Tuesday, 23 August 2016

TUESDAY, 23 AUGUST 2016

TUESDAY, 23 AUGUST 2016

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Motions

New Zealand 2016 Olympic Team—Success

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I seek leave to move a motion without notice congratulating the members of the 2016 New Zealand Olympic team.

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

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I move, That this House congratulate the members of our record-breaking Olympic team on their outstanding performance in Rio. These inspiring New Zealanders did their country and themselves incredibly proud. They showed that there is no limit to what Kiwis can achieve when they set goals and work hard to attain them. Seeing New Zealanders not only excel but also carry themselves with such dignity and poise on the world stage reflects incredibly well on New Zealand, and is an inspiration to Kiwis young and old.

This Government believes that if you give New Zealanders an equal crack on the world stage, they are capable of anything. These athletes have shown just that—that you can grow up in a town of several hundred, in a country of 4.7 million at the bottom of the South Pacific, and you can be a world beater; that it is possible to outrun, out-throw, out-leap, out-shoot, out-paddle, out-row, and out-sail the best that the world has to offer, if you are prepared to put in the hard work to make it so; and that there are opportunities for young New Zealand athletes outside of rugby fields and cricket grounds, because Rio saw our Olympians top the podium of nine different sports, and the 18 medals won represent our best ever medal haul, far surpassing the 13 won at Seoul and London in 1988 and 2012 respectively. It also saw us ranked 14th among 205 competing nations in terms of total medals won.

We often say—because it is true—that New Zealand punches above its weight on the international stage, and it is something that Kiwis can, and do, take great pride in. Over the past 2 weeks we have witnessed the continued success of established stars like Mahe Drysdale, Lisa Carrington, and Val Adams, and we saw the emergence of new ones. Now young Kiwis can also look up to new heroes like Eliza McCartney, Luuka Jones, and Tom Walsh. They are just some of the New Zealanders representing us in Rio who set themselves the goal of being the best in the world, and who, through a mixture of hard work, ambition, talent, belief, and grit, can now say that they are.

Although it is the athletes out there performing, they do not do this on their own. They have received amazing support from their coaches, physios, managers, and the staff at High Performance Sport New Zealand—and, of course, from their families, who spent all of that time ferrying their children to sailing regattas, to early morning swim training, and to gruelling long-distance running practices, and who, I have no doubt, are immensely proud. As a parent, I know how much time that takes, but also how it feels to stand back and watch your children chase and achieve their dreams.

I would also like to praise the New Zealand Olympic Committee for its great work. A special mention must go to the chef de mission, Rob Waddell. There is something uniquely Kiwi about his reaction to arriving in Rio to find our athletes’ quarters not quite ready. Rather than kicking up a fuss or leaving the hard work up to someone else, he rolled up his sleeves, along with his team, and they put the finishing touches on themselves. This is another example of the humility and work ethic our athletes are so famous for.

I was also heartened to see Nikki Hamblin awarded the fair play award from the International Fair Play Committee. Nikki’s selfless act—stopping her race to help the injured runner who had also helped her up—captured the hearts of people around the world. She demonstrated not only the Olympic spirit but the sense of fair play that is so much a part of our national character.

All this means that the bar has been set high for our Paralympic athletes, who start their games in just over 2 weeks and who I am sure will continue to meet those standards. We wish them all the best, and they go with our full support.

Can I finish by again congratulating all the members of the 2016 Olympic team on their achievements, on their work ethic, and on the way they represented us. They should take immense pride in that. But while they will no doubt be savouring their success, for many the job is not done and they will already be turning their attention to Tokyo in 2020. On the back of their performances in Rio, I have no doubt that they will continue to excel. To the athletes: New Zealand is proud of you, inspired by you, and remains firmly behind you. Today we recognise and we celebrate what has been achieved, but tomorrow we will once again focus on what we can do to help you continue to succeed.

ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): I rise to support the Prime Minister’s motion and to extend our congratulations to our Olympic team, who have done a superb job. They have done us very proud—18 medals: four gold, nine silver, and five bronze. That is the fourth-highest number of medals per capita, and, as the Prime Minister has just said, it is a demonstration that even in a small country like ours, with hard work, grit, and determination anything is possible.

It was very heart-warming to see Nikki Hamblin in the 5,000 metre women’s race being awarded the International Fair Play Committee award because, in the middle of her race, she stopped to help another injured athlete. She completed that race last, but, in fact, she also won: she won the hearts of millions around the world for her generous spirit. She said that she was proud to prove that you can be a competitor but you can be kind and responsive at the same time. We are a country that prides itself on fair play, and Nikki, in the true Olympic spirit, has done us very proud.

We saw the old hands, the experienced hands: Val Adams, Mahe Drysdale, Lisa Carrington, Blair Tuke, and Peter Burling. They excelled in their chosen fields. Nick Willis, of course, came through on the bronze and took a month off social media—how envious we all are of him for doing that—so that he could focus on his success. But one of the most encouraging things about these Olympics has been the number of new young New Zealanders who performed and who are now becoming household names: Jacko Gill, Tom Walsh, and, of course, the amazing Eliza McCartney. The success of these young Kiwis is a great sign of things to come, and we should be very hopeful for future Olympics.

I want to also acknowledge the work of Rob Waddell, not only in managing the team we had and the success that we achieved, but—I was so impressed that, on his arrival, after sorting out the issues that he had to with the team, he also took members of our Olympic team to the favelas in Rio de Janeiro. He showed that outreach to those who are less fortunate, which again, is in the true Kiwi spirit. On behalf of the Opposition and the Labour Party, I want to congratulate our Olympic team on their successes and the many successes still to come.

KEVIN HAGUE (Green): The Green Party wants to join other parties in expressing our admiration and our thanks to Rob Waddell and the fantastic Kiwi Olympic team—especially, of course, to the medal winners. Indeed, we want to express our admiration for and our saluting of everyone from that team. We know that sporting performances like those that we have seen, near the limits of what the human body is capable of, do not just happen; they are the result of many mornings in the dark and the cold and the wet—the loneliness of training. They are the result of self-sacrifice, determination, and hard work. We want to salute all of those members of the team for that. We in the Green Party could not help but notice that most of our medal winners were women, and we hope that this will be the prompt for properly funding women’s sport.

High Performance Sport set a target of 14 medals for Rio, so our record haul of 18 medals clearly surpasses that. That is a fantastic achievement. But for us, the real measure of the success of our Olympic performance will be whether, as a country, we have the wit and the wherewithal to ensure that those performances inspire more people to become more physically active more often.

It is hard to pick a favourite performance and, of course, invidious to try, but, I guess, for me, my favourite sporting performance of the games was Eliza McCartney. Who could deny that fantastic grin, sharing her excitement and her pleasure with the entire nation? But just as the Prime Minister and Andrew Little have mentioned, I guess my favourite moment of the entire games was the incident involving Nikki Hamblin and Abbey D’Agostino from the United States in the 5,000 metres event, because what those two women did was show us some values. They showed us that solidarity was more important than competition, even in the most competitive environment, and that most Kiwi of values: that when someone is in need, it is our nature to reach out a helping hand. Let that be a lesson to us in this House.

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I would like to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to also add our congratulations to the New Zealand Olympic team, but not just to the sportspeople—men and women—who competed so feverishly on the international stage but to all the families, the supporters, the team members, the coaches, and the physios who backed this team up and actually enabled them to get there. In fact, every single taxpayer in this country can take pride in knowing that the hard-earned money that they have worked for has gone into supporting this very iconic event that happens every 4 years, to see such a fantastic result by this country. It is certainly a result that we have not felt in the past—receiving our highest ever medal tally of 18, which certainly surpasses the 14 medals that we were tipped to receive. We also note the four gold, the nine silver, and the five bronze medals.

Those people are heroes, but there were people who also missed out on the international stage, people who we thought were going to make it and did not. The fact that New Zealanders still stand in solidarity and support for those, the Black Sticks being one of them—twice in a row they missed out, only just, but we can absolutely attest to their hard work and their dedication to being there. Of course, we had high hopes for our equestrian team. As each of those bars dropped, one by one, we saw our medals drop away from us, but it was great to see that New Zealand stood by our people as they went through that.

I have to say that my favourite moment was to see, as many people saw, our Nikki Hamblin out there on the international stage stopping to take time to show her solidarity and true Olympic spirit. It has been picked up throughout the world; it resonates very, very strongly internationally. We may yet pick up another medal, of course—there is the Pierre de Coubertin medal, which she is potentially going to be put forward for. That has only ever been given out 17 times in the entire history of the Olympic Games, and if that medal is gained, then that certainly would be of huge value to New Zealand and our history within the games.

As I said, and as has been mentioned, we had 11 of the 18 medals achieved by females—the first time that has happened with New Zealand’s involvement in the Olympic Games. Also, to see a female majority competing in the Olympic team of around 200 people was great.

I would just like to finish, again, in supporting the House and congratulating our Olympic heroes and heroines, and also acknowledge the hard work that is still going on today with our Paralympians, who will be taking to that stage on the 7th of next month. A thought to think about as we go into new sporting events and, of course, the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, is the people who paid and enabled this event to take place and who put our sportspeople on the international stage so that we can swell with national pride. We should have given them the ability to watch these games of national significance live and free to air, as we once enjoyed in previous times gone by. We would like to see this House support that as it comes up in the future. It is affordable, and, I think, if you ask the people, and stay in touch with New Zealanders, there is a huge desire for it.

Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, mō tētahi wāhi ki a au ki te tautoko i ngā mihi, i ngā kōrero ki te hunga i haere ki tāwāhi, mō te hunga i waimarie, te hunga kāre i waimarie, ā, i tū ki te mura o te ahi, ko ētahi i hinga, ko ētahi i eke, ka mihi rā ki a rātau katoa.

I a au e kōrero ana mō tēnei o ngā kaupapa, ka hoki ngā mahara ki a Amster Reedy. Koirā te tangata, Te Māori, i whakauru anō hoki i ngā tikanga o Te Ao Māori ki roto i tēnei o ngā tīma, i tēnei o ngā tira. Ko te korowai tērā, ko ngā pounamu tērā, ā, ko Amster tērā i hinga i ngā tau tata kua hipa ake, ka tangi ake ki a ia.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to endorse the acknowledgments and sentiments accorded to those who went offshore—those who were fortunate, those who were not, and those who stood to the fore in the field of competitiveness—some of whom fell by the wayside, some of whom made it. I commend them all.

As I speak about this matter, my thoughts go back to Amster Reedy. He was the individual, the Māori, who injected customary Māoridom practices into this team, this company of sportspeople. That was the cloak and the items of greenstone, and that was Amster, who passed away in recent years. I mourn him.]

I join with other speakers in acknowledging all those sportsmen and sportswomen who did us proud overseas, and I also acknowledge the contribution from one Amster Reedy, who pretty much set the scene in respect of kaupapa Māori with the New Zealand Olympic team in years gone by; he passed away not long ago.

This was not only a very successful Olympics for Aotearoa New Zealand—can I say that I am hugely proud of the part that Māori have played in this year’s games—it was hugely successful for Māori as well. Some of New Zealand’s leading musicians—Kirsten Te Rito and her husband, James Illingworth, created a song in Te Reo Māori to inspire our athletes, and not too many people know about that.

A quarter of our 200 athletes are Māori. The Australian Olympic team, for goodness’ sake, also included some Māori, but they are coming home soon—and they better get home. Māori visual artist Shane Hansen, of Ngāti Māhanga and Ngāti Hine, led the delegation in the New Zealand team’s uniform, in terms of the design of the uniform. Māori BMX sensation Sarah Walker, from Te Whakatōhea and Ōpōtiki, but who has previously been in Kawerau as well, has been elected to the International Olympic Committee—the IOC—so that is pretty important for us.

Hon Simon Bridges: Tauranga girl. She’s a Tauranga girl, I think.

Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL: Oh, no, I do not think so. It is all us—Bay of Plenty. Lisa Carrington, two-time Olympic gold medallist, was flagbearer—a huge honour to be bestowed on an athlete, and, of course, Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, I understand, tōna whakapapa. You will know from previous speeches that I am not one to blow the trumpet of Waiariki, but I have got to say that six of the athletes who won gold medals for New Zealand, for Aotearoa—three of them were born and trained in the Waiariki electorate: Mahe Drysdale from Tauranga, in rowing men’s single sculls; Lisa Carrington from Ōhope, in the canoeing women’s K1 200; and Peter Burling from Tauranga Moana, in sailing men’s 49ers. So in the Bay of Plenty and the Waiariki electorate—as I say, very humble—we both breed them and train them, and nine of the 15 Olympic medals that New Zealand received at this year’s Olympics came from Te Waiariki. I am just saying, that is the contribution that we bring to the country.

Can I ask us to spare a thought, aside from all of those other athletes, for one Portia Woodman. If there was ever a competition in that women’s rugby sevens, which I think many people were watching—just to see how she was so emotional in the outcome of that particular event. Because of her efforts, I think that she actually should hold herself proud of being an example of the Olympic spirit by going hard through all those games, but she says “to find at the final hurdle—not quite good enough.” So we wish her well, and hope that she comes through for the next games. Ka nui te mihi, kia ora tātou.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): On behalf of the ACT Party, I would like to join with other leaders in support of the Prime Minister’s statement. It is difficult to overstate how well our tiny country won so big, and we should all be proud of the many fine attributes of New Zealand that were embodied in those achievements. In honour of those great Olympians, those who competed, and especially those who won medals, I am going to keep my speech, hopefully, shorter and faster than Lisa Carrington paddling 200 metres. Congratulations to our Olympians. Thank you.

Motion agreed to.

Sittings of the House

Sittings of the House

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I move, That the sitting of the House on Tuesday, 23 August 2016 be extended from 9 a.m. on Wednesday, 24 August 2016 for consideration of the Committee stage of the Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Standardised Packaging) Amendment Bill, consideration of the Committee stage of the Judicature Modernisation Bill, and the second reading of the Statutes Amendment Bill, and that the House adjourn at 11.30 a.m. for a State luncheon. The State luncheon is to recognise the service of the Rt Hon Sir Jerry Mateparae as Governor-General.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 44

New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 12.

Motion agreed to.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Freshwater Management—Drinking-water Supplies

1. METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Ka tū a ia i runga i te mana o tana kōrero “you turn on the tap, you expect water to flow and for it to be potable, that you can drink it”?

[Does he stand by his statement that “you turn on the tap, you expect water to flow and for it to be potable, that you can drink it”?]

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.

Metiria Turei: Does the Prime Minister agree with Dr Russell Death, professor of freshwater ecology at Massey University, that even if we chlorinate all our water supplies, people are still going to get sick from water-borne pathogens associated with the intensified dairy sector, and that another outbreak, as we have seen in Havelock North, is inevitable?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No.

Metiria Turei: Does the Prime Minister accept that the cleaner the water is before treatment, the cleaner the water is at the tap?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am not a technical expert, but it sounds logical.

Metiria Turei: Will the Prime Minister arrange for the review of the wadeable standard and the national policy standard for fresh water management, given his agreement that the cleaner the water before treatment, the cleaner it is at the tap?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No.

Metiria Turei: How many people does the Prime Minister expect to have to get sick from the water that is coming out of their own taps before the Government will take urgent action to clean up the pollution of our fresh water?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: One thing we can be sure of is that this Government has done more than any Government in the history of New Zealand to clean up waterways, including setting national standards, pouring money into ensuring that our lakes and rivers are improved, and ensuring that New Zealanders can expect a high standard for water.

Metiria Turei: Does the Prime Minister understand that New Zealand has the highest level of water-borne diseases in the OECD?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I have no basis to either confirm or deny that statement.

Metiria Turei: Why is land use not specified in the terms of reference for the Havelock North inquiry when it is well known that intensive agriculture is linked to declining water quality and, therefore, could be a factor in this outbreak?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The terms of reference are very broad, and I do not think—as much as it suits the member’s own political agenda and her followers’—that she should jump to conclusions about what the cause of the water concerns is.

Housing Supply—Productivity Commission Report and Government Initiatives to Address

2. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua) to the Minister of Finance: What Productivity Commission reports has he received on New Zealand’s urban planning system?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Last week the Productivity Commission released its draft report Better urban planning in response to the Government’s request for a first-principles analysis of land use allocation, because land use is critical to the health and success of the New Zealand economy. The commission finds that planning can contribute positively; however, planning legislation lacks clarity and focus, there has been planning overreach in urban areas, and the planning system is not responsive to changes in cities. Infrastructure funding tools do not recover costs or account for the risk placed on councils. The Productivity Commission also suggested that central government and local government should make more effort to understand the issues each other is dealing with.

David Seymour: Is the Minister concerned, or does he share the concerns of the report, for example, that the level of complexity in land use planning laws is increasing—for example, the Resource Management Act (RMA) was 382 pages when introduced in 1991, 790 pages in the 2011 revision, and 827 pages in a 2013 revision—and does the Government have any plans to introduce RMA reforms that might reduce the length of the Act?

Mr SPEAKER: Before I call the Minister, can I just remind the member that he raised a point of order last week about questions being in line with the Standing Orders, particularly Standing Order 380. I would be grateful if he could assist me as well.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: We believe that the RMA amendment that has been proposed in this House will achieve some of those things, but I do agree with his general point that the complexity of planning has increased. The Auckland Unitary Plan—where the general thrust of it is correct, I think—is around 7,000 pages, and it is possible that our councillors are getting a bit too involved at very low levels of detail, not just in how our cities develop but in how our own houses and households operate.

Andrew Bayly: What does the commission say are some of the consequences of excessive planning?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The commission takes a fairly even-handed view of the function of planning itself, saying that it is important in achieving some aspects of the development of our cities. However, it does say that housing is unaffordable where land is unaffordable. The report highlights an eightfold increase in the price of land in Auckland between 1996 and 2014. In 1996 a hectare of land in Auckland was valued at around a million dollars; today it is valued at around $8 million. Research has previously associated that increase with Auckland’s urban limits.

Andrew Bayly: What steps is the Government already taking, as part of its comprehensive housing plan, that were recommended by the Productivity Commission in its most recent report?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: A lot of steps because, actually, the very first report of the Productivity Commission, back in 2012, was on the regulation of land use, and the Government took some advice from that. The commission says that notification and appeals should be limited to those more directly affected by development—that is part of the current RMA amendments. It says that planning should prioritise responding to growth and providing land use flexibility—that is the goal of the current RMA reforms and the national policy statement. The commission says the Government should be able to override local plans in limited circumstances where there are wider effects on the rest of the country—that is also part of the current amendments.

David Seymour: Which of those steps does the Minister think will be first to have an effect?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: They will all have an effect at the same time, when the RMA bill is passed. In the meantime, though, the prospects for improvement are pretty positive because the Auckland Council has passed the Auckland Unitary Plan, which now enables twice as much housing supply as the original plans did, and that is good news, particularly for low and middle income households that want to, in the long run, own houses in Auckland.

David Seymour: Did the Minister intend to imply that none of the steps in the Government’s comprehensive housing plan have had an effect yet and will not have an effect until the RMA reform is passed?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: No, because a whole lot of other steps are in place, ranging from demand-side measures implemented under the macro-prudential policy, through to the special housing areas and the cranking up of the Government’s production of new houses on its own estate, particularly in Auckland.

Andrew Bayly: What steps is the Government taking to get more social and emergency housing where it is needed most as part of the Government’s comprehensive housing plan?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is a bit of a challenge because 50 years of poor social housing policy has meant that about a third of Housing New Zealand’s portfolio is in the wrong place or is the wrong type. The Government is making significant change to the social housing system at the same time that prices have been rising fast, and that does make the changes challenging. Sales to social housing tenants and, where appropriate, to first-home buyers have generated revenue that has been reinvested. Housing New Zealand is planning to build around 2,000 houses over the next 2 years, on top of the 7,500 houses that are expected to be delivered by the Tāmaki Redevelopment Company and community providers around the country.

Housing—Supply and Affordability

3. ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement that “we are seeing a record number of houses being built”; if so, why, given 29,000 dwellings were consented nationwide in the past year compared to 33,000 in 2004 and 40,000 in 1974?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes; according to the latest Building Activity Survey from Statistics New Zealand, the volume of residential building work in the latest March quarter is the highest since the series began back in the 1980s. That is up 40 percent since 2013, and an impressive 80 percent since the start of 2012. As I said in a speech last month, building consents are now at their highest level for over 11 years, and National’s comprehensive housing plan is aimed squarely at increasing them further.

Andrew Little: Has he seen the Reserve Bank report showing that the number of new houses being built, both in Auckland and around the country, is many thousands below the number of new families needing a home?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: There is probably a likely shortfall at the moment, but what we know is that that gap is closing very rapidly, which will be assisted in part by the Auckland Unitary Plan and, actually, the fact that we are in the middle of the biggest building boom that New Zealand has ever seen.

Andrew Little: Is he aware that the Reserve Bank’s calculations show 16,000 houses were needed to keep up with Auckland’s population growth last year, while only 9,000 were consented?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I have not seen that data. I think that most people accept that one of those factors is migration, but, of course, migration goes through flows. We already saw it—and the cycle was easing back a little bit last week. So, overall, I think the generally received wisdom is that we need about 13,000 new properties a year in Auckland, and we are rapidly getting near that number.

Andrew Little: How does the housing shortage, which is leading to out-of-control house prices and rents, affect families?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: It obviously has an impact in terms of what people have to pay for their homes—although I would point out that house prices nationally have gone up at under half the rate under this Government as they did under the previous Labour Government, and at about the same level in Auckland as they did under Labour. The one big advantage, of course, for New Zealanders now, with a National-led Government, is that interest rates are at a 70-year low and employment markets are very strong. The economy itself created 251,000 additional jobs in the last 3 years. In fact, things have got so good that even the Māori King says he will never vote for Labour again.

Andrew Little: What does he say to Samoanagalo Ioelu, who is about to be evicted from the unconsented garage where she has been living with her 11-month-old baby, and who says “we couldn’t afford the $300-and-something a week for rent … I can’t go on the road, I can’t go sleep in the car with my son, he’s too young.”?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not have the details of the case, but I would refer the person to Work and Income.

Andrew Little: Why, in 2016, are any New Zealanders having to choose between living in garages or living in cars—or is this the “something special” that he said that we were on the cusp of?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The Government has been looking closely at the issue around emergency houses. It is one of the reasons why there was $41 million additional expenditure in Budget 2016 alone. It is why hundreds of millions has been put into social housing. It is why the Government has been ensuring that income-related rents are paid not only for Housing New Zealand homes but also for community housing providers for social housing. It is why there is more money being spent in Auckland for social housing.

Andrew Little: In light of statements by Treasury, the Reserve Bank, the Auckland chamber of commerce, the ANZ—and now the 85 percent of Aucklanders who say there is a housing crisis—will he now admit that his plan is a comprehensive failure and that it is time to just build some bloody houses?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I think that the member is incorrectly quoting those agencies.

Homelessness—Cross-party Inquiry

4. MARAMA DAVIDSON (Green) to the Minister for Social Housing: Ka tū a ia i runga i te mana o tā Te Pirimia kōrero e pā ana ki tētahi pakirehua i te take kore whare a te hunga Tōrangapū-whakawhitinga, “the Government has done a lot of work in the area of homelessness”?

[Does she stand by the Prime Minister’s statement regarding the cross-party inquiry into homelessness that “the Government has done a lot of work in the area of homelessness”?]

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): Āe.

Marama Davidson: How can she say that her Government is doing enough when at our inquiry at Te Puea Marae yesterday we had a packed wharenui with person after person, all day long, saying that what the Government is doing is just not enough?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I can say that, actually, this Government is taking the issues around social housing, emergency housing, and homelessness very, very seriously, to the extent that we actually did the work that the members are doing now over 12 months ago. That was part of the review that this Government led. From that we saw $2.5 million going into social housing just last year alone, then an increase of more than $41 million through Budget 2016. Since then I have announced another $9 million going into the Housing First initiative, and, equally, around better tenant outcomes, some more money for that wraparound service. Equally, of course, we have seen the changes to the special-needs grant where we can help people with motels, so they no longer have to pay that back. So we have an extensive work plan around emergency housing. We are a long way through it, but we have still got more work to do.

Marama Davidson: Did she say no to being part of our inquiry because she does not want to hear from people like Peter Jeffries from CORT Housing, who said of this Government’s response that it is just throwing scraps?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I would have met with Peter Jeffries from CORT Housing more times than that member has. In fact, I meet with community housing providers and non-government organisations weekly and am actually very connected to what is happening in this issue. I visit the city missions on a regular basis. I am in touch with the maraes and the work that is going on. [Interruption] The member cannot have it both ways. She cannot simply sit there and say that we are not doing anything and then say that what we are doing is not enough, because, actually, those two things contradict each other.

Marama Davidson: Was the reason she was not there yesterday that she did not want to be confronted with stories like the mother of a child with a disability who is stuck paying $400 a week living in a dirty caravan with no cooking facilities?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: The reason I am not part of this inquiry is that I actually speak to people at the coalface and people who are suffering from this on a weekly basis. I do not need to go 18 months back in the programme of work that this Government is already doing. As the members themselves would say, what they need is action, and that is what the National Party and this Government are doing.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Minister, since when has the coalface been the local deli?

Mr SPEAKER: If the member chooses to answer—she does not have to.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: It is probably the rest home that you should be in. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does the Minister remember making such a similar comment, being challenged for a race in the main street of Maungatūroto, with her being given half a kilometre head start, and not taking it up?

Mr SPEAKER: If the Minister wants to—the Hon Paula Bennett.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: In all fairness, I do not believe in elder abuse. And, for that matter, I probably do not think he should be in a rest home anyway.

Children and Young People, Care and Protection—Ministry for Vulnerable Children and Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill

5. ALFRED NGARO (National) to the Minister for Social Development: What recent announcements has she made regarding the care and protection of children and young people?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): Last Thursday, at the Vulnerable Children’s Hub in Grey Lynn, I announced the establishment of a new, dedicated, child-centred ministry. The Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki will be in place from April 2017 to focus on the safety and long-term well-being of our most at-risk children and young people. It will focus on five core services: prevention, intensive intervention, care support services, transition support, and a youth justice service aimed at preventing offending and reoffending. It will have the ability to directly purchase vital services such as trauma counselling as soon as they are needed. There will be more high-quality caregivers and better support for those families who open their homes to our most vulnerable children. As I have said before, the long-term outcomes for young people in the current Child, Youth and Family system are simply atrocious. The new Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki demonstrates this Government’s commitment to properly care for and protect our most vulnerable children and young people and ensure they can lead the lives they deserve.

Alfred Ngaro: How will the new ministry ensure that the best interests of the child are addressed?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: The Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki will be a child-centred system. Legislation has already been introduced in the House that will establish an independent youth advocacy service and require that children’s voices be heard in decisions affecting them. I was also delighted to announce that I have appointed a new youth advisory panel, made up of young people who are in or who have experience of State care, to advise me and the transformation team in the months ahead as we design the new system. I had my first meeting with the new panel this morning, and we had a very constructive conversation about how the new ministry will operate and best look after the needs of children in care. The advisory panel, the independent youth advocacy service, and new legislation will mean that the ministry will be truly child-centred.

Alfred Ngaro: What reports has the Minister seen regarding her announcement of the new Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I have seen many reports welcoming the Government’s bold decision to radically overhaul the care and protection system and to establish the Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki. The Children’s Commissioner called it “a great day for New Zealand children today” and said that “The new agency has the potential to be a world-leading organisation.” Social Service Providers Aotearoa Inc welcomed the certainty provided by the announcement and the path ahead. The Press called it “a welcome change for NZ children”, and the Otago Daily Times said it was “refreshing … to finally find an instance where someone is prepared to call a spade a spade.”

Darroch Ball: Will she put the care and protection of children and young people first by supporting New Zealand First’s Supplementary Order Paper that makes the child sex offender register public, or will she continue to back the ideology that the rights and privacy of the offender come first?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: The answer is no, because the premise on which that member has put his Supplementary Order Paper is incorrect. In fact, the reason you do not make the register public is so that you can have all the names of those offenders in the one place so that that has the better chance of keeping the community safe.

Darroch Ball: In that case, what does she say to each of the victims of child sex abuse who made submissions to the select committee, all wanting the register to be made public?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I say exactly that. What we need—and the purpose of the register—is to keep track of those offenders who disappear into our communities, and we need those names and the details of where those people are to be all in the one place. Many of them have name suppression. If they are not on the list, then, of course, you end up with two lists and you have every chance of losing track of some of those.

Freshwater Management—Drinking-water Supplies

6. Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister of Health: Does he have confidence in his Associate Minister of Health, given that less than half of drinking water supplies serving populations of less than 5,000 people are meeting drinking water standards?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Yes; and I am also advised that 96.8 percent of water supplies serving more than 100 people meet the bacterial standards, and 80 percent of water supplies serving more than 100 people meet the protozoal standards, while 98.7 percent of such water supplies meet the chemical standards. The situation is not quite how the member portrays it.

Hon Annette King: As the budget-holding Minister, has the recent Havelock North drinking-water crisis and the latest crisis at Haumoana School—which has been forced to close today over an E. coli scare—convinced him to reverse his decision to discontinue funding of the subsidy scheme for small communities to upgrade their drinking-water supply?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The member should remember that it was actually the Labour Government that started this scheme. It was a time-limited, 10-year scheme, so that Government always intended for it to finish. It was actually for populations of fewer than 5,000—Havelock North is considerably more. So she is a bit in danger of becoming, sort of, the “Ryan Lochte of Parliament”—making stuff up, exaggerating, and then having to apologise.

Hon Annette King: He has not come back in any better a mood, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No. Order! That may be the member’s opinion, but it is unnecessary to raise that at question time. Can we have the supplementary question.

Hon Annette King: If the Government is really committed to improving drinking-water quality in New Zealand, why did it freeze the subsidy scheme in 2009, then restrict access to the scheme in 2011, then underspend the original funding by $20 million in 2015, and, finally, cancel the scheme altogether last year?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Once again, the member is conflating a couple of arguments. It was always a time-limited scheme. In actual fact, Labour always had restrictions around the scheme, so it was limited to decile 4 communities and higher; and no applicant who qualified under the criteria of the scheme did not receive a subsidy—unless they had not filled the application form out properly. So, quite frankly, what she is saying is completely incorrect.

Hon Annette King: Why did he ignore the president of Local Government New Zealand, Lawrence Yule, who wanted the subsidy scheme for drinking water in small communities to be reinstated, saying that the scheme provided vital funding support for small communities that cannot afford to upgrade their drinking water?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I have not been ignoring him. I speak with him regularly—in fact, I spoke with him this morning. The point about that scheme, I think, has been well covered. It was a time-limited scheme started by that member’s party, and it had run its course—and, in the end, all the applicants who fulfilled the criteria received the subsidy. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Order! Mr Brownlee. Order! We need quite a lot less interjection now, coming from many quarters in this House.

Hon Annette King: Will he heed the warning of Professor Russell Death of Massey University, who said that contamination is highly likely to happen again in rural areas, or does he stand by his statement that “… we do not have these terrible water-borne epidemics in New Zealand.”, and that “actually campylobacter is a disease found primarily in chickens, and a disease of poor food-handling.”?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Once again the member is taking comments out of context. That was from a speech made in 2007, and I stand by those comments in the context they were made in, at the time. The other point I would make—I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: I will just—

Hon Annette King: It had better be a point of order.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Well, we will hear whether it is shortly.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I am just noting that you are allowing the member to start her questions with a little flick at the person she is questioning. You are very keen on maintaining order in the House. I am just wondering whether you are going to let that practice continue.

Mr SPEAKER: No. I can assure the Minister that nothing has changed in the way I have tried to attempt to keep order in this House over the last few weeks while the member might have been away. The Minister has managed to put a number of flicks in himself—I think it is about equal.

Teachers—Supply and Quality

7. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National) to the Minister of Education: What recent announcements has she made regarding teacher supply?

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Late last week I announced several initiatives to boost the number of teachers in high-demand subjects and locations. We currently have enough overall numbers of teachers, but not necessarily in the areas or subjects that we need them in. The Government will offer an extra 100 TeachNZ scholarships for science, technology, and maths subjects to lift the number of graduates in these areas. Additionally, to support our recruitment of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers, we will for the first time invest in promoting teaching as a career to tertiary STEM students. We will also invest nearly $1 million in an Auckland programme to employ 40 new teachers through to full registration. Additionally, we have been working with secondary principal groups to identify solutions to secondary teacher supply. This announcement is a great example of how constructive work in the sector—namely, with the Auckland Primary Principals’ Association—leads to solutions that will benefit the young people in our education sector.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: How do these initiatives fit into the overall strategy to increase the quality of teaching and leadership in our schools?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: There is an ongoing work programme that is aimed at building a workforce that meets the future needs of students and schools, such as lifting the quality of initial teacher education, establishing the Education Council, and forming communities of learning. Additionally, we are already supporting schools so that it is easier for them to recruit overseas teachers when a New Zealand candidate cannot be found. We will now expand our investment in this initiative, and have launched a new recruitment campaign focused on bringing Kiwi teachers back home. The communities of learning have the potential for schools to work together on recruiting and sharing teacher expertise.

Hon Members: Oh, come on!

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I am glad the House is so interested in raising supply. Thank you.

Wage Rates—Average Wage and Growth

8. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement that the average wage would rise to $62,000 by 2018; if so, by what percentage per annum would it need to increase in the next 2 years to reach that level?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Yes, I stand by a statement made at the time based on Treasury forecasts in 2013. Of course, as the member is aware, over time what actually happens can be different from the forecast. To answer his question, wages will have to increase from their current level of $58,200 by 2.6 percent per annum to reach $62,000 in 2018. Treasury is now forecasting significantly lower inflation over the next couple of years, and that has lowered its forecast of the increase in the average wage.

Grant Robertson: Is it in fact correct that in order to meet his promise made to voters that average wages would be $62,000 in 2018, they would have to increase at 3.6 percent per annum, or 2.5 times the rate that his Budget says they will?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: In the first case, much as it might surprise the member, forecasts are not guaranteed to occur. That is the first thing. The second thing is that in forecasting wages over 4 or 5 years, it has turned out that inflation is much lower than was expected—less than half. In the last Budget, Treasury has reforecast that the average wage will not reach $62,000. It will reach a lower level, mainly because of lower inflation.

Jami-Lee Ross: How did forecast wage increases and inflation since 2013 compare with actual wage increases and inflation?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is important to remember that the real wage is what determines the spending power of families and households. If we compare Treasury’s forecasts for wages and inflation in 2013 with what actually happened, we can see that nominal wages increased 6.4 percent. That was a bit below Treasury’s forecast of 6.8 percent, but total inflation since 2013 has been 1.4 percent, when Treasury forecast 6 percent inflation. So the effect of that is that real wages have increased quite a lot faster than Treasury said they would, because inflation has been so low.

Grant Robertson: Are working people receiving a fair share of growth in the economy?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is a matter of how you measure fairness. I have not actually looked at the long-run averages for a while, but, from what I can see, they are not too far out of line. Of course, the question of whether they get a fair share and what that means is heavily dependent on other things that are happening. For instance, no one expected such low inflation for a long time. That has meant higher real wages. No one expected the lowest interest rates in 50 or 60 years, or, in parts of the globe, the lowest interest rates in 300 years, and we are not quite sure what that means for the share that households get.

Grant Robertson: Does he think an increase in the real average household weekly income of 3 percent between 2008 and 2015 represents a fair share of growth in the economy for working people?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think if you asked any particular household, they would say it is not enough; they would have preferred more. I do not think there is any doubt about that. But I think they would also say they prefer not to have 10 percent interest rates, like they had under Labour; not to have 5 percent inflation, like they had under Labour. By and large, at the moment they can see moderate but consistent wage increases ahead of them, and, if you look around the rest of the developed world, that puts us in a fairly unique position.

Grant Robertson: How is it that the Reserve Bank, Treasury, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the ANZ bank, the Auckland chamber of commerce, Harcourts, and now Capital Economics are all wrong when they say that suppressed wages are partly a result of immigration policy settings, and why will he not take action to review those settings?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The settings are always under review. One of the fundamental tasks of a Government is deciding who comes across the border. But the most important change in those settings has been New Zealanders staying home, which we regard as successful, and, actually, I think those commentators do. It is really only the Labour Party that thinks that the turn-round from 40,000 Kiwis leaving to 40,000 of them staying home is some kind of problem.

Health Services—National Health Targets and Christchurch Health Services

9. JOANNE HAYES (National) to the Minister of Health: What progress has been made towards achieving the Government’s national health targets?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Today the Ministry of Health published the health targets for April to June 2016. They show great progress overall, with the improved access to elective surgery target again being achieved. In fact, it has been surpassed by 8 percent, but, of course, there is always more to do. This is the final time that the more heart and diabetes checks target will be reported, and it has exceeded the target, with 91 percent of the eligible population having had a cardiovascular check in the last 5 years. The health targets are important as they drive performance across the health system, ensuring that New Zealanders get better access to key health services.

Joanne Hayes: What steps has the Government taken to improve access to health services in Christchurch?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: On Friday the Prime Minister opened the new $215 million Burwood Hospital in Christchurch. With 230 new beds and being 32,000 square metres in size, Burwood Hospital is the largest rebuild project in Christchurch East, and a great addition to the Canterbury health system. Key features include more beds for older persons, mental health, stroke, and more brain rehabilitation. Each floor boasts shared allied health spaces, such as gyms, to support the patient rehabilitation process. Burwood Hospital is the first cab off the rank in the close to $1 million of hospital redevelopments under way in Christchurch. Our focus will now be on delivering the new $72 million outpatients facility and the $445 million acute services building on the Christchurch Hospital campus in 2018.

Hon Annette King: I seek leave to table an article from the New Zealand Medical Journal, which is not readily available, dated 19 August 2016—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: It’s in the library.

Hon Annette King: —no, it is not—stating—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a point of order.

Hon Annette King: Can I start again, Mr Speaker?

Mr SPEAKER: Yes, the member can start again, and I do not want any interruptions from my right.

Hon Annette King: I seek leave to table an article from the New Zealand Medical Journal, dated 19 August 2016, stating that the childhood obesity plan is unlikely to solve New Zealand’s obesity crisis; it is based on a dated paradigm.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that particular document. Is there—[Interruption] Order! I am putting the leave. Leave is sought to table it. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.

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

Students with Special Needs—Funding and Support

10. CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) to the Minister of Education: Does she stand by her statement regarding the special education system that “I want it to be child-centred, simple to access, and available promptly, early and without interruption for as long as required”; if so, will any of her proposals announced last week reduce existing services or provision?

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Whether it or I, yes I do. Last week, as part of the open and transparent way we work with the sector, I released papers and gave a briefing to the quarterly national cross-sector forum, updating it on the work under way in this area. There is no proposal to cut overall funding to special education. I am simply looking at the $590 million we already spend in the system, and making sure that the right support is going to the right child at the right time. Every child and young person currently getting an appropriate service will continue to be supported for their assessed needs.

Chris Hipkins: How many students who currently receive additional support with their learning will have to stop receiving that support or receive a reduced level of support in order to meet the indicative reduction in spending on school-aged students, illustrated in Appendix 2 of her Cabinet paper?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: We are at a midpoint in—

Hon Annette King: Answer the question.

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I have said about six words so far, so I am into answering the question. What we are looking at, based on a year’s worth of consultation with the sector, is how we can redesign the service going forward without compromising the service for those who are currently in it. So there will be a long transition.

Chris Hipkins: Does this graph in Appendix 2 of her Cabinet paper indicate an increase in spending on students aged 0 to 6, and a reduction in spending on students aged 7 to 21; if so, why?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: It reflects modelling on a social investment approach, which is that if we intervene early, with impact—which parents throughout the year-long consultation said they wanted—we have the prospect of helping kids earlier, and not expending more funding at the other end of the system.

Chris Hipkins: Is she suggesting that if earlier intervention is in place, students will stop being disabled later on in their schooling?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: No. That is so ridiculous. No.

Chris Hipkins: How does she propose to increase funding on the early years without reducing funding on the school years, with no increase in overall funding? What is this miraculous new budget tool she seems to have accessed?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: An intelligent strategic approach is how I have accessed it. Unlike the Opposition, which is very keen to throw money at a problem—usually someone else’s money—we are focused instead on how we get a better outcome for more kids using the funding we have already got but improving the underlying system, and, as a basis for the future, on what we might ask for in addition.

Chris Hipkins: Does her own Cabinet paper argue “There are also more children and young people with acute and complex needs” and “Demand for the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS), which provides support to those with the most complex needs, has been rising consistently.”; if so, why is she proposing no overall increase in funding?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: The member is making my argument for me. We are interested in whether we have got the right system in place under it, and parents tell us we have not—it is too complicated, there are too many hurdles, it is difficult to access. We need to improve that, and, with earlier intervention, we think that we can improve the service for those young people.

Tracey Martin: Can she confirm that if she, as Minister, closes Salisbury School, this will be a reduction to zero of provision for residential high-needs single-sex special education specifically for girls?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I am in the middle of a consultation process, and it would be inappropriate to pre-empt the outcome of that. In other words, no decision has yet been made.

Tracey Martin: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was “Can she confirm that if she closes”—I did not ask her to decide.

Mr SPEAKER: No, no. The question was definitely addressed by the Minister.

Chris Hipkins: Why does she propose measuring the effectiveness of educational support provided to a child with an intellectual disability by the attainment of national standards in the National Certificate of Educational Achievement?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I think the paper speaks of the various options available in our system to measure impact, and that is appropriate because we want to know that we can make progress for every child, no matter their disability or disorder.

Tracey Martin: How are gifted and talented students to be catered for in her special education proposal, considering her Government disbanded the advisory group and removed the funding specifically tagged for these students in 2009?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: We are in the process of developing the policy off the proposals we have made, and they are driven completely on the basis of how we improve provision for every child, no matter their learning challenge or opportunity.

Chris Hipkins: Does she seriously believe that the effectiveness of the educational support provided to students with an intellectual disability can be assessed using the same measures applied to students who do not have an intellectual disability; if so, why?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: More seriously, I can tell the member that the special education association tells me that they want to be able to measure progress, and that these tools offer that opportunity in looking at progress as well as outcome.

Smoking—Electronic Cigarettes and Cessation Services

11. NUK KORAKO (National) to the Associate Minister of Health: What recent announcement has he made affecting the status of electronic cigarettes?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (Associate Minister of Health): I have recently released a consultation document seeking public feedback on legalising and regulating e-cigarettes. There is scientific agreement that e-cigarettes are less harmful than smoked tobacco, and it is clear that some people are using e-cigarettes to help them quit smoking. The Government supports any efforts being made to reduce the harm from tobacco. However, we do need to ensure there are proper quality and safety controls in place to protect users and to ensure young people are not encouraged to use vaping as a gateway to tobacco use.

Nuk Korako: What other reports has he seen on New Zealand’s tobacco control programme?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: The Ministry of Health has recently released a report on the Government’s tobacco control programme. Between 4,500 and 5,000 people die prematurely each year from a smoking-related disease. The economic cost to New Zealand’s health and welfare systems has been estimated at $1.7 billion. The Government funds a range of activities, including stop-smoking services, medicines, education campaigns, and enforcement activities. The stop-smoking services have recently been realigned to focus on high-risk groups such as Māori, Pacific, and pregnant women. The Government is committed to reducing the harm caused by tobacco.

David Seymour: Can the Minister confirm that the Government will legalise nicotine-containing e-cigarettes for sale in New Zealand?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: No, I cannot guarantee that, but what I can say is that there is a consultation document out and we are seeking public support for that consultation document.

Infrastructure—Northland

12. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements; and in what manner?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes; and as I pointed out to his sidekick last week, in a stylish manner. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] We have not yet had the question, but now we will have some order while we can have the supplementary question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: With regard to his statements to the people of Northland that he would deliver on super-fast broadband, Government-funded cell tower coverage, a Pūhoi to Wellsford motorway, and 10 double-lane bridges, why has he not kept even one of those promises?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not think the member is accurately reflecting those. If he wants to put them down in writing, we can give him an update on each and every one of those.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why, since 2009, has not even 1 metre of the Pūhoi to Warkworth motorway been built or the burglary resolution rate in Northland fallen to just 3 percent?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The member would need to ask the Minister of Transport, and he can give an update.

Bills

Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill (No 2)

First Reading

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I move, That the Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill (No 2) be now read a first time.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Regulations Review Committee.

Bills

Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill

In Committee

TIM MACINDOE (Senior Whip—National): With the agreement of the other parties, I seek leave for the Committee to consider the separate parts and debatable questions of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill in one debate, with voting on the questions to be taken separately at the end of the debate.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection.

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

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): In the purpose clause of this bill, it says: “The purpose of this Act is to establish a Child Sex Offender Register that will reduce sexual reoffending against child victims,”. I do not think there is anyone in this House—and I very much doubt there is anyone in New Zealand—who does not want to reduce sexual offending against victims. We will support this bill through to the Committee stage, but I have some very serious concerns about whether in fact this bill will actually meet its intended purposes.

We know that the number of offenders is increasing, and the number of sexual offences against children is increasing. For example, there were 505 offenders who committed nearly 2,000 sexual crimes against children in 2012 and 2013. This is an absolute travesty and something must be done about this—of that, there is no doubt. But when we are talking about spending nearly $150 million over 10 years, I wonder—and I wonder out loud—whether this is the best use of this money. We know that children who have been victims of child abuse, of sexual abuse, are more than likely to enter into a life of drug abuse, mental health issues, suicide, and a number of other antisocial behaviours. For a Government at a point in time with a limited budget—is this really the best use of money to address this crime? The police themselves are under immense pressure at this point of time. They say themselves they cannot afford more officers on the front line. At a time when burglary resolution rates are below 10 percent, they are having to find $14 million immediately, out of their own budget, to fund this sex register. I estimate that is around 100 extra police officers on the ground—who could be funded by this money if it was spent on police officers solving crime and preventing crime.

When I have a look at this I think—well, we all know that child abuse is insidious. But we also must, I believe, put in place evidence-based legislation. The Law Commission itself, which knows a little bit about this sort of stuff, has come out and agreed that we need to do something about this problem. But it has also said that it is opposed to this because the evidence does not exist that this bill will actually solve the problem. When the Law Commission itself comes out and questions the human rights implications of this, I think we should listen.

Let me have a look at the regulatory impact statement and what it says. It actually says: “In particular, there is limited research evidence from other jurisdictions about the effectiveness of sex offender registers and the best practice for long term monitoring of high risk sex offenders in the community after their sentences end.” The officials themselves have come out and questioned the value of this. The officials also note that “an estimate of the value of anticipated benefits has not been possible.”

I find it difficult to stand up here and support something that is going to cost us $146 million when, in fact, the officials themselves state that they cannot quantify the benefits. I find it difficult to stand up here and saying that this is a good thing when the officials themselves state that in other jurisdictions it has not been proven that this works. It is a substantial amount of money—a substantial amount of money—on something for which we have no evidence that it will make a difference.

The reason I will support this bill is: let us see how it works, let us give it a go, and if, in fact, it does make a difference—and I am highly sceptical—then let us develop it and let us see where it goes. But I would really like this to be a trial. Let us not say we are going to do this for 10 years and commit $150 million to this. Let us say we are going to trial this for 2 years or 3 years, or a statistically valid period of time, and see whether it does work. Then, if it does not—like it has not in other jurisdictions—let us not be afraid to say: “Let’s put the money into other areas that will really make a difference.” We all agree with the objective of this piece of legislation—there is no one in the House who does not—but we all have concerns about whether this is the best use of the money.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I want to speak to the purpose of this bill as well and just cite a few issues that were raised by submitters during the process. This particular bill, and what it is attempting to do, really does strike the emotional side of everyone in this House and the general public, and it is really important that we do consider this rationally and that we do consider the evidence that is in front of us. We did have to give this a lot of thought before we could confirm that we would support it at this stage, and one of the reasons that we have decided that we will support it is because of the support that we do think we have for my colleague Jacinda Ardern’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 193.

This SOP will change the name of the bill to the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Bill. We want to make it really clear that this is about Government agencies sharing information, rather than this being a public register that records the names of and provides information about sex offenders. We had a number of submissions that pointed out the evidence internationally, which proves that, actually, public registers do not work. They may give the general public a sense of security; whether that is a valid sense of security is another question. But the fact is that the international evidence we were presented with shows that a public register does not work, with regard to reducing the chances of reoffending by sex offenders. Therefore, a public register would not make our children, our community, any safer.

The purpose, as I said, is an admirable one and one that we do respect, but I have to bring up that a number of the agencies and individuals that submitted on this bill did say—and I am talking about agencies and individuals who actually work, in some instances, with the victims of sexual offences and, in some instances, with the actual sexual offenders. The majority of those who were in that position actually reported that they did not think that a register would change anything at all or in any significant way.

They were concerned, many of them, that this is a large amount of money. We are talking about $146 million to implement this register over 10 years, and they were concerned that this money could be spent in places that would better address the needs of victims or, actually, create more of a secure environment so that we are less likely to have as many victims, or are able to reduce the number of victims of sexual offences. So it is really important to note that because those really are the experts who are on a day-to-day basis working with the victims of sexual offending or the sexual offenders, for them to say that this is not the best use of money really needs to be noted.

We have real concerns around the issues of false security. People seem to think that if you do have a register and you know who the sexual offenders are, then they will be safe, but the reality is—and we saw this evidence presented at the Social Services Committee as well—that, unfortunately, the majority of people who will sexually offend against children are actually close family and friends. So we cannot protect them through this particular piece of legislation, because most of them will be unknown to the justice system. I would hate to think that this would provide a sense of security for the public out there, because the reality is that we all need to be aware of the fact that, quite often—more often than not—the sexual offending is actually happening in our own homes and in our own communities, and not by people who have been convicted of sexual offences in the past. So it is really important to note that.

I want to refer to one of the submissions that was made, and that is the submission made by the Salvation Army. I am sure that all of us in the House do respect the opinions of the Salvation Army and the fact that it does come with evidence-based views around these types of issues. The Salvation Army refers to clause 43 in the bill and talks about the flawed conceptions of public safety. The Salvation Army submitted that “a Register without sufficient safeguards on its use by the public can actually create conditions that may lead to reoffending.” It states that currently, in clause 43, the bill allows for disclosure of information to a third party if the commissioner believes, on reasonable grounds, that the offender poses a threat to the life, welfare, or sexual safety of a particular child or particular children.

I do not really feel like we got to the bottom of that particular issue in the Social Services Committee. There were discussions about who the third party might be, and I think at one point it was discussed that boards of trustees might be the third party that the information could be released to if they thought that someone posed a threat. And, of course, we can understand the rationale for that, but then, at the end of the day, if this is not intended to be a public register, how does the Minister for Social Development anticipate that that information will not go any further, given that the boards of trustees are actually members of the community and parents of the children at the school? It is hard to see how that information could be confined to just that individual board of trustees and not shared more widely within the community.

I am raising that because of the fact that the Government has committed to the fact that this will not be a public register. So I guess just thinking that through, how do we stop that happening? I think someone brought up at the select committee that the third party could, perhaps, be a church minister if there were concerns that a sexual offender who had been released may pose a threat to the congregation or the children in the congregation. So how does that information then get passed on? How are those decisions made about who appropriate third parties are? It would be really good to get some more examples from the Minister for Social Development about who appropriate third parties would be in respect of that particular clause.

I just want to go back to the fact that we have had a very broad-ranging discussion in the select committee about whether or not this register should be made public. I just want to contrast the SOP that Jacinda Ardern has put in, with the SOP that has been put in by Darroch Ball, SOP 178. I know that Darroch Ball and New Zealand First are trying to make this register public. Our SOP is trying to confirm that this actually a Government agency register and that it is not for the public. So there is a clear difference of opinion here. It will be very interesting to hear from the other members of the other political parties about what their thoughts are on that particular issue.

Going back to the costs of setting up the register, we did feel that they are disproportionate to the evidence in terms of benefits. As I stated, several submitters working in the area cited serious underfunding of proven strategies for curbing sexual offending and struggled to reconcile this underfunding with the investment of $146 million into a register. For those who have not been part of the select committee process, it would be interesting to hear from the Minister how the $146 million will be spent and what effect that the Government anticipates in terms of the actual impact that will have on sexual offending or reoffending by these sex offenders.

It is important to note that submitters articulated the need for the Government to place a higher emphasis on investing in research and evaluation of other means of reducing offending, such as specialist offender treatment, primary preventative education, as well as working with children, young people, families, and communities about recognising harmful behaviour. All of those things are areas in which we would have preferred $146 million to be spent in, rather than on a register, hence why today we are here saying that we are supporting this bill, but with some major reservations: where money could be best spent being one of them, what the evidence says with regards to how we stop sexual offenders reoffending, and how we keep our children safe from sexual offences.

It is important, we understand, to manage any risks to children in the community posed by convicted child sex offenders who have come to the end of their sentences or are serving non-custodial sentences. We do think that this bill will allow for the tracking of convicted child sex offenders in the community to be used as a tool to try to prevent reoffending, but it is, by far, definitely not a silver bullet to the issues that we are talking about and it is definitely not going to resolve the issue of sexual offences against children. It is one tool, it will maybe do a little bit, and it may give the community a sense of security, but there is a lot more that needs to be done.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): I thought it was appropriate that I say just a few words in response to the two speakers who have already been on their feet, Stuart Nash and Carmel Sepuloni. It will come as a bit of a surprise to the member who has just resumed her seat, Carmel Sepuloni, that, actually, I quite agree with her. This register, this piece of legislation, is not a silver bullet to solve sexual offending against children and should never be seen as that.

This has been a very slow, deliberate development of policy. If I go right back to when I had the privilege of being the Minister of Corrections, I was really concerned that there were a large number of these predators who disappear into our communities and nobody knows where they are. On their release from prison, or their release from the court with a community sentence, the police may have some knowledge of them, but time goes by and they can move on and they can just slip quietly into the community—and there are a considerable number of them. So that was where the idea came from: that we needed to be able to keep track of where these people are.

I did go and do some international research, and I remark on the comments from Stuart Nash, and that there is a paucity of evidence as to whether keeping a register actually stops anything. What it does do—there is good evidence—is it does keep track of where they are. But the difference between what we saw overseas in some jurisdictions and what we are proposing here is that management context around those high-risk offenders, based on the analysis that is done at any one point in time on their circumstances. That came out of a conversation, actually, with an offender himself who said: “I understand why you’re doing it, but if you’re setting up this register, I need to be able to know that I can go—because I know when I’m slipping off track—there needs to be a way that I can go and seek help when my circumstances alter. I have a good idea of what those triggers are, and I need that assurance and that back-up that I can go and seek some help.”

That has been augmented by discussions with both New Zealand Police and the Department of Corrections about those offenders who are at high risk—not just at one point of time but throughout the time that they are back in our communities when something can trigger a relapse. In most cases those offenders are taught to manage their urges, but when a circumstance changes in their life—losing their job, losing their rental or home, something happens in the wider community, or something happens in their family—it can actually have a serious effect on them. And so that management system that we are building in is new, and it is something that we should keep a very close eye on to make sure that it is effective. I do not disagree with having a good look at it a few years down the track to make sure that it is effective.

At the heart of it, it is a known group of people—and we want to know where they are in our communities and identify those who at high risk and make sure that we can put some support and services around them. There are some police who may well drop in on some of those high-risk offenders on a regular basis to make sure that they are OK, that they are living where they said they were living, and that they are keeping their details up to date.

I just want to be a little bit pragmatic about the amount of money. It sounds like a lot of money—$147 million—but that is over 10 years. So, on a per annum basis, if it means that we can keep track of where these people are, then it is not a lot of money and it does give some comfort and some tools to the professionals in order to deal with a particular group. I also agree with the speaker who has just resumed her seat that it is not the panacea, as I said. It is not the silver bullet, and by far the most dangerous people, the evidence shows, are the people who are friends with your family—or who are in your family—and you need to keep a very close eye on what is happening to your children. I think that is a sad thing. When I was a child we roamed the streets and there was a much more open way of living, and we just cannot do that today. We know that these predators are there, we know the damage that they can do, and we have to do everything we can to protect our children—our communities’ children—from those predators.

Finally, I know that Darroch Ball is going to speak to his Supplementary Order Paper 178; he raised the question in the House today. In the research that I did, there are jurisdictions that have public registers, and there are jurisdictions that have non-public registers. All the experts and all the specialists will tell you that if you have a public register, you leave yourself open to the sort of mob mentality that we have seen on numerous occasions. In fact, one offender who had not reoffended for many, many years, was working, and was well rehabilitated into a normal life, had his house burnt down while he was out working in his forestry job, simply because someone found out that he had a previous conviction, and they did not want him living in their neighbourhood. I can understand the fear that parents and communities have when they know that there is a predator there. We can all understand that, but if we want these people to be rehabilitated—and many of them can be, and can live an offence-free life—then we have to find ways to rehabilitate them into our communities, and a public register does not support that.

But, for me, the most important reason for the register was that I wanted to make sure that all the names were on the one list. The courts do offer name suppression in many cases in order to protect the victims. If we had a public register, those names could not appear. It would mean that you would need a separate register, in which case you have got two places where you have to go to get information. And we all know that that may lead to people slipping through the cracks. So the desire to have a register where we knew where everybody was, and the advice from the experts about the ongoing management of these people in our communities, led to the fact that we needed a closed register that only specific agencies could get access to. I have indicated to Jacinda Ardern that I am comfortable with the change to the name, as proposed in Supplementary Order Paper 193, as I have said on many occasions in recent weeks. Actually, it does not matter what you call it, it is the way that this operates that is going to make a difference in our communities. If that makes it clearer that this is not a public register—it is only for Government agencies—well, then, there is no harm in calling a spade a spade and having the name reflect that.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): It was very helpful hearing some comments from Minister Anne Tolley, albeit I am going to disagree with much of what she had to say.

I would just like to refer back, firstly, to some of the comments made by Carmel Sepuloni. Although acknowledging Labour’s serious reservations about this legislation, she suggested that the register might give people some sense of security. In fact, I would argue that that would be a false sense of security, given that the sad reality is that most offending of this sort—most offending against children—is perpetrated by people known to them. I have recently seen evidence that this whole programme around stranger danger we used to run in schools is to be abandoned because it gives people the sense that the problem is somewhere out there, that it is external—somebody hiding in the bushes or behind the bus shelter. The reality is that, sadly, much of this child sex offending is perpetrated by people known to them; therefore, the publishing of a list of names, whatever one calls it, really does not contribute much to resolving that problem.

We have heard very strong arguments as to why this register ought never to be public, and that rather graphic example of a fellow who had come out the other side and was working and contributing to his community having his house torched because somebody discovered that he had been a sex offender. It is almost inevitable that this register will leak. If you look at the list of agencies that will have access to it, at the number of people working within those agencies, it is inevitable that there will be literally thousands of people in New Zealand—and we are a very small community, this country. We all know what a small village we live in. Inevitably, it will leak and people will be victimised, despite their not having reoffended. Despite their living good lives, they will be identified, they will be stigmatised, and there is nothing surer than that those incidents will occur.

Some provisions of the legislation almost invite the publication. I am particularly concerned, and always have been, about the provisions under clause 39. The Commissioner of Police is obliged to develop guidelines for the use of and access to the register—that it must be used for specific named purposes by particular agencies. But all of that gets blown out of the water by clause 39(3), which says: “… guidelines may authorise the use of information contained in the register for a purpose other than the purpose for which the information was obtained if an authorised person reasonably believes such use is necessary to— … (b) prevent or reduce a threat to public safety,”. Nowhere in this document is that notion of a threat to public safety defined. There are no boundaries put around it, so it is a very broad, wide-open invitation, almost, for people to use this information for purposes for which it has not been gathered. I think that is a very dangerous clause, and I think it is one that will undermine the best intentions of anyone who thought that it might ever remain a private, secure register, along with, as I have said, the many of thousands of people who will have access to it.

The Minister noted—I think we are still talking about this figure of $146 million over 10 years, which was in the regulatory impact statement as a projected cost. That is about $14.6 million a year at a time when we are seeing initiatives like Circles of Support and Accountability withdrawn for the sake of a few tens of thousands of dollars, when we are seeing treatment facilities in the community discontinued anywhere and everywhere one looks. Organisations that are doing work in this field are crying out for cash, and there simply is not any to be found. I think $146 million is a great deal of money when there is no compelling evidence to suggest that this register will do any good at all.

In reply to some additional questions put to them, the police came back with an approximate breakdown of what the costs just to them would be. They suggested a $5.08 million capital cost to set up this register, and then something like $54 million over 8 years. So 54 plus 5—that is the thick end of $60 million, at a time when I am hearing from local policemen on the beat in Northland that they are stretched beyond breaking point. We know that everywhere in New Zealand police are running on empty despite their best efforts, despite their hard work, and despite their efficiencies. They are doing their level best to perform in the absence of adequate resource, and suddenly $60 million goes away.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill because we believe that a register is, at a bare minimum, needed. We do have Supplementary Order Paper 178, which mentions that we wish that the register be made publicly available. I have to note though that my Supplementary Order Paper does state that there will be two separate registers. One will have the entirety of the information that is described in the bill as it is and that will remain restricted. However, the publicly available register will have the basic information on the offenders within the community.

I will talk more about my Supplementary Order Paper in a later call, but first I would just like to speak on a couple of things that the Minister has said and that a number of the other members have said when they were speaking here. The first is that during question time today the Minister mentioned the names all having to be on one register, and that the issue of name suppression would be a reason to ensure that it is restricted and a reason why it could not be made publicly available. The figures that New Zealand First got for the number of child sex offenders—firstly, there are over 400 convictions for child sex offenders every year; over the last 10 years, on average, there are probably around 250 to 300 who are released from prison every year; and, also, around 180 who are given community-based sentences every year.

Of all of those child sex offenders, less than 10 percent are actually given permanent name suppression. This is not a huge number or proportion of all of the child sex offenders who are given name suppression. There is only a very small number, and that is no excuse for keeping the register restricted. There are a couple of questions that fall out of that. There are instances now where high-risk child sex offenders are placed in the community. The surrounding community, the schools, and the neighbours are informed of where they are and who they are. That happens now. The only reason that corrections and all of the authorities do that—the one and only reason—is for the community to know in order for them to protect their children. That is it. There is no other reasoning behind why it actually happens now—why there is publicly available information for certain communities with child sex offenders in those communities.

That is a question that I would like Minister Tolley to answer: why does it happen now that the communities surrounding these high-risk child sex offenders are informed of their locations, but she does not want to make the register of all of the child sex offenders public for that same reason—the one and only reason—which is to give the parents the ability and the tools to make safe and correct decisions for their children about where they go, whom they associate with, where they spend social time, and where they go to school etc. All it is is a tool for parents to protect their children.

Secondly, there are a number of people who have stood up and talked about research. We have had Labour say that registers do not work, and there is little evidence that it does work—same from the Greens. We have had the Minister talk about research as well. Even in the departmental report for the Social Services Committee it literally states that “There is a wide range of international research … against the effectiveness of sex offender registers … most of the evidence that is available comes from the United States, which is not a jurisdiction that is fully comparable with New Zealand.” The last sentence of that little paragraph there says: “There is little evidence available that pertains specifically to child sex offender registers in like jurisdictions.” So when any member stands up and talks about the research, that context needs to be put into place. There is no jurisdiction and no international research out there—and members have been talking about international research—that is comparable to New Zealand jurisdiction. So any conclusions that any member makes in this Committee based on the international evidence cannot be applied with any sense of certainty to the jurisdiction of New Zealand.

There are a number of things that I would like go on to, in further calls, including Supplementary Order Paper 178, but the most important, I think, in regard to this bill is the fact that we had around about 150 submissions to the select committee, and it will be interesting to see how many of the members actually read them. The vast majority—120 or 125—asked for the register to be made public. Over 80 percent of all the submissions that came in wanted the register to be public. Apparently, there are no other parties in this House that are listening to the public. Politicians get accused day in day out about being out of touch with reality, about being out of touch with the public, what the public wants, and what the public needs, and here is demonstrable proof that we have the public coming forward with their submissions and asking and pleading for us to have that register be made public. Every single party—apart from New Zealand First—in this House is ignoring them.

We have just recently had an issue with a child sex offender in Lower Hutt. All the Lower Hutt people wanted to know was who that person was and where they were. That was not because of vigilantism or because of the mob mentality, like the Minister was mentioning, and fearmongering. That is not what the purpose of a public register is. The reason why the parents in Lower Hutt wanted to know who that person was and where they were was solely to protect their children—solely to protect their children. That is why they come out and ask for a public register.

I would also like to note that of those submissions, we had a number of victims of child sex abuse who came forward, and every single one of them wanted it to be public. Every single submission from a victim of child sex offences wanted the register to be public. I can say that we had a number of child sex offenders who actually made submissions, and every single one of those child sex offenders did not want a register and did not want it to be public. I ask the Committee, and I ask the Minister, why we are ignoring the obvious public support for a public register. Why are we ignoring the victims of child sex abuse who have come forward to submit to the select committee and asked for it to be made public? Why is New Zealand First the only party that is listening to them? That is a question that I would like the Minister to answer.

I think it has been mentioned also previously that it is not a silver bullet. It is not about solving the issue of child sex abuse; it is about concentrating on the reoffending. Those who we know have offended, and those who we know are likely to reoffend—that is what this tool is; it is a monitoring tool. It is not about punishment. It is not about extending the sentence that they have had. It is about the authorities, in terms of how this current legislation is written, knowing where the sex offenders are and who they are, and being able to monitor them. That is why New Zealand First wants to extend that for the public to be able to do the same thing.

We believe that, actually, there is a lot of ideology out there about the rights to privacy of the offender and the perpetrator. New Zealand First says and believes that the children’s rights to protection and the parents’ rights and the communities’ rights to protect their children come before any of the rights of the offender—any rights of the offender. If this Committee and the Minister take the step to put the children at the centre of this conversation, then there is no doubt that the Minister must agree to make the register public.

New Zealand First will be supporting this bill. I will speak a little later on about our Supplementary Order Paper 178 in detail. We will be supporting this through the Committee stage. We would like the register to be made public, and I would like the Minister to answer those questions. Thank you.

ALFRED NGARO (National): I take a call, and I just want to respond to a couple of the comments made by the previous speaker, Darroch Ball. We actually had 135 substantive submissions that were made to the Social Services Committee. There were 98 of those submissions that were actually calling for a public register, and we heard 22 oral submissions. The member noted that those who were advocating on behalf of victims, out of the 98 submissions, were asking for a public register. There were those who were actually perpetrators and offenders who actually asked for that. Here are some of the reasons—which the member may have forgotten—why.

When we think about those who are offenders, there is a continuum. There are those who are absolutely at the extreme end, who we know do not comply, who need restrictions and monitoring and management in their situation. There are also, down at the other end of the continuum, those who, yes, have made mistakes. You can also think about scenarios where there may have been an 18- or 19-year-old who, unfortunately, may have had a relationship with a 15- or 16-year-old. It has happened. That is classified as statutory rape, if there is a charge and a conviction that is held. So there is a continuum that we need to be aware of.

In one of those submissions that were made, there was an offender who actually said that he had rehabilitated himself—had been many years without offending. He has a young family now, and all he was asking was that there be some understanding for his situation. That is the reason we need to be cognisant of the fact—when we think about a public register and the harm that it could cause, what about those who have admitted fault, who have had rehabilitation, but who want an opportunity to make sure that their lives can continue on for them and their family? That is part of the reason why.

Darroch Ball: What about the victims?

ALFRED NGARO: The member there talks about—oh, absolutely we are taking the victims into consideration. Here is the thing that the member also needs to remember: this is not the silver bullet, as I know we have all been saying. In fact, this is to enhance the CISO, which is the Centre for Impact on Sexual Offending. That is where the police collaborating with corrections have come together since 2013. What it has asked for with this registration is to ensure that it has up-to-date information. That is the power of registration. It is not just a list of names. What it allows the CISO to do is put together what it calls a product of intelligence, so that when it comes to the risk management of an offender, that information and that up-to-date data give it the best possible ability to manage the risk. That is the reason why we have the register. That is what it is doing as well, and we think that is important.

The member talked about the lack of evidence, and he is correct in saying that there is no comparative jurisdiction. In fact, in the States there are multiple jurisdictions that are operational at that point in time—in other words, different corrections departments and different police departments are trying to work in different states. New Zealand is unique in that it has one jurisdiction—the member is correct. But there is the evidence that states this—and it is in the departmental report, paragraph 21. It states: “There is, however, evidence that public notification can severely disrupt the life of the registered offender, and their family, and thereby increase the risk of reoffending.”, so, you know, we need to take that into account as well.

I also want to then approach the member—if he reads on to paragraph 22, it also says that the largest and most comprehensive study about the impact of registration, which was carried out by Prescott and Rockoff, talked about: “We find evidence that registration reduces the frequency of sex offences by providing law enforcement with information on local sex offenders.” This is what we are talking about. This is what the register is about. This is what it is intended to do, and this is the intent of what it is actually trying to achieve. What it is doing is it is a register for those two enforcement agencies to ensure they have up-to-date information and to ensure they have a product. What that does is create a profile around certain offenders for whom—the member is absolutely right—we need to have some concern for our communities, as well.

I just want to comment on the cost. There has been some issue around the $146 million, and we did hear—and Mr Clendon talked about the fact—that the police talked about what that would cost, if they were to break down those costs. There is $5 million for capital set-up of that service, and around about $54 million over 5 years, but what they also told us was that two-thirds of the $146 million was already consumed in services, and also in the intelligence that they currently have, as well. So we are talking of a portion of the $146 million that is already there, and all it is doing is actually pointing those services—of intelligence, in particular—directly into ensuring that the register is up to date and has information that is critically important. We think that is actually an appropriate use of that resource—to ensure that we actually ensure that offenders are kept in line as well. I also just want to make—

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. There is no easy place for this debate to land because there is nothing more vexatious than the issue of harm that comes to our children. So I want to just acknowledge the Social Services Committee that heard the submissions on this particular piece of legislation, because there were some difficult things to hear, and it is a very sensitive conversation. So it is in that vein—that there is no easy place to land around this particular issue—that I actually want to structure my comments in this Committee stage debate.

When we look at the purpose in clause 3, there are two key phrases that are within the legislation. The first one is about reducing sexual reoffending. We had many submitters who came to the committee and there were a variety of views. If I can, perhaps, sum up the arguments on both sides when it came to that particular argument about reducing sexual offending.

Some of the submitters said that this legislation actually has the ability to identify where potential risk can reside within the community. That is important—so potential risk can be identified and, therefore, it is easier for offenders to be taken in for questioning by police should another offence occur. So you kind of know, in the community, where there are some identified individuals who pose some risk and it is easy for the police to be able to monitor that group of people—as long as they are placed in an appropriate setting, and that is something I want to come back to later.

There was another group of submitters who, actually, had another argument, in that they felt that it was a significant amount of money there we are talking about—and it is significant—and I want to comment on that. When the Social Services Committee conducted the inquiry into funding for sexual abuse services, the result of that was an extra $10 million going into the sector over 4 years. So we are talking about the difference between $10 million to support the sector for people who support victims of sexual offending, and a significant amount of money—$146 million over 10 years—for this register. So there is quite a disparity there, and submitters said that they felt that the money could be better spent on rehabilitation and prevention. That is the thing that I do not think that this register actually addresses—the prevention of harm through sexual assault.

The other thing that the second lot of submitters said was that, actually, there are relatively low rates of reoffending—relatively low rates of reoffending—so that when you have a register of people and you know where they are in the community, they may not be ones who are likely to reoffend. To also pick up on the point that our Green colleague David Clendon made about the notion of stranger danger, this register actually plays into those ideas around stranger danger, when we know that sexual offending—particularly against children—actually happens with people who are known to the family. By and large, there are many more people who offend who are known to the family, and over a period of months, or perhaps years, children, particularly, are groomed by these people.

So we have got two arguments with regard to whether this piece of legislation actually reduces sexual reoffending.

The other significant part of that clause is about reducing the risk posed by serious child sex offenders. And here I want to comment on two recent cases where the community has had a view about having sex offenders in the community—namely, in the Hutt and also in Māngere—and where the community has been very clear about the fact that it does not want sex offenders in their communities. People have felt that the placement of those offenders has been inappropriate in their community, whether it has been where they have lived, or whether it has been where they have been able to access children—being close to schools, and that kind of thing. So the community has—

DAVID CLENDON (Green): I would like to reflect on something Mr Ngaro said. He made a statement I can agree with, and that is not always the case, I have to say. But he did point out—he talked about a different scale of offending within overall—I hope I do not misunderstand him. He talked about an example where a 19-year-old might have consensual sex with a 15-year-old. It is undesirable behaviour and something that needs to be dealt with—it is not condoned—but it is a very different scale of offending from someone who assaults an infant or a young child.

Therefore, we would deal with those people differently. We would assess the risk of their reoffending differently, given the circumstances. Unfortunately, that is what this legislation abjectly fails to do. I am going to quote here: “The legislation currently before this committee”—this was written in November last year—“assesses offenders’ risk on the basis of offence type, rather than their risk of reoffending.”

The ever-reliable Kim Workman offered us a supplementary submission to the select committee on behalf of Robson Hanan Trust, and made the very valid point, I thought, that we have in this legislation an expectation that people who commit particular types of offences therefore share a similar risk profile, and that is demonstrably untrue. There are people who will commit certain offences who are highly likely to go on and reoffend in that same style of offence; there are other people who might commit an offence who are most unlikely to reoffend, for whatever reason.

On one of my first excursions into visiting people in the community with some interesting record I went to a relatively remote place and spent some time with a man who had done time for attempted murder. On the way out there, I thought: “This is an interesting situation to go into.” The fact is, having got to know and talk to that man, the likelihood of him reoffending was probably zero in regard to that particular offence; similarly, with some sex offenders.

The submission from Mr Workman was titled “Risk assessment of sex offenders: A short history”. He talked about 1995 as a bit of a turning point in how we deal with risk assessment generally. It was in the context of decisions having to be made by parole officers, but it is perfectly valid for this as well. The key finding he comes to is that this is a one-size-fits-all approach. It does not facilitate or encourage, person by person, individually profiling the risk of reoffending of each individual as we go through. That is fundamentally the wrong approach.

It causes me to reflect on the much better solution that was offered by the New Zealand Law Society, which opposes this bill. The law society continues to oppose this legislation; not dismissing the fact that we do have a problem in this country, but suggesting a much better alternative. Rather than this blanket approach—“You have committed offence X, therefore you go on to a register, potentially for life”—the law society suggests simply giving judges the authority and the wherewithal to make single judgments in specific cases: “Yes, on balance, the likelihood of this person reoffending is very, very high and therefore they ought to be identified in an ongoing way in the interest of community safety.” That is a far more sensible approach than this one-size-fits-all, blanket approach: “You have offended against law X, therefore we are assuming you will continue to offend.” There is simply no justification for that sort of blanket approach to risk assessment.

New Zealand—and Mr Workman notes this—has developed quite a good reputation. We have not got it right yet, clearly—we get it wrong on occasion—but we are seen as having been at the forefront of modelling new and improved ways of assessing the risk of people reoffending, and this legislation is a retrograde step. We could potentially support any mechanism that we believed was going to reduce the likelihood of offending against our children—that might protect our children.

Sadly, we believe that the only protective element is in the name of this legislation. The New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, which has done a lot of research around sexual and domestic violence, could find no compelling evidence anywhere in the world that suggests that having a register actually does enhance the protection of children, or that it would be effective in any way. That was the theme to a lot of the—dare I say it—better informed submitters. We heard anecdotal references to research or reading or something somebody had heard somewhere that indicated that registers do have some facility to protect or to lower the risk to children. We could see no such substantive evidence.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Kia ora. I too would like to start by acknowledging the Minister and the Social Services Committee. The subject matter is probably an area, or a topic, that none of us would like to discuss. The fact that we are, today, debating the merits of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill, or, if my colleague Jacinda Ardern’s Supplementary Order Paper 193 is supported, the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Bill, is—I was going to say incredibly sad, because, in preparing for my contribution today, I looked for some statistics.

I found a piece of research, which is on the Department of Corrections website, actually, and it is called Reconviction Rates of Sex Offenders: Five year follow-up study and it looked at sex offenders from 1 January 2001 to 31 December 2003. There were 1,100 male sex offenders. Of those, 63 percent, or 689, were child sex offenders, which is pretty harrowing, actually. Then, when I looked at some of the descriptions, I will call them—on average they were 41 years old, 56 percent were 40-plus when released, 35 percent were Māori, 51 percent European, and 13 percent Pasifika. The interesting part for me—because this whole corrections research project was about recidivism—was that what they found, of the 689 child sex offenders, 66 percent were first-timers, so that is 455; of those, 19 percent were reconvicted within a 60-month period post their release. I guess some people would see that as a good thing, but I looked a bit deeper into the numbers, and it actually means that, of the 455 first-time offenders, 369 are out there—somewhere. We do not know where they are, and no one is monitoring them.

I can see the intent behind this piece of legislation when I look at figures like that, because, actually, it is a safeguard for us when they stay in the system, which is incredibly perverse. What is incredibly interesting, too, was that, of the recidivist offenders, of which there were 234, 54 percent were reconvicted within that 60-month period—126 people—but only 13, or 4 percent, were reconvicted for sex offending on children. I actually can see the intent behind this piece of legislation, so I am getting up to support the Minister.

I think that, in light of some of the recent community commentary, however, on where these sex offenders are currently being placed, what I am hoping is that not only are we going to have a register but we are actually going to think through where people should be rehabilitated in the community. I want to particularly pick up on a comment by the Minister, Anne Tolley, who said that these offenders have to manage their urges. I guess my challenge back to the Minister, to the ministry, and to all of those involved in monitoring these child sex offenders is: is managing them within a kilometre of a school, where they can see children, where children actually, in Māngere’s case, saw them—and, from what we have heard, there were issues of masturbation, because this particular offender was getting off on seeing the kids—appropriate?

There was an interesting ad in Germany in 2005, and it said: “You are not guilty because of your sexual desire, but you are responsible for your sexual behaviour.” I think the reality for some child sex offenders who are paedophiles, managing their urges—as the Minister said—is actually also the responsibility of the Government, because if we are going to put people back into the community and rehabilitate them, then we have to make sure that they are going to be in the best environment so that those urges do not pose a risk, not only for our kids but for them.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Before I call Darroch Ball, I am going to remind members—and I am just feeling a wee bit conflicted now because of stated interests in this area—that they should be debating this bill. It is not a second reading - type debate on the causes or the general statistics. It is not a discussion about where people should be living. Actually, this bill has been accepted by the House at its second reading, and all we are talking about is whether the details in this bill now fulfil the wishes of the House as expressed at the second reading.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): I would just like to take a quick call to address a couple of things that have been said, first of all, by Alfred Ngaro, actually—what he was saying. He actually contradicted himself. He was talking about the scale of offending.

First of all, he was talking about the scale of the offending, but it is important to note that this legislation—this register—has got nothing to do with the decision-making process about putting someone on that register. That comes before they are put on to the register. So if Alfred Ngaro wants to talk about the scale of offending and who should go on the register and who should not go on the register, that comes before any decision is made about the role of the register and how the register is used. The authorities make that choice. But he contradicted himself when he agreed with what I was saying about there being no jurisdiction—that you can accurately rely on any research for any information that would be accurate to New Zealand. Within the same breath he starts quoting research about overseas—about what this register is for and why it should not be made public. If he would like me to go back into the Hansard and quote it to him at the third reading, I will be able to do that for him.

The second thing I want to talk about is actually one of the major concerns that New Zealand First has. It is what the Minister for Social Development said, talking about the police and what they would do with the register. She literally said: “The police may well drop in” and “make sure they are living where they say they are.” We have heard from all of the Opposition parties, throughout the readings and the processes of the bill, about the issues with the funding, the stretched budget of the police as it is, and the failure of the police at the moment to be able to adequately monitor those on electronic monitoring and bracelets. Then we have an added task and duty for the officers, to stretch their budget even further to be able to go and monitor offenders.

The issue here with this legislation—the main one is that it points to the fact that the offenders themselves have to update their information. The offenders themselves have to update their own information. They have to say whether they are moving, they have to say whether they are going to be in contact with children where they are, and then the police have to react to that—the police have to react to that. New Zealand First has got major concerns around that, as well.

I would just like to briefly read out two submissions to the Social Services Committee, because they highlight a couple of the points that New Zealand First is making. The first submission is about the need for the public to be able to be the eyes and ears for the police, and the importance of that. It states: “If the success of this register is going to rely on just the Police and Corrections to monitor 250 child sex offenders released in the first year, followed by an extra 250 in year two, on up to 2500 by year ten then supervision is going to become non-existent due to sheer numbers. … The task of Policing is not the sole prerogative of the Police. At any one time there is a very high level of dependence on the general public to see and report what they see to the Police for action.” That is one of the major reasons why New Zealand First believes that the public need to be the eyes and ears within the general public for this register, and that means that the register needs to be public.

The second submission is actually from a victim of child sex abuse, and gives her views on why she believes the register needs to be a public register: “I am a sexual abuse survivor and from personal experience I cannot stress the importance of having a Child Sex Register available to the public. After what I had to go through, … I would hate to think this could happen to another young and vulnerable child. Knowledge is power, and that ‘saying’ couldn’t be more true in this situation. If parent’s and members of the community are able to have access to those that pose a risk to children, then they can in fact make informed decisions around where they live, where to send their children and where they deem safe.”

Those two submissions are the basis of why New Zealand First is putting forward Supplementary Order Paper 178 to make the register public, and we hope that the Minister supports that.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I want to start by looking at Part 1, subheading “Offenders to whom Act applies”. This starts at clause 6, “Who is a registrable offender?”. Clause 6(1)(a) says it is someone “sentenced to imprisonment;”—we get that. But clause 6(1)(b) says “sentenced to a non-custodial sentence and made subject to a registration order.” So, basically, someone who has not gone to prison, but the courts make a decision that they should be subject. If we go to clause 8(1), it says “the court may”—may; and I do not know what constitutes “may”—“order that the person must be placed on the register and must comply with the reporting obligations of the Act. (2) … if the court is satisfied that the person poses a risk to the lives or sexual safety of 1 or more children, or of children generally.”

Well, the first question is: what judge would actually order a non-custodial sentence if he or she thought that a person posed a risk to the life or sexual safety of a child? I think that anyone who poses a risk to the life of a child should be in jail, anyway—but let us not argue about that. What happens is that the judge must consider 10 variables when determining whether to make a registration order. I am not going to list all the variables, but they are listed under clause 8(3), and there are 10 of them. The thing that concerns me about this is that they are subjective, to the point where I think there may end up being judicial inconsistency here. You are going to get a so-called hanging judge who says: “OK, I can’t order you to jail because of past precedent, but you’re going to go down because I’m considering all of these.”

The thing that concerns me about this is a lack of objectivity—I think that what the bill should have done is been a lot clearer in determining who actually comes under a registration order if there is a non-custodial sentence. That is something that I think will have to be sorted out in the courts. What I would be loath to see is people appealing their registration order simply because they felt it was unfair, so that we get another layer of process or court there.

The other thing I would like to talk about is the child sex offender register itself. Now, the Commissioner of Police, he or she is the person, or the position, responsible for this. But the interesting thing, if we go into clause 10, “Administration of register”—in clause 10(2) it says: “Before making significant operational decisions about [how] the register is administered, the Commissioner must consult with the chief executive of the Department of Corrections.” Again, what constitutes a “significant operational decision”? I am assuming that what will happen is that the Commissioner of Police and the chief executive officer (CEO) of corrections will sit down at the point that this register comes into law and have a memorandum of understanding about what constitutes a significant operational decision so that there is no grey area there—so that they have sorted it out and they know when the commissioner must consult with the CEO. But, again, when we have subjective words like “significant operational decision”, it does allow for grey areas that are open to contestability.

If we go down to clause 10(3), it says: “For the purpose of administering the register, the Commissioner may appoint … (a) 1 or more Police employees …”. But this comes back to the point—will the information get out there? This is one or more employees for the administration of the register; it is a different definition for those who are responsible for implementing or monitoring the people on the register, because it actually says in the legislation, under clause 25, that a person who delivers a report—I will come to “report”, and soon—can go into any police station designated by the commissioner. Now, there are 281 police stations in New Zealand at the moment, so, theoretically, what could happen—probably practically, actually—depending on where the sex offender lives, the commissioner will designate that that person must go to make their report to the closest possible police station, which makes sense. So there are another 281 people brought in.

I would never ever question the integrity of the police or of corrections staff, but let us be honest about this. If a police officer or a corrections officer finds out through dealing with the register, or someone on the register, that that person lives next door to—or two doors down from—a niece or nephew or something, human nature dictates that that information will get out there. When David Clendon mentioned that this information will leak—we know it will leak, because that is human nature, and that is something that concerns me.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Corrections): Thank you, Mr Chair—thanks for the opportunity to contribute to this very important bill. I just want to take the opportunity to correct a little bit of information. Mr Ball told the Committee, that police are responsible for monitoring child sex offenders when they leave prison. Well, that is incorrect and I think we just need to correct that.

But there is another point I want to make about this. I am very concerned about some of the rhetoric around having a public and open register. I think it is one of those questions and issues that might seem very compelling at first glance, but one of the problems is that it does give, for a start, a very false hope and a false sense of security—even having a register. I fully support the register because, to me, it is an opportunity for Child, Youth and Family—or whatever its equivalent is—and many other agencies to understand that they actually are placing a child in a home with a child sex offender, which otherwise they might not know, if they do not have the information. It is really important that we have that information across Government—across the official agencies with responsibility.

But I think one of the very sad comments that I have heard is just the number of people who are child sex offenders being released out into the community. You know, we are talking about 250 in a year. That is an appalling statistic for New Zealand. I would say, on the good side, that it means that those people were caught, that they were held to account, that they did, in fact, receive justice, and that they will have received rehabilitation, as well, in most cases. But what that tells me, too, is that there are probably a large number who are not caught and who are not actually held to account.

We do get quite a lot of talk about where child sex offenders live. Some people want to have a register open so that they can know where every one is. Actually, child sex offenders are more likely to be living in one’s home, along with the child whom they are sexually offending. They are not so likely—although it does happen—to be living in the park, waiting to molest little children as they come to play. They are far more likely to be in positions of responsibility. They might be members of Parliament. They might be counsellors. They might be psychologists. They might be defence personnel. They might even be, dare I say, police or corrections staff. Do you know what? That is actually what has happened in the past. They might even be diplomats. We have certainly had situations like that.

There are people who are child sex offenders right throughout society. They do not have little horns on their heads. They do not have tattoos on them saying “I’m a child sex offender.” In most cases, they are actually people who are highly manipulative and able to gain people’s trust—often gaining the trust of mothers, often gaining the trust of families, particularly vulnerable families, who seek out and want someone to help them with their children or to be a mentor for their children. Some of these people are highly manipulative people. Actually, it is all right to say, well, we have a public register. Then we get—what—vigilantism, and that is absolutely not something that we should be seeking.

We should also be trying to get people who are child sex offenders, once they are released, to actually continue with therapy, because what we know is that quite a lot of the work that goes on in rehabilitation in this area can actually be very successful. It is an area where we have had huge success, particularly at Rolleston Prison. Sometimes people do not realise that. It is an area where change can be brought about. It is not that people no longer identify sexually with children, but it is that they do not act on it. That is what we want. We want people not to act on that sort of behaviour.

It is wrong to think that child sex offenders are not everywhere. I support the fact that I want agencies that have responsibility to know. I also want the situation that if somebody worries that somebody in their family or someone who is living in their house might be acting around their child in a way that concerns them, then they should be able to come to police. The police should be able to get all the information they have and they should be able to talk to Child, Youth and Family. People should be able to tell the parents what is actually going on or what is likely to be going on, and take action, because, actually, that information is so valuable.

One of the things I think we need to do is give agencies the information. I have been to the police to have a look at how this is all working with the Department of Corrections and the Ministry of Social Development staff and all the other agencies working together. I was really impressed with the level of detail that they could have because it is not a public register. I would also say, too, that this costs money, which it should do and which we, actually, are happy to put Budget money towards, because it is so worthwhile. But let us not double up. Let us keep the information where it needs to be and let us have it detailed enough that it makes a difference.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I just want to raise a few points that have not been raised already about the purpose of this bill, and then I am going to go to clause 43. I raised some issues on that before but the Minister in the chair, Anne Tolley, has not responded yet to them, so I am just going to reiterate those.

Looking at clause 3, the “Purpose”: “The purpose of this Act is to establish a Child Sex Offender Register that will reduce sexual reoffending against child victims.” One issue with that that we have not discussed at the Social Services Committee, and I have not heard any mention of by the Minister, is actually what the anticipated reduction is. We know that the National Government likes to set targets, so what is the reduction that the Minister expects to occur here with regard to sexual reoffending? I think it is really important to point that out, because the evidence that we were presented with at the select committee did show that, actually, only about 1 percent of all sexual offences will end up with a conviction in the criminal justice system. So how much of a reduction are we going to see with reoffending, given that that is the case?

I also think that it is important to actually focus on that word “reoffending”. This is not going to reduce the sexual offending against child victims. It is the reoffending against child victims, and the reoffending that has gone through the criminal justice system and ended up in conviction. Keep in mind that 99 percent of the sexual offending against children that goes on does not even end up with conviction through the criminal justice system. So I think it is worth discussing that. In clause 3, after it states “reduce sexual offending against child victims …”, it says “and the risk posed by serious child sex offenders, …”. I think we need to keep in mind that when we are talking about serious sexual child sex offenders here, we are talking about the ones who have been convicted. We are not talking about the serious child sex offenders out there who we know exist but who have not been convicted or have not been discovered, so it is important to mention that.

Clause 3(a) says: “providing government agencies with the information needed to monitor child sex offenders in the community, including after the completion of the sentence; …” I think my colleague Louisa Wall brought up why that is absolutely important, so we support that. But clause 3(b) says: “providing up-to-date information that assists the Police to more rapidly resolve cases of child sex offending.” So when we are looking at paragraph (b) for the purpose, we have to keep in mind that that is after the fact, because we are talking about providing police with information to more rapidly resolve cases of child sex offending. Actually, it is hard to reconcile that with the original statement in the purpose, where it says: to “reduce sexual reoffending against child victims”, because paragraph (b) of the purpose clause is just actually to provide police with information so that they can resolve child sexual offending cases. I think it is really important to talk about that.

I talked about clause 43 earlier, and I do want some answers from Minister Anne Tolley. Clause 43 is in relation to disclosure of information to affected people where a threat to child safety or welfare exists. We know that this particular clause means that it is not just about the sharing of information between government agencies; it opens it up to third parties. I think it is really important that we in the House are clear about who those potential third parties are, what safeguards are in place with regard to protecting that information, and who an appropriate third party is—so, just some examples. How will the risk be assessed before the decision is made to pass that information on to the third party? Who will be making that decision and who will be passing that information on to the third party? What will the consequence be of sharing that information outside of the parameters of the agreement in terms of—if it is given to the third party and it is supposed to stay there, what are the consequences if that information is passed on?

I am thinking here that one example of a third party discussed in the select committee was a school board of trustees. There you have got concerned parents. Yes, they are governing the school but you can imagine that it would be very difficult for them to withhold information from the rest of the community if they then become aware of the fact that there is a convicted sex offender living in their community. So what then, Minister, would the consequences of sharing that information be? I think we are just lacking a little bit of detail and explanation around that particular clause, clause 43. So if the Minister can answer some questions about that, then I think that would, hopefully, give some people a bit of peace of mind or, potentially, give us guidance in terms of further changes that need to be made.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): Yes, I am happy to answer that. I am sorry—I meant to do that before. Clause 43 provides that the Commissioner of Police may disclose, or authorise a particular agency to disclose, personal information on the register to an affected person. So the classic example of that is where they know that this person is high risk and that person then moves in with a new partner who has children. When you look at the definition of an affected person, it is a parent or guardian of the child, or regular caregiver. So the commissioner would then decide that there is an element of risk to the children living in that home now with that new offender living amongst them, and he or she—one day we might have a woman Commissioner of Police—would decide that it could be disclosed to that new partner that her children might be at risk. That is the classic example of when that clause would be used. The important thing is that it is the commissioner who makes that decision and disclosure has to be to an affected person.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): I want to make reference, firstly, to clause 3, the purpose clause. I would just say, like others, that this issue is of concern, and, like others have said, this issue is so important in light of the media coverage of a couple of high-profile matters that have occurred in my electorate and in the Hutt Valley. When I am looking at the purpose clause, it is quite specific, but I have to ask myself when looking at the purpose—I am hearing the Government members saying that this is about reducing the offending of child sex offenders, and yet, when I read the purpose of the bill, it says: “To establish a Child Sex Offender Register”. In my mind, I am asking how a child sex offender register prevents offences by those who are—and I have seen research to say this—oriented towards attacking young children. I am not a member of that committee, but I would like to know how a register prevents children being molested, being abused, being raped. How does it do that?

I am looking at clause 3(a), and it says: “providing government agencies with the information needed to monitor child sex offenders”. Yes, I agree, like many others, that having that information available to Government departments is important for monitoring some of the most serious child sex offenders. We had one in Māngere, who the ministry acknowledged is of high risk of reoffending. But, like with everything else, this Government has a tendency of cutting funding, and what that clause suggests to me is that it is reliant on somebody else providing that information to it.

Like many people in our country now, people are so busy—how do they provide that information to a Government department? With Government departments now, I do not know whether the right hand and the left hand talk to one another. So I am not sure whether this is broad enough in order for us to do what many MPs have spoken about in this House, and that is to prevent our children from being abused—that is, to keep our children safe from those who are predators. One of the issues that we are still debating is—when a sex offender or a violent offender has served their time and they are to be released into the community, the big question is: where do we house them? I would have thought that if this was truly about preventing child sex offending by those who are of imminent risk of reoffending, then that needs to be part of the purpose. I do not know why this Government has not included that as part of the purpose clause.

In clause 3(b), it says: “providing up-to-date information that assists the Police”. I will give you an example of why that clause concerns me. We in Māngere have a child sex offender who is of high risk of reoffending—and this is a term that the Department of Corrections has made—who is under 24/7 surveillance. I asked the police the other day: “How long will it take for you to get the information that is necessary for you to act on this person if this person slips their surveillance?”. It would take, roughly, as best as I could assess, about 10 to 15 minutes. That, to me, does not give me confidence at all that the purpose that Government members have said this bill is for, the prevention clause. The question that I want the Minister to answer is how having that child sex offender register will prevent high-risk offenders from reoffending—abusing, raping, or whatever it is that they do to children in our community. That is of paramount concern to members of the community—how to ensure that our children are kept safe.

JONO NAYLOR (National): I think this is one of those bills where we would not actually say it is a pleasure to rise and talk about it, because this is something I think none of us would particularly like to be speaking about as a topic. But I think doing something about reducing harm to young people through reducing the level of reoffending by sex offenders in our country is something we absolutely must do. I am quite convinced that this bill can contribute to this, and what I have heard asked a number of times today from across the Chamber is how it will happen. Why do we think this is going to be of any use whatsoever?

I just want to take people back to a conversation I remember having in the smoko room at Child, Youth and Family 20 years ago—in fact, it would have been 1996 when it happened. We were sitting around the smoko room talking about how useful it would be if we were able to identify and know who the previous sexual offenders against children were in our community, because there were a couple of things that would then happen. One would be that when you were actually placing children with a family in care—I mean, there are other checks and balances in place in terms of vetting caregivers—making sure you are not actually placing a child with a known sex offender would, obviously, be particularly helpful. But the other factor that was very, very common, and is still common now—although I have not been practising social work for a while—is that you are working as a Government agency with a family who is vulnerable, with a family who is at risk, it might be a single mum with some children, and then a new bloke turns up and this new bloke moves into the house. As a social worker, actually knowing the history of this bloke who might be turning up in this family—that he was potentially a previous child sex offender—that would be very, very useful knowledge to have, as a front-line social worker, at your fingertips.

I have heard the people over the other side of the Chamber asking how a register would be useful; well, I can tell you right now, that is exactly how it would be useful. It would protect some young people. No one—not the Minister, not anyone who has been speaking in support of this bill—says this bill on its own will stop all reoffending of sexual offences against children in New Zealand. If only it would—if only we could find that silver bullet—I am sure we would all fire it and be quite happy. But, in the meantime, until we find that silver bullet, it is beholden on us to continue to put forward those things that we know can be useful and that will play a part in reducing the level of reoffending involving sexual violence against young people.

I want to refer to the Supplementary Order Paper that has been brought forward in the name of Darroch Ball, who has claimed that the best thing we could do would be to put this register out publicly. I think it is widely accepted by everybody in this Committee—apart from the New Zealand First MPs—that that would not be a particularly useful thing to do. There is actually a reason we have name suppression in certain circumstances; so are you going to publicise all of the people on the register except for the ones who have name suppression? There is a presupposition in this that third parties or other people cannot ever know what is on this list. In this bill, it has been identified that in certain circumstances, this information may be released to a third party—such as the parent or guardian of a child—where that has been deemed to be appropriate in order to protect that child. So there is not a need for us to publicly go out so that Mr Ball and his mates can run around in a vigilante sort of way to hunt them down and seek them out.

There are provisions in this bill to ensure that where appropriate, third parties can be made aware of it, and I think that actually strikes exactly the right balance of what we want. We want to be able to make sure that the professionals—the police, Child, Youth and Family, those Government agencies that need to know—can know; and that any public who those people believe need to know because of some sort of imminent risk can be made aware of it. That is an appropriate place for this bill to land. That is an appropriate level of disclosure.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): I would just like to take a quick call to address a couple of the things that the Hon Judith Collins said and what Jono Naylor has just said. First of all, I would like to thank the Hon Judith Collins for correcting me on who monitors those on electronic monitoring or bail, or whatever. Of course it is the Department of Corrections; it is not the police. But what I intended to say was that the police, the Department of Corrections, and the courts all have to absorb the costs of this register.

The intent of what I was saying still remains: the fact that of the $150 million - odd that this is going to cost, the total that the police, the Department of Corrections, and the courts actually have to absorb is around $85 million. What we heard, I think during the first reading, and certainly through the select committee process, was that it was OK, firstly, because it was over a 10-year period, but, secondly, that a lot of it was work that the police, the Department of Corrections, and the courts have already been doing. So part of that would be just a double-up overall. But that does not make sense, when the regulatory impact statement says that the extra costs that are being absorbed will be pursued following decisions by Cabinet to implement the policy. So there is obviously a need that has been identified by the Minister for Social Development to actually sort out where this extra money is coming from. It is not being absorbed just by the police, the Department of Corrections, and the courts.

The point I was trying to make, about the issue with relying on the authorities as the only ones at the moment to be monitoring and using this register, is the fact of the environment they are using it in. The fact is that we have got dropping police numbers per capita, we have got a demonstrable increase in crime, and we have got those three authorities—the police, the Department of Corrections, and the courts—screaming out for resources as it is. The fact that they have to try to stretch resources even further, and add further tasks, is the point that I was making. New Zealand First has concerns with that.

The second thing I would like to mention about what the Hon Judith Collins spoke about was one of the issues with making the register public, which was the fact that you could not put on a public register all the information and the level of detail that you can have on a restricted register. New Zealand First understands that, and that is why, in our Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 178, we want a restricted register to remain, to have all of those details and all of that information that the Hon Judith Collins was talking about. That will remain. But there will be a separate publicly available register for communities to know the very basic information—to know who and where the child sex offenders are.

Lastly, I would just like to quote from New Zealand First’s SOP, the last paragraph of the explanatory note, because it sums up exactly our position. It states that “New Zealand First is against using ideology that places the rights of the perpetrator above the protection and rights of the child. Public safety concerns and the safety of children, who are the most vulnerable and defenceless, outweigh the privacy or equal-protection claims of a sex offender.” Thank you.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Firstly, before I start my contribution, I do want to say that the value of these debates is in ensuring that, should this piece of legislation be tested in court, the judge knows the intent of the piece of legislation by viewing the contributions of members, particularly at the Committee stage.

Having been a member on the Social Services Committee and having heard a wide range of submissions, there are a couple of points that have not been traversed that I must ensure are part of this particular Committee debate. In particular, I want to refer to clause 8, which my colleague Stuart Nash raised, because there are some complex and technical matters within clause 8 that talk about the risk factors that a judge would need to determine in order to ensure that somebody who has a non-custodial sentence is given an order to be placed on the register. We have to give those kinds of elements some context. We have to be able to illuminate and be able to ensure that when this legislation is tested, there is a sufficient amount of evidence and information in order to make those determinations.

But on hearing from some of the submitters who actually were offenders themselves, one of the key points that was raised was the fact that—and it is a principle that we need to examine—as an offender who has been charged with an offence and has completed their sentence, there are obvious restrictions upon that person when they go on to a register. There are obvious restrictions. So, not only have they completed their sentence but they may, in effect, have another sentence. We need to look at that principle of having completed one sentence, to then have further restrictions placed upon you. It is an important thing to consider within this debate.

One of the other considerations that people who are offenders raised at the select committee was the fact that if they, as people, as humans, as family members, were to go on to a register, and in particular one that is then made public, what is the impact on their family? What is then the impact on their children? Are the children of sex offenders or the family members of sex offenders then guilty by association? It is an important thing for us to consider—the rights of family members of sexual offenders—particularly if we are unable to control the release of information. For instance, should that information go to third parties, like boards of trustees? It is not just the offender who may be at risk of being identified, but also their family members.

The last point I want to make in this contribution is about the length of time that an offender is on the register. At the select committee we were given some explanation, and I ask the Minister if she can perhaps clarify this, and I have asked this question before: how did the Minister land on the time frame for offenders to be on the register? I know there are three categories and three different lengths of time. How can we say that somebody, after a period of 8 years or 10 years or 15 years, is now safe to come off the register? Or, alternatively, how we can say that the period of X number of years actually reduces any risk to the community?

I do not think that question has been asked as part of the discussion in this Committee stage, so I would like to know from the Minister how she arrived at determining those particular years. I would also like to know how the rights of children and family members of sex offenders can be guaranteed to be upheld in this piece of legislation. Thank you.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): It is important to take a call in this Committee of the whole House on what will be New Zealand’s first child sex offender register for child sex offenders over the age of 18 who have committed crimes against children under the age of 16. I want to start by looking at clause 48B, which is around the issue of child sex offenders and their ability to change their name legally. I just want to acknowledge my colleague Jian Yang, who had a member’s bill around this pulled out of the ballot. Unfortunately, it was deemed that with human rights—it was not able to proceed. But part of the essence of his bill has now been embedded in this bill, and quite rightly so. On saying that, I probably did have some sympathy for his bill not allowing convicted sex offenders to change their name. But I think we have got a very practical and right process now, under this clause, whereby the offender would apply to the Commissioner of Police and a decision would be made as to whether the offender was allowed to legally change their name.

Clause 3 outlines very much the purpose. We had Su’a William Sio come into the Chamber and say that he was unsure how this register would reduce risk and would reduce offending. I think it was very much a rhetorical question. If he had bothered to read the bill, he would know that himself, before coming into the Chamber.

We also had Stuart Nash, who tried to play, I suppose, spokesperson politics around this bill by arguing the zero-sum game around the resourcing. We heard very clearly through the submission process about the $150 million. It was an increase, and Cabinet approved that—around $35 million for the technology part of this legislation—but there was a lot of operational expenditure that was already within budget and that will be reconfigured around this register. So instead of playing politics and thinking about “bobbies on the beat”—this is very much at the heart of the issue of what we are trying to address: tracking offenders through a register.

I think that when you look at it, it is around supporting the professionals. It is supporting the police officers, corrections, probation, and social services. I just want to acknowledge the work they do in a very difficult space. We have heard very clearly in contributions from both sides of the Chamber that this is not a silver bullet, but what this register will do is provide the professionals with a tool. What it is about is capturing the data, managing the data, and analysing it. That will then inform decisions made to protect, ultimately, the community and protect our children. When we look at it, it is not about treatment, it is not here to replace punishment, but, again, it is supposed to be informing decisions that will mitigate risk and mitigate reoffending.

I agree with some of the contributions so far—the evidence base is still developing in this area—but it was very clear from the advice that we received that this register and this legislation, once it is enacted, will go some way to reducing four to 34 sexual offending convictions over the next 10 years. So when we look at that cost-benefit analysis, bearing in mind that 90 percent of these offences are undisclosed and unreported, I think it is very clear around the cost and the benefit.

But I think another area we need to focus on is the parents—giving them certainty that authorities are tracking these offenders and putting systems in place to monitor them, because, ultimately, it is about putting young people at the heart of these decisions. I had a town in my electorate of Waimakariri where there were accusations of a child sex offender moving into the area. A lot of parents were very concerned that there was no central register, and in an age like today, with social media, things can go viral very quickly. It builds fear, it builds concern—

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): I have just decided to take a call on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. Every so often I think that a select committee does a good job of making a bill better, and I think when I look at clauses 48A to 48C, which are around restrictions on change of name for child sex offenders, they have actually done a good job. There was some concern from the Attorney-General that the permanent prevention of changing names by child sex offenders was against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and I think the office of the Attorney-General did submit to the Social Services Committee that it was probably not the best idea to have that completely absent from the bill.

There was also another member’s bill that was before the House—and, I think, may have been before the select committee—that looked at preventing name changes for child sex offenders permanently. But I think the approach that is within this bill is better, because instead of going to the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages to change a name, someone who is placed on the register because of their having been convicted has to go to the Commissioner of Police to be able to change their name. That comes under clause 48B, and if the commissioner is going to consider that, there is a set of criteria that he—he or she, I should say—will have to look at in order to change the name. There could be some scurrilous reasons for a child sex offender to potentially change their name and therefore not be on the register, but there might be some perfectly valid reasons for someone to change their name—getting married is probably one of the most obvious examples of that.

Clause 48C does run through what I think is a better way to attack the issue than that member’s bill was. The Commissioner of Police has to take into consideration, when someone is applying for a change of name, “(a) the safety of the registrable offender and other persons: (b) the registrable offender’s rehabilitation or care or treatment: (c) whether the proposed name change could be used to further an unlawful activity … : (d) whether the proposed name change is likely to frustrate the administration of this Act [that we are debating here] … :” and, finally, “(e) whether the proposed name change could be considered offensive to a victim of a crime or an immediate family member of a deceased victim of a crime.”

I think that is an extremely sensible way to address the issue of people who might be on the register changing their names—instead of the alternative that, I believe, was before the select committee, which sought to prevent permanently the changing of names of people who may have been on the register. So I would like to thank the select committee for taking a rather pragmatic point of view and perspective, and also for taking into account some of the concerns of the Attorney-General.

I think that this change in this piece of legislation is a better balanced and practical way to address the issue of name change. I do note that Mr Doocey mentioned this issue as well. This select committee has listened to the issue around this specific part of the bill. There may have been concerns in the community about it, but it is a much better way than taking the rather blunt instrument of permanent prevention of name change in the member’s bill that was proposed—and I understand that is not going to go through now—and filling the ballot with meaningless and stupid members’ bills.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): There are three points I want to make, and I want to start with Part 3—this is “Miscellaneous matters—Regulations”. In clause 49, it says that “The Governor-General may, by Order in Council, make regulations for any of the following purposes:”. Clause 49(c) says “prescribing details relating to the administration of the register:”, and clause 49(d)(i) talks about “the circumstances in which information will be required concerning the identity of the registrable offender …”.

The reason I have some concerns about this is that what this Part 3 basically says is that if the Minister or the Government of the day does not like how this is operating, they can change the rules without bringing the bill back to the House. I think that from a constitutional perspective that is quite dangerous, because what we are talking about here is something—as a number of members have talked about—quite subjective in the nature of law we are proposing and in the type of matter we are proposing here. I think that by taking it out of Parliament and putting it in to regulations, we run the risk of that separation of power. I would have liked to see any change in this come back to the House as an amendment bill.

There is just one other thing I would like to query the Minister in the chair, Anne Tolley, on. She talked about clause 43, where the commissioner may disclose information. The reason I have concerns about this is that word “may”, because this does not put any obligation whatsoever on the commissioner to disclose information to anyone at all. It is purely subjective. What it says in clause 43(1) is: “The Commissioner may disclose personal information in the register to an affected person if the Commissioner believes on reasonable grounds that the registrable offender poses a threat to the life, welfare, or sexual safety of a particular child or particular children.”

There are three subjective terms in there that cause me concern. The first one is that the commissioner “may” disclose personal information, the second one is “on reasonable grounds”—I am not too sure what constitutes reasonable grounds—and the third one is the “welfare” of a particular child. Obviously, we know about the physical and/or sexual well-being because that is highly documented in the case, but the mental and the psychological well-being is, again, subjective. I think this clause here, around when the commissioner may disclose information, or the information that can be disclosed, is too wide and is open to interpretation. The last thing we want to see is someone coming before the courts because they have caused harm to a child and the commissioner being held to account and the court saying that the commissioner should have provided this information but he did not, and therefore we go through a debate about what is reasonable information and when it should be released.

What I would like to talk about is, actually, what the personal information that must be recorded is—i.e., what this register is. We are talking about clause 15 here. What happens is that there are 22 pieces of data that must be recorded within 72 hours—and that is in clause 16—of the offender being released from custody or made subject to a registration order. These are quite specific, and I applaud that. The concern I have is that if we make an assumption—and we have heard these figures—that there are 250 sex offenders released from prison ever year, after 10 years that is 2,500 sex offenders, and it specifies in the bill that an offender must update their report at least once a year, or as designated by the commissioner. So that is 55,000 pieces of data that have to be monitored every year, minimum, after 5 years. That is an average of seven per day.

What it does say in the bill is, actually, in some cases the person has to be monitored for their whole life. So what concerns me is the level of resource that is going to go into monitoring those 55,000 pieces of data every year and, conceivably, even more as this builds. What we must ensure in the Public Service is that when we collect data, it is there for a purpose and not simply for the fact of data collection, if you know what I mean.

Carmel Sepuloni: I know what you mean.

STUART NASH: Thank you, Carmel Sepuloni. The thing about this, also, is that when we look at clause 37, it outlines the penalties for not disclosing information. It is $2,000 for failure to disclose information. This is based on the reasonable person test, again, but $2,000 really is not a great fine. But the thing is that it is quite prescriptive in here—

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity. I would like to speak to clause 3 because there has been a lot of interest in the purpose of this bill. This clause forms the basis of this whole bill, and there has been a lot of discussion from both sides about the objective of this bill. The objective of this bill is to track serious child sex offenders. Yes, I have heard members from the other side saying that there is no evidence that this register is going to help us reduce offending or reoffending, but to me it is a common-sense thing. Keeping track of serious child sex offenders cannot go wrong.

We live in a society where the safety of the public is of utmost importance. We also know that the rights of victims are important, but we need to balance the rights of victims with the rights of the offenders. This register will collect information, not just as a data-collection exercise; the information that will be collected on this register will form the basis for risk assessment of these offenders by police and the Department of Corrections. The information that will be available on this register will be only for specified agencies and will be available to third parties if required.

On Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 178 from the member from New Zealand First Darroch Ball, I want to say that I oppose that SOP because there is no evidence that making such a register publicly available helps.

Darroch Ball: You just said there’s no evidence that a register works, but you’re supporting that.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: It is about a publicly available register; that is not going to help. The evidence clearly shows that making such registers publicly available actually does not provide anything in terms of public safety. Instead, it can disrupt the life of the offenders to the extent that they can take up reoffending.

There is a very, very narrow focus in that SOP, because that SOP is just taking into consideration the offender and is not taking into consideration the wider picture—especially those people who may be related to that offender and how their family and work life will be affected if that offender is named and information is in the public domain. It is not just about protecting the offender’s information, it is not just about protecting victims, but it is also about protecting those people who are related to offenders who will go on that register. As I said, the information will be available to specified agencies and, based on that, they will be doing risk assessment and they will be able to take preventative action.

I fully support that this database should remain as a secure database, and that is why we want the administration of this database to be so strict. The bill clearly specifies that the administration of this register will be done by the Commissioner of Police and, as we heard before, before making any significant operational changes the commissioner will be required to consult with the chief executive officer of the Department of Corrections. We have taken this very, very strict, exclusive approach just to ensure this database remains secure and that the public have confidence in this register.

We know that there is a lot of information that will be collected on this register. We need to be sensitive to those offenders and especially the families of the offenders. About who will go on the register—again, this legislation is very, very clear that those who are convicted and are sentenced to imprisonment will automatically go on this register, but in the case of a non-custodial sentence it will be at the sentencing judge’s discretion to decide whether the person should go on the register or not. But, again, this bill gives enough guidance to the judge about who should go on the register. It clearly states that if there is a continuous risk from the offender, then that person should go on the register. So it is about reducing the possibility of reoffending by serious child sex offenders.

About the age—again, there is no uncertainty in this legislation. It makes very, very clear that the person should be 18 or over at the time of committing the offence, at the time of getting convicted of a qualifying offence, at the time of being sentenced to imprisonment or, through a non-custodial sentence, being directed by the judge to be on the register. Another good thing about this legislation is that it covers those people who are convicted overseas. So if people are convicted of a similar offence in an overseas jurisdiction and they decide to come to live here in New Zealand they will also go on this register.

About the information—yes, we heard a lot of information will go on this register related to the offender.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): I want to focus on two Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs), one of which we support and the other we do not. I will start with the one that we support, and that is Supplementary Order Paper 193 in my colleague Jacinda Ardern’s name. It is great that the Minister for Social Development has also supported the name change. The bill will be called the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Bill. I just want to quote from the Supplementary Order Paper, because then it will make sense why we are not supporting the second SOP. It says in the explanatory note: “This title better reflects the content and scope of the Bill, by specifying that the register that the Bill proposes is limited to information between government agencies, and not a public register.”

Thereon I move to Supplementary Order Paper 178 in Darroch Ball’s name. I do not think we have actually adequately addressed why we are not supporting it, so I am going to take the time to explain why we are not. I think that when we look at the register—to get on the register you have to be a sex offender, so you have to have been convicted. Therefore, you have to have gone to prison.

I really want to focus on sentencing principles, actually, in trying to explain our position. The sentence must be no more severe than is necessary to meet the purposes of sentencing, and the overall punishment must be proportionate to the gravity of the offending behaviour. If you start from that principle or premise, then why we do not support this Supplementary Order Paper is because, actually, it will infringe on fundamental human rights that we all have in regard to protections of our privacy. The privacy that I want to emphasise is the privacy of our information. There should be rules that govern the collection and handling of our personal data, and I think that we—when looking at why we do not support a public register, it is because it also has to be coupled, which is why I brought up the principles of sentencing, with what the sentencing enables us to do as a society.

Those offenders who are so heinous that we need to monitor some of them for ever can be sentenced to preventative detention, and so sentences such as that protect society from individuals whose behaviour is so unacceptable that, actually, there are going to be limits on their freedoms. We also have public protection orders, which are in place to prevent individuals who have been sentenced but of whom, on their release, we then say that there is something about them and their lack of rehabilitation—because I also want to focus on one of the Department of Corrections’ strategic objectives, which is about the management and rehabilitation of offenders. We would hope that people would go through our prison system and be managed in a way that then enables them to be rehabilitated and to rejoin society, but the reality is that some members of society are not able to do that, so we rely on the Government to protect us.

We do not want, I think, to set up a scenario where we actually breach individuals’ privacy and allow vigilantism on individuals, because we do not want to live in a society like that. We want to live in a society where we are friends to the people who live beside us, our neighbours—where we get along with members of our community because we all go to the same RSA or “cossie club” or play squash together, or whatever it might be. We do not want to live in a society where people who have committed an offence, served their time, and are now back in the community actually have to continue to serve a sentence for whatever transgression they have had in their past. We want to give people another opportunity to be part of society.

Fundamentally, I am sorry to say to my colleague Darroch Ball, that is really why we will not support your Supplementary Order Paper. I think that your intention in bringing this to the Committee was valid, because what you wanted to do was to enable—and particularly, I think, we have seen lately—parents of young children, to give them a choice about how they manage the young children in some of our communities where they do not know that a sex offender is living just down the road from the school or—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Carmel Sepuloni—final call.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I just want to refer to something that my colleague Kris Faafoi was talking about earlier, and that was in relation to clause 48B: “Application for change of name by registrable offender”. In clause 48B(1), it states that the offender “must not apply to the Registrar-General to register a change of his or her name under the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 1995 without first having obtained the written approval of the Commissioner.” Clause 48B(2) then goes on to say: “An offender who, without reasonable excuse, contravenes subsection (1) commits an offence and is liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years, or a fine …”.

What I want to check with the Minister for Social Development, Anne Tolley, is why the Department of Internal Affairs—I am particularly looking here at Births, Deaths and Marriages—has not been included as one of the Government agencies that information would be shared with. I am just thinking that if the offender does attempt to register a name change, actually, there are no checks and balances in place. There is nothing there that will actually capture the fact that this is a convicted child sex offender, and so, therefore, they could successfully change their name.

I want to know from the Minister whether or not she would look at extending the sharing of data amongst agencies, because if we look at page 2, where the commentary is, it states really clearly that the specified agencies at this stage are just the New Zealand Police, the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Social Development, and Housing New Zealand. So I want to ask the Minister whether or not there would be any consideration for including the Department of Internal Affairs to avoid the possibility of a registered child sex offender being able to change their name. I would like to hear from the Minister if that is possible.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): I would just like to speak to one specific point, which is new clause 36A, in particular subclause (4). The majority report from the Social Services Committee indicated that there should be a new clause 36A, “which we hope will ease the Attorney-General’s concerns.” We all want our Attorney-General to sleep well at night. The specific concerns expressed by the Attorney-General were in respect of the lifelong reporting obligations that can be imposed on people who are captured under this legislation. The Attorney-General deemed that this was inconsistent with section 9 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which is the right not to be subjected to disproportionately severe treatment or punishment. The Attorney-General said that he considered that registration and reporting obligations constitute a punishment—so after a person has been tried, convicted, sentenced, and completed a sentence, nevertheless we are going to impose further punishment on them. He suggested that placing registrable offenders on a register was not in itself disproportionate, but the fact that in the original drafting of the bill there was no mechanism ever for a person to have their name removed from that register was disproportionate. So new clause 36A does address that.

I should say that similar concerns were expressed by the Human Rights Commission, which said that “lifelong [Child Sex Offender Register] registration, which may be invoked retrospectively and without the possibility of independent review, constitutes disproportionately severe treatment.” So there are two fairly high-powered comments that we really ought to have some means for people to extract themselves from this register. Clause 36A was inserted for that reason, but what it unfortunately does under subclause (4) is: “The court may make an order indefinitely suspending the reporting obligations of the offender only if the offender satisfies the court that he or she does not pose a risk to the lives or sexual safety of 1 or more children, or of children generally.” In other words, it is a reverse onus of proof. It is incumbent on an individual to prove their innocence, rather than for corrections or police or anybody else to demonstrate that there is an ongoing serious risk.

That is unfortunate wording. It is an unfortunate reversal of the usual expectation that the prosecuting body, if you like—in this case it is the police, corrections, whoever—would not be obliged to prove that a particular individual continues to represent significant risk for children, but rather the onus is on the individual to prove their innocence. I think that is back to front. I do not think that is appropriate at all.

It does say that the police and corrections may make submission. If a person applies—I should make the point, they may not make such an application until at least 15 years have gone by, at which point, if they are unsuccessful in their application, in the normal course of events they must wait at least another 5 years before they can make a similar application. It just seems to be wrong that a person who has not reoffended for a period of 15 years after release from prison is nevertheless obliged to demonstrate innocence. I really wonder how you can do that. How can any of us prove to the satisfaction of a court that tomorrow we are not going to go out and offend in some way, large or small? I find it difficult to think of how one would construct such an argument. An argument of innocence against a charge that you are guilty is one thing, but proof of innocence, I think, sets too high a bar, and, to me, it is most unlikely in fact to satisfy the concerns expressed by the Attorney-General, or indeed by the Human Rights Commission. Thank you, I will leave it there.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): I just want to respond to the question from the member Carmel Sepuloni. I actually thought that she was on the Social Services Committee, but however. I draw her attention to Supplementary Order Paper 183, which I have tabled. The select committee actually added both the Department of Internal Affairs and the New Zealand Customs Service into the list of agencies, because it added in qualifying offences under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act, so it made sense then to put the New Zealand Customs Service in, and of course—[Interruption] The select committee made that decision. For the very reasons that the member was talking about, around the name, it added in the Department of Internal Affairs. The member needs to do her homework.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 183 in the name of the Hon Anne Tolley to Part 1 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 178 in the name of Darroch Ball be agreed to.

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

Ayes 14

New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Noes 107

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

Amendment not agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 183 in the name of the Hon Anne Tolley to Part 2 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Darroch Ball’s amendment to clause 39 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 178 is out of order, as it is inconsistent with a previous decision of the Committee.

The question was put that the remaining amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 178 in the name of Darroch Ball to Part 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 14

New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Noes 107

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

Amendments not agreed to.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

The question was put that following amendment in the name of Jacinda Ardern to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 183 in the name of the Hon Anne Tolley to insert new clause 56 be agreed to:

in new clause 56, new section 209(2)(ba), replace “Register” with “Government Agency Registration”.

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

Ayes 109

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

Noes 12

New Zealand First 12.

Amendment to the amendment agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment as amended set out on Supplementary Order Paper 183 in the name of the Hon Anne Tolley to Part 3 be agreed to.

Amendment as amended agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Jacinda Ardern’s amendment to clause 55 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 193 is out of order, as it is inconsistent with a previous decision of the Committee.

The question was put that the remaining amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 193 in the name of Jacinda Ardern to Part 3 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 109

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

Noes 12

New Zealand First 12.

Amendment agreed to.

Part 3 as amended agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 183 in the name of the Hon Anne Tolley, and the following amendment in her name, to schedule 1 be agreed to:

in clause 1(1)(f), replace “sentence; or” with “sentence”

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

Ayes 107

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 14

Green Party 14.

Amendments agreed to.

Schedule 1 as amended agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 183 in the name of the Hon Anne Tolley to schedule 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 107

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 14

Green Party 14.

Amendments agreed to.

Schedule 2 as amended agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): We move now to clauses 1 and 2, and the question is that Jacinda Ardern’s amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 193 stand part. Those who are of that opinion will say Aye, those against, No. The motion is carried.

Hon Members: Party vote.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Can you speak a bit louder, please? I take it you are calling for a party vote.

Hon Members: Yes.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): The Clerk will conduct a party vote.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 193 in the name of Jacinda Ardern to clause 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 109

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

Noes 12

New Zealand First 12.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 1 as amended agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): The question now is that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 183 in the name of the Hon Anne Tolley stand part. Those who are of that opinion will say Aye, and those against, say No. The Ayes have it.

Steffan Browning: No; party vote.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Sorry, I did not hear any votes against.

Steffan Browning: I said “No”, and then I called for a party vote.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Oh, sorry. The Clerk will conduct a party vote.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 183 in the name of the Hon Anne Tolley to clause 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 107

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 14

Green Party 14.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 2 as amended agreed to.

Name changed to Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Bill.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

Evidence Amendment Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to Evidence Act 2006

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I would like to make my first contribution in respect of the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 188, which amends clause 26 of the bill. The Supplementary Order Paper makes three changes. I am not going to talk about the changes to clause 16 or clause 35. They seem pretty clear and uncontentious. I do want to just check that my understanding is right in respect of clause 26(2), which inserts new section 90(7) into the Evidence Act. This concerns previous consistent statements of a witness. It is a bit confusing to follow, because the original provisions do not lie in section 90 of the original Evidence Act 2006. They appear to sit in section 35(3) of the Evidence Act, which concerns previous statements of a witness that are consistent with the witness’s evidence, and they are admissible currently if: “(a) the circumstances relating to the statement provide reasonable assurance that the statement is reliable; and (b) the statement provides the court with information that the witness is unable to recall.”

It seems that the Law Commission recommended that that part of section 35 be moved to what is going to be amended section 90, through this clause 26, but the recommendation from the Justice and Electoral Committee was that this admissibility of a prior consistent statement be limited to allowing the witness to refresh his or her memory, rather than the previous consistent statement of the witness being admissible in evidence as of right in those circumstances.

I am just a little confused at how this change works, given that the two subclauses after that still apply, which are the subclauses that are in the existing clause 26(2), inserting the new subsection (7). The two conditions are in paragraphs (a) and (b) and say that “(a) the circumstances relating to the statement provide reasonable assurance that the statement is reliable; and (b) the statement provides the court with information that the witness is unable to recall.” So if the previous statement is to be admissible now, it is going to be admissible not just to refresh the memory of the witness but, effectively, as evidence in its own right, which is now going to be there even if, having had their memory refreshed, the witness cannot remember it.

I wonder whether the explanatory note is right to say that that is what the Law Commission actually recommended, because that is what the explanatory note says, which is to say that the Law Commission recommended—well, it says this reflects the original policy intent to amend section 90 in line with the Law Commission’s recommendation to move the substance of section 35(3) to section 90. So that is my first question for the Minister of Justice.

My next question relates to what has been done in respect of business records. The bill, quite rightly, fixes a problem identified with the Evidence Act 2006, which is that the admissibility of business records was not quite right, so the definition in section 16 of the Evidence Act 2006 that deals with the “business record” is amended, and in amending it, it makes it clear that a business record that is a hearsay document that can be admitted as evidence of its content cannot “include a Police record that contains any statement or interview by or with an eyewitness, or a complainant, or any other person who purports to have knowledge or information about the circumstances of alleged offending or the issues in dispute in a civil proceeding”.

It is a longer definition than the original amendment that came to the select committee, which was “does not include a Police record that contains any statement or interview by or with an eyewitness or a victim”. So it has been extended in the way that was in the longer form that I read out. That seems to me to be sensible and, therefore, I am speaking in support of the amendment that has been made at the select committee because the normal rule against hearsay, which is being abrogated in respect of business records, should not be abrogated in respect of a police record of a statement or interview by an eyewitness, or a complainant, or any other person who purports to have knowledge. So I think that the select committee change there is useful, and the Labour Party will be supporting it. I think, if my understanding of the earlier matter that I referred to in terms of the new form of clause 26(2), inserting new section 90(7), is correct, then we will be supporting that too, but I just want to check that I have got that right.

I want to turn now to Jan Logie’s Supplementary Order Paper 195, which is about the ways in which evidence can be given by complainants in criminal proceedings that are sexual cases or concern domestic violence. The bill already makes some good improvements to the way in which child witnesses can give evidence in similar cases, and that is achieved in the proposed new section 107B of the Evidence Act 2006, inserted by clause 32 of this bill. Jan Logie is proposing an extension of that to the ways in which complainants can give evidence even if they are not child witnesses. I am aware that the Law Commission has done work in respect of this. I think it is unfortunate that some of the earlier work that was done by the Law Commission in this regard was, I think, rejected by the prior Minister of Justice, Judith Collins, and that, I think, is why Jan Logie is trying to do this by way of her Supplementary Order Paper.

We know that the number of successful prosecutions in respect of crimes of sexual violence and domestic violence that is not sexual—the rate of conviction is very low. It is very, very low. One of the reasons for that is that complainants are reluctant to give evidence. One of the ways that, as a society, we can improve the experience of complainants is through these perhaps more, shall I say, protected ways of giving evidence: by video or behind a screen. That, I agree, is completely appropriate in respect of child witnesses, and I think it is probably appropriate in respect of complainants too. I think that subsequent recommendations or responses from the department to some of the Law Commission’s earlier recommendations might see this come forward as Government legislation in a future bill. We would be willing to consider that then if this Supplementary Order Paper does not get up.

I think the reason that Jan Logie is bringing this forward is that she is frustrated that the prior Minister—not the current Minister in the chair, the Hon Amy Adams—has pulled that out, so I will be interested to hear from the Minister as to whether the Government will be supporting Jan Logie’s Supplementary Order Paper, which I think has got No. 195 at the top, and it is about clause 32, inserting, after the new section 107B, this new section 107C that she proposes, and some related documents. It is quite complex—there are other cross references in the Act that you have got to get right to make these things right. I hope—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! I might just be able to help the member. It appears that no Supplementary Order Paper has been received from the member Jan Logie. There was a proposal, but it is no longer being tabled.

Hon DAVID PARKER: I picked this up off the Table, Mr Chair.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Maybe we can seek further clarification to the clarification we have already had.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, OK, thank you. I will accept that clarification.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Maybe it should have been taken off the Table.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Yes, well that makes it easier, because it is actually quite a complex thing to do by way of Supplementary Order Paper, and so I congratulate Jan Logie on the effort that she obviously put into this. But maybe she came to the conclusion that it was actually better to leave that to a process, because one of the points that I was going to make is that it may be that some submitters on the legislation had not properly considered that in their submissions, and it might be better to improve that area of the law in a later bill.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I think it was in light of select committee changes that were made.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Right, OK. Thank you. In terms of the bill—

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I do want to take a call earlier in this debate, and I will take the opportunity to respond to the points Mr Parker raised. I also just want to touch on what I also understood to be the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) in front of the Committee. Given that the Committee has granted a little bit of leeway to Mr Parker to talk about them, I am sure it will be equally generous in allowing me a little bit of leeway to respond.

May I begin, of course, with a very overarching comment about the effect and impact of the bill. I think it is one that has, as far as I know, broad support in the House as to its aims, which are, effectively, to ensure that vulnerable witnesses, particularly child witnesses, are far better protected in the ways in which they can give evidence, and that when prior video evidence is taken, particularly in sexual violence cases and involving vulnerable complainants, that evidence is very carefully handled—and, of course, the changes that Mr Parker made reference to in terms of prior consistent statements.

If I can just firstly address the issues that Mr Parker raised around clause 26 and the impact of the changes there, I can confirm for Mr Parker that the changes in this solely pick up the Law Commission recommendation, which is really just to move what was in section 35 of the Evidence Act 2006 into section 90, being its better place. There is a slight amendment in my SOP simply because the drafting left out a single word, but a reasonably important one, which is “admissibility”, and so we have just made sure that the bill as you have it in front of you, with the addition of the Government SOP, simply replaces the original wording of section 35(3), into the new location as reflected by the Law Commission’s recommendation.

I can assure Mr Parker both that it is simply giving effect to the Law Commission recommendation and that it does not change the operation and the practice that is well understood in respect of what was section 35(3) and will now be in section 90.

I am just going to briefly, again, touch on what I understood to be the SOPs from Jan Logie, and let us work with the benefit of doubt for a moment—

Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I wonder whether we could have clarification, because I have just been approached by the Greens’ whip to say that their understanding is that those Supplementary Order Papers that I was addressing were, in fact, tabled and are live. So if we could have some clarification of that, Mr Chair, then I—sorry to interrupt the Minister, but it would be relevant to the Minister’s answers too.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Yes. To clarify, Supplementary Order Paper 195, in the name of Jan Logie, and Supplementary Order Paper 194, in her name, are live.

Hon AMY ADAMS: Thank you, Mr Chairman. So it is nice to know that Mr Parker and I both were operating off the same information and that it was, in fact, correct, which is always an added bonus.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): It always helps.

Hon AMY ADAMS: Ha ha! It is not always the case, but we will take it. So we have the two SOPs from Ms Logie, and I certainly want to support the intention that I know she is trying to deliver in this space, which is better protection for vulnerable witnesses. Although the Government will not be supporting the SOPs, I do want to pass on my assurance to the Committee that we are absolutely interested in continuing to work on further ways that we can to support victims, particularly of sexual and family violence, not only in the manner in which they give their evidence and the use of alternative means but actually a far wider range of changes than that.

Mr Parker made comment in his contribution about the fact that, actually, although there is a lot of ability for us to make improvements in this space, it is in fact an incredibly complex area. My view in getting this legislation up in this time frame was that the changes we had encompassed here were clear, they were straightforward, they were well supported, and the sooner I could give effect to them the better.

The changes that we are working on around the Law Commission’s piece of work around sexual violence, family violence, and the way the court responds are extensive. They combine a range of changes, from the minor and simple through to the quite considerable reform of how we think about our system of laws. I think we should be open to that discussion. I think it is a big discussion to have, but I think it is one that we should take time to get right. Although child witnesses and sexual violence and family violence complainants and victims have some matters in common, they are actually quite different vulnerabilities that we are dealing with, and I think the solutions need to be thought through carefully.

Obviously, in some cases, a witness will be both a child witness and also a victim of sexual violence. Of course, the main thing is that the most comprehensive level of protection should apply in that case. But where we are dealing with sexual violence victims who are not children, although I absolutely have a piece of work in front of me that is comprehensive in looking at these issues, I do not think it is as simple as saying: “Well, if you give your evidence through closed-circuit television, we can consider the support of sexual violence victims appropriately dealt with.” But I am very interested in working not only with Ms Logie but with members around the House who I know have an interest in improving this area of work.

If I can talk then to Ms Logie’s other SOP, which the Government also will not be supporting, Supplementary Order Paper 194, which is seeking to amend section 85 of the Evidence Act 2006 to explicitly provide that a judge may disallow intimidating questions. The reason, again, that we are not proposing to support the SOP in this form is simply that I am satisfied that for current purposes the existing ability of a judge to order that questions be ruled out of order because they are unfair or improper gives the judiciary a very wide range of redress in the case of intimidating questions. Again, certainly the whole conduct of our courtrooms, the conduct of defence counsel, the conduct of some of the prosecuting counsel—more usually, defence counsel—and the questioning of witnesses is part of this wider piece of work that we want to be considering.

Can I just make the point too, referring to the earlier SOP, that although this bill sets up a clear presumption in favour of the use of alternative ways of giving evidence, there is still an absolute ability for the judge in any case to make that determination. So it should not be mistaken that sexual violence victims do not have the ability to give evidence through alternative means; they absolutely do. What we have done in this bill is create a rebuttable presumption that that should always be the case for child witnesses, and I would expect that judges do use that with considerable care, when it is appropriate, for sexual violence victims now.

But if I can simply reiterate my support of Ms Logie and the Committee to continue to work on how the whole system of prosecuting sexual and family violence is better dealt with—I will absolutely do that. However, I am not convinced that these SOPs, pulled out as individual little aspects of that piece of work, are best progressed in this form. I note that the select committee considered them and rejected them, and I share their view, but the work is important, which will continue through another channel.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I would like to—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member—[Interruption] Sorry, I have a wicked sense of humour. The time has come for the Chair to leave the Chamber. The Committee will resume at 7.30 p.m.

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

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Tēnā koe e Te Whare. Tēnā koutou te whānau o Te Whare. Kia ora mai tātou, tēnā tātou katoa. Members, when the House suspended, the member Stuart Nash was robbed of his opportunity to speak by the arrival of the time to leave the Chamber for the dinner break, and I ask him to get to his feet and give us 5 minutes of his best.

STUART NASH: First of all, let me just go over what I was talking about when I was interrupted. Good evening, Mr Chair. That is it. No, look I should not make light of this, because this is actually a very serious bill. I would like to talk about clause 16. This is the application to offer evidence or ask questions about the sexual experience of a complainant in sexual cases. This is a very serious matter.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! I just ask the member to resume his seat momentarily. Sorry, my oversight—I call Stuart Nash.

STUART NASH: As I was saying.

Hon Member: You’ll have to start again.

STUART NASH: OK. Look, let me start again. Good evening, Mr Chair. This is a very serious bill and I do want to talk about a serious clause. This is clause 16, inserting new section 44A. This is the application to offer evidence or ask questions about the sexual experience of a complainant in sexual cases. First of all, let me outline what clause 16 is about, but then let me outline the couple of concerns I do have about the practical application of this.

First of all, I think this clause is very good. What this says in 44A(1) is: “An application under section 44(1) must comply with subsections (2) to (5) (as relevant) unless—(b) every other party has waived those requirements;”—we are talking about asking questions about sexual experience—“or (c) the Judge dispenses with those requirements.” Let me come back to why, or how, a judge can dispense with those requirements. But let me first of all say why I agree with this. So what 44A(2), (3), and (4), basically, say is that if a party wants to offer evidence about the sexual experience of a complainant, if a party wants to ask any questions about the sexual experience of a complainant, or if any document is intended to be produced as evidence of the sexual experience of a complainant, then notice is required under subsection 2 and must be accompanied. So this is, in essence, asking the complainant’s permission to dig a whole lot deeper into their sexual history.

What it says here is that this application must be complied with unless the judge dispenses with those requirements that I have just outlined. Now, what it does in subsection 6 is it outlines the areas in which the judge can dispense with those requirements. The first one, 44A(6)(a), is “having regard to the nature of the evidence or question proposed to be offered or asked, no party is substantially prejudiced by the failure to comply with a requirement;”. I sort of get that. I understand that. That makes sense. In 44A(6)(b), it says: “compliance was not reasonably practicable in the circumstances;”—and, again, I understand that, and I can see how you could mount an argument in that case. But it is 44A(6)(c), in clause 16, that really causes me concerns—this is on page 8—and this is a reason why the judge can dispense with any of the requirements, i.e. to seek permission to ask about a person’s sexual history, and that is if “it is in the interests of justice to do so.” Now, that is a very, very wide condition that it provides to judges.

Let me outline the concerns I have there. First of all, what is the definition of the “interests of justice”? I know of a number of cases—and this is the reason why this bill is here—where a woman’s sexual history has been brought into play as use of evidence against her. There is a case of a very good friend of mine—she is a high-profile person in Napier. For obvious reasons, I am not going to mention her name, but she is quite open about this. She accused someone of rape. What happened is the defendant’s attorney painted this woman as a man-hating woman who was determined to bring this guy down. She is about 56 years old. Her whole sexual history was brought into play. She was painted as just a not very pleasant woman who had a loose morality. Now that is absolutely not the case—but this judge tore her to pieces.

This woman was an advocate for women victims of sexual violence, and she said to me “You know, if a young woman came to me now, after what I have been through, I would find it incredibly hard to recommend that she go to the police and make a complaint.”—and this is a woman who has advocated on behalf of women victims of sexual violence, and that is an absolute travesty. So I know what this part of the bill is trying to do, and I applaud it in terms of seeking permission to dig really deep into a woman’s past. But when there is a clause here that says the judge may dispense with these requirements because “it is in the interests of justice to do so.”, I can imagine that this could turn into a very complex legal argument. I can imagine a smart lawyer successfully challenging the definition of the “interests of justice” on behalf of his client—the interest of justice argument—and especially when we consider that the reason this is here, the reason this is before the Committee, is because this is a common tactic used by defendants to discredit women. I have real concerns about how this will be used, from a practical perspective.

I get what the bill is trying to do, and I think it is admirable that we must seek permission from the woman before being allowed to go there. Obviously, there is another way that we can dispense with these requirements, and that is if every party has waived those requirements. That is, if the defendant and the prosecution have said: “OK, no problem. Let us dig as deep as we can.” But from what we know about sexual abuse and the amount reported—let alone the number of cases that are successfully tried—it is very, very minuscule.

That is why I have real concerns about this, because, as mentioned, this puts a whole lot of power in the hands of a judge. Of course it is the judge’s courtroom, so he or she has the discretion to make decisions, but the decision around what is in the best interests of justice, I would argue, is a really subjective call, and I would like to see that used absolutely sparingly when a judge does decide that it is in the interests of justice. Because if it is not used sparingly, if it is given a loose definition that can be successfully argued by every two-bit lawyer who comes in front of a judge, then we know that the application to offer evidence or ask questions about the sexual experience of a complainant in sexual cases will actually mean nothing. It will not have the desired effect, which I believe this legislation tries to give effect to, and that is to remove the fear among women who have been victims of sexual abuse, so that they are coming forward without fear or prejudice that their reputations are going to be dragged through the mud.

I know the Minister in the chair is not responsible for this bill, therefore—with all due respect to the Minister, I am not being disrespectful—I doubt it is worth asking her a question about how she sees this is going to be applied. But the Minister has had responsibility for pretty serious portfolios around this. I would be interested in whether she has any ideas around this—or whether she, like me, would like to see a very narrow definition of how the judiciary do apply this. I would like to put on the record that I do have concerns that this could be open to—and I will not say abuse, that is the wrong term; this could open a Pandora’s box, so to speak. Thank you very much.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Climate Change Issues): In reply to the member Stuart Nash: I am not the expert on this bill—it is not my bill—however, I have been given information and I would like to pass that on to the Committee in response. So the “interests of justice” test is a standard legal test that judges are used to applying. It encompasses a range of factors and will be fact-specific and determined on a case-by-case basis. The provision in question—new section 44A(6)(c), inserted by clause 16—is only about the procedural requirements of filing an application; it will not have a bearing on the test for admissibility of the evidence. The bill does not alter that test; it just requires the application to be made before the trial.

JAN LOGIE (Green): At this stage of the debate, I would like to speak to all three of the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that are on the table, and specifically to speak to Minister Amy Adams’ SOP 188 first, and to reference the Minister’s comments in reference to my SOPs earlier in the evening. The Green Party will be voting against the Minister’s SOP because it seeks to extend the periodic review of the operation of the Evidence Act 2006.

This Act is incredibly important for justice for victims of sexual violence and domestic violence. In this country, we have had many, many pieces of work telling us what we need to do to reform our justice system. We know that there is about a 1 percent conviction rate for sexual violence in this country, and about 2 percent for domestic violence. A significant part of the reason that the conviction rate is so low is our justice system and our courts and how they are operating. We have got a body of academic work where there have been interviews with lawyers and judges, and lawyers and judges have said that if a family member of theirs was raped, they would not advise them to go to the police and take a case to court, because they would not want to see their loved one re-traumatised through the court process. We have had many recommendations telling us what we should do to fix the system to stop that reality, to enable victims of sexual violence to achieve justice, and, as a consequence of that, for us all to be safer as a society when people are held properly to account. Yet we have not managed to get those changes through our system.

Initiated in 2009, we had the Law Commission work on alternative trials and pre-trial processes. It was taken off the table by the last parliamentary term’s justice Minister, Judith Collins, and put back on by the current Minister of Justice, Amy Adams, but the problem was that she gave the Law Commission a very short time frame for considering the work, which reduced the scope of what it was able to consider in that review. That review was reported back in December last year, and one of its recommendations was that there needed to be further consideration given to reviewing the substantive rules of evidence—the exact content of this piece of legislation in front of us at the moment—and it suggested that it could take place at the same time as the next review of the Evidence Act 2006, which is now being extended by this SOP put forward by the Government. So we have had case after case going through our courts that have just broken the hearts of women and men around the country who have looked on and said: “That is unfair. That is wrong—that somebody should be subjected to that experience in the process of trying to get justice.”

We have had a massive piece of academic work called From “Real Rape” to Real Justice: Prosecuting Rape in New Zealand by Elisabeth McDonald and Yvette Tinsley from Victoria University, which has told us what we need to be considering. Only some of that work went into the Law Commission’s review; some of it was put aside. Then that work got shrunk down, and then one of their conclusions was “Well, we need to be looking at the Evidence Act.”, and now the time frame for that has been put out again. It is actually completely unacceptable.

We heard from the Minister earlier this evening that the Government cannot support the SOPs that I have put forward because: “Well, the Government’s looking at these issues in a considered way, and they are very complex issues.” This has been going on since before 2009, when the solutions and the issues were put on the table—since 2009. This is 7 years of victims of sexual violence in this country waiting for us to do our job, to give them a system that has a hope of giving them some dignity in the process of trying to achieve justice. It is not acceptable that this House would extend that process any further. We have the chance to actually prioritise this.

I will just calm myself at this moment and try to bring it back to the SOPs that we have put forward, which are tiny—tiny—tinkerings with the system, but they are systems and things that we could do in the form of an amendment to this Act that could make a small change. One of those things, which was recommended by Elisabeth McDonald in her submission, was to be able to allow the alternative ways of giving evidence, which have been created in this legislation for children, and to make that the presumption for victims of sexual violence and domestic violence. In her response to this, the Minister noted that although the Government supports the intent of my SOPs, this was an incredibly complex area, and there are different vulnerabilities for adults and they need different solutions. Well, I would like to point out to the Minister that the latest report from the Law Commission, which came forward in December, said that less traumatic methods of giving evidence at trial should be made available to complainants of sexual violence. That is what my SOP does. I will also note that the Minister also said that providing evidence by closed-circuit television will not solve it all—no it will not.

I really, really wish the Justice and Electoral Committee could have been given a bill that would have enabled it to consider all the issues to make a real difference, but this is one thing that could. The ongoing research noted by Elisabeth McDonald still indicates that there is an inconsistent approach to the issue of support and advice to adult complainants in sexual cases, and a presumption would address this issue: “There is no evidence to suggest this has changed as a matter of practice … nor has there been any responsive amendment to the Victims of Crimes Guidance to Prosecutors … [the] adult complainants who have made allegations of childhood sexual abuse may also be”—and this has been recognised by our courts—“extremely vulnerable and require assistance to give evidence …”. Yet the select committee chose not to recommend those changes to this House. My SOP rectifies that oversight and gives this House the opportunity tonight to ensure that sexual violence victims have that presumption to give evidence in alternative ways. It does not lock them into to it. They can still opt out of it and provide evidence in other ways. This has been recommended by the Law Commission. The need for it is supported by long-standing research, and this House should do that. Victims of sexual violence in this country deserve us to give that to them.

The other recommendation that I make in the SOP is, again, incredibly minor. It is to ensure, or to provide—excuse me just while I find my piece of paper—that we “add the word ‘intimidating’ to the list of unacceptable questions that a Judge may disallow or direct that a witness is not obliged to answer.” The point of this is that although judges do currently have discretion—and that has been the argument against putting this in—the advice and the suggestion from Elisabeth McDonald for including it in the list is more about the signal that it will send to victims. Victims will know that intimidating evidence is not considered to be appropriate in our courts. That may actually help build that confidence in our court systems to help victims of sexual violence to come forward and use the system in the hope of getting justice. We know we cannot assure them of that at the moment. We know that, actually, when we have seen a very recent case where, I would say, some evidence that was allowed in lines of questioning was completely unacceptable, I think there needs to be clearer direction for the court and also a clearer message of what victims can expect. On that note, I will be interested in hearing responses.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I want to go over one of the main provisions in this bill and return to new section 44A, inserted by clause 16, to address some of the comments that a member across the Chamber made. I do disagree with the member. I acknowledge his heartfelt intervention in this debate on behalf of his friend, who clearly went through an incredibly distressing time that continued through the court process. I do want to acknowledge that, but I do wish to take a different view of the impact of new section 44A.

The member ascertained that the effect of new section 44A in the bill was an opportunity to delve deeper into a complainant’s previous sexual history, and I will take a different view to that. Also, I will take a different view to the evidence that the member gave when he referred to new section 44A, subsection 6(c), around the interests of natural justice. It is not a judge’s role to attack, I think the word was, a witness or a person in the stand. It is not the judge’s role to do that. The member did say that, so I just wanted to mention that.

Returning to the notice requirements for evidence of previous sexual history, what the bill does do is it adds a requirement that the defence give notice before the start of the trial if they intend to use evidence about a victim’s sexual history with someone other than the defendant. Now that is different. This was, in fact, a change that was recommended by the Law Commission and has been picked up in this bill. The notice requirement will allow the admissibility of the evidence to be determined pre-trial, so it is not in any case an opportunity to delve deeper, but it is an opportunity for the admissibility of the evidence to be determined before the trial starts. At the moment, permission to introduce this evidence can actually be sought from the judge at any time during the trial. So it is my view, and it is the view of the Justice and Electoral Committee, which voted in favour of the part of the bill in this clause, that new section 44A around notice of application to offer evidence or ask questions about sexual experience is an improvement on current practice.

Stuart Nash: That was my argument.

JACQUI DEAN: The member is saying across the Chamber “That isn’t my argument.”, but it was certainly the argument that I heard, and it was at variance with the intent of the bill.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I first of all want to make some comments about the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) and then finish with some comments about clause 33A. First, I turn to SOP 188, in the name of the Hon Amy Adams. New Zealand First will support this SOP. It does a couple of very simple things: firstly, to replace the word “notice” with “application” in clause 16, and then another simple thing, to extend from 1 to 2 years the period for periodic review of the Act. We have no problem with any of that. The second of the three amendments that it makes, which is that a previous consistent statement of a witness will be admissible in evidence rather than the witness being able to refer to it only to refresh his or her memory, I think is perfectly fine by us, and we are happy to support that SOP.

The more substantial one I wanted to make comments on was SOP 195, in the name of Jan Logie, and I thought she mounted a very logical and compelling argument in favour of the thrust of that SOP, which would extend the use of the alternative ways to give evidence beyond the current limitation age of 18 years so that all complainants of family and sexual violence could make use of that. We think that is actually a very good thing to do, and the main reason is that people who give evidence in those sorts of cases have often had traumatic experiences, and it is good for them, for those reasons, to be able to give evidence in those alternative ways, like video, for example. In other words, it is the same rationale for young people who find giving evidence very difficult. For these people in those circumstances, it is just as difficult for them, so why not extend that to people in those situations? For that reason, New Zealand First will support that SOP.

However, we are not going to support Jan Logie’s SOP 194—well, one out of two is not too bad, Jan. Anyway, the reason for that is that we do not think that inserting the term “intimidating” after “misleading” in section 85(1) of the principal Act is a good idea. The reason, simply, is that I do not think the word “intimidating” is well enough understood or is certain enough to be used in that context. So we would prefer that the word not be there, and we will therefore not support that SOP.

The only other thing I need to talk about is something that I think deserves a comment, and that relates to new clause 33A, which inserts new sections 119A and 119B into the principal Act. The reason I mention that is that the Justice and Electoral Committee heard a submission on access to video evidence, which I thought was quite compelling, that demonstrated what can happen to a person if we do not get the law right in these sorts of respects. I refer in particular to access to video records of evidence outside criminal or Family Court cases, because some tribunals and similar statutory bodies have powers quite outside this legislation to call for and consider video evidence, but they are not subject to the regime that is actually prescribed in regulations under the principal Act. Injustices can flow from that, and there was an injustice to the person who made this particular submission.

Under new clause 33A, the requirement that the police would be prohibited from releasing a video record of evidence to parties to proceedings outside criminal or family courts unless the relevant body orders it is, we think, most appropriate. It would deal with the situation raised by the submitter and would operate to avoid the sorts of injustices that we heard had occurred to that particular person. It is a very serious issue, because that person had suffered serious damage to his reputation and his ability to gain employment, so it is not as though it is a minor matter. It is a very serious matter, and I want to commend the select committee for listening to him, understanding, and doing something about that issue. We very much support it.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I listened to the Green member Jan Logie speak a few minutes ago about her real concerns about part of the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 188 around changing the review period from 1 year to 2 years, which, on the face of it, does not sound an awful lot longer. Before that I listened to the Minister’s comments before the break with regard to Jan Logie’s SOPs 194 and 195 and why, although she was sympathetic to those SOPs, she could not support them. She used phrases such as “we need to pass this legislation the sooner the better”, and that there is a “bigger” discussion happening around the issues that Jan Logie’s SOPs, particularly her substantive SOP—195, I think it is—address. She said that she had thought through carefully whether or not to support it.

All of those things are reasonable to say, but I want to ask the Minister some questions. I accept that the Minister in the chair right now, the Hon Paula Bennett, is probably not going to be able to answer them. If possible—

Hon Member: Have faith in the Minister.

CLARE CURRAN: Or she may. If the Minister Amy Adams, who has carriage of this bill, is able to answer the questions before this debate is up, that would be useful, I think, for the Committee—if not, then perhaps in the third reading—to address the issues. They are around the piece of work that she referred to that is being undertaken to address the issues partly, and no doubt more, raised by Jan Logie in her SOP 195 with regard to the giving of evidence by complainants in criminal proceedings for people who are over 18, and alternative ways of giving evidence by complainants in criminal proceedings.

I know Jan Logie referred to them as minor amendments, but they do seem quite significant to me. I did not sit on the Justice and Electoral Committee, but I did speak in the second reading of this bill and I have considered the issues that lie behind it quite carefully. It does seem to me that in the select committee process there clearly was quite a discussion about the recommendations put before the select committee around dealing with evidence given by women who were over 18, and I wonder why that could not have been dealt with at the time, because it does seem that those issues were pretty important.

I am going to just refer to the advice that was reported from the select committee by the Associate Professor of Law from Victoria University Elisabeth McDonald, who, along with Yvette Tinsley, being New Zealand experts, advised on making those changes that Jan Logie refers to, which would benefit the victims of sexual violence. This was around alternative means of giving evidence—not having to give evidence face to face, and that this should be extended to just beyond the age limitation of 18 to all victims of family and sexual violence. I would like to know what the rationale is for holding back on this, what the piece of work is that is being addressed by the Minister, what the time line is for that piece of work, and whether that is going to appear as another amendment to the Evidence Act 2006, and when that might occur. We know that the statistics are frightening—

DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I just want to start by thanking Minister Bennett for the clarification on a question that Stuart Nash posed before. Notwithstanding the comments made by Jan Logie about the extent of this bill, I do agree with my colleague Clare Curran in terms of some of the issues that this bill raises and improves.

It may not go as far as we would like it to go, and it may have been delayed. I want to just start with a couple of introductory comments about that delay. This piece of legislation has been in the mill, really, since about 2006, when the Law Commission put out its first report. It really has sat in abeyance on the Order Paper for pretty much 5 years while it has been churning through. So it has been a very long time.

I will put that into further context with just a brief comment. We have the sixth-worst sexual violence record in the OECD. It is nothing to be proud of. We have an incredibly high domestic violence record. The fact that it has taken the bill this long to get through is actually pretty significant. This bill will not fix that record, but when you look at the fact that out of about 100 sexual violence cases, 10 of those get to court, and one leads to a conviction, you can see, as in the example that Stuart Nash was pointing out just a minute ago, that the fact that those odds are so long certainly does put people off going forward and reporting those cases, because of the stress and the duress they are going to be facing when they end up in court.

But having said that, I just want to point out three or four of the issues that I think I am particularly pleased to see in this piece of legislation. The first is in terms of children and the fact that for a child witness the onus has shifted to the point that child witnesses will give evidence in alternative ways. Alternative ways means closed-circuit television (CCTV) through video, but not through direct personal presence inside a court. This is significant in the sense that it will mean that the presumption is that no child will appear in court, which, obviously, is going to be intimidating and traumatic for many of the child witnesses—so the fact is that that has now become an assumption that that would be the case. Now, it is up to the judge—the judge can ask whether the child would want to come into the court, but it means that cross-examination does not occur in an intimidating and potentially traumatic environment. That, I think, is good.

Secondly, the bill also provides that a child witness is entitled to have a support person when giving evidence, and may even have more than one support person if that indeed is necessary as well. The provisions for support persons also can apply whether a complainant, or the witnesses covered by those subsections, gives evidence in an alternative way or an ordinary way. The support person will be there with the child whether the child is giving evidence through a CCTV and video or whether the child is actually physically present inside the courtroom. Again, it is a small step but a significant step forward in terms of being able to satisfy some of the issues that perhaps prevent people, particularly children, from being able to give accurate evidence in a court of law.

There have been some other issues brought forward, particularly about the video recording of evidence. There is a series of three offences under new section 95(1), inserted by clause 27. If the video evidence that is being used is used inappropriately or shown publicly or whatever, there is a new series of offences that will come into play there.

The last thing I just want to mention is section 95, which is being amended. Section 95 of the principal Act is being replaced with: “A defendant in a sexual case, or a defendant in or a party to criminal or civil proceedings concerning domestic violence or harassment, is not entitled to personally cross-examine—”. This is a significant issue because we have had past cases where the defendant has been able to stand up and cross-examine and intimidate and, in effect, traumatise, particularly a woman who is the complainant in the case, and put that person through an enormous and extraordinary ordeal in the court. The fact that that cannot happen now is, I think, significant progress, along with a number of the issues that, obviously, the Labour Party will be supporting.

I come back to the point that I started from. This has taken a long time to come through. It is a very significant piece of legislation in terms of enabling people to feel much more confident about taking their cases to court. It gives a much greater chance of a conviction occurring as a result of that. It may also provide or prompt some degree—the fact is that it might deter the people who commit these crimes from carrying out those crimes, because they know that they have a greater chance of being convicted in court. It may actually have a dampening effect on the committing of those crimes, because they are highly prevalent in New Zealand—much to our shame. With those comments, I will resume my seat.

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

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): I am going to dedicate my whole contribution to the Supplementary Order Paper of my colleague Jan Logie—it is the one that wants to insert “intimidating” after “misleading”. The reason I want to do so is that I have just been reading from McDonald and Tinsley and why they say it is so important.

Just for the Committee’s information, section 85 in the principal Act is about unacceptable questions that are put to witnesses—to victims, a lot of the time. Some of the criteria from the section, which we use to determine whether those questions are acceptable or not, are that you cannot ask questions that are misleading—that is, giving the wrong idea or impression; you cannot ask questions that are improper and that are not in accordance with acceptable standards; you cannot ask questions that are unfair—so, they are not based on or behaving according to the principles of equality and justice; and you cannot ask questions that are needlessly repetitive or expressed in language that is too complicated for the witness to understand.

So when I look at what “intimidating” means—definitions are really important—it means to frighten or overawe, especially in order to make someone do what one wants. It also means to frighten, to terrify, and to scare. I could not imagine us wanting to frighten, to terrify, or to scare any witness who was providing evidence in a court, so I just do not understand what the issue is.

What McDonald and Tinsley said was that if we add “intimidating”—and “overbearing” was the other word that they used, actually—it was noted that it “calls for greater judicial management of inappropriate cross-examination, and considered such a change may assist such judicial control.” It also noted that section 85 is about giving the judge “a wide discretion to control the nature of the questions and the manner in which they are put.” I think that some may see it as a little amendment, but I actually think it is quite a big amendment, because it speaks to the integrity of putting victims at the centre of pieces of legislation.

I stand to support this Supplementary Order Paper 194, as does the Labour Party, and I want to commend Jan Logie for her passion and for bringing to the Committee Supplementary Order Papers that are going to enhance this particular piece of legislation. I think that she speaks for members of communities that she is actively involved with. She does a lot of work—as others of us do, but Jan particularly—with Women’s Refuge, with women’s organisations, with Victim Support, with organisations that entrust her to come into this House and to speak for them.

I would implore this Committee and the Minister and other members of Parliament to add “intimidating” to section 85, which ensures that witnesses who are being cross-examined are not frightened, are not overawed, and are not terrified by the experience. We have talked a lot about the minute number of women who stand up and have the strength to go through the judicial process. Not enough women stand up and make complaints, so we want to empower those women who do with a process that is not going to frighten, terrify, or scare them.

I think that this is one of the Supplementary Order Papers that, as I said before, strikes at the heart of what this bill is trying to achieve. Again, I hope that there will be some common sense tonight and that we as a Parliament will at least pass this Supplementary Order Paper. Kia ora.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): I move, That the question be now put.

JAN LOGIE (Green): I would like to speak again and give some additional information about the Minister of Justice’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 188, and thank my Labour colleague Louisa Wall for her contribution and, I think, for creating that picture around why my SOP to add “intimidating” to the list of inadmissible questioning is so important. This is because it is about how we can create and change the culture in our courts in a way that holds the belief that we can achieve justice without traumatising people.

I think that intimidating questioning is clearly aimed at traumatising witnesses, and I do not believe that that is necessary to achieving justice. I absolutely do not believe it, and I do not believe that most New Zealanders think that witnesses should be intimidated in the docks or that our courts should be a place where that happens full stop, let alone people who have experienced violence against them in such a deeply personal way—and the impact that that has on people—then having to stand up in front of a room of people and expose themselves and then be intimidated through that process. That is not about justice, and I do hope that members in this Committee will vote tonight for a compassionate justice system that believes and stands up for the rights of defendants and the dignity of victims.

I would just like to speak a little bit more again to the problem I have with the Minister’s SOP, which delays the review of this Act and puts that further out, just by bringing to this Committee’s attention some of the issues that would be considered in that review. There are issues around whether the court should record evidence at trials of complainants in cases where it is not already pre-recorded. This is particularly important, again, for victims of sexual violence, when we have very long delays in people being able to get their cases to court. This process can go on for a very long time, and, if there has not been a pre-recording or if there is a mistrial or people have to come back, to be able to keep holding that experience, to be able to keep it alive, and to be able to recall it accurately under questioning sometimes months, if not years, down the track, is traumatic. So the review of this Act would help this Parliament consider that amendment properly.

The review would also be looking at whether the basis of admissibility of relevant evidence should be expanded to include the impact on the complainant of having to answer questions—considering the impact of the questions on the complainant, especially during cross-examination—and taking into account the distress likely to be experienced as a consequence of the questioning. We know, again, that this is very significantly linked to the issue of intimidation, but it goes much wider than that, around considering how we create court processes that give the defendant the right to a proper trial and proper consideration of evidence but do not cause distress to a complainant. That is not a simple thing to work out. A huge amount of work has been done on it, and, clearly, we have not got there with this piece of legislation in being able to come up with solutions, but the Minister’s SOP will extend the process of being able to come up with a solution to that even further. It is pretty much at the heart of the problems with our court system at the moment.

Also, looking at other issues that came up for the Law Commission to consider were—

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 58

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

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 188 in the name of the Hon Amy Adams to Part 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 107

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 14

Green Party 14.

Amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 194 in the name of Jan Logie to Part 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 46

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14.

Noes 75

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 195 in the name of Jan Logie to clause 32 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 58

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

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Revocation and amendments to other enactments

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I want to take a relatively short call just to explain why the Labour Party is supporting the amendments to Part 2 that were proposed at the Justice and Electoral Committee. They are, essentially, to move the new reference to the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 from Part 1 of schedule 1 to schedule 2 of the Act, making it clear that the list of matters that can be appealed to a higher court if a direction is made at an initial trial includes the “making or refusing to make a pre-trial witness anonymity order under section 110 of the Evidence Act 2006:”. This adds to the list in the Criminal Procedure Act 2011, which, in section 217(2) says “The defendant or the prosecutor may, with the leave of the first appeal court, appeal to that court against a decision that is one of the following:”, and then there is a big, long list of “making or refusing to make” an order under various sections, which creates this ability for either the defendant or the prosecutor, with leave of the first appeal court, to make a further appeal. Added to that list is this new category, which is the “making or refusing to make a pre-trial witness anonymity order under section 110 of the Evidence Act 2006:”.

At the same time, there is also a very minor change. It is the revocation of a statutory regulation, the Evidence (Recognition of Overseas Practitioners) Order 2008, which has been revoked by clause 37(3) of this bill.

Both of those seem to be appropriate, which is why the Labour Party will be supporting this part of the bill.

Part 2 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clauses 1 and 2

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I do not think these clauses are particularly contentious, either. As has been well traversed, the Evidence Amendment Bill 2006 is supported. There are some criticisms that have been made by Opposition parties that some of the changes that could have been made to the way in which complainants who are not children could give evidence in criminal cases relating to family violence or sexual cases—those amendments that were proposed by Jan Logie have been defeated by the Government. The rest of the bill has the support of Opposition parties. I do not think there is really any need for me to relitigate that. The Labour Party will be supporting these clauses.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): We have heard from a number of speakers about how long this piece of legislation has taken to come before the Committee, the importance of it, and that, hopefully, what it will do is encourage victims of sexual violence—and we are predominantly talking about women here—to come forward. I wonder why it is not coming to force until 1 July 2017. Initially, the commencement was stock standard with most pieces of legislation that pass through the House, which is that they come into force on the 28th day after the date on which they receive the Royal assent. For some reason, it has actually been pushed out to July 2017. I am making an assumption here, of course. The assumption is that the third reading of this bill will be before 1 June 2017, because if it was not, then there would be no point in changing it. But for some reason it has been pushed out, and, I would suggest, by at least 8 or 9 months. I am expecting that the third reading of this bill will come before the House in the next month or two.

If it is such an important bill, if we recognise its importance, if we understand that this is actually going to provide a mechanism for those who have been victims of sexual abuse to actually have permission sought to have evidence heard about their sexual history—all these things that we have wanted, all of these things that Jan Logie has spoken very passionately about, and in fact a number of members have spoken very passionately about—why are we delaying it another 6 to 8 months? Is it because, perhaps, the judiciary needs time to get its head around it? Or is it, in fact, that the legal fraternity may need a series of briefings before the legislation is enacted? I am not too sure—because it has been around the traps for a long time, it has been debated and commented on by the Law Commission and the New Zealand Law Society, and a number of eminent bodies that actually submitted on this.

Hon David Parker: The Minister might know.

STUART NASH: The Minister might know. But it is not as if this piece of legislation is a surprise to the legal fraternity in any way, shape, or form. In fact, I would argue that it is quite the opposite. I would argue that they have had—[Interruption] There comes the answer now. I would argue that perhaps this has been around long enough for the legal fraternity to actually have a very good handle on it at this point in time. But for some reason—and I am not saying there is not a very good reason; there may well be an excellent reason—it has been deferred by around about 6 to 8 months. But I think that the Minister perhaps does know, so on behalf of those who are looking for an early enactment date, the Minister may be able to enlighten us as to why it is July 2017 and not, perhaps, 1 November 2016. Thank you.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill

In Committee

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Climate Change Issues): I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one question.

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

Parts 1AA, 1, and 2, schedule, and clauses 1 and 2

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): The Labour Party supports the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill. We support this bill because it should protect New Zealanders from criminals who have been released from a sentence of 2 years or less or sentenced to intensive supervision. It amends the Parole Act of 2002 and the Sentencing Act, also of 2002.

Intensive supervision is a community-based rehabilitation sentence that targets offenders who are at medium to high risk of reoffending, who have been convicted of more serious types of crimes, and who have got complex or severe rehabilitative needs. Intensive supervision can be imposed only by a judge. That is why it is important that when they are released into the community, these people do have electronic monitoring—i.e., a bracelet attached to their ankle so that their movements can be tracked.

The big thing, though—and we have got to get it out there right at the very start—is the fact that these electronic monitoring bracelets are only as good as the quality of the materials that they are made of. We have seen so many cases where electronic monitoring bracelets have been cut off—in fact, there was the infamous story on Story where a TV cameraman cut them off with a pair of scissors. Apparently, there is only about 1 percent of offenders at any given time who have cut off their bracelets, but earlier this year that 1 percent equated to some 47 offenders. It is easy for us to say “Look, let’s not get too worried about it, 1 percent is not that great a proportion.”, but when we say there are 47 offenders who have cut off their bracelets, that is 47 communities, 47 suburbs, 47 towns that are living with some element of fear because we have these offenders out on the loose. So it is important that we get this right—that the electronic monitoring bracelets are made of robust, sturdy material and that they cannot be cut off with just a standard pair of scissors.

I believe there is going to be even sturdier material that these bracelets are going to be made out of. The big thing is that sturdier material just requires a bit of a sturdier implement to cut them off, such as bolt cutters or tinsnips, so it is really important that the bracelets are very robust. There has to be some ease to have them cut off, for health and safety reasons, in case these offenders happen to be in a car accident and they have to be X-rayed and the equipment may affect the X-ray or the medical machines or the scanners, or whatever the hospital uses to check up on the health of these people. So I was thinking about what could be a decent system of robust bracelets, and I was thinking about how if you go shopping and you buy some clothes and they have got those tags on them—those tags set off a buzzer if you walk out of the shop with the clothes on—there is a special device used to remove those tags. Maybe that is the solution—that whatever the bracelet is made of is such sturdy stuff that the emergency rooms in hospitals actually have a box full of these little gadgets that can remove the bracelets if they need to be removed.

In terms of Part 1AA, it amends the Corrections Act and it mainly deals with those people who are on temporary release from prison. Temporary release is when somebody is let out, maybe on compassionate leave such as for a funeral. In fact, last Thursday I was contacted by the family of a woman who had passed away. Her daughter was ringing me to see what I could do in order to get her brother and a couple of nephews out of prison—the grandsons and the son of this particular woman were in prison. It was quite interesting that the two grandsons were fairly low-risk prisoners in Spring Hill Corrections Facility, and the son of this woman was in prison for manslaughter and was considered fairly high risk. What was strange about this temporary release was that the guy who was fairly high risk was actually allowed out to the funeral, whereas the two who were low risk, in Spring Hill, were not allowed out to their grandmother’s funeral. There is just an element of inconsistency there. They were in two different prisons: the two younger guys were in Spring Hill and the older guy was in Pāremoremo prison. But that is a classic example of when an offender may be entitled under temporary release, which is what Part 1AA is about, to have to submit to wearing a monitoring bracelet.

The purpose of the monitoring bracelet in that case, and in fact in all other parts as well, is, firstly, as a deterrent effect. If an offender is wearing a bracelet, the belief is that it will deter the offender from running off and breaching the conditions that relate to his or her whereabouts, but it is also to monitor compliance with the conditions that relate to their whereabouts. The bracelet itself can be used to verify compliance with any of the conditions—the whereabouts of the offender—and to detect non-compliance.

It also can be used to provide evidence, which I am assuming would be evidence to later on say: “Yes, that person was meant to be in a restricted area and has gone out and breached the conditions of where they should have been.” Also, it could be that if there was a criminal act committed somewhere in the vicinity, you would be able to either confirm or eliminate the fact that that offender may have been in the vicinity or at the particular place at the time that the offence was committed. The information from the electronic monitoring bracelet could be used to provide evidence at a later date. It could also be used to verify that the bracelet has not been tampered with, because if the bracelet has been tampered with, again, the offender will have breached a condition of wearing the electronic monitoring.

Part 1AA is about temporary release. People can be temporarily released just outside prison limits. When I say “outside prison limits”, I mean outside the secure perimeter of the prison. There may be reasons why prisoners are allowed to do work outside, and there are actually, I believe, self-care units around prisons, but they are not within the secure perimeter area. So offenders may be compelled to wear these bracelets to make sure that if they are in a self-care unit outside the secure area of a perimeter, they do not disappear when they should have been inside the area, or, if they do disappear, they can be tracked. That is Part 1AA.

Part 1 itself amends the Parole Act 2002 and is about people who have, obviously, been paroled, whereas Part 1AA is about people who are prisoners but are on temporary release from the prison. The same sorts of conditions apply for the people who are on parole. They may be required to have electronic monitoring equipment attached to them—that is actually a part of the bill. It changes the law so that it makes it explicit that people might have to have these electronic monitoring bracelets attached to them, whereas previously I do not think it was quite so explicit. But, again, Part 1 is about the offenders on parole—

Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I want to first say that the Labour Party is in favour of this bill. It is supporting each of the clauses of the bill. Basically, what the bill does, of course, is it enables us to extend electronic monitoring to categories of people who were not included in the original legislation that I passed back in 2002.

If we look at Part 1AA of the bill we see—and this was a change made in the Law and Order Committee itself—that we are extending the potential for the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections to require electronic monitoring of people who are temporarily released from custody, which is under the amendment to section 63, and those who are temporarily removed from the prison, under section 64 and the amendments there. The purpose of it is quite clearly that we want to deter people who are out in the community on parole or under intensive supervision, or who may be out because they are released to go to a funeral or some other purpose for which they can legitimately be released, from breaching the conditions of their release and going about doing things that they should not be doing and offending in a way that they should not be. It also enables us to monitor the compliance.

The Labour Party will support anything that means that any offender who may be at risk of offending and creating new victims in the community will be deterred from doing that and brought to justice if they do do it, but I have got some questions that I would like to ask the Minister in the chair, Amy Adams. It is all very well for us to legislate in the Committee today to say that we are putting a condition on offenders that they have to wear an electronic bracelet if, in fact, these electronic bracelets can be and are being readily removed.

Kelvin Davis and I were in the Law and Order Committee’s Estimates hearing earlier this year when the Minister of Corrections came in with a great deal of fanfare and said: “Here is the old electronic bracelet, and here is the new one. Now I can cut through the old one. That’s easy. But I’d have to take a chainsaw to cut the new one off. They’d lose their leg rather than losing the monitor.” This is not making it up. This sounds like a fairy tale, but this is actually what the Minister came to the select committee and said—that these things were practically impossible to remove.

Well, I was watching television that night and I saw Billy Weepu get a pair of scissors and cut through it. This was an ordinary pair of scissors, and he cut through the electronic bracelet as easy as that. I have got a workshop at home that is full of tools that would cut through it: pliers and side cutters and hacksaws, or whatever. But to take a pair of scissors to a new bracelet that the country is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in getting and they could remove it that easily, when the Minister gave her commitment to all of us on that select committee—Todd Barclay was there. He saw it. He was there saying: “What a great Minister we’ve got. Look, she’s come in with this irremovable bracelet.” It was no such thing. The Minister was making it up. So we are engaged tonight in the Committee stage of this bill in very serious legislation that will extend the conditions under which we can require people to wear bracelets that they can readily cut off.

I want to ask the Minister whether she can give us the assurance that we are not wasting our time in the Committee tonight. I want to ask the Minister this as well. I saw a comment from John Key, and it was last year. He said it would be ludicrous—“ludicrous” was the word—if a person who is under electronic monitoring could readily remove the bracelet. Well, it is ludicrous. My question to the Minister is: if it is ludicrous, as her Prime Minister describes it, why are we passing legislation to extend the use of electronic monitoring when it can so readily be removed? You might say this happens only on very odd occasions. Well, the world is a very odd place, because in the last 6 years it has happened on 15,500 occasions when people have been in breach of electronic monitoring.

We then heard from the Department of Corrections, Mr Chairman, and I think you might have heard it yourself, because you were on the select committee. You heard—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, no.

Hon PHIL GOFF: —it say that there are 27 to 40 people out in the community at any one time who should be electronically monitored, but they have removed their bracelets and they have not been apprehended.

I want law that protects New Zealanders. I think that is what we all want in this House. That is why we are supporting this legislation, but what we have not had, and I hope the Minister will take the call, is an assurance that when we pass this law, it is going to have some meaning, and that we are not going to have a law that we pass—because we do that in this House; we pass law every day—that will not mean anything because the person whom we have just extended electronic monitoring to will take out their fingernail cutters and snip the bracelet off.

When we were at the centre that was responsible for monitoring, I asked a question of one of the people there. I said: “Why don’t you make these practically impossible to take off?”. He said: “Oh, what if it gets caught in a piece of machinery?”. That is what the answer was. Well, frankly, that is a nonsense. We should have a form of electronic monitoring that is extraordinarily difficult to remove. We are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace the existing bracelet with a bracelet that is just as useless, and then we expect the public to take us seriously when we say we are going to get really tough on these offenders, we are going to monitor them, and the community will be safe because we know where they are and what they are doing. Well, that cannot come about unless we have a system of bracelets that actually work, and unless we have a system that actually has some sort of sanction for the 15,500 people who have decided that they will breach the condition of their parole, or of their intensive supervision, or of their home detention, or whatever.

The current situation is not good enough. And one of the worries of the people who submitted to us on this bill was that the fact that offenders are wearing a bracelet does not mean to say they will not reoffend, and we saw that, dramatically and tragically, in the case of Tony Robertson, who was wearing a GPS monitor at the time he ran down, raped, and murdered Blessie Gotingco. When people see something like that, they also worry that maybe this Parliament is complacent—“We’ll put them on an electronic monitor, and everything will be fine.” Well, clearly, in that case it was not fine, and that family lives with the tragic consequences of the failure of our system every day of their lives.

So they are serious questions to the Minister. I approve of the groups that we are extending electronic monitoring to, but I remain totally unconvinced that we have a system that is actually working when you can use a pair of scissors to cut off your electronic bracelet, and where, if you are relying on only the electronic bracelet—as we apparently were with Tony Robertson—the person can still go out and commit a grievous crime. So what we are doing, in theory, looks very good; how this translates into practice is the question we should be asking as we work through the Committee of the whole House. What will the Minister say in explanation of the assurance that the Minister of Corrections gave to us as parliamentarians that these things were practically irremovable, when that was, clearly, absolutely inaccurate. Judith Collins—she—

Hon Damien O’Connor: “Snipper” Collins.

Hon PHIL GOFF: Yes, not “Crusher” Collins, but “Snipper” Collins. We actually spent 10 minutes of our valuable Estimates time going through this role playing where the Minister said: “This is how tough it is.”, and the bracelet was passed around the committee. It was not tough at all. We were misled, and I do not want to mislead the country tonight by saying that we will pass this legislation and, therefore, we will be safer from the activities of these offenders. Why cannot we, in the 21st century, have a form of technology that means that these things cannot be readily removed? That is a valid question. Legislate, yes, but if it means nothing, it is not taking us anywhere. I invite the Minister now to take a call and give us an explanation as to why we were misled that these were irremovable and what she is now doing about that problem.

TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland): It is a privilege to be able to speak in support of the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill. We have already heard this evening about which categories of people this bill is being extended to cater for. I just want to pick up on a couple of points that two previous members have mentioned—first, that at any one time around 47 people who are out on electronic monitoring are able to cut off their bracelet. That is in the context of 4,000 people at any one time wearing one of these monitored pieces of equipment. And, actually, it is also in the context that we have had this piece of legislation, which Mr Goff introduced, since 2012, monitoring some of our most dangerous criminals who are out in the public. But before then, there were literally thousands of people who were out in the community and should have been monitored but were not monitored because the technology simply was not there. Now what we are doing is extending that category down to lower-level offenders.

I think a perfect case in point, which was experienced last week through the media, was in Hutt South. It was about a sexual predator who is under electronic monitoring in the Hutt and who is potentially a risk to his community. That was part of a wider package of safety reforms that were in place to protect the community from that person. Electronic monitoring was in place for him, but there were also two other corrections officers who were monitoring his appearance 24/7 throughout the day. I think that the thing that this piece of legislation does is it extends to a wider category of people who are out in the community—people who are not going to live in prison for their entire lives and are serving sentences of 2 years or less. They are simply not going to be in prison for the rest of their lives. They are going to be in a community, they are going to be somebody’s neighbour, and they are going to be near areas where they could be a risk to the public.

Electronic monitoring in this sense extends public safety and it keeps pace with the technology as it is developed. When the Department of Corrections first implemented it in 2012, it was because the technology had developed to the point where it could reasonably implement it to the public and have a level of safety, ensuring that there were safeguards in place there. This is a good piece of legislation.

In the context of what Labour is trying to spin tonight around having people out there who can cut off their bracelets—well, yes, that is probably right. Unless they are going to be made out of titanium, you are probably going to be able to cut them off. But you know as well as I do, Mr Goff, from watching the news, that the human being who chopped off that electronic bracelet was no average-sized human being. He was a very big, strong person, who would, obviously, reasonably be able to cut the bracelet off. The fact is that it is 1 percent of people. This is a good piece of legislation, and that is why we are supporting it.

MAHESH BINDRA (NZ First): I take this call on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill. We think that this bill could have been named differently, and we have some more appropriate names for this bill. One of them is the “Attempt at Keeping Prisoner Numbers Down Bill”, and there is the “Cost-cutting on Crime Prevention Bill”, the “Letting Dangerous Criminals Out in the Communities Bill”, and the “Saying One Thing and Doing Exactly the Opposite Bill”. These are the reasons that this electronic monitoring system has failed, and failed miserably, in the last 5-odd hours, or last 5-odd years—or it could be hours. This electronic monitoring system has failed 15,500 times, and this bill has failed to keep our communities safe. The Minister claims that this is going to keep our communities safe; it is not.

The other reason to disapprove of this is that communications between the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections and the Commissioner of Police have not been made mandatory in this bill. The Government should have made it mandatory. At the moment one hand does not know what the other hand is doing, and that was the reason that dangerous criminals like Phillip John Smith escaped the country, and that is the reason that somebody on an electronic monitoring system—as Mr Goff just mentioned—breached his electronic monitoring system and raped and killed Blessie Gotingco. So this electronic monitoring system has failed to keep the Blessie Gotingcos of this country safe.

The electronic monitoring system has had thousands and thousands of dollars spent on it, and the Labour Party member Phil Goff just spoke about the electronic bracelet being cut by an ordinary pair of scissors. Mr Barclay, you have not seen prisoners. They are not average human beings, all right? They can cut it as easily as Billy Weepu could cut it, so you need to look at the offenders whom we are dealing with in our prisons. It is not very hard for them to cut it. It is as easy as it was for Billy Weepu. So it would be wrong to think that just by buying a new type of bracelet that has been touted as next to impossible to cut, it is going to keep our communities safe. It is not.

We have serious issues with the entire intent of the bill. The intent is to keep the prison costs down and to keep our prison beds on low numbers. So we do have issues with the entire bill. The only thing we do agree with is that when the prisoners go on temporary removal and the electronic monitoring system is used as an additional safeguard, then it is OK. But it is not OK for the system to put those criminals out in the communities, depending on only the electronic monitoring device. Thank you.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): Community safety is a matter of grave concern to many of our communities, and I know most New Zealanders pay their taxes in the expectation that the Government uses those taxes to ensure that our communities are safe. So when issues of community safety come before this House, we on this side of the House take them very, very seriously.

As outlined by my senior colleagues who have spoken earlier, the Labour Party supports this bill, but despite supporting it on the basis that we do want to ensure that there is safety in our communities, I have to say that I share the concerns that the Hon Phil Goff has shared with this Committee.

When I look at the report from the Law and Order Committee, it says that this bill seeks to amend the Parole Act and the Sentencing Act to enable the monitoring of offenders released from a sentence of 2 years or less, and of offenders sentenced to intensive supervision. I also note that in this committee’s report there have been significant changes made by the committee. I note that the committee recommended that new Part 1AA be inserted, setting out amendments to the Corrections Act, and inserted new clauses 2B and 2C. I also note that the committee recommended inserting clause 2D, which inserts a new section 64A into the Act.

Not having sat through that committee but having read this particular report, I do not get a sense of confidence—that the committee had confidence when the Minister tabled this piece of legislation. That concerns me. When Ministers who have the power and the resources table legislation that ends up being significantly amended by the committee, that concerns me as to what the real thrust of the bill is.

I heard the member from New Zealand First talk about whether this bill is really about reducing prisoner numbers to allow this Government to somehow paint itself as being able to reduce those numbers, but the Government is not necessarily concerned about law and order. I also note that in the regulatory impact statement—and we have in paragraph 28: “The department intends to provide the courts with advice on whether offenders are suitable to have their whereabouts restricted and monitored by GPS in pre-sentence reports.” I just highlight the fact that they identify family violence offenders who pose a high risk to their victims, gang affiliate offenders who pose a high risk to public safety, and the third one that the department identifies in this regulatory impact statement is high-risk sex offenders.

This is of concern to me because in Māngere we have one about whom the community has been agitating for some time now, and it is wanting this Government to remove him from the place that the Department of Corrections has placed him in. It has placed this high-risk sex offender right next door to a school in a community that has many, many children, and yet the department is aware that this high-risk offender also presents an imminent and high risk of reoffending. The department is aware that this sex offender raped a 13-year-old girl. The concern there is that despite the department and the Minister trying to assure the community that this offender has 24/7 surveillance and has electronic monitoring, it was only yesterday that a member of the community reported to me that they saw this offender at Pak ’N Save in the morning, and he was out in the public.

I was told by the corrections officers that this offender has a range of conditions on his being placed next to Jean Batten School in Māngere. I am going to follow this up, but I am hopeful that the Minister on hearing this, and the officials hearing this, would ensure that this is not the offender whom we are talking about. This a note given to me early this morning by a member of the Māngere community, saying that they saw this man in Pak ’N Save—this is a person supposedly with 24-hour surveillance and with electronic monitoring. I do not know whether there were other people around monitoring him when he went to Pak ’N Save, or whether he has slipped the electronic monitoring and gone out.

I was listening to the Hon Phil Goff talking about how easy it is for people to slip the electronic monitoring. There have been a number of examples that have been repeated already in the media, not just this year but I would say in the last 8 years of this Government. People have been slipping their monitoring and then reoffending. That concerns me, because if this is about community safety, if it is about law and order, if it is about keeping our children safe—as far as the people of Māngere are concerned, we do not have that confidence at this point in time.

I have to say, it was highlighted to me by my colleague Susan Zhu in Auckland how members of the Asian community do not feel safe at all, with the offending that is happening in Auckland and the appearance that these communities are being targeted by offenders. Generally, we know that whenever a burglary or some crime is committed in the community, it is usually by somebody who has offended before and has served time.

So the plea I am making is that if the Government is true about its need to ensure that there is the ability for minor offenders to be able to attend funerals and whatnot, I want to know what it is exactly that it intends to do with the high-risk sex offenders identified in this regulatory impact statement, and how this Government intends to ensure that our children are safe from those who have a high risk of reoffending. At the moment, insofar as the people of Māngere are concerned, as long as that high-risk offender at imminent risk of reoffending is located a few houses down from Jean Batten School, the community does not feel safe.

What is worse now is that the parents are having to adapt their behaviour in order to try to present some semblance of confidence and protection to the young people who are around that particular school. If the story pans out that this neighbour did, in fact, see that this man was at Pak ’N Save yesterday—and supposedly he was under some electronic monitoring and 24/7 surveillance—has this man broken the conditions of his bail, being located here?

The other thing I will say is that electronic monitoring is not necessarily going to prevent people from reoffending. I am not sure that this Government has captured in this bill the holistic approach that it needs to take. As I pointed out earlier in another debate on a bill that this Government has introduced here, there is a need for this Government to address where we house those offenders who have been released and, particularly, those offenders who have a high risk of reoffending. Is it safe to place them next to children? I do not think so, and certainly the community of Māngere does not think so either.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Thank you very much for this opportunity. Can I assure the member Mahesh Bindra that Mr Billy Weepu is not scary. Having played alongside him in the Parliamentary Rugby Team, I can say he is quite the nice chap, and, despite his size, he has been brought down by many small men in the Opposition. But I digress.

Most of the discussion around this particular bill has been around getting bang for buck. When we look at the increased use of electronic monitoring, as indicated by the regulatory impact statement, it actually does talk about that cost. Members on this side of the Chamber have mentioned that cost and asked whether the taxpayers are getting bang for their buck. Will this help secure our communities? Will this help our communities feel safer when they know that opening up the eligibility for those to receive electronic monitoring will not only bring a cost with that electronic monitoring—estimates of $3,500 per person, per offender. That might not sound like much to some people, but when we are talking about the risk it poses to our communities—$3,500. I am sure some will not mind paying that, but why would we pay that when there are still serious questions about this equipment?

Let us be very clear here. There are some serious questions about this equipment. Mr Goff has given fantastic examples of where this equipment has failed. We have already heard that the Law and Order Committee was told that this was as “safe as houses”—although that is questionable under the housing policy of this Government—that it is “safe as”, and that the community can feel safe. Then the entire country witnessed the actual thing being cut by a normal pair of scissors, and by a pretty good bloke in Mr Weepu.

We have got to ask these questions about the cost: $3,500. We know that the eligibility will be wider for those offenders, and there are still questions there. The electronic monitoring for persons temporary released from custody or temporary removed from prison—there are still some questions. As a member of Parliament I have been approached many times by whānau who are looking for the release of members of whānau who are locked up, looking for them to be released so that they are able to attend funerals—tangihanga—or to visit whānau members who are in the departure lounge on the way out of this world. There do seem to be—and I want to highlight the point raised by Mr Davis—some serious inconsistencies there, some serious inconsistencies. I have had those cases come through our offices where some of the worst offenders have been granted that leave—and good for them. Some of those on the lesser end of the scale have not been granted leave, and when questioned, no information has been provided to us or the families—to us or the families. Although I appreciate that perhaps this might allow for better monitoring of those who do get given leave to attend such events as a funeral, those inconsistencies are still there. Those inconsistencies are still there and will cause some challenges for those who are refused that particular leave. I can only imagine what that might mean for the corrections officers in the prisons who have to look after them.

I do want to speak briefly about the offenders who are still within the prison grounds but not in the secure area. Although I appreciate that they are still within the grounds, but not necessarily the high security areas, I wonder whether this is actually the best way of supervising them, because, clearly, if they are not able to go out into the community and, regardless of having served their sentence, they are still required to be within the grounds of a prison—I wonder, well, maybe the GPS monitoring is actually not the best way. These people still need 24-hour human supervision, constant contact with the officers, and constant contact with the right people to make sure that these people do not reoffend, that they do not slip away, because I would hate to think that horrible crimes will take place when those types of offenders who have—

Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I am still waiting for the Minister of Justice to take the call on the inadequacy of the bracelets, because we need to know before we legislate for the extension of their use that they are fit for purpose and not readily removed. We have the Committee of the whole House so that the Minister can hear the genuine concerns of the Opposition and respond to them. So I really do hope that the Minister will take the call, because otherwise we are going through the motions and the Government is just bulldozing the bill through. This bill is going through with our support. We are seeking reassurance that the intent of the bill will be carried through in practice because the things in it will work.

I have another series of questions for the Minister in the chair, and it is appropriate that she is the Minister of Justice, because what we have found when we are making these changes is that her colleague the Attorney-General has issued a report under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That report—and I want to quote from that report—applies to each of the clauses in this bill that we are working through. The Attorney-General, Mr Chris Finlayson, has said that he has “concluded that the Bill appears to limit the freedom of movement and the rights against unreasonable search and seizure and double jeopardy affirmed in…the Bill of Rights Act.” He says that this cannot be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

Normally, I would be deeply concerned about a report under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act that said that we were in breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, but, frankly, I think the Attorney-General’s report is a nonsense in these circumstances. I want to be reassured by the Minister about why a member of Cabinet would issue a report like this that actually, effectively, says we should not pass this bill that is before the Committee today. That so exactly what it does.

Chris Bishop: It’s not in his role as a member of Cabinet. It’s Attorney-General—it’s not in that role.

Hon PHIL GOFF: No, no. The Attorney-General is wrong in the judgment that he is giving, or the law is an ass. I want to go through this with the Minister of Justice. She is well-qualified to answer my concerns here. The vetting says that the bill breaches the freedom of movement—well, exactly. Why do you put an electronic bracelet on a person who has been guilty of domestic violence if not to stop that person having freedom of movement to go to where the victim is and revictimise that person? So why is it that we are so deeply offended that the bill does what it is intended to do, which is to restrict the freedom of movement?

There is another category of offenders. These are offenders who offend under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Clearly, a condition of their release may be that they do not use or go to places where they can get alcohol and drugs. So of course, Minister, would you not want to restrain freedom of movement so that you can enforce a prohibition on that person going back to the substances that led them to offend in the first place?

There is another category of offender that my colleague Su’a William Sio talked about, and these are child sex offenders. One of the conditions that you place on such a person is that they do not go to a children’s playground or a school, but the Attorney-General is telling us that this breaches freedom of movement. Well, that is exactly why we are passing this legislation today. We do not believe that a child sex offender should have the freedom to go to a place where that person is tempted to reoffend and revictimise. So I am asking the Minister of Justice why it is that we are told by a member of the Government that this breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act on freedom of movement? If it does, is it not time, Minister, that we changed the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act to accommodate what is demonstrably justified in these circumstances?

Then there is the question of search and seizure. If you go through the clauses of this bill, you will see that one of the purposes of each of these clauses is so that we can get evidence on an offender on parole, on home detention, or in some other form of restricted movement about the offences that they have committed. But then the Attorney-General tells us: “No, it breaches rights around search and seizure because we are using the evidence that that person has offended.” Mr Bishop, does that not sound to you like a nonsense as well?

Then there is a third thing. It says that if we pass this, we are breaching double jeopardy because we are punishing the offender again. I want to put it to the Minister that this is not at all a breach of double jeopardy. Double jeopardy is when you are punishing a person twice. I passed the original extended supervision order legislation. It was not to punish people twice. It was because the people whom the court was ordering that there should be extended supervision over, the court was saying were at risk of reoffending. So this is a preventive measure—a preventive measure—designed to stop people from reoffending. We know that the actual criterion set out under the extended supervision order is that it will be imposed on those who are at risk of reoffending.

So the three grounds that the Attorney-General has given us, on advice from his ministry, do not stack up and do not hold water. This is not the first time this has happened in regard to extended supervision orders. Why are we going through the farce of having laid on the Table of this House a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet that patently cannot be right in terms of saying that what we are doing tonight is demonstrably unjustified?

Chris Bishop: That’s up to us. It’s a parliamentary bill of rights.

Hon PHIL GOFF: OK. What I want, Mr Bishop, from the Minister is an explanation why we are yet again going through the farce of having a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet that says we should not be doing what we are doing, when I believe that it is demonstrably justified that we do this to protect the safety of the community. So is it too much to ask the Minister to take a call and give the Committee an explanation of why we have this report laid on the Table of the House by the Attorney-General that says, effectively, we should not be doing this as a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, when there are demonstrable reasons why we should, and we are not ignoring the rights of the offender as much as we are enforcing the rights of innocent people not to be victimised in a situation of genuine risk. How many times will we go through this process again where we go through the motions when we are passing legislation and the Attorney-General says “This is all bad; it is not justified, it restricts people in an unfair way.”, but we do not believe that that is the case?

So I have got two sets of questions—just so the Minister has not forgotten them—(1) if we pass this legislation, do we not need the legislation to work? Do we not need the public to have assurances that somebody does not just snip off the bracelet and walk away? You know, I heard Todd Barclay saying “This happened only 40 times.”—happened only 40 times—15,000 times the electronic monitoring rules have been breached: some of them minor, some of them serious. There have been 26 to 40 people out in the community creating some risk to New Zealanders. We have them under electronic supervision so that we know where they are and what they are doing. They have taken them off, we do not know where they are, we do not what they are doing, and sometimes they do appalling things while they are in that situation. So there is that set of questions.

We want this legislation to work, and work properly, to enhance the safety of New Zealanders and to stop New Zealanders from being victimised, and we want an answer on why we lay a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet on the Table that the Government—apparently, because it is continuing with this legislation—intends to ignore and dismisses as being irrelevant. Well, if it is irrelevant, we should not just ignore it. We should change the provisions in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act so that they make sense, so that when we restrict the rights of offenders in order to protect the rights of other New Zealanders, that can be regarded as a justifiable act.

They are genuine questions, Minister. I would very much like that you take a call and explain the Government’s position to the Committee.

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

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): Everything that Phil Goff said, and more—what a fantastic speech from the member, and I wish everyone else could be as eloquent as that and explain things so clearly.

But, look, I really do want to take Todd Barclay, the member from somewhere down south of here, to task for his comment about Billy Weepu. Obviously, the member knows nothing about those people who are incarcerated in prison. He is so out of touch with this whole issue. He is making out like Billy Weepu must be the biggest person in New Zealand, and the only person capable of cutting through a bracelet with a pair of scissors. Well, if he actually knew a bit about the corrections system and actually went and visited prisons, he would see that there is any number of people who are bigger than Billy Weepu and just as capable of cutting through a bracelet with a pair of scissors, or with a pair of nail clippers, like Phil Goff said.

Just last week I went into Wiri Prison to talk to a guy. I tell you what, he was a man mountain—he was a man mountain. Todd Barclay is saying that that guy may never ever get out and would have to have a bracelet on his leg but he would not be able to cut through it—you know, it is just ridiculous. As Phil Goff has said, 15,500 people have breached their electronic monitoring conditions. I can bet you that a fair percentage of those people were just as big and just as powerful as Billy Weepu. I mean, he may be the centre in the Parliamentary Rugby Team—and not all of our backs in the team are built as big and as strong and as powerful as Billy Weepu—but the fact of the matter is Billy Weepu is just like any other New Zealander. Anyone who has got a bracelet on has got the potential to cut through it, or to have family, friends, and associates who equally able to cut through these electronic monitoring bracelets.

As was mentioned, the Minister of Corrections turned up in our Law and Order Committee and she said: “These new bracelets are the greatest things ever. They will never be able to cut through them, and an offender has a choice: either leg or no leg.” Within hours the Minister was just made to look like a total fool, and that snip, snip, snip of Billy Weepu’s scissors was the snipping of the Minister’s credibility.

As Peeni Henare has said, these bracelets cost $3,500 per offender. At any given time, there are 47 people who have breached their conditions. That is 47 times $3,500—I was a maths teacher. If Peeni was a student, I would expect him to have the answer of what 47 times $3,500 is, but that is a lot of money that is being invested and just going down the gurgler.

I would also like to turn to new section 54IA(6) in clause 10 in Part 2, and it talks about the annual report of the Department of Corrections. It is going to have to include in its annual report the following information about the use of electronic monitoring in the year being reported on: “(a) the number of offenders who were at any time subject to an electronic monitoring condition: (b) the average number of offenders who were subject to an electronic monitoring condition and the average duration of the condition: (c) the percentage of offenders who, while subject to an electronic condition, were—(i) convicted for failing to comply with the condition; or (ii) convicted of any other offence:”.

I would also like to know just exactly how much this is all costing us. If we have got 15,500 people who have already breached the conditions of their electronic monitoring, that is a lot of money that is going down the gurgler, and it is really, really important that the communities and that our country can have faith in the technology and the materials that these electronic bracelets are made up of.

It is also a concern to hear—as Su’a William Sio said—that today a sex offender who has a conviction for raping a 13-year-old girl and who is meant to have 24/7 surveillance and an electronic monitoring bracelet was allegedly seen at a supermarket.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. I want to bring attention to section 15A(3), in clause 5. It says: “An offender who is subject to an electronic monitoring condition—(a) may be required to have electronic monitoring equipment attached to his or her body;”—that is straightforward—“and (b) must comply with written instructions from a probation officer that are reasonably necessary for the effective administration of the electronic monitoring (for example, an instruction to regularly charge the equipment); …”.

To regularly charge the equipment—I think that makes a little bit of sense. You have got to make sure that the bracelet is able to be monitored and has a bit of power. So I think that is a pretty fair request through a written instruction from the parole officer, but I wonder what else might be in that scope. I wonder what else might be considered a reasonable request on the part of the probation officer to that particular person. Sure, I understand that on the serious end of the spectrum around those offenders it is important that some heavy restrictions be placed on them, but I wonder what that might mean for the lower end of the scale. I am just putting the question out there.

I wonder too whether this is the best technology or the best equipment currently available out there. With the technology nowadays, I would imagine that for somebody with domestic violence convictions who is out on electronic monitoring, you can pinpoint places that would automatically set off an alarm. For example, if I want to mark spot X when I go fishing, I mark it on my phone, and I can constantly go back there. It actually sends me a reminder that I am in the vicinity—all on my smartphone.

I wonder, then, whether this particular equipment is actually the best available to do what is a pretty difficult job. If somebody with domestic violence charges is ordered to stay away from a particular area and to not be in the vicinity of a particular area, I wonder whether or not the technology should actually have a pre-warning system that allows those who are monitoring it to actually stop any potential crime before it takes place, or before the person who is being supervised actually breaches the order imposed on them by coming within a certain vicinity of a person, or coming within cooee, or a stone’s throw, if you like, of an actual location. I wonder, because a quick Google search will actually show that there is technology out there that can do that. We have already heard about the failures of this particular device—“snip and walk away”, and the need to charge them pretty regularly—but I wonder whether or not this is actually the best use of technology that is already available on the market. I am just asking the question, putting it out there.

I wonder how wide the scope went to ensure that the tools, the devices, the bracelets that are being used are the best bang for the buck, to make sure that we actually can monitor these people properly. It is not simply about just sitting and staring at a computer screen, hoping that the GPS bracelet does its job or that the offender has followed the written requirements given to them by the probation officer to make sure the device is charged, but you can actually predetermine some of these things. In the famous words following the All Blacks’ victory on Saturday: “You can front-load.” Front-load—make sure that you are actually ahead of the game. Make sure that when we put in place legislation like this, we are not back here trying to change the legislation again just to keep up with technology.

We already know—like I said, a quick Google search on my phone showed me—that there is already technology out there to do exactly what was described by the captain of the All Blacks team as front-loading—getting ahead of the issue here and making sure that we keep victims safe and that these offenders do not go on to reoffend. It could be a simple thing, like coming into—as I have already said—the proximity of a particular place where the order says they are not supposed to go. I wonder, like I said, how wide the scope went to make sure that this is the best technology bang for our buck.

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

Motion agreed to.

Parts 1AA, 1, and 2, schedule, and clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.

The Committee divided the bill into the Corrections (Electronic Monitoring of Offenders) Amendment Bill, the Parole (Electronic Monitoring of Offenders) Amendment Bill, and the Sentencing (Electronic Monitoring of Offenders) Amendment Bill, pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 189.

Bill to be reported without amendment presently.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register), formerly the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill, and the Evidence Amendment Bill with amendment, and the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill without amendment, and that the Committee had divided it into three bills.

Report adopted.

Bills

Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill

Second Reading

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): I move, That the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill be now read a second time. In April of this year the Government announced the launch of the New Zealand Health Strategy, which is all about delivering better care closer to home so that more people can get access to the services they need, more conveniently. Part of that is using all the skills that we have right across the workforce to their fullest extent. We have a highly skilled nursing workforce, highly skilled pharmacists, and many people in the allied health professions are obviously trained to a very high level, but there are a number of functions that, by statute, only doctors can perform. So the purpose of this bill is to improve access to services for the New Zealand public and to increase workforce flexibility.

I will go through a range of the different provisions, but, essentially, it looks at a range of Acts and removes the barriers to patients accessing the healthcare they need. A number of functions previously able to be performed only by doctors will now be able to be performed by an appropriately qualified medical practitioner who is a member of some of those other professions—for instance, the nursing profession. It covers areas such as sick certificates, some clinical assessments, and the issuing of death certificates. The purpose of the bill is to remove legislative barriers so that competent health practitioners can perform a number of statutory functions previously limited to doctors under existing legislation. Barriers to innovative models of healthcare and making the best use of our workforce were identified in a number of Acts, and seven of those Acts were prioritised by the Government for amendment.

The Government also intends to review unnecessary restrictions for statutory functions for health practitioners in further Acts as they are revised. To improve efficiencies in the health system, removal of legislative barriers will reduce unnecessary costs and time for the public, who must often wait and pay to see a medical practitioner. This bill allows the public to be examined, clinically assessed, and, if required, issued with certificates such as sick leave certificates by suitable health practitioners in a much more timely and cost-effective manner. Changes to the statutory provisions in this bill will allow competent health practitioners to use their qualifications, knowledge, and skills for the betterment of consumers.

The bill will improve health practitioner accountability by making practice more transparent. Currently, health practitioners already undertake clinical assessments, but the law requires a medical practitioner to formally authorise the assessments. This double handling is unnecessary and will be addressed by the bill. Delays for consumers in access to care will be reduced. The bill will also allow nurse practitioners with the primary responsibility of patient care to be able to certify the cause of death. This will address the issue of delays for families when doctors are unavailable for certification.

In terms of the work of the Health Committee, it heard submissions totalling 28 from interested groups and individuals, and it also heard 10 oral submissions. Most submissions gave full or qualified support, and I would like to thank those who did take the time to submit, and of course I thank the Health Committee for the work that it put into this bill. As members might expect for a bill of this type, the submissions considered by the committee were largely from professional organisations and individuals with an interest in the nature of the legislative tasks undertaken by health practitioners. On the whole, health professional groups such as nursing, pharmacy, and physiotherapy supported the bill. Most medical group submitters, including some medical colleges, also supported the bill, but a few medical submitters questioned some aspects.

The committee considered the concerns raised. One aspect raised in those submissions was accountability for health practitioner competence. Committee members sought additional advice on the adequacy of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003, to assure themselves that the safety of the public is maintained. The committee was assured that responsible authorities regulating health practitioners have sufficient safety controls. The Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act includes mechanisms to ensure that practitioners are competent and fit to practise for the duration of their professional lives. I would like to emphasise that the principal purpose of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act is to protect the health and safety of the public. Having a single legislative framework allows for consistent procedures and terminology across the regulated health professions. The accountability regime that ensures health professionals are practising safely is unambiguous under the Act. Those not deemed competent will not be able to perform statutory duties.

Health practitioners must be registered with the relevant responsible authorities and hold a current annual practising certificate. The responsible authority determines the scope of practice for the practitioner. It prescribes the qualification for scopes of practice, and it ensures that practitioners are fit and competent to practise within their scopes of practice. It is also responsible for reviewing practitioners’ competence and, if needed, has the power to suspend a practising certificate. It also has responsibility for referring complaints against a health practitioner to a professional conduct committee or to the Health and Disability Commissioner for investigation or sanctions, as required.

Several submissions requested changes to Acts other than those identified in the bill. These were considered by the committee and several further amendments were made to the bill, including an additional amendment to the Medicines Act 1981. The committee has recommended the bill be passed, and proposed several improvements. The reported-back bill will now amend eight statutes, to enable a wider range of suitably qualified health practitioners to undertake activities currently restricted to medical practitioners. Some additional changes were also made to improve consistency of definitions across the amended Acts and to enhance the provisions of several Acts.

I would like to provide some examples of the bill’s contribution to improvement in the health sector. Amending the Medicines Act 1981 allows regulation-making powers that enable nurse practitioners to supervise designated prescribers, clarifying the current provision in the Medicines Act with regard to the supervision of designated prescribers. Where there is a shortage of medical practitioners available in certain areas, nurse practitioners will be able to supervise designated prescribers. This will enhance training opportunities for health practitioners working towards qualification as a designated prescriber. With the Government agreeing to regulate designated registered nurse prescribers, this supervision will facilitate the delivery of health services in rural and hard-to-staff areas, including nurse-led clinics.

The bill includes improvement to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 to allow nurse practitioners and registered nurse practitioners working in addiction services to be able to prescribe controlled drugs as part of the team treating a person for drug dependency. The committee further recommended that designated prescriber pharmacists be allowed to prescribe controlled drugs to a person with a drug dependency when working in drug dependency treatment teams. A further amendment to the bill was also recommended, to add the requirement for compliance with applicable guidelines issued by the Director-General of Health for those treating drug dependency. This change will enhance access to treatment services for drug addictions, and ensure that there are adequate controls of those allowed to prescribe for drug dependency.

To respond to the changing burden of disease in the future, there will be greater emphasis on working in a collaborative fashion right across the various health professions, and partnering with individuals, their whānau, and communities. The health and disability workforce must be freed from statutory barriers in order to be deployed in new ways, to ensure that services are delivered by the right practitioner to meet the needs of the public. This bill will contribute by creating the environment where statutory functions can be delivered by a wider workforce. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): Labour supports this bill. It is a very simple bill, a bill that went through the Health Committee relatively easily with collaborative work across all parties represented within the select committee. But I do want to make a few comments about it.

The first one is that this is a bill that has taken far too long to get on the legislative agenda, because straight after the election of 2014 Treasury and the Ministry of Health advised the new Minister, Dr Coleman, to push ahead with this long-awaited bill to remove the barriers to health workforce flexibility. In fact, it was one of the 12 recommendations made by Treasury to the Minister, and Treasury said that they needed to “identify and remove unnecessary barriers to workforce flexibility by progressing the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill”—the very bill we are debating tonight. This is back in August 2014. Treasury noted that the bill had been under development for several years, and there was frustration at the lack of progress, particularly amongst the nursing profession. In fact, its publication the Nursing Review first reported in April 2008 on the work of an expert advisory group reviewing the health law to remove such barriers so that there could be more innovative practice. So updating this legislation became a priority for those in the profession, but, unfortunately, it went on the go-slow here in the Parliament.

We now have over 50,000 nurses in New Zealand registered with the Nursing Council, and we know that there is a looming GP issue in New Zealand, with around 44 percent of GPs saying they intend to leave the profession over the next 10 years. So we really do need to be developing a very flexible health workforce—those with the skills to be able to undertake work—and allowing them to become more active with their experience. This is what this bill does. We do also know that we have got over 3,000 young doctors revealing the extent of their workload—that some of them are reporting 16-hour shifts for 12 days in a row. We have reports of young doctors falling asleep while driving home, and over a thousand admitting they had made a mistake affecting patients because they were tired. So the need for us to pass this bill, to allow those who have undertaken the training to be able to use it in a much more comprehensive way, is urgent.

The first nurse practitioner—these are nurses who have a very high level of additional training—graduated in 2001, and since then we have got many, many more who have graduated and have been waiting to use their experience. Tonight I would like to just acknowledge one particular person who has been pushing for this for many years, and that is Judy Kilpatrick, who was the chair of the Nursing Council right through the development of nurse practitioners and getting the first nurse practitioner recognised. My complaint, I have to say—if it is a complaint—is the slowness at putting this bill in place, knowing the pressures we have on our health workforce, knowing the need to undertake more innovative practice. We needed to have passed this bill to allow our health workforce to be able to use their skills, as I said.

What the Minister went through in some detail is exactly what this bill will do, and it is about removing the references to medical practitioners in legislation and allowing other suitably qualified health professionals like nurses to perform appropriate tasks, which will allow that flexibility in the workforce, as I said. There are some good examples of things that they could do when this bill is passed: participating in claimants’ individual rehabilitation plans, issuing certificates of proof of illness or injury for sick leave, arranging medical examinations of children or young people, and taking blood specimens from road users are just some of the things that they would be able to do when this bill is passed. This bill is an omnibus bill. It amends seven statutes to increase the range of functions that can be performed by health practitioners under those statutes by changing certain references from “medical practitioner” to “health practitioner”. That will enable us to see far more innovative practice.

I do look forward to the opportunity, when we get to the Committee stage, to ask the Minister of Health questions about others who could be added to “health practitioner”, should they be registered under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance (HPCA) Act. The first that come to mind are paramedics. Because paramedics are not registered under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act, they are therefore not recognised in terms of the bodies that are covered in this bill. The paramedics have been waiting to have registration under the Act for years, going right back to about 2008. We have paramedics who undertake very, very skilled procedures on the side of the road—highly skilled people. In fact, some of the procedures they are able to undertake are more skilled than those of a GP, but they are not registered under the Act.

One of the things that I would like to see is paramedics become registered so they too can be included as health practitioners, because I can see the role of paramedics being very important in a flexible, innovative workforce—providing services not just at the side of the road but, in fact, in people’s homes and other settings. They, I think, are a group who desperately need to be included as health practitioners and recognised as health practitioners.

I also wonder—and I could not see it, but we will, hopefully, find out with the new Social Security Act rewrite that is taking place now—whether the Social Security Act will be included in this bill. I have gone through it, and I cannot see the inclusion. I see Child, Youth and Family, but I do not see a rewrite of the Social Security Act where nurse practitioners, under that Act, will be undertaking particular procedures. So that is another question that I would like to ask of the Minister.

We do support this bill. We are sorry that it has taken so long—sorry for those who have been waiting for its passage. I sometimes wonder why bills in this House that seem so trivial to many people in the public come before those that could make such a difference in the lives of people and in the operation of our health services, and that get pushed to the back of the queue. This is one of those bills. Go right back to 2008, and we are 8 years on from that first report that came back then from the expert advisory committee, to 2016, when we are now at the second reading of a bill that has taken so long in gestation to get to this stage. I think we need to look more carefully at some of the bills that we have and the priority that is put on them when we are deciding what should be debated and passed in this House.

This might seem a minor thing to those who do not understand the health sector, but it is a major thing if we are going to have innovative, flexible, creative provision of health services, and this bill will help do that, it is said by those who understand, from nurses to those other health professionals. As the Minister said, there were a few in the medical profession who raised concerns, but I do not think they need to be concerned, and neither did the Health Committee. We believe there is enough protection in this bill and within the HPCA Act around competency and around qualification to ensure the safety of the public. So we do support this bill, and we welcome its hasty speed through this House.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I am delighted to take a call after the honourable member Annette King, who has just taken her seat. Once again, it seems that through the work of Health Committee, concord has broken out across the House. All parties, I believe, are in agreement, but I will look forward with anticipation to the contributions from New Zealand First and the Greens. So I am very pleased to take this call on the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill in its second reading.

I want to begin by acknowledging all those who came before the select committee in the weeks prior to talk us through what they saw as the various perspectives on this bill. As has been noted by the last two speakers, including the Minister of Health, this is a relatively simple bill in what it attempts to achieve, but its repercussions are quite significant, I think. If time allows, I might touch on a few of those. I do want to thank all of the submitters who came and spoke, by and large, in support, but, again, I think it is important to acknowledge there were those speakers—I think, in fact, the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners was one—that raised some questions, and I think that that has to be acknowledged. I want to thank the officials, obviously, who helped us to bring it back to the House to this stage. Obviously, we have to go into the Committee stage after this and really begin teasing it out.

But this bill is just another example of the Government’s focus, if you will, or intentions to improve healthcare in this country. We often use the phrase, quite rightly, “Faster, sooner, more convenient.”, sometimes even adding in “closer to home”, and there is an enormous amount of examples of how that is actually working. [Interruption] I encourage those on the other side of the House, even the good member who shares my last name, to look at the health targets that were released today—thoroughly good reading, even at 4 minutes to 10 on a Tuesday night.

What this is ultimately doing is allowing the scope of practice to widen or to be transferred between specialties. Often, as I am speaking to constituents or others in the community, the best example is around something like a death certificate. At the moment, the legislation is very clear that a medical practitioner—that being a physician, a doctor—is the one who must do that. This bill, as one example, says that there are actually other health professionals—and we can think immediately of the likes of nurses—who are able to fill out that form. In fact, we will see that through—it is an omnibus bill, so this touches on seven pieces of legislation. This is also going to apply to the likes of death certificates and it is going to apply to the likes of ACC. Basically, it is acknowledging that medical practice changes over time, and that the scopes of practice do broaden.

I think back, particularly, to when I was working in the private healthcare space. I was very conscious in picking the area of dermatology and plastics that what was once an area for specialists alone—so by that I am talking dermatologists, plastic surgeons, general surgeons, and the like—is now actually being done by general practitioners. There is always a little bit of tension in this space, for a variety of reasons, but what we are also seeing is not only our GPs in this space now, but you could imagine in the future that those working, say, as nurses may be able to do this. A good example of that is actually in the endoscopic space, which, again, has usually been in the realm of specialists—endoscopists—but, actually, now there are nurses who would be able to act in this way.

I think it is prudent for this Government and the health profession to look at how it can better coordinate. A word that was also used by the Minister was “collaboration”, and I think this bill is going to help encourage and facilitate that as well. There will be better collaboration. A good example is what is already happening in the pain management zone. In fact, the Government has put money into pain management teams, and the long and the short of that is that it does not matter whether it is an occupational therapist or a nurse or a doctor or a social worker, or whatever—they can actually work together in that space. So I think this is very positive.

I do want to just draw quick attention to the fact that the scopes of practice are maintained by the respective colleges themselves, in coordination with the Ministry of Health—in other words, this is not carte blanche. It does not mean that just any health practitioner is able to do what they wish to do. What this is, is ultimately a chance for those particular colleges and groups to decide what is and is not appropriate for a health practitioner in this modern environment today. So I think it is really important to assure the public that although we are broadening, if you will, the scope of various practitioners and what they will be able to do, there is still plenty of oversight, particularly through the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act. Basically, there is legislation already in play that allows and strictly puts forward the way that the scope of practice of these groups is enacted. So that is going to be vitally important that that will continue.

I think, finally—because I am conscious of time—it is one thing amongst many. The select committee made a number of changes, most of them quite small, primarily around something that is just making sure that we describe doctors clinics correctly in a very modern parlance. One of the things we changed, in clause 42B, is to elaborate on the definition of “nurse practitioners”. They will not necessarily have been all that well known to New Zealanders. People just think of nurses, but actually there is a whole range of different equivalents, and nurse practitioners are very important in that space. So I think, with that, I will end my contribution.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)

TUESDAY, 23 AUGUST 2016

(continued on Wednesday, 24 August 2016)

Bills

Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Standardised Packaging) Amendment Bill

In Committee

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I seek leave for the Smoke-Free Environments (Tobacco Standardised Packaging) Amendment Bill to be debated as one question and voted on separately.

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

Parts 1 and 2, schedule, and clauses 1 and 2

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): Good morning, Mr Chairman. I can see that there is a lot of interest in the passage of this bill. Can I say that this is a red-letter day and that we are now at the Committee stage of this very important bill, a bill that will bring in plain packaging on tobacco products. It is something that Labour called for in 2011. The Government, in 2013, decided that there would be a new regulatory scheme to standardise tobacco products and packaging, and here we are, in 2016, about to go through the Committee stage of this bill.

The reason why we are keen to see it passed is that tobacco is a unique product. It is unique in that it kills a large percentage of those who consume it. About 5,000 people die each year from smoking and second-hand smoke exposure. That is 13 people a day dying from a product that has, as I said, unique qualities to it, which is why we wanted to see yet another tool to tighten the screws on tobacco consumption and tobacco prevalence in New Zealand.

There has been a lot of work done over many years to tighten those screws and to reduce the percentage of New Zealanders smoking, and I can recall the very first piece of legislation, which was legislation of the Rt Hon Helen Clark when she was Minister of Health. It was controversial at the time because she brought in legislation to ban smoking in the workplace, and many workers who had gone to work and puffed up large were very angry at the thought that they could no longer do that. When we think back to the late 1980s, when that bill came in, and our attitudes today, you can see how much has changed.

Over the years there have been other measures that have been put in place, such as getting smoking out of bars and restaurants and increasing excise tax. I would like to commend the work that was done by the Hon Tariana Turia, who did a lot of work when she was with Labour and then when she was part of this Government around tobacco consumption, and she was very keen on the annual increase on the excise duty, which we support.

So we have seen a reduction, but, as one of the signatories to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and one of the first to ratify that UN convention, we were very pleased to put in place the measures that it recommends in that framework, and one of them is plain packaging. So now we are putting in place yet one more measure.

The plain packaging legislation—and this part of the bill is the main part of the bill. It is also important around the name of this bill, and at the Health Committee we decided that the name was not appropriate. I recall Sir Geoffrey Palmer saying that when you name a bill—and I think this was when he was chair of the Law Commission—it ought to reflect what the bill is about, so having names that confuse the public is not appropriate. Well, in the original name of this bill, as people will know, it was plain packaging. Of course, there is nothing plain about the packaging that is going to be put on the standard cigarette packets in New Zealand. They are far from plain—they are graphic. In fact, they show some horrific examples of what can happen if you smoke.

We have seen some of the examples of what these would be, and the Minister Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, when he replies, may like to share with us some of what the New Zealand examples would be. I know that there has been a call for us to have some unique graphic pictures on our packaging that are of a New Zealand flavour. We know what the Australians did, and other countries, but there has been a call for us to have some unique graphics of our own that relate to New Zealand. So the Minister may like to address that, because we have not seen what those—

Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: They haven’t been finalised yet.

Hon ANNETTE KING: Oh well, the Minister said they have not been finalised. I am sure, as a responsible Minister, he would like to share them with the House when they are finalised, and maybe he would even like an input from the very good Health Committee, which would be very happy, Minister, to look at them when you have finalised them to see whether we think that they do have a particular New Zealand flavour.

In fact, we have recommended a change to the bill—and I know that the Minister is going to accept it—which is that we should change it from the “Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Amendment Bill” to the “Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Standardised Packaging) Amendment Bill”. That is what we have had suggested from the select committee. It is standardised packaging. It is not plain packaging, for the very reason that I have set out.

I just wanted to say that in the select committee, when we were putting up some amendments—we put up three main amendments to the bill, Minister, and I think you have probably accepted them all. They are the “(Tobacco Standardised Packaging)”, the offence for the sale of certain tobacco products in small quantities, and the offence for the sale of certain herbal smoking products in small quantities—so, restrictions and offences. Those were amendments that we put up, and I am pretty sure that they are going to be supported.

But I wanted to say that at the select committee, we worked in a very collegial way over those amendments, and we were also not moved, Minister, by the tobacco industry’s protests about plain packaging. I do know that there are a couple of members opposite who are former tobacco lobbyists, who were very keen on tobacco. I do not know whether they have changed their minds, but, of course, Chris Bishop, a former Philip Morris spokesperson, said there are not any studies to suggest—

Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Get out of the gutter.

Hon ANNETTE KING: No, no, this is important, Sam. He said this—and it is on the record so we should share it—“There aren’t any studies to suggest that plain packaging will work at stopping people from taking up smoking or helping them to quit”. There is not one study to suggest that, he said. The Minister does not agree with it, otherwise he would not be backing this bill, and I believe that the National Government does not believe it. I certainly know that a doctor like Dr Shane Reti would not agree with that. So I think that maybe young Chris Bishop learnt a thing or two when he has got in here, because we do have research cited in the New Zealand Medical Journal that states that New Zealand studies show that “Plain packs that feature large graphic health warnings are significantly more likely to promote cessation among young adult smokers than fully or partially branded packs.” So I think that there is evidence that it will work.

It is not the panacea—let us get that straight. It is just one more measure. So it is not going to suddenly stop everybody smoking, but, Minister, you know, and this Committee knows, that it is yet another tool to use to help discourage people from smoking.

We do support this bill, and we do support its speedy passage. So getting this Committee stage finished and having the third reading and Royal assent for this bill is very important to those of us who care about the health of New Zealanders.

Minister, I am pleased that you are actually here with this bill. I do have questions that I asked you over many months about what was happening, and you were particularly cagey for a long time, but suddenly the bill is here and we are passing it. I cannot say whether it was you who was holding it up, but I do believe that we did lack the courage in New Zealand to follow the Australians, who put this in place several years ago. They said to the tobacco companies: “Go to hell. We are sovereign. We make our own public health policy. We are not going to be told by any tobacco company what we ought to do.” They put the legislation in place, they took the hit of being taken to court, and we sat back and said: “Oh, we better wait and see what Australia does. It might be a problem.”

I wish that we, as a country that has been a leader in tobacco control, had been the country that had had the courage to do it—that we had stood up and said that we firmly believed in reducing the consumption of tobacco in New Zealand for the health of New Zealanders and to prevent some of those 5,000 deaths a year—but we did not. We were very slow followers.

Minister, I am not saying that is your fault. You are a person who, I am sure, believes that we need to take this measure, or otherwise you would not be taking this bill through the House. But perhaps you might like to reflect on why it took us so long, and why we did not have the courage to take this bill—well, certainly, I had the courage, and others had courage. But we did not have the courage of the Government to do this.

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (Associate Minister of Health): I take great pleasure in coming to this Committee stage to talk about this standardised packaging legislation. I thank the member Annette King for her contribution. It was good right up until the 7-minute mark, when she decided to have a go at members opposite about past statements, because the focus is on the health of New Zealanders; it is not about scoring political points across this House. It is not about making accusations about what members opposite did in their past lives. This is about the 4,500 to 5,000 people who die prematurely every year because of tobacco smoke—the 4,500 to 5,000 people who die prematurely. And so this bill contains measures—regulation-making powers—to control aspects of the design, of the physical appearance of cigarettes. And we know from the Australian legislation—the Australian experience since 2012—that these things work.

So what does it do? The member Annette King spoke quite eloquently about the history of the Labour Party. She spoke quite eloquently about Tariana Turia, and I acknowledge her, because it is her driving force that has brought this legislation alongside the Government. This bill actually removes company colours; it removes logos and other marketing ploys that are designed to attract people to smoke. Essentially, they are almost designed to attract people to kill themselves. And if you recall the many years ago when there were advertisements on TV and there were logos and advertisements at sporting events that had this notion of attracting people to tobacco.

Hon Annette King: A long time ago.

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: That is a long time ago, and it made it look attractive. So this is just another step—another step in the long journey of bringing about change that will change the culture around smoking in this country.

This bill does impose controls on marketing—on advertising—and I know that some of the more liberal free-marketeers out there will say that this is an impingement on intellectual property rights and freedoms and liberties. But we have got to remember what is at the heart of this bill, and it is the health of all New Zealanders. I take the member’s point around standardised packaging; I have accepted that that is the more appropriate term to use in this space. But it is intended to restrict the ability of the tobacco industry to promote and advertise these products, and that is a good thing, because I believe that will lead to more people’s lives being saved, to people living longer, and to people being able to contribute to their communities, to live with their families, and just to live better lives overall.

So what is the experience in Australia? Well, in Australia, the Australian Government’s official post-implementation review has found that it has made a sizable addition to contributing to lowering the smoking prevalence rates. It says that about 25 percent of the decline over the last 4 years can be attributed to standardised packaging. That is a good thing. What it shows is that it has increased the number of intentions to quit as well as recorded quit attempts in Australia. Alongside all the other smoking cessation tools and products that help people get off tobacco, it has shown that it has, in fact, saved lives in Australia.

I think the other point to mention here is that other jurisdictions around the world have taken on standardised packaging: Ireland and the UK in May earlier this year, France has passed legislation, and I hear that Canada—and these are some of our closest allies, if you like. They are jurisdictions that have very similar laws to New Zealand and similar histories and backgrounds. They have taken on standardised packaging legislation. Canada also intends to do it, and I am proud of the fact that New Zealand is progressing this legislation through the House this year.

The other point that will be made, and may be made, is around the illicit trade of tobacco. I see Barbara Stewart there. She is sort of champing at the bit to make points on behalf of the tobacco industry. What it is about is that there is no evidence—

Hon Annette King: Talking about political point-scoring.

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: No, I do it with a smile. I do it with a smile; you do it with a nasty streak. [Interruption] No, no, Barbara and I are really good mates, but there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that any illegal sales of tobacco will increase. There is no evidence. But we know that the police will keep a watching brief on these developments, as they do with increases in tax and various other things that impact on the sale of tobacco.

In terms of the timing for this legislation—and I know there will be a couple of Supplementary Order Papers put forward by the New Zealand First Party—the Government has not yet set a date for standardised packaging. It needs to go through this House, of course. It also needs to go through the regulation-making period. But just know that there will be ample time not just for the industry but also for the public to adjust to these laws, and the legislation is pretty explicit. There is a 12-week wash-through period, and that period is actually greater than the Australian period, so—

Barbara Stewart: It didn’t work in Australia.

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: No, she shakes her head, but anyway, I just want to say that this legislation is welcomed. It is welcomed by our Government. It is clearly welcomed by Opposition parties, and we welcome their support on this. But coming back to the heart of the matter, we know that smoking is highly addictive. We know that all smokers take it up at quite a young age and that this piece of legislation is just another tool in the tool box around increasing taxes—in the tool box that we will be looking at in consultation around e-cigarettes and whether they will have an impact on smoking rates. It is also part of the tool box around the point of display that this Government has put in place, alongside support from other parties.

We know that a high proportion of those smokers take it up because of its attractiveness. We know that pack design—product presentation—which is used to enhance the appeal of these products, must be attacked at source. That is why standardised packaging makes sense intuitively, and it makes sense in terms of the mechanics of it—the aesthetics of it—and that is why standardised packaging is important in order to reach our 2025 goal of a smoke-free New Zealand. Standardised packaging also supports New Zealand’s international obligations, which the member opposite, Annette King, talked about: our commitments under the World Health Organization framework for the convention on tobacco control.

We are proud to be a part of that convention. We support it, and we support the goals around it, combined with other measures, particularly those measures that our Government is putting in place to focus on high-needs populations. We know that Māori rates are well over 30 percent and Pacific rates are in the mid-20s. We know pregnant women have rates that are ridiculous. So we support that convention, and that is why there has been a realignment of the services towards those high-needs groups in order to bring down the rates for smoking.

This is another step in the right direction. It is another step in the comprehensive programme that this Government has around tobacco control. I welcome the support across this Committee, and I look forward to the questions that may come from members opposite. Thank you.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I thank the Associate Minister of Health Sam Lotu-Iiga for that contribution to the debate, but what the Minister did not address was the core question that Annette King asked him, which was: why so long, Minister? Why has this bill taken so long to progress from when it was first proposed as an idea? The Labour Party proposed it back in 2011, the Hon Tariana Turia introduced this legislation in 2013—why are we now, in 2016, only at the Committee stage?

I would like to propose a few reasons why I think that is the case. The first is that the Hon Tariana Turia is no longer in this Parliament and is no longer the Minister in charge of this bill. National had no interest at all in legislation designed to reduce the harm caused by tobacco. For years and years and years, it railed against changes that were made by successive Labour Governments. It did nothing to reduce the harm caused by tobacco when it was in Government in the 1990s, and, at every opportunity, it campaigned against parties or MPs who introduced or supported legislation to reduce the harm caused by tobacco. That changed only when National entered a relationship with the Māori Party.

Good on Tariana Turia for her efforts. She championed getting rid of tobacco displays, she championed increasing the excise tax, and she championed introducing plain packs, or standardised packs, as we now talk about. That all came to a halt when Tariana Turia left. That speaks loudly, I think, to National’s lack of enthusiasm for reducing the harm caused by tobacco and the sorry state of the Māori Party now that its leadership has left the Parliament, and it has far less influence in its role now. This was something that was a key priority for the Māori Party, and it has gone right on the backburner since Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia left this House. I think the Māori Party, frankly, is a shadow of what it could have been, especially in this area.

Of course, in the last few years, National has professed to have had a road to Damascus moment and has supported all those pieces of legislation to reduce the harm caused by tobacco. But we know that deep down inside, this is still not at its core. This still is not in its DNA. When you have got people like Chris Bishop saying that there are not any studies that suggest plain packaging will work or that it is stopping people from taking up smoking or helping them to quit smoking—that there is not one study to suggest that—you know that, actually, within the National Party caucus, the members do not really believe this stuff. Shane Reti might. He is sitting very quietly up the back.

I recall when Dr Paul Hutchison crossed the floor to vote with the Labour Government in favour of legislation to reduce the harm caused by tobacco, and I am sure that if the roles were reversed and this was a Labour bill, Shane Reti would be crossing the floor to support this legislation because I doubt that a National Party in Opposition would actually support this. It would use this to campaign and rail against the Government. The best indicator of future behaviour is prior behaviour, and that is the behaviour that we saw from the National Party every time Labour tried to do things to reduce the harm caused by tobacco.

Let us not forget, of course, “the Boy Wonder”, Todd Barclay. He had a lot to say about tobacco control before he came into the House as well. He was another one of those tobacco lobbyists.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Well, we have all said things before we came into the House.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Sorry, what was that, Mr Chair?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Well, it is just—

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: He was the one getting into—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): What I would suggest—I suppose I should stand up if he is going to stand up. I would suggest that if we are going to keep it relevant, what comments people may have said long before they came to Parliament—even in short lives—may not necessarily be applicable. The difficult thing is, of course, as Chair I do not get to make a speech; I would make a really good one on this.

Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I think that should also be applied to the Minister, who made, I think, an unfortunate accusation against Barbara Stewart that she was going to be speaking on behalf of the tobacco industry. Of course, as you know, no member can be accused of being in the pocket of anybody.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Let us just—well, interesting you should make that particular comment.

Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: I’ll apologise.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Have you called upon the Minister to apologise?

Hon Annette King: I can’t do that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): No? Well, let us just leave it at that. Let us just say that we have a few slaps either way, and let us just see whether we can debate the issue. Congratulations.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Ha, ha! Thank you, Mr Chair. Well, I would just say that it was not that long before he came into Parliament—he is not old enough to have had long before he came into Parliament—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): You old sage.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —Todd Barclay was railing against the idea that there was evidence to support having plain or standardised packaging for tobacco products.

So yes, we do support this, because the evidence is clear that every step we take to clamp down on the tobacco industry to reduce the prevalence and the visibility of tobacco products has an impact. As other members have said, including the Minister, there is no one silver bullet. No one claims that this is the silver bullet, no one claims that excise tax increases are the silver bullet, and no one claims that getting rid of advertising was the silver bullet, but putting all those things together over years and adding in education—they all have an impact. This has always been the next logical step.

I hate it when we are beaten by the Aussies. I enjoyed watching the Bledisloe Cup match over the weekend. I enjoy the fact that we have held the Bledisloe Cup since 2002. I love beating the Aussies, and I hate it when we get beaten by them. It is sad that we, as a nation that in the past has been at the forefront of controlling tobacco and that has taken huge steps to reduce the harm caused by tobacco, allowed ourselves not just to be beaten by the Aussies, but once we were beaten by the Aussies, we then sat back and watched from a distance to see what they would do and what the impact would be on them before we as a nation had the courage to step up and actually do this. But it is good to see that this is being progressed.

I would like to speak very briefly about the New Zealand First Supplementary Order Papers 198 and 199. These seek to have a long transition period between the current regime and when this regime comes into force. Actually, I reiterate what the Minister said. The industry—both the manufacturers of tobacco, which are large global companies that have the resources to change very quickly, and the retailers—has known this is coming for a long time. It has known this was coming since 2013, and we have given it the transition period. We have given it plenty of warning by the Government dragging its feet on this legislation. In fact, the bill as it is written gives it plenty of time to transition from the current regime to the new regime. If the industry is not getting ready for it now, then it has got a problem and it is not paying attention. Anybody who works in that industry ought to be preparing themselves for the time when standardised packaging comes into place. So we will not be supporting New Zealand First’s Supplementary Order Papers.

We think the bill as it is drafted does a good job. We support the idea that we need to take one more step to reduce this harm. It is a product that kills 5,000 people a year when used as directed by the manufacturer. We had lots of debate about lots of different substances—the harm caused by alcohol, the harm caused by illicit drugs. The difference between those and tobacco, particularly alcohol and tobacco, is that alcohol is extremely harmful when abused. It is addictive, lots of people abuse it, and lots of people get addicted to alcohol, but with tobacco, this is a product that when used as the industry expects you to use it, kills half of the people who use it, and that amounts to 5,000 people a year.

So I am surprised, frankly, that any party is opposing this legislation. I am surprised that it has taken us so long to progress this legislation, and I am proud to be a member of a party that promoted this idea early and that has a long track record of supporting legislation that reduces the harm caused by tobacco, because anybody who opposes things that are proven to reduce the harm caused by tobacco has to seriously think about their priorities.

BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): Firstly, I would like to clarify for the Minister in the chair, Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, and the Committee and the public of New Zealand that New Zealand First is not in the hands or the pocket of the tobacco industry. We definitely are not, and I am very disappointed that the Minister did not apologise for an entirely erroneous statement that he knows is untrue. Tobacco is a legal product in New Zealand and the Government enjoys the excise tax, so I am amazed that he was so condemning of New Zealand First.

But I would like to talk about the two Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that are in my name for the Committee to consider at this stage of the debate. I did ensure that the Minister was aware of these SOPs before they were published and I reached out to him, but he did not come back and talk these through, which I found very disappointing. I sent an email through and it was not responded to.

Both SOPs basically look at extending the lead-in time for compliance for manufacturers and for the retailers of tobacco products. We believe, in New Zealand First, that the legislation has not learnt from our own example when we passed legislation requiring graphic health warnings, but also, when we look at the Australian example, when it moved from branded to plain packaging. We need to be realistic as a Parliament and recognise the logistical and the operational challenges for manufacturers and retailers when introducing standardised packaging.

It is a change from what is there, and although the Minister says everyone has known about it for years, the exact dates are definitely not there in place, even now. When I look at my SOP 198, that looks to provide manufacturers with a realistic time frame for transitioning from branded to standardised stock. We know that tobacco packaging is printed in huge quantities, and I know the Minister knows this as well. It is unrealistic for manufacturers to have a very minute stock of packaging when they know that this legislation is going through the House, but there is still no set date for it. We need to give manufacturers a definitive time to comply. We need to look at the problem from their point of view as well.

SOP 199 looks to provide tobacco retailers with a realistic time frame to manage stock and changeover issues that we have seen arise in the past. The bottom line is that 12 weeks is not sufficient to basically get rid of all of your old stock and sell it on, because it is impractical to work out what is required. No doubt the Minister would be very happy when some of these ram raids are carried out, because then all of the cigarettes, all of the tobacco, is taken by these people. So we are very disappointed that the Minister did not reach out and at least consider it.

We have looked at the Australian examples quite realistically and for a long time, so we want to learn from that particular issue. I am hoping that the other parties will at least consider businesses and the business time frame in how a business operates, even though I know that many of these people have not been small-business owners themselves and do not understand the mechanics of business.

So for SOPs 198 and 199 we would like the support of the Committee. We know that the legislation is going to be passed and we know that this is the new regime that is coming, but we would like manufacturers and businesses to at least have a realistic time frame to get through their stock. Thank you.

KEVIN HAGUE (Green): I have spoken in the House on a number of occasions about some of the settings that this Government has. One of its settings is to shrink the size of the State, to withdraw from functions that New Zealanders have traditionally collectivised and determined that as a society we will take care of each other through. National has been pulling back those boundaries. Another of its settings has been that where that is no longer possible—so, where it is politically untenable to shrink the size of the State, where public opinion has mounted to the point that some kind of action is required—National has responded not with substantive action but with gesture, a small step in the direction that is required.

It was interesting to hear the Minister Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga speak about the compelling evidence of harm that tobacco is causing in this country. Indeed, Minister, it is causing that harm. But rather than responding with a comprehensive suite of measures, National is responding, again, with gesture—with small steps taken as small and as slowly as the Government can get away with. The Minister gave a list of countries that are moving on plain packaging, but I want to echo the Hon Annette King and her comments to say that New Zealand at one point was a leader on tobacco control—a leader on actually limiting the damage being caused by tobacco in our country. We have stepped back, under this Government, from that role as a leader. We are now not even a fast follower; we are a slow follower.

The other speakers have rightly praised Tariana Turia, and I want to add to that list my praise for Helen Clark, for Annette King, and for Hone Harawira, who have been leaders on tobacco control from this House. But I also want to extend to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, the challenge and the encouragement to actually step forward to become a leader in this area too. We have, as a Parliament, as a Government, all endorsed this fantastic goal of having a smoke-free Aotearoa by 2025. We are currently not on track for achieving that goal, and yet when experts have recommended more aggressive excise tax increases, the Government has responded with the least measure that it can. Although experts have all endorsed the effectiveness of this standardised packaging bill in front of us today, we have actually had 2 years of delays, when, in fact, the Government’s reason for the delay, or the reason it espoused for the delay—fear of investor-State dispute settlement mechanisms—really has been proven to be nothing more than a paper tiger, as all of the advocates for tobacco control were saying from the beginning.

So the smoke-free Aotearoa 2025 goal is one that we should be pursuing, not with timid and isolated steps but with comprehensive measures. I want to see this bill passed as quickly as it possibly can be, and I want to see the Minister in the chair actually step forward with other measures. How about some supply-side control? How about a register of retailers? How about all of those other measures that the Māori Affairs Committee recommended to this House?

The submissions that the Health Committee heard on this bill were all strongly in favour of the bill, with the exception, I have to say, of those from the tobacco industry itself and its proxies—those individuals who appeared before the select committee with sponsorship from the tobacco industry, which had supported their “research”. The evidence of effectiveness that the select committee heard was compelling. On that basis one would have hoped that the Government could move faster.

I want to say that the Green Party certainly supports the change in the name of the bill. I am very pleased to know that the Government and all the National Party members will be voting for the bill itself and for that change.

I want to highlight our disagreement with the New Zealand First minority view in the select committee report. The New Zealand First minority view says that New Zealand First believes that there are “more effective” measures. Well, I would like to know what those would be, because if there are measures that are more effective than this one, which we know has great evidence of effectiveness, let us actually debate those. Let us debate them and pass them into law as quickly as we can.

The truth is that New Zealand First has generally voted against tobacco control measures. My friend Barbara Stewart has several Supplementary Order Papers in her name, and she has spoken in this debate about those. I have to say that I recognise the difficult situation that Barbara Stewart may be in, in relation to this debate, but I have to say that the Green Party will be opposing the Supplementary Order Papers in her name.

What those Supplementary Order Papers do is to further delay the implementation of this bill, and, as Iain Lees-Galloway has said, this is a bill that was introduced in December 2013 and its first reading was in February 2014. The industry has known that this was coming. Barbara Stewart said in her contribution that there are members in the House who have not been small-business owners. Well, I have been. I have owned and managed multiple small businesses—and large businesses, for that matter—and I can say with confidence that small-business owners are perfectly capable of interpreting the fact that a bill is before the House and that most of the parties in the House are saying that they want it to be implemented without further delay.

I agree with the contribution that Iain Lees-Galloway made—that, in fact, there has been enough delay already. I am reminded of the tactics and the strategy that the industry has used from the word go—from the Doll and Hill study back in the 1950s, which first made the definitive connection between tobacco consumption and lung cancer. The industry has, from the word go, attempted first of all to deny the findings of the research, then to obfuscate—that is what we saw in the evidence before the select committee—and, finally, to delay. Its sole motivation is profit maximisation and protection of its commercial position, and I do not believe that this House should facilitate that purpose. Enough delay already—this bill should be passed, forthwith.

RIA BOND (NZ First): I want to respond to the member Kevin Hague, who has just talked about New Zealand First’s Supplementary Order Papers 198 and 199. I want to point out to that member that the reason why these Supplementary Order Papers have been produced by my fine colleague Barbara Stewart, who has not got the tobacco lobbyists in her pocket, as Minister Lotu-Iiga claims, but he will not get up and man up and say sorry to her. I want to address the fact that, as the bill says—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! The member cannot use a phrase such as that in her speech like that. There has been some dialogue between the members. I think the member should just move on.

RIA BOND: Thank you, Mr Chair. I will do that. I want to point out that the bill reads, under clause 2, “Commencement”: “(1) This Act comes into force on a date appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council.” That gives the manufacturers and the retailers no security whatsoever. It then says: “(2) However, if this Act is not in force by the day that is 18 months after the date on which it receives the Royal assent, it comes into force on that day.” So the issue—which is why Barbara Stewart provided her Supplementary Order Papers—is that there is no security of an actual date given to manufacturers or retailers.

Mr Hague also got up and said that, as a former small-business owner, he believes that business owners can actually get themselves into line with changes when they are aware that bills are going through the House. Well, Mr Hague, I am sorry to tell you, but small-business owners are, in this case, little dairies on the corners, which I grew up going to and buying things from as a kid; the garages that actually used to be owned by Kiwis but now the owners find it hard to speak English; and the supermarkets that have the issue that they actually do buy the cigarettes in quantity—in thousands. So I do not find that comment about the fact that small businesses would be relatively organised and savvy to be quite true.

The issue—which, again, is why Barbara has brought these Supplementary Order Papers to the Committee—is that the needed transition time and production time needs to be fair on the manufacturers and give them time to comply. In terms of the production line and what actually happens in this instance, they have to approve of a new plain packaging design. This goes back and forth through the manufacturers to approve the design, and then they actually have to go through and change their production line, change the actual calibrations to their machinery, and change how their establishments inside their manufacturing lines are working. That is no easy process for manufacturers to go through. I think the practical element, in terms of bills in this House, sometimes gets lost on members.

What we are asking for in Supplementary Order Paper 198 is an actual, definitive date. I think, too, that we actually set a precedent when New Zealand changed from text health warnings to graphic health warnings. That gave manufacturers 12 months. A definitive date—that is all we are asking for. Give the manufacturers an actual, definitive date—there would not need to be a Supplementary Order Paper put forward if this were the case.

I also want to talk further about the fact that the logistical and operational issues for manufacturers surrounding plain packaging—it has been brought to our attention that the time frame, again, is what actually concerns them the most. I do happen to think the 12 weeks’ wash-out, as the Minister said earlier, is hardly good enough. We have seen from the examples in Australia that this did not actually work for them and caused massive problems. In fact, the Australians had to backtrack when they realised what a mess they had actually made of this. They did backtrack and they did provide a better time frame.

I want to also talk again about the fact of the impact on small businesses. I think that this bill does demonstrate a distinct lack of awareness of the commercial realities of being a small-business owner. I think that because we do have a lot of dairies on the corner that do sell cigarettes behind the plain doors now—as I said, they stockpile. They buy these cigarette packets in quantities, in thousands, in cartons. These dairy owners, petrol stations, and supermarkets are going to be left out of pocket, and that is a serious concern for New Zealand First. We need to protect our small businesses, and this bill does not actually do that. It does not take into account that these small businesses have dumped thousands of dollars into buying cigarettes.

I want to refer to a media statement, or a media release, if you like. It says here that the move to not have any consideration of what the impact of plain packaging would be on small businesses—because they were not given a definitive date, they wanted know, if anything, whether retailers were going to receive compensation. This was from one of the Australian retailers, and I too wonder about that myself, because the retailers are going to actually lose quite a lot of money in stock sitting there. I wonder, too, whether this Government is going to compensate the retailers.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am happy to take a brief call on the plain packaging of cigarettes and to give my absolute and full support to this bill. It is important to remember that this is not an issue that just affects the people who smoke the cigarettes. It affects everybody around them, including children, including people who are in public places, including people who are in the workplace, and including the people who, when they are using public transport, sit next to someone who smokes.

This is an issue that affects everybody, and I think that the plain packaging of tobacco is well and truly justified. The burden that this will place will predominantly fall on the tobacco industry, and I want to be clear about this: I have never been confused about my own position when it comes to the tobacco industry. I have never been conflicted in my own position. It is an industry entirely without conscience and entirely without any moral compass. This is an industry that sets out to kill its customers, and it does so without any sense of remorse, so the fact that this Parliament is passing legislation that is going to disadvantage it is, in my view, nothing to be ashamed of and is something that we should be fully in support of.

I have always been in favour of measures that will reduce smoking and that will reduce the harm that comes from smoking. I have to say to the members opposite who have changed their position, or have been confused about their position, that they should search deeply within themselves to find their own moral conscience and ensure that they do the right thing in supporting this, not just because they are told to do so by their party but because they actually find within themselves the belief that this is the right thing to do—because it is the right thing to do.

I refer in particular to the members who have said things like “there aren’t any studies to suggest that plain packaging will work at stopping people from taking up smoking or helping them to quit smoking. There’s not one study to suggest that”. That was a comment from a National member of Parliament. Another comment from the same National member of Parliament: “we are worried about retailers. We are worried about the impact of plain packaging on intellectual property treaties that New Zealand is subject to, and global trade treaties.”

Those, of course—members will be well aware—were the comments of Chris Bishop, who is a National member of Parliament. The fact that he may have made those comments, as the Chair pointed out, before he was a member of Parliament does not change the facts of the matter. When voters vote, they vote for us based on who we are as people, and what people say before they become members of Parliament has a bearing on the views that voters should be entitled to form of us. I want to say very clearly that I have always been opposed to the tobacco industry and the tobacco lobby, and I will continue to speak out against them at every available opportunity.

This bill has been on Parliament’s Order Paper since 2013. The industry and all of those who work within the industry have had plenty of time to adapt and prepare for this law change that we will be progressing today. There is simply no justification for saying that it should be further delayed because of the cost that it will bear on business. The cost will predominantly fall on the tobacco companies, whose job, as I have said, is to kill people. That is what they set out to do. The product that they supply—they know that it kills people, and they continue to supply it, they continue to promote it without any sense of remorse, and I think the Parliament is doing absolutely the right thing in passing this legislation without any further delay.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koutou katoa. I want to just take us through a bit of history, because we have been talking a lot about the origins of this piece of legislation. In 1989, the New Zealand Department of Health’s Toxic Substances Board recommended that cigarettes be sold only in white packs with black text—so no colours and logos. So, in fact, we have been crediting Australia this whole time for leading the way, but we actually had the idea. I want to acknowledge that Canada, in the 1990s, had a parliamentary committee that also looked at the issue of plain packaging or standardised packaging. For them, it was part of a reasonable step in the overall strategy to reduce tobacco consumption.

We are here today because, as a country, we have committed to Smokefree Aotearoa 2025, and so I want to commend the Minister for the bill. It is a bill that we have been waiting a long time to debate, but this year we have debated two bills that, I think, have substantially impacted on not only smoking rates but ongoing smoking among young people. In fact, from the research, it is young people who will benefit the most from this plain packaging legislation. Clause 5 of the bill amends section 3A(1)(b) of the principal Act to read: “to regulate and control the marketing, advertising, and promotion of tobacco products …”. There is an explicit understanding that tobacco consumption is incredibly harmful, and so this bill is intended to improve public health.

Those of us who have spoken today are on the whole, I believe, advocates for public health, because we know that there are some products that are killing us, and this is one of those products. On average, 5,000 people who smoke die every year. We have got over 550,000 smokers in this country. Five thousand people is a heck of a lot of people dying every year from a preventable practice, I will call it. We also have 350 people die from second-hand smoking—so those who do not smoke who think this bill is irrelevant to them, well, actually it is—and we have 70 babies die every year from sudden, unexpected death in infancy, and that is associated with the environments that our children are growing up in.

For Māori and Pacific, the rates are a lot higher. Our prevalence rate in New Zealand is 20 percent; for Māori it is 34 percent and for Pacific it is 26 percent. The interesting thing to note is that, currently, the Australian prevalence rate is just over 16 percent, but 3 years ago, when it brought plain packaging in, it was like ours—20 percent. So there is evidence that this piece of legislation will reduce smoking by 3 percent.

I find the whole debate about the time frames for plain packaging really interesting, and it is just because I have looked at other pieces of legislation. To New Zealand First, I want to acknowledge your Supplementary Order Papers, because in France and the UK, from May this year, they brought in standardised or plain packaging. But in terms of non-plain packages, in France they have allowed until 1 January 2017 for the sale of non-plain packages.

Barbara Stewart: That’s a reasonable lead-in.

LOUISA WALL: Yes—so that is a 9-month lead-in, and in the UK they actually legislated for a year, so they can still sell the non - plain packaged cigarettes up until May 2017. That is how other jurisdictions have dealt with this particular issue, and I just thought it was my responsibility to also highlight that.

Barbara Stewart: Thank you.

LOUISA WALL: No problem.

In terms of the evidence about the effectiveness—and there is a lot of evidence about the effectiveness. Cancer Australia particularly focuses on the decrease of youth uptake, and I have just found another survey that reinforces that the decrease in uptake from young people was also relevant to Torres Strait and Aboriginal youth. There is generic application of this particular tool to decrease the uptake of smoking and the consumption of smoking by young people right across the board, so we would anticipate that Māori, Pacific, Asian, and other groups in society will benefit from this particular initiative. What the evidence basically said was that the plain packaging or standardised packaging actually makes the whole product less attractive, and that is what we want. I think the whole point for the marketers and advertisers of tobacco is to make these amazing packs that people want to put on the table because they are proud to be associated with them. That is why this piece of legislation is so important.

There were also negative perceptions and feeling about the pack and smoking it in a public place, and so young people actually hid the pack. They did not want people to know that this was the pack that they were smoking, and that decreased their consumption of tobacco around others. They actually chose to go without and so it decreased their consumption, and it also increased the thoughts to give up. I think that is the part of the equation now that I want to highlight—and I will take the opportunity with the Minister—because all these initiatives are fantastic, but what we have to make sure is that people who want to quit have the resources to do so. So I am hoping that there will be a corresponding increase in the availability of smoke-free, or auahi kore, resources so that those who want to give up are helped to give up.

I know, from my father’s experience, that those tools included going to a hypnotist. It also includes patches. Some people need counselling. Some people actually need to be giving up smoking in team events, and there is a little initiative called Wero, which has been incredibly successful. Rugby league actually piloted this challenge, and, actually, it enabled families and communities to give up collectively, because that is the other part of the deal. We want families to be smoke-free because we know that young people who grow up in families where two parents smoke are 40 percent more likely to smoke. So all of this package, Minister, will translate into us becoming smoke-free by 2025.

I think what you have heard today from my colleague Kevin Hague actually is an opportunity for us to work collaboratively across the House. You know, you have got a lot of supporters of this particular kaupapa, and so we would welcome an opportunity to meet with you formally so that we are part of the solution—so that it does not matter who is in Government, actually, and that this kaupapa is taken into the future. I know that there are opportunities coming in terms of the e-cigarettes, and you and your ministry have responded to some evidence about these different tools that help people to give up smoking. So I am very excited about this piece of legislation going through the House.

I cannot not think and comment about the passion of the Hon Tariana Turia. This really was her legacy, not only for the Parliament but for the people of Aotearoa, and I know she did it because she realised that, as a tool of colonisation, smoking has actually been incredibly pervasive in the lives of Māori. So I want to acknowledge her. I want to acknowledge Hone Harawira, when he was a member of the Māori Affairs Committee, and Tau Henare, who chaired that Māori Affairs Committee, because they too were incredibly passionate and committed to addressing the negative consequences that tobacco continues to have on the lives of Māori.

I am particularly pleased because this initiative, as I have said before, really is targeted at young people. But, in addition to young people, I do want to say that smokers generally have been turned off, and one of the most important things is the graphic health warnings on these packs. People need to see the reality of what smoking can do, because then they can take some responsibility and make an informed decision about whether they continue to smoke or not.

But we also know that cigarettes are a drug, and people need help. It is not just about the mind, but when the body craves smoking, then that is a different story. Some people are strong enough to go cold turkey, but, actually, what we know is that people often have to try more than 10 times before they actually give up. So it is having the resilience again and again and again to give up, which is why we need to provide them with as many tools as possible so that they actually can be auahi kore—smoke-free.

If we do this for this generation, actually, we are doing it for future generations, and so that is what I am most passionate about. I am passionate about this issue because in Manurewa I think we have got one of the highest rates of smoking—over 50 percent. But I am visiting one of my schools next week, James Cook High School—

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. In Part 1, new section 3A(1)(b) in clause 5 talks about the purpose of this particular piece of legislation. Having been a member of the Health Committee that heard the submissions, I am very keen for the passage of this legislation, but I want to talk about the actual purpose.

There are four main articles in the purpose, which actually describe a bit of a journey that this nation has taken in terms of its smoke-free legislation. New section 3A(1)(b) talks about discouraging people from taking up smoking in the first place. The second part of it, if you are a smoker, is actually giving you the tools and the ability to give up smoking. If you are one of those lucky people who have reformed and given up smoking, the third part of this actually looks at supporting you to stay smoke-free. Then the fourth part of this is really about ensuring that those people who are non-smokers are actually not exposed to second-hand smoke. So the purpose of this legislation, as I say, has got a long gestation, and there is quite a whakapapa of legislation that has brought us to this point. We, as a nation, have really been on a journey to becoming increasingly smoke-free, as we ought to be.

Part 1 also brings into the discussion the vernacular of the industry. We actually start talking about quit programmes, as opposed to stopping smoking or giving up smoking, because the word “quit” is actually associated with the smoke-free industry. There are quit coaches, who help you to give up smoking, and there is Quitline, which is the telephone service that helps you to give up smoking, so I am really pleased that in this legislation we have decided to use the jargon of the industry and put “quit” in the legislation. It is not normal to use terminology like that, but I am really pleased that we have done that in this case. Having a sister who is a quit coach, I felt it was really important to be able to signify that we knew exactly what we were talking about in terms of the industry supporting people to give up smoking.

New section 21(a) in clause 6—this is where we start to look at the difference between plain packaging and standardised packaging. It was really important to make this point because “plain packaging” actually is a misnomer. “Plain packaging” does not adequately describe what we are talking about here. “Plain packaging” seems to describe, you know, clear, white packaging, but “standardised packaging” has actually got some requirements within the legislation. So standardised packaging looks at several considerations. It looks at the graphics that will be on the packaging. It looks at the colour of the packaging and what the warning messages will be, and the warning messages have to be messages that will be likely to get consumers to reduce their uptake of smoking and they have got to ensure that any false perceptions about the harmful effects of tobacco products are diminished. Standardised packaging also refers to where the producer’s logo goes on the particular packet.

New section 32(1) in clause 11 says quite clearly what the packaging must include, so the messaging has to be about outlining the harmful effects of smoking and the benefits of quitting smoking. It also has to list all the harmful constituent chemicals and ingredients in the smoke and the respective quantities of those ingredients within the smoke, and it talks about the graphics, as well. New section 32(1)(b) actually talks about leaf tobacco—tobacco that you get in pouches, I guess. That information has to be available, but because you do not have the cardboard packaging, it has to be included on a leaflet within the tobacco itself. The amendments to section 36 in clause 13 actually increase the penalties in respect of any offence—[Bell rung]

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Poto Williams.

Ron Mark: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I was just wondering—normally the Chair does rotate the speakers across the different parties. We have had four speakers from Labour, one after the other. Is there a change to protocol procedures?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well, actually, we do not alternate around, especially with parties that have a lot fewer members than other parties. It is a matter of generally sharing proportionately. I do listen carefully to members’ speeches to see whether or not they are speaking relevantly when I decide whether or not to give them another call; Poto Williams was, as other members generally have been. The member is on my list to get a call—I have noted that he is going for it—but I think he has also been around long enough to know that it is disorderly to question the Chair as to who gets a call.

POTO WILLIAMS: As I was saying, clause 13 amends section 36 in respect of offences and the increase in penalties. If you are a manufacturer, importer, or distributer, you can receive a fine not exceeding $600,000. A large retailer, for example, can receive a fine not exceeding $200,000, and in any other case, which would be a small retailer, there will be a fine not exceeding $50,000.

Clause 9 of the bill amends section 30A, which is a small but very interesting part of the legislation. It restricts the sale of loose or single cigarettes. That is particularly problematic for young people and people who are starting smoking—for example, children. There is a relevant clause, clause 13, which amends section 36(7A), which looks at the penalties should you be a retailer who is selling single cigarettes. That fine is $2,000. There are some transitional provisions that allow for not only distributers but retailers to have a period of time to work through stock that is non-standardised to the new stock that is standardised stock. For distributors that is a 6-week period and for retailers that is 12 weeks.

I just want to make a couple more comments—firstly, about the submitters. There were quite a few submissions from retailers, grocers, and the like. Some of these submissions were on form submissions. They talked about the standardisation of the packaging causing some confusion within the retail environment. They said that this would increase confusion, they might sell the wrong product, and it would increase delays in actually serving customers. There were high numbers of submitters from around the country who were very supportive of the legislation and who talked quite emotionally about how smoking had impacted on them and their families. There were some submitters who actually wanted us to go further and consider banning smoking in cars.

The last point I want to make is, I guess—having sat on the select committee under the chairmanship of Dr Paul Hutchison—that it was a good committee. This bill was one of the first pieces of legislation that I was involved with as a new member to the House, but we were inevitably delayed bringing the bill back to the House for further debate because, it is my belief, the Government was waiting to see what the World Trade Organization decision was going to be in respect of the Australian Government around its legislation. We had an opportunity to talk to the Australian officials about their legislation and how effective it had been. At the time, there was only anecdotal evidence that was available—but it was actually quite compelling—that even in the early days the standardised packaging that they had introduced was making an impact on smoking rates in that country.

I am very pleased that this legislation has come back to the House, and that we are debating this through the Committee stage now. I commend it to the House.

RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): I am so pleased—because I do have to get back to my desk—but I could not help but come down to the Chamber because right at the start of the debate I heard a comment from a Minister that I thought was a little bit unnecessary—

Barbara Stewart: Unparliamentary.

RON MARK: —and unparliamentary, in my terms, but more so because it was launched at probably the most least confrontational, least controversial, nicest MP in the House, who is New Zealand First’s Barbara Stewart. Why would the Minister dare to have a shot at Barbara Stewart because New Zealand First is opposing this bill? Then he went on to make some outlandish statement that New Zealand First was opposing the bill because we supported the tobacco industry.

So I had to come down to rebut these assertions and remind the Committee of two things. I have heard a lot of comment from the Labour benches in support of this bill, based around harm minimisation, but nothing at all about the need to implement measures against smokers who harm themselves because they blow smoke in the face of a lady at a U2 concert and get punched in the mouth for their actions. Now—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member will resume his seat. We are now debating the Committee stage of the bill, which are the details both of the bill and of Barbara Stewart’s amendment. The comments you are making might have been marginally relevant at first or second reading; they are not now.

RON MARK: My other point is to add some comment to some of the comments that have been made in the Chamber during this detailed debate in the Committee stage—some things that New Zealand First has considered, as it has considered this bill whilst it sat in caucus. It is these inconsistencies in the debate—in the discussion, in the evidence—that lead us to conclude that we will not vote for the bill, like the fact that we do not believe that the evidence is strong enough.

We have heard these arguments from the two parties, National and Labour, that are supporting the bill, saying that this plain packaging will reduce smoking, but we heard the same discussions—and these things came up in the hearings—about other measures that were taken that were supposedly going to reduce the levels of harm. We do not think that those things have happened.

In fact, we have seen harm in another form generated as a result of legislation such as this going through the House. We would point to the price changes. Everyone told us that raising the price of cigarettes would reduce the level of smoking—the same argument that is behind this legislation. On 12 May 2012 I stated in a debate that raising the prices and having this persistent attack on working class New Zealanders who choose to smoke—choose to smoke—would lead to crime. I predicted that in a debate—I did—on television.

The Government of the day continued with Tariana Turia’s measures in that respect, much the same as it is doing now. It ignored the warning. But what have we seen? Well, far from seeing strong evidence that plain packaging will work, we have seen very, very strong evidence that increasing the price—essentially implementing prohibition by economic measures. It is economic prohibition by elevating the price to such a level that you create a black market product and that is why this measure will not work—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): OK, now, the member has now gone on for a minute and a half in an area that was part of legislation passed some time ago and is not relevant to the clauses of this bill. Final warning to the member—stay on the clauses of the bill or I will terminate.

RON MARK: I would like to say, in concluding my speech at this point, that our point is clear and we stand by that. We will vote against this legislation because plain packaging—I still do not understand whether plain packaging means a red shiny package is acceptable as plain packaging or if a blue shiny package, which might well reflect something, is acceptable—I do not know. But a shiny, plain package—what we do understand, and I have not seen it anywhere in the bill, is that in time people become inoculated—

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (Associate Minister of Health): I just want to take the opportunity to answer a few questions, queries, suggestions, and other matters that have been raised across this Chamber. The first issue I will deal with is one that was addressed by Annette King. She asked what the cigarette packets would look like. This packet I am holding is a clear example. It is very similar to the Australian packages. They have some images on them. They have health warnings. As the member has already stated, they will be adapted to New Zealand conditions—there is a Māori health warning. But this is just an example. It is a prototype. It has not been finalised. It will be finalised, of course, as part of the regulations that will go out to form part of this legislation as we proceed not just through the House but through the public consultation process. I am happy to share this with the member after this session—and the Health Committee, of course.

Secondly, there has been talk about some type of delay in this legislation. Can I just say up front that our Government has been transparent about the fact that we would keep a watching brief on the World Trade Organization (WTO) case that was put against Australia. We would keep a watching brief through our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials. We would look at how that case transpired, and we would also look at the evidence around standardised packaging and how it worked in Australia. Some might say, you know, we want to be world leaders at this—like the Olympics, and making these comparisons—but sometimes a cautious approach, a considered approach, and an approach based on science and evidence is the way to go.

In some debates I hear people talking about science and how we should test it. Well, it has been tested now. The evidence out of Australia—and that was available only earlier this year—showed that a quarter of the reduction of smoking prevalence in Australia could be attributed to standardised packaging. That is evidence now that we can hold up. There is room for members in this Committee who have had opinions that were not tested around science to then change their opinion and vote for a piece of legislation that will, based on evidence and based on science, make a difference—and based on the advice, I should say, from those officials.

We now know that we are on strong grounds for putting this legislation through the House. We also know, as I have already stated, that other countries are taking up standardised packaging legislation, and those countries are not subject to WTO action. Those are tangible things that we can point to that demonstrate to us that we are on strong ground and that we should proceed with this piece of legislation. I wanted to just address that point—that it is considered—and to members who say that this bill was in the House in 2013, I say that, actually, it was introduced in the House in December 2013. It had its first reading in February, and the progression of this bill is not inconsistent with other bills that have gone through this House.

I want to thank the member Louisa Wall. She has since left the Chamber, but I just want to note that she talked about the time, in terms of Supplementary Order Papers 198 and 199, in which this legislation should come into force after this bill is passed. She noted the various times. The Health Committee considered these matters. It is important to note that the select committee members looked at these matters, and they rejected these assertions. The reason I made the analogy—and I will state publicly, and I apologise. It was in jest. Barbara Stewart and I have a strong relationship. We have a positive relationship. [Interruption] She seems surprised. But those were the arguments that were put forward by the tobacco industry in the select committee. They were rejected wholeheartedly by the select committee. I reject them wholeheartedly too.

I think that where the regulations will be developed over time, we need that level of flexibility within this legislation. We know that the regulations have been developed and we know that they will come into force after this bill has been passed, and so we need that flexibility. In terms of the second Supplementary Order Paper—No. 199—in terms of the wash-through, can I say to that member that the transitional provisions in the bill are clear. They currently allow for two wash-through periods, and that member knows that. The 3-month, or the 12-week, wash-through period—the total period—is actually longer than the period that was allowed in Australia. It is longer than that period.

The member notes—and I will agree with her—that there were some teething issues, but we believe, based on the Australian experience and the extended period under this bill, that there will be sufficient time for wash-through to occur in the New Zealand context. I accept the submission that she has made. However, I reject it, alongside the select committee, in terms of whether this is sufficient time.

Can I also just come back to members opposite talking about the overall package in terms of this along with tax increases. I can talk about the overall package—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): No. No, you can’t.

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: —along with the e-cigarettes consultation paper that has been put out there. They talk about working together. I have always had my hand out to work alongside members opposite in terms of these initiatives, and I note that Ms Wall and I constantly go to events relating to smoking cessation and constantly support those groups that are determined to bring down the smoking rates for New Zealanders. I agree with her that this is part of a culture change to make smoking less attractive—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): OK, I am—

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: —and I want to come back—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The Minister will come back—

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: —to why this legislation is important. Can I, Mr Chair?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): You can sit down when I stand up. I am going to remind the Minister that I have been relatively tight on other parties and, to be fair, I am not going to allow him to reply to irrelevancies from them.

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: OK. I want to come back to why this legislation is important. It is about the lives of New Zealanders. It is about the 4,500 to 5,000 New Zealanders who die prematurely. It is not about the 4,500 people who die, as some people have said in this Committee; it is that they are premature deaths. They are people—they are New Zealanders—who could have lived longer and enjoyed time with their families and their communities.

Of course, there is the health cost of smoking, which I think is really important when you consider this piece of legislation as bringing about better change for New Zealanders as a whole. Although members opposite have made relevant points, I believe I have answered those in due course. I have given an undertaking that this Government is committed to this piece of legislation, and is committed to the health of New Zealanders and to bringing down the smoking prevalence of New Zealanders over time.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): I am pleased to make a brief contribution in the Committee stage of this bill. I join with my other colleagues in supporting this legislation, which will bring in the introduction of plain packaging for tobacco products. There is nothing left for me to say in terms of just endorsing the intent and the purpose of this legislation and why we want to enact it, and I do acknowledge the Associate Minister of Health, Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, for his work. What I would like to do is focus on what I think is an omission from this legislation. That involves the effect of internet sales and the plain packaging that may apply—well, how this law will apply to private purchases that are made online by folks from vendors over the globe, which is presently allowed, and how that will align with this plain packaging legislation.

At the moment we have an increasing amount of trade that is conducted online, and I know there are regulation-making powers within the legislation to prescribe the nature of internet sales, but, as I am aware, it is still open to any citizen of this country to jump online and find a relevant vendor around the world, to purchase cigarettes or tobacco products, cigars—whatever is on offer. Those products may comply with, say, US laws around a Surgeon General warning, but they do not go to the extent of the regulations that are prescribed by our own laws. So I just want to clarify—we do have the Minister of Customs in the Chamber at the moment—whether the private purchase of internet sales of branded products, tobacco products, will be prohibited. Will they become a prohibited import? Will they be stopped at the border because they are not compliant with the New Zealand plain packaging legislation?

I think that as online consumers increase and become more savvy and the world is opened up online, we may have the corner shop selling a plain-packaged cigarette, but it is certainly open for any citizen to purchase their treasured, retro-looking, branded product that you cannot ordinarily get here in New Zealand freely and happily on the internet, provided the Customs Service is able to intercept that product at the border and charge the relevant duty and excise and GST to the purchaser of that product. Will there be an additional prohibition on that product by virtue of the fact that it is not in plain packaging? I think that is a straightforward question.

At the moment, as I said, it is open to any citizen of this country to jump online, find a vendor, and purchase a box of cigarettes that is beautifully—well, not “beautifully”—brightly coloured, branded, psychedelic coloured, in all the colours of the rainbow, and containing all the different flavours they want. It is open to them. They can purchase them all. They can pick off the shelf any particular product they want. They need not go to the corner store and buy a bland, plain-packaged product. So what is the purpose of this legislation if it does not defeat the increasing number of Kiwis who are shopping online?

I believe that the legislation does seem to fall short on that very point. How do I know this? Well, I do it myself. I am not actually a smoker, but I have tested the customs system as the Opposition spokesperson on customs, and it is perfectly open to any person to go online, like I do, and buy whatever selected little cigar product, tobacco, anything you want, and in some instances it is not even caught by the Customs Service. But in the very rare occurrence that the beagles at the border do, I think it is a very fair point.

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

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Adrian Rurawhe has been trying for a long time to get a call, so we will give him a shot. It is pretty much a warning here that we are coming to the end of the debate—it is losing steam and relevance.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): I want to speak to clauses 5 and 6, in Part 1. I want to start off in reference to clause 5 and the purpose of the bill. We have all heard that our aim is to have a smoke-free New Zealand by 2025, and I want to point out the real reasons why we need to make that date. Today 13 people, on average, will die from smoking-related issues. That is 5,000 people this year, and by 2025 that is 45,000 people. We need to do this. We need to acknowledge the purpose of this bill, and clause 5(1)(b)(i) says “discouraging people from taking up smoking or using tobacco products;”. That is why we need to do this. There are 45,000 people who will die by 2025. We must not as a Committee delay this legislation any further. We must not put up and accept Supplementary Order Papers that delay this date. We have to acknowledge, as the Committee of the whole House, that too many New Zealanders will die by 2025—the same population as where I live, just south of Whanganui, wiped out of New Zealand. That is why I am standing up here to support this bill.

I want to acknowledge the Health Committee and the changes that it has made to this bill. It has changed the language, and I point to clause 5(1)(b)(ii). The words “encouraging people to give up smoking” have been changed to “encouraging people to quit smoking”. I think that language is a lot more robust, and it is the language that is being used as part of the initiatives to help people to stop smoking—indeed, to quit smoking.

In clause 6(a)(ii) there has been a change to section 21 with the addition of the words “and cultural”, so it changes to “further reduce any social and cultural acceptance and approval of smoking and tobacco products;”. I support that wholeheartedly.

I listened very carefully to the Minister’s last contribution. I think that having the word “cultural” in there, to me, means things like the design of that standardised packaging. There is scope in there for a cultural dimension, and I think that in the communities that I represent in Te Tai Hauāuru there are different cultural aspects or signs that could be put on that packaging to indicate that it is not good for you—and they are not necessarily words, and they are not necessarily images of people who are suffering from smoking-related diseases. In the Māori culture, in a number of iwi around the country, there are certain symbols that we like to avoid. Some of those symbols represent messages. For example, in some iwi there are particular birds that are regarded as messengers of bad luck, or impending death in some instances. So I think there is a whole scope around just including those two words in the changes to this bill that gives the opportunity to have that reflected in that plain packaging. I wanted to speak about that, as well.

I want to acknowledge the good work of the Health Committee but also that of past select committees, including the Māori Affairs Committee, which, in its inquiry, really pushed the boundaries around this area.

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

Motion agreed to.

Part 1 agreed to.

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

Ayes 108

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

Noes 13

New Zealand First 12; ACT New Zealand 1.

Part 2 agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 199 in the name of Barbara Stewart to the schedule be agreed to.

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

Ayes 12

New Zealand First 12.

Noes 109

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

Amendments not agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I now want to clarify the ACT Party vote on Part 2. Was the ACT Party voting for or against?

Joanne Hayes: Against.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): It was voting against?

Joanne Hayes: Yes.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Right, thank you. We have got it right.

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

Ayes 108

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

Noes 13

New Zealand First 12; ACT New Zealand 1.

Schedule agreed to.

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

Ayes 108

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

Noes 13

New Zealand First 12; ACT New Zealand 1.

Clause 1 agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 198 in the name of Barbara Stewart to clause 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 12

New Zealand First 12.

Noes 109

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

Amendment not agreed to.

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

Ayes 108

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

Noes 13

New Zealand First 12; ACT New Zealand 1.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment presently.

Bills

Judicature Modernisation Bill

In Committee

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I seek leave for the Judicature Modernisation Bill to be debated as one question, with all votes taken separately at the end.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Is there any objection to that process? There appears to be none.

Parts 1 to 6, schedules 1 to 11, and clauses 1 and 2

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): Mr Chair, you will see, just as a visual aid, that the Judicature Modernisation Bill is a weighty bill—

Denis O’Rourke: Door stop.

JACINDA ARDERN: —a door stop, as my colleague has described. But despite the fact that it is so weighty there does seem to be some universal support—near-universal support, at least—for what this weighty document is attempting to do. So that theme will probably come through in the debate today.

The Judicature Act as it stands is over 100 years old. There is universal agreement that it absolutely needed to be updated, and so I do thank the Ministry of Justice and Minister Adams for the work that has been done in that regard. It has taken some time. The Law Commission did produce recommendations to consolidate this document—the Judicature Act with the District Courts Act and the Supreme Court Act—some time ago. So, as I say, it is timely that we finally come to the point of reaching the Committee stage here today.

I want to run through some of the substantive changes that this bill also introduces. Even though we will be debating this as one question, I will thematically go through and begin with some of the Part 1 changes. I think it is fair to categorise the Part 1 changes as being focused on simplification, on streamlining, and on transparency. There are a couple of opportunities that are missed here, and I will touch on them briefly as well. Part 1 repeals the Supreme Court Act 2003 and the Judicature Act 1908, and creates the new Senior Courts Bill, which will put all of the courts—the High Court, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court—under one system. In doing so, it streamlines the appointment of non-permanent judges; establishes a judicial panel for hearing certain types of commercial cases; repeals the commercial list, which has set out case management approaches; and gives more power to restrict vexatious civil litigants, an area where we are seeing more self-representation, which is probably timely.

Originally, it also required the publishing of—and part of this provision remains—information relating to reserved judgments, recusal from cases, and suitability of judges holding employment or other offices, and I note a useful Supplementary Order Paper 66 from the Greens on declarations around pecuniary interests in this regard. It also talks about requiring final written judgments to be published unless a good reason exists not to do that. We have had a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) from the Minister in that area, and I just want to touch on that SOP very, very quickly.

SOP 197 by the Minister makes, by and large, a few changes that we are generally supportive of—particularly around things like commencement dates, superannuation subsidies for acting judges, and the like—but one of the things it does is reverse the requirement for mandatory publication of decisions online. We are slightly disappointed that that has happened. We do think that there needs to be a longer-term plan to allow that to happen. Down the track we will ask officials what we are doing to make sure we have greater transparency. If you want to make a judicial complaint, for instance—I have had people come to me and say they want to do that, but the lack of transcribed rulings and judgments from hearings makes that difficult. So that, I think, ultimately would be a good place for us to head to.

I want to come, though, to some of our SOPs that cover this part. We have a couple of really substantive SOPs that on the face of it may seem simple, but that capture matters of constitutional importance and weight, which I will be seeking the Committee’s support for. In fact, one of the SOPs in my name that I want to speak to, SOP 62, was not originally raised by me but actually by members of the judiciary. In particular, I want to refer to Justice McGrath’s retirement speech, which has been referenced in the media. A retirement speech is obviously the chance to reflect on a lengthy career as a member of the judiciary and of our legal fraternity, and the fact that this retiring judge used that special opportunity to reflect on what was happening here in Parliament in respect of this particular provision to me speaks to the weight of this issue.

I want to read from that retirement speech—just for a moment, if the Committee would let me, because it relates directly to Part 1. He said: “Just bearing that in mind, I hope you will forgive me if I detour for a few minutes to raise a matter of a constitutional kind that causes me some concern. Our constitution is an informal one. It is not set out in any single document. It has been described as the product of a complex mass of forces of a political, legislative, prerogative and judicial kind. As a result the New Zealand constitution is found in some rules that have been enacted by Parliament, some rules of common law stated by the Courts and a number of conventions which are [appropriately described as] established understandings … Most New Zealanders seem happy with [these arrangements] and so am I. I do not favour replacement of them with a [formal] constitution …”.

He goes on: “But I believe there are gaps in our constitutional arrangements … And we also need to ensure that we do not [as a society,] inadvertently create new gaps [in our constitution]. The Constitution Act 1986 provides that Parliament continues to have full power to make full laws. [Now that recognises,] with clarity, that Parliament is the supreme law making power of the nation. There is no equivalent provision [in that Act] stating the role of the judicial branch, or indeed the underlying concept of the judicial function which is to uphold the rule of law. That gap was filled, to some extent, when this Court, the Supreme Court of New Zealand, was established in 2003. The legislation stipulated that nothing [in the Act] ‘affects New Zealand’s continuing commitment to the rule of law and the sovereignty of Parliament’. Commitment to the rule of law is a simple but important constitutional concept. It means our nation’s commitment to the principle that all persons and all bodies, whether public or private, must comply with the law and are entitled to exercise all rights that it gives them. Upholding this principle is the central role of the Courts.”

That provision, as set out in the Supreme Court Act 2003, in this act of consolidation to create the Judicature Modernisation Bill, is lost. That rule-of-law provision, once this bill is enacted—voted for in this House—will no longer exist. I want to acknowledge at this point that in the select committee I posed this question, both to the Attorney-General and to the Minister of Justice, and was met with sympathy on this issue. They acknowledge that it is an important provision. The question in debate has come down to where it is best placed. I do not dispute the argument that the Constitution Act would be the appropriate place for the rule-of-law provision. I do not dispute that. I think I would probably agree with both Ministers on that point. The issue, however, is that our opportunity here, at this point in time, is to amend only the Judicature Modernisation Bill.

We did seek advice from the Clerk of the House on whether or not it would be possible to make a subsequent amendment to the Constitution Act, and were told it was out of scope. So herein lies our one opportunity. If, in the future, the Government was to say “We would like to place it separately in the Constitution Act.”, I would have no trouble supporting that. But as a holding pattern I would absolutely seek the House’s support to have it, in the meantime, sit where it has sat for over 10 years now—in the Judicature Act, as it consolidates the Supreme Court Act of 2003.

It is an incredibly important provision. I know that it may not have registered with many New Zealanders, and I can see good cause for why—I can see good cause for why. But it has, for instance, been the subject of debate amongst the legal fraternity. We cannot look lightly on our constitutional provisions, simply because members of the public may not have engaged directly with them. It is our job to ensure that those provisions are robust where they should be, and upheld. That is why I see it as our job today, in this House, to support such provisions. Our SOP 62 is not the only SOP that speaks to that issue.

I would say, also, that entrenching some of the conventions around consultation for the appointment of Māori Land Court judges, under Supplementary Order Paper 202 in Louisa Wall’s name, fits in that space as well—as does my SOP 63, which amends clause 3 of the bill, which enables important legal matters, including legal matters relating to the Treaty of Waitangi, to be resolved with an understanding of New Zealand’s history, conditions, and traditions. Again, it is another provision from the Supreme Court Act 2003 that has been lost in the consolidation of the Judicature Modernisation Bill—all incredibly important.

I do just want to reflect briefly that Dr Richard Cornes, who is a senior lecturer at Essex University and a visiting fellow at the Legal Issues Centre, Otago University, has also written on the need for us to retain this rule-of-law provision. I know that he has worked hard to raise the profile of this issue with members of this House as well, and I thank him for that work.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I want to continue this discussion in respect of the clause that should preserve in the Judicature Modernisation Bill the provision that comes from the Supreme Court Act 2003, which emphasises that nothing in that Act, or indeed this Act, affects New Zealand’s continuing commitment to the rule of law and the sovereignty of Parliament. I want to explain the background to the original decision in 2003 and take up some of the points that were raised by Jacinda Ardern.

In 2003, when the Supreme Court was brought into being, it was fresh after the Court of Appeal decision in the foreshore and seabed case. Considerable disquiet was felt within this Parliament as to that decision going too far—not in the finding that there were unexpunged or unextinguished common law interests to be argued for in the foreshore and seabed case but the finding that the Māori Land Court had jurisdiction to consider them. The Māori Land Court, being a court of statutory jurisdiction having no inherent jurisdiction, was found by the Court of Appeal in that case to have jurisdiction over the foreshore and seabed, despite the fact that nowhere in that Act, which is called Te Ture Whenua Māori Act and in its English translation is called the Māori Land Act, was there any reference to anything that was wet.

The Court of Appeal could have gone back to the Hansard at the time of the passing of that legislation and it would have found no reference to any area of foreshore or seabed.

Chris Bishop: That’s not right.

Hon DAVID PARKER: It would have found only reference to dry land in the debates. Therefore, there was surprise on both sides of the House, Mr Bishop, that the New Zealand Court of Appeal had found that there was jurisdiction in the Māori Land Court to determine the claims to unextinguished interests in the foreshore and seabed. So when the Supreme Court legislation was passed at the same time, Parliament thought fit to remind the Supreme Court that was being created that this Parliament remains sovereign in respect of legislation.

Chris Bishop: Ha, ha!

Hon DAVID PARKER: Mr Bishop, you might laugh, but that is the reason why this was put in. I was part of those discussions within the Labour caucus, and your colleagues would have been part of those discussions as well.

There is a proper debate to be had as to whether the courts should have the right to overrule primary legislation in New Zealand. That is a proper constitutional debate to have. I am with Justice McGrath there; I am not with the Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Palmer. I do not think that we should hand over to the courts the power to strike down primary legislation. I think the experience in other parts of the world where that occurs, whether it is the United States or some other jurisdictions, shows that you actually get to wrong outcomes. There are essentially complex political decisions that lie under those sorts of headline issues in constitutions, like freedom of expression, where you go one step under it and you have got to consider whether it is fair to have campaign financing laws. Some jurisdictions overseas, including in Australia and the United States, have struck down laws similar to those that we have in New Zealand to control big money in elections as being an unfair incursion on the freedom of speech.

I am not one of those people who think we should confer jurisdiction on the courts to do that. I want to make sure they do not think they have got the right to take it. Having said that, I always acknowledge that there is a limit to the sovereignty of Parliament, which goes back to the Bill of Rights 1688, when there was a division of powers between the courts and Parliament. There are some things that lie in there or have their roots in the Magna Carta that are so fundamental that I do not think Parliament has the sovereignty to overrule. I think that there is this sort of grey area arising from those ancient documents, which were referred to in the Privileges Committee when we were considering the changes to defamation laws, arising out of the Erin Leigh case against the Attorney-General in respect of something that occurred in the last Government. We actually put that in our select committee report—that there is, at least in the view of some members, including me, a limit to the sovereignty of Parliament that arises from those ancient documents, not from the granting of some new jurisdiction to the courts later. That is a very important point of principle.

I like the greyness of those boundaries at one level. If we had an egregious New Zealand Government that set up concentration camps and started to torture people, I do not think you would necessarily have to rely on international conventions—you might be able to. You could also rely upon those ancient laws to strike that down, but that is where I think the limits to the sovereignty of this—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I will call the Hon Amy Adams, but I do recognise the fact that the member is mid-flight and I will recommend to my successor that we come back to you.

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I apologise to the Hon David Parker. I just want to take a very quick call to—I thought it might assist the Committee if I indicate that the Government will be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 62 in the name of Jacinda Ardern. It saves the Committee time debating the point, just to make it very clear at this early stage that we accept a lot of what Ms Ardern said in her comments. We do believe the place for it is in the Constitution Act but, none the less, we are persuaded that there is certainly no harm in maintaining it in the interim—but I certainly welcome the record in Hansard showing that when the appropriate time presents itself, we would like to see it removed from this legislation and placed in its appropriate place. I thought it might assist the House just to clarify that point, and I apologise to Mr Parker.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Thank you for that indication, Minister Adams. Can I also just put on the record that in the Labour Party we were somewhat reluctant to agree to a single debate here. We wanted a part by part debate, because this is a very serious piece of legislation, governing all of our courts. But we were presented with the option from the Minister that if we agreed to a single debate, we would remove the uncertainty as to whether we would get National’s vote for Supplementary Order Paper 62. Having spoken with my colleague Jacinda Ardern and discussed the pros and cons of that, actually, this is such a fundamental provision in this bill that we thought we should bank that—that that was the most important thing that was going down at this Committee stage and we should get it through. I suspect that when the final votes come—well, actually, we already know that we have got the good support of New Zealand First and the Greens—we are going to get support from other minor parties like United Future and get it across the line anyway, which is why the Government might have rolled on it. I do not know. The Minister shakes her head; she may not know either. That might be a little bit cynical of me.

Jono Naylor: What clause of the bill is that? What clause of the bill is that in?

Hon DAVID PARKER: This is Supplementary Order Paper 62 that I am talking about.

Having put that provision in there in the Supreme Court Act, you have got to consider what the effect of taking it out would be. Even if it was not necessary to put it in the Supreme Court Act—and arguably it was not; it was just stating what was the underlining position at law—its having been in there, for Parliament to withdraw it in this iteration could actually change the law. So even if the original provision was not necessary, to actually omit it from the replacement legislation for the Supreme Court and other courts below it in the hierarchy of courts would have meant that the law meant something different to what it meant before that provision was in there. That would in itself have created uncertainty that is best avoided.

I agree that this provision is best sat in the Constitution Act, but, actually, it is the same effect whether it sits in the Constitution Act or in this Act. It is of the same legal effect, and it would be of the same legal effect to not have it—sorry, that is not quite good English. The effect of not having it would have had legal effect, whether it does not sit in the Constitution Act or it does not sit in this Act. It needs to be in one of these pieces of legislation. That is the most important issue, in my opinion, in this debate that we are having, because by and large, I think, the Justice and Electoral Committee has done a very good job on the rest of the legislation and has reached agreements that I can concur with.

I will say one final thing: equity and good conscience jurisdiction is going up to $5,000 on the recommendation of the select committee, but not up to the full amount of the jurisdiction of the disputes tribunal, which has a jurisdiction of, I think, $15,000—it can be a bit more, if people agree. I agree that the select committee has got that right. There is rough justice in the disputes tribunal. It is rough at times. You have got limited rights of appeal. It has an equity and good conscience jurisdiction, which means it does not actually have to follow the law. Even its process protections are pretty thin, compared with traditional courts. The answer to people who have got serious legal problems lies in the courts, and I think we should be careful not to say: “Anything goes; we will just throw the dice up in the air and see where it lands on the basis of how someone feels on the day, on an equity and good conscience basis.” We should actually make sure that our courts are accessible so that the rule of law can be applied rather than brushed over.

With those comments, I will take my seat. I am so pleased—I really am so pleased—that Jacinda Ardern’s Supplementary Order Paper, which I have also been advocating for, is going to be passed.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First was going to vote against this bill at this stage despite this being a very much-needed piece of legislation and a long time in development. The two reasons were the compulsory retirement of judges provision and also the failure to reaffirm the principles concerning the rule of law and the sovereignty of Parliament. Now that we hear that that latter provision will now be reinserted into the bill, it makes it possible for New Zealand First to vote in favour of the bill. So I am pleased to be able to say that, because we do think that that matter—the reaffirmation of the principles concerning the rule of law and the sovereignty of Parliament—is extremely important, and I am glad to see, therefore, that they are going to be put back into the bill.

Jacinda Ardern quoted from the speech of Sir John McGrath, and I just want to add one more quote to that, which I think sums it up very well. He said: “It means our nation’s commitment to the principle that all persons and all bodies, whether public or private, must comply with the law and are entitled to exercise all rights that it gives them. Upholding this principle is the central role of the Courts.” So that, for me, puts it in a nutshell—the central role of the courts. There is a lot more I would have said about that issue had the Government not indicated that it will support Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 62, but now that it has, I can move on to the other issue I want to talk about, and that is that New Zealand First does not support clause 132 regarding the compulsory retirement of judges and, therefore, does support Supplementary Order Paper 61.

There are a four reasons for this, and the first is it is actually ageism—clearly and unmistakably ageism. The Government should be ensuring that people who are capable and who wish to work beyond the age of 70 are given the opportunity to do so. Secondly, under the Human Rights Act, discrimination on the grounds of age is, in fact, unlawful. It is unlawful for employers, who may not contract for a fixed age for retirement age. If that is the principle there, then it should be the principle everywhere. Thirdly, it is an unnecessary provision. Few people carry on when they are actually unable to perform adequately, and even if they did, the Chief Judge could and should advise and counsel judges in that position, and the bill could just have said that instead. Fourthly, the age of 70 is not, in fact, so late in life these days for very many very able people that they are forced to retire at that age. In fact, when you think about it, the huge experience of judges who reach the age of 70 actually makes them extremely valuable, and their expertise should not be lost if they wish to carry on.

New Zealand First believes very strongly in this. We oppose clause 132. We support SOP 61, and I call upon the Government to give that a little bit more thought, because it is actually not the right thing to do and it should agree with and adopt SOP 61. If it does not do so, that would not be sufficient in itself for us to vote against the bill as a whole, because it is a very important piece of legislation and one that has been a long time coming and is very much needed in this country. With those comments, I will leave it there, but I do hope that in addition to adopting SOP 62, the Government will reconsider and will now also adopt SOP 61.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I too want to express our gratitude and certainly our support for the acceptance of Supplementary Order Paper 62, introduced by the member Jacinda Ardern from this side. In my brief contribution at this point in time I do want to speak to some of the other Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that have been presented on the Judicature Modernisation Bill by our side of the House, certainly by my colleague Jacinda Ardern and, of course, Louisa Wall. I will speak to Supplementary Order Paper 202 briefly, because I know that the member here Louisa Wall will certainly elaborate a bit further, but it says: “In clause 192, after subsection (1) … insert: (1A) Before giving advice to the Governor-General under subsection (1) on the appointment of a Judge to the Māori Land Court, the Attorney-General must seek advice or recommendations from the Minister for Māori Development.”

Although some might say that is a convention that is already in place and that is what already takes place currently, we would like to see that it be put into this particular bill by way of this SOP to cement that process in place, to make sure that the person who is responsible for pushing through the current Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill, and, also, overseeing Te Ture Whenua Act, actually has a role to play in advising the Attorney-General, to make sure that, in the vein of Pūao Te Atatū, the services that are being given and those who are doing the service actually reflect the people whom they are serving.

I know, with my experience through the Māori Land Court, that for many years before my time, in the time of my grandfather and in the time of my father, many of the judges who presented, while learned gentlemen and ladies, were challenged quite often around their cultural competence, if you like, in dealing with pretty touchy subjects around Te Ture Whenua, what whenua means to people, and, I guess, the court process in general, given the nature of the claims that were presented by the many people through Te Ture Whenua and through the Māori Land Court.

So I think it is a good SOP. I think it is one that is necessary so that, like I say, that advice from the person who is on the ground, from the person who is speaking to those who are affected by legislation or by bills such as this, and, of course, Te Ture Whenua Act, are best reflected in the appointments made by the Attorney-General.

I also want to speak to Supplementary Order Paper 63 from Jacinda Ardern, which states: “After clause 3(d) … insert … (e) enable important legal matters, including legal matters relating to the Treaty of Waitangi, to be resolved with an understanding of New Zealand conditions, history, and traditions.” I think this is really important. Many of my constituents whom I deal with in Tāmaki Makaurau and also in my relations in Te Tai Tokerau often begrudge the fact that there are just not enough references to Te Tiriti o Waitangi throughout legislation—this particular piece, as well as many others. But this SOP looks to change that in clause 3 by “enabling important legal matters, including legal matters relating to the Treaty of Waitangi, …”.

What I also like with this is that it gives it context so that it can “be resolved with an understanding of New Zealand conditions, history, and traditions.” I think that is a very good step forward. The ongoing debate around the Treaty of Waitangi and its place in our country—some would rather see it closed, and others want to have this debate continue. As we move forward as a country I think it is important that such an SOP be included in this particular bill to make sure that those voices and that dialogue can be heard around the Treaty of Waitangi.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this Committee stage debate of the Judicature Modernisation Bill. I would like to congratulate the Minister of Justice and the select committee, because this is probably the biggest bill that I have ever seen come through the House. Although I am now on the Justice and Electoral Committee, I have played no part in coming to this point in the process, but I want to acknowledge those who have been here throughout this piece of legislation.

My contribution, really, at this point in the proceedings, is to talk about my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 202. I am not quite sure whether or not it fits, but, hopefully, we will be able to figure out where it is best in terms of inclusion in this piece of legislation. I was motivated to write this SOP because the Judicature Modernisation Bill is about—and I will go to the purposes, set out in clause 3(a)—consolidating “in a single statute the provisions of the Judicature Act 1908 and the Supreme Court Act 2003; …”, and under clause 3(b)(iii) it is about “judicial and other officers, including their—(A) selection; and (B) appointment and conditions; …”. So I really want to focus on that, particularly in terms of the Māori Land Court, because, currently, Māori Land Court judges are appointed under section 7 of Te Ture Whenua Māori Act 1993.

The Governor-General by warrant appoints “fit and proper persons”. No reference in that piece of legislation is made as to who advises the Governor-General on the appointment. So from our perspective as a Labour Party, the “fit and proper person”—actually, that is fundamental to what my SOP is trying to address, because we believe that the person who can determine who is a fit and proper person to be a Māori Land Court judge is actually the Minister for Māori Development. I have included that in my SOP—and I will read it out: “To apply the generic provisions of appointment of Judges set out in this Bill would result in a failure to recognise the distinctive nature of the relationship between Māori land, Māori land owners, Māori Land Court and the Minister for Māori Development.” So, essentially, we are trying to preserve in statute a convention that has been operating. We all know that convention is overridden by statute, so this seemed an opportune time to deal with this particular issue. I think the other point I wanted to make is that, yes, I realise that “advises” is hugely specific because, essentially, what it does say is that the Minister for Māori Development will select the Māori Land Court judges.

I was also motivated to bring this Supplementary Order Paper to the House because I think there have been concerns from some of the submitters and some Māori Land Court judges, and I have had some feedback from one of the Māori Land Court judges. I was trying to figure out whether this SOP fits in this part of the legislation, because the heading of Part 2 is “District Court”, Subpart 2 is about judges, and then clause 192 is about the appointment of judges. So there seems to be a need for clarity about whether this is the appropriate place in this bill for the SOP to fit. It all, then, stems from whether or not Māori Land Court judges hold District Court warrants, so I went on to the Ministry of Justice website. It is interesting. Under the title “Courts” it has got “Jury Service”, “Going to court”, “Civil”, “Criminal”. Then it talks about all the different branches, I thought, of District Court warrants, which are Youth Court, Family Court, coroner’s court, Employment Court, Environment Court—and included in these is the Māori Land Court. So there does need to be a determination from the officials—and if I am wrong, I am wrong.

What I have thought is that there is another part in this legislation, which is clause 568. Clause 568 references the amendment to Te Ture Whenua Māori Act 1993. So I am looking at another SOP, then, that will amend this particular part of the clause. I have not quite figured out where we are going to put it, but the convention that we want to put into statute, in my SOP, will now fit into here. I want to thank the Minister in the chair, the Hon Amy Adams, actually, for taking the time to converse with me this morning, and to highlight that we have possibly got things wrong—yeah, after netball training—because if that is the case, then I will withdraw the SOP that is on the Table and I will put to the House another SOP.

I am really happy to do that, but what I hope is that behind my intentions people will see that what I am trying to do is actually about the mana of the role of the Minister for Māori Development and the mana of the role of our Māori Land Court judges. I did ring—well, Nanaia Mahuta did, actually, on my behalf—Judge Caren Fox this morning to ask about her warrant, but her particular warrant is for the Māori Land Court and the Environment Court. Having a convention written in statute—given the opportunity that this bill presents, because we are modernising the Judicature Modernisation Bill, to put into statute a convention that seems to be long-running and everybody is committed to—I just do not understand why there could possibly be any problem with it.

I would also like to thank my colleagues from across the Chamber, because—I did this very quickly—I talked to Denis O’Rourke in the Chamber last night, and I know New Zealand First is supporting my Supplementary Order Paper. I also emailed it to David Clendon, and I want to thank him because he indicated that the Greens are going to support my Supplementary Order Paper. At the end of the day, I think that we all agree that that principle of the Minister for Māori Development appointing the Māori Land Court judges is incredibly important. So if there is an opportunity for that convention to now be part of statute, so that everybody knows and it is transparent, then I actually think that is a positive development.

I just want to say that this is no slight upon anybody. I know that the generic aspects of this piece of legislation—again, I kind of intimated that the Attorney-General, by default, actually has a lot of power in this process, because they will be determining whom they advise that the Governor-General then gives a warrant to serve our country and our courts. It is no disrespect, so I hope that it is not taken in that vein, but what I wanted to do is to just consolidate, as I said before, the mana of the Minister for Māori Development, the mana of our Māori Land Court judges, the importance of our whenua, and the mana of our whenua and how it is administered. That was the intention behind my Supplementary Order Paper. As I said, if I have to withdraw what is currently on the Table and come back to the Committee with an amended Supplementary Order Paper, then I will do so. So the Minister might like to provide that clarity to the Committee, and then we can all move on with some, I guess, definitive direction about how we can address this particular issue. Kia ora tātou.

Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL (Minister for Māori Development): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker, kia ora tātau katoa. Ka mihi rā ki te āhuatanga o tēnei rā ātāahua, he rā hōu, ā, ka mutu, kai konei tātau ki te kōrero i ngā take o te wā. Kai te rongo ake ki te āhuatanga o te kōrero o taku tuahine a Louisa Wall, koinei au i hara mai ai ki Te Whare i tēnei rā ki te āta whakautu i ētahi o āna āwangawanga mō tēnei o ngā kaupapa.

[Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and greetings to us all. I acknowledge the situation indeed about this beautiful day; it is a new one, and furthermore we are here to talk about matters of the moment. I hear the tenor of my sister colleague Louisa Wall’s contribution, and that is why I came here to the House today: to make a considered response to some of her concerns to this proposal.]

I very much appreciate the sentiments provided by Louisa Wall, who got in touch with us to give us the view about this particular clause of the bill. I can tell her that this has been very much discussed with both the Minister of Justice and the Attorney-General, as we tried to line it up with Te Ture Whenua Māori legislation. So I stand here to give some responses to some of the queries that she has made. I acknowledge that they are well motivated, and that it is all about the best intentions of ensuring a part for the Minister for Māori Development, and indeed to place all of the Ministers in their right place.

So let me offer some explanations to some of the issues that the member has raised. The member’s Supplementary Order Paper 202 seeks to add a provision to clause 192 of the Judicature Modernisation Bill that is related to appointing Māori Land Court judges The first point to note is that clause 192 of this bill deals with the appointment of District Court judges; this has nothing to do with Māori Land Court judges. In the context of clause 192, the downside is that the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) is basically meaningless.

The Māori Land Court appointments are covered under clause 568 of the Judicature Modernisation Bill. If Supplementary Order Paper 202 were amended to refer to clause 568 it would still be meaningless, for the following reasons—I will try to outline those. The appointment of Māori Land Court judges is covered by section 7 of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993, which says that judges are appointed by warrant by the Governor-General. There is no mention of any Minister. The equivalent provision in Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill is in clause 427, and is exactly the same as the current Act, namely that appointments are made by the Governor-General, and there is no mention of any Minister.

Although not prescribed in legislation, the appointment of Māori Land Court judges by the Governor-General is made on the recommendation of a Minister, with the agreement of the Cabinet appointments and honours committee. The recommending Minister is always the Minister responsible for the department that administers Te Ture Whenua Maori Act. That department, now and in the future, will still be Te Puni Kōkiri. Ministerial responsibility for Te Puni Kōkiri is decided by the Prime Minister. It has always been the Minister of Māori Affairs and/or the Minister for Māori Development.

Relating that back to the member’s SOP, the SOP assumes the Judicature Modernisation Bill makes the Attorney-General the recommending Minister, and that is incorrect; it does not. If the Supplementary Order Paper—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable Minister. The time has come for me to report progress.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Standardised Packaging) Amendment Bill without amendment, and progress on the Judicature Modernisation Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 11.26 a.m. (Wednesday)