Thursday, 3 December 2015

THURSDAY, 3 December 2015

THURSDAY, 3 December 2015

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): Next week is the final sitting week for 2015 before members head back to their electorates to conduct constituent business pre-Christmas, or conclude that business. On Tuesday, 8 December the Government will advance a number of first readings in the Order Paper. On Wednesday, 9 December the Government intends to progress the Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill and the first reading of the Statutes Amendment Bill before moving the confirmation of the 2016 sitting programme and the 2015 adjournment.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour): Can I just clarify with the Leader of the House, given that the House has already confirmed the 2016 sitting calendar, that, in fact, he does not intend to make any further changes to it and propose an alternative calendar to that which the House has already approved.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): The House has approved it by way of a Business Committee decision. The House has not entered into a debate that sees the House, upon its rising, sit on the following dates. I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It may be an opportunity to move the motion relating to the auditor for the Office of the Auditor-General, if that would be all right to go outside of the current riding order—I am seeking leave.

Mr SPEAKER: The member can take the opportunity of moving it. So, effectively, we are calling on Government order of the day No. 1.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, I will wait—that is fine.

Mr SPEAKER: It would certainly be tidier.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Housing, Auckland—Property Speculation and Weymouth Development

1. PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) to the Minister for Building and Housing: What policies were put in place at the Weymouth development to prevent houses being bought and sold by speculators given the $29 million Government grant for the project?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Housing): The $29 million grant was for the social housing component of this $120 million - plus mixed housing development. The contract requires that 20 percent of the 295 homes—or 59 of them—remain with registered social housing providers, and that is being met. The development is being partially funded by 105 private market sales. The first 20 of these were sold off the plans and had no conditions, so they could secure the bank finance for the community organisations to be able to fund the infrastructure and get on with the project. I am not surprised that some of those homes have subsequently been bought and sold at some increase in price, given what has occurred to Auckland house prices over the last more than year and a half.

Phil Twyford: Was the $29 million grant at Weymouth, which amounts to $100,000 per house on average, meant to enable speculators to make $130,000 in 5 weeks on the back of a Government subsidy, as reported in the media today?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member, firstly, misrepresents the facts. The particular house was bought off the plans in August 2014, actually, after being on the open market for about 10 weeks before it was sold. More than a year later when the house was completed, that purchaser who bought it at the free-market price decided to resell it. That is no different from what has occurred in Hobsonville. It is no different from what has occurred in housing developments all over the country, including many housing developments that the State funded during his time in Government.

Alfred Ngaro: Have there been any changes to the Weymouth project from what was announced in October 2013?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Yes. The original announcement was for 282 homes at Weymouth. The community developers now believe there will be, in fact, 295. They originally announced that the housing development would have 113 homes that would be sold openly on the market at commercial value. Actually, that number has come down to 105 because they have secured such a good price on those—i.e., there are going to be 21 more houses for social and affordable purposes than when the Government announced the project.

Phil Twyford: Why did the Government not include a clawback provision that would have seen capital gain from the sale of affordable homes within a certain period repaid to the taxpayer as a way of deterring speculation in these houses?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Because the Government is not doing the development. The Government is providing a grant for the provision of 59 social houses. If the member opposite wants to regulate the price of every house that is bought and sold in New Zealand, that is the sort of socialism he might stand for; it is not what we do.

Phil Twyford: When he titled a press release “Weymouth symbolic of Government’s housing success”, did he mean the Government’s success at having houses bought and sold by speculators subsidised by the taxpayer, given that at that point there was no provision at Weymouth to stop houses being sold on in the first 3 years?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Whether it be Hobsonville or whether it be Weymouth, there will be people who buy houses off the plans and resell them. The member might want to note that some of his colleagues are on record doing just that. People’s circumstances change. What you need to realise is that this project could be funded only by some of the houses being at private market value. It is a $120 million development. The infrastructure and other components required private sales to fund it.

Phil Twyford: Does he still think that his policy is a success, given that only 500 houses, on his account, have been built in the special housing areas, that very few of them are affordable, and that he has no policy at all to stop them being sold off to speculators for windfall profits?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The only way we could have a country where nobody was able to profit from houses would be to have the Government controlling the sale price of every house in New Zealand, and that is not this Government’s policy. I would be very surprised if it is the member’s policy. In terms of success of the policy, I would note that the latest statistics from Statistics New Zealand on the level of residential construction in Auckland, out this morning, show that since I have been the Minister the amount of residential housing work occurring in Auckland has more than doubled.

Phil Twyford: Does not this fiasco prove that his flagship policy to increase the supply of housing in Auckland is just more piecemeal tinkering, given that house prices in Auckland went up by 25 percent in the last year?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: What I would note at Weymouth is that it has been the fastest housing project that has taken place in decades in Auckland. This is a block of land that sat vacant for 9 years under Labour. I remind the member what happened to the land at Weymouth when house prices in 2004 went up by 29 percent. The land sat absolutely vacant. It has now got hundreds of houses on it.

Mt Eden Corrections Facility—Young Offenders

2. DAVID CLENDON (Green) to the Minister of Corrections: What was the average period of unlock for young people at Mt Eden Correctional Facility when it was run by Serco in June 2015 and what is the current period of unlock for them under the Department of Corrections?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (Minister of Corrections): The unlock time for youth aged 17 and under at Mt Eden Corrections Facility is currently between 3½ and 5 hours per day. Serco was unable to provide a figure as at June this year within the time available.

David Clendon: What specific actions did the Department of Corrections take to ensure that the number of hours young people spent locked down in their cell was reduced after the problem was identified by the Ombudsman in April 2014?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: The Department of Corrections has implemented a number of different initiatives; they include putting in place rehabilitative programmes and rehabilitation programmes for youth, and educational programmes. It is also looking at staffing requirements.

David Clendon: Why then, despite those measures, did the hours of lockdown for young people increase despite the Department of Corrections being alerted to the problem four times in 14 months, between April 2014 and June 2015?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: The number of hours of unlock time have increased since the step in procedure. I think that is a net positive.

David Clendon: When was the Minister first made aware of the fact that young prisoners were being kept locked down in their cells for 20 to 23 hours a day?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: I get regular reports from the Ombudsman, as well as from Department of Corrections staff. I was made aware of this particular fact earlier this year.

David Clendon: Does the admission by Commissioner Burns that the Department of Corrections did not know about the 23-hour lockdown periods until the Ombudsman’s report yesterday reveal a failure in the department’s monitoring of Serco management at the Mt Eden Corrections Facility?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: Certainly, monitoring is an important part of being aware of what goes on at Mt Eden prison, but it is also part of the communication between the Department of Corrections and Serco and being vigilant in contract management.

David Clendon: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister did reference monitoring but I am not convinced he—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I invite the member to ask his question again. It was actually very hard to hear because of some interjection on my left. Could the member ask that supplementary question again.

David Clendon: Does the admission by Commissioner Burns that the Department of Corrections did not know about the 23-hour lockdown period until the Ombudsman’s report yesterday reveal a failure in the department’s monitoring of Serco management at Mt Eden prison?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: That was Miss Burns’ personal opinion, but in terms of the Department of Corrections, there is communication between the department and Serco in terms of the monitoring of Mt Eden prison.

David Clendon: Were young prisoners locked down at Mt Eden prison for 23 hours a day because Serco did not adequately staff the prison, as indicated by Commissioner Burns’ comments that despite the department’s placing 40 extra staff at that prison, it is still below strength?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: That certainly is Miss Burns’ opinion of that particular case, but the step in procedure was deemed to be necessary at the time, and I am confident that the management of Mt Eden prison is currently going well.

Economy—Employment

3. ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he received on trends in regional employment?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): I have seen reports of a rise in unemployment in the South Island, which is not unexpected in view of a very substantial fall in dairy prices and in coal prices. However, we need to keep this in perspective: 30,000 jobs have been added in the South Island in the last 2 years and 44,000 jobs added in the last 3 years—not all of these jobs in Canterbury. The South Island unemployment rate is 4.4 percent—the same level as it was 2 years ago, but a bit higher than it was two quarters ago when it was as low as 3.9 percent. The South Island participation rate is 70.6 percent. That is above the highest ever nationwide participation rate—that is, a greater proportion of the South Island working population is available for work than even the record high proportion across New Zealand. Four of the five regions with the lowest unemployment rates are in the South Island.

Alastair Scott: What evidence has he seen of skill shortages in some regions?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, labour markets in a number of our regions seem reasonably tight. We have seen any number of anecdotal reports of skill shortages and employers struggling to fill vacancies. For instance, in the South Island, the Clutha District Council recently ran a job fair in Dunedin because, as it said itself, the Clutha district is awash with hundreds of job vacancies, including up to 350 at a Balclutha meat processing plant—that is Finegand, the largest meat processing plant in New Zealand. So, clearly, across the regions there are some real challenges in filling the vacancies available.

Alastair Scott: What other reports has he seen on labour market trends, particularly in the public sector?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Although the Government is doing as much as it can to encourage businesses to employ more people, it is doing as much as it can to discourage the Public Service from inappropriately employing more people. I have seen a report that showed that in Wellington, public sector employment increased by 50 percent between 2001 and 2008. In the subsequent 7 years from 2008 to 2015 it has increased by a further 3.3 percent over 7 years, rather than 50 percent over 7 years.

Grant Robertson: In light of that answer, could the Minister tell the House by how many staff—what increase there has been in the number of staff in his department, Treasury, in the last year?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: In the first place, I am pleased to see that the member is motivated at least about Public Service jobs, if not about everyone else’s jobs. In respect of Treasury, its headcount has grown for two reasons. One is that functions have been shifted in there from other Government departments, and there have been some new centralised functions for the whole of Government—for instance, data and analytics functions, which are housed in Treasury.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That Minister was asked “by how much?”. It is a very clear question, and he was never required to answer it.

Mr SPEAKER: That is true. I can have the question repeated if the Minister wants it. It was, how much has the staff increased at Treasury?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I do not have the exact number.

Alastair Scott: What measures has the Government taken to increase jobs and the resilience of the New Zealand economy?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The view this Government takes is that the private sector creates jobs. The Government cannot and should not try to just make them up because unemployment might be rising a bit for the time being. We have taken many steps—in fact, hundreds of individual smaller steps—to help businesses create more jobs. For instance, we have reduced the taxes on work, which was opposed by other parties in the House.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: They’re still not sure about work.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: That is right—they are running a work commission to find out what that thing is. We have increased residential building across the country through special housing areas and have made a massive investment into infrastructure, which has enabled businesses to export more, to run more efficient businesses, and therefore to create more jobs. Finally, we have negotiated New Zealand’s biggest trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to support more jobs in the economy; the parties that are running in favour of jobs apparently are against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is completely ridiculous.

Grant Robertson: Is it correct that there are 11,000 fewer people in employment across New Zealand in this latest quarter compared with the previous one?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think those are the figures, and that is a bit of a shame because job growth has been so strong for so long, and because we had a soft economy in the first half of this year, job growth has slowed down. But probably the best hope for a lot of those unemployed people is that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is supported by this Parliament. But although Labour is campaigning for jobs, it is campaigning against the free-trade agreements that enable those jobs.

Swimming Pools—Legislative Change and Minister’s Interaction with Industry

4. JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) to the Minister for Building and Housing: What evidence or research led to his decision to change pool safety legislation that has been in place in New Zealand for well over 20 years?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Housing): The evidence and research to change the pool safety legislation was contained in an announcement by the then Minister, Shane Jones, in early 2008, when he announced that a review was needed and published a substantive report. At the time Mr Jones said that the Act was outdated, that compliance was inconsistent between councils, that Labour wanted to make the Act more flexible, and that it needed to reflect modern house design. I have difficulty disagreeing with Mr Jones.

Jacinda Ardern: Did he mislead Parliament with his estimates, provided to Parliament alongside his bill, given that this morning the Children’s Commissioner called the numbers that he has used inaccurate and stated that the net effect of the law he has drafted is likely to see an increase, and not a decrease, in the number of children who will drown?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The numbers that I have provided were in the advice provided by the ministry. The reason I have confidence that this bill will actually increase the safety of our swimming pools is that if we look at the reports of coroners, the issue is non-compliance with the current law. The reality is that many councils have no requirement for regular inspections. This bill makes two important changes: it requires councils to regularly inspect the fencing, and, secondly, it requires those who are constructing pools to actually notify the owners of their legal obligations.

Jacinda Ardern: Who is right: he and the pool industry, who want 5-yearly inspections rather than the current 3-yearly inspections, or those who have argued against his proposed changes, including Water Safety New Zealand, Plunket, Safekids, the Children’s Commissioner, and even Wellington City Council, which he claims he is trying to help?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member is incorrect. The current law does not require councils to regularly inspect pools. In fact, 30 of our current councils have advised my ministry that they have no programme for regular inspections, and that is why our view is that there should be regular inspections. There is a debate between the Local Government and Environment Committee as to whether that should be 3-yearly or 5-yearly. I would invite the select committee to hear the evidence and ensure that we have a regime that makes our pools as safe as possible.

Jacinda Ardern: How many times has he or his department met with the pool industry regarding these reforms?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I cannot advise the number of times that my ministry has met with them. I suspect that the previous Minister, Shane Jones, who announced the policy, probably did meet with the pool industry. I know that the Labour caucus in 2008 supported Mr Jones at the time.

Jacinda Ardern: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I asked how many times he, as the Minister who has drafted this legislation—drafted this legislation—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am going to invite the member to ask that question, but you also asked, as I recall the question, how many times he or his officials met, and he certainly—[Interruption] Order! He certainly answered immediately that he could not answer on behalf of his officials. If the member wants an additional supplementary question to ask the very question about how many times the Minister has met with the industry, I will give her the opportunity.

Jacinda Ardern: Can he confirm that the pool industry has lobbied his Government, which has presided over these changes over the past 7 years, to make these changes because, according to an email from Master Pool Builders, it believes it will reverse the downturn in pool construction?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Some of the key policy decisions on this issue were actually announced by Shane Jones, and I cannot comment on how many times the then Labour Government met with the industry. I can advise the member that in terms of my own position, I have met with both paediatricians and advocates for child safety, and I have also met with people in the pool industry. I just simply invite members who are concerned to let the select committee do a good job of ensuring that we have got practical law, because, for instance, I do not think it is sensible at the moment. I actually think a lockable pool cover on a spa pool is a sensible way to manage child safety, rather than the current law, which requires a fence round such an arrangement.

Freshwater Management—Consultation with Iwi

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

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): Yes, and particularly my statement yesterday that the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill will help address housing, it will help support job growth, and it will also help support regional development in areas like Northland.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: This quote, “Nor do we see anything in this bill that will enable us to address the huge and growing problem of iwi holding communities to ransom and effectively asking for ‘brownmail’ in order for projects to proceed.”—which unreconstructed serial flip-flopper said that?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I am not going to speculate, except to say that we do need to ensure that our resource management laws ensure that those who have interests properly participate, and, equally so, that we get rid of the sort of supermarket circus. That is why we made significant changes to the Resource Management Act in 2009 to stop trade competitors.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why did he yesterday mislead the House when he said—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I will give the member the chance to rephrase it, but you cannot accuse a member of misleading this House.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Sorry. Why did he yesterday tell the House that Resource Management Act legislation was introduced to the House on 16 December 2004 when the Hansard record shows that the House did not even sit that day?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I am happy to check. What is absolutely correct is that a bill was introduced to the House in December of 2004 that provided for iwi joint management agreements, and the member and his party voted for that bill.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why did he tell the House yesterday, and repeated today, that New Zealand First supported that legislation, when, if he looks at the Hansard record on 2 August 2005, it shows clearly in the Noes votes section that there were 13 votes from New Zealand First against it? Why did he tell a lie? [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question has been asked.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: My understanding is, and the Hansard record that I had checked is—here is the answer—that when that bill was introduced in December of 2004, Winston Peters and New Zealand First voted for it.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why has he gone from saying in 2004 that giving iwi greater powers under the Resource Management Act is “a revolutionary constitutional change” to now supporting it wholeheartedly? Has he himself been a victim of the very “brownmail” that he warned us about in 2004?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The bill that I will be introducing to the House has iwi participation agreements in it. This was in the discussion paper that my very capable colleague Amy Adams put out for public consultation in 2013. The real strength of that mechanism is that it enables iwi to identify with their council what the resource issues are in the area that they do need to be consulted about, and, equally, those ones that actually add little value and just add bureaucracy to the process.

International Education—Reports

6. PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National) to the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment: What reports has he received on the contribution of international education to New Zealand?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment): Today I released the latest New Zealand International Education Snapshot report, which shows the sector is continuing to grow strongly, with international student enrolments up by just under 12,000 in the first 8 months of this year, to a total of 104,418—that is, an increase of 13 percent. These students bring a number of benefits for New Zealand. Firstly, the economic contribution, which is worth over $2.85 billion annually and employs over 30,000 New Zealanders, was specifically highlighted by Statistics New Zealand as a significant contributor to New Zealand’s trade surplus for the year to September. Secondly, international student alumni are great ambassadors for New Zealand when they return to their home countries. Thirdly, international education plays an important role in ensuring that New Zealand’s young students have the skills and abilities required for a successful globally connected economy.

Paul Foster-Bell: What impact is international education having across New Zealand, especially in regional New Zealand?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: A particularly positive highlight is the growth in international education in regional areas as well as the main centres. Education providers in the Bay of Plenty, Waikato, Canterbury, and Auckland have all welcomed growth of between 15 and 18 percent, with Nelson, Taranaki, and Northland experiencing double-digit growth in enrolments. International students add vitality to regional education institutions and additional growth in retail and service sectors of regional cities and towns through their spending on tuition fees and living expenses. This strong growth is testament to the efforts of education providers nationwide to delivering excellent education and providing outstanding study experiences to both domestic and international students.

Mr SPEAKER: Before I call the next supplementary question, I require less interjection coming from one particular quarter to my left.

Paul Foster-Bell: How is the Government encouraging ongoing growth and increased diversity of students in the international education industry?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Last month I announced an additional investment of $2.76 million into initiatives to further boost the industry in regional New Zealand and help develop new international markets for students. Ongoing regional diversification is key to the resilience and further growth of the industry, and the funding will strengthen regional partnerships and increase the spread of students across the country. The additional funding will also focus on market diversification, exploring new partnerships in countries like Columbia and the Philippines that have the potential to become significant international education markets for New Zealand. Activity will also be stepped up in countries where New Zealand has existing educational ties, including Viet Nam and the US.

National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Pass Rate and Exam Marking

7. CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) to the Minister of Education: Is she confident that increased pass rates for NCEA reflect a genuine increase in student achievement?

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Yes, I am. If that member wants to denigrate the efforts and hard work of the—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is no need to answer the question with that tone. It is simply a question that was answered. If the member wants to add something that is then relevant to the question, I will accept it, but to then attack that member for asking a legitimate question will only bring disorder.

Chris Hipkins: Have any National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) markers been instructed to re-mark exam scripts to raise the number of students receiving Achieved, Merit, or Excellence grades; if so, why?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Our system is robust, and as part of the integrity of the system the New Zealand Qualifications Authority looks at 100,000 student samples each year and, to ensure fairness to students, a rigorous quality assurance process sees 10 percent of exams re-marked by a senior marker. It is part of quality assuring our system.

Chris Hipkins: Is Peter Lyons of St Peter’s College in Epsom wrong when he said last week that a fellow teacher marking NCEA exams had been told by the chief examiner “to re-mark his scripts to ensure more students achieved excellent pass rates.”?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I cannot comment on what Peter Lyons said to the person in his staff room, but what I can tell you is that this system is about students meeting the standard, not being compared with other students. That is why we do not have a norm-referenced one. We need to know, overall, how many kids are meeting the standard. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority keeps an eye on that. But as to Mr Lyons’ personal opinions, I cannot comment.

Chris Hipkins: How can she claim that we have a standards-based system if examiners are being told to re-mark exams in order to increase the number of students achieving a particular grade?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I cannot speak to Mr Lyons’—one person’s casual conversation with another in the staffroom. What I can tell the member and this House is that the Auditor-General in 2012 carried out a review of the quality and integrity of our system and found it to be very, very good. The New Zealand Council for Educational Research carried out a similar evaluation in 2013 and found that principals have high confidence in our examination. Students are being assessed and their markers are being assessed to ensure that we have a quality system.

Chris Hipkins: Can she give an absolute assurance to the House and to parents and to students that no student’s grade has been inflated as a result of their exams being re-marked to increase the number of students who gain Achieved, gain Merit, or gain Excellence for NCEA?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I can give an absolute assurance that I am confident in the processes of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, as opposed to one columnist in a paper, which the member is relying on.

Chris Hipkins: Has the number of student results from externally assessed achievement standards decreased by over 60,000 over the past 5 years, while the number of internally assessed standards reported increased by over 150,000? If so, what evidence does she draw from to claim that increased National Certificate of Educational Achievement achievement reflects an actual increase in student achievement, not a change in the nature of the qualifications being achieved?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: To begin with, because I have trust and respect in the New Zealand teaching profession. Secondly, internal assessment does make up about 70 percent of hours, because when we moved to this approach of qualifications, it was in real time to assess learning. Examinations are at the end of the year; it used to be the case that they were at the end of 3 years. Now we have a system that allows real-time marking when the learning has been done, complemented by external examinations.

Employment—3K to Christchurch Initiative

8. JONO NAYLOR (National) to the Minister for Social Development: What recent announcements has she made to assist job seekers to relocate for full-time employment?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): Yesterday I announced the expansion of the 3K to Christchurch employment initiative to other regions. The 3K to Work programme will support those at risk of long-term welfare dependence to relocate for full-time employment. Since it was introduced in 2014 more than 1,700 clients have taken advantage of the 3K to Christchurch scheme. This expansion will support an initial 500 job seekers over the next year to relocate for work, but this number could increase based on demand.

Jono Naylor: Who is eligible to receive the $3,000 under the expanded initiative?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Although this offer has open eligibility, we are focusing it on some particular groups of clients: those who are aged 18 to 24 years, those who have been in receipt of a main benefit for more than 6 months, those who are currently in a work-focused case management service, those who are Limited Service Volunteer graduates, and those who are experiencing social factors where relocation would be beneficial, such as gang affiliates and victims of family violence. By helping these clients successfully move into sustainable employment, the grant will support those who are at most risk of becoming long-term beneficiaries.

Oil and Gas Industry—Government Involvement and Support

9. GARETH HUGHES (Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement that “it makes no sense to be calling for emissions reductions on one hand, while subsidising emissions on the other”?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Acting Prime Minister): In the same reply I gave to the same question just the other day, yes.

Gareth Hughes: If the Government is serious about reducing fossil fuel funding, why did it give $850,000 of taxpayers’ money to fund an oil conference at Skycity?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: One of the differences between us and the Greens is that the Greens regard petrol, diesel, and aviation fuel as evil; we regard them as a normal part of civilised society. Despite our admiration for the usefulness of fossil fuels in shaping modern life, we still campaign against large-scale subsidies on fossil fuels, and we are getting international support for that campaign, because if all countries eliminated their subsidies for fossil fuels at the pump, carbon emissions would drop by around 12 percent.

Gareth Hughes: If it was not a subsidy, what was the quarter of a million dollars of public money that his Government spent on wining and dining 11 oil executives from Shell, Anadarko, and Chevron Oil Co.?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I would have to check the member’s numbers, but it is the business of this Government, as it is in most developed countries, to host business owners and operators in order to sell to those owners and operators the opportunities available in the country. It is called attracting investment, and when you attract investment, you enable new jobs. In fact, without that kind of investment, unemployment levels would be much higher than they already are. So whatever the cost of entertaining some of those offshore business owners or operators, the Government certainly does not apologise for the fact that it does cultivate interest in investment opportunities in New Zealand, including in oil and gas.

Gareth Hughes: As the world tries in Paris to keep fossil fuels in the ground, can he explain why his Government is opening up a massive half a million square kilometres of New Zealand’s waters for fossil fuel exploration?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The thing that is keeping fossil fuels in the ground is not the Paris conference; it is the very low price of oil, gas, and coal. That is what is keeping it in the ground. The market is doing a much better job than the Greens ever did, and I will believe the Greens’ views on fossil fuels when they stop flying and driving to climate change conferences.

Gareth Hughes: How can he look with a straight face at New Zealanders and say he is serious about climate change when his Government is giving oil drillers tax breaks, providing the oil industry with taxpayer-funded research, funding petroleum action plans but not clean energy action plans, appointing people with links to the oil industry to the Environmental Protection Authority and Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority boards, hosting and sponsoring oil conferences, and opening more of New Zealand to oil drilling?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: We look New Zealanders in the face with no problem whatsoever. It is pretty simple: we do not regard fossil fuels as evil. In fact—a bit of anecdotal evidence—a lot of people’s lives rely on them at the moment, and that will probably be the case for the foreseeable future. The Greens think these things are evil and want to stop people using them. I do not know how they can look people in New Zealand in the face and say that they want their vote at the same time as wanting to shut down their ability to fly, drive, have a job, and run a business.

Workplace Health and Safety—Legislative Reform and Legal Liability

10. CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First) to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: Does he stand by all his statements in relation to the Health and Safety Reform Bill; if so, why so?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Yes, in the context in which they were made.

Clayton Mitchell: Does the Minister stand by his comments made during the Committee of the whole House earlier this year that removing the ability for a person conducting a business or undertaking to insure themselves against any legal culpability is appropriate; if so, why so?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Yes, to the first part of the question.

Clayton Mitchell: Is the Minister aware that some school principals have been provided with legal advice suggesting that they place their family homes into a family trust to protect themselves from the absurdity from some of this new legislation?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: No, I am not. I am sure they have had a variety of advice; not all of it was accurate. I should remind the member that, actually, the liabilities and obligations by school principals under the Health and Safety at Work Act are no different from those under the Health and Safety in Employment Act, which has been in place for 23 years.

Clayton Mitchell: Will the Minister confirm that he is working on amendments to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, and whether they will include New Zealand First’s proposed amendments to delete section 29, “Insurance against fines unlawful”, to protect school principals, board members from council-controlled organisations, and other members at risk; if not, why not?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: No, I cannot confirm that at all.

Cycleways—Nelson Street Cycleway

11. ALFRED NGARO (National) to the Minister of Transport: What progress has the Government made on its commitment to build the Nelson Street Cycleway in Auckland?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Transport): I am pleased to tell the member that in just the few months since the project started there has been incredible progress. In fact, this morning, alongside the Hon Nikki Kaye, it was my privilege to open this new and iconic Nelson Street Cycleway. The cycleway, which is New Zealand’s most ambitious piece of urban cycling infrastructure ever, will transform Auckland’s inner-city cycling network by offering a convenient and safe travel option to and from the city centre, particularly for people who work in the city. I am proud that the Government has delivered a world-class cycleway that will shape the way Aucklanders and visitors move around the city. It is for all ages—even the Rt Hon Winston Peters.

Alfred Ngaro: What benefits will the new Nelson Street cycleway provide for the people of Auckland?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Very many. The new Nelson Street Cycleway, first and foremost, ensures that cycling will be an integral part of Auckland’s future transport network, and by making cycling safer, and therefore more attractive, it is contributing to a healthier and a more environmentally friendly set of communities in Auckland.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I seek leave to table the plans for the motorway that is over 25 years old, which he says was built in the last year.

Mr SPEAKER: No. If members want that information, I am sure they can find it.

Mt Eden Corrections Facility—Serco’s Performance and Monitoring

12. KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau) to the Minister of Corrections: Does he still have confidence in Serco given that Mt Eden Corrections Facility has dropped to last place in the most recent Prison Performance Table?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (Minister of Corrections): My confidence in Serco, as I have already said very often in this House, and in its management of Mt Eden Corrections Facility, will depend on the outcome of the review currently under way and the actions taken to address the issues that it raises.

Kelvin Davis: Given the new tables, does he think Serco’s earlier top rankings were real, or were they due to Serco pulling the wool over his eyes?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: Those tables are based on the facts that are available at the time. May I just inform the member that when a prison fails core security it immediately falls to the bottom of the table.

Kelvin Davis: How many core security incidents occurred at Mt Eden in the year to June 2015, which caused it to drop 16 places?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: Clearly, the evidence around the fight clubs caused the failure in core security. But may I add that Rimutaka Prison and Whanganui Prison failed core security for the year ended 31 December 2014. Christchurch Prison also failed the core security criteria on 31 March 2015. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I am going to ask the—[Interruption] Order! Is the point of order—

Kelvin Davis: Sorry. I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did ask how many core security incidents.

Mr SPEAKER: Yes. I am going to invite the member to ask that question again.

Kelvin Davis: How many core security incidents occurred at Mt Eden in the year to June 2015, which caused it to drop 16 places.

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: The member again fails to understand how these tables work. It requires only one incident to fail core security. Clearly, it failed based on the evidence that was given to the Department of Corrections at the time, and that included evidence of fight clubs.

Mr SPEAKER: The question was: “How many incidents?”. If the Minister does not have that information, he can just simply state so. Would the Minister please address the question that has been asked.

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: I do not have that information, but clearly there was one incident relating to the fight clubs at Mt Eden prison, which led to that failure.

Kelvin Davis: Does he still stand by his statement that Serco is the “highest performing prison”; if not, what does that say about his position that privately run prisons are working well in New Zealand?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: I made that statement in May of 2015, based on the evidence that was—[Interruption] Yes, it was this year—[Interruption] Excuse me.

Kelvin Davis: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The point of order is that the question asked: does he still stand by his statement?

Mr SPEAKER: I will invite the member to clarify the question again for the Minister.

Kelvin Davis: Does he still stand by his statement that Serco is the “highest performing prison”; if not, what does that say about his position that privately run prisons are working well in New Zealand?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: As I have said, I stand by that statement, based on the facts that were given at the time, and I made that statement in May of 2015.

Kelvin Davis: How can not receiving a bonus of $325,000 be considered a proper punishment when its baseline is untouched and Serco is still making millions off New Zealanders?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: The amount is actually $315,000. That amount is based on the contract that was signed at the time. I suggest that that member needs to understand contractual law—that you must base these sanctions on the contract that exists at the time.

Kelvin Davis: How can the public have any faith in the Department of Corrections given that it missed everything that was going on at Mt Eden until it was exposed on the 6 o’clock news?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: I reject that assertion made by that member that the department missed everything, because clearly it has monitored and sought assurances from Serco and is working alongside it right now to manage Mt Eden prison.

Offices of Parliament

Appointment of Auditors—Office of the Controller and Auditor-General

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I move, That pursuant to section 38(1) of the Public Audit Act 2001, the House appoint PKF Goldsmith Fox Audit as the independent auditor to audit the financial statements, accounts and other information of the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General for the financial years ending on 30 June 2016, 30 June 2017, and 30 June 2018.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Resource Legislation Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): I move, That the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Local Government and Environment Committee to consider the bill. The Government’s intention is that this bill, which makes over 40 changes to six different Acts, be subject to wide public submissions and a full select committee process to ensure that we get the details right. This bill is about reducing the bureaucracy that gets in the way of creating jobs, of building homes, and of good environmental management. It provides for greater national consistency, more responsive planning, and simplified consenting, and it better aligns the Resource Management Act with other laws.

I wish to give this bill some context. The Resource Management Act is New Zealand’s most important environmental and planning law, and it matters a great deal to both our economy and our environment that it works well. There are only a few diehard greens who will not acknowledge that this Act needs reform. The OECD in its report last year highlighted the problems with its very high administrative costs compared with other countries. Through the report of Local Government New Zealand earlier this year, councils noted that of all of the areas of their work this is the area where there is the greatest public dissatisfaction. The Productivity Commission’s substantive report on housing affordability identified it as the root cause of our housing problems. Business New Zealand has identified it as its No. 1 priority for reform in terms of job creation. Most recently the Rules Reduction Taskforce identified it as the No. 1 concern of homeowner complaints.

I have been around resource and environmental lawmaking long enough to know that there are no silver bullets. There is always going to be some degree of tension between people being able to get on and use their own property and the wider public interest in ensuring that environmental issues are properly managed. However, I am also of the view that we can make substantial improvements.

National set out on a two-phase reform programme when we were first elected in 2008. Our first reform bill set up the Environmental Protection Authority and a far better process for dealing with big infrastructure projects. We would not have the Waterview Connection motorway and tunnel in Auckland, which is half finished now. We would not have the consents for the 600 megawatt geothermal power station in Taupō. There would not now be work beginning on Transmission Gully. There would not be the new Christchurch motorway being constructed if it were not for those changes that our Government made in 2009.

The first phase reform was also successful in stopping trade competition objections and appeals that gave the Resource Management Act a bad name. We have, thankfully, consigned the supermarket circus to this country’s history books. We introduced provisions that penalised councils when consents were processed late, and we have seen those numbers drop from 14,000 in 2008 to fewer than 1,000 last year. The second phase reform was always going to be more complex, and I want to acknowledge the work of the three technical advisory groups that helped pull together the proposals. I want to put on record my thanks for the hard yards that were done by present justice Minister, Amy Adams.

The first big change in this bill is the introduction of national planning templates. I highlighted at the beginning of this year the 10-metre high stack of Resource Management Act plans, amounting to over 80,000 pages of objectives, policies, and rules. We have each of our 86 councils reinventing the wheel, and that is just not efficient for a country of 4½ million people. We have over 50 definitions of how to measure the height of a building. There are dozens of different descriptions of what you are allowed to do in a commercial area. The answer is standard planning templates, as proposed in this bill.

The second big change is reforming how councils write plans. The current process is too cumbersome, too rigid, and too slow. This Parliament keeps having to pass special legislation to get around this problem, such as in respect of the previous Government’s challenges over the Waitaki River or our own challenges around Auckland housing. The average time it takes, under the current Resource Management Act, to make a plan change is 6 years, and this is just not responsive enough to deal with the environmental and resource challenges that we regularly face. This bill speeds up the plan-making process and makes it more flexible. It introduces collaborative planning where there are conflicting interests that are incentivised to work together on a way forward—a proposal that was sensibly developed by the Land and Water Forum. It also introduces an alternative streamlined planning process that can be adapted to the specifics of a local issue.

The third batch of changes in this bill is around making consenting less bureaucratic. It gives councils the discretion to waive the need for consents on minor issues. It introduces a new fast-track consent for simple issues, which is required to be done in 10 days. Councils will be required to have fixed fees for standard consents. Consents will not be required where an activity has already been approved under another Act. This bill will reduce the number of consents required each year by thousands.

This is a blue-green bill that will deliver environmental as well as economic gains. It enables us to pass national regulations to ensure stock like dairy cows are fenced out of rivers, lakes, and wetlands. It requires decommissioning plans to be required for offshore oil and gas rigs. It introduces into section 6 a requirement to manage natural hazards—a recommendation that came from the royal commission on the earthquakes in Christchurch. It would also help ensure we properly address the issue of sea level rise from climate change.

This bill is an important part of the solution to the long-term problems over housing supply and affordability. The new bill requires councils to properly manage for population growth. It reverses the presumption of subdivision. It limits appeals on consents for housing infrastructure. It removes the double up of charging regimes between development contributions under the Local Government Act and financial contributions under the Resource Management Act.

There are also important changes in the bill to the Conservation Act, the Public Works Act, the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act, the Environmental Protection Authority Act, and the Reserves Act that will also help achieve our goal of less bureaucracy and better economic and environmental outcomes. The bill also contains significant cost-saving measures from the use of new web technology. This will reduce those boring long ads that you read all the time in the paper about the Resource Management Act by having a crisper description and having the information available on the web. It allows for the electronic serving of documents. It also contains improvements to the Environment Court that encourage early dispute resolution.

I want to acknowledge the support of the Māori Party and their advocacy around iwi participation arrangements. The arrangements were included in the proposals put forward in 2011 and have been refined. They will work better for iwi by focusing in on the issues that are important to them, but also preventing the bureaucracy of them being involved in a huge number of consents, which just adds time and costs. Can I also welcome the support of Labour members opposite. I look forward to a genuine process of engagement and dialogue, so we can ensure that this reform delivers a Resource Management Act that works better for New Zealand. I commend the first reading of the bill to the House.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): There are lots of areas of policy that show that National is increasingly out of touch with the values of New Zealanders. I think that National’s now failed attempt to undermine the fundamental principles of Part 2 of the Resource Management Act is another of them. National has once again been on the side of a small minority that would have personally profited by doing what they wanted to do, at the expense of decent environmental baselines, with disregard to what are appropriate environmental safeguards, at the cost of other New Zealanders who would bear those economic consequences.

At a time when New Zealand has declining freshwater quality National’s answer was, for years, to lower the environmental tests in Part 2 of the Resource Management Act. It has been pushed off that. For 10 years National has said that New Zealand’s economic performance has been substantially—not just in a little way, but substantially—undermined by the fundamental principles of the Resource Management Act that it has wanted to change.

Yet National has failed to convince New Zealanders that that was right, and after 7 years of its excuses it has been forced to concede—because the weight of public opinion and parliamentary opinion has been against it—that that was never true. The Resource Management Act has not been the substantial cause of New Zealand’s economic performance in the last 7 years. The fact that on a per person basis the size of the New Zealand economy is shrinking is not the fault of the Resource Management Act. Economic negative growth per capita has not been caused by the Resource Management Act; it has been caused by National’s lacklustre economic performance. The Resource Management Act has been used as a whipping boy by National and ACT for years.

David Seymour: By the OECD and the Productivity Commission.

Hon DAVID PARKER: At the time of the last election, I said that if we were elected, we would give Remuera and the Epsom electorate a Resource Management Act - free zone. We would give them a carve-out of the provisions of the Resource Management Act. Watch them come to us when we put all the prisons, all the tanneries, all the multi-storey buildings between the residents of the ACT electorate and their superyachts in the harbour and see them complain and call for the restoration of the Resource Management Act.

Nowhere is National’s rhetoric made more clear than in respect of housing. The housing crisis in Auckland is severe; not enough homes are being built. The demand side factors and the supply side factors are complex, and they do include land supply, as the Labour Party has long said, but land supply alone will not fix the housing problems in Auckland, and blaming the Resource Management Act unduly for the problems there is wrong. It is not just Labour that is saying this; it is actually the fact that National has not been able to get a parliamentary majority. I want to thank every member of this Parliament who has stopped National gutting the Resource Management Act.

I want to thank the Māori Party. The two recent things that the Māori Party has managed to knock out of this bill include the over-interpretation of property rights, which was proposed and the Māori Party managed to knock it out. The other ridiculous thing that was, until recently, still being proposed was private consenting authorities, notwithstanding the absolute debacle of National’s pushing upon the country private building consent authorities, which was one of the causes of the leaky building crisis and the injustices of people who could not get a remedy after those building consent authorities that were private went bung and disappeared. National was going to do the same thing in respect of resource consenting. The Māori Party’s advocacy got rid of that—thank you to the Māori Party.

Peter Dunne has been very principled in all of this. He knows the importance of Part 2 of the Act. He was one of those who was in Parliament when the Resource Management Act was introduced, and I want to pay credit to him. The Greens and New Zealand First have also been opposing these changes. The truth of this is that on a voting basis National has got 61 votes against them in a House of 120: 32 votes of those are Labour, 14 of them are the Greens, 12 of them are New Zealand First, two of them are the Māori Party, and one is United Future. This Parliament is arrayed against National, and despite its having the advantages of power and the pressure that it can bring upon parties, it has not succeeded in bringing the fatally flawed bill that it wanted to bring to this House.

The New Zealand Herald in the weekend said this: “Dashed RMA reforms show NZ’s priority”. I will read some quotes from this. “This Government’s longest and most ambitious legislative battle ended this week in defeat.” And yet we had Nick Smith just claiming victory. “The saga ended on Thursday when Environment Minister Nick Smith introduced a bill that will make very little difference to the operation of the act.”—victory, Dr Smith. “But the bill’s real significance is that it represents a landmark victory for the environment over the economy.” There is an environmental baseline that ought not to be breached. I agree with that World Bank economist Herman Daly. At one level the economy is a subset of the environment. You have to protect the environment in order to protect the long-term viability of your economy and have a nice place to live.

There are some aspects of this bill that we welcome. That is why we are voting for it. We have long called for standardisation of some provisions. I agree that a standard format for plans will make them all easier to follow because we will all know how they are all set out and there is no problem with that being standard. They can have different rules even if they are set out in a standard way, and that is just sensible. I agree that some definitions ought to be standardised. We might have different rules as to what is the maximum height above ground level in different plans, but we should all be able to agree that we measure ground level in the same way. Things like that should be standard. We do need more national policy statements.

You know, it has been clear for a long time that we have got a problem with affordable housing. How do you fix that? One of the ways is through a national policy statement on affordable housing. The Labour Party has been advocating that for 3 years. We have been offering to the Government that we will cooperate with it in that regard, but it will not take up that offer. These do work. Look at what happened when we had a national policy statement on renewable energy, which I had a hand in. Since then, we have had more than enough renewables consented. We have actually met society’s need to bring forward more renewables. We have. Renewables had dropped to 57 percent; they are now up to 80 percent. One of the blocks to that being achieved was that it was too hard to consent renewable electricity projects, so we made it easier through using a national policy statement under the Resource Management Act to bring forward renewables.

There are some aspects that I will be wanting to debate very carefully at the select committee, and I look forward to this—I hope—intelligent debate that we have across parties, because the Government cannot do this on its own. It actually needs cross-party collaboration. I want to name some of them. Some of the changes that have been made so far in the name of speed have actually had the opposite effect. The Environmental Protection Authority has been a hopelessly expensive cause of more complexity and delay. We have even had complaints to the Regulations Review Committee because the authority’s hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of bills to applicants have been so high that people have ended up before it. It has not caused speed, and it has actually just created multi-track alternatives that have added complexity to the Act. I think we should look at that. The Government might not be willing to change it.

In terms of the exclusive economic zone part of this, the Government’s major mistake here is that it should have just applied the Resource Management Act to the exclusive economic zone area. It needed a different consent authority, but the same rules would have done. In terms of collaborative processes, I want to give members one final anecdote. I ran collaborative processes leading to emissions trading scheme for emissions pricing. I excluded the worst critics. I left out Don Elder from Solid Energy, and the then head of Genesis Energy, an Australian who was rather unhelpful as well. I stacked that body. I actually got to an outcome through that stacked body that led to emissions pricing, which was a good thing for New Zealand.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: No, you didn’t.

Hon DAVID PARKER: I actually did.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: No, you didn’t.

Hon DAVID PARKER: I am sorry, Dr Smith; you do not realise, but we actually legislated for an emissions trading scheme that—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You didn’t implement it.

Hon DAVID PARKER: We did so—you negated some of it. Look, I am not going to have that puerile debate. I stacked that board in a collaborative process just as any Minister can stack a board going the other way. Collaborative processes without appeal rights can be abused by Governments—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry, but the member’s time has expired. A 5-minute call, Hon Te Ururoa Flavell.

Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Ka nui te mihi ki a koe, otirā, ki a tātou katoa. He tīmatanga kōrero māku me pēnei rawa te kōrero: “Ko Rangi, ko Papa ka puta, ko Rongo, ko Tāne Mahuta, ko Tangaroa, ko Tūmatauenga, ko Haumia-Tiketike, ko Tawhirimātea. I tokona te Rangi ki runga, ko Papatūānuku ki raro, ka puta te ira tangata ki te whai ao, ki te ao mārama. Ko ia rā e Rongo whakairia ki runga, tūturu whiti whakamaua kia tīna, tīna, hui e, tāiki e!”

[I appreciate you greatly, Mr Deputy Speaker, and all of us at the same time. Let me begin my address in this manner: “Rangi and Papa consorted with each other and Rongo, Tangaroa, Tūmatauenga, Haumia-Tiketike, and Tawhirimātea were born. When Rangi was separated to remain above and Papa below, the human element emerged into the world of light and understanding. Therefore suspend it in the heavens above, Rongo, so that it remains fixed there permanently; oh yes, securely!”]

I recited a very brief karakia—some might say a whakapapa, and some might say just an ordinary kōrero, but I think that kōrero actually sets out the relationship that Māori have with our environment. You would understand too, being a member who has been here for a long time, that kaitiakitanga is a kaupapa, one of the founding kaupapa, of the Māori Party—protecting the environment and giving legislative effect to the important cultural and spiritual relationship that our people have with the environment. It has been one of the key focus areas that we have worked on in Parliament since I have been here and indeed since the Māori Party has been here. In giving effect to kaitiakitanga we promote sustainable development of the natural resource with the protection and restoration and enhancement of our environment.

When the National Government announced its intention to fundamentally rewrite the Resource Management Act in favour of economic development in 2013 our position was pretty clear. The Māori Party, along with United Future, would not support such a fundamental change that would weaken the core environmental principles and purposes of the Act. Sections 6 and 7 in Part 2 of the Act affirm the national importance of preserving our natural environment, including: “the relationship of Māori and their culture and traditions with their ancestral lands, water, sites, waahi tapu, and other taonga.” So on that basis the Government’s proposed Resource Management Act reforms were effectively stalled for 2 years.

Earlier this year the National Party released a broad outline of its proposed Resource Management Act reforms and signalled its desire to achieve a broad political consensus. We signalled that we would be happy to support procedural changes that reduce unnecessary bureaucracy. We share the general concerns of most New Zealanders, which is to increase the supply of affordable houses for all whānau. We also recognise that some of the proposed changes around streamlining the consent process and creating national templates will save time and money for homeowners.

So for the last 9 months we have had discussions with the National Party in good faith to reach a compromise position. We have sought advice from independent practitioners and the iwi leaders technical advisory group, and I would like to acknowledge the immense value of working with the iwi leaders group and independent practitioners at the pre-bill stage. Their input has been critical to securing our political support. The working groups have worked their way carefully through the 180 pages of the resource management legislation, and the almost 700 pages of the current Resource Management Act. They have identified some key areas for change, and others are for further negotiation.

All this background leads the Māori Party to support the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill. Our major aim has been achieved, and that is to retain sections 6 and 7 with some small amendments. Can I acknowledge the Hon Dr Nick Smith for working with us to achieve a positive outcome to this point in time. But it is not all over yet. We have contributed new provisions to the Resource Management Act including a requirement for all local councils around the country to better engage with iwi. As mana whenua and kaitiaki of natural resources in their rohe, iwi and hapū have a vital role to play in keeping the balance between the protection and development of the local environment. We realise that some councils are well advanced in their relationship with mana whenua, but there are many others that are not. The new provisions proposed in the Act will not override existing mechanisms for iwi participation outlined in Treaty settlements or override iwi management plans. The new provisions will have iwi involved at the front end of local council planning rather than responding at the end.

To be clear, we do not support every single provision of the bill as it stands. However, we are satisfied with the point that we have reached with our negotiations with the National Party and, indeed, with the Hon Nick Smith, and the commitment made by the National Party to address these concerns as we work through the select committee process. We will be supporting the bill that far, and we look forward, as Mr Parker mentioned, to having good debate where all parties can contribute and look forward to seeing how it goes into the future for this bill. My colleague Marama Fox will, I think, outline further the things that the Māori Party has contributed in framing up this piece of legislation. Ka nui te mihi.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: David Seymour—a 5-minute call.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill, but I start by commending the honourable Minister, Nick Smith, for bringing a Resource Management Act reform bill to the House. Resource Management Act reform is, in my view, the No. 1 regulatory priority for this country, and do not just take my word for it. As the Minister said, it is also the view of the OECD, the Productivity Commission, Business New Zealand, The New Zealand Initiative, Federated Farmers, and so the list of stakeholders who have observed this issue goes on.

Resource Management Act reform is important to New Zealanders, and one reason is housing. In the 1960s and 1970s New Zealand built eight to 13 residences per 1,000 head of population. This century, the period of the Resource Management Act, that number is 5.3 residences per 1,000 of population. That housing shortage has been directly sheeted home to the land-use planning environment—not just in New Zealand, but around the world; that is what the international evidence tells us. The shortage of housing has led to a price bubble that now imperils not only equality and equity for New Zealanders, but also the stability of our financial system. And if you doubt that, do not ask me, ask the Reserve Bank Governor.

Sadly, this bill is completely disproportionate to the challenge facing New Zealand and the level of Resource Management Act reform that is actually required to get the outcomes that the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders want. It is not reform; it is tinkering. It fails to stop the culture where councils produce, as the Minister mentioned, 10-metre high stacks of rules and plans for our communities. The fundamental problem, and the reason that we get those high piles, is not because we lack a template or we lack enough electronic processing—although, of course, any Government should be doing those things. The fundamental problem is the principles section: the underlying assumptions of the Resource Management Act, which say that there have to be 18 different principles—such as the intrinsic value of ecosystems, which nobody can properly define—considered in every single plan.

And if you cannot define what you want to have in the plan, then it does not matter whether it is the central government setting the template or local councils writing the plan—you still have a planning ethos that puts more value in the ideology of the planning profession and third-party objectors than in the actual owner of the property. Among those principles, property rights do not appear once. That is something that the Hon Amy Adams wanted to put in Resource Management Act reform and, sadly, it has not been able to be included in this bill. Even the idea of competitive consenting, which would have been an enormous incentive to improve the quality and speed of consenting, could not be included in this bill, although that would be a very good improvement. I hope to come back for future readings and be able to vote for some of those characteristics in this bill.

But not only does the bill at present not solve the fundamental problems, it adds new ones. An ambiguous requirement to accommodate natural hazards will add yet another layer of complexity in the plans and the consenting processes that property owners and businesses in New Zealand face when they try to do things with their own property. The new requirement to universally consult with iwi adds another third party that must be consulted when developing one’s own property. This, again, is not progress towards people being able to use their property efficiently; it is actually another step backwards. And yet we always say this is a trade-off between the economy and the environment. It is not. Most of the red tape, most of the principles, and most of the conditions that I resent and would like to reform in this Act are not actually environmental. Most of them are about nebulous principles that have nothing to do with the science of the air, water, and soil purity; of biodiversity; and of the noise and disturbance to people by their neighbours.

We want a country in which our productivity growth puts us in the 10 wealthiest countries in the OECD. We want a country where housing is affordable for all New Zealanders, rather than a major threat to our financial stability. If an outside observer was to look at this country, they would say: “They must do better at land-use planning.” In particular, for some of the poorest people in this country who are Māori and who also have the least access to housing—and is it not a shame to see how the Māori Party has held up this legislation? It is very clear to the people of New Zealand who want substantial Resource Management Act reform in the next Government who they have to vote for. On behalf of the ACT Party, I oppose this bill in the hope that in future we will have something better and more substantial to vote for, for all New Zealanders. Thank you.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I am going to look back, I think, fondly on the career of the Hon Nick Smith in a couple of years’ time when he is languishing as an Opposition backbencher, fondly remembering the halcyon days when he was the building and construction Minister. The image that I will have in my mind when I think back on Nick Smith’s career is him giving a press conference with a 10-metre high pile of council planning documents teetering, and about to collapse on his head. That image, that photo stunt, which is so characteristic of the Hon Nick Smith and his political career, is the high-water mark of the National Party’s grand ambitions to reform the Resource Management Act.

This bill is a ministerial white flag. This bill is an abject surrender after a decade of blaming the Resource Management Act for every economic ill, every setback, and every disappointment. Nick Smith has been blaming the Resource Management Act for the Auckland housing crisis. That is what Nick Smith has been doing: for the last 10 years, Nick Smith has been blaming expensive housing on the Resource Management Act.

As David Parker said, we are going to vote for this bill. We are going to vote for it because, like so many of the bills that the National Government brings to this House, particularly in the housing area, it is a small, incremental measure that may bring some positive change. It is basically a 180-page collection of fairly incremental process improvements, and we will talk some more in this debate and in subsequent debates about the detail of those improvements. But it is important for people to understand the backstory to this bill.

My colleague David Parker quoted the New Zealand Herald editorial that outlined the great political journey that the National Party has been on for the last decade around trying to weaken and gut the critical environmental principles in section 6 and 7 of the Resource Management Act and how it has been singularly unable to get the support of the country or this Parliament for ripping the guts out of the environmental protections of the Resource Management Act.

What National has done with this bill is bring something that does not—and this is the good news—weaken the fundamental environmental protections in the Act, but what it also does not do is it does not tackle the important Resource Management Act and planning rule blockages to urban development and affordable housing in this country that desperately need to be addressed. So it does not achieve the National Party’s cherished goal of weakening the environmental principles, but it also does not do anything to tackle the root causes of the housing crisis, and I want to talk more about that. It may be worthwhile, and it may be a positive thing to improve the speed and efficiency of consenting, but it is not a root cause of the Auckland housing crisis. If it was, Nick Smith’s policy of the special housing areas might have been hoped to have had some effect, because they are nothing but small, little, mini fast-track consenting zones. But as we have discussed many times in this House, the special housing areas are not making a blind bit of difference to the housing crisis, and have resulted in only 500 houses being built in 2 whole years. So it is clear to everybody that the speed of consenting has nothing to do with the housing crisis.

We are voting for the bill because it might be a good thing. No one is going to complain if consenting is more efficient and if it is cheaper. That will be a good thing, and we will test that out. We will test out in select committee whether the provisions in this bill will actually achieve that stated goal. But let us talk about what has actually been going on here. The National Party has been blaming the Resource Management Act for the housing crisis, trying to use Resource Management Act reform as some kind of Trojan Horse: a cover for weakening the fundamental environmental protections in the bill. Meanwhile, over 7 years in Government, National has done nothing to address the aspects of planning rules and local government’s regulation of urban development that are among the root causes of the housing crisis.

If the Government was serious about reform in this area it would, instead of the kind of tinkering that David Seymour used to characterise this bill—and I would say it is tinkering on an industrial scale—

Hon David Parker: Oh!

PHIL TWYFORD: Ha! Yes. What the Government would be doing right now is actually tackling the planning rules that are a root cause of the housing crisis. I want to talk about those too, because they are what is missing here. They are what should be in this bill.

I think that most sensible people will acknowledge that one of the root causes of the housing crisis in Auckland has been the planning rules that both stop the city growing out and stop the city growing up. It is very clear that the urban growth boundary in Auckland has had the effect of creating an artificial scarcity of land that sees section prices being 10 times the value inside the urban boundary as land on the outside of the urban boundary. That has driven section prices up, it has set off a chain reaction creating massive business opportunities for land bankers and speculators, and it is the reason that the high cost of land in Auckland today is one of the main reasons that builders will not build affordable houses—not in Dr Smith’s special housing areas, and, in fact, nowhere in Auckland, because the land is too expensive.

We cannot ignore also the plethora of planning restrictions that stop builders and developers building up. The restrictions on height and density—[Interruption] That is right. It stops people building affordable housing, and the kinds of housing that people want in places where they want to live, and that is in the city, and in suburban and town centres. The combination of those two planning rules has created a pressure cooker in Auckland. The only outlet for that pressure cooker has been the exponential increases in house prices that saw the average house price in Auckland City reach $918,000 only a couple of weeks ago.

Hon David Parker: Further fuelled by speculators.

PHIL TWYFORD: Absolutely. It is a magnet for property speculators and land bankers—something this Government refuses to do anything about. Those are the planning rules that are at the root of the housing crisis in Auckland. This bill does nothing about tackling them. It is an exercise in avoidance.

I want to read a quote from Jason Krupp of the New Zealand Initiative, who wrote a very good post the other day on the website interest.co.nz. Dr Smith, this is really good. You should listen to this because I think you will find it very informative. Jason Krupp wrote: “The last 7 years have been characterised by weak piecemeal workarounds, special housing areas, for example, while meaningful reform of urban development policy has been trapped in the Minister’s quixotic quest to reform sections 6 and 7 of the Resource Management Act. In the time it has taken to draft and shelve two versions of the RMA, a workable urban national policy statement could have been drawn up and implemented immediately”—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You had 9 years—9 years.

PHIL TWYFORD: There is more Dr Smith: “If Minister Smith is not willing to consider new ideas, at least there are others in the political process”—I think he is talking about the Labour spokesperson—“who recognise that if the tools you have at hand have not solved your problem by now, it is time to consider new tools.”

A national policy statement under the Resource Management Act that the Labour Party has been advocating for for the last 3½ years would fix these problems.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You did none. You had 9 years.

PHIL TWYFORD: That Minister has done nothing in 7 years to tackle the root causes of the housing crisis. Two years ago he came to this House and said: “You cannot do a national policy statement on urban development without changing sections 5 and 6.” How he has been proved to be wrong, because now he has scuttled away to his officials to get them to start drafting an urban policy statement. He has wasted 7 years blaming the Resource Management Act for the housing crisis. He brings this bill of modest process improvements to the House, and still he does nothing to address the root causes of the housing crisis.

SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is a pleasure, as chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee, to stand and speak in this first reading debate of this Resource Legislation Amendment Bill in the name of the environment Minister, Dr Nick Smith. But I cannot let it pass without comment, by way of introductory comments, having listened to Phil Twyford in his speech spend most of his 10 minutes railing against the Resource Management Act in its existing form as not being the root cause of many of the ailments that prevent housing growth and efficient and cost-effective development in New Zealand, when only last week—only last week—in a press release dated 26 November he said: “The way Councils regulate housing and urban development under the RMA is a root cause of New Zealand’s expensive housing.” He has forgotten that in less than a week—forgotten that in less than a week.

Back in 1991 when the principal resource management legislation was passed, it was groundbreaking legislation—it was creative, it was imaginative, and it was world leading. But in the years that have ensued since, it has become complicated, it has become frustrating, it has become expensive, and it has become a real weight around the neck of so many New Zealanders who want to grow their businesses, build houses, and develop opportunities for themselves and their families. So it is no wonder that reports from organisations as worthy as the OECD, Local Government New Zealand, and, indeed, the Productivity Commission itself all highlight that the cumbersome planning process of the existing legislation is causing us an enormous amount of frustration and slowing us down as a nation.

I want to compliment and congratulate Minister Nick Smith on bringing in this piece of reform legislation. It is the part that is phase two of this National Government’s Resource Management Act reform legislation, and I want to congratulate him on bringing it to the House. I want to acknowledge the support of the Māori Party, and its wisdom in joining us in supporting it to its first reading, and also that of the Labour Party.

People around the country are frustrated by the existing legislation. This bill is a substantial, moderate, and sensible piece of reform legislation. It is a bill that New Zealanders have been waiting for for a long time. The overarching purpose of the bill is to create a resource management system that achieves sustainable natural resource management but at the same time manages physical resources in an efficient and an equitable way. Those are laudable principles that this bill seeks to achieve. The bill will almost certainly go a long way to reducing the existing heavyweight bureaucracy and red tape that surrounds the consenting process, and core to these reforms is a focus on a much stronger nationwide planning direction: better plan-making, simpler consenting, improved processes, better engagement with iwi, and improved alignment with other legislation.

I want to focus just for a second on the consenting process. This bill will make it easier and simpler to apply the consenting process. It will reduce costs and it will benefit those who are seeking to create sensible and worthwhile developments. This bill will achieve nationwide consistency and direction, and that is important for all New Zealanders and for our economy and our country as we go forward. Currently the variation between different council plans around the country can be confusing, costly, and frustrating.

This is a good bill. As chairman of the select committee that will be considering it, I want to give members an assurance that there will be plenty of time to hear from submitters and plenty of time to receive submissions. I am very much looking forward to having it at the select committee, and I commend it to the House.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. It is interesting that the Minister said he was looking forward to a genuine process of engagement and dialogue. I would have been very pleased to have been standing in the House to support this bill if there had been that genuine process, and if there had been an exposure draft, as at one stage, with the great conflict around the changes to Part 2—the Prime Minister, I think, suggested that there be a draft that go out to the public. But, instead, we have had it dropped in the House for a week for the Opposition to actually review it.

We have had one law firm this week describe the bill as one of the most fundamental changes to the Resource Management Act since it was passed in 1991, and that is because it is not just changing the Resource Management Act; it is also changing the exclusive economic zone legislation, the Conservation Act, and the Reserves Act.

The Green Party could have supported it if it had been about reform to improve our environmental management, and there are certainly aspects in the bill that we do support. One of those is adding the management of natural hazards to the list of matters of importance in section 6 in order to elevate this, but I do note that there has long been a power to issue national policy statements and the Government has declined to provide that clear national guidance in relation to one of the biggest natural hazards that we are facing—sea level rise—as a result of climate change. The Government has objected to providing that direction, even though there have been calls from Local Government New Zealand, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and others to provide guidance to local authorities on how they deal with sea level rise—how they make the hard decisions around planning and managing that issue.

The Greens support the provisions for national planning templates, but we would point out that this is a quarter of a century too late. It would have been much better to have had those templates when the Act was introduced and passed in 1991 in terms of providing that consistency.

The Greens support things like the better engagement processes for iwi authorities and the online filing provisions—bringing those filing processes into the 21st century—but we are opposing the bill because there are a number of provisions in it that undermine the public’s ability to engage in how decision making about the environment in their area should occur, and because a number of provisions actually weaken environmental safeguards and compromise the ability of councils to regulate. We are opposing the bill because a lot of the changes appear to be driven by ideology rather than robust analysis and evidence. As Treasury’s regulatory impact assessment team says, there has been no consultation on some of the most significant components of the reform package and, if I could quote: “This means there is little evidence as to how stakeholders are likely to respond to new incentives and opportunities. It is therefore unclear how far the reform package is likely to deliver its objective of robust and durable resource management decisions.”

That departmental disclosure statement several times notes the absence of empirical evidence to justify the proposals in the bill. It notes that the benefits and the costs of each option are not systematically weighed and, therefore, it is difficult to determine whether the most suitable changes have been proposed. So when you have not got that evidence—when the changes seem to be driven by ideology—we are suspicious.

We believe that the bill is much more than tinkering and that it is making some quite significant changes, which will continue to centralise power with the Minister and significantly increase his power at the expense of local authorities and their ability to represent and consult their communities on how they, as councils, develop the planning framework for their regions and districts and how they develop the policies and the rules that determine how air, coasts, land, rivers, and groundwater are managed, what sort of environmental effects are acceptable when use and development happens, and what sort of effects are unacceptable. That is because this bill significantly increases the regulation-making powers of the Minister and centralises environmental management. That has been a hallmark of this Government: giving more power to Ministers at the expense of local councils. It is giving the Minister the power to make regulations to permit certain land-use activities. What will those activities be? How arbitrary will those decisions be? It gives the Minister and the executive the power to impose plan changes where councils have maybe imposed unnecessary restrictions on residential development.

Those sorts of powers are quite arbitrary, and they will cut across the ability of councils to consult and represent their communities. They are also going to be potentially ad hoc, which cuts across the stated desire of more national consistency, because the regulation-making powers may apply only to certain districts or regions. They do not have to apply across the country.

The Greens are opposing the bill because it restricts the ability for the public to get involved in key resource management decisions. Not only does the bill narrow the scope for submissions on resource consents but it also reduces the ability of the public to have input on plan changes, which change the policy provisions that govern environmental management. Councils can limit the ability to make submissions to affected parties. Those affected parties are generally considered to be landholders. That means it undermines the ability of community organisations and environmental organisations to have standing in front of councils to make submissions and promote the community interest and the changes that they seek.

We oppose the bill because we think there will be much less accountability in the way in which councils develop and make decisions on district and regional plans through this new “streamlined” plan-making process that the bill provides for. In this process there is no ability for submitters to front up to a hearing panel to present further evidence to the hearing panel and to see who is actually making the decisions on the plan. That whole hearing process does not exist in the fast-track plan-making process. Potentially, it also means that there is the opportunity there for the Minister and the council to agree on this fast-track process, if there is a sort of convenient mutual interest there, and to shut out the public from being involved in hearings. In Christchurch, where we have had the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority developing plans without a hearing process, we have had faceless decision makers making critical decisions behind closed doors.

The bill provides for collaborative planning processes. That is something that the Green Party has supported, but there increasingly are problems with collaborative processes. In Canterbury, with the Canterbury Water Management Strategy and the 10 zone committees, environmental organisations have walked away from that, because they see the zone committees as increasingly dominated by agribusiness and irrigation interests. The Mackenzie Shared Vision Forum, the collaborative process that was supposed to decide the future of the high country, has virtually collapsed. Fish and Game has recently left the national Land and Water Forum. So those collaborative processes, which showed so much promise, do not seem to be delivering on that.

We oppose the legislation because of the politicisation of decision making in the exclusive economic zone. There the Government has caved in to lobbying by the petroleum industry and seabed miners, and it is having the Minister appoint the decision-making panels for applications for marine consents in the exclusive economic zone, when officials advised that it should be the Environmental Protection Authority that continues to do that and that the Resource Management Act should be made consistent with the process the Environmental Protection Authority uses in the exclusive economic zone. So that is politicising decision making in the exclusive economic zone. It is giving the Minister too much power, and it is very pertinent that the only people whom the Ministry for the Environment consulted with were PEPANZ, the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand, and mining interests. It did not consult with community organisations to make that change. Once again, it shows that this Government is captured by corporate interests. It is not passing these changes to benefit all of New Zealanders, to ensure that we have protection that safeguards the places that Kiwis love; it is making changes to our environmental law to benefit special interests that are interested in exploitation rather than protection. So there has been absolutely no public consultation on that change, and it is being shunted through in an ad hoc way because the exclusive economic zone legislation has been in force only since 2013.

Others have seen the fact that this bill does not make those changes that were initially proposed to Part 2, pancaking the matters of national importance to becoming a grab bag of matters and stripping out things like recognition of amenity values, intrinsic values, and the quality of the environment, as a major victory. It is certainly a victory, and we thank the Māori Party and the Hon Peter Dunne for their advocacy there. But we should not have even been having that debate about stripping out those environmental safeguards. It shows how much of an attack this Government has wanted to make on the Resource Management Act.

The environmental safeguards in the bill should be strengthened. The Government has missed the opportunity in terms of improving the prospects for our indigenous biodiversity by strengthening private property rights in this bill, which risks having a chilling effect on councils and their ability to regulate, by allowing the Environment Court, potentially, to require councils—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt the member, but her time has expired.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): This is a bill of 180 pages and 40 changes in 235 clauses and 8 schedules. It was introduced on Tuesday, and here we are on Thursday asked to support it without any prior consultation whatsoever. This is a bill that will take time to study and assess, so New Zealand First will neither support it nor oppose it until we have done that properly. We will have no choice but to abstain at this stage, and we will decide later whether we will vote Yes or No.

I note that the Māori Party has said that it will support the bill conditionally at this stage. It got what it referred to as “pre-bill consultation”, yet it says it still wants more demands—unspecified demands—yet to be discussed. We will not know what those are until we hear them a lot later, but we know that the Māori Party is always looking for some sort of advantage for Māori over other New Zealanders. We do not think that is clever. We think those are separatist attitudes. They smack of division and of favouritism, and New Zealand First will never support any of that. But we will support Māori for fair and equal treatment in all things, just as we do for all other New Zealanders. We think it is deplorable that important legislation of this kind has been subjected to some kind of tit-for-tat negotiation behind closed doors between the Government and the Māori Party—and I will have some more to say about that later.

Yet it is New Zealand First that has actually been the main playmaker here, because the truth is that if Winston Peters had not won the Northland by-election, National would have had the votes to pass this legislation as it was originally intended. This is a hugely watered-down version of it. The truth is that there would have been a full attack on the Resource Management Act’s main provisions, set out in sections 5, 6, and 7, on the pretext that compromising the Resource Management Act in that way was justified and necessary to ensure economic development and the provision of adequate housing. What poppycock that was.

The truth is that the Resource Management Act’s principal sections were never a roadblock to appropriate economic development and housing provision. They were never a roadblock to that. The attack was nothing more than a barely disguised assault on a tried and tested and highly respected resource management regime, putting profit and commercial interests, effectively, ahead of fundamental environmental protection. National had, in fact, already begun to argue that it wanted those things to be equal in the Act, but, in practice, it would have been impossible to do so, and commercial interests would have prevailed and the environment would have come off second-best. Anyone with half a brain knows that that would have been the result. Credit for stopping that happening goes to Winston Peters and, of course, to the extremely intelligent voters of Northland.

While those excesses have been avoided, New Zealand First does want a bill that delivers speedier and cost-effective consent processes, but without compromising the fundamental provisions of the Resource Management Act. It must deliver a sensible, balanced, and fair regime for Resource Management Act processes that avoids unnecessary costs and unnecessary delays. I myself, in my previous life, have had involvement with a number of major consent processes. As a result of that I have certainly learned that there were often excessive delays caused by submissions processes that were repetitive and delivered very little additional useful information. They were often submissions purely based on personal rather than environmental or public good interests, as well. They were often eye-wateringly expensive, with very little to show for that expense.

But that does not mean that the submitters should be shut out, because a lot can be done to simply streamline the Resource Management Act’s processes without losing that value. We also think that ways to make expert evidence more objective and more useful would also be worthwhile. Overall, the Resource Management Act’s processes have caused too much cost and have caused too much delay, with no real benefit arising from it. New Zealand First does solidly support—and I want to make this absolutely clear—improvements in processes to the Resource Management Act to make those processes more useful and therefore the outcomes better, both for development and for the environment.

However, New Zealand First will not commit to support this bill at this stage, because we have identified already some major areas of concern. There are at least three of those. Section 6 of the principal Act, for example, requires that functionaries shall recognise and provide for specified matters of national importance; included is: “(e) the relationship of Māori and their culture and traditions with their ancestral lands, water, sites, waahi tapu, and other taonga.” Another is: “(g) the protection of protected customary rights.” We in New Zealand First want to know what all that really means—whether it means, for example, access to water rights, which would not be available to other New Zealanders. If so, we would be voting against the bill.

Clause 11 amending section 30 will also need careful scrutiny, because it introduces a new function relating to what is called “development capacity”, requiring councils to ensure development capacity for residential and business land. On the face of it there is nothing wrong with that, but the issue here is whether that new provision will result in an appropriate balance between environment and development objectives—or will it really just ensure that the Resource Management Act becomes development-oriented and dominated? We would like to explore that.

We are also concerned about the scope of the iwi participation agreements. There is very little in the bill that tells us what those will really be about and how far they will go. We are especially concerned as to what participation and planning processes will mean in practice. It may be appropriate, but it may not be, and we want to know a whole lot more about that before we are prepared to commit our support. In closing, New Zealand First will look forward to studying the detail of the bill to see just what it really does mean, because I agree with what Eugenie Sage means: these are not really tinkering provisions; they are, in some places at least, quite important changes that will require careful scrutiny.

We simply do not trust this Government. We do not trust the provisions that it is putting in this bill without adequately explaining why it is doing so. We particularly do not trust it because of the backroom deals it appears to have been doing with some other parties. We are going to take a good hard look at it before we are prepared to commit our vote in the future. We want to keep faith with the people who do want to achieve appropriate development, but also with those people who want to make sure that that is balanced with very good environmental security. That is where we are coming from, and we will tell the House whether we are ultimately satisfied with this bill or not as the further stages of it proceed.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): When the original Resource Management Act came before this House in the late 1980s I was the Associate Minister for the Environment. When the bill passed into law in 1991 I was the Opposition spokesperson on the environment, and worked closely with the then Minister to get a bill that could be adopted unanimously by this House, because of its significance. I contrast that with the situation we now face, which is the reason I will be voting against this bill.

The process that has led to the introduction of this bill today could, at best, most charitably, be described as quixotic. First of all, you had the announcement by the National Party at its conference of September 2013 in Nelson about its reforms, but it had not bothered to check with its support partners whether it had support to even introduce them. It was all, then, about promoting affordable housing. Over the intervening couple of years the debate has waxed and waned, and when I see this bill it is not entirely clear now what its purpose is going to be.

In January of this year I had a telephone conversation with the Minister for the Environment where he indicated that he wanted to consult with support parties about the nature of the bill. But he made a slightly ominous comment at the end of the conversation that he was not going to waste his time talking to support parties unless he was sure he had their support. I wryly observed that that was what you talked about, and waited for what was to happen next.

In May I received from his office 39 headline proposals for changes to the Resource Management Act, mainly around process. Having had a look at them, I wrote to him indicating that some of them seemed to be unobjectionable, some I had real reservations about, and some I wanted further information about. And I did not actually get—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: But you couldn’t tell me which.

Hon PETER DUNNE: I was not going to reveal my hand at that point, Dr Smith. We were in a negotiating process, for goodness’ sake. I waited for some response. None came. I then raised the matter at the end of June with the Prime Minister and said that in the letter to Dr Smith I had said I thought the way forward was to issue an exposure draft. I raised that matter with the Prime Minister. He said: “Well, it makes sense to me. We can hardly expect you to vote for something you haven’t seen.” The Minister for Economic Development was quoted a few days later in the National Business Review as saying an exposure draft would be released. I patiently waited to receive the document that I had indicated in June that I was interested in seeing. Nothing happened.

On 5 November, during a rather testy text exchange with the Minister, I said to him “Well, the ball’s in your court. Give us an exposure draft.”, or words to that effect. He came back and said: “I never promised you an exposure draft.” Yet, at that point, I knew that discussions were under way with my colleagues to my right, the Māori Party and that they had seen drafting that was clearly available. I then advised the Prime Minister that on the basis of that there had clearly been a conclusion reached—for reasons that I do not understand, but I do not contest—that my support was unexpected and therefore that it would not be forthcoming.

When I look at the bill that has been produced to the House, I think it actually raises more questions than it answers, because there are provisions in here—I mean, I find it ironic, for instance, that we are going to see, by the time this process is completed, the Resource Management Act being 300-odd pages longer than it was when it started, all in the aid of simplification. But there are measures proposed in this bill that I think have quite sinister potential impacts. For example, there is a provision in the bill, under the new proposed section 360(d), that would allow the Minister, effectively, to make regulations that would prohibit a local authority from making specified rules or types of rules, or, effectively, overriding or prohibiting specified types of rules, etc. What that would mean, in effect, is that something like the Manawatū council’s Horizons One Plan, which was the subject of a great deal of debate in recent years, could in effect be overridden by a ministerial directive, by regulation. Having gone through a process of widespread local consultation and development, regulation could be passed to override that if it did not meet the Minister’s requirements. Similarly, if you take a contemporary situation, proposals by the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council to make that region GE-free could be overridden by the Minister under these provisions. They are not just process changes; they are very significant potential changes to the way in which the whole decision-making framework that the Resource Management Act sought to introduce will be carried out in future.

I think that they would have benefited from a substantial period of public consultation through an exposure draft, as indicated and promised, before the bill came before this Parliament. The question that therefore needs to be asked is: why this bill at this time? I think there is a very simple answer. The word “frustration” comes to mind. I think that the Government got to a position where, having negotiated with partners, or having attempted to negotiate, it felt it was not making sufficient progress and simply decided to proceed with something that on the face of it looks a little incoherent and disjointed so that at least it can say: “We have done something.” I think it was getting pressure from people who heard—and I understand this—the argument advanced in September 2013 that how come over 2 years later nothing had eventuated, and I think this is the opportunity.

Be that as it may, the bill will go to a select committee. The select committee will have to take a considerable amount of time, in my view, to work its way through all of the issues that are contained in this, because, at the end of the day, we cannot afford to have certainly a weakened Act. I think the decision not to amend sections 6 and 7 is a positive step in that direction. We have got to have an Act that is coherent and workable.

The argument that the Minister raises with his rather dramatic pile of regulations—the 80,000 pages or whatever—is a consequence of the current Act. It is a consequence of 20-something years of case law that has built up under that Act. We cannot afford to, effectively, destroy that and then be forced to start from scratch all over again in a climate of uncertainty, expecting lawyers and planners and everyone else—and the member opposite referred to the fact that these things always have astronomical, eye-watering costs associated with them. We cannot afford to go back to a situation where we encourage more of that to try to interpret what the latest set of amendments mean.

I think that this bill will go down as a lost opportunity. I understand the political dynamics that drive it; I appreciate and I respect those. But they are not sufficient as a reason for good quality decision-making. If I go back to 1991, where there was a lot of debate about the Resource Management Bill, as it then was, because it was new, it was unproven, it was untried. I remember the rhetoric that we were abolishing 54 separate pieces of statute and bringing them into one. It was bold. There was a real determination to steadily work through all the issues to make sure we got it right. I do not think that has been evident in this case, and I think that is a great pity.

With considerable heavy heartedness and reluctance, I will vote against this measure today, not because there are not some provisions in here that are worthwhile but more because the whole process by which the legislation has been brought together this year has been extraordinarily unsatisfactory. On something as important as resource management legislation, where we are setting a fundamental environmental benchmark, we cannot afford that sort of cavalier approach. I hope that the select committee takes its proper time to consider all the issues carefully, and, if need be, comes back to the Government and says that we cannot proceed with this legislation in this form and that it needs to be rewritten more consistently and thoroughly. At the end of the day it will not be just this Parliament that wears the consequence; it is the people of New Zealand, it is the people who do care about our environment, the people who do seek to achieve a reasonable balance between development and sustainability, and the people whom in the interests of greater accessibility to affordable housing this legislation says it is trying to help. They will not thank this Parliament, and certainly not this Minister, if the House gets it wrong.

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

JAN LOGIE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I rise as the Green Party spokesperson for local government to take a short call on this, the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill 2015. I do need, I think, to comment on the previous speaker, the Hon Peter Dunne, and acknowledge and echo his sentiments expressing the importance of this piece of legislation.

The principal Act is our primary environmental protection legislation. Without our environment, we have no economy. Without our environment, we have no well-being. This legislation is absolutely essential to us as a country. Increasingly, I feel as if I am standing up in this House talking to legislation and of concerns about a sense of the legislation being rushed and ill-thought-through, with many provisions that seem inconsistent and arguing against each other, and with some things that might be good and some things that are fundamentally deeply concerning. This is another piece of legislation exactly like that. Although our select committees are certainly not bowing under the load of work and this Government does not seem to be producing much legislation, increasingly what is coming to the House is of a very worrying level of quality.

My colleague Eugenie Sage has already spoken and outlined a lot of our concerns around the environmental conservation impacts of this bill, so I would like to focus my contribution on the democratic aspects of the bill. Of course, we will be very interested to hear from local and regional councils during the submissions stage of this bill and to examine the many provisions that will impact and potentially erode their decision-making power. I want to acknowledge up front too that the bill will require local authorities to consult iwi authorities on the appointment of commissioners with an understanding of tikanga Māori. It will require councils to invite iwi to form an iwi participation group early in the plan-making process. This sounds good to us in principle. For this to succeed, however, it obviously needs to be sufficiently resourced so that iwi can properly and professionally engage, rather than relying on overstretched volunteers, as the Crown and council so often seem to expect, sadly. But we definitely support these aspects of the bill as it is clear that we need different structures to ensure the constitutional rights of mana whenua and mātāwaka to participate in our local government. We would support legislation with these provisions that did not erode environmental and other democratic rights.

So for me, as local government spokesperson, the heart of opposition to this bill is that it is giving extraordinary powers to the executive, to the Minister, to be able to override local decision-making and to interfere in what seems like quite an ad hoc way, where we are not even being given details of the philosophy behind when a Minister might intervene. Democracy and care for our environment go hand in hand, as democracy and community-building go hand in hand. There is a connection between democracy and sustainability. That has never been clearer than in what happened with Environment Canterbury. The elected councillors were removed from Environment Canterbury because the people of Canterbury started to vote for councillors who wanted to restrict the dairy sector. It is as simple as that. That was stated pretty publicly by the agriculture Minister at the time. So this Government acted to override the concerns of the community—the environment—with its own agenda and the agenda of profit over people and environment.

So some of the specifics of this bill are of concern. They may not seem so big on the face of it, but they are of concern. Smaller changes to improve the plan making may be worthwhile but simple consents are defined as likely to have reduced council scrutiny. There are many aspects of this that are deeply worrying. I hope they will have scrutiny—proper scrutiny—through the select committee process.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Marama Fox—5 minutes.

MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Firstly, I want to talk about the irrational fear that comes from having greater Māori participation in bills such as this. I have heard the cries that Māori are going to be “brown-mailing” the Government—“brown-mailing”; seriously. That is the opinion that was held over the foreshore and seabed; that, oh my goodness, if you give Māori the rights, you cannot go to the beach any more. I will not be able to wear my bikini and sunbathe—and, frankly, that might a good thing. But I want to allay those fears.

Many people think that RMA simply means Resource Management Act. But I want to try something else. Does RMA now mean “Realising Māori Acumen”? Because there is no fear here—Māori have been doing this for a very long time now. There was a lot of conversation when the bill first came in, many years ago, about whether Māori would be holding things up because of the taniwha in the creek. Māori have been working, in a voluntary capacity, to come up with solutions. We know the art of compromise in order to achieve real outcomes and real benefits for all people. Iwi participation agreements should not be feared; they should be embraced. Having Māori tikanga support the development of this country is value added to this country, and not something to be feared. Continuing to protect clauses 6 and 7 of this bill ensures that kaitiakitanga, the principles of tikanga, and Māori aspirations can be upheld. There is no fear there. In fact, environmentalists across the country say: “Thank you very much. You are our last-stop hope to protect that river, this river.”

I want to reflect on that freshwater argument at the moment, since it has been brought up recently in the House. In 1957, when the allocation of water happened, Māori lived beside awa, in its pristine state, and for 60 years we have simply been observers to the allocation of water for the corporate benefit of people who gain from that allocation. While we have been observers to that, we have seen the degradation of our rivers. This is a place where we can realise and have true Māori acumen come to the fore to aid and value New Zealand and the benefit of this Act. That is what we have been fighting for throughout the negotiations to date.

We are not happy with all parts of this bill. I want to applaud the Minister for the Environment. The Minister has, in good faith, been negotiating with us. Some of the things we were able to get out right at the beginning were bottom lines—“We cannot move on this unless these things are in place.” Others we will continue to have negotiation over because we do recognise the value of this. Actually, I want to thank the Minister for understanding our place as Māori in this country to have that conversation, to realise the value of doing this together.

And so we come to the first reading. Many people did not think we would get to this point. But we are happy to support the bill to the select committee because the whole of New Zealand now needs to have their say. It is a complex, technical bill and it will benefit from the submissions that will come from all of local government and the other community organisations and peoples who have an interest in protecting the resource. This is not the silver bullet for all housing issues, but it may help if we get the balance right. So I want to assure the public of New Zealand that the Māori Party’s getting it to this stage has been through good-faith negotiations, and we will continue to push for that going forward, beyond and through the select committee. If those things are supported and strengthened, then we could see the bill supported—but only if and when. Thank you.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): I rise to take a short call in support of the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill, which is being discussed this afternoon. It is a practical bill supporting business growth, housing development, and effective environmental management. And, boy, is this needed. As we have heard already this afternoon, under our current regime we have a very inconsistent and expensive planning regime. We have had a number of organisations—the OECD, Local Government New Zealand, and the Rules Reduction Taskforce—all arguing for and advocating for significant change for many, many years. But the need for these changes, in my view, has been most powerfully voiced by New Zealanders who want to renovate or build a home, start a business, expand their activity, and employ more people. That is why I stand with great pride to support this first reading.

Of course, we had hoped we could achieve more in terms of what we could introduce today, and that has already been well canvassed. We certainly would have liked greater weight to be put around clauses 6 and 7, in respect of economic development and opportunities. But we have got a significant piece of reform on the table for discussion over the next few months.

Of course, we have just had a very interesting contribution from the Māori Party’s Marama Fox. I want to echo some of the points she has made, particularly in respect of ensuring, through this bill, that Māori have the opportunity to contribute to collaborative processes that are going to be required to be held, as either collaborative or streamlined processes, as required in this bill, in the discussion of natural resource use into the future. Quite frankly, that is needed and required in this country. For too long, as Marama Fox has already touched on, in respect of large tracts of this country that is Māori land, they have not had the opportunity to have their voice effectively heard as resource-use issues have been debated. Under the old “first come, first served” model, often their voices were not heard, so it is appropriate to have the obligation put in this legislation for them to be assured of the opportunity to be participating, as other stakeholders do in this country, around natural resources and the use of water. It reflects New Zealand of 2015 and will unlock significant economic opportunity for this country as we do it.

This is a significant piece of legislation. I would love to be able to talk further about the benefits that it will deliver, particularly in terms of housing development, because it will be significant. Where I come from in Tauranga we already have significant embracing of these principles. We have smart growth, we have a very planned approach in terms of how we develop new housing and settlement development, but too many places and areas in this country are not like that. We absolutely need this legislation and we need it now, and I look forward to a very considered discussion and debate over the next few months. Thank you.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, otirā, tēna tātau katoa. [Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and greetings to us all, at the same time.]

Marama Fox: Tēnā koe.

PEENI HENARE: Tēnā koe! It is a custom long held by the Māori people, that when mum gives birth you take the placenta and you bury the placenta in the ground. So, as a linguist of Te Reo Māori, I say that the word “whenua” actually means placenta. What we are talking about here is the land and environment. So the long-held association Māori have with the land, with our whenua, is important, and it is important that we protect that moving forward. I want to acknowledge too the beginning of Mr Flavell’s contribution to the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill, because he also set out what out what I would describe as a whakapapa or a genealogy, of Māori and their association with the environment and the land. I just wanted to make that point here: whenua—land; whenua—placenta. We are for ever locked into the land.

I also want to raise two other expressions: “toitū te whenua” and “toitū te tangata” [land is permanent and so is mankind]. I want to relate it to the economics as well as the environment. This is, I think, central in the theme of this particular bill. I actually took quite great joy sitting here listening to Mr Dunne’s contribution on this bill. I thought it was well considered. I remember as a young person hearing about the Resource Management Act. I would have been about 10, I think it was, when Mr Dunne set out on this bold piece of legislation, but even at that age I remember hearing about the Resource Management Act, and I enjoyed his journey that he took us on to bring us to this point.

It reminds me of the campaign of the National Party in 2014, where it had this waka all rowing in one direction. Well, what is clear in the contributions on this bill to date is that it appears that one of the rowers has jumped out of the boat and one of the other rowers has actually been thrown out of the boat. I think Mr Dunne’s contribution really highlighted the flaw in the process that we have come to right now at this point in time with regard to this bill.

In May 1991 the Resource Management Act was a bold piece of legislation, and now here we are, after the Labour Party putting out the olive branch all year to the Minister and to the Government to work together—to work together not only with regard to the Resource Management Act but on opportunities and ways perhaps we could solve the housing crisis, because there is still a housing crisis, and I suspect that even as this bill passes through there will still be a housing crisis. I have said it may times in this House that the biggest job my staff have in Tāmaki Makaurau is housing issues. It is not just about State housing; it is about the working poor. It is about our families who cannot even get into the housing market, and that is a significant issue. As this bill progresses forward I suspect that we will still have a housing crisis.

I want to, at this point in time, acknowledge the hard work by the member for Te Atatū, Phil Twyford. He has kept his foot on the throat of this Government with regard to the housing crisis. It includes the Resource Management Act, it includes economics, it includes the Auckland Council, and it includes all of those in New Zealand who are keen to see housing affordability for our people—people who are keen to enter into the housing market. I am talking about housing. Why? Because this particular bill is offered up to the people of New Zealand to solve housing, to provide better economic opportunities, and thus more jobs for our people. As I flick through briefly the many, many pages that have been presented in such a short time, as described by Mr O’Rourke, I cannot see how that is going to happen. It is not clear and it is not obvious to everybody.

I want to pick up the point by the member Marama Fox, when she talked about the Resource Management Act. I would like to think it is real Māori advocacy, because although I commend that and say that it will encourage and it will enable and empower iwi to be involved at the forefront of the planning—and that is what this offers to our people—we will be diligently and with a microscope making sure that that is actually what happens. I think everybody in the House will look really hard at this to make sure that tangata whenua, as I described at the beginning of my contribution, still have an important part to play—and that must be protected. I am a big advocate of that.

One concern, however, that I do have is that this Government in its, let us say, bulldozer-type manner in settling Treaty claims and Treaty issues, particularly in Tāmaki-makau-rau, in its rush to do that, I think it has redefined what “iwi” means. You will find, perhaps, in Tāmaki-makau-rau that some, as a result of the settlements, have actually had their rights taken away. I wonder how that is going to play out as this particular bill moves forward. I will be there advocating for those people to make sure that their voice is heard.

The bill will go through to the select committee process and I can guarantee you that we will be looking really hard at this particular bill. We have talked about it for a long time. We have offered to assist the Minister and this Government in developing the Resource Management Act, and we have done so for a long time. And now, as described by Mr O’Rourke, we have come to this very short process where we are actually able to pore through the detail. In the absence of that opportunity we will almost certainly be scrutinising the progression of this bill, wherever it may go. The hope is that if it does go through to the select committee, we will be encouraging submissions from right across the board. We will be encouraging submissions from whānau, from iwi, from hapū, and from concerned citizens, because there are many. There are many concerned citizens when it comes to the approach of this Government and this particular bill. So we will be encouraging that if the bill gets to the select committee.

We will also be making sure that our voices are heard, to keep this Government accountable and to make sure that the things that are offered in the speeches and contributions that have already been given in the House actually do happen—that there are more houses, that there are more jobs, that the economy does do better, that housing affordability is there for our people, and also that the process is streamlined and made a lot more efficient. I think we will all agree with that. If you can make the consent process a bit more efficient, I think everybody would agree that that is a good thing. But we have to make sure that we do not cut corners. We have to make sure that everybody is heard and everybody has a say on such an important issue. We have to make sure that that is what happens, and we will be keeping a keen eye on it.

I want to finish by once again congratulating Phil Twyford on his staunch advocacy for this particular issue around housing and on the hard work he has done. I also thank members on this side of the House who, I am sure, will be keeping a keen eye on this bill. Kia ora.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): It is a pleasure to rise in support of the first reading of the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill. I must start off by acknowledging the very pragmatic response and support of the Labour Party for this bill. I can understand, at least, the Green Party caring about the planet but not wanting to live on it, but I am very bemused with New Zealand First not voting for but not voting against. I say to Mr O’Rourke that they should get off the fence. Get off the fence. Are you for or are you against? They call themselves New Zealand First but they are not putting New Zealand First. They are putting their own interests first.

It is this side of the House that is sticking up for hard-working New Zealanders. It is this reform bill that is supporting hard-working New Zealanders. If you look at three key outcomes this year, whether it be the highest workforce participation rate ever, the positive GDP growth, or the return to surplus, it is all about backing hard-working New Zealanders. It is hard-working New Zealanders who deliver those outcomes, and this Resource Management Act reform bill will support hard-working New Zealanders. So get off the fence, New Zealand First.

When we look at the Canterbury earthquake response, we see that there are a lot of lessons that run parallel to this bill. We know that we lost about 18,000 houses and in response we had the Land Use Recovery Plan, which freed up land and increased supply, which equalled demand. There were real lessons in that. If you look at average annual house price inflation, it is a bit over 10 percent nationally, Canterbury is at about 5.5 percent, but Waimakariri specifically has only 3.5 percent annual house price inflation. When you look at Waimakariri you will see that it is the third fastest - growing electorate by population. We have just taken over from Invercargill as the third-biggest district in the South Island by population, and yet it has only 3.5 percent annual house price inflation with all that urban growth. What we did was free up land, which increased supply, which equalled demand. And under this bill, local councils will be more economic, efficient, and effective in matching residential growth to land use. So I wholeheartedly support this bill, and I am looking forward to hard-working New Zealanders having their say in the select committee process. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 92

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 31; Māori Party 2.

Noes 14

Green Party 12; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Abstentions 12

New Zealand First 12.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee.

Bills

Social Security Amendment Bill

Education Amendment Bill

Taxation (Support for Children in Hardship) Bill

Third Readings

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): I move, That the Social Security Amendment Bill, the Education Amendment Bill, and the Taxation (Support for Children in Hardship) Bill be now read a third time. This Government has expressed a strong commitment to assist children living in severe hardship in New Zealand. Supporting our most vulnerable children is critical to ensuring that they can succeed in life. As a Government, we have worked to build the right foundations to assist and support our most vulnerable families and their children, so that they can thrive. This package will reach more than half a million children in low-income and very low - income families.

In laying these foundations, we are focused on embedding our social investment approach by making early and better-targeted investment to achieve improved long-term outcomes amongst our most vulnerable people and families. Through Budget 2015 this Government is making an upfront investment of $790 million directly into the lives of children living in severe hardship. This investment builds on the foundations we have put in place, and represents a significant step towards assisting some of our most vulnerable families.

Collectively, these bills aim to provide more financial assistance to reduce pressure on the budgets of low-income families with children while strengthening work expectations for beneficiary parents in order to recognise the benefits of paid employment for these families. We know that participation in sustainable, paid employment is a key pathway out of hardship for many families and their children. Paid employment brings a range of long-term social and developmental benefits to both parents and children, particularly when they are disadvantaged. These include increased confidence, expanded social and support networks, increased social mobility, and reduced exposure to hardship in the long term.

In recognising these benefits, the Social Security Amendment Bill will require sole parent beneficiaries and partners of beneficiaries to look for part-time work of 20 hours per week once their youngest dependent child reaches the age of 3. Participation in paid employment will assist these parents to move towards independence so they are in a stronger position to provide the essential items that are critical in supporting their child to grow and thrive. As is current practice, parents covered by the strengthened work obligations in this bill will be required to seek and enter only paid employment that is suitable. This approach will ensure that a wide range of factors related to families’ circumstances and ability to move to work will be considered. The returns from moving to paid work will be further strengthened through low-income working parents being able to access increased Working for Families assistance as a result of changes through Budget 2015.

The Taxation (Support for Children in Hardship) Bill helps children from low-income working families who are living in hardship by providing for an increase in Working for Families assistance. This change will boost both the in-work tax credit and the minimum family tax credit, helping to reduce pressure on the budgets of our lowest-income working families with children. Access to additional Working for Families assistance will provide parents with greater support to move to and remain in paid employment, and that will be of direct benefit to both the parents and their children.

Lifting the returns from being in work will ensure that parents in these families are in a stronger position to provide the essential items that are fundamental to their child’s well-being. This Government is focused on ensuring that families can become more independent through participation in paid work so they can meet their families’ needs in the long term. The changes for Working for Families through this bill represent an important step towards achieving this.

In support of the changes to Working for Families, the Government has also taken steps to provide additional childcare assistance to help meet the costs of childcare. From 4 April 2016 the highest rate of childcare assistance will increase to $5 per hour for the lowest-income families. This change will be of real significance in helping to reduce the pressures of childcare costs on the budgets of the lowest-income families. It will also ensure that the developmental benefits of childcare are more accessible to some of our most vulnerable children.

Lifting household incomes is an effective way to reduce the hardship of children in the lowest-income families. In recognising these benefits, the Social Security Amendment Bill will deliver financial relief to better support some of our lowest-income households with children. From 1 April 2016 rates of main benefits for families with dependent children will increase by $25 per week. The increase to the main benefit provided through the bill represents one of the most significant and historic changes in supporting children in some of our lowest-income beneficiary families. This is the first substantial increase in the main benefit in over four decades. The increase in benefit rates will assist over 100,000 of our lowest-income beneficiary families. A similar increase will also be applied to student allowance rates to provide extra financial support to parents while they are in study. This will occur through changes to regulations.

Boosting the incomes of these families will make a real and meaningful difference by ensuring that beneficiary and student parents are in a stronger position to better meet their children’s basic needs. As a Government, we are committed to ensuring that all New Zealand children are able to thrive and realise their potential so that they can live fulfilling lives. Combined together with changes through the Government’s $790 million package, this will ensure that children experiencing that severe hardship are better off both now and in the future. These bills represent a significant and continued commitment by this Government to assist our most vulnerable children living in hardship. I commend these bills to the House.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I am going to start by just acknowledging the common ground that we have in the House. I acknowledge that that side of the House and this side of the House recognise we have a problem in respect of too many children living in poverty in New Zealand. Both sides of the House recognise a need to address this problem, and both sides of the House actually want to support people to be able to go into work. But there are differences in those common themes.

Although we recognise that we have a problem with poverty, what we on this side of the House recognise is that, actually, there are 305,000 children living in poverty in this country, and that is based on the household income measure that the Government chooses not to use. Instead, what we have is a Government that has selected a measure that would give them a figure of 60,000 to 100,000 children living in poverty. I think it is shameful that the Government would understate the issue that we have here with children living in poverty. It based the package that it provided through this Budget on that lower figure rather than using the household income measure that gives us a clear indication that we have about 305,000 children living in poverty, and we need to acknowledge that in the House.

Anne Tolley, the Minister for Social Development, has said that the Government is attempting to address the issue of child poverty here in New Zealand. Well, actually, this legislation is not money that goes directly to children. Let us acknowledge that these children do not go out and work for themselves. They belong to families. They have caregivers. They have parents who are looking after them, and this legislation is about those parents who are looking after them. We need to acknowledge that because, actually, if we do not support those people who are looking after the children, then there is no way we can address the children living in hardship issue, because they live within families.

We support the idea of people needing to go out into work—we have always done that. Labour lifted the number of people who were in employment over the 9 years that we were in Government in the years 1999 to 2008. Under Labour the unemployment rate dropped to all-time records. But what we have is an issue with the way in which the Government is attempting to push people out into work. It is a method that is based on stigma, that judges these parents, and, also, that does not take seriously their roles and responsibilities as parents as well. So we are disappointed there.

We tried to make changes through the Committee stage, and I want to talk about some of those changes. I want to discuss our disappointment with the National Government for not supporting those changes. We talked about the need to actually define “suitable work”. When we are saying that these parents need to go out into work when their youngest child turns 3, we need to say what suitable work is for that parent and for that child. And, actually, the definition for “suitable work” should be based on work that works for children.

We have heard so many stories out on the hustings, out with our constituents, of people being pushed into work that is unsuitable—work that is outside standard working hours, work where they do not have access to early childhood education. We have had it raised time and time again this year, through the media and through reports, that access to early childhood education is still an issue. Access to quality early childhood education is even more of an issue. So we wanted to include in this legislation a section that actually stipulated that it had to be suitable work for children, and we wanted that defined. Part of that would have been ensuring that those parents had access to quality early childhood education before they would have that expectation on them to go out into work. I do not think that is unreasonable. I do not think that is unreasonable because what we do not want as a society is our kids being left in dangerous circumstances because they do not have access to quality care.

One of the other changes that we actually tried to make, because of the fact that we value the importance of upskilling and training these sole parents as well, was to include study alongside part-time work obligations as another option. The reason we tried to include that is that it is all good saying that these parents need to go out to work but, as the Minister said, it should be about sustainable, long-term employment. We want to support these parents to be able to get into sustainable, long-term employment. For some of them that means being given the opportunity to upskill, train, and increase their level of qualification, so that when they actually go out into the workforce they not only increase their earning capacity but also increase their chances of being able to obtain more secure work. That is important for them, and that is also important for their children.

So much of the evidence that we have seen shows that when you actually impose these types of work obligations what ends up happening is that these parents end up taking up minimum wage jobs, and, in some instances, end up being worse off employed than they were on welfare in the first place. We saw that in studies in the UK and the US. Yet the Government ignores that evidence and just continues to push sole parents out into the lowest-paid jobs, and, at the end of the day, that is not actually long term and sustainable for them and their families.

That study component that we tried to add is important not only in terms of the parents’ ability to provide long term but also just in terms of the research of role modelling education to children. For children, particularly when their mothers achieve academically, all the research shows that that has a huge impact on the academic achievements of them. It is disappointing, because so many times we have heard from the National Government that it is aspirational for New Zealanders. Well, actually, it is not aspirational for the New Zealanders who we are talking about here today. It is not aspirational for the parents of the children who are living in hardship, whom we are talking about here today. So, really, this legislation, unfortunately, is going to do very little to change the circumstances of these families. As I said, that is disappointing.

There are so many things that are being implemented through this legislation where there is no evidence to support them. I asked the Ministry of Social Development through written questions what evidence it has to support the recommendation that a parent goes back to work when their youngest turns 3 rather than 5, and the response I got was abysmal. The response was that the Ministry of Social Development has no evidence to support the recommendation that the age change goes from 5 years to 3 years. That is disgusting—that you would force a parent to go back to work based on some ideological belief rather than any evidence. That side of the House and some submitters made the point that, actually, many parents do go back to work when their children turn 3. That is good, but, actually, everyone’s circumstances are different, and this change in legislation does not take that into account.

The other issue that we had with the legislation was that there was an expectation that work obligations would increase from 15 hours a week to 20 hours a week. The reason we said “Hang on a second, that’s not going work.” is that, actually, these parents have access to only 20 hours of free early childhood education a week, and it does not take into consideration the travel time it would take to get those children to early childhood education, then to go to work, and then to come back to get them. That side says “Well, actually, they’ll have access to a childcare subsidy.”, but as we have seen this year, through other parliamentary questions I have put through, very few parents who are off the benefit are actually accessing the childcare subsidy.

We are supporting this legislation. The only reason we are supporting this legislation is that it puts a little bit more money into the pockets of some of our poorest families. But it is not enough money. It is $25 per family, and there are issues with that because it is not per child, so the bigger your family the more disadvantaged you are. We have to support it, though, because those families are struggling so much that any little bit of money, any little crumb that the Government can throw out to them, we have to support. We have so many issues with this legislation and we are disappointed about the lack of evidence that the Government has to support it, but we are in a difficult position. We will be voting for the legislation, but with very major reservations that I hope I have made clear today.

ALFRED NGARO (National): Thank you for the opportunity to speak in the third reading of the legislation arising from the Support for Children in Hardship Bill. I just want to, first of all, apologise, as the chairperson of the Social Services Committee, that the member Carmel Sepuloni did not get the evidence, because I think she is absolutely right. When we do enact a part of legislation that wants to direct parents into some form of work—especially when their child turns 3—there should be some evidence, and I do apologise if the evidence was not made available. It is in the regulatory impact statement, and I think I have made that clear also in a previous speech. It does talk about the fact that Statistics New Zealand does say that there is an increasing number of solo parents—in fact, it is 25.1 percent; it is actually higher than what you call “partnered mothers”, which is at only 14 percent—which does indicate the fact that there is evidence that shows that it is important as well. The other thing, too, is that there is also international evidence to show that this is the trend. So I do apologise to the member if she did not receive the evidence that is in the regulatory impact statement that is there as well.

I just do want to make my comments in regard to when we think about the direction that we are taking and the importance of it. There have been some comments in regard to the measurement of poverty, or the measurement of hardship. I want to direct members to the fact that in 2012 Statistics New Zealand published a report called Measuring child poverty in New Zealand: Issues and practicalities, and on page 4 of that report it talks about the aspect of—both internationally and also in New Zealand—if we were to measure, what would that look like, and what would be the important parameters around that? And on page 4, in the fourth paragraph, it says this: “International experience shows that the measurement of child poverty is complex. In addition to conceptual and practical difficulties, it entails making arbitrary judgements and choices that require a process of public consultation and political consensus.” That is not to say that we should not take some direction towards understanding what the issues are, and I think that is really important. It also, too, goes on to comment that in other jurisdictions—in fact, internationally—the US is the only one that actually has an indicator of poverty, but according to this one—

Jacinda Ardern: That’s not true.

ALFRED NGARO: That may have changed. The member may direct me to that; I am happy to receive that information.

But going from the report here, it talks about the fact that “Unlike the US, Canada has no official definition of poverty and no official method of measuring poverty.” But what it does do is look at household incomes. It looks at the characteristics of that as well. If we go to Australia, for instance, just across the Ditch, Australia has no official definition, nor an official measurement, of poverty. But what it does do is it measures the characteristics of household incomes and other issues that are important. Though we have been talking about the measurement of poverty, this Government has taken what I believe is a measured approach, a common-sense approach, to addressing these issues that are important.

When we talk about the legislation arising from the Support for Children in Hardship Bill, it is talking about supporting parents. The member Carmel Sepuloni talked in the previous speech about the importance of supporting parents, and we would agree with that. That is important. They are the caregivers of the children who are in their care at the moment. So I just want to make a couple of comments. I want to acknowledge the NGO sector, which works with our Government departments, and out of that there have been a number of commentaries. I refer to 1000 days to get it right for every child, which was a report from 2009 by Every Child Counts. It says this: “Let’s be clear. This is not a call by Every Child Counts for immediate increases in the public spend on children. It is a call for a fundamental look at what’s happening for children, the communities they live in, the supports they receive from government and how New Zealanders work together to grow healthy children.” In other words, what it is indicating—these are the NGOs that are working in the sector—is that it has to be a multi-systemic approach, with both the Government and the community working together so that there is a consensus around that.

I also refer to—and at times it is controversial—the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty. I want to be careful because when I quote from this, I do not want to take it out of context just to confirm the direction we are taking. There are elements of this where I imagine that we would agree to disagree, but there are elements where we have commonality. I refer to page 14 of the report Solutions to Child Poverty in New Zealand from 2012, which said: “Work expectations for parents on income support: Ensure that parents of young children are appropriately work-tested if they are on a benefit. Clarity of expectations about work, accompanied by support for appropriate childcare, are characteristic of systems which generate high employment rates of sole-parents and lower rates of child poverty.” On this point in particular, I am sure that we would absolutely agree with this report as well.

Lastly, I just want to read from A Mountain All Can Climb, which is from the social policy parliamentary unit of the Salvation Army. It indicates on page 53 of its report, where it talks about “Work & Incomes”—these are social indicators that it is commenting on around employment and unemployment. It says: “Labour force participation reached new levels toward the end of 2014.” In fact, it was at 69.9 percent in the December quarter. It can see, and it comments on this, that there is an increasing opportunity—in fact, it is one of the highest in the OECD world, where more Kiwis are participating in work. It is around 2.5 million people. We can see that the direction that we are taking, which is not—as in the eyes and the words of members of the Opposition—forcing people into work. In fact, a Kiwi work ethic is what we are taking.

I want to round my comments up by saying, in a sense, that the direction of this legislation is about supporting children and it is about supporting families. That is the reason why the initial bill was entitled Support for Children in Hardship Bill. If we go to the explanatory note, this is what it clearly says: “The Government believes all New Zealand families and children should have the opportunity to live fulfilling lives. While most families do well, some struggle and their children may face a higher risk of poor outcomes.”

This is about the intent of the direction and the vision of this legislation. It does not have an intent to be a beast of burden or to bring despair upon those families. Regarding the comments that were made on the other side that there may be a way of forcing people into work, and so forth, it clearly indicates in the legislation “to be available” for work that is accessible and affordable—childcare and so forth. If that member or any other member over there has a constituent who comes to them who makes a complaint about the system and who clearly indicates that, actually, it is going against the policy and the direction, then I would be more than happy to advocate with that constituent and even with that member if it was found that the system was not acting appropriately and there were not the entitlements that it was obligated to deliver. If that is the case, then that is what we will do.

Grant Robertson: I want you to come into my office any day of the week, and I have got a list this long for you, Alfred. I have got a list this long.

ALFRED NGARO: Although we hear the talk of anecdotal stories of constituents who are being treated unfairly, I put this challenge out. I too, as an MP who has had constituents come to me who have talked about injustices that they have found—that they have not been able to have their entitlements. I too have advocated for them.

That is the intent of this legislation—to be fair and just. It does four key things. It strengthens work obligations for beneficiary parents. Benefit rates for families—for children—will rise by $25 a week after tax, the first time since 1972 that core benefit rates have increased more than inflation. It increases Working for Families payments for lower-income working families. It increases childcare assistance.

I commend this legislation to the House. I commend the work by the Minister for Social Development. I commend the work by the hard-working Social Services Committee members, who worked collaboratively together so that the legislation can be part of a range of measures to address the issues of hardship for our families, our children, and our communities of Aotearoa. Thank you.

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I want to just repeat that offer. Anyone who is unable to access early childhood education in their community is to directly contact Alfred Ngaro, and he is going to establish that placement. That is on behalf of anyone. That means that if you are unable to do that, then, I am assuming, there will be no deduction or penalty regime via Work and Income. He is holding up a business card; he has put his name to the offer. I really want to make sure other members of the House know that—any casework, fire it straight through to Alfred in west Auckland. I look forward to doing that.

There were a lot of reports referenced by Alfred Ngaro, the last speaker, and he used those reports to try to demonstrate that there was not consensus around the measurement of poverty and hardship in New Zealand and, in fact, internationally. He referenced the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty. There was some reference to Statistics New Zealand and some talk of the United States being the only place that has a recognised and agreed measurement. That is actually incorrect.

In fact, the Children’s Commissioner’s expert advisory group was the first, probably, to have put to the Government a solid proposal on how we can move forward and entrench poverty measures in New Zealand. It actually wrote a very draft legislative framework for us to adopt as a Parliament, one that I thought was so fantastic that I grabbed it, drafted it as a bill, and put it in the ballot. It was a real shame, then, that when I came down to the House the day that we did that and I asked John Key whether he would support it, he said no before, I believe, he even read it. So there is an established framework. There is an established way forward for us to build consensus around child poverty measures; it has just been that the Government has never wanted to adopt it, if we are talking plainly.

It is, I think, such a well-researched, evidence-based set of measures that, in fact, the Children’s Commissioner has used it as the basis of the Child Poverty Monitor, a monitor that is now frequently undertaken and that I think is so fantastic that I usually keep it within easy reach in my desk. Here we go, here is my prop—something I have prepared earlier. The Children’s Commissioner now on an annual basis reports against these established measures. They are established beyond New Zealand boundaries. They are established enough that Unicef now uses them internationally to compare where different countries stand on child poverty. New Zealand is unable to be compared fairly across those comparable countries because we have not entrenched all of those measurements in our country, but other States have—other OECD nations absolutely have.

So what are those roughly well-established measures? I think it is really useful to talk about this, because if you are going to establish policy on child hardship, which is what this legislation does, we need a decent, agreed evidence base. It is continually a point of contention and it confuses the public. So I want to really briefly just run through this. This was the Child Poverty Monitor from 2014. The first box talks about the 260,000 Kiwi kids living in poverty. That has now actually been revised; we know it is 305,000. That measure there is a relative measure based on income. It looks at how many families are living on 60 percent of the median income in New Zealand—60 percent—and it generates that figure. The reason it does it on that basis, in the same way that other countries do, is it assumes that income levels demonstrate what is required to have a basic existence in that country. There are a few variations on this measure that take into account before-housing costs and after-housing costs, and that is useful because it demonstrates to us that actually we have a problem in New Zealand with unaffordable housing, which contributes to income poverty. So that is measure No. 1.

Measure No. 2 talks about the number of people here—10 percent of kids—at the hardest end of poverty. That is how many are in the severe end, because if you use a 60 percent measure you can use a 50 percent one as well. Three out of five children live in poverty for many years—that is your persistence measure, your measure around how long people are staying there. This one is interesting, actually, and the Government should have looked at this one because this one tells us that, actually, children are living in poverty in their youngest years—usually 4 and under. The reason for that, if you look at the evidence, is really clear. It is that it is harder for sole parents to be in additional part-time work when they have young children and caregiver roles, but then, when those children start to get older, they move into work. Actually, those were the numbers that Alfred Ngaro was talking about. When parents can, they do.

This legislation mandates parents being in work from the time their child is 3. You do not need to mandate. Parents, when they are able—for the benefit of their own children—will make that choice for themselves. The statistics that were quoted prove that. They prove that the mandatory nature is unnecessary, and all it does is remove the discretion that parents with children at that age need. Again, there is a real lack of analysis there, which is disappointing.

There is then a measure here: 180,000 children go without the things that they need—that is your material deprivation scorecard. That does not look at income. What it does instead is ask—I think, from memory—18 questions on basic needs. Can you afford to go to the doctor when you need to? Do your kids share a bed? Do you have shoes, clothing, the right food? That is trying to delve a bit deeper into those measures of poverty. Taken as a whole, that gives us a really good picture. The Government has always argued: “We don’t want to use one measure of poverty because it doesn’t tell us everything.” No one has ever argued with that. We have always said to use multiple measures.

In fact, the Children’s Commissioner actually uses five in his proposed legislation. Use this. It is a great start. That is the consensus we need, and the Children’s Commissioner has handed it to us on a plate. I think we would have had better legislation before this House if we had agreed to those sets of measures because it would have allowed us to use a proper evidence base. As I have said, it is not just about income—it is not. Income matters—that $25 that this legislation will deliver matters, but it will not be enough. Again, if you look at the evidence, what we know now is that because most of the really severe needs are for children in their youngest years and, often, children where there are siblings, that tells us that, actually, we need a targeted payment for young kids. It needs to be more generous, and it needs to be per child. That is what some decent analysis would have told us, but instead what the Government did is it went to officials and said “We’ve got a pocket of money. Here it is. Go and see what you can do with it.”, rather than setting out some really clear parameters about who needed that most. That is what we did with the Best Start payment.

My problem overall is that we have never argued that it has just been about income; it has always been about a raft of issues. But if we want to tackle child well-being generally—and when I say “child well-being”, I mean poverty and I mean child harm—we need a national plan that brings together those needs across income, across housing, across early childhood, across health, and across social development. When the Vulnerable Children’s Plan came up, that is exactly what we said to the Government: if you want to find one indicator, one thing, that is evident in child well-being generally, that indicator, that piece of evidence, will always be deprivation. It is the most consistent theme.

So if you want to reduce child abuse and if you want to improve child well-being, start from the position of reducing inequality and getting rid of material deprivation and income inadequacy. That will make one of the biggest differences to child well-being overall. I am not just saying that; the evidence tells us it is true. That is why I am disappointed that this legislation did not use the evidence. Otherwise, we would have been debating a completely different package here this afternoon.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): It is an honour to rise and speak in support of the third reading of the legislation arising from the Support for Children in Hardship Bill. I will just start by acknowledging this Government and the Hon Anne Tolley and their work with vulnerable children. Today we announced the launch of the children’s team in Canterbury. It is another initiative of this Government, working with vulnerable children—1,300 young children in Canterbury—before they become at risk of State intervention.

We have heard the other side of this House today selectively use information. Those members referenced the Ministry of Social Development annual households income report, but what they failed to report was that that report actually stated that absolute hardship declined, from 165,000 young people in 2013 to 145,000 in 2014—the lowest since 2007. It is still not good enough, I agree, but it is some general traction and a clear pathway forward. Even the Salvation Army, in its state of the nation report this year, declared that child poverty was tracking downwards. People are presenting to food banks even less, because of job creation. This is what this legislation is premised on—getting people into jobs.

It is also about education. There was a reference to parents’ educational attainment and the impact that has on a young person, which is partially correct, but it is also about the parent’s expectation of education in that person’s life, and how the importance of education is placed on a young person. Getting a young toddler and infant and child into early childhood education—it is referenced clearly in the evidence that with beneficiary families, that can have the most impact. That is why I support this legislation and commend it to the House.

JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take another call on these bills arising from the Support for Children in Hardship Bill. I would like to start my contribution by referencing back to a submission from a Plunket nurse who was working in Christchurch East. She was talking about the reality of the lives of some of the children whom she was seeing on a daily basis. This legislation should be about our children. This legislation, we were told by the Government, is delivering on child poverty, which is one of its main priorities in this term. It is legislation that I think fails, so significantly.

From the evidence of this Plunket nurse—she was telling us that she is going into rental houses where families are paying a lot of rent. They are cold and damp houses that families are struggling to heat because they do not have enough money to do so, particularly with the challenges of the quality of the housing. Some of the houses lack curtains and carpet, and those families are not able to afford to provide that themselves. There is very little personal space for the children whom she is seeing, and in winter everyone is in the same room. And we know that that is one of the key contributors to the spread of infectious diseases, and that it is not an exaggeration to say it is killing some of our children. She is seeing vulnerable babies sleeping on couches and sharing adult beds because the family cannot afford appropriate sleeping conditions for their babies.

The families are incredibly stressed, there is poor food in the house—sometimes no food—and the adults are skipping meals, trying to be able to afford to give their children that bare minimum. Their children are experiencing the parents’ stress. Infectious diseases, particularly respiratory diseases, measles, and skin infections are happening as a result of this poverty. And these families are deeply embarrassed because they feel the stigma that is being associated with the rhetoric that we hear from this Government of saying that it is their fault, that they need to get into work, and that that would fix everything. Some of these families are in work, and some of these children—because of their sicknesses and illnesses as a result of their housing and the poverty—need additional care, which means that their family cannot go into full-time paid work, or even sometimes part-time paid work.

Our system, as it is operating at the moment, is causing sickness that is keeping parents out of the workforce, and we are telling them that the answer to this is for them to get into the workforce. That is at the heart of the message that the Government is giving them in this legislation. It is completely, wilfully ignorant to the reality of the root causes of poverty and the challenges of these families. When this is the Government’s big answer to child poverty, it just deeply, deeply disappoints me.

I think we need to be reminded that in this legislation the Government is saying that it is increasing the per family benefit rate by $25 a week from next year—not immediately from the introduction of this legislation, or even when the Budget was introduced this year, when the Government announced this, but next year—because it prioritised the surplus over even the small amount of money going to these families whose children are suffering. This $23 a week—the academics and the advisers told this Government that to move any of those beneficiary families out of poverty, the minimum required from the Government to move just a small group of those families out of poverty was $30 a week. It chose a level below that.

I have said it already in this House, but that just offends me because it was a conscious policy choice not to move any of these families who are unable to work out of poverty. And this is the Government’s answer to child poverty! It is not an answer, yet we are having to swallow this dead rat of supporting this legislation because $23.10 a week, when you do not have shoes for your kids, when you are going without food, and when you are struggling to pay what the Government thought was an insignificant prescription fee, matters. But it is not going anywhere near solving the problem.

The Government’s emphasis on taking away family choice, saying that these families will be subjected to more sanctions when up to 50 percent of these families’ benefits could be cut for not meeting an appointment, which is what we saw—I think the evidence of the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services was that over 80,000 families had had their benefits cut in half over a year and that for two-thirds of those families it was because they had missed an appointment. So I would like to see Alfred Ngaro deal with every single one of those concerns, many of which, I am sure, were not valid. If you do want to contact him directly, as he has kindly offered to help, it is Alfred.Ngaro@parliament.govt.nz. I do encourage people to take the Government up on its word, given that it seems so convinced that the system is not unfairly penalising anyone and that everyone is getting their entitlements, when the evidence we get on this side of this House does not reflect that reality.

But to get back too to the point of that $23 being completely inadequate, it is also, unfortunately, going to increase inequality. We know that the families that are struggling the most at the moment are those with more children. So this means that because it is a per family rate, children in the families that are struggling the most are going to get the least out of this. Those families are the families that we need to be investing in. If we understand the concept of investment and the concept of an ageing population, then we would get it that actually a bit of money upfront now to help those young people, those children, to be well, healthy, and to participate and engage in school and have good outcomes will pay off for those of us who are likely to be relying on their workforce participation in the future. But this Government’s concept of investment seems to be a concept that does not meet my understanding of that word. It really seems to be so constrained by this focus on the short-term fiscal bottom line for this Government, not the well-being of our children and not actually investment in the long term.

I also want to mention that we have been told that there was good evidence for dropping the threshold for requiring parents to look for this work to the age of 3. The evidence that was provided was that that is the average age of their child when people are doing that. That is no evidence of why this is a good idea, because actually it could well be that these families who are requiring income support are there because their children are sick. We know that a significant number of these parents in this situation have children with disabilities who require their attention. There are significant numbers—over 70 percent, they say from international research—leaving violent relationships, and their kids need them there. So it is not comparable. Actually, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner also said that although it is the norm, the commissioner was not sure whether it was a good thing. There is research showing that in families in Auckland parents are returning to work earlier, and that that is being economically driven.

Again, if we were thinking and putting our children at the heart of our decision making and our planning, would we want to say that economic necessity should override the choice of parenting and the decision making about what is best for our children, particularly when we know that not all jobs are better than no job? Actually, some jobs cost in terms of stress and in terms of money, but it is the children in these situations who sometimes pay. This legislation is a sad, sad disappointment.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the legislation arising from the Support for Children in Hardship Bill. I would like to start with an analogy. We believe that the legislation should actually have been called the “Oliver Twist Bill”. If you remember the story, we have got Oliver and we have got Mr Bumble, who is handing out the spoonful of gruel, I think it is. Oliver is hungry. There is a room full of orphans and paupers. He goes up and he says: “Please, sir, may I have some more?”. Because, yes, the Government and Mr Bumble, I think it was, who was giving out the gruel are doing a good thing in giving out some food to the children who need it, who are hungry, and who are poor, but it is not enough. Oliver goes up and asks: “Please, sir, may I have some more?”. That is exactly what the Opposition on this side of the House is doing to the Government. It is asking and telling the Government that those children in poverty who are in those poor beneficiary households with sole parents need more than what they are getting through this legislation.

So, yes, we are going to be supporting this legislation because it is a little bit—and yes, they need that food, yes, they need that gruel; yes, they need that $25, yes, they need the extra money—but it is not enough. That is the position that New Zealand First is taking on this. What we heard the Minister say earlier on was that it is going to make a real and meaningful difference. Well, New Zealand First believes that, yes, it is making a difference, but it is not real and it is not meaningful.

What I would like to do is to go through one of the documents that Alfred Ngaro went through, which was the regulatory impact statement. We have heard a couple of comments from Mr Doocey as well, saying that this side of the House is being quite selective with the information and the data. There is a lot of information in the regulatory impact statement, actually, that the Government is being quite selective about presenting to the House and to the people of New Zealand. What we have been hearing is a bunch of rhetoric and media sound bites. Basically, what the Government wants the public of New Zealand to understand is that people who are beneficiaries or who are the working poor who are feeling the pinch of being in poverty will get extra money. They will get $25 a week. That is the sound bite that the Government wants to put out to the public and wants the public to believe, but it is not true. I will prove that by going through the regulatory impact statement.

I would like to just echo a few things from Carmel Sepuloni to say that there is common ground—yes, there is. We all in this House understand that there is an issue with poverty, and children in poverty is just an absolutely unacceptable fact that we have in New Zealand, and we want to address that. This goes some way to doing that, but not far enough.

In the regulatory impact statement it goes through the actual objectives of what this legislation is about. It states that it is “to reduce material hardship amongst children, particularly those living in deeper levels of material deprivation …”. So it is about reducing material deprivation. Does this legislation assist and target sole parents? The answer is yes. But does it assist and target those sole parents, or even couples, with large families? The answer is no. Actually, it increases the inequality for large families. That is a fact of this legislation. The Government cannot deny that. So if the title of the legislation really was the Support for Children in Hardship Bill, then surely logic dictates that the legislation should be targeting the children in hardship? But it is not. It is targeting the beneficiaries, the families. I will go through the data in a second. If we are talking about families with four or more children, they get less per child than what one family with one child would. The legislation is not specifically targeting children in hardship. It is going a very minuscule way in trying to assist the entire family, but it is not targeting the children.

There are examples in the regulatory impact statement that actually highlight the limitations of the legislation itself. One example is when it is talking about the options that they were going through and the broad coverage—specifically, the increase to the benefit rates. It states here: “An increase in benefit rates is relatively well-targeted to families in material hardship,”—relatively—“but misses working families in material hardship …”. So the first question is: what about the working families? We have got a lot of children in families that have at least one of their parents working, and they are still below the poverty line. How is this legislation addressing that issue? Of course, the real problem in that statement is that it says “relatively well-targeted”. What does “relatively” mean? How on earth is that real and meaningful difference? One of the main points that I wanted to bring out of this was, actually, the data and the statistics that, first of all, the Minister has not mentioned, and none of the backbenchers of the National Party has mentioned yet, and yet it is quite important.

Perhaps the National Party members might want to listen so they can understand the position of New Zealand First and other Opposition parties. In regard to the benefit increase, it says it is targeting 108,000 families. Of course we have heard that at the moment we have got over 300,000 children in poverty and suffering from material deprivation. That is what the entire objective of this legislation was. It goes on to say that due to the flow-on effects of the increase in the benefit rate, around 26,000 non-beneficiaries—so we are talking about the “working poor”—will see average gains of just $7 a week. So it is $7 a week. That is what I was saying before, about the Government wanting to stand up and pretend that people in material hardship, families in material hardship, will get $25 a week. That is not the case. But it goes on. It says that around 4,000 non-beneficiary households will see a decrease in their weekly income from the accommodation supplement. They will see a decrease in their weekly income from the accommodation supplement. But we have not heard any of that from the Government.

I have a bar graph here. It shows that 50,000 to 60,000 families will receive less than $20 a week. In fact, around about 25,000 families will get under $10 a week. If you add to that the fact I have just mentioned—you have got 4,000 who will be losing money a week—this is not the grand solution and the best legislation that the Minister and the Government backbenchers are trying to sell it as. They have failed to mention all of this information.

If we look at the table across the page, it goes to break down exactly how much different family types will get. If we are talking about sole parents with four or more children, sole parents with four or more children will get just over $22 a week. If you break it down to a daily average, for a family of four children, it will be less than a dollar a day per child. How is that real and meaningful, and how is that going to achieve the objective of decreasing material hardship for these children? It will not. It gets even less for couples. If you have got a couple with four or more children, they will get $16 a week. That is around 50c a day per child. How is that real and meaningful? Bear in mind the departmental report, which states that the legislation intends to provide an increase in the amount that beneficiary families receive and will help to ensure they can pay for family necessities, which is critical to the well-being of their children. How does that make sense, if they are getting 50c per child per day?

That is the Oliver Twist part of this legislation. That is why New Zealand First, although we will be supporting the legislation, has massive reservations. We have got issues. The real problem that New Zealand First has is that this is all in the regulatory impact statement. We have not heard any of that information at all from the Minister or from the Government. New Zealand First will be supporting this legislation, but with massive reservations. Thank you.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): I am taking a very short call to support the legislation arising out of the Support for Children in Hardship Bill. The people of New Zealand, just like the submitters, are very supportive of the $790 million package in Budget 2015 to help children in hardship. This legislation delivers a few important components. One of the main components is that people with families, those who are dependent on benefits, will be receiving an increase of $25 per week in their benefit. I have heard Opposition members saying that this is not enough—that $25 per family is not enough. I ask the Labour Opposition members—they were in Government for 9 years—why did they not do anything about this? This is the first increase since 1972, and it is this National Government that is giving this increment. It is this National Government that is putting in the hard yards to put more money in people’s pockets, to help children in hardship. [Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Can I ask members to settle down—[Interruption] Can I ask members to settle down a little bit and not to interject when the Speaker is on his feet. Can I also ask the member to address the Chair as she is going, and not quite so much directly to the Opposition members.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Yes, this is true. This is the first increase in benefits since 1972. We are matching that increase in the student allowance. There will be more money for people receiving Working for Families payments. We are increasing childcare assistance.

This is great legislation. I support this legislation and I commend it to the House. Thank you.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare Pāremata. This interchange that we have just witnessed is a classic, because I am old enough to remember the “mother of all Budgets”.

Hon Simon Bridges: Everyone loves a classic interchange.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: A classic interchange is why we are here—especially one without fossil fuels. What we love is when children are at the heart of policy, and this is not it. I think we have heard some excellent speeches this afternoon from my colleagues Jan Logie, Jacinda Ardern, Darroch Ball, and others—and Carmel Sepuloni as well. Their contributions talked about the real content of this legislation and the real consequences, where we have this complicated, messed-up morass of punitive welfare legislation. Inserting $25 into the legislation and not talking about the reality of that $25 and what happens in different categories of benefit and Work and Income treatment does not acknowledge the real effects.

Let us start with the wonderful—if you have got more than four children—effect of getting less than a dollar a day per child. It is a little bit like World Vision. We have got to that point now in this country where it is like World Vision. The children of this country who are living in poverty are supposed to be grateful for less than 50c a day. It is a little bit like the picture on television that we see of this child suffering from the effects of famine, and, yet, we are re-enacting that in our legislation towards children, none of whom deserve it in any country, and certainly not in a country that can afford to do a whole lot better. It is less than a dollar a day—absolutely unbelievable.

So instead of dealing with that, we are now going to have charity workers all over the country—the Oliver Twist metaphor that my colleague referred to—who will be providing the gruel, who will be doing the breakfasts in schools, and who will be doing all the charities. There will be people sponsoring—I used to joke about it—a goat in South Auckland. It is not a joke. The reality is that people in the Government are happy to accept that we should use the benefit system to keep people in poverty and punish people who do not believe they should bow down and accept that.

People are sanctioned every day in Work and Income for daring to challenge the way in which they are being treated, and then they are trespassed and out the door. They are falling through the cracks and they are not acknowledged in the statistics, and this legislation is not going to help. Of course we believe that any dollar is better than no dollar for families on benefits, so we will be supporting that part of the legislation. But we will not be supporting the tax provisions, and the reason we are not is that, as the Child Poverty Action Group has made it clear, by increasing the Working for Families abatement rate and lowering the threshold, this policy fails to protect the working poor. In fact, by its calculations, a family earning the minimum wage—working 60 hours on $46,000—is about $2,225 worse off a year in real terms by this legislation. So that is how the Government has kept the cost down. But it is not right and it is not fair.

Then let us get on to the 20 hours a week—the work testing. The word “appropriate” was bandied about a number of times and it is in the legislation—“appropriate” and “affordable”. No, do not talk about “affordable”, because no one has got a right to talk about “affordable” unless they are rich now—but “appropriate” and “accessible”. Sorry, but bollocks—this is not how it works in the benefit system at all. People are being sanctioned daily. They are constantly being sanctioned because they did not fulfil the work requirements.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Do I have to sit down?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Yes, you do when I stand up. That is right. We are trying to do a little bit of tidying up of some of the language, and I think that the word the member just used is something we do not normally hear in here. I think I would prefer for it to be kept outside. We are not going to repeat it or withdraw it. Thank you.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: I certainly will not, Mr Assistant Speaker. Many words are used in this House in very interesting ways, some a lot worse than what I said, and in worse ways.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): And the member will sit down again. Members do not comment when I make a ruling. I know that has not been our experience together over many years, Miss Delahunty, but on this particular occasion you are not going to answer back. Thank you.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. Rules are important; so are traditions. I would like to talk about—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I give up.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Apologies, Mr Assistant Speaker—back to the bills, back to the bills. As someone working on early childhood education, I am very concerned about the quality of early childhood education and what is actually on offer for people who are being told they must work 20 hours a week from when their child reaches the age of 3. We have a crisis in quality. We have the Ministry of Education saying there is a crisis in quality. We have home care that has not been reviewed because the review was frozen. We have people deeply concerned about the situation for many early childhood centres that have been set up for commercial gain and there is no real evidence that there is any benefit. We have those reports. Those reports come from the Government’s own people. They say that early childhood centres are not necessarily, in some cases, safe and helpful places for children’s learning. Yet, on the other hand, we have the Government saying that people, if they are on a benefit, must go to work 20 hours a week and must put their children in an early childhood centre. This is actually Draconian and inappropriate. Thank you.

SUE MORONEY (Labour): It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Support for Children in Hardship Bill, in its various components. But, look, I do want to say at the outset that this, sadly, is a lost opportunity for the Government. It is yet another example of this Government doing the least it thinks it can get away with to make itself feel better and make itself look as if it is doing something meaningful. With this legislation, although it is marginally better than doing nothing at all, it is, sadly, just marginally better than doing nothing at all, because the truth is that this legislation is targeted at the most vulnerable children in our society—those in the hardest bracket of hardship. They are children who are living a long way below the poverty line in New Zealand and, at the outset, I want to put on record that it is the Labour Party’s view that that should never happen in our country.

It is the Labour Party’s commitment that we have zero tolerance of child poverty. We are a country, a food-producing nation, where the living standards are generally pretty good compared with many other countries. We have got loads of opportunities, we have got a great climate, we have got all the right conditions to raise children well and to do that in a way where every child gets the best start in life, and yet this is an area where we lag behind the rest of the world. Our children do not get the best start in life—and they could. This used to be known as the best little country to raise a family and, sadly, that has been diminished and certainly has not recovered under this Government.

So the Government is doing this to try to ease its conscience about the environment that it has created, which sees 305,000—305,000 children—living in poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand. That is a disgrace. The Government should hang its head in shame, but before it does that it should actually accept and stops denying that that is a reality for far too many New Zealand children, because until it accepts it and stops denying that level of poverty it will not truly address it. In this legislation, what it is attempting to do for the children most in need is to give their entire family, not just per child but the entire family, an additional $23.10 a week, maybe—maybe. For many of the families, as some of the other speakers have already said when they contributed to this debate, it will be significantly lower than that.

I want to talk briefly about the two in five children living in poverty in New Zealand for whom the income coming into that family home is a result of paid employment. That is right—40 percent, roughly, of the children living in poverty in this country live in a family in a household where the parents go out to paid employment. They get paid so little for their efforts to do the best by their family that they cannot afford to feed, clothe, and house their children properly. Those children are living in poverty.

Hon David Parker: And some of them are full-time.

SUE MORONEY: And some of them are working full-time. Some of them are in full-time employment. Those are your zero-hour contracts, I say to the National Government. Those are your failure to actually address having decent wages in this country. That is your failure to create the environment in which hard-working New Zealand families can actually make sure that they can look after their own and that they live in a sustainable situation where they can take care of their children, and those are the issues that should be getting addressed.

Twenty-five dollars is better than nothing—marginally better than nothing—but the answer is the comprehensive approach that the Labour Party has proposed with the Best Start package to make sure that all of our children truly do get the best start in life.

JONO NAYLOR (National): This is forward-thinking legislation from a forward-thinking Government, and I commend it to the House.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): What a dreadful contribution from the Government Minister. This is important legislation and we should—

Jono Naylor: Ah! Not yet—not yet.

POTO WILLIAMS: I am sorry, I have given the member a promotion—not deserved, I should say. That was a dreadful contribution from the Government. This legislation will mean that a family can buy roughly a couple of loaves of bread, a bottle of milk, and maybe add a little bit of petrol to the petrol tank. It does nowhere near enough to address what it claims to address—providing support for children in hardship.

Let us start with the name of the original bill, because nowhere in the legislation does the Government really define hardship, or say how it will actually target that hardship and how it will measure itself against those targets. That is a failure of this legislation. The Government cannot even define hardship. It interchanges the term with “poverty” and “deprivation”, all through its discussion, all through the regulatory impact statement, and it does not actually know what it is trying to achieve with this legislation.

I see that the regulatory impact statement talks about monitoring it through the Ministry for Social Development’s DEP-17, or deprivation index. But we will not know for a few years whether this particular legislation has had any impact on that index, because the commencement date is not until April 2016. So families, after being promised much, are going to get nothing until after April 2016. That is how desperate this Government is to support children in hardship—it cannot bring forward the commencement date to the day after it receives the Royal assent. That is how desperate it is!

Let us talk again about what the regulatory impact statement says are the causes of poverty and hardship. The statement says that it is when the household income is too low, even with good budgeting and discipline, and when the special demands of its budget are too high from such things as high levels of debt servicing. Sometimes the debt is actually the debt owed to Work and Income by families who owe the Government money for things that they actually need in order to get on with their lives, such as furniture and suchlike. Another cause is high net accommodation costs for renters, and unusually high health-related costs because often people are living in homes that are not fit for children to grow up in, and they have terrible health conditions. They may be trying to fill major gaps in the stock of basic household furniture and appliances, and they may have high work-related costs—for example, childcare and transport.

So the $25 that Mrs Parmar says we should all be grateful for is not going to go very far to support families who have to deal with these issues every single day. The $25 that the Government mentions is actually also a misnomer, because we know from the tables presented to us in the select committee that we are talking about an amount somewhere between $12.50 and $23.10 a week that families will get in the hand. We are talking about between $12.50 and $23.10 per family—not per child, but per family—and this definitely is not going to go very far towards addressing the causes of poverty as quoted in the regulatory impact statement.

On top of that, parents are work tested when their youngest child is aged 3. The current age is 5, and nowhere have I seen—despite asking the Minister for Social Development for clarification—any justification for why the age is now 3. The only evidence that was presented to the Social Services Committee was from the Children’s Commissioner, who said that that is the age at which most people return to work. When their youngest child is 3, that is the age at which most people will return to work; not people who have serious difficulties in paying for transport costs and childcare costs, who have high health costs, or who are dealing with high accommodation costs in relation to their income. So there is no clear justification as to why that age should have been dropped from 5 to 3.

While we are talking about childcare, we have not actually traversed the issue of access to quality childcare. We have not thought about what happens in rural or remote settings. We have not thought about the quality of childcare that is available. We just demand that these parents are work tested and that the children are required to go into care. And do we have care available to match the requirements of the jobs that these people will be likely to hold? No, likely not—that is right. They are jobs that may be outside the standard hours of work of nine-to-five—often we are talking about people who are involved in the retail sector, who may have jobs stacking supermarket shelves at night and who may have shift work. Finding childcare to cope with those requirements is really difficult. They often are going to be in low-paid jobs, and they are going to be subject to some of the most precarious working conditions that workers have faced in this country, particularly around 90-day trial requirements.

My colleague Jacinda Ardern talked about the Child Poverty Monitor, and she had the infographic there for you. But I just want to refer to some of the statistics that were in that. One in 10 kids is in severe poverty. That is about 6 percent of New Zealand’s population in severe poverty. To quote what is also on that poster, this means that these kids are going without the things that they need, and their low family income means that they do not have any opportunity to change this. I know that we keep stressing the point, but we cannot stress it enough.

Actually, an increase of $25 is something, but it is nowhere near enough for these families. Again, we are talking about the payment going to a family that may have two or more children. So we are diluting the impact of this. If we have five children, four children, or even three children in a family, we are talking about, as I say, a couple of loaves of bread and a bottle of milk. A block of cheese in the supermarket is about $10. We are not actually going to make a significant contribution to bringing these children out of hardship.

We are also going to rely on Work and Income staff to make the decision about what suitable work is when we know that staff at Work and Income are under all sorts of pressures to meet the Government’s policies, particularly around work testing. Are they in a position to actually make a judgment about what the right, appropriate work is for these parents to take? Are they the right people to make judgments about the quality of work, or are they under such pressure that, actually, they will be applying pressure to those parents to take work that may not actually be suitable?

I just want to end my contribution with a quote from one of the submitters, the New Zealand Christian Council of Social Services, which made a great contribution to the evidence at the Social Services Committee. It talked about the fact that this legislation does not factor in the number of kids in the family. It talked about how more regulation around emergency benefits, and increases in obligations, are really going to impact. In terms of the number of sanctions, for example, that might apply to families, it talked about the 80,000 sanctions that had applied over 14 months, which meant that were 44,000 children in those families to whom sanctions applied. That is a huge number of children to be impacted on, and sanctions will often mean a cut in benefits. I just want us to think about that for a minute—that we can have the power to sanction these very lowest-income families and jeopardise 44,000 children.

As you know, we are supporting this legislation because it will put a few more pennies in the purses of people who need it the most, but it certainly does not go far enough.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): This is great legislation that will reach half a million children who are living in low-income families and it will make a significant difference in their lives. With that in mind, I commend the legislation to the House.

Social Security Amendment Bill read a third time.

Education Amendment Bill read a third time.

A party vote was called for on the question that the Taxation (Support for Children in Hardship) Bill be now read a third time.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am now going to interrupt and ask the member who interjected to stand, withdraw, and apologise.

JONO NAYLOR (National): I withdraw and apologise.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Taxation (Support for Children in Hardship) Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 105

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 30; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 11

Green Party 11.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

New Zealand Business Number Bill

Second Reading

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources) on behalf of the Minister for Economic Development: I move, That the New Zealand Business Number Bill be now read a second time. I would like to thank the Commerce Committee for its timely consideration of this bill. The committee considered 14 written submissions and heard from five submitters.

The New Zealand Business Number is one of several initiatives aimed at achieving the Better for Business - Result 9 programme commitment to reducing business costs by reducing the effort required to work with Government agencies. The purpose of the New Zealand Business Number is to enable easy and more efficient interactions for business in New Zealand. It will do this by allocating a unique number to corporate and public entities, and to unincorporated entities that are in business, such as sole traders, partnerships, and trustees of trusts. This number will link to a reliable set of data about each entity held on a register. Some of this data will be publicly searchable, and some will be public only if the business allows it. Government agencies will be able to access this data to update their own systems. Third parties will also have access to a business’s information if a business consents, or if the data is in bulk or aggregated so that no individual can be identified.

This combination of a unique number, a reliable data set, and access to that data results in a New Zealand Business Number ecosystem that will provide savings to businesses, savings to Government, and e-commerce opportunities. I am pleased to note that Air New Zealand has already integrated the New Zealand Business Number into the validation process for its airpoints for business programme.

The Commerce Committee reported the bill back without recommending any fundamental changes to the policy. The bill continues to be focused on making it possible for entities to interact more easily with the Government and with other entities. That said, the Commerce Committee has made a number of changes that will make the bill more effective and ensure that Parliament’s intent is clear. I would like to comment on the most significant changes in the committee’s report.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I think we will delay that. I regret that the time has come for me to leave the chair, and I interrupt the member.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.