Wednesday, 14 September 2016

WEDNESDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2016

WEDNESDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2016

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Speaker’s Statements

Parliamentary ICT System—SEEMail Email Security

Mr SPEAKER: Honourable members, yesterday Chris Hipkins raised in the House the blocking of an email he wished to send to a journalist. I undertook to look into the matter and come back to the House. The secure, encrypted email system known as SEEMail exists primarily to encrypt emails exchanged between State sector organisations. SEEMail also prevents classified information being inadvertently sent outside participating organisations. SEEMail has been in use in Parliament since 2007. Mail filters look for the words “SEEMail”, “restricted”, “sensitive”, or “in confidence”, which are attached to emails and documents at the choice of the sender. It then applies encryption to the email and attachments before sending them. It does not otherwise scan or store the content of emails. I have been given an absolute assurance that the Parliamentary Service email system does not scan members’ emails other than for spam filtering, viruses, and SEEMail classifications.

SEEMail is primarily used by Ministers and their departments who need secure, encrypted communication, but it currently applies to everyone with an @parliament.govt.nz email address. It blocks any email with a SEEMail security classification from being sent to someone without that classification. The concern raised yesterday was that SEEMail’s system could hinder a member from carrying out his or her duties. Members must be free to send and receive information as they see fit. No other agency should be involved in determining how members deal with the information they hold. That approach is consistent with the findings of the Privileges Committee when it reported on the use of intrusive powers within the parliamentary precinct. Equally, it is important that members are able to communicate securely, safe from external cyber-threats.

I have identified five possible solutions to the conflict between information security and the undoubted right of members to freely use information: (1) a member may remove the SEEMail classification from an email or document they have received. This can then be sent anywhere the member wishes. Although this would have solved Mr Hipkins’ immediate problem, it does not address the wider issue. (2) Ministers could instruct departments not to apply SEEMail security to information being sent to members who are not Ministers. Official Information Act responses should never be so classified in the first place. (3) If members are not satisfied with these two solutions, Ministers could be given a separate email domain so that email as SEEMail applied only to them. That would require further discussion. (4) Parliament could opt out of the system entirely. However, that carries with it considerable cyber-security risks. A fifth possible solution, which does require further testing, is for SEEMail to be applied only to communications with participating SEEMail organisations, then members’ emails to journalists and the public would be sent freely and without scanning or encryption.

The matter is a fairly complex one and it cannot be resolved today on the floor of the House. It is, however, essential that it is resolved to the satisfaction of members, and that their ability to send and receive information is not in any way hindered. I will distribute this ruling to all members immediately. I intend to discuss it further with the Parliamentary Service Commission at its next meeting, and I would welcome representation from any members who wish to discuss this matter with me.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I understand your desire to discuss this further, and we will certainly take you up on that offer. Can I seek some reassurance from you that in the intervening period, while those discussions are taking place, members will not continue to be blocked from sending emails outside the system? The issue arose yesterday when discussing the very ruling that you have just made, with a journalist, where the email that I was discussing the matter in was blocked to the journalist whom I was discussing it with. So I was unable to answer any questions about the matter that arose yesterday because the system picked that up and blocked me from doing so. I had to print the email and hand-deliver it, in order for the journalist to be able to receive it. That is unacceptable, and I want some reassurance that, in the intervening period, that will be stopped.

Mr SPEAKER: If the member would just have a careful look at the ruling, the very first solution I give to him is that he himself can remove the classification. He may need some assistance to be shown how to do it, and that can be provided, but he himself can remove that classification—I am assured—and send it out.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: If it is a further point on this matter, I have said that this is a complex matter. It is not one affecting the order of the House. I will hear from the member, but I would prefer discussion on this to take place away from the floor of the House so that all members can understand it more clearly.

CHRIS HIPKINS: As was explained to me, any email containing the words “SEEMail” and “sensitive” will be blocked, so any discussion of the ruling that you have just made will, therefore, be blocked. We will not be able to do that via email.

Mr SPEAKER: No. I will have an IT person contact the member immediately after question time—[Interruption] Order! This is a serious matter. My understanding is that it is blocked unless the member makes an adjustment to his computer setting and takes the blockage out—[Interruption] Order!—by removing the word “SEEMail”, then he can send it to the journalist of his choice.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is a different point of order. Can the Speaker assure the House that the screening of MPs’ emails has not generated any reports accessible to the Government at either the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) or the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) or elsewhere, about that screening?

Mr SPEAKER: I have been given an absolute assurance that the SEEMail is a setting that then involves no further scanning of the contents of email and that—[Interruption] There was an interjection I heard from somewhere. I am on my feet. If I have misunderstood the question again—again, I think this is a complex matter. It is not a matter of the order of the House today. I invite members to come and talk to me about it. To the best of my knowledge, there has been no scanning of information for any purposes at all.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): You did ask whether you had misunderstood my question. It seems possible that this screening process creates or generates a report when something is confidential—or is a document that the Government has labelled “confidential”—which the system intentionally scans to pick up. I have asked whether you can give the House an assurance that no report is generated by anyone that is accessible to the Government, at the DIA or GCSB, or elsewhere, as a consequence of that screening.

Mr SPEAKER: I cannot give that absolute assurance today. I will look further into the matter and make contact with the member directly, upon further investigation.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Could you explain why it is that there have been attempts to block emails in respect of members of Parliament, and that later on they have been unblocked? What would be the process that has allowed that to happen in the past?

Mr SPEAKER: Again, I think I have covered that in great detail in my ruling, if the member would have a careful look at it. It is a system for cyber-security purposes. There is a method by which a document, once marked by SEEMail—or marked “in confidence”, etc., as I have mentioned—then becomes encrypted until it is received by another party who is also part of SEEMail. Then it is automatically unencrypted, so it is available then. The issue comes when it is attempted to send it to somebody who is not within the SEEMail system. I think we are finding systems whereby we are going to be able to allow information to be freely sent. It can be, as of today, but it may require members to understand how to adjust their computer to do it. [Interruption] Order! I will hear from one other member—the Hon David Parker.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): With regard to that, that is a bit pre-emptory, but I will accept your ruling in the meantime. Can you assure the House that when an email or an attachment has been screened, no one at Parliamentary Service, the Department of Internal Affairs, or the Government Communications Security Bureau has had access to the email or the attachments?

Mr SPEAKER: Yes, I can give that assurance, and I gave it in my original ruling. I just would be grateful if members—this is a complex matter—would please take the time to read the ruling carefully. It will be further discussed at the Parliamentary Service Commission. I do invite all members to come and talk to me if they need to.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am seeking clarification on two matters—and thank you for your ruling; I will read it with interest. First of all, you made reference to the fact that you can change the classification of the SEEMail. When a document is sent to you with a PDF attached, whether it is an Official Information Act response, or whatever it is, it is not possible to change classifications from within that PDF document. The second point relates to the use of trigger words, which I think you referred to in your ruling. Is Parliament able to receive a list of the trigger words that spark this blocking of documents?

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General): On behalf of the Leader of the House, can I say that the Speaker has given a very clear ruling. This is a major issue. The system has been in place since 2007. You have indicated that you are prepared to look at it urgently. It could possibly even go to the Privileges Committee, on an urgent basis. We cannot be dealing, on an episodic basis, with a whole lot of technological questions.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I thank the Attorney-General. Just to respond briefly to the two points raised by Clare Curran. The first point—again, if members would only read the ruling carefully—I make it quite clear that no official information release should ever go out with a SEEMail classification. I am suggesting that Ministers give that instruction to their departments. On the second point made, I do not have a list of trigger words that might then affect such a classification.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Chiefs Rugby Team—Prime Minister and Minister for Women’s Statements

1. Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Prime Minister: Does he have confidence in all his Ministers?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.

Hon Annette King: If he has confidence in his Minister for Women, why did he tell the media, in relation to the Chiefs scandal, that he speaks for the Government and “so [Louise Upston] may have thought that’s good enough.”?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Because, firstly, I think it is a well-accepted convention that the Prime Minister does speak for the Government across a range of portfolios. That is why journalists ask me questions across a range of portfolios, and, actually, it is why the Opposition asks me questions every day across a range of portfolios. Secondly, I made that statement when I was overseas—I think in either Pohnpei or Laos—and the point I was making was that I was not entirely sure what statements Louise had made on her behalf, but she would have seen my comments, and if she had seen my comments, she would accept that I would be speaking for the Government.

Hon Annette King: Does he think he has got credibility to speak for women, in light of his own behaviour—repeatedly pulling the ponytail of a woman—rather than the Minister whose job, he said, is to advocate for women?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes, I do, and I did not see the member making a comment yesterday when I gave what I thought was a pretty hard-hitting speech, actually, on domestic violence. The member criticised me for making that speech.

Hon Annette King: Has he subsequently asked the Minister for Women to make an effort to speak out for women on the behaviour of some rugby officials and players, having refused to speak up on the grounds that it is entirely a matter for the rugby organisation, or is he happy for it to be left to those who have got the guts to confront attitudes in our national sport?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No, I think the Minister is being quite correct. The Government is still a party to the particular inquiry. Actually, I looked at the Minister’s statements. The Minister’s statements were quite hard-hitting in a generic sense, but she did not have the exact information about this particular case.

Hon Annette King: In light of that answer, having decided himself to speak out on behalf of the Government, does he think his comments such as “disappointing” and “unacceptable” are strong enough when compared with those of the Minister of Police, Judith Collins, who said “it’s time they stopped that stupid behaviour, grew up” and apologised?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes. I think members opposite will know that I am always a very measured person.

Hon Annette King: Will he give an assurance that he will pass his displeasure at the activities on to the Chiefs players who are currently All Blacks when he next meets them; if not, why not?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not have all of the details, so I cannot tell you exactly the individual players’ names. But in terms of discussions with the New Zealand Rugby Union, I think the rugby union itself—let alone me—has been making the very point that it thinks that this behaviour and the events of the Monday sort of “leer-up” are not a good idea. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I am trying to call a supplementary question from the end of the House and I do not want the continued interjection.

Jan Logie: How can the Prime Minister value the role of the Minister for Women when he has placed it outside Cabinet, given it the least funding of any ministry, and is now propping up a Minister unwilling to support women challenging our culture of violence?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well, there is a range of portfolios that from time to time are outside Cabinet. It just depends on who we think has the best skills, actually, to conduct those. But let us be honest. That member has been outside Government for the entire time she has been in this Parliament, and maybe that does explain why she has done nothing since she has been here.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You will have heard the last two sentences of the Prime Minister’s answer. Demonstrably, they are not allowed in this House by any past ruling by you, so why do you condone it from him?

Mr SPEAKER: The last two parts to the answer were certainly not helpful to the order of the House, I accept that. But there was no word in there that I would have said was unparliamentary at the time. [Interruption] Order! Mr Mark, if you continue to interject and criticise my rulings, you will get the same treatment as I gave Mr Peters yesterday.

Hon Annette King: Can he guarantee that the Minister for Women was not told to keep quiet on the Chiefs scandal by any of his Ministers?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No, the Minister is free to discuss the matter, but she makes the correct point that she does not have the details. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! You can repeat the question.

Hon Annette King: Can he guarantee that the Minister for Women was not told to keep quiet on the Chiefs scandal by any of his Ministers?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well, I am not aware of any Minister who has told the Minister for Women not to comment on this matter.

KiwiRail—Northland Network Changes

2. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Minister of Transport: Does he stand by all his statements on the rail service for Northland; if so, how?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development) on behalf of the Minister of Transport: Yes, and by asking a Minister to stand here on his behalf and say so.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does he stand by his statement in October last year that there are “no plans to change” the return service from Auckland to Whangarei; if so, why has KiwiRail done just that on Monday this week, halving its service between Auckland and Whangarei from 10 to five per week?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: KiwiRail makes its own decisions, but I would note for the member that contrary to his press release on this subject, the amount of freight able to be carried on that one service is exactly the same amount as was previously carried on the two services.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why would the Minister believe KiwiRail’s statements on that matter of tonnage when they are the same people who said that they are scrapping the 120-log wagon utilities between Ōtīria and Kauri, when at Kauri there is no place for the wagons to have stopped in the first place?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: KiwiRail makes a number of decisions designed to maximise its revenue and minimise its costs, like any other business. I appreciate that the member’s view of regional development in Northland is to have trains carrying around fresh air, but I do not think it is anybody else’s definition.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why does the Minister of Transport not exercise some of his responsibilities by stopping KiwiRail’s very deceptive past behaviour such as closing the Dargaville to Whangarei line without a press statement, shutting down the Portland service junction without a press statement, and halving the service between Whangarei and Auckland this week without a press statement then?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: If the member is concerned about an absence of press statements—fair enough. But I notice that he has been making more than enough press statements to cater for most people.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Given that is the attitude of the Minister of Transport, does he intend to have a larger engagement in the politics of Northland next year, or will he put up the same loser as last year?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I tell you what—next year the Government will not be promoting trains carrying around fresh air as economic development in Northland, as the member seems to.

Economy—Reports

3. IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei) to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received on the state of the economy?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Today Statistics New Zealand released figures showing that the current account deficit—the difference between what we spend and what we earn overseas—fell from 3.1 percent of GDP to 2.9 percent in the year to June. This is significantly better than forecast for the current account deficit made over the last 3 or 4 years. However, today’s figures show that in the June quarter the current account deficit was $187 million higher than the previous 3 months, as a result of record spending by New Zealanders travelling overseas.

Ian McKelvie: What does today’s release say about New Zealand’s level of indebtedness?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: New Zealand’s level of external indebtedness has been a concern for about the last 30 years. Our net external debt has fallen slightly, from 56.7 percent of GDP to 56.3 percent of GDP. When the Government took office in 2008, New Zealand’s net external debt was 83 percent of GDP—so it has fallen very significantly over the last 6 or 7 years. Over the same period, New Zealand’s net international liability position deteriorated slightly because of changes in asset values. Lower national debt is good news because it means New Zealand is better placed to respond to future economic shocks.

Ian McKelvie: How are exporters contributing to New Zealand’s improved economic position?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Surprisingly well, given the low dairy prices. In the year to June the value of New Zealand exports to the rest of the world rose by more than $3.3 billion, to $71 billion—that is despite the low dairy prices. The New Zealand export economy is becoming more diverse. Tourism, education, the meat industry, kiwifruit, ICT, manufacturing, and seafood are all showing an improved performance.

Ian McKelvie: What do the falling current account deficit, the rising real wages, and the declining indebtedness tell us about the New Zealand economy?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: It tells us that the New Zealand economy, among developed economies, is in pretty good shape. It has come through the global financial crisis and become more resilient. Of course, good economic figures are not important in themselves: what matters are household incomes and the confidence that households have in higher incomes and more job opportunities. This economy is underpinning higher incomes and more job opportunities.

Inequality, Economic and Social—Housing Affordability and Government Response

4. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree with Tracy Watkins that the poorest New Zealanders are “shouldering the biggest burden” of the housing crisis, spending more than half their income on housing, and that beneath the Government spin on the Household Incomes Report “it’s not nearly so rosy”?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): I agree with some of the comments and not others. I point out to the member that the Government has been aware of these problems and that is why it commissioned the Productivity Commission report back in 2012, where the idea that poor planning law was bad for low and middle income households was regarded as pretty cranky, if not weird. Now it is mainstream thinking, because it is correct. That is why we are setting out to improve planning law so that the cost of land is not driven up by misguided attempts to make cities smaller, because that burden does fall mostly on low and middle income households.

Grant Robertson: Is the statement on page 15 of the household income report correct that “there is evidence of higher [after-housing costs] income inequality in the last few years as compared with the mid-2000s and earlier.”?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The report is the report, and I have not looked at that exact statement, but if the member says that is what is there, that is what is there. The point is this, though: the increase in the burden of housing costs has arisen because, at a time when there is growth in demand for housing through New Zealanders not going overseas and through more confidence in the economy, and lower interest rates, the supply has not been able to react quickly. That is the part we need to change, and that is the part that has been locked up for 30 years with misdirected thinking about how planning of our cities should work.

Grant Robertson: If the problem is poor planning law alone—which it clearly is not—why has the Government not actually done something in the last 8 years to deal with those problems?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: There has been an awful lot of measures, ranging from the HomeStart programme, which will help 90,000 first-home buyers, through to the $2 billion of accommodation subsidies that the Government pays each year. But those measures, of themselves, will not help low and middle income households in the long run, even though they are quite supportive in the short run.

Grant Robertson: Why is his Government spinning that it is “heading in the right direction on income inequality”, when the household income report shows that it has increased on his watch, when the top 10 percent of earners now earn 10 times as much as the bottom 10 percent, and when the number of children living in cold, damp houses or who own only one pair of shoes has increased by 10,000 in the last year?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member has made a number of statements that are wrong. The report does not show growing income inequality. And it does not matter how often the member asserts that, it is simply not what is in the report. Secondly, the material hardship survey comes from before this Government passed on a $25 a week increase to all families on a benefit with children, the first such increase in 42 years. So we look forward to whether, in the future, the hardship survey shows the same results.

Grant Robertson: How is it fair that whilst the poorest households are carrying the burden of increased housing costs and income inequality, a third of the wealthiest New Zealanders—those with wealth over $50 million—declared an income of $70,000 or less last year?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: In respect of the high-income earners—as my colleague pointed out to the House last week—as a result of this Government’s changes in income taxation, the top income earners are paying a higher proportion of income tax than they used to under that previous Labour Government. And as for the burden on low and middle income households, we look forward to, and, I think, can now expect, the support of the Opposition parties on law changes that are coming before this House to ensure that the planning system does change so that we do have more supply of housing.

Grant Robertson: So is he now agreeing with the Prime Minister that it is OK for a third of the New Zealanders with wealth over $50 million to claim to have an income of only $70,000 because, as the Prime Minister says, “They pay a whole lot of GST.”, and does that mean that low-income New Zealanders who pay their taxes and actually spend a higher proportion of their income on GST do not really need to bother paying the right tax, either?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The higher-income—higher asset owners have to comply with New Zealand’s tax law, and because it—

Grant Robertson: But they’re not, are they?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, if the member believes any individual is not doing so, he is free to report them to the Inland Revenue Department or the police. The fact is that we have probably, in the developed world, the most comprehensive, even-handed income tax system that you can have, and, as a result of that, higher-income earners are paying a greater share of income tax than they did under the previous Labour Government.

Family/Whānau and Sexual Violence—Law Reform and Integrated Safety Response Pilot

5. JOANNE HAYES (National) to the Minister of Justice: How will the family violence law reforms support the work of the Ministerial Group on Family and Sexual Violence?

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): The review of family violence law provides a critical foundation for the ministerial group work programme. For example, it supports the work of the Integrated Safety Response pilot. The independent risk and needs assessment hub, which the reforms enable, will mean that we will have an effective way of targeting the redesigned services to families. The ability to set codes of practice will mean consistent practice can be rolled out across the country, and changes to information sharing and the flagging of family violence offending on records will mean that the wider system can share crucial information to identify risk and enable tailored responses to victims and perpetrators.

Joanne Hayes: What response has there been to the announcement of the reforms?

Hon AMY ADAMS: There has been an overwhelmingly positive response to the announcement of the reforms, which I think shows the widespread desire and willingness of the sector to make these sorts of changes. For example, I have seen the reforms described as having the potential to be a game-changer for victims of family violence. I have seen them described as strong and decisive action, and as being a massive step forward. I look forward to continuing to work with members right across the House on the package.

Poto Williams: As part of her reforms, will she ensure that everyone who needs a protection order can get a protection order by guaranteeing that everyone who applies for legal aid for this purpose gets it?

Hon AMY ADAMS: A big part of the reforms is ensuring that we address and remove the barriers to getting protection orders, some of which are financial, and we are addressing that in a number of ways. First of all, we are ensuring that it is a much easier process to apply for protection orders. We are funding an advice service to help people work through the process if they do not want to use a lawyer. I would also point out to the member that 94 percent of the applications for legal aid are granted. There is not an income threshold imposed, and there is no debt created.

Tim Macindoe: What recent announcements has the Minister made around the next phase of the Integrated Safety Response pilot, to which she referred in her answer to the primary question?

Hon AMY ADAMS: The Integrated Safety Response pilot is a key initiative developed by the Ministerial Group on Family Violence and Sexual Violence to better support family violence victims by improving safety and stopping family violence escalating by intervening and identifying risks earlier. We are already seeing excellent results out of the first pilot site in Christchurch. Last month, with Ministers Tolley and Collins, I was pleased to announce that the pilot will shortly be extended to the Waikato. Extending the pilot to the Waikato provides us with an opportunity to assess how well the model works across a diverse population, including a higher proportion of rural and Māori communities.

Conservation, Department—Ranger Numbers and Funding

6. JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green) to the Minister of Conservation: How many full-time rangers does the Department of Conservation employ at present, and how does this compare with the number in June 2015?

Hon NICKY WAGNER (Acting Minister of Conservation): As of 30 June this year, the Department of Conservation (DOC) had 788 rangers, of a total number of 1,928 employees. This compares with 833 at the same point last year, and a total number of 1,942 employees. Numbers tend to fluctuate due to normal turnover, and these changes are within the margin of error.

James Shaw: How can the Minister claim that the Department of Conservation can adequately protect the spaces and species that New Zealanders love when it employs only one ranger for every 16,380 rugby fields’ worth of conservation land?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: That is really a bit of a debatable point. Our concern for biodiversity and threatened species is why there is more conservation work being done in New Zealand now than at any other time of our history. It is also why we are introducing Predator Free 2050—because managing predators is our biggest challenge. Being predator free is an ambitious, world-leading project, and it will certainly rid our country of possums, rats, and stoats, which threaten our native animals and also our economy.

James Shaw: Why, in a time of increasing numbers of visitors to our national parks and increasing threats to our native animals, has her Government cut the Department of Conservation’s budget by an average of $55 million per year for the last 7 years?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: Vote Conservation has not been cut; it has increased from $416 million in 2008-09 to an expected total of $451 million in 2016-17. On top of that, there has been a further $80 million worth of partnership work over the last 5 years. There is more conservation work being done in New Zealand now than at any other time in our history. DOC has more work programmes: across ecosystems, about 500; and against threatened species, about 300. That is more than ever before.

James Shaw: How will corporate sponsorship replace her Government’s funding cuts to the Department of Conservation when corporate sponsorship currently accounts for only 2 percent of DOC’s overall budget?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: Corporate sponsorship will not. It only supplements the $451 million in Vote Conservation. Our partnerships enable us to engage more New Zealanders in conservation. They allow us to do extra work than what we already do and make our resources go further. They encourage all New Zealanders to take ownership of our natural world and its protection, and in this Conservation Week I encourage all New Zealanders to get out into the conservation estate.

James Shaw: How can the Minister claim that the Department of Conservation is adequately funded when it has only $5 for every quarter-acre section of conservation land to look after per year?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: I repeat: Vote Conservation is $451 million in the 2016-17 year. On top of that, there is $80 million worth of partnership work. There is more conservation work being done in New Zealand than at any other time in our history. DOC is focused on results, and we are working with more ecosystems and more threatened species than ever before.

James Shaw: If there were 833 rangers last year and 788 rangers this year, can the Minister confirm that, at this rate of decline, by Christmas 2025 DOC rangers will be extinct?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: No.

Pharmac—Medical Device Procurement and Access to Medicines

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Can he confirm that Pharmac plans to free up—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am just having trouble hearing because there is quite a lot of interjection. Would the member please start question No. 7 again.

7. Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei) to the Minister of Health: Can he confirm that Pharmac plans to free up $25 million for DHB frontline services through improved procurement of medical devices?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Yes. Since Pharmac’s role was expanded in 2013 to include national contracting for hospital medical devices, 34 national contracts have been signed, covering around 20,000 different items from bandages and sutures to orthopaedic drills and cardiac stents. These contracts are worth up to $72 million of district health board (DHB) expenditure every year and will save the district health boards around $25 million over the next 5 years. This is money that can be reinvested into the front line to deliver better services for all New Zealanders.

Dr Shane Reti: How else is Pharmac delivering better access to medicines for New Zealanders?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: As part of its expanded role, Pharmac also covers the management of medicines in DHB hospitals and the management of community medicines, pharmaceutical cancer treatments, and the national immunisation schedule. Under this Government, Pharmac’s budget is now a record $850 million, and has increased by $200 million since 2008. As a result, nearly 170 new medicines have been subsidised and access has been brought in to 245 medicines, directly benefiting over 800,000 more New Zealanders.

Employment Relations—Written Employment Agreements and Migrant Exploitation

8. IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: Is he concerned that 170,000 people working in New Zealand have no written employment agreement?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Yes, I am. This Government expects all employers to comply with the law, and that is why I have asked the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for a report into why these people do not have employment agreements and what can be done to improve compliance.

Iain Lees-Galloway: Is he concerned that the industries in which workers are least likely to have a written employment agreement—agriculture, forestry, fishing, construction, hospitality, and administration—are also the industries that have the highest numbers of migrant workers?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The fact that there might be higher proportions of migrant workers in those industries is no reason to be any more or less concerned. Everybody in this country has a right to have a written employment agreement, and that is the expectation that Government sets.

Iain Lees-Galloway: Is he concerned that the industries with the worst health and safety records—agriculture, forestry, and fishing—are also the least likely to provide a written employment agreement and are amongst the highest users of temporary work visas to meet their labour needs?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I repeat the answer to the previous supplementary question. But I would agree, to the extent that the lack of a written employment agreement is one of the leading indicators of other minimum employment standards not being met—which is why the Government passed law last year to increase the expectations on employers for documentation and the consequences of not having it.

Iain Lees-Galloway: Why is the Government giving rogue employers who pay low wages, fail to fulfil their most basic employment duties, and fail to provide a safe workplace the option of exploiting migrant workers, rather than cleaning up their act?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: That is probably a question best levelled at the Minister of Immigration, but I am sure what he would say—if he were to answer it—is that that is exactly the expectation that is being laid out to the immigration compliance team. It is why I have asked the labour inspectorate and the immigration compliance team to work more closely together. Access to the international labour market by employers is a privilege, not a right, and it is one that can be lost.

Iain Lees-Galloway: Should he not focus on getting those employers to sort out their employment practices before claiming that young Kiwis are all lazy and on drugs?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I reject the second part of that. No member of this Government has—and I quote the member in his question—said that all Kiwis are “lazy”. What we have said is that there are barriers to employment that need to be removed one by one, and this Government has done more than any to do so. But in terms of the sentiment of the question, I do not necessarily disagree with it.

Whānau Ora—Funding

9. DARROCH BALL (NZ First) to the Minister for Whānau Ora: Does he stand by all his statements?

Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL (Minister for Whānau Ora): Āe, i te wā e kōrerohia ana.

[Yes, at the time it was being discussed.]

Darroch Ball: Does he stand by his answer on measures of effectiveness provided to justify the increase in funding to Whānau Ora, that “The increase in funding for Whānau Ora … was subject to a cost-benefit analysis consistent with other Budget 2016 social sector initiatives.”?

Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL: Āe.

Darroch Ball: How could he possibly use the cost-benefit analysis as justification for an increase in funding, when that cost-benefit analysis clearly states that the “benefits achieved through Whānau Ora are difficult to capture using cost-benefit analysis.”?

Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL: Arā anō ngā momo toronga o Whānau Ora.

[Whānau Ora has other forms of extensions.]

Tracey Martin: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Can we confirm that there is an interpretation going on?

Mr SPEAKER: Certainly—[Interruption] Order! There is an interpretation, and it would be helpful if members listened to it.

Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL: E tika ana kia whai ahau ā-Minita nei i tēnei kaupapa o te cost-benefit analysis. Kua eke a Whānau Ora ki tērā taumata, kāre he rere kētanga ki ētahi atu Tari Kāwanatanga. Ko taua āhua anō, ka whakamātauria ia tau, ia tau, ia tau.

[It is proper that I, as a Minister, follow due process in this matter about cost-benefit analysis. Whānau Ora has achieved that standard; it is no different from any other Government department. It is that situation again, there is an annual audit each year.]

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This Minister was asked as to how he could make that statement, given that he had on record, from a Government department, a statement about the impossibility of a cost-benefit analysis in the way it was being put in his answer. He was asked how he could say that against that official information that he got, and he did not in any way try to answer the question.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, the question was not as the member has now summarised it; it was somewhat different, and, as I listened to the answer, the answer addressed the question that was asked.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. So, just to clarify your ruling, are you saying that what I heard from the Minister was not what he said?

Mr SPEAKER: No, let me try to clarify for the benefit of the member. The question that the member, Winston Peters, suggested was asked was not exactly the same as Darroch Ball asked. I listened to what Darroch Ball asked, and I have ruled that the answer given by the Hon Te Ururoa Flavell has addressed that question. That is the end of the matter. There is not much point in continuing on.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. With respect, I helped draft this question, so I know what is in it.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. [Interruption] Order! I have ruled that the question has been addressed. The member does not have to agree with that, but he has to accept it. We will move to further supplementary questions; otherwise I am quite happy to move to the next question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am certainly not going to entertain a further point of order from the Rt Hon Winston Peters contesting my ruling, and if he does so, I will be asking him to leave the Chamber.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Point of order. Can I just—[Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will resume his seat. I just want to be—[Interruption] Sit down. Resume your seat, please. I just want to be absolutely clear—[Interruption] Order! I want to be absolutely clear. I have given the member a warning that I am not prepared to tolerate him continuing to raise a point of order that is challenging a ruling I have just given. If the member wishes to seek a fresh point of order on a completely different matter, that is a right that he has, and I will listen to it, but if I—[Interruption] Order! If I detect for—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Oh, Mr Speaker, sit down and let me—[Interruption]—put my point of order.

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

Rt Hon Winston Peters withdrew from the Chamber.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would ask you to reflect on the likely order in the House if, when ruling on a point of order that has been raised by an Opposition member, you are subject to a barrage of abuse, and members on this side are subject to a barrage of abuse from the Government side. If the shoe was on the other foot and you were being asked to rule on a point of order from the Government, and if we were to yell and scream and yahoo all the way through that, I think you would have something to say about that.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I accept the point the member is making. It is certainly unhelpful, but the behaviour we have just seen is completely unacceptable, and I would think that most people who have any respect for this place at all would accept that. It does cause some excitement. Mr Peters was asked to leave, he certainly took some time to leave the Chamber, and there was a fair bit of interjection from my right-hand side, which is not acceptable. I accept the point the member has made.

Darroch Ball: I seek leave to table a document, which is a response by the Minister for Whānau Ora to an Official Information Act (OIA) request, dated 25 August 2016, entitled Cost-benefit analysis template Whānau Ora: Growing whānau coverage and reach, which states—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The document has been well and truly described. I will put the leave. Leave is sought to table that particular response to an OIA request. Is there any objection to it being tabled? There is none.

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

Darroch Ball: Can he confirm that 50 provider contracts and their associated funding have been transferred from the Ministry of Social Development to Whānau Ora, when Whānau Ora is exiting 30 of those contracts but keeping the millions of dollars that came with them?

Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL: Kāo.

Darroch Ball: I seek leave to table two documents. The first is an Official Information Act report from the Ministry of Social Development, dated 13 April 2016, entitled Transfer of Vote Social Development Funding to Support Whānau Ora, Progressing Transfer—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That document has been described enough. [Interruption] The second—

Darroch Ball: Do you want to know the title of it or not?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member is very close to now following his leader. I have said that that is enough of a description for it to be put. I will now hear of the second document.

Darroch Ball: The second document is Treasury advice against the transfer of those contracts and funds, an Official Information Act report from the Ministry of Social Development, dated 24 April 2015, entitled Report on Options for Transferring Programmes to Whānau Ora.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table those two particular documents. Is there any objection to them being tabled? There is not. They can be tabled.

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

Darroch Ball: Why has the Minister for Social Development given him a $3 million slush fund out of the Ministry of Social Development budget, and why it is assigned to his delegation if it is nothing but a massive slush fund to be used by him?

Mr SPEAKER: Either of those two supplementary questions, the Hon Te Ururoa Flavell.

Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL: Ki te pātai tuatahi, kāre au i te paku whakaae ki tāna e kōrero nā.

[In regard to the first question, I do not agree one bit with what he is saying there.]

Darroch Ball: I seek leave to table a document that is an Official Information Act report from the Ministry of Social Development, dated 6 May 2015, entitled Assigning Responsibility of Funding in Vote Social Development to the Minister for Whānau Ora, showing a $3 million—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is enough of a description. Leave is sought to table that particular document. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.

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

Ron Mark: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I know that when you leave the Chamber you do review the proceedings. We have always understood that when we are seeking to table documents we are required to state the title of the document and the date or the place from which it came. On two occasions, whilst my colleague was trying to read out the full title—and these documents do have long titles—you cut him short with the explanation that that was a good enough description of the document when he had not even completed the title, so how would you know?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I agree with the member. I will certainly review proceedings.

Early Childhood Education—Engaging Priority Families Initiative and Impact

10. Dr JIAN YANG (National) to the Minister of Education: What recent announcements has she made regarding participation in early childhood education?

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I was pleased to announce a new report from the University of Waikato that showed the positive impact that participating in early learning has on some of our most at-risk children and their whānau. The study focuses on the Engaging Priority Families initiative. Engaging Priority Families coordinators support the hardest-to-reach families to enrol their 3- and 4-year-old children in early learning services. The report found that most of the children in the study would not have enrolled in early learning without the support of the coordinators. We have around 800 more children to connect to early childhood education in order to meet our ambitious goal of 98 percent of children participating in early childhood education in 2016. Every bit of effort counts. These families are the hardest to reach because of their complex circumstances. I am very pleased with the findings of the report.

Dr Jian Yang: How does participating in early childhood education ensure children and young people get the best start for school?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: The report concludes that all participants develop positive learning foundations across all the strands of Te Whāriki—the early childhood curriculum—especially in oral communications, good listening skills, and enjoyment of reading and writing. Transition to school was easier for this group because they had visited their school, their parents had been introduced to their new entrant teachers, and both children and whānau felt more confident about the transition.

Police—Police Workplace Survey 2016 and Resourcing

11. STUART NASH (Labour—Napier) to the Minister of Police: Does she take any responsibility for the fact that almost 60 percent of Police do not believe that New Zealand Police delivers on the promises it makes to its customers, as reported in the 2016 Police Workplace Survey?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police): The question is based on a false premise. I have responsibility to do my best to get the police the resources they need, and I do that. How the New Zealand Police delivers on its promises is its responsibility. But, actually, I think the police are doing an excellent job, unlike that member.

Stuart Nash: Does she think she has been successful in her job of getting the police the resources they need to do their job?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Given that the police got $300 million in this year’s Budget, I would say yes.

Stuart Nash: Does she believe that one of the main reasons why only 40 percent of police state that “the New Zealand Police delivers on the promises it makes to its customers.” is that there just are not enough front-line police to solve crime?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Not at all. In fact, I think one of the reasons that some police believe they are not doing as much as they could in terms of fulfilling their promises is that they set such high standards for themselves—significantly better than some members of Parliament. When I look at that, I also compare it with the 77 percent of people in New Zealand who have public trust and confidence in the police, which is far higher than the police have in their own ability to fulfil their promises.

Stuart Nash: Has she sought an explanation from the Commissioner of Police as to why only 40 percent of police state that “the New Zealand Police provides adequate training for the work I do.”; if so, what was his explanation?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I have, in fact, discussed this matter with the Commissioner of Police, and there were a couple of answers that he gave me. One of them was the fact that the police constantly want to update their training, and they are very committed people who try to do their best for New Zealand. But the other issue is, of course, the constant verbal and public bashing that the police take every day, and particularly, I have to say, from that member, who only yesterday said of the district commander of police in the Eastern district: “A fish rots from the head, and I believe that”—

Mr SPEAKER: Bring the answer to a conclusion.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —“the district commander needs to go.”

Stuart Nash: Why has she changed so much between 2011, when in response to Constable Alana Kane’s assault, she thundered that “harsher sentences are needed for people who attack police”, and now, when she is silent when this very same police officer’s attacker received only a 300-hour community service sentence?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Obviously the member was asleep in 2012 when this Parliament, with this Government and myself as the then Minister of Justice, brought in tougher sentencing when there is the aggravating factor of attacking our first responders, such as the police. I would say to that member—[Interruption] Mr Speaker, do they want to hear, or not?

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: This particular case is a matter that is within in its appeal time. Personally, I do not want to be the person who stuffs up an appeal case because of an attempt to grandstand.

Electric Vehicles—Uptake and Government Initiatives

12. JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green) to the Minister of Transport: Can he confirm Treasury advised Ministers that his electric vehicles package will “not be effective at encouraging the uptake of EVs, representing low-value spending and a missed opportunity to prepare New Zealand for the wide-spread uptake of low emission vehicles”?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development) on behalf of the Minister of Transport: Treasury did make that comment—with the prefix “in their view”—but, I have to say, if the member is looking to Treasury as a potential ally in the electric vehicles (EVs) category, then I must say that she is likely to be quite disappointed.

Julie Anne Genter: Given the Ministry of Transport estimated that there would be 64,729 electric vehicles in New Zealand by 2021 without Government intervention, why did the Minister set a target of only 64,000 vehicles by 2021? Is it because the Government does not actually plan to increase the number of electric vehicles?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The substantive question was actually in regard to Treasury advice, but, nevertheless, the Government is very keen to achieve the maximum number of electric vehicles that would make economic sense by 2021. We have a comprehensive package to ensure that that target is reached. If the member would like me to go through it, I am more than happy to.

Julie Anne Genter: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was about the target that the Government set and how it is lower than what the Ministry of Transport estimated would occur—

Mr SPEAKER: On this occasion I will allow the member to repeat the question. If she could make it a little more concise it would probably be easier, but the opportunity is there.

Julie Anne Genter: Given the Ministry of Transport estimated that there would be 64,729 electric vehicles in New Zealand by 2021 without any Government intervention, why did the Minister set a target of only 64,000 electric vehicles, which would actually mean a reduction in the number of electric vehicles that was expected without any Government intervention?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: As the substantive question was directed to Treasury advice, I do not have that exact quote from the Ministry of Transport to hand, so I cannot confirm the first part of the member’s question. In any event, whether it is 64,000 or 64,000 and change, that would be a lot of electric vehicles by 2021. The Government is determined that that number be achieved, and that is why it has a package to make sure that it is achieved. If the member wants to debate what the target should be, I am more than happy to do that, but 64,000 is a long way ahead of where we are today.

Julie Anne Genter: I seek leave to table this document from the Ministry of Transport, which shows how many electric vehicles would occur without any Government policy—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I just need to confirm that it is not available on the Ministry of Transport website.

Julie Anne Genter: It is publicly available—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Then I will not—

Julie Anne Genter: —but it is very difficult to find.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, if it is publicly available, members who want it will find it.

Julie Anne Genter: Is it because his Government’s EV campaign does not really have any substance that he has now announced his electric vehicle fund on three separate occasions, including on 5 May, 12 August, and yesterday, 14 September?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No, and I reject the assertion in the member’s question. It is a comprehensive package that includes extending the road-user charges exemption, which is the matter that Treasury was critical of; a new road-user charges exemption for heavy electric vehicles; and investigating with the private sector the bulk purchase of electric vehicles to bring more supply into the country—that is a very important part of the story. Government agencies are coordinating the development and roll-out of public charging infrastructure. There is $1 million annually to inform and promote the use of electric vehicles. There is up to $6 million per year to encourage and support innovative low-emission vehicle projects—

Mr SPEAKER: Bring the answer to a conclusion, please.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: —there is allowing electric vehicles in bus lanes and high-occupancy vehicle lanes; reviewing tax depreciation—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The general debate will start shortly.

Julie Anne Genter: Given Treasury says in its advice that the money would be better spent on reducing the upfront price of electric vehicles rather than on the unlikely-to-be-effective initiatives that he just mentioned, why does his Government not support the Green Party’s proposal to exempt electric vehicles from fringe benefit tax, which would reduce the upfront cost of new EVs by a third?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Treasury’s first, best advice on these matters is to not do anything at all. If it is the member’s preference to back Treasury advice, then I really do suggest to her that it is probably not the department to support the fringe benefit tax. But, anyway, if she is keen on Treasury, it has some other policies for her. It would encourage her to put interest back on student loans, and also—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! We are now moving to an area that does not have much to do with the question.

Julie Anne Genter: I seek leave to table this advice from Treasury, released under the Official Information Act, that says that it is its view that money would be better spent directly subsidising the upfront—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The document has been described. 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.

Sue Moroney: Why did he choose such a tiny target for electric vehicles—to be just 2 percent of New Zealand’s vehicle fleet by 2021—given that New Zealand needs to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent, and transport accounts for almost half of those emissions?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Because electric vehicles are not the only way in which emissions will be reduced. In fact, emissions are being reduced—

Sue Moroney: Oh, there’d be rail as well, wouldn’t there, and you’re stuffing that up, too.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: —in all the rest of the fleet—if the member wants to listen. In all the rest of the fleet, emissions are being reduced because of the increasing fuel efficiency of New Zealand’s wider vehicle fleet. So it is across a whole range of areas. Yes, you will see more electric vehicles. You will also see more hybrids and you will also see a range of different vehicles that have lower emissions, and that will help meet our target.

General Debate

General Debate

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. I am tremendously proud to be part of a Government that has not once in 8 years shied away from taking on the hard issues. Any Government can set targets that it can achieve easily, and when you are faced with the difficulties of a 3-year term, which I have never been a fan of, the automatic response is to go for the quick win, the quick turn-around, the quick sugar-fix response—not this Government.

This Government, from day one, has made it very clear that it will not shy away from the hard issues. I am not talking about launching a report or a study or an inquiry, but about actually getting in and doing something. Even if it is hard, even if it is not going to have it all fixed by the next election, we want to see the vulnerable New Zealanders assisted.

I think there was no better example of that than yesterday, when the Prime Minister gave, I think, one of the best speeches I have heard him give. I may be a little be biased, I will freely admit, but I think it was one of the most powerful speeches when he talked very clearly about how focused this Government is on ensuring that we are there for the women, children, and victims in this country who do not get to have that simple, most basic entitlement to a safe home environment. That is something that happens in far too many New Zealand homes. That is something that has been far too easy for too many parts of New Zealand, for a long time, to turn away from—to think: “Oh well, it’s not something that happens in my family, it’s not something that happens in my community. What are you even going to do about it?”. That cannot be the response.

We have to, as a country, accept that the rate of family violence is a national embarrassment. It is horrendous, and it is at the heart of almost all of the social issues that I know we all worry about. We have made it very clear, and the Prime Minister made it very clear yesterday, that where victims are not in a position to stand up for themselves, we will be there to support them to the very best of our ability. As he said, just as the impacts of family violence are widely felt, the responsibility for dealing with it is widely shared. The Government has a considerable role to play—we acknowledge that—and we are stepping up to be the difference in that space. But, actually, it is not just about the Government. The responsibility for addressing family violence sits across government and core Government agencies, Crown entities, non-Government agencies, social support providers, charities, families themselves, communities, and—most importantly—the responsibility sits with the people who are inflicting family violence.

The statistics are sobering. They are almost daunting, and yet they cannot be, I think, repeated too often. We know that there are 110,000 notifications to police every year, and we also know that that probably represents only about 20 percent of the family violence that occurs. So, actually, that tells us there is something in the order of half a million instances of family violence every year. If you want to look at crime rates—if you want to look at serious crime—half of the homicides in this country, half of all serious violent offences, are related to family violence.

One of the things that I find most devastating about the realities of this area is that in those estimated half a million instances of family violence, children are present in those homes two-thirds of the time. So whether or not the children are being hit, whether or not they are the primary victims, the children in those homes are absolutely victims of family violence. All of the information tells us that their life courses are significantly affected. Children who grow up in homes where there is family violence are three times more likely to take their own lives than anyone else. So when we talk about youth suicide—and I know that it is something that everyone in this House cares about—if one of the most significant drivers of that is family violence, that alone tells us that it is something we have to do better on.

We know that for those children, 57 percent of them will leave school without any educational qualification whatsoever. Again, we all know that if our kids are leaving school without an education, their chances of having a worthwhile, productive future are very, very limited. We know that half of the boys in those homes will grow up to be family violence abusers themselves and most of the children will have the risk of being either victims or perpetrators.

We have to—we have to—as a country do more. I am not suggesting for one minute that there is an easy answer, but this Government has made a commitment to reframe the system, to build a better system, and I look forward to being a part of it.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): John Key gave the game away when he admitted, a little too candidly, a couple of weeks ago, “Better to win dirty than to lose clean.”, because that very much sums up this Government’s modus operandi when it comes to the New Zealand public, its attitude to democracy, and its attitude to transparency. Those were his words: “Better to win dirty than to lose clean.” That is very much the attitude of this National Government. It is no wonder that Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index ratings for New Zealand are plummeting when we have a Government that thinks it is better to win dirty than to lose clean. We already know—we already know—that this Government under John Key has overseen the development of the most sophisticated smear machine New Zealand politics has ever seen. The veil slipped before the last election, when New Zealanders got a glimpse at the lengths the National Government will go to, to discredit and to smear its opponents.

If members of the public want to know why members of Parliament are so protective of their email communications, there is a good example, because we know the types of dirty tricks that the National Government got up to in the run-up to the last election and before that. There are significant issues at stake when it comes to the ability of members of Parliament to interact with journalists and members of the public unfiltered, and I think that I am looking forward to the opportunity to get to the bottom of that.

But there are bigger issues around transparency and democracy that concern this National Government, because its modus operandi has been secretive—it has been to avoid public scrutiny at all costs. We had the Skycity deal—the dodgy Skycity deal. We had the Northland by-election bribes—although they were not particularly successful bribes, of course, because they lost. Then we have got the Prime Minister openly admitting that Government members do not take any notice of the Official Information Act. They comply with it only when it is convenient to the Government. This is a legal document. These National Government Ministers think they are above the law. They think that the Official Information Act should not apply to them, that the public should not have the right to see what they are getting up to.

Well, the public does have a right to see what this Government is getting up to, and Government members should stop ignoring the law and start complying with it. They should stop thinking that they are above the law that applies to everybody else and start complying with it, the same as every other New Zealander does. The Open Government Partnership has said that it thinks that this Government pays lip service to the notions of transparency in New Zealand, and I have to say I think it barely even does that. I think it barely even does that, because this is one of the most secretive Governments we have seen.

A classic example of the secretive nature of this Government is this: where is the information about the $4 million bribe that got paid to the Saudi businessman? Government members are not releasing any information to back that up. That is a disgraceful episode in New Zealand’s international relations, and they are not willing to release any information about it. I know that there are members on the other side of the House with high levels of integrity who must be wanting to climb under their benches when they hear information about the New Zealand Government paying bribes to people overseas. They must be absolutely humiliated and ashamed of the actions of their own Government when they hear those things. It is no wonder that Murray McCully will not release any information about it, because it is a stain on the record of the New Zealand Government. It is a stain on New Zealand’s reputation internationally, and Murray McCully should front up and explain it and release all of the information about it. If there is a supposed legal claim, let us see what it is, because giving $4 million in a bribe simply is not the type of behaviour that New Zealanders should be able to expect from this Government.

Increasingly, what we are seeing from members of this Government is their ducking responsibility and pushing public servants out in the front line to defend their actions. That is not the way this system works. The buck stops with the Ministers who are the elected representatives, and they should stop hiding behind their officials and ducking responsibility by refusing to release information, by refusing to front up and justify their decisions, and by continuing to operate. They are doing it even more secretively now than they did before—the most sophisticated smear machine that New Zealand politics has ever seen.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): This week has been the “Tale of Two Parties”, the “Tale of Two Poll Results”, in fact, the “Tale of Two Different Polls”—in other words, the best of times and the worst of times. It was the best of times, of course, for National; the worst of times for Labour. Anyone who was listening to that last speech by Chris Hipkins, anyone who had to sit through all those ridiculous points of order at the start of question time today, will be wondering “How the hell did Labour manage to score as high as 26 percent in that poll?”, because, quite frankly, these people are not focusing on anything that is relevant to the people of New Zealand, and that is a fact.

Labour members think that that poll was wrong, so they have released their own poll. In that poll they say: “Actually, we’re doing pretty well. We’re scoring 30 percent in Auckland.” Well, I can tell you what—if they think that scoring 30 percent on their own polling in Auckland is going to get them anywhere, and that that is a good thing, they have got a lot of work to do.

It is all bad on that side. I do not know whether anyone has read the Listener this week, but there is a very interesting profile of Nick Leggett that pretty much sums up the situation. He talks about the utopians and the pragmatists, and he says: “The Utopians are quite happy to sit in Opposition and have their positions validated by a small echo chamber on social media and in activist groups. They don’t really seem interested in the much harder task of actually building a plank for government.”

I think Nick Leggett has got it absolutely right, but I know there are a lot of members over there who agree with Nick Leggett. In that article it talks about the Labour MP who sneaked into the fund-raising dinner. I want to know who that was. I think it was probably David Shearer because David likes a late-night beer. He is a good guy. He knows there are problems on that side, but, of course, he wants to get out of there as quickly as possible, and he is chuckling silently away there. I saw him laughing at Chris Hipkins today as Chris was going on about email attachments. I do not know what on earth Chris Hipkins was talking about. One thing I did know—it was totally irrelevant to the people of New Zealand.

Of course, the chief of staff has gone. He has been sent to Auckland. I do not know why. I mean, the poll result is so good up there at 30 percent that I would not have thought they would need him there. Labour press secretaries—well, that skill is about to go on the long-term skill-shortage list. All the good people are going or are gone. Nanaia Mahuta—she is definitely out of here. Poor old Kevin Hague—Parliament, the Labour Party, the left, and even the Greens are too boring for Kevin. He is out of here and gone. Phil Goff—he is using blue on his billboards. He knows which side his bread is buttered on. That really just leaves them with Iain Lees-Galloway, Rino Tirikatene, and Clare Curran: self-importance, confusion, and wackiness—that is the story of the Labour Party.

It is all bad for Labour, I can tell you that, because Mrs King is in charge at the moment, and Mrs King does not suffer fools gladly. She has served under eight different leaders, and I can tell you she knows when it is time for a Labour leader to go. If I were Andrew Little—if I were Andrew Little—listen up, I would be very, very worried, because one week you can be the studly rug and the next week the tatty doormat, and that is the way it is going.

Meanwhile, on this side of the House we are getting on with the work that really matters. We had a very important announcement yesterday by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice around the steps that we are taking to tackle domestic violence. That, of course, is extremely important work indeed. Simon Bridges is up in Auckland today. As Minister of Transport he is announcing the $1.7 billion for the City Rail Link.

Of course, I can tell you that we get a lot of correspondence in my office from people who have had great experiences with our health system, and that is no real surprise when you look at the progress we have made there: an extra 119,000 more appointments—those are up 25 percent over the last 8 years—and 54,000 more operations. More Kiwis than ever before are getting access to the services that they need. The Healthy Homes Initiatives—we announced yesterday that $18 million from the Budget is helping 25,000 vulnerable families into well-insulated homes. Of course, we are taking a long view, the social investment view. We know that having warm homes means better kids’ health. It means they do better in the education system, and as a result they are going to come out, through the education system, with the skills to succeed in the modern economy. In terms of hospital infrastructure, we are obviously working hard on the Canterbury rebuild. The West Coast is next and then Dunedin, so there is a very clear sequence.

The economy is going gangbusters. Wages are growing well ahead of inflation. Unemployment is well down and, of course, we are all looking forward to those economic statistics that come out tomorrow. But I could not say it better myself than the New Zealand Herald today, which says: “Politically and economically, New Zealand remains an island of stability in an uncertain world.” That is pretty hard to argue with.

JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): It is Conservation Week and today we have become aware that there is a new endangered species: DOC rangers. It is Conservation Week, and it is time that we acknowledge that the National Government is not truly committed to conservation. We can see all too clearly that what National values is publicity and looking good and great announcements, but it does not care about action or results. Throughout its time in Government, National has systematically underfunded the Department of Conservation. This means that the Department of Conservation is not able to carry out its core functions and it means that more species are at risk than ever before.

This Government makes a virtue out of its so-called commitment to conservation. It has announced the Battle for our Birds and Predator Free 2050 with great fanfare. It is certainly happy to pay for the photo ops, but it is not happy to pay for those things itself. Behind all of that spin is the reality. Let us take a look at its so-called ambitious plan—the Apollo shot—that it has set for New Zealand of becoming predator-free by 2050, which is a laudable goal. It is so ambitious, in fact, that the National Government has given just $7 million a year for 4 years to pay for a mission that expires in 2050—a mission that has had an estimated cost of $9 billion. So you can see exactly how this Government is committed to looking good and to making grand announcements, with no substance and no plan to actually pay for them. That is typical of this Government: cutting funding by a lot and then claiming a small increase back as some kind of massive win.

Over the past 8 years DOC has missed out on $368 million of funding, which is every year added together since National took office adjusted for inflation. The 2016 budget was $40 million less, an undercut of nearly 9 percent on the 2015 budget. Funding for native species, in fact, fell by $27 million, which is a 14 percent cut. We are told that in 2015 there were 833 DOC rangers, and this year there are 788 DOC rangers. At that rate of decline, DOC rangers themselves will become extinct in about a dozen years. The last DOC ranger to be spotted in the wild will be sometime around Christmas of 2027. Even today there is only one ranger for every 35,000 acres of land that the Department of Conservation is responsible for. That is the equivalent of 16,380 rugby fields of conservation land for each DOC ranger to cover.

We need to fund conservation properly. National is not doing this. Our species are more at risk than they have ever been before, and DOC is struggling to cover its core basic functions. In May this year the Green Party asked the Minister of Conservation whether DOC was meeting its basic functions, and the answers showed the following: 46 percent of our DOC tracks are not up to standard; 25 percent of our huts are not up to standard; seven huts have closed and have not reopened; and eight structures, including boardwalks for viewing platforms, failed barrier assessments, 167 failed load capacity assessments, and 37 are listed as needing “serious or critical work tasks outstanding”. The Waikaremoana, one of my first Great Walks when I was an early teenager, is listed multiple times for this—the same walk where four French tourists were violently thrown from a bridge when the cable snapped. Most critically, 142 species, including the kea, the flesh-footed shearwater, and the wandering albatross, have had their threat status increased since this Government came into office in 2008.

The Green Party knows that what conservation needs is action, not spin. It is time to change the Government. In Government, the Green Party would properly fund the Department of Conservation and support thousands of volunteers around the country, who are doing great work. We would ensure that DOC at least has the funding to cover its basic functions. This Government is failing on conservation. It is Conservation Week. The Minister of Conservation should restore the Department of Conservation’s funding to at least the level that it was before her Government came into office, so that it can do some conservation. Thank you.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Women): Tomorrow I start the celebration of 123 years of suffrage in New Zealand, an area that New Zealand is a world leader in, giving women the first vote across the world. We are also proud at the moment of our Paralympians, including Sophie Pascoe, and we are a world leader in terms of the medal count per capita. Unfortunately, another area that we are a world leader in—but it is something that we do not talk about and are not proud of—is our tragic record in the way that we treat women. Each and every day there is sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse, whether at home or at work.

This week alone in the news, we have seen a business leader, we have seen rugby teams, we have seen a news presenter, and, in fact, we have seen a politician who did not make it into Parliament. If I was to comment on every single case that I was asked to comment on, there would be nothing else that I could do, because it is rife in this country. That is why, as a Government—I am proud of our Government and our strong record in terms of what we have already done, and yesterday’s announcement of our comprehensive package of reform for family violence and sexual violence should have every single member in this House celebrating the tough issue that we are confronting. But that is fine—if Opposition members want to take to personal politics and instead have a go at me personally, go for it. At the end of the day, when I came into Parliament I said I would focus on the issue, and that is absolutely what this Government is doing in focusing on the issue. We are tackling the toughest area and the area that affects more women in New Zealand, from one end of the country to the other.

One of the things that I am particularly proud of is being a member of the Ministerial Group on Family Violence and Sexual Violence. This is a comprehensive piece of work that our Government has embarked on, and the difference is, instead of trying to tackle it from individual areas, it is comprehensive. I am particularly proud of the work that the Ministry for Women has done in the space of primary prevention because, at the end of the day, unless we are tackling primary prevention, we will continue to see more girls and more women harmed in New Zealand. So in the space of primary prevention, whether it is involvement in things like ACC’s Mates and Dates, whether it is family violence with the multi-agency group pilot in Christchurch and also in the Waikato, or whether it is the Ministry of Justice’s programme announced yesterday, this is a Government that is tackling the hard issues and progressing them each and every day.

I am proud of what we have done, I am proud of what we are doing each and every day, but, as this House knows, it is about every single person—and what they do and what they say about this particular issue—actually standing up and taking action.

Hon David Cunliffe: What about rugby players?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: And if the Opposition wants to say it reflects on one particular sport, I am sorry that that is where your focus is, because it is easy to say and anchor it on one particular sport when the reality is there are men up and down this country who do not respect women. That is the fundamental issue, and it is why we have such significant rates of family and sexual violence. Focus on the issue. The issue is the lack of respect, and that is where primary prevention starts.

I am also particularly proud of my colleague Joanne Hayes and the member’s bill that she has, which has been accepted into the family violence reforms, around coercion to marry. [Interruption] I do also want to acknowledge the cross-party work—the cross-party work, I am happy to acknowledge—of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians group in terms of progressing this issue.

Hon Member: They’re not the Minister for Women.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Where do you think those discussions get progressed? In the ministerial group on family violence. If you are not big enough to accept that, I feel sorry for you. At the end of the day, our Government is taking this job seriously.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): As a white, middle-class, rugby-playing, beer-drinking male, I completely agree with the Minister for Women on the travesty that is violence against women and children in this country. But what I am absolutely positive about as well is there is an equal travesty here, and that is the lack of resolution for such crimes; I am told that one of the reasons why a lot of women do not come forward is that they are not taken seriously and they know that this will not be dealt with by the police in an acceptable way. The police are at their wits’ end on how to solve crime—on how to deal with the sort of travesty, the sort of crime, the sort of disgrace that that Minister talked about.

Let me talk about the police for a second: 60 percent of them—60 percent of police—say that they cannot deliver on the promises they make to the public, 55 percent of them say they have too much work-related stress, and 60 percent of them say that their views and their opinions are not listened to. But there is another side to that: 88 percent said that they are committed to their communities and the work they do, and 80 percent said that they are committed to the police.

What we have here is a group of highly professional men and women who want to do what is right and who know that they should be spending a lot more time solving the crimes that that Minister talked about—but they simply have not got the resources to do this. They have now been told they have got to investigate every single burglary. That means an extra 8,000 burglaries every single year. But what we have also got is a Minister of Police who told the House today that success, for her, is providing the funding for the police to do their job. What I can also say is that the Minister signed off on a strategic plan for the next 4 years—she signed off on this in May of this year—that said, no more police. So crime is increasing, the type of crime is increasing, people are becoming more and more disenchanted, and the Commissioner of Police himself has said “I want you to do 40 percent more work around solving burglaries.”, but the number of police has not increased at all, and it is not forecast to. We simply cannot keep asking the police to do more with less.

Then we had a bill before the House last night that talked about user-pays. Certain groups, like kindergartens and schools, which we require under law to get employees vetted—when they have this undertaken, they must pay the police force. The police force is going from a model where it is about the community to—now—a model where it is about money. That is a fundamental change in philosophy. We need to get it back to where the police are there to serve our community in every single aspect of the work they do, not a user-pays system; that is not what we expect from our police force in New Zealand.

That same Minister, Judith Collins, said in 2011 that there must be harsher punishments for those who assault police. I think—well, I hope—every single person in this House would agree with that. But 5 years on, the same police officer who prompted the call from that very same Minister was knocked out by a rogue—not a rogue punch; she was knocked out, and when she was on the ground unconscious she was punched again. This lady’s attacker received what—3 years in jail? No. Maybe 2 years in jail? No. This guy received a community service sentence—of 300 hours. That is an absolute disgrace.

What we want is for a Minister to stand up and back their officers—for a Minister to say “If you assault a police officer in this manner, then you are going to go to jail. Anyone who does this to a police officer is off to jail.”, because it is totally unacceptable that someone who perpetrates a crime like this against an officer does not go down. I think that is a disgrace.

Just to sum up, what we need to see in this country is more money to provide more police in our communities, so they can solve the crime that that Minister, Louise Upston, was talking about; so they can prevent crime; so they can work within the community; and so they can deliver on the expectations of New Zealand. We all want that; that Minister over there, the Minister for Women, Louise Upston, highlighted the problems we have got. We need more police in New Zealand now. Thank you very much.

JOANNE HAYES (National): I just want to say that that member, Stuart Nash, needs to understand that the particular case he was talking about in his kōrero is actually still before the courts.

Tracey Martin: No, it’s not.

JOANNE HAYES: Yes, it is.

Stuart Nash: No, he’s been tried—

JOANNE HAYES: Yes, it is, and I am not doing a “yes-no-yes-no” across the House today. I just want to say that I am very proud—I am very proud—to belong to a Government that, as Minister Adams said, actually tackles all the hard stuff, the hard stuff around family violence and sexual violence.

The overhaul of the legislation is because we have recognised that it has been really, really difficult for some of those victims. We have recognised that, and that is why we are overhauling it. That is why we are going at it, and we are looking at all the various ways that we need to overhaul that particular piece of legislation.

Last year I met with a group of family violence support providers in Christchurch—Aviva; He Waka Tapu, based out in Christchurch East; Te Runanga o Nga Maata Waka; Shine; the Mental Health Education and Resource Centre; and the Christchurch police—to discuss exactly the things around the issues that we are facing with family violence. They came up with some amazing insights for me to bring back and add to the rest of the information that was being collected around the points to get to here today and the announcement that was made yesterday. Those were around protection orders and police orders, and most of all around the areas of women and children not being used as punching bags by partners who have no respect for them at all. That was what it was all about—it was about protecting those women and children from those terrible outcomes.

Point three of the announcement yesterday talked about the strangulation of women. Women are the most prevalent group that suffers from strangulation by their partners. Just yesterday the research has shown that women who suffer strangulation by their partners are seven times more likely to die at their hands, and that has got to stop.

Part and parcel of that particular point was also, as Minister Upston talked about, around the coercion of marriage. As part and parcel of my Marriage (Court Consent to Marriage of Minors) Amendment Bill, we discussed that. We discussed the age of marriage and the consent for young people to be married at 18, in that particular bill. [Interruption] Yes, it is a cross-party bill, and I know that it is a bill that, when it does come to this House, will actually have a very smooth ride through the House.

In this particular bill, the coercion of marriage being made against the law and being placed into legislation will actually enhance my marriage bill. It will actually bring along something that I heard about when I was overseas and talking with members of Parliament from Australia around the way that they deal with child marriage in their country. This piece of legislation is actually coming up to where the Australians and other countries have got to with legislation around child marriage.

When I start to look at some of the information that has come out over the announcement yesterday, I see Dr Jackie Blue, who is the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner. She made a comment to do with the overhaul of this piece of legislation. She said “I’m particularly pleased to see that coercion to marry will now be an offence under legislation”, which is what we have been pushing for, and this is what this bill is doing. So many things are going to be improved for women and children. I do not see that there is anything in any of our lives that should allow one person to beat the hell out of somebody else just because they think that they can, and get away with it. It has got to stop. It has got to stop.

Every single one of us—this is not just about Parliament and MPs doing things and placing these orders into legislation; this is a community issue and it is a community problem. It is all of our responsibility to reduce and to eliminate family violence and sexual violence. It is our responsibility to look after our babies, our children, our women, and those few men who also suffer family violence and sexual violence.

When I stand here and I say that I am proud of this Government, I am proud of this Government. I am proud because it has taken the big step and said: “We are going to take care of this and make sure that the legislation that we have put in to do with eliminating family violence and sexual violence—we are going to make legislation that will actually address the situation and empower the police to be able to uphold that law around that.” Thank you.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): Earlier in this afternoon’s contribution we had a Minister stand up and ask the New Zealand public to judge the National Government by its actions. I think it was symptomatic of a Government and MPs who are now in a vicious cycle of self-denial and a belief in their own spin machine. I want to talk to that. More and more we see—the New Zealand people see—that this is a Government that will not be defined by its actions. Rather, it will be defined by its inaction.

This Government refuses to make decisions, and by its inaction we will know it. GST on imports distorts and disadvantages the market, especially for our smaller and regional retailers. I note the Government’s lack of action on the Auckland housing market and the subsequent fallout as the bubble grows to encompass towns and cities neighbouring the Auckland crisis, facilitating an unnatural, unwelcome, and unnecessary growth in homelessness. Never has a Government defined itself more by its lack of action—on tax evasion, for example. As confidence in and respect for our economy and our political system spiral downwards, this Government spends years refusing to act or to do anything about it. By its inaction we will know it.

For years, month after month, New Zealand First has raised the issue and brought it to the Government’s attention that international corporates were using and continue to use New Zealand’s economy as a tax haven. Gun runners and drug dealers use New Zealand to hide their money. Nothing—nothing—happened. More and more, despite this Government’s frenetic and copious inaction, do the people of New Zealand know it for what it truly is. Its inaction on the Electricity Authority’s ruling around the latest pricing methodology will shut down business in our regions and our regions will lose jobs. There is no way that is a debate; that is the truth of the situation. Yesterday after a police investigation about money-laundering was published, finally, this Government’s inaction highlighted—and I note—that this is merely the tip of the visible iceberg of money-laundering in New Zealand.

For years and years New Zealand First has tried repeatedly to get some action from that Government on money-laundering in New Zealand. From around the world, people and corporates have been using blatant loopholes in our system. They have been using our law—or lack thereof, in fact—to launder dirty money, representing criminal activities of all sorts and every magnitude. At the beginning of the year, for example, on behalf of New Zealand First and angry New Zealanders, I asked the Government what it was doing about money-launderers using the New Zealand property market—our homes—to hide and launder funds and, in doing so, hugely inflating prices and distorting our New Zealand property market such that it has so severely hampered our economy.

Our economy is teetering on an edge because this Government refuses to act and do anything meaningful about the housing bubble. It is compromising our futures. It is compromising what little economic activity we have. It is creating a homelessness epidemic, and it is shutting out the next generation from homeownership. Not only has the New Zealand public and New Zealand First been ignored by that Government; we were attacked by the Minister of Revenue, in fact, who called our very rational questions in the House on this issue irrational and claims without substance. Minister, it was a billion-dollar problem then, and it is more and more of a billion-dollar problem now. How substantive do you need the problem to be before you acknowledge it and do something about it? The Prime Minister admitted yesterday he cannot and will not do anything substantive about money-laundering in New Zealand. He will not do it now because it might correct the housing problem.

How is that for inaction defining a Government? There is homelessness, intergenerational theft, and an economy teetering on the edge. This Government needs to act. It needs to do something now, but I think New Zealanders in the future will define this Government by its inaction and not its actions.

JONO NAYLOR (National): We all have moments in our life that, I think, we look back on and we can recall exactly how we felt at that time. One of those moments for me was in about 1994 or 1995, or thereabouts, walking out of the movie theatre after watching Once Were Warriors for the first time. As a relatively young man at that point in time, I suppose, who had grown up in a middle-class, European sort of setting and not having ever been exposed to anything like that quite so graphically, I remember how shocked, how drained, and how just embarrassed, I guess, in some respects, I was.

At that point in time, I think there were a number of people across New Zealand who were waking up to the idea that there was stuff going on behind the doors of the houses in our neighbourhoods that we were suddenly awakened to, and we realised we were not happy about it and felt the need to do something about it. Since that time, throughout our country subsequent Governments have endeavoured to do everything that they can to ensure that they reduce the level of domestic and family violence that is going on in our households. Over that time period it seems that whatever we have tried, it seems to still get only worse.

Yesterday this Government announced that we are now going to take a different approach. I know Mr Shearer does not like the word “comprehensive”, so I will use words like “thorough” and “multi-faceted” and “extensive” and “integrated”, because that is the way that this Government is looking to go forward in addressing what is an absolute blight on our society. There are some grim statistics, but, as has been said by a previous speaker, a woman who experiences strangulation from her partner is seven times more likely to die at the hands of that person. In 2015 Child, Youth and Family received over 150,000 notifications about care and protection issues for children. Nearly half of all homicides and reported violent crime in our country are related to family violence. It is absolutely time that we take a thorough, multi-faceted, extensive, and integrated approach to doing this, and that, as the Prime Minister announced yesterday, is now going to occur.

Recovering from a physical assault is incredibly challenging, and I know that a number of people have experienced that. But if that assault has been inflicted by someone who is supposed to love you, someone who is responsible for your care, then recovering from that act, and repeated actions, is even more difficult for people to do. We have got to ensure that our system does not re-victimise victims, and so, as a part of this plan, we are going to make it easier for people to get protection orders put in place. We are going to ensure that, actually, having been victims, they do not then have to go through big processes. NGOs and other people will be able to seek to get those protection orders put in place on their behalf.

I know that amongst the NGOs and community organisations I have talked to in Palmerston North, where I live, they will be welcoming this so that they can act on behalf of people, rather than simply giving them advice and sending them on their way. There are going to be greater resources put in to ensure that our perpetrators will take responsibility and to provide assistance to them—to those who, once they can take responsibility, seek to break themselves out of that cycle and start to take a better, more appropriate role within their families. It is about getting harder. We are going to put in place more particular offences so that we can strengthen the justice system to ensure that we deal with these perpetrators in the most appropriate ways.

This House is often divided on debates over ideology, but I look forward, when the legislation comes forward over the coming months, to this House working together to help put together legislation that will strengthen our fight against this thing, which is absolutely a scourge on our society. Thank you.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): At the very heart of our democracy, of our democratic system, lies the ability for elected politicians to communicate freely with whomever they want and to exchange information in the course of their work without fear—without fear of their work, of their communications, or of their attached documents being examined or filtered by any other party. If that is threatened, then our ability to represent is compromised.

I would like to ask Jonathan Coleman: how is sticking up for democracy not relevant to the people of New Zealand? I have got two valid and very vital questions to ask. Is New Zealand becoming more corrupt? Is the National Government allowing and enabling New Zealand to become more corrupt and less transparent? The answer to both those questions is, sadly, yes. That is not just my opinion; there is a raft of evidence.

There is slippage. In January New Zealand slipped from two to four on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, after being at the very top for 8 years. There is lip service. There is the open Government partnership amongst 69 countries that we signed up to—which sounds good, but we have not been fulfilling our requirements. In March we got a letter from the partnership saying that we had acted contrary to the process.

There is stonewalling. There are delays to responding to Official Information Act requests. This has got so bad that the Ombudsman did an inquiry. The result was a slap on the hand, but at least the new Ombudsman has said that he will institute league tables. This is the kind of response we are getting to Official Information Act requests—black pieces of paper and no actual information. There is gagging of whistleblowers. The system that protects whistleblowers is out of date and ineffectual. It is weak. Our law is weak. Government pursues whistleblowers instead of actually addressing the problems of waste and unlawful behaviours that they expose.

There is turning a blind eye—the Michael Woodhouse immigration scam is a classic example of that. There are deliberate and misleading U-turns. Bill English, who used false figures to veto the paid parental leave legislation is another example. There are so many examples of creeping corruption by this Government that the next transparency index result will inevitably see us slip further. Those examples include the teapot tapes, the Prime Minister’s supposed lost texts to Rachel Glucina about “ponytail-gate”, the Oravida scandal, the Saudi sheep-deal scandal, the Skycity convention centre debacle, and political interference in our media.

We know about New Zealand On Air. We know about Māori Television. More recently, we have seen Television New Zealand, the State-owned broadcaster, spend $60 million renovating its building in Auckland—$23 million, or 64 percent, more than it told us that it would cost, and to do that it got a 2-year holiday on paying its dividends to the Government. Two weeks ago it had a big opening of a new flash building in Auckland, and guess who opened it: John Key, the Prime Minister. Was the Opposition invited? No. That is very worrying—very worrying—and a very worrying sign. Meanwhile, funding for our public broadcaster, Radio New Zealand, has been frozen for the last year; our only independent non-commercial media has not been given any more money. The media environment is shrinking with the collapse of the traditional business models, and the number of news media outlets is shrinking; that is a real worry for our democracy. The culture in Cabinet has more in common with a hedge-fund boardroom than a public office accountable to the public interest.

The upshot is that this is not an honest Government. This is not a Government of transparency and integrity. Integrity is precious. Whether you are an individual, an organisation, or a country, it is something we should value. Unfortunately, ours is going down the drain, and our democracy is eroding.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): This National Government is working hard to make New Zealand a better place to raise a family. We have a good lifestyle, and we are known to be great for social progress. Yes, worldwide we are known to be great for social progress, and it is because of the hard work of this National Government, because it is focused on delivering for families.

I would love to give some statistics to support what I am saying, because now the Opposition parties have learnt to respect statistics. They have learnt that statistics are done independently by Statistics New Zealand. If we look at the unemployment rate, according to the June quarter, unemployment is 5.1 percent. I am the National list member of Parliament based in Mount Roskill. Looking in Auckland, the unemployment rate is 4.7 percent—the lowest since September 2008. This is because of the number of new jobs that are being created under this National Government. Jobs are the No. 1 priority for families to flourish. We have delivered free GP visits for children under the age of 13. We have increased benefits for families with dependent children—this was the first time in 40 years.

These are only a few indicators of how well New Zealand is doing under this National Government. We are committed, we are helping families to have better lives, we are helping mums and dads, we are helping children to have the best-possible start in their lives, and we are helping young people to have better opportunities in their lives. This is possible because we are focused on managing our finances in a responsible manner, we are focused on supporting our economy to grow, and we are focused on delivering Better Public Services.

We also know that there are areas where we need to do more work, and that is why I am really proud of the work that the Minister, the Hon Amy Adams, is doing in the domestic violence space. The announcement by the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon John Key, and Minister Adams to change the family violence legislation and to bring in wide-ranging changes is about helping families.

As a scientist and as a businesswoman, I was also involved as a volunteer for around 10 years in the NGO sector, helping victims of domestic violence. It is a heart-wrenching field. It is a field that people do not want to talk about. In migrant communities it is very difficult for people to come out and speak about family violence. Even families who are going through family violence do not want to speak about it; they remain in denial. That is why it is a very, very serious issue, and that is why we need to bring these changes to help families come forward. It is about awareness, it is about intervention at the right time, and it is also about crisis management.

This issue of family violence is bigger than we can see, because the data that we see is only for the incidents that come forward to seek official attention. We also need to note that this is not just an issue for New Zealand but an issue for the whole world. I am really pleased to see the pilot that is going on in Christchurch—the Integrated Safety Response pilot—and I am hoping that it will work and that we can expand it throughout the country.

This is about sending a strong signal to New Zealand that family violence is not acceptable. The Government cannot do it alone, as the Minister said; we need the support of the community. I want to commend the various community organisations that are already actively working in this field of family violence prevention. It is about thinking differently; it is about doing things differently. This National Government is prepared to think differently; it is prepared to do things differently. But if I look at the Opposition, the Opposition is drowning. The Opposition is unable to swim. If one is unable to swim, one looks for a source of oxygen. Yes, the Labour Party constantly finds itself in deep waters, looking for a source of oxygen. So it reaches out to the Green Party, thinking that it will be its source of oxygen. But no, what the Labour Party wants—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: —and what the Green Party is offering are not compatible. They are not compatible. The Green Party is not the oxygen, the Green Party is not even carbon dioxide, but it is going to be Labour’s carbon monoxide. Why carbon monoxide? Because carbon monoxide is reactive and carbon monoxide is unstable. An example of that is house prices: the Green Party wants to slash house prices by 50 percent. That is being reactive; that is being unstable. Yes, it is going to be Labour’s carbon monoxide, not its oxygen. The Green Party is now going to suffocate the Labour Party with its own agenda at the forefront of its intentions. That is going to hurt families. But on this side we will keep doing what it takes to support families. Thank you.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): It might surprise the House to know that it has been nearly 3 years since I entered the House. I am very proud to represent the electorate of Christchurch East. I do not know whether other members of the House do this—it might be a bit naff—but from time to time, every few months, I actually revisit my maiden speech. This is because, for me, I want to know that I am actually living up to the principles that brought me to this House in the first place, that I am living up to the commitments that I made to my community, and that I ensure that the principles and the values that guide my life and my decisions continue to guide my work.

So in reviewing my maiden speech, as I often do, I know that the overriding theme is about the advocacy for children to live safe and fulfilling lives. I referenced James Whakaruru—his short life and his tragic and untimely death. I am here to protect our children, to make our country better—to be safe for our kids. I want our kids to live in dry, decent, affordable homes and to have a good education, and I want all the opportunities to be afforded to them, like any other children in this country. I have looked at the factors that have influenced and impacted on the life and the death of James Whakaruru, and I have examined the Government’s response to his life and his death, and I want to hold the Government to account for ensuring that we have safe and healthy lives for all of our children.

Let us look at the elements. Family violence is something that I know a lot about, having worked in the field for several years. Over 110,000 incidents are reported each year, which is only about 20 percent of what actually occurs—so there are half a million to 600,000 incidents of family violence each year. There were 150,000 notifications to Child, Youth and Family in the year 2015, up from 89,000 in the year 2008. I worked in the family violence sector in west Auckland. We did a study where we looked at all of the police callouts for a domestic incident where children were resident and present.

In the area of west Auckland, where I worked, there were 1,900 such incidents, and we identified 3,500 children who were resident or present in a home where family violence was a factor. Of those, about 350 children were notified to Child, Youth and Family, and of those, only 55 children actually got any support for their trauma. So of the 3,500 we identified, only 55 children actually got the support they needed.

Let us look at the factor of poverty. The Salvation Army identifies that one in five kids in this country lives in measurable poverty—230,000 to 280,000. This Government is actually a little cagey on the numbers, but I heard from Minister Anne Tolley’s own voice on Friday that she admits there are at least 100,000 kids she can identify who are living in poverty. That is from the Government’s own statistics.

Let us look at the area of housing. There are 42,000 people living in cars and 130,000 people living in overcrowded homes. The list of illnesses due to overcrowded houses for kids is: sores, cellulitis, abscesses, infected eczema, scabies, gastroenteritis, and infections. This is in a country that claims to be First World. Poor housing conditions in infancy and childhood have a cumulative detrimental effect on physical and mental illness.

Let us look at mental health—and here I tautoko my colleagues at the Waipuna Trust in Christchurch, who have done a lot of work in youth mental health. There has been an increase in the numbers of young people experiencing severe and persistent mental illness, not just in numbers but in acuity.

So let us look at these statistics in relation to James’s life and his mother. Here is my scorecard for the Government: in family violence, where we have increased rates of family violence and reports of concern to Child, Youth and Family, this Government’s rating is a huge fail. Let us have a look at poverty: 230,000 kids are living in poverty. This Government’s scorecard is a huge fail. Let us have a look at housing, and let us read Nick Smith and Paula Bennett into this: 42,000 people are living in cars, garages, and in overcrowded conditions. The Government scorecard is a huge fail.

The only way we are going to change the opportunities for our kids is to ensure that it is not just about legislation but about the State, the community, and whānau working together, and about us changing the Government.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Judicature Modernisation Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed from 23 August.

Parts 1 to 6, schedules 1 to 11, and clauses 1 and 2 (continued)

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe e Te Heamana o Te Komiti o Te Whare nei. It is a pleasure to stand in the Committee stage of the Judicature Modernisation Bill, and I want to turn my attention to one part of the justice Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 197, in particular Part 3, the provisions around judicial review procedures.

First of all, can I acknowledge the Justice and Electoral Committee—in particular, one point made by the Labour Party minority view, and, in particular, the omission from the purposes of clause 3 of any reference to a commitment to parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law, judicial independence, and the Treaty of Waitangi. It occurred to me that in looking at judicial review procedures it would be helpful, I believe, for these procedures to have some commitment to those elements, particularly—for me—to the Treaty of Waitangi. We just heard Poto Williams talking about reviewing the principles in her maiden speech. I think that helpful for every Māori electorate MP—indeed, more than Māori MPs and MPs who come to this House and talk about the Treaty of Waitangi. I thought, in looking at the judicial review procedures, how having an overview or a commitment to the Treaty of Waitangi in the purpose of this bill would give more enhancement for the judges carrying out the reviews to have consideration for these parts of the clauses, which are not there.

I decided to have a look at the whole process of judicial reviews, and it goes back a very long way in common law, as I understand it. In 1972 the Judicature Amendment Act 1972 was put in place. This modernisation bill repeals that Act, but it replaces it with a whole new part within the Judicature Modernisation Bill, which is wholly appropriate. It is a very important part of our judicial processes. I know about some more recent cases, particularly in the education system, where decisions that have been made by the Minister have been challenged through these processes. I think it is important that these processes are retained and are maintained, that they are updated and that the language is changed where appropriate. Although some of the language, to me, does not make it any less or more clear, I think it is just the modern language that we use around this.

I think this process is very important, as I say, and needs to be within the bill. The whole bill takes a collection of Acts and modernises them in a way that is appropriate for 2016. Some of these parts of the bill—as I say, this one is from 1972, and others go back a lot longer, over 100 years ago. I stand in support of this part of this bill, but with the note that it would be much better to have consideration for the elements that are not actually there—mainly, for me, the Treaty of Waitangi. Kia ora.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): I am pleased to take a call in this Committee stage of the Judicature Modernisation Bill. I do note that this is a significant piece of legislation. It has been a long time in the making, but it also goes all the way back, I guess, to the pillars of our constitution—with the courts. I was surprised to learn, just by way of trivia, that it goes all the way back to the year after the Treaty, when the courts were first established. I found that quite fascinating—those were the first measures that our young colony took: to set up and establish our High Court. The law has been updated significantly only twice since 1841. It was done in the 1880s and then we had the Judicature Act of 1908, which we are now finally modernising through the passage of this bill.

This is quite a sizable piece of a bill, but I have been doing some speed-reading. I do want to actually focus on what I have picked up in Part 1. I do remember—it is a proud moment for anyone who gets admitted to the Bar and becomes a barrister and solicitor. That is quite a proud moment—and I do think back to many years ago when I signed a roll and took the oath, over the road there. It is nice, as a member who has practised and is part of the legal community, as a solicitor in years gone by, that we are updating and modernising our court system. Part 1 deals with putting all of our senior courts into their own Act of Parliament. That is a very sensible way of structuring all of the sequential amendments that are taking part. So Part 1 consolidates all of our senior courts—which are the High Court, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court—into one piece of legislation, and it goes into great detail also around the appointment of judges.

That is where I want to pick up. If we look at clause 6A(1), I just have a question for the Minister of Justice, which is in relation to the actual number of judges. In that clause it says that the total number of judges must not exceed 55. I understand that that provision is actually in the current Judicature Act, and it goes back quite a few years. My question is: why is it set at 55? What is the calculation that has come to that magical number? Also, we have set a maximum number but we have not set a minimum number. Why is there not a minimum number of judges at any one time? Why have we not placed a cap on that? I would be interested if the Minister could, perhaps, address that point because I think it is very important.

If, for instance, we have got a population of 4.5 million - odd Kiwis and we have a capped number of only 55 judges, that is not very many judges per head of population. So I would be interested because this number has been carried over—it has not been changed—so I was just wondering why we have not looked at that. I understand that the Law Commission did not address this point, but I think it would be good to know whether there is a formula, whether there is some reason why we have only a statutory capped number.

Another reason why I say that is—my goodness—because I have been somewhat bamboozled by the different types of judges whom we now have in this legislation. In addition to the judges of the courts at each level, we have got additional judges, we have got associate judges, we have got acting judges, and we have got part-time judges—there is such a wide array of judges. We are modernising the law, but I have just been absolutely quite confused by the different types of judges who have now been put into this modern piece of legislation. The reason I say that is that if we look at the number, we have a capped number of 55 High Court judges in Aotearoa New Zealand. We cannot go over that amount, but there are always exceptions that they put into the legislation. I was intrigued to see that the Governor-General can appoint additional judges to the 55, but only in the case where a judge is anticipating retirement or is on leave pending retirement. So that begs the question: why do the judges not just retire? Why do you have to bring in an additional judge in anticipation or while the judge takes leave before retiring? That then exceeds the cap, so then they have had to put in this statutory exception, which exceeds the cap of 55.

It goes further. I think we do need to look at these provisions, because there is an age limit of 70 years; a judge cannot hold office unless they are under 70 years of age—unless they are an acting judge. In that case, they can go on for up to an extra 5 years. Why cap judges’ eligibility at 70 years of age and, yet, say they can continue on as a judge until they are 75 years of age? Why do we not just set the limit at 75? Because in many instances those judges just carry on and they just give themselves a new label, whether it is acting judge, part-time judge, associate judge—or whatever judge. So why do we not just give them a 75-year age limit and leave it at that? Do not give them leave and give them a different title while they are pending retirement. I also want to return to the point. These are very valid points that I am raising. This is very important because this is the High Court of New Zealand. These are senior judges whom we are talking about. These are very valid questions that I would like the Minister to address.

The final point that I would like to make is that we have addressed the point about the age limits. As we know, 70 years of age is also quite relatively young. I know of the two candidates running for the President of the United States of America: both of them are just hitting 70 years of age right now—or there or thereabouts.

Hon Member: Not a good example.

RINO TIRIKATENE: Sure, one might be a bit māuiui at the moment, but they are going for the highest office in the world—the leader of the free world—and they are 70 years of age now. And we are cutting off our judges at 70 years of age. I think consideration should be given to extending that retirement age—yes, right through to the 75-year age limit, which is already allowed in an exceptional circumstance.

This may seem a bit dry and it is very arcane a lot of this stuff—a lot of the subject matter in this bill—but it is very important. If we are modernising, if we are trying to rejuvenate our court system and, in particular, our senior courts—what I find is that lawyers love to consider every conceivable scenario and then they can draft for it and add exceptions to any legal drafting that takes place. That is what I see here. There are a lot of exceptions and different labels for different terms of office, but, at the end of the day, we just want qualified, senior members of our judiciary—the best jurists in the country—to be able to hold those very esteemed offices and responsibilities that they have in those roles. I do believe that some of the provisions in this so-called modernisation Act are may be leading to a bit more confusion. But, then again, I have not gone back to the Judicature Act 1908, so that could be addressed. Thank you.

JONO NAYLOR (National): When I—

Kris Faafoi: This better be good.

JONO NAYLOR: I hope it will be good, Mr Faafoi, and I am sure you will be waiting with bated breath to see what happens next. When I rose to speak on this bill for the first time—it was at its second reading—I had to confess to not having read the whole thing. I can now report that I still have not read the whole thing. It will be a bit of a surprise to you, but as tempting as it has been to sit down and try to plough my way all the way through this bill, I have to confess that I have not managed to do that.

It is a vitally important piece of legislation, and I know that when we have got a title like Judicature Modernisation Bill we have a bit of a laugh, because it is a funny word. We are not sure how to pronounce it. But this is a very, very serious bit of legislation—all 1,200 or so pages of it, I think. It is critical to the future of the judicial system in New Zealand.

For a justice system to be just it needs to be accessible to the people who are trying to access it. In this modern age, when we go online to do our banking and we go online to find out almost anything that is going on in the world, it just seems a little bit archaic that our justice system still requires everything to be focused on paper. It still requires everything to be managed in that way. Amongst other things, amongst this great tome of paper here is the provision for all judgments to be put online, where appropriate. Obviously, at times it will not necessarily be appropriate to release them, but it is to ensure that everybody can have access to them. Instead of having to go down and do all that research, going through all the papers, it will be done online. Using technology is going to be paramount, going forward, for a just judicial system.

I think one of the other things that really jumps out at me, which you would think, in this modern day and age, would be happening already but because we have not modernised this—

Kris Faafoi: The judicature.

JONO NAYLOR: —the judicature, yes, thank you—already, is the provision for audiovisual links to be able to used. This will be of particular use in remand situations. Obviously, when somebody is on remand they may have to come backwards and forwards, from wherever it is they are being held on remand, to the court for various different appearances—over bail, and at various different stages. What this bill will allow to happen is for those particular hearings to be able to take place via an audiovisual link. Of course, this saves the taxpayer money, amongst other things, and it also improves safety, because every time you transfer someone who is in custody, obviously, there are greater security risks that go with that. We are improving security, we are improving accessibility, and, of course, we are making it more cost-effective as well.

I want to acknowledge the Justice and Electoral Committee of the 50th Parliament, because that is the committee that dealt with this bill, through this system. Obviously it was a very hard-working committee because it did manage to get its way all through this bill, and it has made a number of recommendations. It has made some important clarifications—for example, “to raise the value of personal property of the judgment debtor that would be exempt from seizure to $5,000 for their necessary tools of trade, and $10,000 for their necessary household furniture and effects.” This, of course, makes it consistent with the High Court threshold. That is just one of the things that have been picked up on—there is a whole list that the committee has come up with—but I do want to commend the committee for doing that.

Finally, I do just want to say there have been a number of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) put forward on this particular bill, and a number of them have been put up by the Opposition. They are not all going to get voted against by this side of the Chamber. SOP 62 in the name of Jacinda Ardern obviously makes a very clear point. It is going to put a new subclause (2) in clause 3(d), which will read that “Nothing in this Act affects New Zealand’s continuing commitment to the rule of law and the sovereignty of Parliament.” It is absolutely important that we continue to uphold those things and have that inscribed within our modernised Judicature Act. I am really looking forward to the third reading, as we get through this bill.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I want to talk about some of the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs). I am glad to hear that the Government will now support Supplementary Order Paper 62 to reinstate the declaration concerning the rule of law and sovereignty of Parliament. That is great, but I think the Government should also take a look at some of the other SOPs, as I have.

First of all, Jacinda Ardern’s SOP 61 to delete clause 132—that is the clause relating to the compulsory retirement of judges at the early age of 70, which is completely wrong. That is ageism, and is contrary to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The Government should be taking more notice of that. It is a waste of valuable human resource to make people retire at the early age of 70. Judges at that age, and beyond, are perfectly capable of carrying out their duties, and they have a huge amount of experience that should not be lost. So that amendment should be supported.

Supplementary Order Paper 217 in the name of Louisa Wall asks us to take into account gender, cultural, and ethnic diversity, and so on, in the appointment of judges. We will be voting against that because we do not understand what the term “take into account” means. We say that the appointment of judges must be entirely on merit, and if anything was to be said about those issues, it should say that appointments must be neutral as regards gender, ethnicity, and all the rest of it. This amendment says the opposite, so it should not be passed. Passing it would be a dangerous thing to do because it could be interpreted as allowing negative issues concerning gender, ethnicity, and so on, to be taken into account. It directs neither negative nor affirmative reasons for that. It is not very well drafted and it is wrong in principle. We will be voting against it.

However, Supplementary Order Paper 216, also in the name of Louisa Wall, talks about judges of the Māori Land Court and says that “advice or recommendations from the Minister for Māori Development” should be taken into account first. We are very happy with that. We will vote for that.

Supplementary Order Paper 66 in the name of David Clendon relates to a register of judges’ pecuniary interests. That was looked after in a member’s bill of Kennedy Graham and was not supported then. I do not think anyone will want to support it now. We had a long and comprehensive process about that, and it did not go anywhere. It is not appropriate to raise it again now, in this bill.

Supplementary Order Paper 63 in the name of Jacinda Ardern would add to clause 3 another purpose requiring consideration of the legal issues especially relating to the Treaty of Waitangi. The purpose that is set out in the amendment is meaningless because it refers to “an understanding of”. What on earth does that mean—an understanding of “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.”? It does not mean a damn thing, as far as I am concerned, and it is not the right sort of thing to put in the bill. We will be voting against it, for those reasons.

Most particularly, I want to refer to Jacinda Ardern’s amendment concerning the publication of District Court judgments, which Minister Adams in her SOP 197 wants to go back to the status quo. I think Jacinda has got it right. We will be supporting her amendment. The reasons given in the Minister’s SOP are simply that “currently, resourcing required to enable publication of all judgments across all courts and especially the District Court would be substantial.” That is the only reason we are given for the Minister wanting to go back to the status quo. That is just a resourcing issue. It is not a reason why we should not put this in the legislation and let the Government get on with it, provide the resources, and let it happen. I have had, as other MPs will have had, a number of contacts from people saying: “Look, I need to get this information. I need to get those District Court judgments, for very good reasons.” The best place to do that is online. Currently it is very hard to do it at all—to get a District Court judgment, especially notes of evidence—so it is high time that the Government did what it said it was going to do, which is to create a modernisation bill. This does not do that. It is the status quo.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Kia ora, Mr Chair. I have two Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that I would like to speak to. I would like to acknowledge the contribution of my colleague Denis O’Rourke and thank him for his support of one of my SOPs, which I will start with. It is SOP 216, which replaces SOP 202.

I would like to just read from that Supplementary Order Paper, which “amends clause 568 of the Judicature Modernisation Bill, which amends section 7 of Te Ture Whenua Māori Act 1993. Section 7 relates to the appointment of Judges of the Māori Land Court. It enshrines in statute the long-established practice of Judges of the Māori Land Court being appointed on the advice or recommendation of the Minister for Māori Development. In replicating the generic provisions contained in clause 192(3) for appointment of Judges, the Bill would result in a failure to recognise the distinctive nature of the relationship between Māori land, Māori land owners, the Māori Land Court and the Minister for Māori Development. Of note is that Cabinet is merely advised once the decision about the appointment of Judges is made and that we have an opportunity through this legislation to ensure practice and statute are consistent.”

I would like to reference a document that I found through the Crown Law Office website, dated 13 September 2016, and it is titled “Judicial Appointments”. The fourth paragraph says: “The convention is that the Attorney-General mentions appointments at Cabinet after they have been determined. The appointments are not discussed or approved by Cabinet.” I wanted to make the point that this provision of the Minister for Māori Development appointing the Māori Land Court judges is not actually a Cabinet rule or convention. It has become a practice, but there is nowhere in statute or in the Cabinet manual that actually reinforces that practice. I also want to read something else from this communiqué from the Crown Law Office, and it says: “The appointment process followed by the Attorney-General is not prescribed by any statute or regulation.”

In fact, what this Judicature Modernisation Bill does is completely change that. It is going to ensure that the appointment process followed by the Attorney-General is contained in statute, because it will be contained in this piece of legislation. My contention is that if you are going to amend section 7 of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act, which enshrines in statute the process for appointment, this is the reason and rationale why we should be really explicit, as my Supplementary Order Paper has been, in saying that the Attorney-General must seek advice or recommendation from the Minister for Māori Development for the appointment of Māori Land Court judges.

I am not sure what level of support I have across the Committee, other than from my colleagues, New Zealand First, and also the Green Party. I am hoping that there is enough support for this to go through, because it certainly has support from the Māori Land Court judges themselves and, in fact, the Māori community. Inherent to the appointment, I think, is the mana of the position of the Minister for Māori Development, the mana of those Māori Land Court judges, and the mana of our whenua. So I am hoping that the Government sees this as a reasonable request and amendment to this piece of legislation, and that it will therefore support this Supplementary Order Paper.

The next SOP, SOP 217, that I would like to speak to is the one that Denis O’Rourke has advised that New Zealand First will not be supporting, which is to ensure that the judiciary reflects gender, cultural, and ethnic diversity in appointments. This particular SOP came from the review that the Law Commission did. There is a document called Review of the Judicature Act 1908: Towards a New Courts Act, and it was recommendation 16 from the Law Commission that inspired me to put this Supplementary Order Paper to the Committee. Recommendation 16(b)—I have replicated the words there: “regard must be given to the desirability of the judiciary reflecting gender, cultural and ethnic diversity.”

There are other components of that particular recommendation that I would like to bring to the attention of the Committee—and I chose not to include those in a Supplementary Order Paper because I spoke to judges who have been appointed, and those particular issues are addressed—and they are social awareness of and sensitivity to tikanga Māori. All judges, on appointment, now receive social awareness and sensitivity to tikanga Māori training. They also receive social awareness of and sensitivities to other diverse communities in New Zealand. So I am reassured that the current process of educating our judges to those particular sensitivities is taken care of, but what we cannot move away from—I asked the library to do some statistics about the judiciary regarding their gender, cultural, and ethnic diversity, and I would like to read some of those statistics.

On average—total men and women—29.9 percent of our judiciary are women, and if we look at the international comparison, Canada has 35.4 percent, Australia 33.4 percent, and the US 33 percent. The interesting thing for me, however, is that women actually comprise 47.5 percent of lawyers holding practising certificates. So nearly 50 percent of our lawyers holding practising certificates in New Zealand are women, but we are only 29.9 percent of the judiciary. The interesting thing, if you look at the meta-analysis of those statistics, is that there is a requirement—and this piece of legislation reinforces that—that you have to hold a practising certificate for 7 years or more. Of that 47.5 percent of lawyers holding practising certificates who are women, only 43 percent of them are actually eligible to become judges.

So what we see in the profession is, I guess, the historical professionalisation of men in the profession, because 80.8 percent of men have been in the profession and have held practising certificates for more than 7 years—that is 5,091 eligible men, as opposed to 3,844 women. I can understand why there is a little bit of an issue; because of that qualification, women are not being reflected in the numbers that we would expect as reflective of the number of women in the profession. If you look at it, we would have expected that 47.5 percent of judges were women, but that is not what we are currently seeing.

The other interesting point is that of the 243 judges, only 29—or 12 percent—are Māori, and I think that if we were to reflect New Zealand society, then 16 percent of judges would be Māori. In essence, what this particular Supplementary Order Paper is trying to do is to have the judiciary reflect New Zealand society.

The State Sector Act does not do it, in fact. I looked through the State Sector Act and the functions of the State Services Commissioner—in section 6(d)—is to “appoint leaders of the Public Service”, but there is no regard to gender, cultural, or ethnic diversity. I think that we have an opportune time, with this Judicature Modernisation Bill, to actually put into this piece of legislation some minimum levels of acceptability about what we want the judiciary to look like. We want the judiciary to reflect New Zealand society, in terms of both the representation of women and the representation of Māori, but also in terms of the representation of other New Zealanders.

What I did not get from the library—and it is obviously because the statistics are not regularly kept—is the number of ethnic judges that we have in our system. So I did a little google, and I know that we have got two Samoan judges—we have Judge Epati and Judge Malosi. Judge Sanjay Patel was sworn in on only 22 June this year and we also have the first Tongan judge, Mina Wharepouri, but other than me googling, we do not regularly collect ethnicity statistics in terms of the demography of our judges.

So I have put this Supplementary Order Paper to the Committee because I think, like everything, there is a time and a place to make a stand. Our police force has made it this year—it has committed to 50/50 women and men in the police force, and 50 percent women reflected in all the positions across the police force. I actually think that it is about time that any piece of legislation, and a piece of legislation like this that is trying to modernise our judiciary, actually reflects those sentiments. We want a judiciary that reflects New Zealand society, so I implore this Committee to support that particular Supplementary Order Paper. Kia ora.

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I am just going to take a brief call. I have spoken already in this debate, but I wanted to touch on a couple of the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that have been filed since we last debated the Committee stage of the Judicature Modernisation Bill. Two in particular, I think, are new to the debate. The first is a tabled amendment—Jacinda Ardern is seeking to, effectively, reinstitute the requirement for the mandatory publication of District Court decisions.

I just wanted to talk to that very specifically, because there is very good reason why we have not carried on with that obligation, which is that the District Court is, of course, the workhorse of the New Zealand court system. Over the course of the year, it puts out something like 15,500 judgments, of which only a couple of hundred are written, considered, detailed judgments. The vast majority, around 15,000 judgments every year, are oral, quick, sentencing-type decisions—simply a record of proceedings.

To put this requirement in law would be a requirement right across the system for every one of those to be transcribed, checked, formatted, gone through peer reviewing, and put online. This, of course, could be done but as a question of resourcing within the justice system you have to question what the value of that is. When you are simply recording and transcribing straight sentencing notes that, frankly, are not of any precedential value, do not bind the higher courts, do not really inform the knowledge of law in our society, and are for the matter of public record, the very clear view that we have reached is that that simply is not a good use of the time and the resources we have in the justice system, which could be far better spent in much more productive ways.

If we were to do this, let me make it very clear to the Committee that those are important resources that are not available for supporting, for example, better access to justice and more information for litigants, and self-represented litigants, and all of the other things that this House, I know, is very concerned to do.

I would also point out to the Committee that the District Courts now have a website—districtcourts.govt.nz—where they are publishing the decisions of relevance. So the decisions that this Committee has talked about, the necessity to access, absolutely are being published online and are accessible. I think that is the right balance. We are getting the decisions up that are of use and are of information to the system. We are not requiring, as a mandatory blunt tool, every single utterance of a judge at the end of a process to be treated with the same cost implication. So the Government will not be supporting that amendment to the SOP.

The second SOP that I want to touch on that is new is Louisa Wall’s Supplementary Order Paper 217, which she has just spoken about, around the appointment of judges and the desire to reflect in legislation the need to represent a gender and ethnicity balance in our judges. Although I absolutely agree that it is important that our judiciary make up a mixture of our society, I want to say two things. First of all, there are already very clear protocols that ensure that in appointing judges there has to be attention paid to ensuring they represent a reflection of New Zealand society. That is already in the matrix of the decision making that has gone through when judges are appointed.

The second point that I would want to make is that, actually, if you look at the track record, particularly under the current Attorney-General in the last few years, we have been extremely successful in seeing very good women judges appointed—not because of any quota system or making up the numbers, but because very good senior women lawyers are being recognised as excellent judges. Of the last three High Court judges appointed, two of them were women. Just very recently, we have had the head of every single judicial bench as a woman. The number of women being appointed under this Government—I do not have the numbers in front of me; I would be very surprised if they were not very heavily weighted in favour of women being appointed. So actually I would challenge that there is a demonstrable problem in this area.

Yes, in terms of percentages the member is right, but then look at the percentage of senior women in the legal profession. Having been in it for years myself, the problem starts there. We know that there are not enough women moving through to senior levels of the profession and that, of course, means that there is a smaller pool available for judges to be appointed. But I think, in actual fact, the actions of the Attorney-General over recent years have shown very well that the protocols are in place and are working to ensure that the best judges are appointed and that they do reflect modern New Zealand society.

I do not think it is necessary to codify that in a fixated way, which suggests some sort of quota making up the numbers assessment. I know that as a woman when I am promoted I want it to be on merit and not because there is some requirement for the numbers to be met. I think, as I said, the existing system that we have absolutely reflects the need to ensure that judges make up a cross-section of society. That is working very well, and so the Government will not be supporting that SOP either.

SUE MORONEY (Labour): It is great to get an opportunity to make a contribution on the Judicature Modernisation Bill. At the outset I just want to remind people that Labour, of course, is supporting this bill, but we do have some reservations about it and I certainly have some questions that I would like to ask the Minister.

I want to focus my contribution on Part 2 of the bill, which is where it repeals the District Courts Act and instead this bill makes a unitary District Court where we have specialist courts as part of that unitary District Court. Those specialist courts will become divisions of it. Those courts will be a Family Court, a Youth Court, and a disputes tribunal. I particularly want to focus my contribution on Part 2, as I said, clause 260, which is about exceptions. This is the part of the bill where it talks about what jurisdiction the new unitary District Court will have to hear civil proceedings. I note that there are a range of figures used in the bill to describe whether the court will have jurisdiction to hear such civil matters. I think that it is perhaps quite a dangerous thing to prescribe limits because they can quite quickly become irrelevant as figures.

The example I want to use for this is clause 260(1), which actually states: “The court does not have jurisdiction to hear and determine the following classes of proceedings:” and the first one it lists is that it does not have jurisdiction to hear and determine proceedings for the recovery of land. But there are some exceptions to that, and that goes down to clause 261, where it says that the court can actually hear proceedings for the recovery of land in particular situations. The situation described in clause 261(1) is where “(a) the annual rent does not exceed $62,500; or (b) the value of the land does not exceed $500,000.” I think that is quite a dangerous thing to do in a bill like this because, as we know, the price of land in New Zealand at the moment is actually growing at a rapid rate.

My concern would be that if somebody has a civil dispute about recovering land, and that land, at the time that they decide to put an action in front of the court, is worth, say, $400,000, it would therefore come under the jurisdiction of this part of the bill. However, by the time that action comes before the court, it could be several months later, it could be a year later, or it could be 2 years later. What is the situation—and I would be interested in what the Minister has to say about this—if, in the meantime, the value of that land had gone over $500,000? That really is possible in today’s society.

Today, in the city where I live, in Hamilton, house and land prices have gone up by 30 percent in just 1 year. When the action is put in front of the court it is quite possible that the land may well come under its jurisdiction because it could be, say, valued at $400,000, but by the time it gets in front of the court, the land value may have gone up to a place where it actually takes it out of the jurisdiction because of clause 261(1) of this bill. So I would be very interested to know what would happen in that circumstance. Would the judge be required to strike it out as not being within the jurisdiction? Would they have to transfer the proceedings to a different court, to the High Court, because it had gone over the limit that the District Court could hear? What would be the remedy for this happening? Or is it the case that the court would continue to hear it because at the time when the action was first put in front of the court, the land actually was of a value that did qualify?

If this truly is a modernisation bill, then it should take into account all those sorts of issues. I just want to bring back to the Committee’s attention how dangerous it is to use these sorts of figures when they could become—

MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair and thank you very much. It is a privilege to take a call on the Committee stage of the—here we go—Judicature Modernisation Bill, and I hope my contribution is a lot clearer than my pronunciation of the name. Labour does support this bill, but I want to focus on Part 1 and particularly on Subpart 5, “Senior court Judges”. Of course, I am going to reference the submissions by both the Bar Association and the New Zealand Law Society, because who better to take a lead from in this particular section of the bill but actual practitioners in this field.

Clause 93 talks about the judicial appointment process. The Minister who was in the chair previously, Amy Adams, gave the outline around flexibility and avoiding any overly prescriptive criteria when appointing judges. I do want to draw the Committee’s attention to the submissions, like I said previously, from the New Zealand Bar Association and the New Zealand Law Society in respect of judicial appointments, as noted in clause 93. The comments that I draw from their submissions, particularly from the New Zealand Bar Association, are about the role of the Attorney-General in appointing judges. In its submission, the Bar Association is recommending that the appointment process that the Attorney-General undertakes should be done in a consultative manner. It has given a whole list, by way of example, of the organisations or the actual individuals that it considers the Attorney-General should consult with—for example, the Solicitor-General, the president of the New Zealand Law Society, the president of the New Zealand Bar Association, and other such people as he or she considers appropriate. Clearly, the New Zealand Bar Association asserts that the Attorney-General should be required by legislation to consult with specific people in advising the Governor-General on judicial appointments.

I turn to the report from the Ministry of Justice to the Justice and Electoral Committee, and I read about this particular point I am raising—on clause 93. It makes mention that there were a number of submitters that support the Attorney-General taking a more consultative process in terms of making the decisions. It then talked about the Law Society, the New Zealand Bar Association, and the Human Rights Commission. Then it goes through, as officials do, and actually puts up the argument on whether those recommendations should be taken or not. I do note—and perhaps the Minister can explain this to the Committee—that one of the reasons why it does not consider that it should take up the suggestion of a consultative process has to do with the following statement: “We are not convinced that legislating set criteria and consultees is the only way to achieve this aim. In large part the sunlight effect of requiring the process to be published and, therefore, open to public scrutiny …”. I would appreciate it if the Minister in the chair, Nicky Wagner, would just explain how not taking the consultative process will ensure that we have an open and transparent part, as per clause 93.

In terms of the other clauses I want to go to, there are quite a few in Subpart 5 of Part 1, but I definitely want to hear back from the Minister in relation to that point. The other one is, obviously, the criteria that are laid out in terms of the sorts of qualities we want in judges when the Attorney-General makes his or her determination. Again, the New Zealand Bar Association lays out in its submission a set of criteria that are quite clear, I think, in terms of suggesting statutory criteria—namely, the personal qualities, including integrity, sound judgment, and objectivity. Obviously, legal ability is one of those criteria that we should list.

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I rise to take a short call just to speak to some of my amendments that I have not had an opportunity to speak to. Before I do that I do want to refer to a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that there was some discussion over during the last period we were able to debate the Judicature Modernisation Bill, and that was SOP 62, which on the face of it seems rather simple. It simply states that the amendment would reinsert subclause (2) of clause 3. I say “reinsert” because although it was never in the Judicature Modernisation Bill, it was in the Supreme Court Act 2003, which is being modified by this omnibus bill, and it reinserts what is called the “rule of law” clause. It is an incredibly important constitutional provision, and I just wanted to briefly acknowledge that Minister Adams has indicated her support for that SOP, and I am certainly appreciative of that.

The Minister though, while in the chair, spoke to another amendment that I want to quickly touch on. Originally in the bill there was a requirement in clauses 167, 401, and 544 that would require online publishing of all filed or written judgments. When you listen to the Minister speak about that amendment that we have in my name around the publishing of online judgments, you would have thought that we were introducing the idea. We were not. It was in the original bill that went to the Justice and Electoral Committee. It was debated, discussed, and endorsed. It has since then come back to the House and, very recently, the decision was made that those clauses would be removed. So it was not a new idea. It was not proposed by the Opposition; it came from the Government.

I have some sympathy with the rationale that has been presented. Actually, the Minister seemed to question the usefulness of this provision altogether. What was proposed to us at the time when we questioned why it was being removed was simply that the capacity was not available in the court system to put it in place for now, and we had some sympathy for that. We know our court system is under strain. So our suggestion, via an amendment to the Minister’s SOP 197, which simply deletes a clause altogether, was to put a time period on it. Let us give it at least a year to make sure we have the capacity to make sure judgments are transcribed and available online.

The original rationale for this was that it was an access to justice issue, and I do not think that has changed. I have to say that I have had individuals come and see me in my office—two cases, in fact—where, actually, all they have sought is access to a judgment that they were involved in that they had not been able to access in a transparent way. So I do think that there is a call for this, for those issues that are not seen as major before our courts and might simply be of a low level within our district courts. Although we have sympathy for the argument that capacity issues exist, we think that our amendment was a neat, concise way to get around those issues.

One of the other amendments that I want to speak to briefly is in the Minister’s SOP 197, which amends the use of audiovisual links (AVL). In the original bill there was a presumption that AVL would be used, basically, in all non-substantive proceedings. I want to thank the Minister for putting in place an SOP that actually removes that presumption when it comes to sentencing. I think, having watched AVL in action—you can watch an offender sit in a court process and be completely disengaged from everything. It is a very distant way to deal with someone who is directly affected by what is happening in the courtroom. The idea that sentencing would happen under those circumstances does not sit well with me. So I support what the Minister has said to add a little bit more flexibility there for the judiciary in the way that is managed.

Finally, in the last 30 seconds that I have remaining, we have SOP 61, which removes the presumption that as you hit a certain age as a member of the judiciary, then you are immediately required to leave the bench. If there is an issue with performance, let us deal with an issue of performance. That is a separate issue to age. That is a separate issue to age, and it seems completely arbitrary to us to pick an age when, actually, performance issues can happen at any point in someone’s career. We think that that should be dealt with in another way, which is why we have an SOP to remove what we think, ultimately, is just a discriminatory provision.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I want to take issue with what Minister Adams said, when she was in the chair, concerning the publication of judgments, especially in the District Court. She just reiterated what we have been told both in writing and at the Justice and Electoral Committee that there was a resourcing issue. However, when you read what we have been told in writing about this, it says this about the publication of judgments in the District Court—that the Chief District Court Judge is advancing work to enable significant District Court decisions to be published, and the ministry is working closely with her to establish this publishing capacity from next year. So this is, obviously, imminent. It is going to be possible—there will be resources, clearly, expected to be available from next year—for at least significant District Court decisions.

As Jacinda Ardern said, none of us expect that each and every thing that a District Court judge says orally needs to be published on the internet. We do not expect that. That is not what this is about. It is about especially significant District Court decisions, the ones that people want to have access to, and they need to have access to them either because they are involved, or because they are in the Sensible Sentencing Trust or they are in some other organisation that has an interest in these things. So that is all we are asking for. The Minister of Justice tried to tell us that we need to delete all that and go back to the status quo because of resourcing issues, and yet the advice we have received from officials is that that work is advancing and that from next year—and that could be January next year for all I know; as early as that—it will be possible to publish online significant District Court decisions. That is all we are asking for.

So why is it necessary—and I want to ask the Minister this specifically, and I want an answer to it—to delete that whole provision, which the Government itself put in originally. Now it is reneging on it on the basis of resources not being available, and yet we are told elsewhere that resources are, in fact, going to be available to enable that to be done next year. So this does not add up—it does not add up at all. We need to get the story straight here. What is it about? People need to have those decisions published online. We have been waiting for this for a very long time. The bill itself sets out to say that it is—one of the purposes of it is about transparency. That is one of the fundamental reasons why this so-called modernisation bill is being presented. It is about transparency. Well, now we have the Government reneging on just that—transparency. It is not good enough and, by its own advice, there will be resources available, at least for significant decisions, in the District Court next year.

This bill will not come into force for a little while yet. By the time the whole process is finished I expect, based on that advice, the resources to be available to at least enable significant District Court decisions to be published. So I want to hear from the Minister why she is now saying it is not possible when we have been told that it is. That is all it is about. All we want is this law put in place now so that by the time it comes into force next year—as we were told—we are going to be able to see at least significant District Court decisions published online. We are asking for nothing more than that, and I want to hear a much better explanation from the Minister than we have had so far—all this waffle about resources, when we know it is going to be possible.

The point is that the law has to be in place to ensure that it happens when the resources arrive, and they are going to be imminent, as I have just said. So I want to hear that explanation. I think we all deserve to hear that, and so does the public. As I said in my previous speech, I have had a number of contacts from members of the public saying how important it is to them to be able to access online District Court decisions, especially those that are substantive. Nobody is asking for every tiny little thing that a District Court judge says orally to be published online—nobody has ever asked for that—so that is no excuse, either. So, finally—once again—please, Minister, turn up and give us the real deal on this, because it does not make sense so far.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): I am excited about taking a call on this bill, and I want to confine my remarks to the purpose clause and then I want to also make reference to Subpart 3, “Community Magistrates”, in Part 2. I also want to speak on my colleague Louisa Wall’s Supplementary Order Paper 217. But, before I do so, I want to say that I think, by and large, this House welcomes the review and the updated legislation. It has been about a hundred years since the original Act came into existence and, therefore, I think, generally speaking, most of us are trying to ensure that we get the best legislation out of this. I am glad, and I hope that the Government does take its time in ensuring that this process is given due consideration by all parties.

I want to make reference to Part 1, and particularly the purposes, because I understand that in the review on which this bill is based, it had the Supreme Court Act of 2003, where there is reference to a couple of key principles that are missing from the purpose of this bill. I note in clause 3(b)(ii) it makes reference to “practice and procedure;”, but there is nothing in the interpretation clause that makes reference to that practice and procedure. My reference is that in the Supreme Court Act, it made reference to the rule of law and it made reference to the Treaty of Waitangi, and I think there also needs to be a reference to the sovereignty of Parliament as well as to judicial independence. It seems to me that we are expunging some key elements that should underline our court systems, and I am not sure what the Government’s intentions are. I did understand that in the second reading speeches the Minister said that these principles, or these elements, would be included in our constitution, but if that is the case, why are we not then amending the constitution before we do this? So that is the first question I want to ask.

I also want to ask the Minister—the Government is calling this the Judicature Modernisation Bill. The removal of that key element—the removal of our emphasis on abiding by the rule of law—is not a good look for us on the international scene, particularly in our relationship with what is happening in Fiji, you know. In this day and age, modernisation means that, more than at any other time, we have to re-emphasise our commitment to these core principles, core elements, that should underline our court system. I refer to subclause (6) of clause 38, under the heading “Miscellaneous matters”, and I simply ask—there is a reference in clause 38 that anybody can ask the judge to detain somebody who is leaving to go overseas and, if proved to that judge, that person can be detained. But then, in subclause (6), it says that “A defendant who is remanded in custody must be brought before the court within 4 days after the date of the order.”

I am simply asking, why 4 days? Why not “be brought before the court immediately.”? I say that only because the experience of some of our constituency when they have been detained whilst they are on an urgent matter—whether it be, say, a funeral in Pakistan or India, the detaining of this person before they are able to go before the court for those 4 days means that they miss the urgency of the matter that they were travelling to. I am not talking about whether they are able to justify the warrant for them to be detained; I am asking whether that person being held in prison should have the right to immediately be brought before the courts and not be held for 4 days.

I want to refer to Subpart 3 in Part 2. This is about community magistrates. I want to ask a question.

Hon NICKY WAGNER (Minister of Customs): I would like to answer the member Denis O’Rourke. He has asked when the public will be able to access online District Court decisions. He will be very pleased to know that significant decisions of the District Court are beginning to be made available on its website, DistrictCourts.govt.nz. The numbers are small so far, but the website went live very recently. As the Minister of Justice said, the District Court makes thousands of decisions each year, but significant ones will be uploaded as they are made.

I would also like to make a comment on Sue Moroney’s question on the change of land value. The bill increases the jurisdiction of the District Court from $200,000 to $350,000. This is the first increase for over 20 years. Clause 260 lists traditional exceptions to the District Court. Where land values exceed $350,000, proceedings must commence in the High Court. Where a matter in dispute exceeds $90,000, the party may request the transfer of these proceedings to the High Court, and the District Court must agree. Where a matter exceeds $50,000 but is less than $90,000, a party may request a transfer to the High Court, and the District Court may agree.

JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for this short call on the Judicature Modernisation Bill—I had to practise that term several times, because I was tripping myself up. Labour supports this bill; however, we have some concerns. The New Zealand Law Society made a really considered submission on this bill, and one of the key submissions that it made was around the fact that the High Court Rules should not be included in this legislation. In that vein, I would like to address Part 1, Subpart 6, which is about “Rules of court and miscellaneous provisions”.

This bill proposes to retain the High Court Rules—a document that is close to about 800 pages, in terms of the schedule—which will preserve the status quo under the Judicature Act 1908, but in addition to the submission from the Law Society, the Law Commission also recommended that the High Court Rules should be taken out and not included in this legislation, but instead be made as regulations. The Government initially agreed with this recommendation, which was seen as recognising that the High Court’s inherent power to manage its own practice and procedures coexists with the rule-making powers provided in legislation. I wonder whether the Minister in the chair, Nicky Wagner, can explain why the Government changed its mind and changed its position on this issue.

The High Court Rules, by their very nature, will require a lot of amendments, and we have just heard from my colleague Mr Su’a William Sio that it took around about 100 years before we got to this stage of talking about this modernisation of this particular bill. It would be fair to say that we probably will not want to see the changes to the High Court Rules taking quite that long. Other than in exceptional circumstances, delegated legislation should not be used to amend Acts of Parliament. I agree with both the New Zealand Law Society and the Law Commission that the High Court Rules should not qualify as exceptional situations justifying this approach, and that it should be taken out and amended as regulations. Furthermore, the inclusion of the High Court Rules in this particular legislation is not consistent with the treatment of the other higher courts. The rules of the Supreme Court, as well as the Court of Appeal Rules, are not included in legislation. So why are the High Court Rules not treated in the same way? Why the inconsistency? Perhaps the Minister can clarify this for us.

This omnibus bill contains changes that are long overdue, and I welcome the changes, which will enable our courts and our justice system to be easier to understand, more effective, and that will make justice more accessible to many more of our citizens in our democracy. I would like to acknowledge the Minister who was in the chair earlier on, the honourable Minister Amy Adams, for all of the work that she has done in getting this bill to this stage—as well as the Justice and Electoral Committee; they have done a lot of work on this bill. More importantly, I would like to thank the Minister for agreeing to my colleague Jacinda Arden’s Supplementary Order Paper 62. We believe it is crucial to refer, in the purpose clause of this bill, to a commitment to parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law, judicial independence, and, indeed, the Treaty of Waitangi. This was previously a serious omission from this bill, and I am glad that it is now included.

I would also like to talk briefly about clause 167, which Denis O’Rourke spoke about before, and which, if introduced, would require every final judgment of a senior court to be published online unless there was a reason not to do so. The select committee spent some time discussing clause 167, and there was some discussion that it would in fact be included. However, the decision was made to delete clause 167. In this technological age—when most people would expect that when judgments are made and are made available, they would be on the internet—it would be great to know from the chair why it is that they decided to delete clause 167. Thank you.

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

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I have not heard from Gareth Hughes.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Chair. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. I rise to take a very brief call. I have not followed the bill through the Justice and Electoral Committee, but I want to touch on a couple of points, given that we are taking this bill in the Committee stage as one debate.

The first point is at the high level—that this is coming after the last 1908 substantive clean slate review of our judicial environment. We welcome this opportunity to engage. There are serious changes within the legislation that the Green Party is supporting. One area, in particular—given my technical background and interest in IT issues—is the idea of the specialist panels. These High Court judges can establish a specialist panel on areas, for example, in commercial law.

A recent case I was reading about relates to copyright and intellectual property (IP), and is about who owns the copyright for a tattoo. It is one tangible example of some of the changes that our society is going through and the legal challenges we are grappling with that will possibly be addressed through this, the Judicature Modernisation Bill. The question is who owns the IP for the tattoo. Is it the person wearing the tattoo? Is it the artist? What happens if that representation is, for example, used in a video game? Again, who owns it? There are complex issues.

IP is an area that this Parliament has battled with—for example, the software patents legislation. We have seen it as a controversial issue in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is a very technical area that is now seeing much more widespread public concern and involvement in the debates. It is a highly technical area with case law going back literally hundreds of years. So it is good that we have some flexibility, that we can see these specialist judge panels established.

The second point I would like to touch on is Supplementary Order Paper 66 in the name of my colleague David Clendon, which is introducing new clauses 167A and 167B and a new cross-heading. This is relating to a judicial register of pecuniary interests. It is something that my other colleague Dr Kennedy Graham had a member’s bill on and promoted very heavily a number of years back, and something we urge other members of the Committee to support. This is something that every single member in this House deals with in our democracy, and our Parliament is better as a result. Our register of pecuniary interests allows us to be transparent with our information regarding our assets, our outstanding loans, and the gifts we receive. We have seen some cases in the media and in the public domain where judges’ relevancy has been called into question when it comes to these issues.

We think a judicial register of pecuniary interests is something that is reasonable. We think it is something that is important for transparency. It is incredibly important that our judicial system is seen to be of the highest quality. Everyone in court, be they a defendant or on the other side of the bench, deserves to know we have got a high-quality system. The Supplementary Order Paper in the name of David Clendon would require a pecuniary interests register to be established and judges to declare whether they have a close relationship with litigants, legal advisers, or witnesses to the case. I think this is entirely reasonable. I understand the Government was previously quite interested in this area, and I hope we can see some substantive debate on this point. This is something that other countries—Canada, I believe—have done, and is something we should be doing because as we have used it in our Parliament, in terms of the pecuniary interests of our members of Parliament, it is important we translate this and bring those principles of transparency and sunlight to this realm.

All in all, we support this legislation and we welcome the debate.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I will just take a moment because I want to comment on something that Nicky Wagner said. I am grateful for her advice that we are now going to see at least some significant judgments of the District Court published on the internet. But that does not explain why the entire clause 401 of the bill is now going to be deleted. It does not explain that at all.

If indeed that is what is going to be happening, and happening more and more and more, then how come we are deleting clause 401? All it says is this—and this is clause 401(1)—“Every final written judgment of the court (excluding the Family Court, the Youth Court, and the Disputes Tribunal) must be published on the Internet as soon as practicable unless there is good reason not to publish.” the complete judgment. And then in clause 401(3) it says: “final written judgment means a written decision that determines or substantially determines the outcome of any proceedings and is either—(a) a written reserved judgment; or (b) an oral judgment transcribed by an official transcription service.” That is all it covers.

The Minister was talking about minor decisions made by District Court judges that it would not be practicable to put on the internet, and so on, but that is not covered by this clause. It actually covers precisely what we have been told is happening now and is going to happen more and more.

So how come, then, clause 401 has to be completely removed? It still does not make sense. As far as I can see, if in fact the resources are there already and it is already starting to happen, why are we now deleting it? I expect, as I said in my other speech, that by the beginning of next year we will be able to see a lot of those substantive judgments on the internet, and those are the ones that people want. So my question has not yet been answered.

Hon Member: No.

DENIS O’ROURKE: No. I need to know why we are now being asked to delete clause 401. It does not make sense. So I would ask Nicky Wagner, on behalf of the Minister of Justice, to again consult her officials and get an answer to that, because I want to know.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I would like to address my remarks on this mammoth piece of legislation to clauses 167 and 401, just briefly, in parts 1 and 2 respectively, and then concentrate on Part 5. I am hoping I can make an additional contribution on this issue. These are the clauses that remove the requirement for the final written judgments to be published on the internet. As you have heard—and I am not going to go over this again—the bill came back from the Justice and Electoral Committee with those clauses removed. Those clauses were originally in the bill. My colleague Jacinda Ardern has put up a proposed amendment on clause 401, not to reintroduce it but to put in a time period—some time out, in 2018—to allow there to be preparation for the publishing of these judgments on the internet. Of course, we support that amendment.

I would like to remind the Government of two things. One is its own key performance indicators (KPIs), shall we say—the Better Public Services KPI result No. 9, which is that “New Zealand businesses have a one-stop online shop for all government advice and support they need to run and grow their business”. The next is result No. 10, which is that “New Zealanders can complete their transactions with government easily in a digital environment”. Alongside that—and we have had several references today to the Open Government Partnership—is a requirement, as part of the Open Government Partnership, which we are signed up to as one of 69 countries, for easy digital interaction with the Government for citizens. Surely, this is part of that. Taking away that requirement ultimately seems to be driven by financial considerations.

My question on this to the Minister in the chair, Nicky Wagner, is: was the ruler put through it by the Minister of Finance, who said “No, sorry. It’s going to cost too much.”? We can see by the advice that was given by officials that there are 15,300 final decisions that fall within the scope of that bill. So was the ruler put through it by the Minister of Finance, and was the ministry told “Yes, do it on a voluntary basis, but only within the resource cap envelope that you’ve got.” and that “You can’t have any extra money.”? Because that, it seems to me, is why the select committee has actually removed that provision.

I would like to turn my attention to Part 5, which is a substantial part of the bill and a part that we support, which sets out the methods to enable and govern the use of electronic technology in court and tribunal proceedings, including allowing all current paper-based requirements to be replaced with electronic processes. This is not like the previous part. It is not about uploading judgments; it is about electronic processes. Although we support this and think this is a logical and necessary step to take, we do want to raise a few concerns. We note that back in 2012 when the Auckland registry went electronic that there were serious delays and huge backlogs within the Family Court, with the Law Society warning that it was only a matter of time before someone was seriously hurt, or worse. In fact, the Secretary for Justice, Andrew Bridgman—I am not sure whether he is still the Secretary for Justice, but this was back in 2012.

Denis O’Rourke: Yes, he is.

CLARE CURRAN: He apologised to Parliament—and good on him for doing that—admitting that staff were not fully prepared for the change and that the Ministry of Justice did not engage enough with the legal profession early enough or actively enough. So I am just introducing a note of caution around that. I imagine that was discussed at the select committee—and how important that is.

Can I, in my final seconds, just say that this bill does not go far enough? There is a next part to this discussion around the move to electronic processing, and that is a move to an online courts system, which should not be years away. It should be something that we are preparing for and thinking about now. Former District Court judge David Harvey has done a lot of work on this. I know the Minister has expressed some comments. This is happening now in the UK. It is about access to the courts system, particularly for people with lower incomes, and it is something that we heartily support.

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

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

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Sorry, I cast that vote in error; it was meant to be 32 votes opposed. I seek to have that corrected. My apologies.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I have not announced the result, so that is fine.

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

Ayes 75

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

Noes 44

New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 12.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 201 in the name of the Hon Amy Adams to the proposed amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 197 in the name of the Hon Amy Adams be agreed to.

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

Ayes 107

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

Noes 12

New Zealand First 12.

Amendments to the amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Jacinda Ardern to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 197 in the name of the Hon Amy Adams to clause 401 be agreed to:

Delete the amendment to clause 401.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Can I clarify the number of this Supplementary Order Paper?

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Yes. We are dealing with Jacinda Ardern’s amendment to Supplementary Order Paper 197. This is deleting the Minister’s amendment to clause 401. Could I just ask the Green Party—what was your vote, please?

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Twelve.

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

Ayes 58

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

Noes 61

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

Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The next amendment in the name of Jacinda Ardern is now out of order, as being contingent on a previous amendment already lost.

The question was put that the amendments as amended set out on Supplementary Order Paper 197 in the name of the Hon Amy Adams be agreed to.

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

Ayes 107

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

Noes 12

New Zealand First 12.

Amendments as amended agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 63 in the name of Jacinda Ardern be agreed to.

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

Ayes 44

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 12.

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 62 in the name of Jacinda Ardern be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 217 in the name of Louisa Wall be agreed to.

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

Ayes 46

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

Noes 73

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

Amendments not agreed to.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 44, Noes 75.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 61 in the name of Jacinda Ardern be agreed to.

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

Ayes 56

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

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 66 in the name of David Clendon be agreed to.

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

Ayes 46

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

Noes 73

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

Amendments not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 216 in the name of Louisa Wall be agreed to.

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

Ayes 56

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

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Parts 1 to 6, schedules 1 to 11, and clauses 1 and 2 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 107

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

Noes 12

New Zealand First 12.

Parts 1 to 6, schedules 1 to 11, and clauses 1 and 2 as amended agreed to.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I have cast two votes for the Māori Party on Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 217 in Louisa Wall’s name incorrectly. Can I seek leave for the Māori Party’s votes on SOP 217 in the name of Louisa Wall to be cast as two in favour, in each instance?

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Leave is sought for that purpose, to correct the record. Is there any objection? There is no objection. So the corrected vote on Louisa Wall’s amendments as set out on SOP 217 is Ayes 46 and Noes 73, and the amendment is not agreed to.

The Committee divided the bill into the Senior Courts Bill, the District Court Bill, the Judicial Review Procedure Bill, the Interest on Money Claims Bill, the Electronic Courts and Tribunals Bill, the Arbitration Amendment Bill, the Bills of Exchange Amendment Bill, the Building Societies Amendment Bill, the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Amendment Bill, the Companies Amendment Bill (No 2), the Contractual Remedies Amendment Bill, the Copyright Amendment Bill (No 2), the Courts (Remote Participation) Amendment Bill, the Criminal Procedure Amendment Bill, the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 4), the Family Courts Amendment Bill, the Insolvency Amendment Bill, the Local Government (Rating) Amendment Bill, Property Law Amendment Bill, the Remuneration Authority Amendment Bill (No 2), the Resource Management Amendment Bill, Te Ture Whenua Maori Amendment Bill, and the Trans-Tasman Proceedings Amendment Bill, pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 200.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

Education Legislation Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to Education Act 1989

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I welcome the opportunity to debate the Education Legislation Bill, and before I get into the specifics I want to indicate to the Committee that I intend to take my full allocation of calls on Parts 1 and 2. I want to raise a technical matter, and that is with the way the bill is drafted—before we get into the specifics. It is a concern I have got with the way this omnibus bill, which has wide-ranging changes, has been put together. It amends seven different Acts, but it is drafted in only two parts. That actually significantly limits the amount of scrutiny that the Committee is able to give to the bill, because we are restricted in the number of speeches that we have on each part.

Traditionally, when omnibus bills have been put together that amend multiple Acts, each Act that has been amended has been contained within its own part, allowing it to be properly scrutinised. I want to indicate to the Committee, and then to the House as a whole when the opportunity arises, that this development of drafting a bill in this way is very concerning because it violates the norms of the way bills should be put together. It does mean that we will be able to have less scrutiny. But anyway, with that in mind, I intend to make the most of the opportunity that we do have to scrutinise it.

The first point that I want to raise—and I would really like some further clarification on this from the Minister in the chair, the Hon Hekia Parata—is around the issue of principals managing more than one school. There are clauses in Part 1 of the legislation that allow a principal to manage more than one school, but despite some pretty close scrutiny at the Education and Science Committee there are still some pretty big issues around how this will work. I want to say at this point that I am very supportive of things that increase collaboration between schools, but I have got some concerns that this might not necessarily be the best way to achieve that. We already know that previous legislation allowing the Minister to have one board of trustees overseeing more than one school has been very seldom, if ever, used, so the first question is: where is the demand for these provisions that allow a principal to manage more than one school coming from? That is the first question.

The second question is around how that will actually work, because the officials who presented at the select committee were not really able to explain how, in practice, the Government envisaged this being implemented. If a principal is overseeing more than one school—so they are managing more than one school—what does that do for their relationship with the boards of trustees of those schools? Each school, if it still has a separate board of trustees, would have a different relationship with that principal. Where would the accountabilities in that relationship lie? Would they be employed by one board of trustees and have a primary relationship with one of the schools’ board of trustees? If so, where would that leave the other school board of trustees, because that potentially changes the nature of things quite significantly.

If there is only one board of trustees managing multiple schools, it is not an issue, because it could employ one principal now. Under this new change, which allows different boards of trustees to employ a single principal, where do the accountabilities lie, and what would happen, for example, if the principal had a souring relationship with one school but still had a positive relationship with another school? Who would ultimately be responsible for that employment relationship? The ministry officials’ answer to that was that the schools will go into that voluntarily, so they are not going to be forced to have one principal managing more than one school.

That is all very well, and people can set out with good intentions, fully supportive of that, but the question is what happens when it goes wrong, if it goes wrong? There really are not good answers—certainly not from the officials who attended the select committee—around what would actually happen if the relationship turned sour. Could the relationship be dissolved so that the principal ended up at only one school, not at another school; if so, what would actually happen to the employment relationship, because that is a substantive change in their employment relationship, and would they, effectively, be redundant? Would one school board be able to pull out of the arrangement; if so, where does that leave the employment of the principal?

Those are actually really substantial things, because if the Parliament is going to allow this to happen, I think we need to know how this is going to work and what it is going to do for the relationship between the principal and the board, because what we are seeing at the moment is a dismantling of the principle of having self-governing schools. That has been dismantled over a long period of time, not just under this Government but under previous Governments. I do not think that we have really got a clear understanding of where that is going to leave school boards of trustees in terms of their relationship with the principals that they have.

School principals have managerial roles—there is no question about that. They manage the facilities and they report to boards of trustees, and so on. But they actually perform a really critical role as curriculum leaders within the school, and I am yet to be convinced that a principal could do that part of the job effectively across more than one school at the same time, because different schools have different cultures, different approaches to the way they manage the curriculum, and different approaches to all sorts of different things, and what works really well in one school is not necessarily going to work really well in another.

We see this debate where we have arguments that a successful school in, say, a high-decile area should be able to take over a school in a lower-decile area that is not successful, but what that debate ignores is that the things that are working well in that high-decile school are not necessarily going to work well in a low-decile school, or in a different area where the culture and the pressures from the parent community might be different. How would a principal, as a curriculum leader for multiple different schools, reconcile that pressure? I am looking forward to an explanation from the Government as to how it sees that happening.

The second point that I want to raise in this first contribution to the debate on Part 1 is around school hours and the provisions within the legislation for schools to set different opening hours. At the moment, the opening hours are fairly standard: roughly between the hours of 9 to 3, with a little bit either side of 9 to 3. That means that things like extracurricular activities are easy to coordinate—things like school sports. It also means that school transport is easy to facilitate, and it means that for parents who have kids at different levels of schooling and, potentially, attending different schools, the logistics of juggling that are a little bit easier. But what will happen, when the power to set their school hours is delegated to every school in the country, if they then start to set different school hours? So if you take the case of one family who might have three different kids—one at intermediate school, one at primary school, and one at secondary school—and if all of those schools have got different hours that they are open, that is a logistical nightmare for those parents. It is also a logistical nightmare for that local community in terms of sharing school transport.

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

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Kia ora anō tātou. Tēnā tātou katoa. Tēnā koutou te whānau o Te Whare Pāremata. Kia ora anō tātou. Tēnā tātou katoa. When we broke for the dinner break, Chris Hipkins had 2 minutes, 25 seconds left. I suggest he does not waste it.

CHRIS HIPKINS: I will certainly not be wasting it, and thank you for that. When we broke before the dinner break, I had been talking about the provisions in the bill that allow a principal to manage more than one school and I put a number of questions to the Minister. I moved on then to discussing school hours and the ability for different schools to set different hours and the logistical challenges that that could create around school transport, extra-curricular activities, and the logistical challenges that could create for parents. I certainly would like to hear the Minister’s comment on that.

The issue with this bill, of course, is there is so much in it that it is difficult to cut it down to the allocated speaking time. I do have some concerns about the expansion of home-based early childhood education services to allow them to provide out-of-school care for school-age children and the potential challenges that creates and the potential risks that creates. The home-based early childhood education system sector has been one of the fastest-growing areas of early childhood education, and yet it is the area of the early childhood education system that we know the least about the performance of. We do not have good, robust data comparing how kids in home-based early childhood education progress with their education relative to kids who are in kindergartens or early childhood centres. I think that until we have better information about home-based early childhood care, I think further expanding that sector is something that we need to tread very carefully around. I would like to hear more about why the Government stopped the review of home-based early childhood education services, because there are certainly some quality concerns in at least some of those services that exist at the moment. I think, to some extent, they undermine the reputation of the other services that can be doing a very good job. So I would like to hear more about that and how the Government thinks that that can operate.

The new categories of teaching position and the changes that relate to charter schools are very controversial, and I look forward to dealing with those two issues in future calls. I have got a number of Supplementary Order Papers on the Table that deal with those issues. I am looking forward to the ability to debate those in due course, including Supplementary Order Paper 218, which I have on the Table, that provides for elections for representatives on the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, which is the professional registration body for teachers in New Zealand. I am looking forward to being able to fully explain that later on in the debate and to outline what those changes are going to achieve.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe e Te Heamana o Te Komiti o Te Whare. It is a pleasure to take a call to speak on this bill tonight. I want to speak about new section 75A, inserted by clause 9, but first I want to reflect on the existing sections 75 and 76 because I think they are very relevant to this new section headed “Appointment of principals”.

Section 75 of the Education Act outlines the functions and powers of the board of trustees and section 76 outlines the role of the principal. I remember, as a member of the school board of trustees, having to get my head around these two sections and how they impact on each other. That is why I raise them together in relation to this new section that is being proposed.

One of the things that the principals are, and it says here in the Act: “A school’s principal is the board’s chief executive …”. It goes on to say that they “shall comply with the board’s general policy directions;”. My issue with having the new section here for a number of boards to be able to appoint the same principal is this: those two sections establish the function and relationship. The relationship is actually with one school, and my problem with this new section is around the professional leadership of a particular school and how one person is able to do that in one school, with one community. Quite often they are not only the professional leader of their school; they are one of the leaders of their community.

My issue is how does that impact on that particular community, say, if you have—in my electorate, which is 36,000 square kilometres, most of it rural and provincial, how could one principal appointed by a number of boards within a rural area be the professional leader of each of those schools as well as a leader in their community, as established under these two sections? That is my question. I do not believe that we have seen enough or heard enough as to why it is even necessary or how that will actually function in a way that enhances those particular communities.

One of the things about schools in New Zealand is that they play a very important role. They are quite often the hub of any community. I am struggling to understand how in any particular community they would be able to function with a principal who is not always present. How is the relationship developed within each of those communities? There are high expectations on principals, no matter where they are, but can one imagine how difficult it might be for a principal to develop those one-on-one relationships with parents in two, three, or more communities? I have a problem with that.

If one were to ask the parents of children at a number of schools in provincial and rural New Zealand whether they would like to share their principal with a number of other schools, I think the answer would be no. As with other important positions in their community, people like to have good relationships with the principals of their schools.

Another issue that came up in this part of the bill is the opening hours of schools and the flexibility there—so the opening hours of schools, the flexibility around all of that, how that impacts, again, on communities and on families. In the second reading, I mentioned what would be the impact on a family that is not very well off—the families living in poverty, and working families who are living in poverty who have to rearrange their schedules because they have two or three children going to two or three different schools with different opening hours. And then there is everything else that families have to cope with, whether or not they are living in poverty. I do not think that is the fundamental issue here.

I have spoken to a number of families about this and they just do not support it. Sometimes I think, with this part of the bill, are we fixing something that really does not exist? So that is my other question on this. For this part, that is all I want to comment on, but I do hope to take other calls through this debate. Thank you.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Kia ora, Mr Chair. Kia ora koutou katoa, ngā mihi nui. It is an interesting bill, this one. The Green Party has issues with a number of sections of it: the joint principals proposal, the after-school care ideas, the school hours flexibility, the tertiary institutions being allowed to run charter schools, and teachers’ training. These are all interesting issues that we robustly discussed at the Education and Science Committee, and if we had come away with some very good arguments as to why these changes were needed, I think that we would have been prepared to listen to those arguments. We did get some good changes at the select committee, particularly around the home-care numbers, but they did not go far enough to allay our concerns in the Green Party so that we could support some of these provisions.

So starting with the joint principals proposal—again, supporting my colleague Chris Hipkins’ comments, there are two layers to this. There is the philosophical and ideological reason why you might have joint principals, and then there is the practical application of the law. On both counts, we have concerns. We are not sure who has demanded this. We do not understand who is calling for joint principals. We did not have submitters calling for it. But when it comes to the practical application, I have to agree with Chris Hipkins that we could not get an explanation as to how it was going to work, with the issue of dual employment by more than one board. That is just common sense. These kinds of questions about employment needed to be answered. We just needed to know how it was going to work. There are a couple of rural areas where you might see it as being a good idea, but when boards are in conflict or have very different ideas about the employment of a principal, we need to know how it is going to work, and we did not get an answer, so it was impossible to clarify that issue.

On the broader question of the role of the principal, I think this is really important because this Government has made it very clear that it sees the principal and the teacher as the key to the child’s success. We can debate that. We could have many debates about whether poverty has an impact on people’s lives and how much imagination it takes to realise that if you are not feeding kids, they are probably not learning. But in terms of the educational leader of the school, if that person is divided between a number of sites, they will be a different type of leader but it may not be the educational leader of that school. It may be that they are an entrepreneurial coordinator of a range of schools. But given that we are assisting the Government to bring in the policies around the communities of learning, which are supposedly the mechanisms that are going to bring schools together, I do not understand why we would have joint principals. I do not see the necessity for that. There is a clear opportunity for schools to collaborate through the communities of learning. There was a lot of debate about it, but it is a system that is yet to be evaluated, that is just starting. But why joint principals for many of our schools?

Like many of the people on the select committee, I visit school after school after school and meet with principals. They tell me that being a part of their very local community, having very strong, hands-on relationships with their families, having very strong relationships with other educational professionals in their area because of the needs of their very particular student population, and having very strong educational leadership of their teachers—some of whom need a lot more support than others—is their role. If that is divided amongst a number of schools, it will become a weaker role. It might be more “efficient”, but it will not be the educational leader of that community.

Then you have the schools where there are huge social problems that the school is working to address. I have been to a number of schools—I am thinking of one in particular where the principal was like the captain of a ship that could any day hit the rocks but was very clearly staying in the stream because of that professional leader. So joint leadership puts at risk the delicate fabric that some of these schools manage in order to survive. So that is one issue. We do not support that.

Then there is the issue of school hours flexibility. There are claims in the bill that this will happen only if there is consultation. We had quite a debate about the nature of consultation. “Consultation” is a fascinating word. As I have probably said before, my father says “Consultation”—or he said; he is gone now—“is a cross between a con and an insult”. Consultation often is, because it is one way in which certain interests can be listened to, but some voices who are not at the table—as we often talk about in this House—are not heard. So I was not confident after reading the clauses of the bill around the consultation for changing school hours that everybody would be heard—that all their needs would be heard, and that is what concerns me.

I am a grandmother who collects a child every Monday from school, every Monday that I can, and I read the school notices. I realise that it is my privilege to understand the education system and understand the issue around flexible hours. For me, and for others, flexible working hours for schools is actually quite disturbing. Many of us have these lives that are delicately balanced around 3 o’clock. We are balanced around 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock. My daughter’s job is balanced around those hours, my life is balanced around them, the family’s life is balanced around them, and our child is balanced around them. In order to change those hours there has to be a really, really good reason, and we did not hear it. There is already flexibility in the law around before and after noon, but to make it wide open puts at risk some of those very frustrating experiences for teachers and for parents. I do believe in innovation and change; I do think we should be open to it, but I do not think that changing the school hours, particularly for families that are running all over the place with more than one child—I just cannot see the benefit of it.

Quite honestly—I do not want to be Auckland-centric, but try to get across Auckland at 3 o’clock. Imagine if you have got to pick up kids at 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock, and 4 o’clock. It would just be a nightmare, and there is no point in creating nightmares and there is no point in experimenting just for the sake of it. We need to experiment when there is clear educational value. So we are not going to support that—I call it—“faux-flexibility” because parents do not have that kind of flexibility. I do not see the point of it.

The other issues that concern us—for example, tertiary institutions running charter schools. Again, it comes to the heart of the matter of what education is about. Is education something for children at primary school level and secondary school level? Is that the kind of education that universities offer? Universities offer a sophisticated lecture model based on individual research. They are not always best placed to understand what primary school teachers do, which is not subject-based; it is child-based. Including secondary schools as well, I would say—I hope—that they have a different way of teaching from universities. Being an expert in a subject at tertiary level does not make you a schoolteacher, and so we have grave concerns that the charter school model being opened to the tertiary institutions, which will be doing it because the Crown will give them lots of money to do it, is actually an incursion into an educational space where they are not competent. We reject that as an idea. We do not believe that tertiary institutions are competent to run the schools that are basically for children whose learning journey is about collaborative interaction, about starting off with relationships-based learning.

That is not what university study is all about, unfortunately. I wish it was. I am a participatory educator and I would love to see universities—I was totally bored at university. I found it very, very narrow in its educational methodology. I would love to see that, but I do not see it yet, and I do not think we should sacrifice our primary and secondary school kids to a model that is not about their stage of learning. As we all would agree here, everybody is at a different stage. They all learn differently. People do not learn—when they are 5 years old they have a different learning journey than when they are 25, 35, or 45. We really put these things at our peril.

The other big issue I want to talk about in the remaining seconds—but there will be more chances, I hope—is the home-care business in early childhood. The Minister talked today about the participation rate, which she is saying is nearly 98 percent—it has nearly reached the goal. The problem that we have is that participation is not quality, and I have raised this issue at a number of select committee meetings and will continue to raise it—98 percent participation sounds great, but where is the guarantee of quality? If you listen to the professionals, they will tell you that the early childhood sector cannot guarantee quality right across, and there is very—I have asked the Secretary of Education—

TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): It will be no surprise to anybody in this Committee that New Zealand First stands to oppose this bill. I will tell you what is interesting; I will tell you what is surprising is the fact that it is obvious that the Government members have no intention of taking a call. I think it should be noted by the New Zealand public that the Government members have no intention of interacting with the Opposition around dialogue justifying the steps it is taking in this piece of legislation in any way, shape, or form. One might call it ignorance, another might call it arrogance, but that is something that should be noted by the New Zealand public—all the parents out there, the children who are going to school, the secondary school students, and the sector itself. It would appear that the Government members have absolutely no intention of taking a call and justifying themselves in terms of this bill.

With regard to Part 1 of this bill, it does several things. First of all, it enables the principal to manage more than one school. What is interesting is that a principal can, if there is a combined board—and you have probably heard this already—actually work across at least two schools, possibly three schools. I am not aware that it can only be the combination of two school boards of trustees. I am not aware that the legislation restricts it any way to just two school boards of trustees. So if you had communities of online learning (COOLs) in a cluster and they decided to amalgamate their boards of trustees, it is already possible under the current legislation for the boards to agree that there could be one principal across all the boards. The Minister might like to correct me if I am wrong about the current legislation.

However, what this piece of legislation outlines is that it is changing the way that that can be done, and in our view what that does is turn principals from being the leaders of education and learning inside secondary schools—with recognition that they are the leaders of that learning—into chief executive officers (CEOs). There is no way that the ministry was able to explain to us how the employment relationship would work in this instance. So it is not a combined board. We have got individual boards, but we have got a principal who is contracted—and I think “contracted” is a very important word—to several different boards. That is what this change to the legislation allows. That turns the principal into a self-contracting CEO. That removes the accountability from a single board, it places it inside a contract, and then each board will have to have a contract with that CEO.

I have heard this before. I heard this in the digital literacy inquiry. I heard this 3 years ago when a gentleman came to present at the digital literacy inquiry and said there is no need for a principal to even be in the same country as the schools that they are “managing”. He said it is quite feasible in the digital age for them to be in Australia and be the CEO of several schools. That gentleman did not get the relationship—and I am not going to hesitate to say that that Government does not get the relationship—of the principal to the community, the link that the principal has between the teaching staff, the support staff, the students, and the community, and the vital link and the vital contribution that a principal inside that learning community makes. So that is the first thing that this bill does that we oppose.

There are changes to school opening hours. Let us be clear: boards of trustees have been able to change school opening hours for 27 years—for 27 years—as long as they consult with their community and as long as they are open 2 hours either side of midday. There has been a change of a single word around that word “midday”, which I find very interesting, but boards of trustees have had the opportunity to change their opening hours in consultation with their community, and Matakana School would be a perfect example of that. What this bill does, however, is it inserts another body inside the community that must be consulted, and that is business. So what this does is it inserts a single entity inside the consultation bodies that must be talked to, and that is business. That is very interesting to us. There was no explanation why business needed to be consulted. It has not had to be consulted for 27 years. No business has come to me, and no school has gone to an extreme that has affected its employees and their ability to go to work, but now this Government is saying that business must be consulted by boards of trustees as part of that organisation.

The next thing the bill does is it enables tertiary institutions to sponsor partnership schools. I think that the most interesting thing about this is that every university that came to present on the second part of this bill said: “We are not interested. We are not interested in having a charter school. We don’t want to know. We didn’t ask for this.” There was one tertiary provider that did, and that was Mr Stuart Middleton from the Manukau Institute of Technology. So one institution—one gentleman—showed up to submit that this was a good idea. It is interesting. So where is this push that led to the Government finding that this is what was needed?

If, for example, this was a tertiary provider that was able to provide a charter school—something like what happens in Finland, where they are the trainers of teachers, and parents know that it is a teaching school attached to a university—that might be another topic, that might be innovation, and that might be something that this Parliament could support, but it is not. All this is doing is allowing a tertiary institution—and we know they are fighting for numbers at the moment. We know that their finances are under the gun because, population-wise, the number of students that are going to tertiary institutions is dropping.

David Seymour: Oh, there’s a conspiracy around every corner.

TRACEY MARTIN: They need another funding stream, and Mr Seymour and the ACT Party have given them another funding stream. Not only will this Government allow them to stretch the number of students inside their tertiary institutions from 5-year-olds all the way to 100-year-olds, or whatever; the taxpayer is going to fund every piece of property. The taxpayer is now going to fund every piece of property that that tertiary institution that becomes a sponsor of a charter school creates to deliver what is inside this bill. So that is the other reason. Partnership schools dual provision—

David Seymour: What’s the member been reading?

TRACEY MARTIN: Here you go—boards of trustees can already do this now, but they will not. Boards of trustees could already allow charter schools to come inside and use their technology rooms, but they will not—they will not, for many reasons. Mr Seymour will tell you it is because the unions have somehow blackmailed all the elected officials of the boards of trustees; I can tell you that is untrue. As the chairman of a board of trustees, I have not had one single member of any union come to me and actually say: “We’re going to walk out if you are going to discuss this.”

Let us talk about this. Charter schools do not come under the discipline process of State schools. There is only one form of complaint for charter schools, and that is to the Ombudsman after a child has been removed from the school. [Interruption] The reason it is important, Mr Bennett, if you would like to be educated, is that if a mainstream school—

Carmel Sepuloni: Good luck with that.

TRACEY MARTIN: I know. It was a long shot, but you have got to try. If a mainstream school opens up its technology rooms to charter school students, which is what this dual provision is, the discipline process of the State school does not apply to the students of the charter school. If the charter school student causes some form of damage, attack, or assault—look, it happens—there is no facility for the board of trustees of the State school to implement its discipline process over that student. They are a student of another organisation, and that organisation does not have to follow the discipline process. There are reasons why State schools do not want charter school students in their technology rooms. The fact that the charter schools get the dollar to build the technology rooms, do not do it, and then want to go and use the ones that the State schools have built is one of the other reasons.

In terms of the early childhood education services, there were changes made at the Education and Science Committee, and, quite frankly, although we are not that thrilled with home-based learning and the coverage of home-based learning at the moment, the changes made were positive. With regard to Teach First NZ and the new category of teaching positions, I have a Supplementary Order Paper—and I doubt very much whether Mr Chair is going to extend my call 1 minute longer. But seeing as the Government members are not taking calls, I am sure that the Opposition is going to have lots of opportunities before Part 1 is voted on to discuss my Supplementary Order Paper 214, which would restrict Teach First NZ - style apprentices—because that is what they are; they are apprentices in front of our students—to secondary schools only, which is how Teach First NZ has been operating under the current pilot.

So I will leave it there, Mr Chair, because I have no doubt that although you are a fair man, you are unlikely to give me another call. But I am hoping that my Opposition colleagues will stand. Maybe—just maybe—we will get a member of the Government to stand. Oh! It does not look like it—a signal from the other side there. But maybe, just maybe, at some stage the Government members might think that this is important enough to stand up—[Interruption] Mr Bennett, stand up and show people you have not read this. Go on, stand up and show the New Zealand public that you are sitting there merely to warm a seat because you do not know what it is that you are voting on. Kia ora.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Let us change the channel—Jenny Salesa.

JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for the call on the Education Legislation Bill. I would like to talk about two things that this bill is going to do. First, it will enable principals to manage more than one school. It will bring in what I would call a chief executive officer (CEO) type of person to manage a group of schools. Second, it would allow tertiary education institutions to sponsor charter schools, or, as this Government calls them, partnership schools.

I would like to start with the charter schools. We strongly oppose the expansion of charter schools. This is an initiative that is still not based on evidence that it actually works for our most vulnerable Māori and Pacific students, in particular. The charter schools model was introduced here into Aotearoa New Zealand because we were promised they would deliver better educational outcomes for our Māori and Pasifika students. To date we have not seen evidence that this actually has happened. In fact, when we look at the results, there is not very much difference between the results of charter school students versus those who attend State schools.

So why is it that we are going to expand this model and put even more millions of dollars into a model that is not yet evidence-based, when, on the other hand, we are freezing the operational budget for our actual State schools? We are freezing that. We are going to go and ask the parents to put even more money from their own pockets to assist with funding schools so that they can run, and we are going to invest millions and millions of dollars more to this untested, unproven charter school model. We already know from our own experience in Aotearoa New Zealand that charter schools have not worked—at least one. This Government has closed a failed school, Te Pūmanawa o te Wairua, and $5.5 million of our taxpayers’ money has gone down the drain.

So is it very wise that, in addition to knowing there is already one school that has failed, we are going to allow tertiary education institutions to open up and become funders of partnership schools, or charter schools? Our polytechnics already have issues of their own that they are dealing with. For instance, tertiary providers, as we all know, have been caught enrolling staff members to make up the numbers—to boost the numbers. They themselves have their own fiscal issues that they are going through right now. Instead of having them focus on what they deal with, which is tertiary education—just look at the name “tertiary education institution providers”—we are going to allow them to open up their doors and to serve our compulsory sector children, as well as some of our primary school children, probably, if this Government would have its way. But it is an unproven model.

Millions and millions of our own dollars is going on an unproven and untested model that has not actually shown the results. Also, when we were sold this model—this wonderful, market-driven model—one of the things that we were told was that it would bring in private funding. It would bring in corporations with their own funds, with their own capital, to assist in delivering educational outcomes for our students. It has not. So this bill allowing tertiary providers to become charter school providers is really an admission from this Government that it has failed. It has failed to attract the capital and funds from private providers that it said it would actually do.

But I turn now to my colleague Chris Hipkins’ Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 219. It will remove the ability of tertiary institutions to sponsor a charter school. It is a very good SOP and I am hopeful that members of the opposite side will join us on this side and make sure that this SOP is actually approved.

The other issue that I would like to turn to now is principals running multiple schools—as I said earlier, a CEO-type person running a group of schools. The idea that one principal can run two, three, or four schools very well is not one that I think has come from principals themselves. In fact, if I quote the President of the New Zealand Educational Institute, Louise Green, she said: “Principals work hard to lead the school they are the principal of, and it’s not a part time job.” She is absolutely right. It is not a part-time job, so why do we think that actually having a principal run two schools—or three, or four—is something that would work, when a principal running one school is a huge job on its own?

I would now like to talk about one of the schools that is in my electorate, which the Prime Minister has awarded for currently being the best, the most outstanding school of this year: McAuley High School. You would think that when you look a principal who would be capable and competent of becoming a CEO-type principal of a group of schools, it would be this principal, Anne Miles. But she will not have a part of becoming a principal of more than just one school. She is focused on ensuring that the results that she delivers for her current students—about 800 students—is something that she actually continues to do.

She says that she is so focused on making sure that her students are served well—do you know one of the things that she does? Because it is a decile 1b school and because she sees so many student come through who do not have funding to buy school uniforms, or to buy stationery, or even to eat, this principal actually goes out fund-raising. She goes out fund-raising to assist her students. She cannot see how combining the role of running a school very well, as well as ensuring that she serves very well the current students whom she already has, about 800 of them—she does not see that dividing her time and dividing her expertise amongst many schools is something that she would like to do.

She is exactly the kind of principal whom we should be looking at, whom the Government should be looking at as someone who knows what she is doing. She is someone who within the last 10 to 20 years has improved the academic standing of the school that she is currently in charge of. If a principal like her will not have anything to do with this kind of school, a school that is actually allowed to be run by one “super-principal”, what kind of other principal are we actually going to allow to run such a school? Thank you very much.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): It is great to be able to put Tracey Martin’s mind at rest and confirm that we are, of course, partly listening. I stand—

David Seymour: Don’t overpromise at the start of your speech, mate.

TODD MULLER: —well, partly listening; not to everyone—to retort some of the comments that we have heard thus far this evening. What an extraordinarily negative bunch they are on the other side. Sometimes I wonder. They are parties that look for the shadows. I sense that they sit in the corner of a dark room and try to imagine all the negative permutations that could possibly occur—

Stuart Smith: Sucking lemons.

TODD MULLER: Sucking lemons—well said, Stuart. There are all the possible permutations—they always cover them. They always start with the view that they are broadly supportive: “We are broadly supportive of what we are seeking to do, but now let’s look at the list of permutations and possibilities that we could imagine might happen one day that could be negative.” It is such a shame that they live life with such a dark lens over their perspective.

But to the bill and Part 1. I will just spend a moment reflecting on the comments in respect of this concept “enable”. It is “enabled” only—not “directed”; “enabled”. It is a great word, that.

David Seymour: I thought “enable” was the same as “compulsion”.

TODD MULLER: Some, clearly, do. But the bill enables a principal to look after one school. We have heard, over the last hour or so, around how this could be a problem. Indeed, I think it was Mr Hipkins who said that this is a challenge because schools have different cultures and different successes in terms of their learning environment. How terrible it would be if a principal could be appointed from one school—one would assume, in this case, a successful one—and then be able to apply their capacity across both schools to lift the performance of our children!

Well, that is what this bill is entirely focused on. This is about leadership. This is about principals who have demonstrated to their particular school that they are a leader. They are delivering a culture of performance to our children, and that should be encouraged and embraced. If the opportunity that this bill enables is that that principal can then apply that leadership, strength, and capability across two schools, then that is to the benefit of more children. It is not saying that it has to happen; it is saying that it enables it. Standing on the other side of the Chamber and saying “Oh, well, this is bad.”—from my perspective, I cannot see that you have children at the front of your mind when you make comments like that. Leadership is important, and it should be encouraged and the opportunity provided for our principals to be able to apply their skills over more than one school.

I would also like to make a comment in respect of the opening hours. Again, we have heard a tirade of potential permutations and complexities that this could bring to communities. With respect to the Opposition, let us start trusting our parents who sit on boards of trustees. This is an enabling piece of legislation. It is not directing them. It is handing it to our boards of trustees and saying that if this works for your community, then you have the capacity to consult with your community and to evolve and make it happen. It is not a dictate; it is enabling. Again, that word—“enabling”—seems to have missed the lexicon of understanding on the other side.

It was quite extraordinary listening to Tracey Martin saying that there is a word when we talk about community that says “business”. Oh my goodness—that means that business is part of the community. Yes, because those businesses are filled with parents. So it is not a problem for businesses and the broader community and the role that they play to be part of a consultative process, which is comprehensive. In fact, as someone relatively new to education, I was astounded at the layers of consultation that we have embedded in this.

This is good legislation. It is enabling legislation. It trusts our parents and it puts our children at the centre of education excellence. It should be encouraged, as opposed to being blocked at every turn by parties that always see the negative and love the shadows and enjoy the darkness. I support this bill.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): What a pleasure it is to follow that happy member, Todd Muller. Members opposite will remember the days in their first year of this House when the air was fresh and they were tiptoeing through the tulips using words like “leadership” with gay abandon, and no matter that Judith Collins was sitting right in front of them, gnashing her teeth, thinking: “Don’t say it too often, Sonny Jim. You’ll be a dead man.” But, apart from that, at some point it is going to dawn on members opposite—one is tempted to say “these dudes”—that Government is finite. We are only 1 year from swapping sides in the House. Then we will see how positive the chipper Mr Muller really feels.

Mr Muller is right about one thing. Colleagues, do not get too excited. Those members are just so excited about being in Opposition, because they will actually get to give speeches in the House rather than saying: “I move, That the question be now put.” Imagine having sweated so hard to get into the place and the whips tell him: “It’s your big moment, Todd. I know you used to work in the Prime Minister’s office. Here, read this: ‘I move, That the question be now put.’ ” Sometimes they get an IQ test for John Key’s Cabinet. If you get it wrong more than twice, it is another year on the backbenches. This brings me to the member for Hamilton—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): And back to the bill.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Now the member for Franklin is eyeing up the race. He is like a greyhound coming into the benches, and he is off and running—“I move, That the question be now put.”—thinking that if he just says it fast enough, it will truncate his on-ramp. But, honestly—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I think the member has had about 300 metres of slack, and he should get back to the bill—or get to the bill.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Mr Chair, you are characteristically generous and correct. Let me turn my attention to the amendments in Part 1, which amend the Official Information Act (OIA) 1982 to exempt a tertiary educational institution that is a shareholder in a charter school from the provisions of the Official Information Act. I will sum up the Opposition’s view of that clause: why? If it is spending public money—which, of course, let us acknowledge that dozens of tertiary institutions are currently rorting from this hapless Government and its useless Tertiary Education Commission—why would we not apply the Official Information Act? I challenge Minister Parata to take a call. We are very privileged to have the current Minister of Education—for as long as it takes Nick Smith to want a new job other than housing—to be in the chair for this. We would ask the Minister to explain the logic of why you would accept a provision that exempts from the Official Information Act an institution that is taking public money for the purpose of investing in a charter school.

As if that is not enough, it is also exempted from the provisions of the State Sector Act, which governs every other expenditure item on the public account. And, as if that is not enough, the Ombudsmen Act—well, that is perhaps less serious, because, let us face it, this Government has been so single-mindedly adept at starving the Office of the Ombudsmen of resources that it takes about 2 years to get an OIA through, and that is just fine according to Mr Key’s Government, because democracy, it seems, is a “nice-to-have”, not always a must-have. At least, as long as you can spin it out, the better it seems to be.

Charter schools—why do we have charter schools, colleagues? What reason could there possibly be? Could it be that we enjoy spending five times the amount of resources per pupil on a charter school pupil that we would on a regular, State school pupil? By a kind of National Government Cabinet logic, if everybody was in a charter school, we could spend five times as much on every student. No—no. In fact, if charter schools represented just 20 percent of students, we would have double the education budget, but I do not think anybody has told Bill English that. Charter schools have been proven to be a failure. Whangaruru is the flag bearer for a desultory performance and a lack of clawback where public funds that were clearly not being properly used were unable to be returned to the Crown.

I have been witnessing tertiary education institutions, which are subject to the clauses of this bill, routinely being caught out overstating student numbers, overstating course duration, using dodgy immigration agents, promising the world, and ending up in real trouble. Why would we give them—

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I would like to thank the member who just resumed his seat, David Cunliffe, for a genuine, engaging, and humorous address. If only he could have done that a few years ago, he might still be the leader of the Labour Party, but such is how things go.

I would like to address my comments to a couple of provisions that have already been widely debated by members tonight. I would like to pick up on some comments that Catherine Delahunty made—that every student is different and that one size cannot fit all, and that it is the role of the education system to bring out the greatest potential in every single student, which is something that Peter Fraser, that great Labour Party education Minister was so fond of eloquently saying.

When we come to Part 1 of this bill, there are several aspects of it that are very much in pursuit of that objective. We in this House do not know precisely what each and every child needs. When we talk about “evidence-based”, what we are often talking about are statistical methods of trying to establish what the average child needs, not allowing communities to use the knowledge they have about what their child needs. So I agree with Catherine Delahunty in her empathy for each and every child being different and special and needing to be educated to the greatest of their potential, as the great Peter Fraser once said.

Jenny Salesa: Not by tertiary people.

DAVID SEYMOUR: But Jenny Salesa might want to ask herself why it is that so many Pasifika groups and so many Pacific parents are enrolling children at partnership schools kura hourua. That is the answer to the Hon David Cunliffe’s question as to why we have partnership schools kura hourua. We have them because, in the first instance, community groups, no longer satisfied with the service they are getting from the State school network, go to considerable effort to put in applications and establish the school, and, in the second instance, the parents of those children come along and enrol their children to attend the school. I would just submit to members opposite that they might get a little bit above 26 percent if they were prepared to resonate with and listen to the communities that are making their choice, even in the electorates of the members who have been speaking.

The part of this bill that enables a principal to operate several schools was touched on by Jenny Salesa. Jenny Salesa said she was aware of a principal—who, no doubt, is a hard-working, noble, empathic principal who goes well above and beyond the call of duty in her job, and is the kind of principal whom all of us should be very grateful to have here in New Zealand, because we know, to the extent that we want to take aggregate evidence, that the quality of school leadership is one of the most important determinants of how our children will succeed in times to come. It might be, if we were to alter Jenny Salesa’s anecdote, or thought experiment, just a little bit—what if such a wonderful principal was actually ambitious to extend and expand her skills to a second school and help more children?

What is so special about the number 800—the number of pupils who Jenny Salesa tells us are in that particular school? I have schools in my electorate that have 2,400 students and more, and 2,400 is three times 800. Is it the case that that principal has too few students, or is it the case that the principals of those schools have too many? And what on earth is the Government going to do about it?

Surely, the most important thing the Government can do is actually allow choice and allow people to use their local knowledge. There may well be principals who wish to look after several schools and extend their knowledge and help even more children, and what exactly is wrong with that? Why would we ban people from having a particular freedom just because not everyone wants to use it? Did we hear any members of the Labour Party using that kind of argument when we had the marriage equality debate? I should certainly hope not. This bill is about enabling people to use their freedoms to better educate children.

Then we come to another section of Part 1, Subpart 8, which enables—and let us just focus on that word for a moment, members; “enables”—tertiary institutions to become sponsors of partnership schools. We heard Tracey Martin say that she believes that there are good examples of schools that are run in parallel or in combination with tertiary institutions where the exchange of information and knowledge between the tertiary institution and the compulsory sector school actually benefits the students—and that is another phrase that members opposite should focus on. Let us just tally up a few words here: “enable” and “benefits the students”. This is what education is supposed to be about. So why would it be so bad if, for instance, Stuart Middleton and the Manukau Institute of Technology, or any of the other universities or tertiary institutions in New Zealand, were able to open a partnership school and start helping New Zealand’s children in a wider range of ways?

Well, we heard from David Cunliffe—actually, he was guilty of misleading the House, whether he meant to or not, when he said that partnership schools—

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The member—I know he is relatively new, but he should know that that is an unacceptable thing for him to say, and I am sure that you know that that is an unacceptable for him to say.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): No, I do not. I see that this is a fairly robust debate. He has made an accusation. I have heard many accusations made from across the Chamber during Committee stages about all sorts of things, and I have not found in favour of the member’s point of order. I will call on David Seymour to continue.

Hon David Cunliffe: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I am pretty devastated by that remark, on two counts: firstly, that I might have misled the House, and, secondly, that it might have been unwitting. I would ask you to take that into account and ask him to withdraw and apologise.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Well, I note that the member has said that he has not taken offence, which is good, because I do not see how he could, bearing in mind the robust speech that he made earlier in the debate. I call on David Seymour.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Thank you, Mr Chair. And, for the record, the member was not unwitting, but what he said was that partnership schools receive five times as much funding as other schools, and any reasonable member of the House who believed the moniker “honourable” before the name of David Cunliffe might have come to believe that partnership schools are deliberately funded at a higher rate than other schools. Well, that is simply not true, and the official information is out there that partnership schools are not funded a dollar more nor a dollar less than a State school with the same number of students.

Some members will disingenuously mislead the public by saying that because most partnerships schools are new and all schools get additional funding in their early years as they grow, somehow they are receiving more money that way. But that simply is not the truth, and it would be better for the quality of public policy debate and for the education of New Zealand’s children if the Labour Party members could focus their debate on the facts, rather than inventing their own facts when the real ones do not suit them. But tertiary institutions sponsoring partnership schools will be an enormous advance for education in New Zealand, and I am very proud to see that in this bill.

In the short time I have remaining, I would also like to speak to Supplementary Order Paper 220, which would bring the legislation into line with actual practice. An important part of the partnership school policy is the Partnership Schools/Kura Hourua Authorisation Board. That is the place that people in the community, including Su’a William Sio’s community, including Jenny Salesa’s community, including Carmel Sepuloni’s community—

Carmel Sepuloni: Please don’t tell us what’s good for our communities, David Seymour.

DAVID SEYMOUR: —all of which have had applicants from—no, I am telling the member that people from within her community know what is good for them and have chosen to make an application, and they make that application with the partnership school authorisation board. That member should stop telling people in her community what is good for them, because they know what is good for themselves, and they are applying to operate partnership schools at the partnership schools authorisation board. Try a bit of empathy; the polls might go up.

The fact of the matter is that this policy depends on having a clearly signposted, professional, robust process that applicants who wish to open partnership schools can enter into to be approved if they have sufficient quality. Where there have been difficulties with charter school policies overseas, it has often stemmed from poor-quality authorisation. In the past, in the legislation, it requires only one member of the partnership school authorisation board. Legislation should reflect real practice, and in real practice one member is not sufficient to carry out the processes that I have just described. That is why I am advancing a Supplementary Order Paper that will change the legislative requirement to have five to nine members of the partnership school authorisation board, rather than merely one.

In conclusion, this really has been a debate about one side of the House, which would like to enable educators to have a wider range of permutations of arrangements for helping children, and the other side, which can see only the worst in giving people freedom and giving communities choices. I am very proud to stand on this side of the House, where we believe in communities, we believe in education, we believe in freedom, and we are not afraid of it. Thank you.

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): I thought it would be helpful if I rose to answer some of the concerns that have been raised by members in the Committee and alleviate those concerns for them. I want to talk about a number of issues that have been raised in this part of the bill. The first is the concern about enabling principals to be in charge of more than one school, were their boards to be agreeable to that. What this provision reflects is the underlying driver for this entire bill, which is how we create flexibility for schools and their communities to make choices that better meet the needs of their children and young people. All children are different, and they have different needs. Parents should be able to determine what the best options are for their children.

In terms of principals being able to manage more than one school—again, it is not a compulsion, and it is not a prescription. It is an enabling of this to occur, and it is a facilitation of a choice. It is providing flexibility for those communities that deem that to be the best way of meeting their needs to take up that opportunity. Clearly, no principal who thinks this is beyond their ken would put themselves in that situation, nor would boards that did not feel that they had the range of skills required for carrying out that responsibility.

The member Jenny Salesa has identified a remarkable principal who is leading an excellent school, and who was recognised through the supreme award of the Prime Minister’s Education Excellence Awards this year. But the fact that that principal makes that one choice does not compel all other principals to make the same choice. That is the choice that she freely makes, but others may wish to make other choices, and what this provision does is enable that to occur.

There has also been concern expressed that this would then require principals to become chief executives, rather than leaders of learning. Well, newsflash—they already are chief executives. They are responsible for running the budget, their staff, their property, and their communications with parents, and leading the curriculum and all of the teachers within their school to ensure that kids get the best education, and that they are able to demonstrate that. I do not know why being a chief executive is described as some kind of disparaging term. A principal is the chief responsible for executing responsibilities within their school. Again, just to alleviate the concerns of the Opposition, no principal is going to be compelled to take up this opportunity, but it is going to be there should a community wish to do so.

In the same theme of flexibility, the bill provides in Part 1 for there to be flexible hours. It makes very clear that there needs to be blocks before noon and after noon, but then the school can decide, in consultation with its community, whether it might wish to be a little bit more flexible. We saw that that flexibility worked extremely well in Christchurch, for instance. In fact, with all the challenges that burdened that community, it not only coped but flourished with flexibility and with the sharing of resources. I can tell the Committee that the achievement levels of the Greater Christchurch region have continued to go up, so it was not compromised by the notion of flexible hours.

Let me come to the point of consultation. Some concern has been expressed by two members tonight about consultation. On the one hand, Catherine Delahunty was concerned that consultation might not be wide enough, and on the other hand Tracey Martin was concerned that it might be too narrow and prescriptive. The possibility was entertained that those involved in commerce who pay tax, which in turn funds schools, might actually also be included in the consultation. Again, to alleviate that member’s concern, let me just read out what the actual provision does say in terms of that consultation. It says that “a board may vary the time at which any 1 or more half-days take place (for example, by starting a second half-day before noon) if the board—(a) has adequately consulted parents, staff, the local community, and any other person who the board considers may be affected, about the proposed variation and it is generally acceptable;”. There is no prescription as to who is in or out of the consultation, Catherine Delahunty. It leaves it to the judgment and discretion of the people concerned, which is that school and its community, and that is as it should be.

Another assurance I can give members is that, as I announced recently, over half of all schools now—catering to 410,000 students—are in communities of learning. Communities of learning, by definition, track an end-to-end pathway from early childhood, through primary school, secondary school, and on to a connection with whatever tertiary options could be made available to young people in that community. That means that as those communities of learning make determinations about what hours work for them, families who have children in early childhood education in primary school, or in secondary school will be part of a whole pathway of a community to make a decision about what hours work for them. But let us not resile from everyday reality now—right now it is complex for parents who have chosen for their children to be in different schools to get them all there by 9 o’clock. That is a complexity. It is just on the other side of this particular challenge.

Members have been concerned about providing more opportunity for other providers to offer partnership schools or kura hourua, and what this bill also offers is the opportunity for tertiary education institutions to participate in that process. It does not require them to do so, but it enables them, if they wish to take up the opportunity, to have another option of providing educational choice to communities that might want it. I would like to remind members of the Committee—if they knew, and if they did not, I would like to tell them—that when kura kaupapa were first promoted, the amount of opposition about whether this option should be allowed or not, how it would compromise learning—

Chris Hipkins: And which Government promoted them?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Good point—good point. I am not questioning which Government. The example I am giving is that as new models have been introduced into our country, there has been opposition at different times.

One of the reasons why our education system is characterised as being a world-leading one is the range of diversity of options, the priority of parental choice, and the focus on ensuring that, whichever option it is, young people are getting the best education possible. That is what kura hourua offer—another option. Nobody is required to take them up, just as no one is required to go to a kura or a State integrated school or a single-sex boys’ school, but parents should have that choice. Why would they not? Why would we not, in this act of democracy of Aotearoa New Zealand, provide those choices? So, again, underlying not just this part of the bill but the others that we will go on to debate are these very core principles of flexibility, of choice, of parents being able to exercise that, and of ensuring that there are different models and different options available to young people.

I have just one final remark about the opportunity for a principal to lead more than one school. We already have examples of that. So, for instance, there are already appointed 26 community of learning leaders whose jobs include leading across communities of learning that can have six to 12 to 20 schools in it. They have taken on those opportunities with their eyes wide open, their energies raised, and their enthusiasm engaged as they focus not only on how they lead learning for those young people but how they also stretch their leadership ambit. We want more challenges for leadership in our education system. We want to see ourselves growing that quality because we know that the quality of teaching and leadership makes the most difference within schools.

So I am hoping that I have alleviated the concerns of the Opposition that these are all about enabling choice. They are not about directing, instructing, or prescribing them, but, rather, it is about choice being available to parents, who know their children best. Thank you.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Members, I just want to draw a couple of things to the attention of the Committee. Before the Minister spoke, because you have got such a lenient and convivial Chair, the wheels got a little bit wobbly. I just want to remind members that the Committee stage is about discussing the parts of the bill that are under debate at any one time—to consider, for instance, the submissions that were made before the select committee, and to pose questions to the Minister and for the Minister to respond. What I noticed in a number of contributions in the last half an hour is that there has maybe been a little bit too much humour and conviviality. We have taken a few slaps each side. Now we are going to come back.

Over the past few days you will have noticed various presiding officers referring more to the Standing Orders. So we are going to look now to contributions in this Committee stage that actually adhere a little bit more closely to the Standing Orders—that examine the parts that are before the Committee and scrutinise the legislation that we are considering.

MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Kia ora, Mr Chairperson. I am pleased to take a call in this Committee stage. I want to focus, in terms of Part 1, on Subpart 2. I want to thank the Minister of Education for giving an explanation, particularly around the clause that I am going to address in my contribution, and that is clause 9, which inserts new section 75A. She did touch on the appointment of principals, and I appreciate her assurances to the Committee that this is around a flexibility, that no one needs to take it up, and that it is really, I guess, up to the board of trustees whether it wants to take this option up. Of course, I am speaking about the appointment of principals, and the particular clause, where it talks about how “(1) The powers conferred on a board by section 65 include the power to appoint a principal. (2) Two or more boards may appoint 1 person to be the principal of 2 or more schools administered by the boards. (3) A combined board (as defined in section 92) may appoint 1 person to be the principal of 2 or more schools administered by the board.”

I understand the principle of flexibility. For me, representing what is also the Minister’s own homeland of the East Coast, it makes me think how applicable that particular provision of, perhaps, one principal over one or two schools would actually be in practice. I think it is important that as legislators in this Committee we take the intention of bills and we apply them in a practical way to see whether they would work or not. Of course, I am talking about Ngata Memorial College, the Minister’s own high school, and the principal there, Heneriata Milner, the mother of Nehe Milner-Skudder. I am talking about Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Waiu o Ngati Porou, which is just down the road. I am talking about Campbell Dewes school, Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Kawakawa mai Tawhiti in Hicks Bay, not to mention the Minister’s own sister, the principal of Tolaga Bay Area School.

I guess, in response to the Minister’s assurances that this is about flexibility, it would be useful to hear from the Minister, and I was hoping she would say, when she got up to clarify some issues, what research her ministry has undertaken to say that having one principal over multiple schools actually equals better educational outcomes for our children. I name those particular schools because the Minister is well aware of the diversity—not just in terms of geographical diversity but in terms of the history behind those iconic Ngati Porou schools on the East Coast—and I wonder whether the Minister can see that this flexibility will address the real issue facing many of our people on the East Coast, which is one of a declining population.

What enthusiasm I get when I attend those schools with those principals and with those teachers and with those tauira around retaining their hapū identity and their Ngati Poroutanga. I just put that there to the Minister to see whether she can assure us that those particular iconic schools from her own area of Ngati Porou are protected under this. As she said, it is a flexible issue, but there is nothing stopping someone, somewhere down the track, with this particular provision, from saying: “Well, look, we don’t need your school, Campbell. We don’t need your school, Heneriata. We can just combine them. We’ll have one person there.” I can assure the Minister, as she well knows, that there will be a huge reaction to that possibility.

I then want to turn to Subpart 7 and clause 20—charter schools. We are not averse to looking at different ways of providing education. The problem, though, in relation to the partnership schools, is the process by which we have engaged with the local community. I want to talk about the partnership school that was announced in my electorate, Te Aratika Academy. Te Aratika Academy was announced by the member David Seymour as coming to Napier. In his release, he also talked about a special Māori character school. We actually have three existing special Māori character schools in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti/Hawke’s Bay: Te Aute College, Hukarere Girls’ College, and St Joseph’s School.

My point around supporting innovative ways and my point around the process of this particular announcement is that we have three iconic Māori special character schools in the Hawke’s Bay. So when this announcement was made, of course, as with anything that helps Māori males—because this is what this charter school is geared towards—in year 11 to year 13, then my immediate reaction was: where are those year 11 to year 13 young, Māori males from Hawke’s Bay going to come from? Of course, I was going to go and call the principals of the Māori special character schools in my electorate: Hukarere Girls’ College, Te Aute College, and St Joseph’s School. Of course, only one of them is for Māori males—that is Te Aute College. It was interesting that the principals had not even been consulted about this announcement—so much so that they felt that their, I guess, experience, particularly at Te Aute College, to contribute to the success of a charter school in their own area was overlooked.

The Minister might want to comment around tidying up her processes around announcing charter schools around this country, particularly if she is going to use the issue around Māori special character schools when we already have them in those regions.

David Seymour: In that case, no one’ll go to it.

MEKA WHAITIRI: That is my point. Nobody had called those schools. Seriously, we want the school to be successful, but the reality is that the process is flawed—totally flawed. That is what this announcement showed to that particular member.

But back to the Minister in charge of this bill—those are my concerns: clause 9, in Subpart 2, around the principals and clause 20, in Subpart 7, where it talks about charter schools. Minister, it would be good to hear from you around—and I do not want to mention another announcement in my area, Te Whare Tawhiti o Tākitimu, which is apparently going to come out tomorrow. Just like the Minister, I am passionate about ensuring that every Kiwi child in this country gets the best education that the State can provide, but we cannot just gung-ho change things to something new without proper research. My point is around asking what research the Minister and her ministry has been provided that shows one principal can adequately lead multiple schools. The other issue is: please, tidy up your process around announcing charter schools, particularly in areas where there are already Māori special character schools. Kia ora tātou.

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): I will just take a quick call to take up the invitation from the member for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, Meka Whaitiri. She referred to a number of schools and kura with whom I am very familiar, as she indicated. Let me just be very clear about this. In fact, area schools, of which Tolaga Bay Area School is one, are several schools in one. Tolaga Bay Area school is a kōhanga as well as a total-immersion preschool; it is a primary, intermediate, and secondary school. In many senses, we already have examples of this with area schools all around the country.

The member asked whether there is evidence on this. Actually, yes there is. This practice occurs in a number of areas in the UK as well as in Europe, but we are more interested in New Zealand, simply around facilitating the opportunity for those communities that think it will work for them to do so. To take Te Wānanga Whare Tapere o Tākitimu, another example that the member referred to, its whole kaupapa is about kōhanga reo, kura kaupapa, whare kura, and it is interested in a whare wānanga. So there we have an example of one principal in charge of, in effect, four schools, but within a different model arrangement. So I hope the member feels reassured by that—that her electorate already has shining examples of what it is we are talking about. Thank you.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): Earlier, David Seymour, the ACT Party leader, made a comment that Pacific people are all going towards charter schools. He gave a false image, really, because in the Government’s report there are only nine charter schools. Two of those are run by Pacific organisations. I tell you that, at the beginning, I think the Government gave the message to our community, to the Māori community, that charter schools ought to be embraced because they were going to save our young people—that they were going to provide an opportunity for our young people to lift the standards and quality of education. That has not happened. In fact, in the Government’s own regulatory impact statement it says that so far the diverse range of sponsors that was envisaged for the model has not eventuated. That is a failure statement for this exercise. I say that because, right from the outset, the Government promised that charter schools would each have a particular sponsor that would provide an education programme that would be different from what was provided by our public education system, but that is not the case.

Most New Zealanders pay their taxes and collectively do so because it is our expectation that the Government provide an education for all of its citizens because of the public good that that provides. But what I am seeing here are two models: one is the private sector model; the other is the public sector model. The Government has said that there would be these slush funds from the private sector that would set up charter schools, but that is not the case. The case is that they still continue to use public funds. What we are seeing from this bill is an extension of a failed system, which I do not believe—I do not believe at all—is going to achieve what this Government says it will achieve.

I look at clause 9, inserting new section 75A, and I am asking myself why—what is the driver behind having one principal be the principal of two or more schools? This was an exercise that did take place at Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate. It attempted to have one board and one principal for its three schools. It did not work. It also was applied here at Southern Cross Campus, where there was one principal for three separate, distinct schools. They have gone back now. Each school demanded to have a principal for its particular school. It is a specialist role that principals are required to perform, and the needs, particularly the needs of our communities, are so great that you require a hands-on, full-time principal, not a part-time principal, because that is how I am seeing that clause apply: you have a principal who is responsible for two or more separate schools—it could be a college; it could be a primary school.

What drives that? That is what I am asking. What evidence is there that this is going to improve the lot of our young people? Many of the problems that often occur in our communities stem from the fact that still today, in the 21st century, our education system has not accepted the fact that our young people—Māori and Pasifika—have significant assets that they bring with them to their education. Too often, teachers and some schools—and, I would say, too often this Government—look upon our kids as if they have a deficit or they have something bad to contribute to this society. I think this Government needs to get its head in the right space. It will be the Māori and Pasifika communities who will far outnumber the white community in Aotearoa New Zealand. If we want this country to realise its full potential, we have got to give these kids the best opportunities there are, and I do not believe that this is the way to go about it.

BRETT HUDSON (National): I move, That the question be now put.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Ni hao, Mr Chair, in Chinese Language Week. I want to stand to support Supplementary Order Paper 218 in the name of my colleague Chris Hipkins. It is about the composition of the Education Council. To look at where we want to move to, I think it is really important that we look at the current composition of that council. Currently there are nine members, all elected or appointed by the Minister, five of whom have to hold current practising certificates. I just looked at the definition of that on the Education Council website and it says they have to be employed in a teaching position of at least 0.5 full-time teacher equivalent, they have to have been in a continuous position for more than 6 weeks, and they must be employed as a teacher. But there is actually no explicit commitment to the five of those teachers representing specific sectors of our education system.

So if we look at the Education Council’s purpose, it says that it is the professional body for teachers and that it is about improving the quality of teaching and education leadership, focusing on the needs of children and young people and the public interest. As this bill has outlined, those constituent teaching groups actually comprise representatives from the early childhood education profession, the primary school profession, and the secondary school profession. I would like the Minister, I guess, to reassure us that the current rules around who can be appointed by her to the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ) actually ensure that we have representatives from all those sectors.

I particularly want to support the proposition in Chris Hipkins’ Supplementary Order Paper 218 because it is about people being elected to office. We are now in the middle of local board elections, and when you go on the website, it encourages people to stand, because we need committed people with a wide range of skills who want to contribute to their communities. I think that at the heart of this Supplementary Order Paper and the proposition within is that the meaningful constituencies within the teaching profession should be specifically represented. That is, in fact, what this Supplementary Order Paper would enable. It would enable, for example, a teacher representing the early childhood sector to be elected by their peers. It would enable a teacher representing the primary sector to be elected by their peers. It would enable a teacher representing the secondary sector to be elected by their peers.

We have the national constituent organisations that would enable that process. We have the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA). We have the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI), which is made up of principals, teachers, and support staff. We have the New Zealand Principals’ Federation, because another constituent group is a principal representing the primary sector, and also a principal representing the secondary sector. I see no reason why this particular Supplementary Order Paper should not merit, at least, some consideration and a comment or kōrero from the Minister about why she disagrees with this proposition. Essentially, if the Education Council is about a professional body for teachers, then I would have thought that at the heart of it should be representatives of all the specific teaching professions, as I have outlined.

Within the Supplementary Order Paper, there is also a comparison between the education sector and the health sector. So there has been a Minister previously, under this Government, who recognised that having representatives from the health sector on the governance board actually made sense, so I think that the Minister should look at that and make some comment. I think, from our perspective, elected representatives bring something to a democracy—we are all here; we are all elected representatives.

We, on this side, I think, stand for local democracy. We stand for specific representation, and we want to enable the PPTA, the NZEI, and the New Zealand Principals’ Federation to actually have a say in the quality of teaching and education leadership specifically in our country. So I would implore the members of this Committee to consider this SOP. It is a very good SOP, so I commend my colleague Chris Hipkins for bringing it to the Committee, and I commend it to my fellow members. Kia ora.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I want to thank the Minister of Education for her contribution to the debate earlier when she addressed some, but not all, of the questions and issues that members had raised. In particular, the question that she did not address, around principals managing more than one school, is about what the employment relationship would be. Would the principal be reporting to one board of trustees on behalf of a number of boards? How would that actually work? The Minister did not address that. She also did not address what would happen if the relationship between one of the school boards of trustees and the principal broke down but the others were happy to continue with the arrangement. What would happen to the employment relationship in those circumstances?

She did not actually address those issues, and, to me, that cuts to the heart of a lot of the concerns I have about it. How is this actually going to work? The Minister talked, in her contribution, about an area school, and drew an analogy with an area school. There are two essential differences with an area school, one of which is that they are governed by a single board of trustees and the second of which is that they are all, typically, geographically located on one site. What we are talking about with this change is that a principal could be managing a number of schools in different geographic locations with different boards of trustees that have different pressures on them. I want to understand how that is actually going to work in terms of the employment relationship, which is not an issue that the Minister addressed.

We then come to the issue that has not yet been canvassed, and that is Supplementary Order Paper 176, introduced by the Minister after the public hearings process had been completed by the Education and Science Committee, which introduced an entirely new category of teachers called “trainee teachers”. The provision that this bill puts in place gives the Minister power to require a school to create a teaching position called a “trainee teacher” and it could only appoint somebody to it who was taking part in one of the teacher training programmes. There is no guarantee that this position would be in addition to, rather than instead of, one of the positions that the school currently gets within its teaching allocation.

That would be one of the issues where, if the Government were to give me that assurance, I am open to the debate, because I think that there is a huge scope for more on-job training for teachers. That is certainly the feedback that principals give, and, actually, a lot of the initial teacher education providers themselves acknowledge this. But if those trainee teachers are going to replace teachers who are fully qualified and already in the classroom, then that creates a concern.

It also creates a concern that there do not seem to be any restrictions around how widely this will be applied. For example, there is an evidence base around Teach First, and the evidence base is largely positive. It has been evaluated by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, and the evaluation came out positive. It deals only with secondary school teachers. The relationship in a primary school would be very, very different, and yet there is no restriction that would prevent one of these trainee teachers replacing a primary school teacher. So there are really big issues around the Supplementary Order Paper as presented by the Minister and as now incorporated into the bill that have not been adequately canvassed.

I want to be really clear: I think that we need to do a much better job of initial teacher education in New Zealand and that there should be a larger on-job, practical component to initial teacher education, because that is what a lot of the experts working in this area have been saying, and we should certainly take note of that. There is goodwill within the educational community to addressing that issue and to actually creating some practical solutions, but what this legislative amendment does potentially tears away all of that goodwill.

We managed to negotiate with the Government an extension of the time frame for the report back of this bill so that the select committee could have a week to hear submissions from people who have an interest in this particular area. They did not have time to adequately prepare their submissions, but we did at least, as a select committee, have an opportunity to hear from them, and they were overwhelmingly opposed to it. Even within the group of people who were opposed, there was some support for some of the concepts contained within the Supplementary Order Paper, but they were concerned that they were being rushed, that they were being poorly thought through, and that they did not have the evidence base that they needed to back them up in order for people to be able to support them.

This is quite a significant issue, because that part of the bill has not been through the parliamentary process that it should have gone through. It is almost akin to passing it under urgency, because it is not going to get the proper select committee scrutiny that it should have received, although it is not being passed—

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

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am—[Interruption] When I stand up, other people sit down. I am not going to accept the closure motion, and it is for reasons very close to those that were alluded to by Mr Hipkins. When a bill has a significant change occur at the select committee and it has not been properly advertised for submission, that means that it is treated differently at the Committee stage and, therefore, there is an extended debate, in particular on that part of the bill. I think that when there are reasonable questions that are asked about that sort of area, they should be answered, or the debate will run on for some time.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): I just want to pick up on the point that my colleague Chris Hipkins has just raised and that the Chairperson has just referred to, which was that the process was far from ideal, and that is why we do need to discuss the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that relate to it. I think that it is very important to recognise that sector representatives were very upset that they were not going to have the chance to input on this point. There was a considerable struggle to get them heard, and there was a very, very short time frame. It was far from ideal.

The whole issue around Teach First or similar programmes is innovative on one level, but it also has some complexities, so it does need to be looked at and scrutinised by the education sector, because it bears the brunt of the application of it. I am supporting SOP 214, which Tracey Martin has written, which is an amendment to clause 13E, because what it does is replace the word “school” with “secondary school” in each place. This Supplementary Order Paper actually amends new section 91O “to provide that employment-based trainee teachers may only be employed to teach in secondary schools.” The Green Party is supporting that because, as others have said, there is no research or evidence to say that this kind of untrained or partially-trained or “in-training” person, with these kinds of broader opportunities and powers, is safe in the primary school medium. I myself have doubts about the idea that it is great at all secondary schools as well. It is obviously not in all schools, and it has been useful in some ways, but to me it is more about the failure to have any workplace planning.

The “in-training” has been leapt upon by some schools because they do not have sufficient teachers, and that is because we are not planning, we are not attracting, we are not actually thinking ahead, or, as leaders in this Parliament, making sure that we have got enough teachers attracted to the profession and trained to do the jobs that they need to do. This is what happens when you leave it all to free will, the market, and the mantra of choice: you end up with a whole lot of messy, random situations, which get patched up. This is a patch-up job.

Teach First may be inspiring for some kids in some circumstances, but, really, if I was a trainee teacher who paid for a 3-year degree, I would be quite resentful about somebody else coming in and being able to do that. That is about the fact that educational learning requires some depth. I am particularly passionate about children with learning differences, and just being passionate and having been to university and being trained on the job does not assist you. We have enough trouble with teachers who have had 3 years’ training, let alone those who have not had that in certain fields in the school. So this bill, and this particular part, is of concern to me because I do not think that the case is proven. I do think that Tracey Martin’s SOP is valuable, because it protects the group of younger students. So if that is all we can achieve, I am supporting it—it is not ideal, but it is worth supporting them.

I also want to support Chris Hipkins’ SOP 219, which deletes subpart 7 of Part 1, “removing the proposed ability for tertiary institutions to sponsor partnership schools.” I would like to support the speech that we heard from Meka Whaitiri. Kura kaupapa would love to have the resources that could go to tertiary institutions to run charter schools and that go to other institutions that are setting up. Kura kaupapa would love to have those things—they do not. One of the reasons why some people told me that they were looking at charter schools was that they could not get sufficient funding for their kura. Talk about flaky—you take an idea that is awesome, that works, and that upholds culture, and then you underfund it and you come up with another idea, which is basically a privatisation model, and shoehorn it into a situation that provides privilege. Of course people are going to want more money. They need more money to run these schools. It is very, very challenging.

In terms of these issues, I would also like to comment on the fact that we now have this authorisation board, the advisory board. It seems quite difficult to get the quality of applicants required to run a school. Actually, it is difficult. Schools are complex organisations. They require a sophisticated understanding of the community and of education. So randomly saying “I did not like the local school; I think I will start up a new one.” has been shown around the world to have not worked very well at all, and we have already had those examples. I am supporting the Supplementary Order Papers that will actually rein this in, because we do not have the ability under this bill to stop this but we can rein it in.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): As I call Tracey—

Tracey Martin: Martin.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Martin—sorry. I just want to inform the Committee that the Silver Ferns won 61-38.

TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora, and on that wonderful note—

Tim Macindoe: Why so close?

TRACEY MARTIN: Ha, ha! Just back to the bill, I want to thank the Minister of Education for standing and somewhat clarifying it. Both the single member of the Government who has stood to take a call on this bill and the Minister have mentioned trusting parents and parental choice. They used those words a lot: to “trust parents” and have “choice”. I hope that in the decision around Salisbury School the Minister will apply that parental choice and trust that parents know what is best for their girls, and that she will adopt the Salisbury solution so that those parents continue to have choice and can be trusted in that choice for their girls.

First of all, I will make sure that I put it on the record that New Zealand First will not be supporting Mr Seymour’s Supplementary Order Paper 220. We have no doubt that Mr Seymour’s Supplementary Order Paper, with the benefit of the Government’s support, will go through into law, and I want to just put on record that when New Zealand First is in a place of influence we will repeal it, and we will repeal all legislation to do with charter schools.

I want to speak to my Supplementary Order Paper 214, which amends new section 91O, inserted by clause 13E. The new section is around, as they are called, employment-based trainee teachers. I want to be 100 percent clear that there already are trainee teachers who, as part of their 4-year teacher training, do what they call “section” inside our schools—inside our primary schools and inside our secondary schools. This is an amendment made by the Education and Science Committee—the new section allows for a completely new category of apprentice, in a way, and they are called “employment-based trainee teachers”.

It was interesting talking to the gentleman from Teach First NZ who came to discuss this move by the Government. He said that it was news to him 4 days before the Supplementary Order Paper was placed on the table of the select committee. It was news to him because the Post Primary Teachers Association, Teach First NZ, and the Ministry of Education had reached an agreement that the Teach First NZ graduates would be able to apply, like any other qualified teacher, for a teaching position as it was publicly advertised in the Gazette. This piece of legislation removes that requirement. This piece of legislation protects and provides a monopoly currently for Teach First NZ graduates, by the Secretary for Education, so that they have a protected position at the same rate as a trainee teacher who is getting a student loan and is going through the 4-year degree. They will be paid at the same rate as that person after they have come out of their qualification, because the Government is going to protect it for them.

My Supplementary Order Paper, however, recognises that because we currently have a skill shortage in science, maths, and English inside the secondary system, Teach First NZ, with the very strong support of Auckland University, has provided graduates who have been successful inside that secondary level. However, there is no New Zealand data at all on graduates, so they might be a biology graduate or an engineering graduate or an arts graduate who has done an 8-week course over the Christmas break period and then is in front of a classroom. They are in front of the classroom, and, unlike a current trainee teacher, they are in sole charge of a classroom. The best way to describe it for parents is that these are apprentices. What we have usually done with apprentices is married them with teaching experts, and we have made sure that they learn from that experience at the same time as they interact with our young people.

My Supplementary Order Paper is seeking to recognise that there has been some successful practice of Teach First NZ in secondary schools—that those students pedagogically should have the standards, should have the basics, and should have a strength of knowledge, and that when they get a graduate with a degree in, say, biology, to go on an 8-week course over a Christmas period and then get support from Auckland University, it is likely that that will go well. It has been shown that this has gone well, but we cannot be confident that it will translate to a 5-year-old, a 6-year-old, or a 7-year-old.

I challenge the members of the Government to stand and say that they are prepared to take the risk, and I challenge the Minister to answer upon what research this has been based. On what research are we going to place our primary school children under this apprenticeship scheme? So I ask for the support of all those members who actually care about education and care about whether our primary school children have the best people in front of them—not people training on the job—to support this Supplementary Order Paper.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I want to continue on this issue of the new teaching position that is being established by Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 176, now incorporated into the bill by the select committee by majority. I want to turn to page 9 of the bill, and I want to start, first of all, with the definition around line 19 of an “employment-based trainee teacher” and what this new position would cover. It “… means a person who is undertaking an initial teacher education programme that includes a period of employment by a board”. The first thing that I would like the Minister of Education to explain more about is around the initial teacher education programmes and the approval process for those: are we to take that to mean that it has to be, for example, a New Zealand Qualifications Authority or a Committee on University Academic Programmes – approved initial teacher education programme, or could anybody simply establish an initial teacher education programme in order to meet that criteria? The wording is loose. It does not contain anything around what the initial teacher education programme might have to involve or who might approve the initial teacher education programme.

The “employment-based trainee teaching position means a position established by the Secretary under section 91O(1)”, which I am going to now turn to because there has been a change to this to the way it was first presented to us, in that there is a minor wording change. So what it now says is “On receipt of a request from the board of a school, the Secretary may, by written notice to the board, establish an employment-based trainee teaching position for the school.” The question that I have, and my reading of this, would be that that position could, therefore, be established only on request from the school board. From my recollection, the original wording, as presented to the Education and Science Committee, did not have the words around on request from the school board. This was a change made by the select committee, and I would like to seek some reassurance from the Minister that the effect of this change will be to ensure that that position cannot be established against the will of the school board of trustees. Because, under SOP 176 as presented to the committee, the Minister was going to be able to impose one of these positions on a school board of trustees. This change that has been made by the select committee—and I agree with the change—basically says that the school board would need to request that. I want to seek some reassurance that that means that there would not be any other circumstances in which a board, for example, could be compelled to request that by the Government. Certainly, the Government could do that in any number of other ways by simply saying to a school board: “Well, you won’t get this unless you actually ask us to do that.” I want to seek some reassurance that no school board would be compelled to establish such a position if they did not think it would be in the interest of their students. I think that that is important.

The second thing is that this wording under new section 91O around, basically, how these new positions are going to be established—so it will be the Secretary for Education who establishes them—does not make it clear where the funding for those positions is going to come from. It does not make clear at all whether the funding for these new positions comes from the school’s existing staffing allocation or from an additional allocation. I think that there are important reasons to consider that, in terms of how schools operate, because if they have, for example, trainee teachers through an approved initial teacher education programme, say through one of the colleges of education that exist now, those trainees will be in the classroom in addition to the teachers who are regularly there. Even if the teacher steps out for a while and says to the trainee teacher “You are going to run this class for a bit, and I am going to go off and prepare some lessons.”, or whatever, that teacher would still be there and still have the ultimate oversight over what that person is doing.

This new provision potentially allows a trainee teacher position to be established instead of the regular classroom teacher who might be there. If that trainee teacher is good, then maybe that is not such a bad thing. If that trainee teacher needs some help and some guidance and is not quite ready to be doing the job that they have been appointed to do, then those kids’ education is going to be compromised. They are not going to be receiving the standard of tuition that their parents should reasonably expect they are going to be receiving at their school. So the question I have got for the Minister is: is the funding for this position in addition to, or instead of, the existing staff allocation time? I think that that is very important. Those are the two questions that I would like the Minister to turn his attention to.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): It has been a very interesting debate, and I will now move outside my comfort zone and general field of knowledge, out of the health portfolio, to try to address some of the members’ questions.

Some of the issues being raised regarding initial teacher education arise from a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) introduced at the select committee stage; so everyone is aware of that. Members are concerned, as I understand it, that that provision may create a class of teacher. The SOP relates to providing certainty for Teach First NZ field-based trainees. It arose out of Teach First NZ but will now apply to any field-based training, but the fact is, there are no other programmes out there, so it sounds pretty hypothetical. It is highly regarded and well evaluated as a teacher training programme, and schools are very keen on having these graduates in their schools—just to tell you a bit of what you probably already know.

The Education and Science Committee also recommended an important change to initial teacher training in New Zealand, improving the quality of initial teacher education as part of that broader programme to lift teacher quality and leadership, and to strengthen overall workforce capability. Those are probably a number of things you also already know.

The point is that initial teacher education positions can only occur at the request of the board of trustees. They make that request to the Secretary for Education. This is the key bit. These positions are supernumerary and for that purpose only. They are just for the field-based training. The Ministry of Education funds the programme and enables enrolment in the school. The requirements in the State Sector Act and the collective agreements as regarding the advertising of vacancies still need to be made. So I hope that clarifies any questions members may have.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Following my colleague Chris Hipkins on this very issue of employment-based trainee teacher positions, the question that he asked was about the school teacher entitlement and where this position fits in. I do not think the Minister addressed that issue, so I am asking again.

I am also reflecting on the New Zealand Principals’ Federation and the contribution it delivered to the Education and Science Committee around this issue. I will join it up to the other issue that I raised in my first contribution, about principals managing more than one school. It would be quite interesting to know about employment-based trainee teachers in a school that is managed by one principal—say, a principal managing three schools, and they have these employment-based trainee teachers at each of them. That would be interesting.

I go back to the original point in my first contribution. How would a principal be able to manage a school, under the current conditions, but adding another layer of required support for employment-based trainee teachers? I want to quote—and it will probably become one of my favourite quotes—from the New Zealand Principals’ Federation in its submission, talking about these changes: “On the surface, they might be described as a collection of ill-conceived baseless changes which lack any intelligent rationale.” It goes on to say: “They might otherwise be described as changes without openly expressed rationale yet intended to enable further expansion of certain policies and direction. As such, they would be deeply systemic changes, with the potential to alter the very shape of our education system.”

My point, in relation to that statement and these changes, is that they are creating systemic changes within our education system without, as has been pointed out, research and without the Government presenting to the New Zealand public a broad explanation or policy about the direction that they are taking New Zealand’s education system. This bill is making a change to the Education Act 1989, which is a landmark piece of legislation in our country. I acknowledge that not everyone was on board with Tomorrow’s Schools or with the Picot report, but the reality is that the Act has endured for 27 years. That report and what happened in 1989 with this piece of legislation was open to everyone to have their say.

My question around the changes in the bill and, in particular, with this employment-based trainee teacher provision is: where was the public debate on this issue? It did not happen. It did not even make it into the first reading of this bill. It was added in through a Supplementary Order Paper. I say to the Committee that it has not been fully discussed to the extent that it could have or should have been. I ask the Minister to address the issue around teacher entitlement and the establishment of this type of position. Is it included in the current teacher entitlement that each school has? Thank you.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Yes. I have no hesitation in putting the question, and I will reiterate that the reason I have no hesitation is that there was a fundamental question asked by, I think, all three Opposition members who spoke recently, and that was clearly answered by the Minister in the chair.

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 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 12.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 214 in the name of Tracey Martin to clause 13E be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 12.

Noes 63

New Zealand National 59; 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 219 in the name of Chris Hipkins to Part 1, Subpart 7 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 12.

Noes 63

New Zealand Labour National 59; 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 220 in the name of David Seymour to insert new clause 19A be agreed to.

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

Ayes 96

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

Noes 25

Green Party 13; New Zealand First 12.

Amendment agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 218 in the name of Chris Hipkins to Part 1 agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 12.

Noes 63

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

Amendments not agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 12.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Amendments to other Acts

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): We now move to debate on Part 2 and schedules 1 and 2.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): In speaking to Part 2, I want to refer to Subpart 1, “Amendments to Ngarimu VC and 28th (Maori) Battalion Memorial Scholarship Fund Act 1945”. I stand in support of the new provisions within this subpart of the bill, and it is a shame that this is part of a wider bill that we do not support. All due credit to the Minister, Hekia Parata; this is a very important part of New Zealand’s history, the contribution by the 28th (Māori) Battalion and by the famous Ngati Porou soldier Ngārimu. Those contributions ought to be reflected properly within the Act, and the changes in the Act need to be acknowledged. Nō reira, e tika ana kia tū ake au kia tuku mihi atu ki ngā āhuatanga katoa kei roto i tēnei wāhanga o te pire nei. E mihi ake au ki te whānau o Ngārimu i roto i tēnei āhuatanga.

[So, it is appropriate that I rise to acknowledge all aspects in this part of this bill. And, similarly, to acknowledge the Ngārimu family in these circumstances.]

This provides an enormous legacy, and rightfully so. It is important that the whole Committee actually acknowledges these changes, although they are mostly technical—changing the language and correcting the way that things are expressed. It is about a scholarship, so I understand why it is in the Education Legislation Bill. I look forward to when this subpart of the bill is separated out into its own bill, and we will be able to support that moving forward. I think it is also important that the other parts of the legislation—and I am sure my colleague Jenny Salesa will speak to those ones that affect the Pasifika people.

Ā, nō reira, kāore e roa tēnei tū, otirā, e tika ana kia tū ake ki te tuku mihi atu ki ēnei āhuatanga i te tuatahi; nō reira, e Te Whare, tēnā tātou, kia ora!

[Therefore, this speech is not a long one but at the same time it is apt that I rise to acknowledge these aspects in the first place; so accolades to us, the House, and thank you.]

TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora, Mr Chair, thank you very much. I just want to make a few contributions around Subpart 2 of Part 2, “Amendments to Pacific Islands Polynesian Education Foundation Act 1972”, particularly with regard to the interpretation of “Pacific person”. I want to acknowledge and thank the Education and Science Committee members for supporting the inclusion of the Kiribati and Tuvaluan community as part of the descriptors of Pasifika persons living in New Zealand. As a member of a community with the largest Kiribati and Tuvaluan community based in New Zealand, which is in Warkworth, it is personally satisfying to have this community—a relatively new community to New Zealand; over a decade now—recognised in this way.

I do not want to take any more of the Committee’s time, but I do want to acknowledge that it required the support of the officials and it required the support of the majority of the select committee to make sure that the Kiribati community and the Tuvaluan community of New Zealand are acknowledged inside this legislation. Kia ora.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The question is—

Chris Hipkins: I am sorry, Mr Chair.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Are you calling? Chris Hipkins.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Yes, I am, Mr Chair. My apologies—my colleague Tracey Martin sat down a little bit sooner than I was anticipating, and I do want to make a few brief contributions on Part 2 of this bill, because these are all provisions that the Labour Party members will be supporting.

I want to, however, just canvass a couple of things. One is that Part 2 of this bill amends a number of separate Acts, and I am concerned that in the way the bill is drafted, these provisions have not received the scrutiny that they adequately deserve. The traditional convention in the House is that when an omnibus bill, which amends a number of different Acts, is prepared, the different Acts are different parts of the bill so that they can actually be scrutinised appropriately by Parliament. What has happened in the case of this bill is that we have had one part that amends the Education Act and then a sort of also-ran part that basically deals with a whole lot of other legislation relating to education administration, even if it is in no way connected to Part 1.

The Standing Orders Committee of Parliament specifically ruled out this practice in 1995, when it required that the Government cease to introduce what I believe were called—I cannot remember the exact title—something along the lines of “legislation amendment bills”, which basically allowed the Government to insert amendments to any different legislation it wanted into a single bill and push it through the House. The Standing Orders Committee was quite clear that there had to be a clear unifying policy purpose to connect all of the amendments that were put into the bill. The Government has adopted as its policy purpose for this bill the updating and modernising of education legislation. Well, that is not actually really a policy purpose, and, therefore, all of the amendments contained in this part are not in any way connected and so should not be drafted in the bill in the way that they are.

I want to put on record my concern that this bill has got all the way through the House to this point without there being adequate scrutiny of the way it has been drafted, because it certainly does not comply with the spirit and intent of the Standing Orders Committee’s report in 1995, and it is certainly outside of the usual conventions of the House in the way that bills should be prepared.

However, having said all that, I want to turn to some of the specific content of the bill and just make a few very brief comments. It did strike me when I was reading the bill that some of these changes are long overdue and perhaps reflect how far we have come, both as a House and as a country, in that some of the somewhat antiquated terminology is now being replaced. If we look at the Ngarimu VC and 28th (Maori) Battalion Memorial Scholarship Fund Act and turn to the second clause in regard to this, clause 37, we are replacing the phrase “the Maoris” with “Māori”. I know that this might seem a small thing, but you can just imagine what was being said when they were debating this in the first place. The attitude would have been vastly different from the one that we have today.

I actually think it is quite a positive sign that we are updating this, because the vast majority of members in the House would not have been Māori members when this was first debated and, dare I say it, there probably was some semblance of attitude that the Māori were the people over there who needed to be contained and dealt with. I think it is fantastic that Parliament has actually embraced the Māori heritage of New Zealand and is now modernising the legislation that is relevant in this area. I want to fully support this particular provision, which I think is a much more appropriate way of talking about Māori New Zealanders than the previous definition in the Act.

There are other provisions. There is a provision that relates to the Minister of Education being able to delegate their power around supplementary agreements with integrated schools. I would normally get into that in much greater detail, but the very next bill that Parliament will be debating around education actually changes all of the legislative provisions around integrated schools, in the sense that they are being brought into to the Education Act as a whole, so there will be adequate and ample time to canvass issues around integrated schools when we come to debate that next bill that will be coming up.

The Labour Party certainly supports all of the amendments in Part 2. They are updating legislation that has become out of date. We are certainly looking forward—oh, actually, I have just spotted some that we probably do not agree with, which are the amendments to the State Sector Act. But, by and large, the rest of the amendments, with the exception of the amendments to the State Sector Act, are ones that the Labour Party will be supporting.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): I want to confine my remarks to Part 2, clause 53, with regard to the change in the defined term from “Polynesian” to “Pacific person”. I raise this because I understand that there have been changes to the Pacific Islands Polynesian Education Foundation Act 1972. I note that in the original Act it refers to Polynesian, and the definition of “Polynesian” in the original Act “means a member of the Polynesian race living in New Zealand who is both—(a) a native of any island of the Pacific Ocean”. This begs the question whether it is just the Polynesian we include here, because there is Melanesia and Micronesia. Now that we have moved away from using the word “Polynesia”, and we are using the word “Pacific”, others may ask about the Solomon Islands—are they Pacific? I was not part of the select committee so I do not know what the thinking was—whether it was supposed to be encompassing, with the new definition including “Pacific” rather than referring just to the Polynesian sector only. That is what I wanted to ask there.

The other thing is this: in the original Act it also makes reference to a fund. There was a fund, a foundation, established, which would be under the Minister of Education, with the Minister having responsibility for the management or the governance of that particular funding. I am asking whether we know how much money is in that fund, because the purpose of that funding was to help Pacific communities and to be able to provide support for their educational aspirations. I am not quite sure whether any member of the public is aware that that fund exists and that it sits with the Ministry of Education under the Minister of Education’s jurisdiction. That begs the question, then: is that fund going to be available for the Polynesian grouping, or is it now going to include the wider definition of “Pacific”, which includes only the other islands that are now part of the new definition—Cook Islands, Fiji, Niue, Samoa, Tokelau, Tonga, and now Tuvalu and Kiribati? I say that because as small as these other populations are, they do exist and they do live in Aotearoa New Zealand.

With the growing Pacific population expected to reach significant numbers in the next 10 or 20 years, I think it is a concern for those of us who want to see the potential of the Pacific community improve significantly in the years to come, because of the dependency of this nation on that Pacific—or brown—workforce. To save me the trouble of having to write out a written question, it might be useful if the Minister was able to provide some answers to that.

I also note that in the subsequent clauses—let me refer you to the constitution of the board, in clause 60—it makes reference there that if a member appointed to the board is absent from any meeting, the member may authorise any other person to attend the meeting in the member’s place. I am not sure what the purpose of that is, whether it was to maintain a quorum, but under normal circumstances if you are the member appointed and you cannot attend, you table an apology. I do not know what the purpose is of an appointed member now being able to authorise another person to represent them in the likelihood that they will be absent from a particular meeting. What was the reason for including that?

I am generally asking these questions because the submissions on this took place at a time when I was not a member of this select committee, so I have not had the privilege of being part of that and hearing the ministry’s explanation as to the amendments to this Act, but I would be really interested to know. I dare say I have heard of some times where a Solomon Islander would say “Am I not a Pacific person?”, or a Vanuatu person would say “Am I not a Pacific person?”.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Now that I have had a chance to refresh my memory, I do want to address the issues around the State Sector Act and the changes being made to the State Sector Act, and, in particular, the new powers that are being given to the State Services Commissioner. I want to just run through those because these were debated at the Education and Science Committee, and there was some divided opinion amongst the submitters and amongst the teacher unions and the principals who came in and presented to the committee.

The new power in new subsection (1A) of section 75, inserted by clause 83, says that the State Services Commissioner “may, in addition to the actual conditions declared under subsection (1), approve further conditions of employment for an individual employee, or any class of employees”—that has been struck out—“who is employed in the education service under a collective agreement if the conditions are—(a) mutually agreed … ; and (b) not inconsistent with the conditions of the collective employment agreement.”

What the submitters presented to the select committee was support for the idea that the commissioner should be able to approve, in individual circumstances, additional conditions of employment, but they should not be able to impose those on a whole class of employees as the bill was originally structured. There was a variety of submissions that were received and they were by no means unanimous. The New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association supported the amendments. NZEI Te Riu Roa and a couple of individual submitters supported parts of the amendments but not parts of others. But the main issue of concern was around the idea that the State Services Commissioner could approve new conditions of employment for a whole class of employees. What that would do, effectively, is undo the collective bargaining provisions, because these are provisions that would be in addition to any collective employment agreement that is being entered into, and that really does undermine the whole good-faith bargaining concept—that bargaining can take place and the commissioner can then go outside the bargaining to approve additional terms and conditions that would undermine that.

The change that has been made to allow the commissioner the ability to approve additional terms and conditions for individuals, which has now been made by striking out the words “or any class of employees,” basically, I think, meets that test. So having earlier said that we were going to oppose this, I can say that we will support it on the basis of the select committee’s very sensible change, because I think that we have actually addressed the concerns that were being raised by the submitters.

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

Motion agreed to.

Part 2 agreed to.

Schedules 1 and 2 agreed to.

Clauses 1 and 2

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very keen to take a call on the title and commencement of this piece of legislation, the Education Legislation Bill, because I am not entirely clear why this one is called the Education Legislation Bill, but the next one that we are debating is called the Education (Update) Amendment Bill when arguably the Government says they do the same thing—which is to update education legislation. So if that is the case, why two bills? Why are those members so disorganised that they could not get their act together and put it together in one bill, given that they are both omnibus bills anyway? In fact, they probably could have done a better job of drafting it.

Let us turn to the substantive issues that have been raised during the course of this debate. Part 2 of the bill updates education legislation, is broadly supported by members of the Committee, and was supported by the submissions that we received, with a few minor amendments. Part 1 of the bill—which is an omnibus provision because it amends a number of different policy areas within the Education Act 1989—does a whole grab bag of things, some of which are good and some of which are not good, and some of which have attracted considerable debate. The areas that have attracted the most considerable debate, of course, have been around the extensions to charter schools and the failure of the charter schools policy—as evidenced by the changes that are being made in this legislation. But there are further changes around the employment of a principal by more than one school board of trustees, on which the Government has not yet answered questions about how that is actually going to operate. So we could argue that this is the “Education Legislation (No Answers Yet Received) Bill” because we have not actually received answers on how those provisions in the legislation are going to work and are going to be applied. I think that that is actually quite significant, and it is quite important for the Government to participate in that part of the debate.

We also have concerns about school opening hours and how the consultation provisions around those would be applied. I want to be clear here that I do not actually have any concern about the consultation provisions in the bill—I think that the consultation provisions are perfectly adequate. All I am concerned about is that the outcome of the consultations is going to be inconsistent and that that is going to potentially create a nightmare for school communities where kids from the same family are split over more than one school. So I think that the consultation provisions are perfectly adequate—they are fine; they are robust enough—but, actually, I am worried about the outcome. At the moment we have a safeguard on that outcome by the Minister having to approve changes to school opening hours outside the existing rules, and this bill does away with those.

So, overall, the totality of the issues that I have just canvassed means that we cannot really support this legislation, even though there are aspects of it that the Labour Party is in favour of. We certainly want to see education legislation modernised, and Part 2 of the bill does a good job of that. There are aspects of Part 1 that, again, focus on aspects of the Education Act 1989 that needed to be updated, and we, again, are broadly supportive of some of those changes—but there are some of them that simply go too far, which means the Labour Party will not be able to support them.

I do, however—seeing as we are on the title and commencement, and I will try to be as relevant as possible to the title and commencement—want to commend the Minister for one thing: that is that the commencement clause in this bill is, at least, a nice, simple one. I have criticised the Minister and the Government for not drafting this bill in accordance with parliamentary norms, but the commencement clause, at least, has been, in the sense that it is very simple, and it does not have any retrospective provisions. That is a rare thing these days, because the Government is increasingly passing retrospective legislation. It also does not allow the Government to choose which parts of the law come into force at which times by Order in Council. It simply says that, effectively, once Parliament has passed it, it gets the Royal assent and then it becomes the law. That is actually a pretty positive thing, and the Labour Party will certainly support the nice, simple commencement of this legislation—although, as I have said, we will not support the bill.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The time has come for me to leave the chair. The member Chris Hipkins, notwithstanding what it said on the clock, has 15 seconds left the next time we come back to it, because we were a little slow in starting the clock. I will report progress.

Debate interrupted.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Judicature Modernisation Bill with amendment and that the Committee had divided it into 23 bills, and progress on the Education Legislation Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.58 p.m.