party. When we look at this—

Pita Paraone: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member has been on his feet for some minutes now and no mention, no reference, has been made to the bill that is before the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand. I hear what the member is saying—2 minutes. Now we will have some substantive debate on what this bill is about.

DAVID BENNETT: OK. Let us have a look at this bill, the Affordable Healthcare Bill. It says that if someone is in the parent category, they have to have compulsory medical insurance. How would that be enforced? Let us take the example of somebody coming into New Zealand who maybe did have medical insurance but did not keep it for the whole 10 years. Would that party than deport that person after 6 years, when they are on dialysis in a hospital, or if they are getting cancer treatment and are about to die? Would that party be so cruel as to deport that person? I do not think it would, because it knows that New Zealanders would not want that to happen. This bill is not enforceable, because the rules that it sets cannot be implemented in our community.

What about refugees? Would refugees be required to—[Interruption] No? Well, the bill does not say that. This is the party that wants to increase the refugee quota to 1,000 refugees, and this bill is silent about refugees. Is the New Zealand First Party going to make refugees have to actually go and get insurance policies? What about if someone had pre-existing medical conditions? What if somebody came into New Zealand with a pre-existing medical condition and could not get insurance for that, but still could get into New Zealand because they passed the medical test? [Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I would actually like to hear what is going on and what is being said, as long as it is on the subject.

DAVID BENNETT: So there are some major holes in this legislation, as we have just noted.

But there is another element of this legislation we have to look at, and that is the discriminatory part of the legislation, which the Attorney-General noted in his report. The bill discriminates on the basis of age. Some people who could come into the parent category could be as young as 35 years of age. They could have a lifetime ahead of them in this country, and they would be discriminated against under this bill. The report of the Attorney-General says that there is a prima facie case of discrimination on family status, parenthood—and national origin, because this bill actually creates an exemption for Pacific people. It says that people from the Pacific do not have to get a 10-year insurance policy. Let us have a look at the definition. There is no definition of “Pacific country” in the bill, but the Pacific would include countries like China, the US, Australia, and all those other countries around the Pacific Ocean. So is that part—

Ron Mark: Read the bill.

DAVID BENNETT: I have read the bill, member, and it does not say that. There is no definition of the Pacific in the bill. Why should Pacific Island category migrants be given a different category from any other migrant to New Zealand? What is the difference between somebody who is on the Pacific Rim and somebody who may have come to this country from Africa or Europe or somewhere else?

I ask the Labour Party and the Green Party how they can support a bill that has been said to be a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. How can the Labour Party and the Green Party members, who come into this House every day—we saw it today, we saw it yesterday—talking about human rights and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, support a bill that is considered to be against that Act? I ask how the Labour Party and the Green Party can sleep at night when they are supporting bills like this. They cannot do that under that legislation.

This bill is an attack on migrants. That is what it is. It is not a bill to save money; it is an attack on migrants. We know that party is against migration. Mr Peters, we know your stance on this. We know what your deputy said last week about migrants. It is a disgrace that this party is in this Parliament and that these kinds of bills are put forward by a party like that—a party that is purely discriminatory and against people having fair rights and an equal chance in New Zealand. We will not support this bill.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): That was a disgraceful speech from David Bennett. The Minister of Health is sitting in the House, and he could have given a reasoned response to a bill that has had a lot of work put into it, and a lot of consultation. In fact, if you read the history of this bill being put together and who has been consulted on it, you will know that it is being supported by a wide range of the very people that the National Party goes and asks for donations from. The House has been treated tonight to a disgraceful display of—it was just vitriol, just vitriol. What did we get? We got a member talking about it as if it was an immigration bill. The member had not even read the bill. It was a disgrace. Then he said that one of the reasons National would not support it was that it breached human rights. Well, did the Government think about that when it passed the bill about adult carers of disabled people? It breached the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Its own Attorney-General said so. Did that stop it from passing a bill that has been an absolute failure for people who are disabled in New Zealand, and have to have adult carers? There is a word for it; it starts with “h”.

This bill is a bill that is worthy of consideration and will be given it by this party, the Labour Party. It will not only be given consideration but, should we be in Government with the New Zealand First Party, we would look to see how we could implement parts of this bill, and we would work on other parts of it.

It is the first real try to do something for old people in New Zealand who, increasingly, have lost their medical insurance at the age of 65. If that member was any sort of constituency MP, he would have been to his Grey Power meetings—has he been to a Grey Power meeting? If he had been, they would have raised this bill with him. If he had been to Grey Power, and if he had held constituency clinics, he would have had older people over 65 coming to him and saying: “We used to have medical insurance. We took it out when we were 30, and we were well for most of our lives. We hardly claimed anything, but when we reached 65 the premiums on our medical insurance were so sky-high that we had to get rid of it. We are now on a fixed income. We have no medical insurance, and we are on the never-never for our hip replacement.”

This bill puts up a suggestion that there be the equivalent of a rebate of $500 on medical insurance. Let us think if there is a comparison to some other policy here. Let us think about the rates rebate, for example—

Hon Ruth Dyson: Who brought that in?

Hon ANNETTE KING: —brought in by a very good Labour Government. A rates rebate that says that for older New Zealanders, rates can get a bit high. Working through local government you can apply to get up to—it is over $500 now I think—

Dr Megan Woods: $600.

Hon ANNETTE KING: —$600 in a rates rebate. It helps those older people to pay their rates. So this suggestion is that there is a rates-type rebate on their medical insurance. Is that a stupid idea? Is that not worthy of consideration and sending to a select committee?

The second issue that is raised in this bill is around fringe benefit tax, and I find it fascinating that the Prime Minister said that he supported this part of the bill. Did he not tell the National Party? He actually said it out in the Hutt Valley. He said that he came out in support of removing fringe benefit tax from health insurance. I have got it. Shall I table this, Mr Assistant Speaker? It is the cover story from Health Insurance News, and I think if I was to table it, the members opposite—including Chris Bishop, who prances around the Hutt thinking he is Mr Hutt—maybe would like to read what the Prime Minister said about the removal of fringe benefit tax. Yes, I will seek leave in a moment to table it.

The other part of this bill—and my colleague Clayton Cosgrove will speak on this—is around the issue of medical insurance for people coming to New Zealand. He was a former Minister of Immigration, and he will give an insight of how things did work when he was Minister. So why should we not support this bill to a select committee, and let those hundreds—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The member’s time has expired.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): I seek leave to table the September issue, volume 9, issue 3 of the Cover Stories: Health Insurance News—which is not widely available; it is not one of those that is widely available—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No. We know what it is. Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is none.

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

CHRIS BISHOP (National): This is an interesting proposal. A similar proposal put up by a New Zealand First delegate at the New Zealand First Party conference was described by one of the New Zealand First members as “discriminatory, illegal, disgraceful, and would open the New Zealand First Party to ridicule.” I accept that that was of minute difference to the proposal contained in this bill, but the rationale that Denis O’Rourke used in speaking at the New Zealand First Party conference applies absolutely to this bill. Why is that? It is because it is discriminatory.

How do we know that it is discriminatory? It is because the Attorney-General has filed a section 7 report to Parliament about it. What does the Attorney-General say? Well, he says it is not a justified limit on the right to be free from discrimination in section 19(1) of the Bill of Rights Act, and it is not justified under section 5. The Attorney-General is required to make a legal judgment, and he has done exactly that.

I have some experience in these matters because I have also brought a bill to Parliament that has been found by the Attorney-General to be a breach of the discrimination provisions of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. But there are two types of discriminatory breaches. There are two types of section 7 reports. There are outrageous ones. There are ones that are literally the concept of the bill, and to quote paragraph 14 of the section 7 report: “The explanatory note does not provide a rationale for applying the health insurance requirement only to migrants in the Parent Category, nor is one immediately obvious. Indeed”—says the Attorney-General—“it would seem contrary to the general purpose of the Bill to require only this particular category of migrants to obtain health insurance.”

So this is a condemnatory section 7 report—and then there are the other types of section 7 reports that are more technical ones, and that is what my bill deals with, which is a more technical objection. But this is a damning critique of the bill proposed by New Zealand First.

Denis O’Rourke was exactly right in speaking about this proposal—exactly right. It is disgraceful, it is arguably illegal, and it will open New Zealand up to ridicule, so he and Mahesh Bindra—another New Zealand First member—are exactly right. Good on you, Denis O’Rourke for standing up at the New Zealand First Party conference and condemning your own leader’s proposal. Very embarrassing for you, very embarrassing for Mr Peters, but that is life these days in the New Zealand First caucus. With those brief remarks, I do not commend this bill to the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call—[Interruption] Order! [Interruption] I am going to call Eugenie Sage. I would like to hear her now.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou e huihui mai nei ki roto i te Whare. E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Mr Bennett, it is a pity—oh, he is not here. It is a pity that he does not listen and that he always jumps to assumptions. The Green Party will not be supporting this bill, because we believe it is discriminatory towards migrants, and because we think that it is encouraging more private health insurance rather than boosting our public system.

We know that the bill is intended by New Zealand First to stimulate higher voluntary levels of New Zealanders taking out health insurance because of the stresses and strains on the public health system, but the solution there is to invest more in our public health system, not to encourage more private health insurance and more doctors going to the private sector. So we see this bill as a problem, potentially because of the changes to the Immigration Act and the requirement there for parent category migrants to have health insurance, including cover for elective surgery, and for them to have to have this insurance for 10 years.

There seems to be an assumption in the bill that the only people applying for parent category status are the elderly, when the Immigration Act actually provides that anybody over 18 who is a parent, and who has been resident in New Zealand for 3 years or more, can apply. The Green Party wants to encourage family reunification, so a bill like this that puts an obstacle on family reunification by putting this financial penalty on parent category migrants is not something we can support, and we have not seen any evidence that it is these parent category migrants who are at risk of being sick and that they have increased need of the public health system. So that is one reason why we are not supporting the bill.

We are also not supporting the bill because it is proposing to remove the fringe benefit tax on private health insurance as an incentive for employers to encourage their staff to take out private insurance. So the Green Party has proposed removing fringe benefit tax on electric vehicles to encourage greater uptake of electric vehicles as part of a good step for New Zealand of reducing our climate emissions. But here, this removal of the fringe benefit tax is not increasing a public good; it is actually helping to undermine our public health system, so we do not support it.

The bill is also proposing a 25 percent rebate for SuperGold cardholders who have health insurance, up to a $500 limit annually. Certainly, New Zealand First’s SuperGold card for transport has been brilliant in encouraging a lot of older people to use public transport. It has increased their mobility, it has increased community cohesion with people getting out more—using the ferry down to Waiheke—but here, with this rebate, it is reducing tax income and it is for a group in society that we think is not the priority for increased investment.

We need to increase investment in our children. We have over 200,000 children in New Zealand living in poverty—they need to have safe, warm, dry homes. If we are going to be reducing tax income, we should be doing it to assist them, not to assist senior citizens. The instances of poverty amongst the senior citizen community are much less than amongst young children and families. So it is Kiwi kids who are much more likely to grow up in poverty than our senior citizens are to die in poverty. For that reason, this is not a bill that we can support, because it is not encouraging investment in young people and children in poverty, which we see as a much greater priority, and because, as the bill itself recognises, with this exception for migrants from the Pacific in the parent category—why make that exception if New Zealand First is not recognising that the bill is discriminating against migrants? Why accept parent category migrants from the Pacific?

In the Green Party we support family reunification. Migrants—we are all migrants in this country, and this bill, by imposing a high financial penalty on migrants, is not something we can support.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): You would have to say the title of this bill is actually a bit of a misnomer. I mean, it should really be called the “Unaffordable Healthcare Bill” because, actually, there has been no mention in the arguments around this about how much this would all cost. What Mr Peters does not tell you is that this would actually cost an extra $150 million. That is the conservative estimate. Mr Peters had the chance to put his argument, but he did not put up any figures. The fact is that to give this subsidy for SuperGold cardholders, it would actually cost far more than the cost of providing their elective surgery. That is the bottom line with it.

So you have got to look at what your policy settings are and at what you are trying to achieve overall, and if you are trying to provide more elective surgery to more people of whatever age group, the current policy settings of this Government are exactly the right ones. I can tell you what, if you look at the results, we have delivered. So we are delivering an extra 50,000 operations per year, an extra 60,000 first surgical assessments, and an extra 60,000 first medical specialist assessments. So, Mr Peters, what the member needs to do is to go and look very clearly at what he is trying to achieve. If he wants to provide more elective surgery at a better price for more people, he should back the current Government’s policy.

It was very interesting, actually, to see Mrs King get up and try to make out that she thinks this policy is a good idea. She was talking extensively about rebates for SuperGold cardholders and how it made sense to provide a rebate. Well, that is in direct contrast to what she said when she was the Minister of Health back in 2004. When she was asked about this during question time, she said “I think that probably is a question for the Minister of Finance, but I know of no work he is doing to subsidise medical insurance for people over 65, mainly, I would think, because it does not work …”. So Mrs King, when she was Minister of Health, did not think this was a sound policy. She did not think it would work, but she has had some sort of road to Damascus experience. Either that, or she was just making up her arguments on the spot to suit the politics of the day. But, Mrs King, you cannot say one thing on the record when you are Minister—you cannot say—

Hon Annette King: I can say what I like. At least I’m believable.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: No, you are not believable. That is the problem for Mrs King. She is no longer believable. She is full of bluster. This is classic Annette King bluster, because she forgets—it is laid down in the Hansard. She did not think this is a good thing to do when she was the Minister, but, now, today, when she can score a couple of cheap political hits, she thinks it is a very good idea. But, actually, she knows that the finances around this do not stack up.

I just endorse Mr Bishop’s point there about New Zealand First and, basically, the divisions that this bill has caused in its caucus.

Denis O’Rourke: What a load of nonsense.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: And old “Two Letterboxes” over there—Mr O’Rourke—will be resigning from the New Zealand First caucus if this goes through. So, secretly, he will be praying that this bill is defeated at first reading tonight—as, of course, it will be—because he would have to stick to his word and say that, yes, he would be resigning. He called this bill racist and discriminatory, because it was going to make parent category migrants hold health insurance for 10 years. As we all know in this House, that is unworkable dog whistle politics. That would not work. It would completely alienate the votes of our hard-working ethnic communities. It would be completely unfair. I actually do not even think that Mr Peters, who is a very fair man, agrees with it himself, but he knows it is a great chance to get up, score a few dirty little rabbit punches at the bottom of the ruck, and try to appeal to the “Grey Party” crowd.

This bill really does show the difference in health care policy approaches between the National-led Government and our opponents in Labour, who frankly have no policy. Their only answer around health care is to say that they will provide more money, but what they do not say tonight is that this will cost an extra $150 million. I know Grant Robertson is committed to running surpluses; Mrs King, as deputy leader, obviously agrees with that.

This is the “Unaffordable Healthcare Bill”. It is good to see the Greens, in a rare flash of common sense no doubt guided by the sound economic credentials of their new leader, saying: “Look, this is crazy stuff. We cannot go with people on this.” So we do not commend this bill to the House. Frankly, it is a load of rubbish. It is the “Unaffordable Healthcare Bill”.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I guess that the Minister of Health thinks that the Prime Minister is not listening, because if he thought the Prime Minister was listening he would not have made that speech directly attacking what his Prime Minister committed National to doing.

I have got a challenge for the Minister of Health. If he is so confident of his figures and his facts, argue them out at a select committee. Let those facts be aired at a select committee, where members of the Opposition can have the advantage of advice from officials—admittedly they have to get the Minister’s sign-off; it is not really independent advice—so that we can have the facts on the table and debate them. I do not think the Minister has got the confidence of his argument. I do not think he has the courage of his convictions to be able to back this debate at a select committee. That would be the courageous thing to do, so that is the challenge that I want to put to the Minister.

The National member who spoke immediately prior the Minister, whose name just escapes me, made quite a big fuss. He made quite a big fuss about the fact that this bill, the Affordable Healthcare Bill in the name of the Rt Hon Winston Peters, breached the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and what an outrage that was. I have got a little sentence to read to that member. It says: “New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Act 2013”. That was legislation that was introduced by the National Government during the Budget and it went through all stages under urgency. Not a single submission was heard—not a single contribution from the public. No members of the Opposition were able to get any information from officials, because the debate went through right until Saturday night. On Thursday the debate started after the Budget. It went all day Friday, through until midnight. Then first thing on Saturday morning, at 9 o’clock, we were here again debating it, and it finished late on Saturday afternoon.

That legislation, according to the Attorney-General, the Hon Christopher Finlayson, who I am sure was not misleading the House, breached the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It put in the law a provision that stopped family members taking a complaint to the Human Rights Commission. This is New Zealand, and that Government stopped family caregivers taking what they considered to be a breach of human rights in a complaint to the Human Rights Commission. That is what the law says currently.

The regulatory impact statement, which is meant to be the independent advice to Parliament about the impact of the particular legislation, was so redacted that we could hardly read it. Page after page after page of the regulatory impact statement was redacted. So those members should not come and lecture us about the fact that the Affordable Healthcare Bill breaches human rights legislation.

The proposal is not to ram it through all stages under urgency; the proposal we are debating tonight is that this bill should go to a select committee where members of the public can contribute, particularly those people who have got to their 70s or 80s or 90s and have had to stop paying their medical insurance because they have not got enough spare money, and are now facing major medical costs. If Jonathan Coleman says this is not the answer, what is the answer to that question? What alternatives is he proposing? I have not heard any.

The bill says that we should have a rebate for private health insurance. It says that we should remove the fringe benefit tax, which employers currently pay—and the member who has introduced the bill has compared that with the way that ACC levies are currently paid and the entitlement that is born from that. But I think, more than anything else, this bill reminds the House that in the last 7 long years we have had, every year, budget cuts in the health system.

The public health system, which is what most people rely on—every year the new Budget has not been enough to keep up with the costs of health inflation or population increases. In effect, in reality—the real world where we live, rather than the theory where the Minister of Health lives—the health budget has been cut. It is now underfunded by $1.7 billion. The ideas that are contained in this bill need to be contrasted against that significant underfunding. The bill deserves to be sent to a select committee, where we can have the debate properly.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany): I have to say that the parties opposite should really be going out there in the public and telling the public how many operations will not be delivered if a bill like this passes, because $150 million in lost revenue would be the impact on the health budget—$150 million in lost revenue. When the Labour Party and the New Zealand First Party say that we are underfunding health, they forget the fact that we have poured hundreds of millions of dollars more into health. It has reached almost $16 billion. That is a huge amount more than the Labour Party was spending under Annette King as Minister of Health, and we are seeing more operations being delivered. The risk to New Zealanders, the risk to the health system, and the risk to the elderly people whom this bill purports to support is that there will be fewer of them getting access to elective surgery and there will be fewer of those people getting access to first specialist assessments. Those are the negative aspects of this bill.

Those are the negative ramifications of a bill like this. If they want to front up to the public, that is what they should be talking about. There are 50,000 more people a year getting access to elective surgery under this Government. That would fall off if we lost $150 million in revenue because of this bill. An extra 110,000 people are getting access to first specialist assessments compared with 2008, because we are funding them more. If $150 million of the health budget was lost because of this bill, that would be a negative impact for them. The 5,500 doctors and nurses who have been poured into the health system—some of them would be put at risk as well because of the lost revenue under this bill.

When the parties opposite go out and try to say that they are saving private health care for New Zealanders, they have to talk about the fact that they are actually costing the health budget some money. The amount of funding that this would cost the Government in extra costs because of lost revenue would not actually be helpful to New Zealanders. There would be lost revenue, and that is the impact that Tracey Martin and this bill are putting forward. Notwithstanding the fact that there are negative ramifications and there are discriminatory provisions in this bill, overall, from a financial perspective, it is poor for health in New Zealand and it is poor for New Zealanders. This side of the House will not be supporting it, and it should not go through this House.

TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The previous speaker seemed to be referring to notes around the figures. I wonder whether he could table the figures for the $150 million that he is talking—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No, no, that is not a point of order.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): It is very interesting that both the health Minister and the junior whip for the Government quoted, as Tracey Martin said, figures on the cost. The health Minister was wont to tell us that he has all the figures—he has examined this policy, has a complete set of figures, and he knows it all. What he failed to tell us, and one of those geniuses on the opposite side, I am sure, will get up and tell us, is yes, there may be a cost—whether it is $150 million we do not know because the Minister did not provide any verification—but he failed to make any reference to the savings that would occur if many of these folks, elderly folks and others, moved to have their operations in the private sector, and the pressure in monetary terms that would come off the public sector for every one of those surgeries.

So I ask the Minister, or the genius who spoke last, Jami-Lee Ross: what are the savings? What has the Ministry of Health or the spin unit in the National Party in its research unit or Mr Bishop, or both, come up with in terms of that? We did not hear one piece of evidence in respect of that—not one.

So I say to the Minister—I am quite happy to yield to him—what are the savings? He has done the research for this bill. He has noted costs. What are the savings?

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Sorry?

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: No, not sorry. What are the savings?

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: From what?

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Oh, well, there you go: “For what?”! So there is the Minister of Health, who says that he is command of his portfolio—in utter command, the maestro in political and health terms, the man who is in command of his portfolio—to the point where he comes down to the House, having made up a whole lot of figures, plucked the figures from somewhere—

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: That’s not true.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Oh, yes, it is. And then we ask him: on the flip side, what is the offset? What are the savings? And what do we get? “Sorry, don’t know—what?”. Hello—hello! Stage 101.

The other point I want to make, which Mrs King made reference to, was the immigration side of this, but I want to make reference to when I was immigration Minister. I recall getting a lot of applications, particularly from the UK, from elderly folk. Their sons and daughters had moved here, the family had established themselves, and they wished to come here.

The argument that was always—and we actually changed the category to give more weighting to skilled migrants rather than extended family, because we had to do that at the time—put forward by these migrants was: “Look, we have a UK pension. We’re self-sufficient. We have enough means. We don’t need the social services. We’ll look after ourselves.” The difficulty, of course, was that if you gave those folks residence, they were automatically entitled to those social services and, thereby, would likely use them.

So what I did in some of the appeals to me was I had the department go back and say: “OK, here’s the deal. If you want to come to New Zealand, you will probably never get residence, but we will give you a guarantee that you won’t be booted out as long as you are of good character. However, you’ve got to maintain your medical insurance. What do you think about that deal?”. Those who were genuine and took it up were quite happy to come here with a guarantee that they would maintain their own medical insurance. They were quite happy to do it—a win for all.

It was a win for the migrant families who had a lot of skills, and often these migrant families would say: “Look, if I can’t bring mum and dad over here, even though I’m skilled, even though I have got a job, I’m going to go elsewhere, to Australia or wherever, so that mum and dad can come with me.” But we wanted to ensure that there was not a burden on the system. If these folks were genuine, and most of them were, and they said they had means, they were very, very happy to ensure that their medical insurance was maintained so that they would not be a burden on the New Zealand health system. Mrs King made a point. This is a gem of an idea.

I know many, many elderly constituents and many folks who, as Mrs King and Mr Peters said, throughout their life—health insurance is an interesting thing. Throughout your life when you are at the top of your earning capacity but you are at your fittest, normally, apart from one or two over there, the premiums are pretty low, and you are actually building up, if you like, credits with the health insurance company because you are not claiming.

Then your age goes up, your health goes down, and your income certainly goes down, normally to a fixed income, but you have built up maybe 20 or 30 years’ worth of credits in the bank and they slug you and double the premiums. I say this is a gem of an idea. It should be looked at.

The Minister of Health tonight has bared it all in that he cannot even tell us what the offset savings would be in this. He has made it up. He has plucked a figure out of the spin unit of the National Party to come down and make a political statement, but when his feet are put to the fire and we ask him what the savings are from even one elderly person taking up the private medical insurance option for their operation, that Minister cannot give us a figure. He is condemned by his own ignorance and his own arrogance and his own stupidity.

We support this bill to the select committee. It should be looked at.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): It is a pleasure to be speaking on this Affordable Healthcare Bill—particularly, after the previous speaker, Clayton Cosgrove. I would like to speak about something slightly more positive than the negativity that we heard from him. Of course, I understand why the leader of New Zealand First is pushing this bill. It actually offers absolutely no downside for him to be seen to be promoting a bill of this sort, especially given his constituency.

Let us look at this bill. It really has three issues to it: one is that parental category, which will have health insurance on arrival for migrants, and maintained for 10 years; secondly, it removes the fringe benefit tax on health care; and, thirdly, it introduces a SuperGold card—

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

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.