Tuesday, 11 October 2016

TUESDAY, 11 OCTOBER 2016

TUESDAY, 11 OCTOBER 2016

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Resignations

Kevin Hague, Green Party

Kevin Hague

Mr SPEAKER: Honourable members, I wish to advise the House that I have received a letter from resigning his seat in the House with effect at midnight on 6 October 2016.

List Member Vacancy

List Member Vacancy

Mr SPEAKER: I have been advised by the Electoral Commissioner that, pursuant to section 137 of the Electoral Act 1993, Robert Barry Hobson Coates has been declared to be elected a member of the House of Representatives in place of Kevin Hague. I understand that Barry Coates is present and wishes to make the affirmation.

Members Sworn

Members Sworn

Robert Barry Hobson Coates was presented to the Speaker, made the affirmation of allegiance required by law, and took his seat in the House.

Visitors

Germany—President of Bundestag

Mr SPEAKER: Honourable members, I have much pleasure in informing the House that Professor Dr Norbert Lammert, President of the German Bundestag, is within the precincts of the Chamber, accompanied by a parliamentary delegation, present in the gallery. I am sure that members would wish that he be welcomed and accorded a seat to the left of the Chair, and that the delegation in the Speaker’s gallery be welcomed.

Professor Dr Norbert Lammert, accompanied by the Assistant Speaker Lindsay Tisch, entered the Chamber and took a seat to the left of the Chair.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Refugee Applicants—Prime Minister’s Statements

1. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements; if so, how?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes; and eloquently.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does he stand by his statement on 17 August regarding the total number of approved visa applicants who subsequently applied for refugee or protection status once in New Zealand?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I would have to look at the particular statement that the member is meaning.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why did he say on 16 August: “But what I do know, on the advice of the Minister of Immigration, is that the numbers are considerably less under this Government than when that member was a Minister.”?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Because I believed it to be correct—I think it is correct—but I should have added the word “proportionally”, as I said and corrected the next day.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is it not a fact that an urgent request was sent to Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) officials at 8.35 a.m. on 17 August for figures on refugee and asylum claim numbers “as far back as they go”, despite his assertion on 16 August that he had been advised on that by the Minister of Immigration?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes, and the reason for that is that we knew the member was challenging it, and so we were making sure the facts were correct. But I was advised in the House, before I answered the question, by the Minister of Immigration.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is it not a fact that when he arrived in the House on 17 August seeking to clarify a statement he made 24 hours earlier, that information was not available until 3 hours before question time on 17 August, and that the information did not exist on 16 August—which is hardly “eloquent”?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No. The member needs to go and pull the tape. Go and have a look at the visuals, and the member will see the Minister of Immigration being over here advising me before I answer the question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, no. Caught out, son.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Go and look at the video. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Question No. 2—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In my enjoyment I forgot to seek leave to table a document, which is an Official Information Act answer from MBIE, dated 4 October 2016.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that Official Information Act response. Is there any objection to it being tabled? There is none. It can be tabled.

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

Economy—Weekly Earnings, Wages, and Household Incomes

2. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received on weekly earnings?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Statistics New Zealand reports that in the year to June, median weekly earnings, as defined at the broadest definition of it, increased by $44 to $924 per week. That is an increase of 5 percent in median weekly earnings, the biggest annual increase since 2007. First, people are working more hours each week. Average hours of work increased. Average hours of all part-time and full-time work have increased by 1 hour to 37 hours a week, and workers are being paid more for each hour they work. Median hourly earnings for wage and salary earners increased by 3 percent in the year to June, to $23.49.

Chris Bishop: What do the labour market statistics say about wage and salary movements during the year?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: To track changes in the weekly median earnings, Statistics New Zealand monitors the incomes of wage and salary earners and the self-employed. In the year to June, median weekly earnings from wages and salaries increased by $55, or 6.2 percent, a week to $937. This is the biggest annual increase since the series began in 1998 and shows that workers are getting ahead.

Chris Bishop: How does the growth in median weekly incomes in New Zealand compare with trends elsewhere?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Comparisons are difficult because of the different ways that countries collect statistics, but it is possible to compare trends in New Zealand with trends in the US. In the United States the real value of household incomes has not risen since 1998. Over the same period in New Zealand, household incomes have improved by 43 percent as opposed to zero in the United States. Incomes in New Zealand are still considerably lower than in the US, but we are making progress in closing the gap. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member can have a supplementary question if he wants one later.

Chris Bishop: What other reports has he received on wage growth?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: OECD reports show that New Zealand has, since 2008, had the fourth-highest level of real wage growth in the developed world. Our average annual rate of real wage increase has been 1.4 percent, which is almost twice that of Australia and the US, and is considerably better than in the United Kingdom, which has seen real wages fall by 5 percent.

Child Poverty—Target Setting Policy and Prevalence

3. ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does the Government intend to meet all the targets it has set; if so, why does it think setting those targets was important?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): We tend to make good progress towards those targets, because they are focused on addressing some of New Zealand’s biggest challenges. For example, we have set practical targets in the areas that contribute to material hardship and poverty. These include increasing infant immunisation rates, reducing rheumatic fever, increasing early childhood education participation, and reducing the number of assaults on children.

Andrew Little: Given the importance he places on targets, why does he oppose Children’s Commissioner Judge Andrew Becroft’s target of reducing the number of children living in material deprivation by 10 percent?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The Government is certainly not opposed to the individual components of what Judge Becroft was talking about. Actually, the Government has been doing a great deal in terms of working on those, including increasing benefits, increasing Working for Families payments, and increasing childcare assistance, just as an example. But it is important to understand that my advice is that Judge Becroft’s target actually comes off a survey, or a poll, which is then factored up, so I do not think that would actually be a terribly good measure.

Andrew Little: Oh, so he doesn’t know what he’s talking about?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No, he does not, actually.

Andrew Little: Is the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child correct that there is an “enduring high prevalence of poverty among children” in New Zealand; if not, why not?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Some children and some families have been in poverty for a very, very long time in New Zealand’s history. I will say that the United Nations report does not cover the point at which this Government was the first Government in 43 years to raise benefits for families with children. This Government is extremely focused on the needs of those youngsters, and that is why it has individual targets on an individualised basis for a great many of them. We do not believe in, and the official advice does not support, one single target for poverty.

Andrew Little: Why are there more children living below the poverty line, more homeless children, more children in material deprivation, and more working families turning to food banks under his Government?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am not sure I wholly accept the member’s proposition, but some of those factors have been a result of the recession. The good news is that we now have one of the fastest growth rates in the OECD. As the Minister of Finance pointed out in the last question, we have had one of the fastest income growth rates in the last 8 years. That is the very reason why the Government did things like not only support Working for Families in the most difficult times but actually extend it. It is why we have free GP visits. It is why this was the first Government in 43 years to raise benefits.

Andrew Little: What does he say to Ebony Andrews of Auckland, who, despite stringent budgeting and working as a learning support teacher, is forced to rely on charity for basics like food, clothing, and shoes for her children?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I simply do not know her circumstances.

Andrew Little: Why does he think that it is possible to kill every rat, stoat, and possum across New Zealand, but that it is impossible to ensure that all our kids have a warm house to live in, good clothes to wear, and food to eat?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Actually, this Government has been more focused than probably any other Government on making sure that youngsters are in a warm house. That is why it has insulated 300,000 homes, which is multiples more than the previous Government did. That is why this Government increased benefits for the first time in 43 years. That is why this Government has been part of a programme with Fonterra and Sanitarium, for instance, for 7 million breakfasts. The official advice does not support one single definition of poverty, and, actually, interestingly enough, one of the reasons that you might not want to do that is that the Opposition itself says that as soon as you put a label on a child—let us say it is now going to be—

Mr SPEAKER: Bring the answer to a conclusion.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: —the Ministry for Vulnerable Children—[Interruption] The member does not like it, but he wants—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The answer is now drifting on for too long. [Interruption] Order!

Andrew Little: In light of that answer and in light of Judge Andrew Becroft’s statement that the $25-a-week benefit lift has not made a material difference to many families, why does he not cut the crap, accept that there is a credible measure to be had, and measure his Government’s performance on child poverty against it?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I know the member is running out of staff at a great rate of knots, but he really needs to get some new and better lines and stop proving to the country that he is “Angry Andrew”—

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Housing—Homelessness and Emergency Housing

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): My question is to the Minister of Social Housing. Has she received any reports supporting the Government’s housing plan? [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am just going to ask the member to repeat that question. There was a little too much interjection coming from one particular quarter.

4. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National) to the Minister for Social Housing: Has she received any reports supporting the Government’s housing plan?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): Yes, I have. The cross-party report on homelessness released yesterday strongly endorsed the work this Government has been doing over the last couple of years to address the problem of homelessness. For example, the very first recommendation of the group was to roll out Housing First as a primary response to chronic homelessness, and I announced that roll-out to three Auckland locations in July—a full month before the cross-party group even got kicked off. So while the Opposition has still been going out there trying to find the problem, the Government has been working to fund and source more emergency housing places, to secure new short-term housing options, and, of course, to help people find those suitable, long-term, permanent options.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: How much funding has the Government put into emergency housing?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: The Government has put more than $50 million into funding emergency housing places and support products, both to support existing providers that have never ever had support before and to add new beds to the supply. The fact that this is the first time any Government has directed funding directly to emergency housing providers shows its commitment to this issue. There are more social houses being secured all the time, we have got new builds going on, we have got modular homes happening, and we have got permanent new social housing, but we are, equally, also doing something around emergency places, as well.

Child Poverty—Target Setting Policy and Measurement

5. METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Ka tū a ia i runga i te mana o āna kōrero katoa?

[Does he stand by all his statements?]

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes, especially this comment: “This is a government that’s been very focused on the most at-risk kids. We want to do better for them.”

Metiria Turei: When the Prime Minister said that his Government is “absolutely happy to commit to doing the best that we can to reduce the number of children that are in poverty or are struggling”, why does his best exclude a child poverty reduction target?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Because the official advice is that there are a great many ways of measuring children who may or may not be in poverty, and one of the problems with having an individual target is you would then spend your time, I think, (a) potentially stigmatising a lot of kids, (b) not giving the money to areas that you actually need to—like rheumatic fever—and, thirdly, disagreeing with it. The member’s definition of homeless people is 41,000 people including people living on couches. The member’s definition of poor children is 360,000. The Government’s is 60,000. There you go—we do not agree.

Metiria Turei: Does the Prime Minister agree with the Ministry of Social Development’s technical measure that there are 230,000 New Zealand children living in households with incomes at 60 percent of the after-housing costs anchored line?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am sure, if the member is doing justice to the report and reading it out correctly, that will be correct. That will be the report commissioned by Bryan Perry, which is the most definitive guide to measuring hardship in New Zealand, and I quote it where the report says “There is no evidence of increased poverty. Rates of material hardship in children have fallen in recent years.”

Metiria Turei: Does the Prime Minister accept the Ministry of Social Development’s official advice that there are 85,000 New Zealand children living in severe material hardship?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes, and that is why the Government has been saying for some time—when the member has been going out there inflating the number of children in extreme poverty—that the Government’s best calculation is between 60,000 and 100,000. At that point we were saying that we did not have Bryan Perry’s most recent report, but the indications were that it would be around the mid-point and, indeed, it proved to be that.

Metiria Turei: Can the Prime Minister tell the House what is wrong with these internationally accepted official measures used by the Ministry of Social Development and why they are not an appropriate measure of child poverty against which he can set targets for reduction?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: There is absolutely nothing wrong with them, and that is what the Government does: it uses exactly that data and then it sets individual targets for things like immunisation and for areas like participation in early childhood education. It looks at income issues for families most at risk—that is the whole point. The Government goes out there—and this Government has done more than any other Government to do exactly that in terms of insulating homes, in terms of maintaining Working for Families and extending it, and in terms of making sure there are free doctors visits and putting significant resources into rheumatic fever. That is the point: the Government uses the data and then assesses individual targets.

Metiria Turei: If the Prime Minister accepts these official measures and he has set targets in at least 32 other policy areas, why will he not establish these measures as official measures and set child poverty reduction targets as a result?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The Government has chosen to set individual targets on an individualised component, part of what might be defined as poverty. We think that is a better and more effective way of making sure we are delivering for these kids. These kids are the top priority of the Government. That is why we have been putting so much money into areas like rheumatic fever, and insulating 300,000 homes and making sure that is the top priority for those homes now—in fact, actually, those that are occupied by the least well-off New Zealanders. The member is saying that there is one definition of poverty. There is not. The moment that you do that, the member will then come back and say that she is, effectively, stigmatising a whole bunch of kids.

Metiria Turei: At the very least, will the Prime Minister commit to reducing the number of children living in severe deprivation—a measure that he has publicly accepted as accurate—by, at least, 10 percent by the end of next year?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I will not set a particular reduction target, but what I will do is continue to do what the Government has been doing, which is focusing absolutely on those children and that is one of the reasons why the Government has been saying that the number of those children who are in that group is between 60,000 and 100,000. It is why we are the first Government in 43 years to raise benefits. But I will raise one issue for the House—

Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I have not called the member. Point of order.

Metiria Turei: The Prime Minister has answered the question quite fully. If he has other issues to raise, I suggest he does that in other questions.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not a point of order. I think it is a valid point, but it is not a point of order. It is for me to decide when an answer will come to a conclusion.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Is it a point of order?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No. I want to carry on with my answer.

Mr SPEAKER: No. I, actually, on this point—[Interruption] Order! The Prime Minister will resume his seat. No. On this occasion, although it was not a point of order, I said I actually accepted that it was a reasonable point. The answer was given very clearly at the start of the answer, and I was about to rise to my feet to bring the Prime Minister to a conclusion. I do not have to any more.

Government Financial Position—Tax Rates and Crown Debt

6. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Is his reported statement from May this year correct that “Bill English says if he and John Key disagree on what to do with next year’s expected surplus – pay down debt or cut taxes – what the Prime Minister wants, the Prime Minister gets”?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): No, the statement is not correct.

Grant Robertson: Does he agree with the Prime Minister’s statement when asked how much was needed for a meaningful tax cut: “$3 billion, I reckon.”?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: That certainly would be meaningful, but, really, only a National-led Government can contemplate that, because we focus on controlling expenditure and making sure it gets results, and that is why we have got surpluses, so we have got some choices.

Grant Robertson: Does he think now is the right time to offer a $3 billion tax cut, when there are people living in cars and garages and when he himself has identified “intractable social problems” that need to be addressed after 8 years of Government?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government has been seeking to address intractable social problems from the day it took office in 2008, and has made considerable progress on changing the way the Government does its job so that we are not just shovelling money out—the way Labour always says we should—but focusing on getting better results for people, not bigger budgets for agencies.

Grant Robertson: Does he believe now is the right time for a $3 billion tax cut?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member will just have to wait and see. We have got annual accounts coming out on Thursday, a half-year update before Christmas, and then, by Budget 2017, the member might just find out what the Government thinks about that.

Rt Hon John Key: Does the Minister of Finance think that he might have choices on how to spend the Government’s resources, when the economy grows at 3.6 percent and has one of the fastest wage growths in the last 8 years, when the Government’s books are back in surplus, with the unemployment rates—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The question has been asked; it does not need to be a speech.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: As often happens as a result of our discussions, I can say to the Prime Minister, yes, yes, and yes.

Grant Robertson: Is paying down debt and investing in infrastructure a greater priority for him than tax cuts?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: It has been up to now, that is for sure. The Government’s infrastructure programme, ranging from revamping our social housing stock, through to rebuilding our old schools, through to roads, through to digitising government, has grown very considerably in recent years, and that has clearly been a higher priority than tax reductions.

Grant Robertson: How much actual debt has he paid down?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think debt as a proportion of GDP is beginning to shrink, and the member can be reassured that with rising surpluses, actual nominal debt will start reducing.

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

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I require substantially less interjection from my immediate left.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: The finance Minister was asked how much debt he has paid off. He did not answer the question.

Mr SPEAKER: And I agree, he certainly did not answer in actual numbers; that is true. He answered proportionately. The member who asked the question at the time did not object to it. If he had, I would have—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well, I am.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member may well object, but he did not ask the question, and it is certainly out of time now, but I would have expected—[Interruption] Order! If Mr Robertson had immediately stood to his feet, I might well have given him that opportunity.

Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. At what point in time have you issued a ruling about the immediacy of that? There was no time at all between when you asked members on this side to be quiet and when Mr Peters stood up to make a point of order.

Mr SPEAKER: No. There certainly was time. I have not made such a ruling. I was busy dealing with one of the member’s colleagues, who was interjecting quite loudly at the time. For the benefit of the member, if he wants to ask the question, specifically, again, I will give him the benefit of the doubt.

Grant Robertson: How much, in dollar terms, has he paid down debt?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: None yet, and if I took that member’s advice, none ever.

Homeownership—HomeStart Grants and KiwiSaver Accessibility

7. SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki) to the Minister for Building and Housing: How many New Zealanders have been helped into homeownership with the KiwiSaver HomeStart grant scheme since it was introduced, and what increases have there been in the grants and withdrawals under the scheme?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Housing): There has been huge growth in the number of people using KiwiSaver and HomeStart to purchase their first home, following the Government’s changes last year. The number of people accessing KiwiSaver for purchasing a first home has more than doubled, from 15,000 to over 31,000, and the contribution towards a deposit has grown from $214 million last year to $486 million this year. The number of people accessing a HomeStart grant has increased rapidly from 5,000 per year up to nearly 14,000 per year, and $65 million has been paid out in grants for a first-home deposit. So in total, from both KiwiSaver and HomeStart, over $550 million has gone towards home deposits in the last year.

Simon O’Connor: What changes has the Government made that have enabled more New Zealanders to get support in buying a first home?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: We have made four changes: firstly, we enabled people to be able to access more of their KiwiSaver funds to buy a first home; secondly, we increased the income and house price caps to a more realistic level to improve access; thirdly, we provided double the HomeStart grants for new builds, as compared with existing homes, and provided for higher caps; and, fourthly, we changed the rules to make the scheme more accessible for people buying townhouses and apartments. All these changes have proved successful, as seen by the more than doubling of the number of people using those schemes.

Phil Twyford: When the average renter in Auckland is $160,000 short of the deposit they need for the average home, how does he expect a $10,000 or $20,000 grant to make any kind of meaningful difference?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I dispute the member’s figures, but under KiwiSaver the average Kiwi family in KiwiSaver for a period of 5 years, plus the Government HomeStart scheme, is able to secure $80,000 towards the deposit of a home. This Government is giving more support for homeowners being able to get their first home than any Government in a generation.

Simon O’Connor: What has been the impact of the changes made on 1 July 2016 to the rules around access to KiwiSaver for second-chance homeowners?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The significant change we made on 1 July was removing the income caps for people wanting to access their KiwiSaver for buying a home when they had previously owned one but lost it through a separation, a business failure, or some other reason. The removal of the income cap has seen the numbers double. Previously, about half of those applications were declined. The scheme is now helping 500 families a month, or 6,000 a year, get into homeownership.

Electricity Market—Electricity Authority Distribution Charges Review

8. FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.

Fletcher Tabuteau: Does he stand by his statement: “In principle, what they’re trying to do the Government agrees with.”? This is with regard to the Electricity Authority’s decision to change electricity distribution charges across New Zealand.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do stand by that statement, which really just reflects what the Electricity Authority’s mandate is to do.

Fletcher Tabuteau: Can he then “in principle” agree with former National Minister John Carter, who said: “Economically [these changes] would be a disaster. We seriously can’t let it happen.”?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I think it would be better if I did not comment, because ultimately the decision is the preliminary decision, as I understand it, from the Electricity Authority. It is independent in making that decision. It is highly likely that once it goes through its review process there will then be further input, and, potentially, litigation, that involves this area. So it is not something the Government directly influences; the Electricity Authority is independent in making those decisions.

Fletcher Tabuteau: Is he prepared to front up to the people of Northland and the people of Kawerau and the Bay of Plenty and tell them their job losses make sense “in principle”, as big business shuts up shop in our regions because of these huge price hikes?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: As I said earlier, it is important, I think, to understand that, firstly, the Electricity Authority is independent in terms of making these decisions. It obviously tries to have a degree of equity in terms of its decision making. Secondly, these things are going through a process, as I understand it, where there is a review. Thirdly, they may well be subject to litigation. Clearly, the country needs an electricity system that works well and is appropriately funded, and the Electricity Authority has that responsibility.

Fletcher Tabuteau: Does he think his apathy and lack of intervention on these price hikes are good for New Zealand business decision makers and long-term investment, or does he think changing core fundamentals like this willy-nilly is just fine “in principle”?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I accept that the member is part of a caucus where they do everything that Winston tells them to do, but we live in a political party—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order!

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister cannot answer like that. I have seen the latest National Party polls and I know he is panicking, but he cannot behave like that. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member is half right. It is not helpful to answer the question that way, Prime Minister.

Homelessness—Measurement and Government Measures to Address

9. PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) to the Minister for Social Housing: Has she read the final report of the Cross-Party Inquiry on Homelessness “Ending Homelessness in New Zealand”; if so, will she implement its recommendations?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): Yes, I have read the report; and, of course, I have already implemented most of its recommendations.

Phil Twyford: Does she agree with the Prime Minister that people sleeping on their cousin’s couch are not homeless; if so, how can she possibly consider that a family trying to send its kids to school from a different family member’s lounge each week has a home?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: The Prime Minister would have been referring to the definition that used to be the true homelessness one, which is “rough sleepers”—so those sleeping on the streets—and that is the argument. Obviously, we are concerned about people who are couch surfing. We want them to have permanent homes. That is something that we are delivering on and it is something that we are focused on.

Phil Twyford: Has she seen the estimate by Nevil Pierse of Otago University that keeping someone on the street costs around $65,000 per person per year, which, with 4,200 people currently without shelter, means that the cost of inaction is over $250 million a year? If so, would this not justify spending a lot more than the approximately $9 million she is currently spending on emergency housing?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I have had a look at the submission. Officials were unable to tell me how he has come up with that figure, so there is no actual data behind it that I have seen. My point would be that, actually, to house them, I think in the first instance—in the first 2 or 3 years—it would actually cost more. I think that is an investment worth making, and it is one that we are actually doing.

Phil Twyford: How many people will her $3 million of funding for Housing First house each year, and will she consider a full roll-out of the Housing First approach to cover the 4,200 homeless people without shelter?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Sorry, I cannot quite remember how many people it was that the $3 million for Housing First would cover. I do not want to make the number up now. I cannot remember the exact number, but it is hundreds. I have got a feeling it is up to 2,000, but I would like to check that figure for the member. There is a lot involved in implementing it, and it is, of course, about more than just what Housing First is doing; it is all of the services around it. So it is making sure that we have got the mental health services there and the addiction services, and making sure that we are able to have longer-term solutions for those who are inside the houses. I think the three, on top of the Housing First that is in Hamilton, are really good ways. It is going to be quite different doing it in Auckland than it was in Hamilton because of some of the special challenges that are there. We are open to rolling it out further when we see the results coming through.

Phil Twyford: Does she accept that the only way to ultimately house the 41,000 homeless people is to provide permanent affordable housing for them; if so, will she commit to increasing the State and community housing stock by the 15,000 to 25,000 houses needed and to implementing a nationwide strategy to end homelessness?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: That strategy is already in place. We have got a comprehensive plan. We are rolling it out literally every single day, and it is making a huge difference. We are housing 160 people in social housing each week, when we used to house 140, for example. Another good example is just the massive rebuild programme that is going on. The Minister for Building and Housing has recently announced Northcote, where you can see more State houses coming on board. The other is the recent announcement with community housing providers, where we are now giving them access to up to 150 percent of the income-related rent—50 percent that they can use as part of that deposit and 100 percent income-related rent, which we have opened up to them. There are literally thousands more permanent homes coming on board over the next 2 or 3 years.

Marama Davidson: Does the Minister support providing New Zealanders who rent with some security about their tenancies so they can put down roots in their communities and have a secure home?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: That is not work that we are currently looking at.

Marama Davidson: In response to Phil Twyford’s question earlier, and for clarity, how many actual people, if any, have been housed as a result of the $3 million invested in the Housing First initiative?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: We have just chosen the providers for that, and it is being rolled out.

Marama Davidson: Given that Māori are overrepresented in homelessness, will the Minister provide more and ongoing support for the services that are proven to have effect for our people, such as those run from Te Puea and Manurewa Marae?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Yes.

Native Birds—Kiwi Recovery Plan

10. SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill) to the Minister of Conservation: What announcements has she made on wild kiwi recovery?

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (Minister of Conservation): Last week I released the draft 10-year Kiwi Recovery Plan for consultation. The plan sets out how we intend to turn a 2 percent annual decline into a 2 percent increase with $11.2 million from last year’s Budget. Our goal is to have 100,000 kiwi in the wild by 2030—that is up from 70,000 kiwis. A 2 percent increase is, indeed, achievable. Rowi and Haast tokoeka populations, which once numbered fewer than 200 each, have now more than doubled to more than 400 birds each, thanks to intensive pest management.

Sarah Dowie: What are some of the challenges identified by the plan?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Rats and stoats.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: The usual suspects. That member was correct—rats and stoats; he is surrounded by them. They are the main killers of kiwi, which is why this Government has invested in Battle for our Birds, New Zealand’s largest predator-control operation—800,000 hectares—as well as Predator Free 2050, one of the most ambitious conservation projects in the world. The Department of Conservation trials in Tongariro show that aerial 1080 drops are very successful in protecting kiwi. Before these operations, kiwi chicks had a 25 percent chance of surviving to 6 months of age; following the operations, kiwi chick survival was twice as high. Maintaining genetic diversity is absolutely crucial. Preventing dog predation is also crucial, which is why we have programmes for dog aversion around kiwi. All of these things are challenges, but we will overcome them.

Sarah Dowie: How will the plans support community groups working with kiwi?

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: More than 80 groups are already working specifically with kiwi recovery. We are investing $3.5 million over 4 years through Kiwis for Kiwi. For example, Rainbow Springs’ Kiwi Encounter hatched 101 kiwis last season, celebrating its 1,500th chick overall. Kiwis for Kiwi supported 38 projects last year—including community conservation groups, iwi, research, and captive institutions—with over $500,000 in funding. Strategies planned specifically to make Wellington, Picton, and other parts of New Zealand predator-free will be formulated. Advice, self-resetting traps, and other things will also be available through funding.

Mt Eden Corrections Facility—Serco’s Performance

11. KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau) to the Minister of Corrections: Does she still believe that Serco should be operating Auckland South Corrections Facility; if so, how, given she described them as failures in their management of Mt Eden?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Corrections): Yes; because I have sought and received assurances from the Department of Corrections chief executive, Ray Smith, that the Auckland South Corrections Facility is running well.

Kelvin Davis: Were Labour and the Corrections Association of New Zealand right in 2013 when they raised concerns about Serco’s mismanagement of Mt Eden prison, or does she stand by her predecessor’s statement, that both Labour and the Corrections Association of New Zealand were “making things up.”?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I obviously do not have the detail of any allegations made at that time, but I can tell that member that I have often found him “making things up”.

Kelvin Davis: Why is she hiding responsibility for the mess at Mt Eden, when the Prime Minister recently said of her decision to give Serco the contract in 2010 that “clearly they were the wrong choice.”?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I actually lost track, listening to that very long question. Could he start it again?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Would the member please repeat the question.

Kelvin Davis: Why is she hiding responsibility for the mess at Mt Eden, when the Prime Minister said of her decision to give Serco the contract in 2010 that “clearly they were the wrong choice.”?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I am not.

Kelvin Davis: Does she have a responsibility to know what is going on in her own department, or is she going to keep blaming her officials for withholding the reports on Serco?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I would have thought the member must know that the report has, in fact, been released.

Kelvin Davis: Would a weak Minister choose to blame the unions, the prison monitors, the prison inspectorate, the chief executive officer Ray Smith—everyone but herself—for the mess at Mt Eden, or will she front up and admit she made a mistake?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I certainly would not know, because I do not know any weak Ministers.

Financial Systems—Peer-to-peer Lending

12. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: Has he received any advice regarding regulatory uncertainty around peer-to-peer platforms and the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Act 2014?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Yes.

David Seymour: Does the Minister support the Financial Markets Authority’s (FMA’s) interpretation that peer-to-peer lending platforms such as Harmoney provide an intermediary service and are not a creditor?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Look, I would just say at the outset that the member will be aware that the Commerce Commission had civil proceedings to clarify whether one peer-to-peer lender platform fee constitutes a credit fee under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, and so I do not want to go into the specific details of that. In terms of the broader question—yes, I have had advice from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), the FMA, and the Commerce Commission, and I am considering them all as to whether the overall settings are right. I will be working with officials and considering that carefully over the next few weeks.

David Seymour: Why does the Minister think that MBIE and the Commerce Commission are concerned about a practice that is the norm for peer-to-peer platforms in the US, the UK, and Australia with, for example, in the UK, Zopa with £1.6 billion of loans and Funding Circle with £1.4 billion of loans, and Lending Club in the US with US$27 billion of loans—all of which charge borrowers origination fees, which are the subject of the Commerce Commission’s investigation?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: It is because, I think, the laws relating to credit contracts are slightly different in New Zealand, and we have to deal with the situation that we have in this country, and make sure that the laws work effectively. We do certainly want to see peer-to-peer lending work effectively in New Zealand, and I am carefully considering the options to make sure that that works in practice.

David Seymour: How is New Zealand really different from the UK, the US, and Australia, and is this a case of New Zealand companies falling behind because of poor, slow, and not fit for purpose regulation killing entrepreneurship in our financial technology sector?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I think the member could reflect on some of the ease of doing business in terms of regulation in this country, where we score very highly. The member and his caucus may prefer no regulations, but we have seen throughout the history of the financial markets in New Zealand and globally that they can create problems, and we are working through this carefully and sensibly.

David Seymour: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister did not actually address the question about this particular area of regulating peer-to-peer lending at all; he merely referred to peripheral issues.

Mr SPEAKER: The difficulty was that it was not a very clear question the way it was asked—“How is New Zealand different from the UK, US, and Australia?”. It was a difficult question and I think, on this occasion, the Minister addressed it.

David Seymour: Does the Minister find it odd that his Government spends so much time trying to pump up economic diversification, and as soon as the private sector gives us some diversification, his regulatory regime kills it—as it is doing at Harmoney in Parnell with 45 employees right now?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I do agree with the member that the regulatory framework for peer-to-peer lending does need to be clear, and we do want to support innovation and competition in credit markets. That is why we are giving this very careful consideration.

David Seymour: In light of that, will he consider clarifying the law by making a small amendment to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Act, or will he let this overzealous regulator harm nascent financial technology in New Zealand?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I am not sure whether the member is implying that, as a Minister, I should be interfering with the independent regulator in terms of the Commerce Commission, which I certainly would not want to be doing. But we are giving thought to the broader policy issues.

Iain Lees-Galloway: How much did those questions cost, David?

David Seymour: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is a robust debate, but for Iain Lees-Galloway to imply that those questions were paid for by somebody outside the House is completely out of order. It brings disrepute to the House, and he should stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I heard the comment. I did not actually identify who said it. Now that the person has been identified I do require him to stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Iain Lees-Galloway: I withdraw and apologise.

Urgent Debates Declined

Mt Eden Corrections Facility—Organised Prisoner Fights and Contraband, Report

United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child—Fifth Periodic Report Presented by the New Zealand Government

Mr SPEAKER: I have received a letter from Metiria Turei seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the report of the Chief Inspector of Corrections on organised prisoner fighting and access to contraband at the Mt Eden Corrections Facility. This is a particular case of recent concurrence involving ministerial responsibility. It is absolutely critical that the public has confidence in our corrections system; for that reason, last year I agreed to an urgent debate on the cancelling of Serco’s contract to manage Mt Eden. Although the report highlights matters of significance and concern, they were largely addressed in the urgent debate at that time. I am not convinced that the latest developments warrant the further setting aside of the House’s time; for that reason, the application is declined.

I have also received a letter from Andrew Little seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the report of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child on the fifth periodic report presented by the New Zealand Government. The report was released on 7 October, so it is a particular case of recent occurrence. However, there is no administrative or ministerial responsibility of the Government for a report of the United Nations committee, which is a prerequisite for granting an urgent debate under Standing Order 389(2)(b). The application is, therefore, declined.

Bills

Electoral Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I move, That the Electoral Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice and Electoral Committee to consider the bill, and at the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported back to the House by 13 February 2017. New Zealand is fortunate to have a robust and efficient electoral system. This efficiency is maintained through regular reviews of the law and practices surrounding the electoral process. The reviews also ensure that electoral law and practices are regularly modernised and reflect the changing needs and expectations of voters. The Justice and Electoral Committee carries out these reviews after every general election, which look into the delivery of the election and determine any potential improvements that could be made to the electoral framework. The committee then makes recommendations to the Government regarding the suitability of potential amendments.

Between October 2014 and April of this year, the committee undertook its inquiry into the 2014 general election. I would like to thank the committee for its careful consideration throughout the process. I would also like to thank the variety of individuals and organisations who made submissions. I understand the committee received 211 written submissions and heard 32 oral submissions. On 21 April this year, the committee released a thorough report, which included 28 recommendations on a range of electoral issues. I was pleased to see that all of the inquiry’s recommendations were unanimous.

When the Government responded to the committee’s report on 4 July 2016, we set out our approach to the recommendations. Each recommendation has been carefully considered, and the Electoral Amendment Bill is the result of those deliberations. This bill implements 12 of the inquiry’s recommendations that can be introduced in time for the next election, along with two changes relating to issues not considered by the inquiry. The changes contained in the bill will update our electoral law and further enhance the efficiency of our electoral system. In addition, the Government will progress those recommendations that do not require law changes. In particular, Government agencies and other key stakeholders will be encouraged to work more closely with the Electoral Commission to address the issue of low voter turnout.

Four recommendations require more significant policy development and have not been included in this bill due to time frames. These recommendations will be considered for future elections. One recommendation that the select committee considered was to give greater flexibility for opening and closing addresses, to give parties more choice about how they want to use their allocation of time and money. I am interested in considering this idea, and I am consulting with political parties across the House on how this piece of work might be progressed. If there is broad support, I do intend to advance this matter further. As signalled in the Government’s response to the inquiry, other electoral broadcasting matters will be considered as part of the digital convergence bill.

I would like to touch briefly on a number of the specific changes that the bill makes. The bill helps to ensure a timely count of votes, in light of the increasing number of people who choose to vote in advance. The Electoral Commission will be able to start counting advance votes earlier on election day and will have more flexibility in how this is done. This will ensure that the preliminary election results can be announced on election night in a timely manner. The Electoral Commission will also be able to make certain forms more user friendly. Many of the electoral forms are currently overly complex, which can be a barrier to voter participation. By de-prescribing the format of these forms, the Electoral Commission will be able to simplify them, making them easier to use. The Electoral Act will continue to prescribe the purpose of the forms and the information required. This change will not affect ballot papers, which will still be prescribed.

Some changes that were not considered by the inquiry are also included in the bill. One of these changes provides clarification about the prohibition on making false statements to influence voters on election day or the 2 days prior. The bill specifies that this offence relates only to actions taken to actively and purposefully publish or republish false statements on election day or the 2 days prior. The bill makes a number of other amendments to electoral law, all of which are minor and technical in nature but no less important for the smooth delivery of our elections.

Having a select committee inquiry into each election is a valuable opportunity for ensuring multiparty collaboration around electoral reform. I welcome the opportunity for constructive cooperation with other parties during this bill’s passage through the House. It is important that these amendments can be enacted sufficiently in advance of the 2017 general election, so that the rules of the game are clear for everyone and to ensure we minimise disruption for election preparations. I am hopeful that the select committee will be able to report back in a timely manner, given that the vast majority of the changes have already been carefully considered by the committee and, importantly, were unanimously recommended. The changes made through this bill will enhance the efficient delivery of our elections and will ensure our law remains relevant for next year’s election and beyond. I commend this bill to the House.

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I welcome the opening remarks of the Minister of Justice because, of course, I would absolutely agree that the process that we have undertaken as a Parliament is a robust way to bring to this House any electoral law amendments that, ultimately, we would want cross-party consensus on. It is a little bit of an about-face, this process, because, thankfully, driving the changes that we have is a report by the Justice and Electoral Committee, which has already considered what might need to be changed. We have already had submissions around that, and out of that have come some recommendations.

Those recommendations have been drafted into a bill, and that will then allow submissions, again, to come forward from the public. It is a robust procedure, and I think that that is appreciated by all sides of the House. Having said that, what has been captured by this bill is by no means every element that was considered by the select committee—particularly by some members of the select committee—to be of great importance. I want to touch on some of the missing elements from this bill, because they feel equally important to us on this side of the House.

The first that I would mention simply falls under the heading of this: how do we make it easier for members of the public to participate in the act of voting in New Zealand? We know, because we work in this area, that it is a two-stage process. It requires, first, accurate enrolment—preferably before the published roll, but certainly before election day itself. That in itself has caused problems, as 10 percent of the population—roughly 330,000 voters, and that has doubled in recent times—who are eligible to vote do not even undertake the act of enrolling. Some of that may be deliberate—a choice to opt out of the process—but some of it could simply be a lack of understanding around what is required in order to vote.

Many people could naturally assume that you vote by showing up to a polling booth and casting a vote. We know that that is part of the problem, because there were a number of people who did undertake enough effort, at least, to participate in the act of voting by going to a voting booth, and, either on polling day or beforehand, casting a vote, but did so inaccurately. When I say “inaccurately” I mean that they did not enrol, or that they put down inaccurate information, or that there was a difference between their special vote form and their enrolment form—some administrative error meant that 27,000 people cast a vote that did not count in the last election. In some cases that would be as many votes as would be cast in an entire electorate—27,000 votes discounted because of an error. That error might be that someone went in and cast their vote thinking that they were on the electoral roll, but were not.

We know that there are ways to mitigate against that risk. If, as a voter, I go into a polling place, and I go in there early to vote in the advance voting period—it is not election day—and they cannot find me on the roll, I can take a risk and say “Oh, I’m pretty sure I’m on the roll, I am just going to cast a vote anyway.” If I am not, it will not count. What they could do, then, is give me a special vote form and an enrolment form, and I have to fill out the two. If I fill out anything there and there is inaccuracy between the two forms, or if I say that I am definitely on the roll and they give me just one form—there is so much room for error. We could combine the two forms and say: “If you are having to fill in a special vote form, let us make that count as an enrolment form. Let us just have the one—remove the risk.”

It would be a simple administrative change that could change the outcome for thousands of voters who currently have had their vote not count—and they know it, because after the election they get sent an enrolment form that says: “You cast a vote and it did not count. Can you please enrol?”. That does not encourage participating in democracy. The Electoral Commission came to us, the select committee, and it said: “We think we can do this—in fact, we think we should do this. Let’s combine these two forms.” I still do not understand why Government members voted against that—I still do not understand that. I want the opportunity again, in the select committee, for that to be discussed. I can absolutely guarantee now, for this House, that Labour will be putting in a Supplementary Order Paper on this matter. I would much prefer that we have consensus on this question, so it would be good if we could use this process to tease out why it was that the Government had discomfort with this change.

Taking it one step further, we had one other element that the Government had even less comfort with. You can enrol all the way through the advance voting period, and, in fact, you can do it in a polling station. If I go in and I am found not to be on the roll, I can fill in an enrolment form and I can vote at the same time. That is great, but there is one day you cannot, and it is the day that most voters turn out to vote, and it is election day. It is becoming increasingly arbitrary to say that you cannot enrol on that day—increasingly arbitrary. When we tested out in the select committee why it was that we still have that partitioned off, distinct day we could not vote, it was identified that, actually, we could probably maintain the integrity of the voting system and allow enrolment on the day that you vote on election day. Again, we had real concerns that we could potentially be turning away people who are willing and ready to vote, because of that administrative quirk in our system. That seems completely unnecessary.

We are very lucky in New Zealand that our voter fraud is low, and that the integrity in our system is high. From memory, I want to say we had 150 duplicate votes, and the Electoral Commission could not even narrow down how much of that was simply people who, for instance, are not aware that they have filled in a ballot paper—a special vote, for instance, in a residential facility—and then have filled in a second. Actually, a lot of incidents are probably people who are—I did not want to say senile, but we do not know, and in some cases it could simply be that. The numbers are so low—the numbers are so low—that, actually, there will be cases of that. Why is it that we have a fear around opening up the ability to enrol and vote on the same day—to enrol and vote on the same day?

Jacqui Dean: Who was that?

JACINDA ARDERN: I say to the chairperson that I know he meant no offence by that statement, but we do go into every place where someone is eligible, to ensure that they do have the opportunity to vote. Those are two issues we had great concern with.

The other thing I do just want to add is about civic education—we discuss it every time, but let us actually do something about it this time. It should be compulsory in the senior years of students in our schools not only to enrol to vote but to learn about the electoral system and the political system in New Zealand. It is not enough that we do it in social studies. It is not enough that we do it in junior school, when it does not feel as relevant to a younger person. Why is this not embedded within our compulsory subjects in New Zealand—not an elective and not a choice that is made by a school, but a subject every single student should be learning? It is absolutely critical.

I want to touch very briefly on what is included in the bill. The Minister did that a little bit, too. Many of the changes, I would say, very broadly, are captured by the idea of giving the Electoral Commission, where there should be flexibility, greater flexibility, a right to have clear, plain English on voting forms—excuse me, not on ballots, because we have kept them distinct and legislated, but on guidance and other non-statutory forms—to make sure that they have the ability to ensure they are doing everything they can to make their processes accessible, so that they do not have to communicate just via post.

We have also done some really common-sense things like allowing the Electoral Commission to use online electronic roll look-up in voting places, so we are not just reliant on the printed roll. We will have real-time data on enrolment so that 6 weeks prior to the election, if someone is enrolled, they will have that real-time information, if it is available. That is important.

Because of such an increase in advance voting now, we had a discussion around where electioneering should not take place around an advance polling place, and, roughly, we thought: “Look, people should not be harassed. They should be free to walk into a polling place without being harassed and without being confronted.” So creating a 10-metre boundary around polling places is important, but we accept that, for instance, in an inner-city polling booth like in the area that I work across, sometimes there are hoardings in quite close proximity. There always have been. That is because we have more polling places in accessible areas, so let us not be extreme. Let us be practical and give a bit of flexibility for the Electoral Commission to reduce that if it is impractical for a voting place—that particular boundary.

We are Saturdayising when hoardings can go up. That has been a bugbear for a while. We are saying, look, an MP’s signage on their office is obviously not an election advertisement—let us be clear about that. We are trying to be practical and pragmatic, but I would challenge the committee: we need to make sure we are doing everything in our power, within reason, to make sure voting and enrolment are accessible, and we have not quite got there yet.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): The Electoral Amendment Bill, first reading—and I want to first acknowledge members of the Justice and Electoral Committee, who, as usual, worked in a constructive, collegial, and pragmatic way to make a report to the Government, and here we are with the Government’s response by way of a bill.

I think we would all acknowledge that we are incredibly fortunate in New Zealand—some might say lucky, but I reckon we are fortunate in New Zealand—in that every permanent resident above the age of 18 is entitled to vote in the general election. We also are fortunate—and there is nothing lucky about this; it has taken many, many years of diligent attention to the legislative process, to which we add our most recent iteration—to have a good, robust process within the electoral system, and we do now enjoy a very high level of integrity within that system. The other part of that equation for a good, robust electoral system that delivers good results for the country is to have strong engagement by those who are entitled to vote, and also those younger folk who are not yet entitled to vote but who should be thinking about their degree of responsibility and, in particular, civics responsibility.

It is my view, and, I believe, the view of a number of members on the Government side and other sides, that early engagement in the process is far more beneficial than that very last-minute “Oh my goodness! It’s the day before the election. I’m not enrolled. I do want to vote. Oh!”. If you are not engaged, how do you make good choices? If you are not engaged in the electoral process, of which we are so proud, how can you then be focused on receiving many, many, many types of information that will come flooding in to you as a citizen, through every means possible—and we expand those means even in this bill. If you are not engaged, how do you make a good, informed decision? That is why my view and the view of many others on the committee and across these benches is that early engagement, so that a considered decision can be made, has got to be the preferred option for anyone who is engaging in this electoral system.

It is also really important that we have regular reviews of our electoral system so that it can be as efficient and as effective as it possibly can be. A lot of the recommendations that are made in this bill reflect that, the changing nature of doing business in New Zealand. Therefore, for example, we are making changes to bring the electoral system in line with shifts in technology and, indeed, shifts in voter behaviour. We will enable more efficient systems in polling places with things like, for example, earlier counting of advance voting—just seemingly simple changes that will make our system even more robust. Because we have many opportunities to speak on this bill, I would emphasise that early engagement of people in the system has got to bring about better outcomes for us all. Thank you.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): For those who think this is a somewhat dry subject and unimportant, we should reflect on the fact that the election of George W Bush in his first election, when he beat the Democratic Party candidate Al Gore, was, effectively, an outcome of improper purging of the rolls in Florida. What happened in Florida in that election was that the Republicans, who did not want people who they thought were more likely to vote Democrat to be able to vote, went through the electoral rolls and they struck out people who had the same name as people who were in prison.

In the process, they struck out a lot of Bill Smiths who were not criminals and were not in prison and who had not been imprisoned, and they struck out the wrong people. The effect of it was that those people lost the right to vote because they were not on the electoral roll, and that could have been the difference in the electoral college in Florida, which was the difference in the electoral outcome that foisted upon the world George W Bush, who was not a force for good. He was a force for, overall, the world going backwards, including in the likes of Iraq and with continuing effects in Syria. So electoral rolls are incredibly important.

Around the world you always see the swing about a central point depending on whether you have a right-wing Government or a left-wing Government, because a lot of the people who are less likely to be correctly on the roll, who are more likely to have insecurity of accommodation and, therefore, be moving around, are more likely to be left-leaning voters than right-leaning voters. Therefore, there is an electoral advantage in having a narrow roll for the right and an electoral disadvantage for the left if you have got a narrow roll. We have seen that, I think, in the last few years. I am not saying that this National Government is as bad as the Republican Party was in Florida, but it still does things that curb the ability of us to have as fulsome a roll as we should have in New Zealand to enable people who have got as much right as me to participate in the political process to do so. They have as much right as any of us here, yet they are prevented because they are not on the roll.

How could we fix this in New Zealand? There are a lot of Scandinavian countries that now use the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) system. Virtually everyone in New Zealand has an IRD number. You have got to have an IRD number if you have got a student loan. You have got to have an IRD number if you are on a benefit. You have got to have an IRD number if you are a superannuitant. You have got to have an IRD number if you are in employment. Virtually everyone in New Zealand has an IRD number. Why can we not use IRD numbers as being a legitimate representation of your ability to vote? Some Scandinavian countries put a year of birth next to everyone’s IRD number. So my IRD number would be the same, but it would have 1960 in it, which makes it a little bit harder for someone who is 16 or someone who is 80 to impersonate me. It actually is a good way that you could move against—

Hon Member: Would they?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I leave a fair range in the middle there, as a consequence of the hole in the top of my head, which did not use to be there. I think that we need to move to a system that would save money, because at the moment we have all of these people being paid money to try to maintain our electoral roll, separate from the IRD system, which could be more cost effectively done if we utilised the IRD system. I think it is terrible that so many people in New Zealand are disenfranchised from being able to vote. Not only are those people disenfranchised; theoretically, they are in breach of the law because they are meant to be on the electoral roll.

I want to mention another thing that is not fixed by this legislation. Taylor v Attorney-General is the first decision ever of the New Zealand High Court to give a litigant a declaration for legislation that is in place being in breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It was an appalling piece of legislation passed through this House following Paul Quinn, a National Party member, bringing forward a member’s bill. What it did was that it changed the rule on people who were on short criminal sentences and their ability to vote. It has always been widely accepted in New Zealand, including on this side of the House, that if you are in prison for a long period of time, like 3 years, you lose your right to vote.

But the Government shortened it to any period of imprisonment and created injustices again by doing that, according to the High Court. This is because if you get a 1-year sentence and it happens to be between two elections you can still vote in each election, but you cannot if it is over the period of an election. If you get a non-custodial sentence instead of imprisonment—which would be more likely to happen to someone who is better off in society than someone who is itinerant, who might not be able to satisfy the court that they should have home detention because they have got no home to stay in—then the person who gets home detention can vote, but the person who has been guilty of just the same seriousness of offence cannot vote. The High Court, for the first time in New Zealand’s history, criticised the law passed in New Zealand. It gave a declaration that that law was non-compliant with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. This piece of legislation could fix it, but it does not. That is wrong in principle.

I want to turn to two other issues. Jacinda Arden has already made the point that if you can enrol close to the election and you can also issue a special vote close to the election, why can you not do both through the same form in an early voting booth? It is a very simple idea. It is a very simple idea that would enable more people to vote, and I would have thought that that is something the National Government would support.

There are some other good things in this legislation. I agree with the practical remedies advanced in terms of the practical changes being made in allowing advance votes to be counted earlier in the day on voting day, but not before voting day—I think that is appropriate. I like the way that we are giving flexibility to the format of forms rather than prescribing the forms. We are just prescribing the content rather than the way in which they are set out. I agree with Minister Adams that ballot papers are very, very sensitive because the way in which a ballot paper can be set out could affect the outcome of an election, and I do not think that anyone in this Parliament would want Parliament to give away the right to control what ballot papers look like, because that could be politicised more easily if that was the case.

Can I return to the point that I made at the start. I think we should be able to use IRD numbers. Together with a declaration that someone is either a permanent resident or a citizen at the time they vote, that should be enough to enable a person to vote. Thank you.

JONO NAYLOR (National): It is great to see, when you have done an inquiry in a select committee, it start to come through with recommendations that are a part of legislation. I agree with the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee, Jacqui Dean, who spoke earlier, that it was, I think, a very constructive time that we had together as a committee, working through the various submissions. We got submitters from all sorts of areas—obviously, various political parties and different private citizens who had different views about improvements that could be made to the electoral process in New Zealand. I found it, personally, a really interesting experience to hear the pros and cons. Often you look at things at face value and say “Well, that looks like a very good idea.” and then you start to think about some of the ramifications of those ideas and think through the possible adverse consequences of those decisions. I think it has been great to tease those out through this process. I look forward to teasing those things out further when this returns to the committee as part of this Electoral Amendment Bill.

I think that what has happened in this current iteration, or review, of the Electoral Act—and, of course, this will happen after every election—is that, in particular, it has been beholden on us this time around to make sure that we maintain the integrity of the voting system within our country, and I believe that we have done that; but, also, to explore some of the changing environments, some of the changing behaviour that has occurred around early voting, and, also, to acknowledge and reflect on some of the changing technological aspects of our society. I just want to draw the House’s attention to a couple of those things at this particular stage of the legislation—for example, allowing electoral officials to be able to use an online enrolment-checking function of voting papers, which enables real-time checking of voters’ enrolment status. I think that is a great outcome. That just makes common sense when you think about it—that, actually, we have not got people having the ability, perhaps, to go around different polling booths, to try to cast a vote, and then to catch them out later on and have to go through a whole process. Being able to do it online and in real time is clearly a very good step, and I think there are a number of other technological aspects to this bill, in terms of acknowledging the advanced technology, that are good as well.

In particular, finally, I just want to touch on a particular aspect that came up, which was that party secretaries will have to be reappointed almost immediately if they leave during the election period. I think that is critical, given that party secretaries are, in effect, the only ones who, when there is a breach of some kind, can legally be held accountable. So I look forward to this bill returning to the Justice and Electoral Committee and to the further debate that we will have on this going forward.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I will not take too long in the debate on this bill. It is great that the parties support it, and we certainly do. The inquiry was, as always, a good one and it raised a number of issues that have not been addressed in this legislation. It would be good to work with the Minister of Justice on more legislation early next year to see whether we can resolve some of these issues that have not been able to be resolved in this bill.

Just a few things to note from the inquiry, I think: the kids’ voting programme that was rolled out—78,000 children in years 9 and 10 had access to an experience of being able to vote and learn how to vote. I think that is a really good start and we need to keep rolling out that programme. I recently gave a talk at Logan Park High School, to their senior students there, and although about two-thirds of the students there were learning about the New Zealand electoral system, about a third had not. So there is still a serious gap when young people do not understand how our electoral system works, and we can do a great deal more to improve that.

The advance voting is increasing, as has been discussed, and there was a lot of conversation in the Justice and Electoral Committee about there being more places for advance voting in places where people are, where they go, as opposed to expecting them to go to their local school hall, and about increased opening hours. If we were able to do that, we could potentially shorten the period of advance voting, as long as there was greater access during that period of advance voting. Greater access, by having polling booths in the places where people go during the day and in the weekends, is incredibly important if we want to maximise people’s access to their democratic right to vote.

The voters in prisons issue, which was raised briefly by my colleague, was also talked about to some degree, and it continues to be a stain on New Zealand’s democracy that the bill of that man was allowed to pass, with the support of the National Party members, to disenfranchise thousands of New Zealanders, many of whom—a predominant number of whom—are reportedly Māori, and prevent them from voting. It was a disgraceful act at the time and it continues to be a disgrace. When people are convicted of a crime and they are sentenced to a custodial sentence of 3 years or more, you may be able to argue that they should not vote. I would not argue that, but you may be able to justify that—someone might. But at the moment, the change that was made means that most prisoners now, including those who have sentences of fewer than 3 years, are not able to vote. Those people are entitled to have a say—all prisoners, in my view, are entitled to have a say—in the democratic processes of their country.

Prisoners are, in fact, one of the groups of people most excluded from the democratic process when they are in prison. The whole point of the prison process and incarceration is to punish them by relieving them of their freedom of movement. It does not relieve them of their rights as citizens. We do not strip citizens’ rights from people who are convicted of crimes and are imprisoned—we simply remove them from society and remove their right to free movement. These people all have rights as citizens, and one of those core fundamental rights in a democracy is that they should be able to vote, particularly given that the most powerful laws, if you like, that are created in this place are the laws that enable a person to be incarcerated, the punishment laws through the criminal system. They have a right to have a say as to who represents them in this place, so that they have some kind of voice, and the fact that we continue to disenfranchise thousands of New Zealanders, many thousands of Māori in particular, is an ongoing disgrace and needs to be changed.

There was some talk about voters with disabilities, and there was a higher level of satisfaction, if you like, with the voting system in the last election for those people who had disabilities, but there is still more that can be done to improve access for those with disabilities. When I say “improve access” I do not just mean making it possible for a person with a disability to vote; I mean making sure they have all of the privacy, the agency, and the access to voting, without others being involved, that we all enjoy as people who, in the main, are able-bodied. It is not just about whether they can actually physically vote; it is the circumstances in which they are able to vote, that they do not need to use another person to interpret for them, that the rules do not impose an unnecessary burden on them—like, for example, the rule that says that they have to verbally say what their name is as part of the voting system, which for many people with a disability is not possible. It is a silly rule that makes it very difficult for those people. It reduces their access. So we can certainly do much more to improve access to the voting system for people with disabilities.

Just finally, the Māori electoral option was also discussed. There is a strong view that it should be possible for people to change from the Māori roll to the general roll, from the general to the Māori, and back again once every electoral period, rather than once every 5 years, and to decouple—the report describes “decoupling”—the Māori electoral option from the census. The census is actually irrelevant to the rights of people to be able to vote and to the electoral cycle. So there was some very good discussion. Not all of it is represented in this legislation, but there is, no doubt, more time to make some changes.

Finally, tomorrow is the 20th anniversary, as I understand it, of the very first MMP election. The very first MMP election was on 12 October 1996, and what we have not done in the last 5 years is make the changes to MMP that were promised by National after the 2014 election. You would remember that we had a referendum on whether or not to keep MMP, and there was a resounding call from New Zealanders to keep MMP and a strong commitment from New Zealanders to support changes to the MMP system that would improve that system, to improve the democratic approach, to improve access, and to improve the quality of representation in this . None of those things have been done by National, for all sorts of varieties of excuses—

Chris Bishop: What a load of rubbish.

METIRIA TUREI: Go and talk to Judith Collins if you want to find out about those foolish excuses that she made at the time. So we have had lots of time now to consider what those options might be, to make those changes, but we continue to have a Government that, despite promises to change the system, to improve MMP after the referendum—National broke that promise, and we still do not have those changes set out in an electoral bill. This was also a missed opportunity to make those changes to improve our democracy. Thank you.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First will be supporting this bill to the Justice and Electoral Committee. There are a number of things that we want to discuss there, and, in fact, amongst those are a number of things that are actually not in the bill at all but that were previously discussed by the committee when it reviewed the outcome of the 2014 election. One of them was mentioned by the Minister in her speech, and that is the question of more flexibility for funding for opening and closing addresses on television. There is no provision for that in the bill as yet, but I understand from what the Minister said that she is willing to consider that. I want to say right here and put on record that New Zealand First is very interested in that. We do want to discuss it, and we do want to try to reach consensus with other parties on that, because it is high time that that issue was looked at. The fact is that opening and closing addresses on television are not very popular, most people do not watch them, they are probably not really worth the money that is spent on them, and it would be good if parties had flexibility to use that funding in other ways, especially for broadcasting. So that is something we look forward to discussions on, both at the committee and, perhaps, on a one-on-one basis with the Minister.

Something else that I think bears more discussion is the whole question of advance voting. There was a lot of discussion about advance voting when the committee reviewed the 2014 election, and we noted—with some satisfaction, I think—the strong trend of voters to use advance voting. I think it went up by around 20 percent, to well over 30 percent at the 2014 election. When you get that number of people using advance voting up to 3 weeks ahead of election day, it makes you sit up and take notice. The reasons are pretty obvious: people are working, many work on Saturdays, many have sports functions to go to on Saturdays, or go shopping on Saturdays. Saturdays are very, very busy days for people, and many people do want to take advantage of shorter queues at polling stations well before election day itself. If we want to really increase turnout, we really do need to make sure that we optimise facilities for advance voting.

What was discussed at the select committee when it looked at the matter were two things. One was that there are not enough polling booths available in the advance period, for the 3 weeks before election day—not enough polling places, and that needs to be improved. Second was the problem that some voting places used for advance voting are not the same as the polling places used on election day, and that causes confusion and possibly turns people off from going and casting their votes. So those are two things that I think, even though they are not in this bill, we need to have another look at. Maybe they do not need to be in this bill; maybe it is something that the commission can have a look at without any change in legislation. I am not sure about that, but I am sure that we need to discuss this more, and I would like to hear the Minister give some indication about whether the Government is going to move in the ways that I have suggested, as to how we can improve voting up to 3 weeks before election day.

Talking about voting in advance, I note that the bill does make some changes about counting votes on election day, and the proposal is to extend the period, instead of 2 p.m. on election day, down to 9 a.m.—that gives the whole day in which it is possible to start counting votes. Given the number of votes that are cast in advance, it would be very sensible for that to happen. What New Zealand First would not have supported is any proposal to start counting votes during the 3-week advance voting period. We think that that would have opened up the possibility of leaks, of progress votes, or of speculation and false claims about how votes are going, so it is better not to do that. It should be sufficient to count the votes on election day, but I am sure we would support the extension of a few hours by making it possible to start counting votes from 9 a.m.

The bill does some other quite sensible things, which I am sure that New Zealand First will want to support, and one of those concerns contact information on election advertisements out of Parliament offices. They will now be treated as a single sign. Most offices have a number of signs on or near them; the same occurs with vehicles. It is good to see that the law will be clarified to make it possible for all of those signs to be treated as one sign, and for those not to infringe the law by remaining in place during the election period, especially the advance election period. So it is good to see that, and there are some other pretty sensible things too that we would like to state our support for at this stage.

One of them is the new section 197(1)(k), which provides that it will be an offence to do a number of things to influence advance voters during that advance voting period. In fact, what is proposed is for there to be a buffer zone, and that will be 10 metres unless there is some good reason to alter that. I think this is actually a very important provision, because I think it is important that people are able to go and cast their votes in peace without being harassed by people, whether it is by loudspeakers, by being handed pamphlets on their way into a polling booth, or by being harassed in some other way. One of the things that will put people off voting is if they have to run a gauntlet of people on the way to a polling booth, being harassed and being told which way they should vote or which issue they should vote in favour of, or whatever the case may be. So we in New Zealand First do very much support that people should be able to vote, and do it in peace without having to be subjected to any form of advertising outside the normal scope of things. I note that there are exemptions in the bill for advertising on people’s clothing—the usual rosettes are exempted from these provisions—and similar things on motor cars, and so on. I think we have got, as a result of this bill, a very sensible balance between allowing people to vote in peace and providing some exemptions to make sure that we do not go a little bit too far, especially as far as rosettes and those kinds of things are concerned. So that is good to see.

Another thing that is good to see is clause 97, which provides for a specific period beginning 2 days immediately before polling day and ending on the close of the poll. It relates to people who would make false statements to influence voters, and that will now be an offence during the whole of that period. I think that is a very, very important provision when you consider some of the things that happened at the last election and that happened at previous elections. Again, it is important for the integrity of our system that that should not be permitted to happen. So we do, overall, support all of the major components of this bill, and there are many other more minor things that it covers as well that are very sensible. But there are a number of items that I said, at the beginning of my speech, we do want to discuss. They are not actually in the bill. We think they should be in the bill. I know that there are some proposals for Supplementary Order Papers to insert them, but I would like to think that we would be able to discuss those before we get to the point of the Committee of the whole House. I would like to think that they will be discussed at the select committee even though they are not in the bill. I hope we are not going to be told they are outside the scope of the bill and that we therefore are not allowed to discuss them. That would not be a good thing to happen.

I would like to see a more general discussion at the committee, so that we can discuss some of these things. The Minister has already raised one of them; as I said, we want to discuss that. I would like to discuss the matter that Jacinda Ardern raised, and a number of other matters that I think deserve discussion and that would improve New Zealand’s electoral system. So I look forward to the discussion of those things at the select committee and after that. We have had a pretty good record of achieving consensus on most things so far. I hope we can achieve consensus again on some of those other things yet to be discussed.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): The inquiry from the Justice and Electoral Committee into the 2014 election was one of the first things I had the privilege of doing after I was elected to Parliament in that election—the 2014 election. It was a really interesting experience on the committee, and I want to acknowledge all the committee members who have spoken in the debate so far. It was a collegial committee and we worked our way through the submissions on that inquiry, and it became very clear—I think, reasonably early on in the committee’s inquiry—that we were going to end up with some form of legislation down the line to make improvements to our electoral system.

We consulted widely. We had trips up and down the country—to Auckland and Wellington, at least. Colin Craig turned up in Auckland, and we were all very worried for a while, but it turned out that he just wanted to make a submission about, I think it was, the Broadcasting Act allocation of funds, in the end, so it actually turned out to be a bit of a damp squib, but it was fine. I think what we have produced as a Government out of that parliamentary inquiry is a sensible piece of legislation—14 changes, as other speakers have made mention, to adapt the Electoral Act to shifts in technology and voter behaviour.

I just want to highlight one thing in particular that I am very keen on, and that is the new amendment to prohibit campaigning and the display of campaign material within 10 metres of advance voting places. I think it is going to be worth having a discussion at the select committee as to whether or not that 10 metres is the appropriate space around the advance polling place. We canvassed this in the committee and with submitters, but it may be impractical in some areas for those 10 metres to be enforced, particularly in urban centres in which there are advance polling places in libraries and community centres, for example, near main thoroughfares. So we are going to need to have a bit of discussion, I think, at the Justice and Electoral Committee as to whether or not that is an appropriate space around an advance polling place, but I have no doubt we can reach some sort of unanimity or at least some consensus on that.

Just in closing, I do want to just rebut a couple of the comments from Metiria Turei there, who said that this is a real missed opportunity to make improvements to MMP. She said that the National Government promised to make amendments to MMP after the 2014 election. That is a fallacy. That is not correct. What was promised was a review of MMP, which is exactly what happened, and there is no consensus on moving forward on some of the changes that the Greens seem to want to promote. For example, the removal of what is known as the electorate seat threshold waiver, which is the ability for MPs who win an electorate seat to waive the ordinarily enforced 5 percent threshold—there is no consensus on getting rid of that.

The other point I would make, because the Greens are very concerned about proportionality under MMP, is that it is often forgotten that the electorate seat threshold waiver helps proportionality. It makes the Parliament more representative; it makes it more democratic; it makes it more proportional. It was more proportional after 1999 when the New Zealand First Party missed out on the 5 percent threshold and Winston Peters won Tauranga; it was more proportionate after 2002 when Jim Anderton won Wigram; it was more proportionate after 2005 when Peter Dunne came into Parliament with two other colleagues on the back of winning Ohariu-Belmont. So with those brief remarks I commend this good bill to the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): A 5-minute call on behalf of the Green Party—Kennedy Graham.

Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): Just to reiterate what Metiria Turei said, the Green Party will be supporting this bill to the select committee. The bill follows, as we have heard, the 2014 inquiry by the Justice and Electoral Committee. It makes a number of small changes to the Electoral Act, in line with recommendations by the committee. It allows the Electoral Commission to start counting advance votes earlier on election day. It allows the Electoral Commission to make certain forms more user-friendly. It prohibits electioneering inside and within 10 metres of advance voting places. We have just heard from Chris Bishop of the practical implications of that that will need to be explored; we take that on board. It removes references in the Act to the former Electoral Commission and other offices. It makes a change, which was not recommended by the committee, to clarify the prohibition on making false statements to influence voters on election day or the 2 days prior, so that this offence relates only to the actions taken in that period.

These in our view are all meritorious. The proposed changes appear to us to be reasonable. We endorse the points made by our colleague the Hon David Parker about the critical importance, as he put it—it is easy to regard this as just a purely technical issue, but it strikes at the absolute heart of liberal democracy—of an honest, accurate, and transparent electoral system, the problems that can arise when you do not have that elsewhere, and the interesting suggestion that we should use the Inland Revenue Department system for our registration, broadly in the way that the Nordic countries do. So there is a lot to be explored in the committee as the bill becomes subject to scrutiny.

I recall Jacinda Ardern’s comments lamenting the fact that 27,000 votes were rendered invalid at the last election. That is not something that we should see as acceptable. A number of people expressed regret at the way the legislation has turned now with the former member Paul Quinn’s member’s bill, which removes the right for prisoners to vote. We agree that that is unsatisfactory and needs to be rectified, and possibly could be examined in this committee. There is a lot to be looked at. I have not been involved in this committee, but I am following it very sympathetically, and there is a need to look at a lot of issues, in the general recognition that we will be supporting this bill.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Listening to the debate so far on the Electoral Amendment Bill I cannot help but get the feeling that there is a little bit of fiddling while Rome burns going on when it comes to this debate. This bill makes a number of technical amendments to current electoral law, while the huge elephant in the room is the declining level of participation by the citizens of this country in their democratic process and the dwindling levels of confidence in the institutions of our democracy, whether that be lack of confidence in this Parliament or the electoral system or whether it is just wider scepticism about the whole of Government and the whole of the governing process.

We are seeing that much more visibly in other countries than we are in New Zealand at the moment, but we are not immune to that here in New Zealand. If we want to see indicators of that, let us start with the number of people who are not on the electoral roll, which is quite significant, and then the number who are not voting. Combine those two numbers together and the second runner-up at the last election was not actually us in the Labour Party; it was that group of people. It was the non-voting group of people who actually came second. The non-voters party came second at the last election. That is something that none of us in this House should take any pride in.

I have to say that we are here debating the rules by which we are elected, and I am willing to make a wager right now that there will be very little public scrutiny of this debate. It will not get covered in the media—it will not be on television, and it will barely be covered in any other form of media—and yet we are determining the rules by which we get elected, by which we then have the authority to make the laws of this country, and no one is scrutinising us. That is something that we should be concerned about, because what we have seen over the last decade or more is a diminishing of the fourth estate, the media, and the role of the media in scrutinising what we do.

The fact that we are changing the laws around elections with no scrutiny is something that we should be concerned about, as well as the fact that most New Zealanders now will be getting information about politics and about the electoral system through non-traditional media—things like social media. The problem with that is it encourages people to live in an echo chamber, where the only views that they get are ones that they already have. Their existing views are reinforced and they are not actually exposed to alternative arguments and debate, and I think that that is something that we should be really concerned about. And of course it relates to this, because when we are talking about low turnout and we are talking about people not being on the electoral roll—all of those things contribute to that. So here we are debating a whole lot of technical amendments, but we are missing that wider picture.

My colleague Jacinda Ardern talked about the importance of civics education, and I absolutely agree with her on that, but I would go so far as to say that the entire New Zealand curriculum is actually civics education, because the single most important thing that we can do is encourage young New Zealanders to be critical thinkers and to question everything that is put before them. That is what the New Zealand curriculum can do, should do, and is designed to do. If anyone wants to see the risks of a jingoistic approach to civics education, we only need to look at our good friends in the United States of America to see what happens there. Bear in mind, when you watch those video clips on social media of the average Donald Trump voter explaining why they are supporting Donald Trump, that every one of them was taught civics in school. Every one of those people who are voting for Donald Trump was indoctrinated with a version of civics. They were taught to memorise the Presidents of the United States, and yet they were not taught to critically question everything that is put before them by politicians.

I want every student in school to question everything that I say and everything that the members opposite say, because, actually, that is how we get an informed democracy. I do not think that a narrow version of civics education that is about memorising the former New Zealand Prime Ministers or any of that sort of thing is going to deliver that. I actually think that the best civics education is a very broad curriculum that encourages New Zealanders, yes, to understand our history, but also to question everything. I think if we do that, we will be taking a big step in the right direction.

But let us just talk in my remaining 30 seconds about the particular issue that really annoys me, and that is the fact that people cannot enrol to vote on election day. They can enrol in the early voting period, but they cannot enrol on the day. Jacqui Dean says that that means that they are not engaged. That is not true. Many of the people who show up to vote on election day do not know that they are not actually on the roll—it is because they have moved house or something like that. They have been participating, they have been following the debate, they have been engaging in debate, they show up to vote, and their vote does not count because they are not on the roll and they were not aware of that. That does not mean they are not engaged.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): It is a pleasure to stand in support of the Electoral Amendment Bill in its first reading today. Following the general election, a review was undertaken of our electoral laws. This amendment bill is a result of the review that occurred after the 2014 general election.

In New Zealand, we have an electoral system with a high level of integrity. Foremost in our considerations is protecting that integrity. There are 14 changes proposed in this amendment bill that will improve services, not only to the voters but to the candidates and the parties, and they include changes that just help to bring the voting system in line with the 21st century and with the shifts in technology and voter behaviour. One example of this is the change to the Electoral Commission being able to use technology to communicate and provide information to electors. Another proposed change extends an exemption to the signage rules around fixed parliamentary signage on electorate offices.

The complete suite of changes proposed in this bill provides improvements to our electoral system. They are very simple and mostly technical in nature, and I have pleasure in commending this bill to the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Sorry, I was just going to say to members that I know there were two or three members looking at the clocks somewhat anxiously. I just want to tell members that the clocks were accidentally set for a 5-minute period, not for 10 minutes. I call Maureen Pugh. [Interruption] Oh, she had actually finished. Sorry.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Thank you very much for allowing me to contribute to this first reading debate on the Electoral Amendment Bill. I am now a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee, but I was not a member of the committee whose terms of reference post the 2014 election was “To examine the law and administrative procedures for the conduct of Parliamentary elections in light of the 2014 general election.” The select committee received 211 submissions and heard from 32 submitters.

I think critical to any analysis, actually, should be what the Electoral Commission recommended in terms of its election report. It really highlighted two critical priorities. The first was promoting voter participation—and that is within the context of a turnout of 72.1 percent in 2014, which actually built on the 2011 turnout of 69.6 percent. I think that really was a shock for the Electoral Commission, actually, that voter turnout was under 70 percent, and that continues to be one of the priorities that it has highlighted. It has also highlighted finding ways to meet the changing needs and expectations of voters. Another critical finding from the Electoral Commission was that the number of people who voted early in 2014 was 29.3 percent but in 2011 it was 14.7 percent. So, in fact, we had a doubling of the number of people who chose to vote early.

Within those two areas, I think what the select committee has tried to do was not only use the submissions from the people who came to our inquiry but also to try to complement and implement the Electoral Commission’s findings and recommendations. That really comes from its mandate, which is outlined in the Electoral Act in section 4C(a), which is “facilitates participation in parliamentary democracy;”. I actually think that should be at the forefront of our minds as a select committee when we debate the merits of this piece of legislation and any proposed amendments. From my perspective, and I think the perspective of a number of us who have contributed today—we are fully aware of the declining voter participation rates, and we do want to do something about changing those statistics.

One of the other interesting statistics that I want to read into the Hansard today is that we also have a problem about enrolment. In 2005, 94 percent of eligible voters were enrolled, but in 2014 that had dropped to 90.3 percent. So there has been a steady decline in enrolment figures. So not only do we have declining enrolment but we have had, up until the 2014 election, declining voter turnout or participation rates. I think that it is incumbent on us to ensure that the next generation of voters actually are fully engaged in the system.

What the Electoral Commission has been able to tell us is that we seem to have particular issues with a couple of cohorts of people: those who are under 50 and also those who are under 34. I am not too sure about why it is those particular age groups, but I am sure that there will be submissions to the select committee that will outline those issues. We have also got issues about Māori on the general roll compared with voter participation rates of non-Māori on the general roll. The other interesting statistic—and my colleague Adrian Rurawhe will be interested in this—is that Māori on the Māori roll vote less than Māori on the general roll. We also have quite a few issues in the Pacific and Asian communities, generally.

So I think that there are a number of challenges ahead of us, and, again, I think if we go back to one of the central purposes of our Electoral Act—it is to make sure that all eligible New Zealanders are enrolled in the system and they have their say. That is fundamental to democracy. That is fundamental to how our system works. It is certainly fundamental to determining who gets to occupy certain roles within this institution. So I look forward to having some really robust discussions at the select committee and, actually, as a committee enhancing what I think is a good piece of legislation. Where we have got to now is that we do not disagree with anything that is on the table, but I think many of us have Supplementary Order Papers that probably have already been drafted, given that I know how diligent my colleague Jacinda Ardern is, and are ready to go to enhance this piece of legislation.

In terms of the decline in voter participation, there were some interesting comments about civics education and also about whether we should change the age at which young citizens should be able to vote. Obviously, our voting age is 18, and I am sure we are going to get submissions that say we should allow 16-year-olds to vote. I was actually really interested in my colleague Chris Hipkins’ comments as our spokesperson for education. Obviously, we would hope that all 16-year-olds are at school and so they are contained within a system that can actually encourage and ensure—[Interruption] yes—that they are enrolled and they actually do vote, because, possibly, we could set up booths at school. So if the biggest challenge going forward is that young people are not engaging in the system, I think there is some merit in either a Supplementary Order Paper already—based on that presumption—or somebody making a submission to that effect and providing the rationale to us as a committee for us to make a determination that it has merit. I am really not going to speak for much longer. We obviously support this piece of legislation, and I look forward to hearing submissions. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): As the final speaker in this first reading debate I just really want to round out what I think has been a good introductory debate from across the House, and to thank the Justice and Electoral Committee for the very good work that it has done, under the capable chairmanship of my colleague Jacqui Dean, on its inquiry into the 2014 general election and the recommendations that it has made.

I think the committee has done a very good job. It is clear to me that the Minister has picked up on pretty much all of the recommendations. There seems to be broad consensus across the House for this bill, and I am looking forward to watching it progress through the House. I commend the bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee.

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I move, That the Electoral Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 13 February 2017.

Motion agreed to.

Third Readings

Third Readings

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I move, That the Arbitration Amendment Bill, 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 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, the 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 be now read a third time. New Zealand has a strong and independent justice system that serves New Zealanders well, but its legislation needs to be more accessible and better supported by modern technology. The changes we are making in this legislation will make our courts more transparent and allow them to be modernised while preserving their traditions and upholding the rule of law.

At 23 separate bills across more than 1,000 pages, this is one of the largest pieces of legislation Parliament has ever dealt with in one go. It replaces one of New Zealand’s oldest statutes still in force, the 108-year-old Judicature Act, and modernises the principal statute that governs our courts. This overhaul is made necessary by rapid changes in both society and technology, and a need to ensure that our justice system keeps up with the demands of the 21st century.

This legislation forms part of the Government’s commitment to making sure our justice system can be more flexible and modern, and that it better meets the needs of New Zealanders. It will increase flexibility for court users, enhance the clarity and transparency of the court system, bring about more modern ways of working, and allow courts to transact electronically in the future.

The legislation we are considering today includes five new bills and 18 amendment bills. The key provisions follow the Government’s consideration of the 2012 Law Commission report on its review of the Judicature Act. The legislation retains much of the existing provisions of our court statutes, but in more modern language and in a rearranged format. The legislation also introduces important new provisions.

I would like to turn first to the bills that will become the five new Acts. Firstly, the Senior Courts Bill brings together, in a single bill, the statutory provisions for the High Court, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court that were formerly set out in the Judicature Act 1908 and the Supreme Court Act 2003. These provisions will be expressed in modern language and be made more accessible. The High Court Rules, which regulate the practice and procedure for civil proceedings in that court, remain part of the new Senior Courts Act, but will be published separately, under the Legislation Act 2012, as the High Court Rules 2016 and as if they were a separate statutory instrument. This will make them more accessible to all court users. The process for amending or replacing them will not change.

The District Court Bill continues the District Courts as a single District Court, while retaining its specialist divisions of the Family Court, the Youth Court, and the disputes tribunal. The District Court of New Zealand will be Australasia’s largest court, hearing more than 200,000 matters every year. The general civil jurisdiction of the District Court increases from $200,000 to $350,000. This is the first revision of this limit since 1992. As a result, more parties will be able to choose to litigate in the District Court instead of the High Court.

The Judicial Review Procedure Bill relocates the Judicature Amendment Act 1972 into a stand-alone Act. This new Act continues the important constitutional statutory provisions under which an affected person may check the legality of the exercise of power by the executive and other public bodies.

The Interest on Money Claims Bill replaces the existing statutory provisions for the award of interest-on-money claims with a more comprehensive scheme. This new scheme will both deter prolonged disputes and ensure creditors are more fairly compensated. The proposed Interest on Money Claims Bill is based on the recommendations of a 1994 Law Commission report, and its implementation is long overdue.

The Electronic Courts and Tribunals Bill enables greater use of electronic documents in proceedings, allowing people who use and work in New Zealand’s courts and tribunals to benefit from modern technology by being able to create, submit, and receive court documents electronically instead of on paper.

The 18 amendment bills will amend other statutes by relocating the existing provisions from the Judicature Act and the District Courts Act to where they will be more accessible, by extending the new accountability provisions included in the Senior Courts Bill and the District Court Bill to the specialist courts to ensure consistency across the judiciary, and by consequentially amending a number of related statutes.

This major revision of our courts statutes ensures a greater degree of consistency for common provisions. This is particularly important as a number of new provisions have been introduced to improve the transparency and accountability of our courts system. These provisions include the requirement for the Attorney-General to publish information on the judicial appointment process, even when the Attorney-General does not have responsibility for nominating appointments to a particular bench. For each court, the head of bench will be required, in consultation with the Chief Justice, to develop and publish certain information on reserved judgments, as well as guidelines to assist judges to decide whether they should recuse themselves from hearing a proceeding.

The legislation distinguishes three categories of information generated by the courts and the Ministry of Justice and clarifies the access conditions for each of those categories. The legislation also enables the sharing of certain court record information between agencies, through approved information-sharing agreements prescribed by the Privacy Act. This sharing of information will help Government agencies to provide better services to New Zealanders by being able to identify risk, to spot patterns, and to tailor services to suit. The legislation also clarifies contempt of court provisions, and the restrictions on commencing or continuing proceedings deemed to be without merit.

The passing of this legislation marks a significant step in enabling New Zealand’s courts to provide modern, accessible, people-centred justice services. I believe we are well served by our independent courts. Our courts, and the judges and the judicial officers who work in them, ensure that the rule of law prevails in our society. They are a vital part of our democracy.

Many people have contributed to developing this important legislation. I want to thank those members of the community, the legal profession, and the judiciary who made submissions, and, of course, the members of the Justice and Electoral Committee, who worked diligently to examine the legislation. I would also like to acknowledge the work of the Parliamentary Counsel Office, which has done an extraordinary job with such a large piece of legislation, and my own officials in the Ministry of Justice who have put countless hours into this important piece of work.

It is with great pleasure that I commend these 23 bills to the House.

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): Mr Assistant Speaker, thank you for the call and for the Minister’s contribution to the discussion. Of course, the Judicature Modernisation Bill, which is now split into 23 separate bills, has been a long time coming. In fact, the Minister of Justice took over this bill from her predecessor, and some elements of it have certainly changed along the way, some as recently as in the last stage of the bill’s debate. I will touch on that a little further on. But I do think it is important to add to the Minister’s vote of thanks, because particularly for officials within the ministry, but also for Parliamentary Counsel Office, this has been a significant drafting exercise, and regardless of the various positions we all may have taken on elements of the bill, they need to be congratulated on, and thanked for the intense work that would have gone on for the Judicature Act.

Some of the legislation that we are amending here today is 100 years old, so there is no doubt that the work needed to be done. In fact, the Law Commission’s work was several years ago when it recommended that we consolidate the District Courts Act with the Supreme Court Act. So we absolutely agree that it is long overdue. But there were elements of that merger that meant that we lost some really critical parts, some critical principles, which I want to touch on. We also lost a few opportunities.

We started this debate several years ago, but, actually, as we have gone along there have been additional questions of legal reform that have come up—for instance, the work by the Law Commission on alternative trial processes for sexual violence. That has recently produced a number of recommendations that could have been picked up in various pieces of work that were already before the House. This bill happened to be one of them; there was also the Evidence Act—there were various vehicles that could have allowed us to expedite some of the work that needs to happen within the justice reform area, which still waits this Parliament’s consideration. So there was a little bit of a lost opportunity there, but perhaps more so for the Evidence Act.

We do know, for instance, that this bill repeals the District Courts Act and makes a unitary District Court, where the specialist courts will become divisions of it, so then the Family Court, the Youth Court, and the disputes tribunal will sit under it. Part 3 of the Judicature Modernisation Bill—originally, as it was set out—enacts the Judicature Amendment Act with updated language. We have then got the incorporation of the Law Commission’s work on aspects of damages. This obviously was an omnibus bill, so we did have some opportunities that were not taken up.

But, as I mentioned earlier, I want to speak to the elements that were lost in the merger, as it were. I mentioned that the Supreme Court Act 2003 was one of the Acts that were brought in under this piece of work. Some of those principles—like, for instance, the original principle around the Treaty of Waitangi—have been amended. Originally, it was lost altogether in this work. I want to commend the Māori Party, because, actually, I think it was its lobbying that saw that provision go back in—but not all of it.

So let me just clarify here that, originally, within the Supreme Court Act, one of the sections included: “to enable important legal matters, including legal matters relating to the Treaty of Waitangi, to be resolved with an understanding of New Zealand conditions, history, and traditions;”. That was dropped. What was put back into the bill, through the work of other parties, was simply: “enable important legal matters, including legal matters relating to the Treaty of Waitangi”. So we did lose half of what would have been, I am sure, a really robustly debated clause from the time that the Supreme Court Act was passed. That is obviously disappointing and strikes me as an unnecessary omission from this legislation.

Secondly, as was canvassed in the newspaper yesterday—the New Zealand Herald covered off the fact—we have, in the legislation, basically created compulsory retirement for judges. There are very few areas where you could justifiably have compulsory retirement and most are usually based around careers where there are certain levels of physicality. But it does strike me that we have used an age as the arbitrary guide to whether or not someone still has the competency for their role. Age is a very arbitrary measure for that. There will be a range of professions where people, regardless of their age, may need to be moved on for competency reasons.

I do not want to comment on Parliament as an example of that, but my view would have been that if we in this House were debating how to ensure that we always have the robust instruments to ensure competency, we would not pick one measure and use that as a way of dealing with it. So for the judiciary, it strikes me that if we need to remove people because there are competency issues, we need to make sure that we have got the powers to do that and to make sure that we are able to have that flexibility as required—and age is not the best marker and determinant of that. So we saw that as being arbitrary. Secondary to that, of course, it is discriminatory as well, and we sought to have that removed. It is such a danger zone to move into examples, so I am not going to, despite the Assistant Speaker trying to entice me down that dangerous track. I will not be doing that, and so I will just leave that as that.

One of the other elements—and I have to really reflect on this—of the bill that was removed in the last stages was the provision that said, basically, that we would be publishing all final written judgments. That was removed at the eleventh hour, basically. We asked the Minister for some rationale. Basically, the rationale that the ministry came back with was that the scale of producing all written judgments in that manner was just massive, it would be costly, and it would require immediately for new staff to be hired, and basically, courts were not ready for that. So our view was “OK, well, let’s give you time”—let us put in a time frame for the Supplementary Order Paper to come into force that is longer than the enactment clauses for the bill itself. Unfortunately, that was defeated, although I think it had quite wide support in the House.

I just went back and had a look at the statement that was put out by the then Minister of Justice at the time this bill was brought before the House. It was 27 November 2013—almost 3 years ago—and one of the primary reasons the then Minister—it was Judith Collins—said she was introducing this bill was to build a more customer-focused, lower cost, more accessible justice system. Let me reflect on this statement. She said: “The Bill includes changes to ensure all written judgments are published online, unless there is a good reason not to. It also places a requirement on the Judiciary to publish information on the number of outstanding judgments … . New Zealanders are paying for this justice; they should be able to access it. The higher courts already publish decisions of interests, but the biggest gap is the district courts, where the bulk of cases are heard. We must work with the judiciary to close the gap, and this bill is a key part of that dialogue … . People … have the right to know”.

Most of this press statement was about the online publishing of judgments. Most of the rationale that the then Minister of Justice gave for this massive bill was something that was removed by this Government at the very final stages of the bill. Again, I just wanted to highlight that that seems a massive loss. We understood the timing issue, but we absolutely believed it would have been possible to deal with that.

One final word: in making the justice system more accessible, the use of electronic filing was a theme in the bill. I have heard recently of changes that have, for instance, been used in the Family Court around electronic filing, and that the time frames within which lawyers must have documents filed with the court have become so explicit. They have lengthened the time frames, of course, that things must be filed by because there have been issues with judges not receiving them in time—that is fine. If you are a minute late on that long lead time, those documents will not be passed on to the judge hearing your case and you will find yourself, when you are before the court, having your hearing postponed—or you will frequently see documents lost in court and cases postponed because of that, as well.

I urge the officials from the ministry to sit at the back of a court for a day, and they will see the inefficiencies we have at the moment because of the way our filing is working, and the frustration from officials and registrars. It is cramming up our system to an unbelievable degree, and there is no documentation of it, so it is hard for this House to scrutinise, but it is a massive problem and I really ask ministry officials to engage with the legal fraternity on this issue. It is denying people timely access to justice, and this presumably was what this bill was meant to be all about.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I am very pleased to speak for the final time on the Senior Courts Bill, which was formerly part of the Judicature Modernisation Bill, in its third reading, and I am very pleased that I do not have to go through the 17 existing statutes that are going to be amended by this bill.

What this bill does is it encapsulates this Government’s approach to justice and criminal matters, which understands and responds to the need to update, modernise, make more accessible, more reliable, less costly, and more victim friendly—all of those court processes. Was it only 2 weeks ago that we were standing in this House debating another excellent bill that puts victims at the very centre of the court process in terms of young and vulnerable witnesses giving evidence: the Evidence Amendment Bill?

This is a weighty piece of legislation that came through the Justice and Electoral Committee before I was involved. I have had the opportunity to have a look at what is now the bill—I had the bill with me but I do not any more—since it has been worked on by parliamentarians across the House. This bill does change the legislation governing how New Zealand’s courts are arranged and how they operate, and that can only be a good thing, in my view.

If I go back to my electorate, as I am often fond of doing in this House when I am making a speech, the Ōāmaru courthouse—as with a number of other courthouses—is undergoing substantial change. We almost lost the Ōāmaru courthouse, and I am grateful to the current Minister of Justice and the previous Minister for Courts, who, in their advocacy for the people of North Otago, understood and accepted that access to justice is in fact very important to all of us New Zealanders.

It is interesting that New Zealand is experiencing the lowest crime rate in over 33 years. So now, arguably, not only is the time to focus more on the underlying causes of crime and crime prevention but also it is timely indeed to modernise and improve our operating model for justice and to work towards a more customer-focused model, a victim-focused model that is at lower cost, efficiency in the Public Service, and, indeed, a more accessible justice system. A number of speeches have already canvassed the provisions in this bill, and I now commend it to the House.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Can I begin my contribution by saying that I was pleased that, in the Committee stage of the House, Parliament chose to reinsert, in what is now the Senior Courts Bill, the provision that expressly set out that we have sovereignty of Parliament. That provision was in the former Supreme Court Act and it was put in there to emphasise that courts are not meant to be writing law; they are meant to be applying and interpreting law. Obviously, they have to fill a void if there is a gap in the law, but they should not usurp the role of Parliament. There was a view that it did not sit naturally in courts legislation and if it was in a constitutional provision it ought to have sat in the Constitution Act. So, at one stage, the Government said it was going to remove that particular clause from the legislation—indeed, it was not in the first reading or, indeed, recommended by the Justice and Electoral Committee on the report back from the select committee—and leave that issue to be dealt with in the Constitution Act at some later date, which would have left a gap in the law.

Retiring Supreme Court Judge Sir John McGrath, as he left, made the point that that was wrong. Others, including myself, made the point that, whether or not that provision was originally necessary in the Supreme Court Act, the fact that it was there but was no longer there had to have legal meaning, which meant that the law was probably changing by the omission of that clause and, therefore, we would have been undermining the sovereignty of Parliament if we had not kept that clause and carried it forward from the Supreme Court Act to this legislation, which we have now done. Can I thank Richard Cornes, who is an expat Kiwi now living in the UK, who also provided advice to the select committee on this issue and advocated for its inclusion in the legislation. I think it is better legislation for restoration of that clause.

Can I deal also with something that my colleague Jacinda Ardern mentioned, which is the compulsory age of retirement for judges. I share her concern that age is not generally a proxy for competency, but there is one difference between senior judges and employees, and that is that they do not have an employer. So if you get a doddery old judge who is losing his or her marbles, it can be pretty hard to get rid of them, because if they are stubborn and unwise enough to stay on, the only way you can get rid of them is actually through this Parliament moving to get rid of them, and that is a very difficult thing to do and is rarely used. So I think that was probably in the minds of those who favoured a compulsory retirement age, because—

Metiria Turei: Could we do that with MPs as well, if they are doddery and losing their marbles?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, MPs are, actually, elected for only a 3-year term, and if a doddery, senile MP stands for election, the people are generally wise enough to elect someone else.

Metiria Turei: No—no.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Ha, ha! Oh well, Metiria Turei indicates that that is not always the case and that we have got some premature senility on the other side of the House, but I think that is a cruel blow. Can I turn to another issue, and that relates to access to the law. Although it is good that there are some provisions in this that are improving your ability to file documents electronically so as to reduce costs and perhaps speed up processes, overall, we do have a serious and unresolved problem relating to access to justice in New Zealand. We have got two major spheres of jurisdiction in our courts. We have got the criminal jurisdiction and we have got the civil jurisdiction. These bills, in the main, deal with the civil jurisdiction, which is why I am going to concentrate on the civil jurisdiction in my comments.

Access to justice is largely a function of cost. If you cannot afford to use the courts to resolve your civil disputes, you do not get to use the courts to resolve your civil disputes, and sometimes those disputes that ought to be resolved by the judiciary are not, because people cannot access them. I have got to say that I have been a lawyer now since about 1982—I think it was at the end of 1982 when I was admitted, which is now more than 30 years ago. In my 30 years of legal practice I saw access to the courts deteriorate markedly. When I first was a young lawyer, people were routinely resolving quite minor disputes like car crashes or disputes with their insurers or disputes on the quality of workmanship—not a house that is so faulty that it is falling down but smaller house disputes. Hire purchase transactions that were not complied with were sued upon. I can remember working for Wilson Neill Finance—or whatever their finance company was called—and it would sue for the last hundred dollars due under a contract. It was not because the last hundred dollars was going to make it broke, but because enforcing the rule of law actually encouraged adherence to the rule of law and reduced all of our costs of credit, because people would not just flick off and not pay the last few hundred dollars of their hire purchase contracts. Virtually none of those things are ever litigated through the courts now.

We do have a disputes tribunal, which, in respect of the smallest of those things, can resolve disputes between people. It cannot enforce debts—that is actually outside the jurisdiction of the disputes tribunal, and there are many disputes that fall outside the jurisdiction of the disputes tribunal. I am not suggesting that it should be increased materially, because it is pretty rough justice there sometimes, but there are many disputes that are above the jurisdiction of the disputes tribunal that cannot afford to be litigated through the New Zealand courts.

I am one of those people who—you know, I started with environmental law but I was a civil litigation partner in one of the largest South Island law firms. One of the main reasons I gave up civil litigation quite a long time ago—although I have still got a practising certificate—was that I thought the cost of the services that I was delivering to people exceeded the value of what it was that I was delivering to them. That is even for the people who could afford it. I did not think it was fair value given the complexity and cost of legal processes. In addition to those people, there were lots of people who just could not afford to access the system, who can no longer get justice. This is now widely acknowledged by the judiciary. I am going to quote the last Chief High Court Judge Justice Winkelmann. She said “Why is access to justice important in the civil sphere?”, and her answer was: “It is because access to justice is the critical underpinning of the rule of law in our society: the notion that all, the good, the bad, the weak, the powerful, exist under and are bound by the law. That condition cannot exist without access to courts.” Then, further on, she says “Unless we have this access, we will live in a society where the strong will by any means, including violence, always win out against the weak. This will be a society in which, once binding civil obligations, are recast as voluntary.” She observes: “If courts dispense justice for only the few, what does this mean for our concept that we are a nation that exists under the rule of law?”.

It is increasingly true in New Zealand that individuals cannot afford to access the courts. It is increasingly true that even our non-governmental organisations cannot afford to litigate the things that they want to—and should be able to—litigate if they are challenging a governmental decision. Not only are disputes between citizens not being properly resolved but disputes where the Government is being held to account through judicial review are rarer and rarer.

When I started working in law, community organisations would—not every day, but quite frequently—challenge illegal acts or unreasonable acts of government. Now you see that very rarely. The Environmental Defence Society and the New Zealand Fish and Game Council had to spend many hundreds of thousands of dollars to litigate the plan in the Manawatū, and, even then, the regional councils effectively thumbed their nose at them after they had spent all that money—perhaps partly in the knowledge that they could not afford to litigate the issues.

These problems relating to access to justice will not be resolved through this legislation. I have some views that we need to simplify our civil procedure rules. We need to trust judges, and expect judges to control their courts. They should be expected to dispense affordable justice. They need to avoid a lot of the pre-trial interlocutory processes that so drive up cost, and that can be used by rich litigants to avoid justice at the suit of a poorer party, because they can effectively outspend them and delay justice, and actually avoid justice in some cases. Sadly, this legislation does not fix those problems.

JONO NAYLOR (National): As tempting as it is to rattle through the names of the statutes that are going to be repealed, the new Acts that are going to come into place, the 17 that are going to be amended in this legislation, and then to go into all of the details that are contained within the 1,200 pages of the Judicature Modernisation Bill, I want to limit my contribution to, I guess, what that as-seen-on-TV famous lawyer Dennis Denuto would refer to as “the vibe”.

This piece of legislation is, I guess, really one that has been well overdue. Obviously, the big Act that is being repealed is the Judicature Act 1908. It has been in place for a considerable length of time, and it is obviously very much time for us to overhaul it and to look at the way that the judiciary is conducted within New Zealand.

I want to just acknowledge and thank the former Justice and Electoral Committee for the work that was done in the 50th Parliament. When I arrived here we were up to the second reading stage, and I know it has been a really long and involved process getting to this point. I believe that what is most important with legislation like this is that we do, in fact, get it right. You do not want to have to keep reviewing large tracts of legislation like this too often, so I think it has been good that an appropriate length of time has been taken, and that a lot of thought has gone into it. As has been referred to, late changes have even been made during the Committee stage of this bill.

I think we have landed it in the right place. It is ensuring that we will have a better judicial system in New Zealand when this process is running smoothly—one that is fairer and one that is in line with many of the other changes that we have been bringing in over the last number of years to make the judicial system better for victims and better for everybody else. I commend this bill to the House.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I want to just acknowledge the contribution made by my colleague David Parker about the concern for the lack of access to justice, and how this legislation has not dealt with any of that. It is, in fact, a policy of this Government to restrict access to justice.

I was at the 2014 Ethel Benjamin Address at the Otago Women Lawyers’ Society in Dunedin when Justice Winkelmann was giving an address there, and she was highly critical of the policy that she described as a marketisation of justice and justice services. She said that, increasingly, lawyers and judges are being described as stakeholders, and that there was an increasing policy approach that would provide a market for justice services, as opposed to the rights of citizens to have access to justice across the board. I would recommend members who have an interest in the justice area to look at her address from 2014, where she applies a very critical and very analytical assessment of the current Government policy that is excluding thousands and thousands of New Zealanders from access to justice when they so desperately need it.

To the legislation—the Green Party supports this legislation. I am standing, actually, on behalf of my colleague Dave Clendon, who saw this legislation through the Justice and Electoral Committee on our behalf, so I was not directly involved in the ushering of it through the process. I will just make a few comments. There are a number of good things about the legislation. We were strongly in support of the Human Rights Commission’s submission, which raised concerns about the outdated language of that legislation, and some of that language has been improved. There is a general increase in the transparency around some of these legal services, which is a good thing. The increase in the level of damages that can be awarded by the District Court and by the Human Rights Review Tribunal to $350,000—we fully agree with that increase in the level of damages, particularly for the Human Rights Review Tribunal, which is one of our core watchdogs for this. We have seen, actually, a recent case exposed, where damages were awarded in favour of a person. It is really good to see that they have greater powers to award greater amounts in terms of damages.

There were some concerns that we had with the final shape of the legislation, and concerns that National had voted down a number of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs), which, as I understand it, are not reflected in the divided legislation. I will just acknowledge that Jacinda Ardern did talk about her SOP in relation to the Treaty of Waitangi. We supported that SOP; it is disappointing that National did not, and excluded that broader concept of not just dealing with the legal matters relating to the Treaty but resolving them in the context of both our history and our current need. That is really important because the Treaty of Waitangi, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, is a document that evolves over time and meets our needs as our needs change over time. It cannot be constrained to just one point in time and to one interpretation; that is not how that document works, and neither should it. The issues of colonisation that arose after the Treaty was signed, contrary to the Treaty wording, mean that there will be ongoing issues with colonisation that need to be reflected back in terms of Treaty justice.

Thirdly, we were very disappointed that our SOP to establish a register for pecuniary interests of judges was also denied by National. My colleague Kennedy Graham made an attempt to put this in place last year, too, as I understand it. This is just about making sure that there is transparency for the financial affairs of people in those core constitutional positions. We now have a system, available for the public, to show transparency of MPs’ pecuniary interests, and we think that that should be the same for judges as well.

We were disappointed that the SOP from Louisa Wall to enshrine in statute the long-established practice of judges of the Māori Land Court being appointed on the advice and recommendation of the Minister for Māori Development was not supported, but now we know why: at the same time that this issue was being dealt with through this debate on the Judicature Modernisation Bill, National was planning to decimate the Māori Land Court, without telling the Minister for Māori Development about it. So of course National then said: “Well, we don’t want to have a clause in this bill that requires the Minister for Māori Development to know anything about the appointment of judges.”, or, actually, anything else to do with the Māori Land Court, it appears, because National has decided that it knows much more about it and will simply go around firing very large numbers of staff from this court, which has been a—

Louisa Wall: They voted for it—crazy.

METIRIA TUREI: It is crazy. So the Māori Party voted—

Louisa Wall: They voted against the SOP.

METIRIA TUREI: Yes—against the SOP. Well, there you go. The Māori Land Court does have a chequered history for Māori over its lifetime, and in the early years it was a real tool of the State to take land from Māori, but as times have changed and circumstances change there has been a greater reclamation of both the Treaty concepts and also the rights of iwi Māori to have some control over that process, and the Māori Land Court has oftentimes been a really important line of defence and protection for whānau and hapū who are trying to protect their land.

The fact that not only was Louisa Wall’s SOP denied by National but that National is now trying to, basically, destroy the court through significant job loss just goes to show that these few remaining defences of Māori land are being taken by National—I mean, it opposed the Green Party’s Public Works Act legislation that would have stopped Māori land from being taken under the Public Works Act as well. It is now decimating the Māori Land Court. It is not supporting greater involvement of the Minister for Māori Development in the appointment of judges to the Māori Land Court. It all smells like, looks like, and is walking like National is wanting to crack open the few defences that remain to enable Māori to protect their land in customary and communal ownership. So all of those things together spell very bad news for Māori, and I am very surprised that the Māori Party has supported those provisions. Hei aha. [Never mind.]

I also would say that we were very disappointed that another of Louisa Wall’s SOPs, which was to take into account the desirability of the judiciary to reflect the broader cultural and gender picture, if you like, of Aotearoa, was also denied. If we are to remove the systemic racism that still pervades the courts and the legal system—despite many attempts to actually try to fix that, there is still, none the less, systemic racism; there is still a significant unconscious bias in the legal system—then one of the core means to deal with that is to have representatives from across the gender and ethnic spectrum represented in the judiciary. It helps to raise awareness, it is a natural check on some of those unconscious biases, and it often provides support for a systemic change inside these organisations to support judges and the legal system to move on and do better. So not having any kind of commitment to diversity undermines the need for the judiciary and for the legal system to be less biased in the ways that we know it is. So that was a real shame.

But, overall, we accept that there is more good than bad in this legislation. We have supported it so far, and we will support it at the third reading as well. Thank you.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First supports the work of the Law Commission and of the officials who worked for so long to modernise and improve New Zealand’s system of judicature. It is legislation that has been a long time coming, and I think that, overall, New Zealand First has no difficulty with anything that it provides, except for one thing that I will come to later.

I do want to pause just at this time to say, as others have, that there is one major, glaring issue that the legislation does not cover and is outside its scope, but nevertheless I think I will take just a few seconds to reiterate that a really big issue for the justice system in New Zealand is the cost of it and, therefore, access to the system by ordinary people who simply, so often, cannot afford to pay for justice. We have all had people in our offices talking to us about that, and most of us have tried to help people through the system, only to realise that the cost is the real barrier. Therefore, what I have often asked this Government to do—and I ask it once again—is to have another look at the legal aid legislation and improve the thresholds so that a far wider section of the New Zealand community can have access to legal aid, because, in the end, that is the only way that we are going to tackle that major problem of the cost of justice and, therefore, access to it.

New Zealand First will not be voting in favour of this legislation, not because we do not support most of what it says at all but for only one reason, and that is the requirement for the compulsory retirement of judges at the age of 70. That, for us, is a deal-breaker. That means we cannot vote for the legislation even though we support 99 percent of the rest of it. The reasons why we think this is so important are, firstly, that this is just plain, simple ageism. The Government should be ensuring that people capable of working beyond the age of 70 are given, as of right, the opportunity to do so.

The Human Rights Act itself is very clear that age as a means of discrimination is unlawful. Employers cannot do it. Why should the State be doing it when it comes to judges? Thirdly, it is utterly unnecessary for there to be a requirement for retirement at age 70. Few people who find themselves unable to perform their duties after that age—or even before it, for that matter—would wish to continue to do so, and there is no reason why the Chief Justice should not intervene and talk to people who are in a position where they should be retiring. But the real reason is that age 70 is not so late in life these days that very able people should not be able to continue to carry on, and I have appeared before judges well over the age of 70 who were very, very astute indeed. In fact, their experience should not be taken lightly, because that experience is of huge value for the judicial commission and the community.

And if there really are issues about the competency of judges, then they arise at all ages. There is nothing magic about the age of 70 to determine whether or not somebody suddenly becomes not competent. So if there really is an issue about competency, then why are judges not on a 7-year appointment basis, renewable for those whose appointments should be renewed and not renewed for those whose appointments should not be? That would be a far better and fairer and more effective system than this arbitrary choice of the age of 70. We are voting against the legislation for that reason alone.

But I also want to place on record New Zealand First’s strong objection to the failure of the Government to legislate now for the publication of all District Court judgments. We do not mean those minor pronouncements that are made orally, but, fundamentally, all District Court judgments. We were told that the reason why the legislation no longer requires that publication is resourcing issues, and yet we were told this by the officials: “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 imminent—obviously, there are resources being made available—so I do not see why the legislation should not now provide for the publication of those judgments even if there is to be a delay before it is actually done.

As far as I am concerned, this Government is simply reneging on its responsibility—and its undertaking, in fact, originally—to see that the District Court judgments were going to be published. The original bill itself sets out to say that one of its most important purposes is the transparency of the judicial system. That comes right down to the publication of judgments through all of the court system. So it is very strange that a bill that sets out to be transparent is actually now not providing full transparency as far as District Court judgments are concerned. Remember, the District Court now has jurisdiction of up to $300,000 so that by itself is one good reason why those judgments need to be published.

What we saw in the original legislation was this, in clause 167, and I think it should have been retained: “(1) Every final written judgement of a senior 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.” Then it goes on to say: “(4) …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 judgement transcribed by an official transcription service.” Why on earth are we not seeing that preserved in this bill? Of course it should be.

The argument for resourcing is a vacuous one. We can see from the officials’ own advice that resources are being made available and that it will be possible to publish District Court judgments next year—at least the significant ones. It is a small step further for the legislation to provide for the publication of all such judgments, with the exception of those that it is simply unnecessary to provide for.

New Zealand First members would not have voted against the legislation because of the failure to require publication of District Court judgments, but we cannot vote for legislation with such an objectionable provision in it as to require the compulsory retirement of judges at the age of 70 years. That is a disappointment to us because we think that this is otherwise a very good piece of legislation that we would have preferred to support. But that provision is so objectionable that it means we have no choice but to vote against it. For that reason only you will hear our vote against the bills.

Otherwise, I do want to make it clear that New Zealand First does support the work that has been done by the Law Commission and by the officials to bring forward legislation that will update and improve New Zealand’s judicial system in the way that is proposed in the bills. So I am sorry to those who would be looking forward to our vote for the bill. Unfortunately, because of the provision for compulsory retirement of judges at age 70, our vote has to be against.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): It is my pleasure to stand in support of the Senior Courts Bill, which was formerly part of the Judicature Modernisation Bill, and we are here today to hear it in its third reading.

As we have heard in today’s debate, this legislation has been quite some time in getting to this final stage of the process. However, like a great Wangapeka cheese, good things take time. This Government is committed to improving public services, and this legislation, in the name of the Hon Amy Adams, is yet another example of delivering on our priorities.

The Law Commission reviewed the Judicature Act 1908, and this legislation is largely in response to that review. It includes a huge amount of input from officials and it also has nine recommendations that came out of the work of the Justice and Electoral Committee. The end result is legislation that improves the flexibility, the responsiveness, and the transparency of New Zealand’s court system and brings it into alignment with a 21st century system.

I was surprised to learn that our court system is one of the last areas of the public sector that still operates a paper-based model. So the time is right to modernise it and, therefore, I commend this legislation to the House.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure as a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee to speak on this the Judicature Modernisation Bill that has been split into 23 bills, and I will speak primarily to one soon. I want to just acknowledge the work of the Law Commission and its report Review of the Judicature Act 1908: Towards a New Courts Act. We really should acknowledge that that piece of work that it undertook actually has helped result in this legislation before the House. I would also like to thank the officials and also the select committee and previous select committees. I actually have had no active involvement in submissions and the process that the select committee went through to get to this point, but now as a member of that select committee I get to speak on this the third reading.

I just want to note a few things in terms of what this legislation will enable. It will provide, for example, the District Courts to deal with civil cases up to $350,000, from $200,000, so we are expanding the jurisdiction and, I guess, the cases that the District Court can hear. It is also improving flexibility for the court to limit vexatious proceedings, and I am sure there will be members of the court system who will be happy to hear that. It also enables specialist panels of judges to be assigned to hear particular types of cases in the High Court. It was really interesting finding out where that came from, and it was Issues Paper 29 that the Law Commission put out and it was actually replicating a system that currently operates in Australian courts. When I was looking at what types of specialist skills or specialist panels we are looking at, the example that is given a lot in the literature that I have read is about commercial specialisation, and maybe my colleague Clare Curran will talk about that. The rationale was actually about providing access to justice for the commercial community, so I found that really an interesting rationale.

I really want to spend most of my contribution on Te Ture Whenua Maori Amendment Bill, and that is because during the Committee stage debate I did move a Supplementary Order Paper—it was Supplementary Order Paper 216—to ensure that that reform of section 7 of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act was really clear that the Minister for Māori Development appoints the Māori Land Court judges, and that was really to acknowledge the taonga that our whenua is. Māori land is so special, and Māori and the connection and relationship between the whenua, the landowners, the Māori Land Court, and the Minister for Māori Development, from my perspective—and I think the perspective of many of us across the House—was that we should actually make it explicit in the legislation.

What is made explicit in the legislation, actually, is that that is the responsibility of the Attorney-General. So we amended the legislation to now empower the Attorney-General to seek expressions of interest, to appoint judges for the Māori Land Court, but there is a really interesting clause in this Te Ture Whenua Maori Amendment Bill, in new section 7(7), which says “If the Attorney-General is not for the time being responsible for recommending the appointment of Judges of the court, he or she must publish information explaining the responsible Minister’s process for doing the things referred to in subsection (6).”, which is his responsibility and autonomy in appointing and going out to the public to enable people who are suitably qualified to nominate for any vacancies.

I do want to highlight, as my colleague Metiria Turei did, the fact that the Māori Party MPs did not support that the Minister for Māori Development appoints the Māori Land Court judges. So people out there will think that that is really strange and bizarre, and why did the Māori Party and the Minister himself not support the fact that he should be the one as the Minister for Māori Development to appoint the Māori Land Court judges. I have got no idea why they did not think it was an important thing to do. What we do know, and I would like to acknowledge my colleague Meka Whaitiri for highlighting the fact, is that there are a lot of changes in the Māori Land Court and there are a lot of redundancies happening. I presume that, for example, that means that the Minister for Māori Development has had or will have no responsibilities in that area. Obviously, the staff who are employed by the Māori Land Court are there to support the Māori Land Court judges. So it is just an incredibly curious thing for the Māori Party to vote against.

One of the other areas that I was particularly passionate about was about the diversity and inclusion of the judiciary, and the Law Commission, in fact, said to the Justice and Electoral Committee in its submission—and made it really clear—that it thought judges should be appointed based on gender, cultural, and ethnic diversity. It was really clear that having a representative judiciary was going to make access to justice a lot easier. So for the Law Commission, having social awareness and sensitivities to diverse communities and tikanga Māori was a way of providing criteria that would enable the judiciary to reflect society.

I think there are a lot of discussions happening at the moment about issues such as structural bias. The old-fashioned term is institutional racism, and maybe one of the best ways to address institutional racism would actually be to ensure that the people who are making the decisions when people come before the courts actually have the social awareness and sensitivity to be able to understand some of the circumstances, some of the life history, of people coming before the courts to hopefully make it—if it is their first time and their first offence—the last time that the court has to deal with any issues. That particular Supplementary Order Paper was not supported by the Government, but it also was not supported by New Zealand First, so I do acknowledge that, that my colleague Denis O’Rourke did not think that was a good strategy, I suppose, in making sure that there was diversity and inclusion within the judiciary.

But I did highlight in the Committee stage debate that the police have committed to diversity and inclusion, and actually have a fifty-fifty aspiration for women in the police force. Some would have thought that that was a lot harder to achieve, but I think putting it on the table and continuing to have the discussion about it means that it is out there, we have to think about it, and we actually have to make an active decision about whether we support initiatives such as that. So I was really pleased to be able to put that to the House, and in spite of it not going through, I do know that judges now do receive tikanga Māori training, for example, which is reflective of the skill set that is required in the undertaking of their particular duties.

I am not going to prolong the debate any longer. We are supporting this piece of legislation. I want to congratulate Minister Adams. She has had a few successes lately, and I think she is incredibly diligent in the work that she does. I commend the bills to the House. Thank you.

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Senior Courts Bill, which was previously the Judicature Modernisation Bill, in support of this piece of legislation that looks to improve the flexibility, responsiveness, and transparency of New Zealand’s court system.

This is going to be a very brief call. We have already heard members opposite and members from this side of the House traversing the different intricacies of this legislation, but the one thing that I think I will touch on is the clarification around the use of audiovisual links with regard to sentencing.

Last week, during the adjournment, I was honoured to go and visit staff at Invercargill Prison. It was an exceptional visit, and they were quite passionate about the use of audiovisual links with regard to sentencing. Not only is it beneficial to offenders—they do not, obviously, have to be physically moved to court. They were showing me the facilities that they have to facilitate the audiovisual link with the judge for sentencing. Notwithstanding the safety plans and safety procedures that the staff has for transporting offenders to court, it obviously means that staff resourcing is lessened when we do use audiovisual links. That remains at the discretion of the judiciary, and I think that it is a good thing that this legislation seeks to enable the justice system to be more easily accessed along with technology advances. This evolution should be celebrated. It fits in nicely with this Government’s reform of Better Public Services, and it means that justice is delivered more effectively.

With that, I commend this legislation to the House.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I am pleased to take a call in the third reading of what was the Judicature Modernisation Bill, which has now been divided into 23 bills. This legislation, I think we all agree, is very out of date. It is 100 years old—long overdue for an overhaul and for modernisation. I do not want to cover the ground that has been dealt with by others. I will confine my comments and my contribution to some concerns that I have about what we have ended up with and, also, with some pointers, really, to the way forward if we are really serious about modernisation of the courts system, modernisation of our justice system, and some of the work that is being done in that area, for which, unfortunately, this legislation did not go nearly as far as it could have. That being said, there is a lot of important work that is being put into this legislation, as, no doubt, it has been held up in the House. It is a huge piece of legislation. It has been through an extensive select committee process.

The main point of concern is around the late deletion of those clauses 167, 401, 544, 565, and 571, which would have required online publishing of all final written judgments. The fact that this was included in the bill as it originally went to the Justice and Electoral Committee was important. It was actually quite radical and really did show that there were steps being made towards true modernisation. Unfortunately, the Minister of Justice was spooked during the process of the bill going through the House and, unfortunately, also would not support the Supplementary Order Paper by my colleague Jacinda Ardern at the Committee stage, which would have phased this in over time and would have, perhaps, addressed those issues around the enormity of the publishing of online decisions and the cost that that would involve. Instead, the Minister was guided by the advice that the 15,300 final decisions that would fall within the scope of the requirement of this legislation would require around a million dollars and 10 fulltime-equivalent publication staff. I think that was at the point where, probably, there were words had with the Minister—you know: “There’s no way that this could be afforded. You’ll have to back away from this.”

Unfortunately, it was backed away from. The impact of this, though, is that this is, therefore, not a true modernisation piece of legislation if we are not moving towards a system where there is accessibility of judgments for the public and for people who are doing research in different areas and who do not have access to the legal systems where you can access judgments. If they are not online, if they are not accessible, then we are not truly modernising our system and we are not making it more accessible to the public and more accessible as a system using the technology that we have available. I think that is a great shame, and I am hoping that we can revisit and redress this at some point in the near future.

I would also like to remind the Government of its obligations under the Open Government Partnership, which it is a signatory to, for easy digital interaction with Government. Access to the justice system, and access to the decisions made through the justice system, is part of that easy digital interaction with Government, and I say that this Government should not be paying lip service to these treaties, to these weighty documents that it signs up to that give commitments to being true open government. It is a multilateral initiative between dozens of Governments and civil society to create a more transparent Government regime. This is one of the things that it could be doing more work on. It also, as my colleague Jacinda Ardern said, runs counter to the quite strong comments made by the former Minister of Justice Judith Collins on this, where we must be able to access it. She said that New Zealanders are paying for this justice; they should be able to access it—unfortunately, that has been wound back.

I also want to touch on, in thinking about the way forward, the fact that there is new thinking in this area. I would like to hear from the Minister of Justice at some point soon, given that we are moving into modernisation of the justice system, that we could be looking at the concept of online courts—an online court system. There is work being done at the moment in New Zealand by our only true cyber law expert, former District Court justice Judge David Harvey, who has just set up the institute of cyber law in Auckland into the means for more people to get justice faster and cheaper, which would help to narrow a civil justice gap and fulfil the State’s democratic duty to ensure citizens can have their disputes resolved fairly. This is true modernisation. It is a move looking at how we could move to an online court system where more people can access justice faster and quicker. He points to the fact that, currently, civil claims of up to $15,000 can be dealt with cheaply in a disputes tribunal, but delays and costs of taking a case to the higher courts are prohibitive for a dispute over less than $75,000. He also believes that the judiciary is unlikely to propel us towards an online court system; it is a revolution that only politicians can make happen.

There is a considerable amount of work going on at the moment around this. There have been some reports of the Civil Justice Council, chaired by Professor Richard Susskind, about an online dispute resolution for low-value civil claims. A second report has recently been released by an organisation called JUSTICE entitled Delivering Justice in an Age of Austerity, and these are processes that are about the resolution of low-value civil disputes up to £25,000—this came from the UK. These are ideas that are really worth thinking about and are worth pursuing, and I hope that following on from the judicature modernisation legislation, when it passes, this will be one of the next steps that, as a country, we can take towards truly accessible justice.

I do want to, finally, just raise some caution around another part of this legislation, which is around moving to an electronic system for the registry of courts, which, of course, is a sensible idea, but where there are precedents—particularly in Auckland, in the Family Court, where this was attempted a few years ago and where it has created more problems than it has actually solved. There have been serious delays and huge backlogs within the Family Court by moving to an electronic system, the point here being that whenever these moves are made, they have to be done well and they have to be done properly. Taking Novopay as an example, where you turn off one system that has been working in order to bring in a new one, and you do not keep the old system going for a while just in case the new one falls over—this is one of the lessons that we really have to learn within the justice system as well. If we are moving to an electronic system, then we do have to make sure that we are doing it carefully, that we are doing it properly, that we are doing our due diligence, and that we do not turn it into another Novopay.

JOANNE HAYES (National): I stand to take the last call on the Senior Courts Bill—which arises from the Judicature Modernisation Bill—in the third reading. I must say, I was on the Justice and Electoral Committee in the 50th Parliament, when I first came here, and the Judicature Modernisation Bill was the very first bill that they put in front of me as we started going through it. I am pleased that I get to actually have a little bit of a say in a speech on the legislation just before it receives the Royal assent.

Essentially, this legislation—as everybody has said—is modernising how our courts are administered. It is modernising how our services are delivered to the public and the expectations of the public as to what they expect from the court system, and it is taking the focus off the papers and the building and putting the focus back on to victims and the customers who use the court system. The select committee has done a wonderful job.

The Minister of Justice, Amy Adams, has carried this legislation right through to its fruition and she too has done an excellent job on the legislation. It only leaves me to commend the legislation to the House. Thank you very much.

A party vote was called for on the question, That 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, the 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 be now read a third time.

Ayes 109

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

Noes 12

New Zealand First 12.

Bills read a third time.

Bills

Education Legislation Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed from 14 September.

Clauses 1 and 2 (continued)

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): When we were last considering this bill we were debating clauses 1 and 2. Chris Hipkins had the call, and if he wishes he has 15 seconds.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I do indeed, because I was robbed. The clock was wrong when I was last contributing, so I hope that the Chair will view me kindly and give me an additional 5 minutes to talk on the Education Legislation Bill, as I fill the role that I occupied prior to Shane Jones’ valedictory—helping to fill in the time until the Hon Phil Goff has the opportunity to do his valedictory, somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes from now.

The Education Legislation Bill is somewhat of a disappointment of a bill, as we get into the concluding parts of this debate around the title and commencement. It contains a number of provisions that are uncontroversial and really could be included in a statutes amendment bill without taking up any of the Committee’s time, and then it includes some that are a little more controversial. We have been through those in detail, but to sum up some of the more controversial changes, the bill does allow for charter schools to be operated by tertiary education institutions—in particular, polytechs and universities. The universities universally said they did not want to do that; the polytechs, of course, are the ones that have indicated that they want to do that. For some of them there are serious concerns about their ability to manage their existing business without having to take on the responsibility of a charter school.

The bill allows schools to change their opening hours in consultation with their community, and, of course, that creates some issues for parents where they may have different kids going to different schools with different opening hours and the logistical nightmare that that could be. The bill allows principals to run more than one school. Throughout the Committee stage we put a number of questions to Hekia Parata about how that would actually work, and the Government was unable to answer any questions about the ultimate accountability of a school principal who is managing more than one school. The bill extends out-of-school care provision to home-based early childhood education providers. I want to say at the outset here that we made a number of changes to these provisions at the Education and Science Committee to ensure that there were adequate adult to child ratios, and we certainly welcomed the Government’s pragmatism on those, although we do still have some quality concerns about how out-of-school care for older kids will be managed by those providers whose primary duty is to manage early childhood education kids.

There are some other things that the bill does, but perhaps the most controversial is the establishment of a new beginning teacher position, which was not thoroughly debated by the select committee because it was tabled only a few weeks before the select committee was due to be reporting the bill back to the House. Those amendments were incorporated by a majority. They create a new teacher position called a trainee teacher. They allow the Ministry of Education, or the Minister through the Ministry of Education, to impose that on a school, and that was incredibly controversial. It deals with some of the issues that were canvassed around the Teach First NZ programme, but actually goes much wider than that. We had the opportunity to debate that, but the Minister of Education was unable to provide reassurance around how that position might be used and whether that position would be over and above the existing staffing entitlement for schools, and, as a result of that, the Labour Party still cannot support that particular amendment.

We certainly cannot support the provisions that allow for charter schools to be operated by tertiary education providers. We have concerns about principals running more than one school, and about schools being able to change their opening hours. With those factors in mind, we will be voting against the bill, although I would say some of those other minor amendments and updating amendments—particularly the amendments in Part 2—are supported by the Labour members of the House. We have voted in favour of those, but the totality of the changes means that we cannot support the bill as a whole. Thank you.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe e Te Heamana o Te W’are nei. I would like to begin by suggesting some titles for this bill, and my titles are derived from a quote that I read in the other parts of the Committee stage. It is from the New Zealand Principals’ Federation, and, taking from what it said, this bill could easily be called the “Altering the Shape of Our Education System Bill”. It could also be the “Changing Our Education System Without an Openly Expressed Rationale Bill”.

I refer to comments that I made in the first reading. I believe that this bill is really about preparing our education system for privatisation. That is what underpins this particular bill. The Education Legislation Bill makes several changes that do not really make any sense except if you were preparing the education system for a different pathway. I suggest to the Committee that the comments in the submission from the New Zealand Principals’ Federation—namely, that “On the surface, they might be described as a collection of ill-conceived baseless changes which lack any intelligent rationale.”—are pretty strong words, and they are strong words that I think that this Committee should take note of.

An organisation like the New Zealand Principals’ Federation is a very important part of the New Zealand education system, and that is why I stand here and say that those changes to charter schools—which we will never agree with on this side of the House—and the changes to how schools are managed are making a more corporate model for self-governing schools. If we go back to 1989, the whole notion of self-managed schools was in the legislation that was put up in 1989, and we need to examine this new legislation very closely for what it really does.

I say to the Committee today that I do not agree with this particular piece of legislation. I believe that the title ought to be something quite different—more descriptive about what it actually does. So my contribution on this day, albeit a very exciting day, may be that I think, in all seriousness, that those particular clauses that make significant changes all add up to exactly what I said—preparing the education system for privatisation.

In terms of the other part, Part 2 of the bill, I thought several of those issues within Part 2 ought to have been in a separate bill altogether. For example, the changes that are made to the Ngarimu VC and 28th (Maori) Battalion Memorial Scholarship Fund, I think, are parts of the bill that I do actually support. But Part 1 I think ought to be renamed the “Altering the Shape of Our Education System Without Any Expressed Rationale Bill”, and the expressed rationale that ought to be in there is “privatising our education system”. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): In accordance with the Speaker’s decision I will now report progress.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported progress on the Education Legislation Bill, no progress on the Building (Pools) Amendment Bill, and no progress on the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill.

Report adopted.

Valedictory Statements

Valedictory Statements

Mr SPEAKER: In accordance with Standing Order 360(3) I call on the Hon Phil Goff to make his valedictory statement. I understand it is the wish of the House that should we adjourn earlier than 6 o’clock, or slightly later than 6 o’clock, we will then, at that stage, rise for the dinner break.

Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): It was some 35 years ago that I first stood in this House. I was actually elected 6 months before I gave my maiden speech, because it was the tradition in the Muldoon years that Parliament was not called for 6 months after an election. I would not encourage the current Government to consider adopting that practice.

I looked back at my maiden speech and I thought that with experience and with changed circumstances many of the policies that I have pursued over my time in this House have changed. But what I do not think has changed are the values that I pronounced in that very first time that I stood up in this Parliament. What I believe in very strongly is a socially just society that respects all of its people equally and that works to ensure that people have access to their basic needs like housing, health, and education to live their lives decently, and a society that is committed to every child born or brought up in this country having the opportunity to achieve to their full potential.

I am part of a lucky generation. They call us baby boomers. We grew up in the aftermath of the Second World War, and we stood on the shoulders of a generation who had gone before us, many of whom had gone overseas to sacrifice their lives for the freedom that we enjoy in this country. It was a generation who lived and suffered through the Depression. I want to pay tribute to that generation and, in particular, I want to pay tribute to the first Labour Government, which strove to achieve a country where people got the best education they could, regardless of their income; the best health treatment they could, regardless of what their position in society was; and housing that gave a stable life for them to raise their families in.

I was a beneficiary of those policies. I achieved an education that was beyond the reach of my parents. Both my mother’s and father’s families went through hard times. In particular, the influence on my life was my paternal grandmother, a woman called Jessie. Her brother died in the First World War. Her husband, my grandfather, fought on the Western Front, was gassed, and spent the end of the war in a prisoner of war camp. He paid with his health for that experience and he died in 1934, about 12 years after the family migrated to New Zealand. He left behind him a widow and three children, the oldest of whom was 14. They had paid two-thirds of their mortgage but they were unable to keep up their payments, and they found themselves out on the road.

A year later a man called Michael Joseph Savage was elected as the first Labour Prime Minister of this country, and I grew up on my grandmother’s knee believing that Michael Joseph Savage was a saint. He did some very practical things. He lifted the widow’s mite by a shilling a week—it does not sound very much to us today—but, most importantly, he gave families like my grandmother’s family hope for the future.

My grandmother continued to suffer after that. She lost her youngest son, John, my uncle, aged 19, in the war in the Pacific serving with the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Maybe as a consequence of those experiences that she went through, her family believed that working people, who had given so much for their country, deserved a fair go in return.

I grew up under the principle that Michael Joseph Savage followed—that social justice should be our guiding principle. That, I guess, was reinforced by my Catholic upbringing. It was reinforced by excellent teachers that I had at school. I pay tribute to my old school, Papatoetoe High School, where working-class kids went and got the best education they could ever have hoped to get.

I was also inspired by a young guy who was flatting with my brother, Warren. At age 16, halfway through my last year in what was then called the seventh form, I was not so politely asked to leave home by my father. We still argue about this, and we are probably going to meet halfway, but it was partly his responsibility and partly mine. But that young man was a guy called Mike Moore, who went on to become Prime Minister of this country and Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO). So I had good role models. Another role model was my predecessor as the MP for Mt Roskill. His name was Arthur Faulkner. He was a Spitfire pilot during the Second World War. He was an excellent local MP, serving Mt Roskill for 24 years. He was a decent and capable man, and he taught me much about politics.

Two and a half years after I succeeded him as MP for Mt Roskill, the then Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, called what became termed the “schnapps election”. We have all seen the photographs, we remember the clips on television, and Don McKinnon still wonders why he was standing behind the then Prime Minister while those famous shots were taken. But I remember gathering that night upstairs in the Leader of the Opposition’s room—David Lange’s room—and the palpable excitement that we felt that there was going to be change in New Zealand and we were going to be part of that.

I was privileged to be elected by my caucus to Cabinet in 1984 at the tender age of 31 years, which I think still makes me the youngest Cabinet Minister in New Zealand’s political history. I was young, and perhaps that was an advantage. I did not know the constraints on Ministers. The first thing I did as the Minister of Housing was to unilaterally stop the sale of State houses. A triumvirate of finance Ministers—Caygill, Prebble, and Douglas—came to see me and said: “Do you know what the fiscal implications of your announcement are?”. I did not, and I was not concerned about that, but I was pleased at what I did.

I said we were excited, but our first Cabinet meeting was before we were sworn in. We were briefed by Rod Deane from the Reserve Bank and Bernie Galvin from Treasury. I remember that excitement subsiding as they told us what the state of the country’s books was. We were broke, and there were really tough measures that were going to be needed to rescue our country from bankruptcy. I remember grimly thinking: “This is going to be a one-term Government.” In the event, it was not. We took the hard decisions—most of them, I believe, right; some of them wrong—and we were rewarded for our courage with a second landslide victory in 1987.

The excitement of that election did not last long. I remember running into Roger Douglas in January 1988—I was still in the habit of coming back early from holidays, thinking “This is a really important job. I need to be behind my desk.”—and Douglas saying to me “I got a letter from the Prime Minister.”, and I wondered “Why would the Prime Minister be writing to the Minister of Finance?”. That Government, which started with so much promise, ended after the collapse of the share market and with the disunity that marred the second term of that Government, and that is a lesson for any Government in this country.

Just reflecting on the portfolios, my first portfolio—I think your first portfolio is like your first love, with respect to my wife, who is sitting in the gallery. “Not quite as good as your first love” is what I should have said.

Jacinda Ardern: You’ve had heaps of portfolios.

Hon PHIL GOFF: I have had many portfolios, but I have only had one wife, and she will be pleased to know that.

Mr SPEAKER: Get your way out of that, Mr Goff.

Hon PHIL GOFF: I diverge, Mr Speaker. What I loved about the housing portfolio was that I believed that you could make a tangible difference in people’s lives, and I hoped that I was able to do that for the many families that we were able to help.

There were other portfolios where I also felt that, working together with a group of other people, we were able to make a difference. Making a difference is what is really important when you come into this House. That is what all of us want to do.

You do not always go along with public opinion. I remember when I became the Minister for the Environment and very soon after that an organisation called the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research put a report on my table. That report said that within a matter of months the Pōhutu Geyser at Whakarewarewa would collapse, and it would collapse because the residents and the commercial establishments had all decided that having cheap energy was really great and they would sink bores quite close to it. I was appalled at that thought, and worked, remarkably, with Peter Tapsell and Bob Tizard, and we made the decision to close those bores within a 1.5 kilometre radius. I think if I had gone to Rotorua at that time I would have been lynched by the locals. But today that geyser is still there. That geyser was there for me to take my kids to, and will be there for me to take my grandkids to. It is a small thing, but it gives you a sense of the satisfaction of how we can make a difference in what we do, and when we make decisions that might not always be popular but are the right things to do, we should be ready to be judged by history rather than by what the contemporary people might say about us.

Education was a challenging portfolio for all of those Ministers who have carried it out. I inherited the portfolio from David Lange. I remember this cartoon. It had David Lange floating down serenely on a parachute and had me plunging to the ground with this lead weight around my leg called “education”, and David is calling “How’s the portfolio going, Phil?”. And it certainly felt like that. But we made some remarkable changes, with Learning for Life, Before Five, and Tomorrow’s Schools. One of the small changes that I made—looking back at my colleague who was also a Minister of Education—was the Education Amendment Bill in 1989, where we enabled public institutions to take on international fee-paying students. It was not, Trevor, always a popular decision with all of my colleagues and with the education establishment. It was going to ruin education, I was told. International education today is a $3 billion enterprise that employs highly skilled people at high rates of pay, and again I was proud to be part of making that change.

In 1990, I and some of my colleagues, Annette King and Trevor Mallard, lost our seats in the landslide victory of the incoming Bolger Government. We all came back 3 years later, in 1993. We were termed “retreads”—I think that was the phrase. But all of us remembered the lesson that that had taught us: that serving and being accountable to our local community and to our electorate is what gives us the right to be in and stay in this place.

In 1999 Helen Clark appointed me to two portfolios—one was foreign affairs and trade and the other was justice. They were a curious pairing of portfolios, but, Prime Minister, if you want to keep a Minister busy and keep them out from under your feet that is probably a very good thing to do.

Rt Hon John Key: I don’t know where he is at the moment.

Hon PHIL GOFF: Ha, ha! But I relished both of those portfolios. I look back at some of the legislation we passed over that time. There was the Bail Act, the Sentencing Act, the Parole Act, the Victims’ Rights Act, and the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act. Some of those were laws that were tough laws, but I believe that combined with addressing the causes of crime, they contributed towards making our community a safer place.

Foreign affairs and trade was a quite different portfolio. It was stimulating; it was fascinating. We had the challenges, quite early on in our time, of 9/11. I remember 9/11 well. I habitually went home at about midnight. I got taken home by our VIP Transport Service. I had been in bed for about 20 minutes when I got a call from my driver. He said: “Minister, I think you should go downstairs and watch the television.” I thought that was a very strange thing to suggest at 20 to 1 in the morning. But that was a scarring experience for the whole world, and I remember the dramatic nature of what happened and the decision that we made shortly thereafter that we would need to commit our soldiers, putting them in the line of duty, at risk because of the threat that al-Qaeda posed to the world.

I remember the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami. Mary and I had decided we would stay at home on the farm rather than go away those Christmas holidays. I remember building a structure out in the front of the farm, and getting the telephone call. I remember the dramatically awful experience of going to a place called Khao Lak, north of Phuket, and going to a temple that was a morgue for several thousand people who had been dead and exposed to the sea and the sunshine for about 8 days. I remember the huge admiration I had for the disaster victim identification team—our New Zealand police officers—who did a job that I am just amazed they could have stomached, for 2 or 3 weeks at a time. The smell, the sight, and the taste of death is something that will always remain with me, but, equally, so too will my respect for those people, who served our country so well.

I said before that I was proud that we made the commitment to Afghanistan. I was equally proud when we made the decision not to commit to the invasion of Iraq. We believed that the invasion was a poor decision, that it was ill-founded, and that it was the wrong thing to do, and I believe that that decision by the allies has led to the appalling situation that we face in the Middle East still today. I was proud that this country stood up and was independent in its assessment and its delivery of its foreign policy—and we were right. As foreign Minister I had the opportunity to get out and meet with people in our Defence Force who were on deployment. I went to Bosnia, to Timor, to Afghanistan, and to the Solomon Islands. In every one of those deployments I saw the respect that was accorded the men and women of the New Zealand Defence Force. They were professional, they acted with courage, and they treated the local people decently.

I remember a particular example. I have been part of the movement for an independent East Timor since 1975, and I think Nick Smith and I went to East Timor in 1994, when it was under Indonesian occupation. But going back there—and some of us in the House were independent observers at the referendum in 1999 on the independence of East Timor in 1999. But I remember going there shortly after we had committed our troops in 2000. We were driving out of Suai in an army truck marked with a big kiwi emblem on the side. We drove by one of the many schools that had been burnt to the ground by the militias, and the kids were, therefore, taking their lessons under the tree. These were kids for whom a lifetime of experience said that a man in uniform was an oppressor and a threat to them. We drove by, and I asked my driver to stop. It was just a fantastic photograph—the burnt-out school, the tree, and the kids doing their lessons. As I got out of the truck, the kids looked up. I have got this wonderful picture of all of them running towards our truck with their thumbs up, saying: “Kia ora, Kiwis.” What they had learnt in a matter of a few months was that our people were decent people, who were there, on their behalf, to help them. I was incredibly proud of that experience.

I have particular regard for the SAS. Their toughness and their skill are matched by their integrity and their courage. It was also a proud moment to be there to tell Willie Apiata that he had won the Victoria Cross.

I was later privileged to become Minister of Defence. In that role, I was aware that one day I might have to explain to parents that their son or daughter had died in their country’s service. Sadly, the first New Zealander to die in Afghanistan was my nephew Matthew, who was serving with the 173rd airborne division of the American army. Our family still keenly feels that loss 9 years on. We understand only too well the emotions that other families who lose their children, their brothers, or their sisters in those circumstances go through.

In 2005 I took on the trade portfolio and worked immediately to try to negotiate a free-trade agreement with China and then with the countries of ASEAN. I want to pay tribute in this House to the skill and the absolute commitment of our trade negotiating teams. My first experience in a trade negotiation was in Hong Kong, with the WTO. Our people worked through the night. They went to bed at 3 o’clock in the morning, and they got up at 6 o’clock in the morning to continue that work. And I pay tribute to those people in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade who show that commitment to their country, and, in particular, I pay tribute to David Walker, who was my chief negotiator on the China free-trade talks. That was an amazing deal, to get the first free-trade agreement that any developed country had with China, and, Prime Minister, I think that that helped us immensely with the trebling of our exports, and that helped us not to sink into the severe recession that we might otherwise have suffered from with the global financial crisis.

I want to mention just one other portfolio, and it is disarmament. People thought, when I went overseas, it was curious that I was simultaneously Minister of Defence and Minister of disarmament. I have always been proud of our small country striving for a better and a more peaceful world. As a country, we have been ready to stand up and fight when it was necessary to combat evil. In the two World Wars our casualties per capita were higher than any other Commonwealth country, and in the First World War, they were higher than any country other than Russia. But we have always striven for a world in which alternative ways can be sought to resolve conflict.

I am proud, and Labour is proud, of Peter Fraser’s role in setting up, as a charter member, the United Nations. We are proud of our Prime Ministers Kirk, Lange, and Clark for their pursuit of a world free of nuclear weapons. Einstein once warned the world that splitting the atom changed everything except the way we think, and therefore we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. That warning remains relevant, and we need, as a country, to continue to lead the struggle for a world free of weapons of mass destruction. One of the things that we achieved during my time as Minister of disarmament was to be one of seven small countries that managed to get through a convention against cluster munitions. And our country should be proud of the role that we played.

It is a moving occasion for me to be making my last contribution as a parliamentarian. I want to thank my Mt Roskill electorate, which has supported me so strongly for so long. It is a wonderful and diverse community, and every day that I have served the holy city of Mount Roskill has been an absolute privilege for me. I want to thank my electorate secretaries: the late John de Jager, Paul Grant, Christine McKain, Elaine Niven, and Terry Law. Each has worked for me for years, and they have done an amazing job. Likewise, my private secretary, Murray Wansbrough, sitting in the gallery, is still with me after many years. And all of those people—the seconded people who came from ministries, the personal staff we have, and our parliamentary staff—this Parliament can be truly proud of the calibre of people who work on our behalf.

To the New Zealand Labour Party. Andrew, I want to thank the Labour Party for making my parliamentary career possible. Our party is 100 years old. It has shaped the country that we are today. I want to acknowledge in particular my long-term bench mate and friend Annette King. We have been through a lot together, Annette, and you have done a fantastic job for this Parliament and our country.

Can I acknowledge that there are a number of parliamentarians in this House still today who started off working in my office: David Shearer, behind me; Jacinda Ardern; Moana Mackey; and Kris Faafoi. You could not have learnt from a better person. But there is somebody who went to the dark side, and I also have to acknowledge Paul Goldsmith, who is sinking lower into his chair as I mention his name. He did have the redeeming factor of being a boy from Mount Roskill.

To all of the people in my party organisation—those still with us today and those who have passed on—they have been my inspiration as well as my support. I would like, in particular, to acknowledge, somewhere in the gallery, Michael Wood, who has been the longstanding chair of my electorate. Michael is a young man of amazing integrity and of competence, he is sensible, and he is hard-working. He has served the community well on the Puketāpapa Local Board, and his candidature as the new Labour candidate for Mt Roskill makes it much easier for me today to relinquish this job.

To my family—Mary, in the gallery, who was my teenage sweetheart and remains the love of my life, and my children, Kris, Sara, and Kieran—your love, tolerance, and support have made it possible for me to do my job. You have made sacrifices for the job that I chose to do, and I pay tribute to the partners, the spouses, and the families of all of us in this House, who take the flak and sacrifice the family time on our behalf.

Finally, although I am leaving here, you have not, I promise, seen the last of me. It was a deep honour and privilege last weekend to have been elected with a strong mandate to serve my city of Auckland as its mayor. It is a city I love. It has a stunning environment. It has a richness of cultural diversity. It offers the people who live in our city choice and opportunity. It makes up 35 percent of our population and 37 percent of our production, but more than half of this country’s growth. Auckland is our country’s international city. By attracting and retaining the talent and enterprise that New Zealand needs to progress, it serves New Zealand as a whole. For New Zealand to succeed—Cabinet members, this will not be the last time you hear this—Auckland has to succeed. I look forward to working with the Government and with all members of the House to start to resolve the problems we all know about—the worsening traffic congestion and the housing unaffordability—which stand in the way of Auckland achieving for New Zealand and itself what we as a country need it to do.

This is an adversarial chamber. However, I believe that members elected to this Parliament all want to make this country a better place. I thank you all for your friendship. I thank you for indulging me today as I have reflected on my time in this Parliament. I wish every one of you well for the future, and farewell. Thank you very much.

Waiata

Sitting suspended from 6.09 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Bills

Education Legislation Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed.

Clauses 1 and 2 (continued)

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): I have to admit that I thought we were on the title and commencement, but clearly we are still on Parts 1 and 2. This bill—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Sorry, this is clauses 1 and 2, which is the—

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Clauses 1 and 2?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Yes, which is the title and commencement.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Thank you very much for the clarification, Mr Chair. I would hate to go wrong and deviate from the subject. I am not sure I can take a full call on this, but I thought I would just have a little go.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Oh yes, you can—yes, you can.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Other members of the House are urging me on, so I will do my best to say something pertinent and relevant. The Education Legislation Bill—sometimes I think these titles are extremely misleading, because they do not really say anything. You do not know whether they are the amendment bill or the legislation bill. There have been hundreds of these bills, but the title should, I feel, be more evocative, be more exciting, and be more relevant to the subject of the bill, but this one, again, is not particularly like that.

We have got problems with this bill for a number of reasons. Really, it has been pretty well thrashed out at previous stages, but we are concerned about a number of aspects of the bill in terms of the schools’ changing of school hours and other such matters, not to mention the charter provisions, which, of course, are a red rag to some of us because of the privatisation of what has been an excellent public education system. I guess we would like to see the title and the clauses in the commencement reflect that. This is actually a bill that could have been called the “Education Omnibus (Let’s Sneak In Some Awful Things While Doing Some Things That Are OK) Bill”—something like that—but that is not a very good title, either.

I would just like to take the call to say that the Green Party is not able to support this bill, despite some of the things in it that are what I just described as OK. Then there are some things in it that are actually not OK. But the worst thing about this bill, including the title and commencement, is that we never got to hear any reason for a lot of these things at the select committee. We never at the select committee heard any explanation for these changes around principals managing several schools, around the issue of hours in schools, around numbers of early childhood children at home being cared for, or around the charter schools. We never heard any reasons why these things were important.

At this stage of the process I am expressing the Green Party’s disappointment that the title and commencement clauses, like the rest of the bill, shed no light on what is actually a critical issue. The critical issue at this point in time is public, quality education, not piecemeal, bit by bit, undermining, in the name of choice and flexibility, a system that is based on making sure that every child in every community has access, more or less for free—it is not free any more, but more or less free—to equity in education. As we have heard in this Chamber today on other issues, we have a crisis in terms of poverty in this country. We have a problem with our institutions, and this bill, these clauses and this title, should reflect what is in here, which is that we are let down again. It is not that the Green Party or this House is let down again—I can live with that—but whom we have let down again are the children of this country and the parents and the families, because this is a bit of a mess.

We did not get many submitters because, under the title of Education Legislation Bill, this bill sounds really innocuous. It sounds like it is has got nothing. “We are just kind of, like, legislating education. It is just kind of, like, a cool thing to do.”—what a load of rubbish. Thank you very much.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 58

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

Clause 1 agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 58

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

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

Building (Pools) Amendment Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to Building Act 2004

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It seems timely that as we come to debate this bill a flyer from Safekids arrived in the mail, which a number of MPs may have received. I just want to point out that Safekids have been massive advocates in this space and have repeatedly called on this Parliament to make sure that we do not lessen the current safety provisions that exist, and it has to be said that the fencing of swimming pools, under the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act, has been incredibly successful in reducing the number of drownings. We have gone from 100 drownings in the 10 years before the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act, to 30 in the 10 years to 2012. So no doubt it has had an incredible impact.

What we need to be debating here in this Chamber today—well, the primary consideration for the Labour Party—in the context of debating these parts, has been what we are doing to further reduce the number of deaths and, I want to add, injuries because that was the significant point made by submitters on this bill. So that has been our primary consideration and it was from the point at the very beginning when Shane Jones, originally in Government, began a consultation process on this Act with the view—and I know this because I went back and read the beginning of the consultation document that Shane Jones put out as Minister—the primary goal, of reducing drownings even further.

That is in direct comparison to the discussion document because that process, for reasons I am unsure of, was dumped and restarted by the Hon Dr Nick Smith. When I went and read the beginning of that document, drownings were mentioned but so was a reduction in regulation and regulatory compliance. So there was a different focus. There was an additional focus added at that point, but for us the primary goal has been quite singular.

From Safekids’ perspective—look, it has put out this information on the number of injuries and deaths of children in New Zealand. Over 60 percent of all injuries to under-fives happen in the home, and it does point to the number of drownings—12 percent. It advises that pool owners use gates and stairs at doorways, and have a compliant fence. Safekids’ view of what a compliant fence needs to be and what this bill proposes are quite different, and I do want to talk about that a little bit.

The schedule of this bill does significantly change the way we define what is acceptable as an enclosure around a pool or an immediate pool area. If I could just give a little bit of context at the beginning of this Committee stage debate. When we first started this debate we entered into it in good faith and voted in favour because the Minister told this House, and the regulatory impact statement told this House, that this bill would save lives. Yet when we got to the select committee the overwhelming evidence from submitters was that their view—and they were experts in the field—was the opposite: we were in fact diluting, in their view, a number of the preventative factors that had been in place.

I will concede that there has been considerable change by the select committee on this bill, good change, and I thank the officials and the select committee members for that. One of the most significant changes has been around compliance. If I were to find where that was set out—I believe it was in clause 12 of the bill, in Part 1. The compliance regime for pools, obviously, is managed by local councils. Originally, the first draft of the bill stipulated that we would have certainty around the inspection regime. At the moment it is a bit ad hoc. There are some councils that inspect on a different cycle from others. By and large, though, many councils tend to inspect around the 3-yearly mark, and we know from Auckland Council that that was the case for them, because they came and told us that they inspected pools every 3 years, and that when they did that—I believe it was every 3 years—they found that 65 percent of pools were non-compliant, within a 3-yearly time frame.

The bill, however—I will grant you this—wanted to create uniformity, because some councils were not inspecting that often. So they chose 5 years. For some councils that would have been a lift, but not for everyone. So the select committee took the evidence base that said some councils are inspecting at 3 years and are finding a lack of compliance, and we know that for all of the drownings that have occurred in New Zealand, or I believe at least the majority of them, there have been non-compliant fences. It was not that the law had allowed a loophole that allowed a drowning; it was that there were non-compliant fences, so surely compliance would be the thing that would be most likely to prevent all drownings in pool areas.

So compliance needed to be absolutely at the top of our radar; absolutely. It was put, at the select committee, that perhaps, yes, having a uniform time and inspection cycle was a good thing, but let us lift the bar. Let us not have it at such a large lead time that you could have disintegrated fencing or latches, and so on. So I am very pleased that that was changed at the select committee to 3 years, under I believe what would be roughly around—clause 12 I think is where the inspection regime is. We are absolutely supportive of that.

Other gains that were made by the select committee included broadening the purpose beyond just drowning, to injury. I still vividly remember the paediatricians—I believe it was—who came to the select committee and described some of the injuries, including significant brain injuries. So, yes, we have fixated on death by drowning, but the ramifications for a child who is in a pool for just a few seconds without supervision are absolutely crushing.

The acceptable solution under the Building Act is now the one specified in the schedule to the old Fencing of Swimming Pools Act (FOSPA), which is excellent. The discretion to vary from that solution to another, or to exempt pools, is the same. So it is no wider in breadth, and the test for its application is the same as what we had under FOSPA. I have to say there was really a lack of information out there for a lot of the groups who came to the select committee—that message simply had not got through. I can understand the alarm that they had, and it was rightly placed.

Also the bill now provided that the information provided to councils for spas and other small pools would help them distinguish—because the rules now around a spa being allowed to have a lockable lid is a big change and one where we are going into somewhat uncharted territory.

So we had a number of areas where we have had concerns with this bill, but I have to say there was one that really stuck for us and it is set out in Part 2 of the schedule, and I want to bring that up in the bill. That really defines the way that a pool area must be enclosed. It says in the schedule, and there have been some changes here, that where a building forms all or part of an immediate pool area—so imagine that you perhaps have a house form one side of the barrier around a pool area. You might have a fence on three sides and then maybe a ranchslider out into the pool, and this forms all or part of an immediate pool area barrier, so it is not a four-sided fence.

The bill says that the doors between the building and the immediate pool area must not be able to be readily opened by a child and must either emit an audible warning when the door is open, or close automatically after use. What that means is that you could have a ranchslider, for instance, that could be opened but when it is opened an alarm might go off, but you are, to all intents and purposes, in the pool area at that point. There is an alarm ringing but you are in.

Our major concern is that this is not proven as a way to prevent drowning and harm—an audible alarm. It is not proven. We know that a contributing factor to drownings in a pool that might be compliant, the fencing might be compliant, is lack of supervision. So we cannot allow any of our regulation in this area to be reliant on the most fallible thing of all, and that is the constant attention of an adult or of supervision. Because if we rely on that, we know we will fall down. And we are relying on an adult hearing that noise and responding to it.

What it suggests to me is that (a), if a kid is able to pull open a door and get out that door, there is probably no one around in the vicinity, and if you are in a large house, who is to say they will be able to hear that audible alarm; (b), who is to say that alarm does not get triggered every so often and it does not drive everyone in the household crazy, to the point that they disarm the alarm? That is a reasonable assumption because we know that has happened before. There was, I think, evidence from a study in London of smoke alarms installed for free in low socio-economic neighbourhoods. In small flats the alarms went off regularly, so what was the response? They were taken out by the owners. They were just disabled because they drove people nuts. I have the same concern about being reliant on these alarms. So we have a Supplementary Order Paper that basically—

TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora, Mr Chair. I rise on behalf of my colleague Ron Mark to take a short call on this bill in the Committee stage. New Zealand First will continue to support the bill. We want to acknowledge—as Jacinda Ardern, the previous speaker, did—the work of the Local Government and Environment Committee and the amendments that have been made.

During my time as a member of the Rodney Local Board of Auckland Council, it was one of the jobs of the local boards in Auckland to actually go round and inspect for exemptions—predominantly around spa pools and spa pool covers, and gates opening in and out, and so on and so forth—so I am aware of the 3-year cycle of inspections that Auckland Council has had. We think that is a very sensible time frame to try to even out across the country, so that all councils will be required to make sure that the regulations and the safety measures that have been put into place are being adhered to and are fully up to speed. We do think that the amendments made, particularly around hot tubs and spa pools, bring the legislation into line with the advances around lockable covers and other mechanisms that are now in place around those particular items.

If I can just take a short moment to talk about the Supplementary Order Papers, the one that Jacinda Ardern referred to, which is Supplementary Order Paper 208—New Zealand First will be supporting that Supplementary Order Paper. We agree with Ms Ardern, and perhaps the concept of an audible alarm is just probably a step too far for us. We share the same concerns.

We like the way Ms Ardern’s Supplementary Order Paper is worded. We see that it is possible for an existing door, or a door on a home that is going to have a pool built on the other side of it—because let us get real. If you are able to walk out of your ranchslider door and straight into a pool enclosure area, more often than not it has been purposely built in that way. We see that it is possible, even if it is a ranchslider, to have some mechanism by which the ranchslider itself can be slammed shut and can have a childproof catch or latch. We think that that can be accommodated in the wording that Ms Ardern has placed here, which reads “(a) doors between the building and the immediate pool area must not be able to be opened by children, and must close and latch automatically after use:”. So we see that that is possible, we think, without causing any undue stress on the homeowners, but it gives us that little bit more protection for what is most valuable to all of us, which is our children.

However, with regard to Supplementary Order Paper 213 from Metiria Turei, unfortunately, we are unable to support that Supplementary Order Paper at this time. We recognise that it addresses the same concerns as Ms Ardern’s Supplementary Order Paper. We feel that Ms Ardern’s amendment to the legislation is more appropriate. It sits more closely with New Zealand First’s attempts to bring the legislation up and modernise it, and to make sure that the safeguards are still in place so that we do not create any opportunities for any further tragedies. So, unfortunately, we will not be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 213.

I will not take up any more time of the Committee, but, as I said, I just wanted to take a quick call on behalf of my colleague Ron Mark to say that New Zealand First will continue to support the bill. We will be supporting Ms Ardern’s Supplementary Order Paper, but, unfortunately, we will not be supporting the Green Party’s. Kia ora.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): The Green Party is opposing this legislation. All of the advice that the Local Government and Environment Committee received from everyone involved in child safety and child health—from paediatricians to Starship Hospital, from doctors to families whose children have died from drowning, as well as the information received about the effects of near-drowning on children and the significant brain injury that occurred—all said that this bill would cause more harm to New Zealand children and that it would put them at much greater risk of drowning or near-drowning. The justification given by the officials, and, therefore, by the Minister for Building and Housing, was that it is more important for there to be some cost savings on behalf of local government than it is for the lives of children to be protected through good quality rules around the fencing of swimming pools. As we know, the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act has actually saved a number of lives over the many years it has been in place, and this bill is a degradation of that legislation, and it increases risk to children. It is expected that more children will drown as a result of this legislation passing through the House.

One of the major issues that was raised by child health advocates—doctors, paediatricians, and similar organisations—was that the rules will, essentially, remove the requirement for childproof fencing around four sides of the pool. It will allow for other kinds of barriers that will be subject to different kinds of looser criteria to be used around pools, but not the fencing—the fencing that, as we know, has actually saved children’s lives. My Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) will reinstate the requirement for four-sided fencing. I do not doubt that others will disagree with that, but I make no apology for putting the lives of children ahead of the need to save some costs for some local councils. Actually, children’s lives are worth much more than that. We should be enacting law in this House that protects children and improves their safety, and this SOP will do that by requiring four-sided fencing around swimming pools.

The other changes that this SOP makes are to the requirement about the use of a building as part of fencing. You could argue, in some circumstances, that the side of a building could be used as a fence because it would restrict access. This bill makes it much easier for the side of a building that has a door or building through which a child can access a pool to be classed as a legitimate barrier for those swimming pools. As we know, we can have alarms and we can have automatic latches—we can have all of these things—but we all know how people live in the summer in this country when the weather is good. Doors and windows are wide open, people are doing things, there are lots and lots and lots of kids around, and if you have a swimming pool, there will be lots and lots of kids playing in the swimming pool. We know how wonderful it is for those kids to be able to play in the pool.

There is no guarantee and there is no regulation that we can put in place to ensure that the doors and windows that open on to a pool area will be kept closed and child safe. There is absolutely no mechanism in the regulation that we can put in place that will ensure that children do not get access to a pool area through a door or a window from the house out to the pool area. Do we believe that children’s safety is paramount? Do we think that it is better for the law to be clear, to be simple, and to be effective? Because if we did, in favour of child safety, then this Committee would support my SOP, which would prevent the side of a building that is against the immediate area of a pool from having any kind of window or door in it. If you have a window or door, you do not have a child-safe barrier to that pool area. Parents will leave the windows and doors open if it is warm. Older kids will leave the windows and doors open, because they are just kids and they cannot be expected to be held responsible. Little kids—babies—will make their way through those windows and doors and into the pool area, and they will be at serious risk of drowning.

We know that that is a risk. We know that there have been examples of children accessing pool areas through windows and doors. We know that there are circumstances where children have drowned, and many, many more have suffered the effects of near-drowning as a result of accessing a pool through an open door or window. We also know that even with fences, the fence latches that are designed for the purpose of being childproof are often left open by adults or by older children in the area so that younger children who are not properly supervised have access to those pools and can drown. Why would we allow for an additional risk by saying that it is OK to have the side of a building as part of the barrier if it has got a door or a window in it? We know that there is a risk. We know what the practices are of families in the summer months. Why would we increase the risk of those families having their children drown?

Let us be responsible legislators. Let us put children’s safety and children’s well-being at the heart of the decisions that we make, and let us make sure that this law will protect children from drowning and injury. I urge this Committee to support my SOP if you believe that putting children at the heart of policy is the most important thing we can be doing, because children will drown as a result of this legislation passing as it is. Thank you.

DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I want to speak, obviously, in favour of this bill because in terms of what has gone on in the past, in the 10 years before the legislation was enacted, as has been rehearsed in this House many, many times, there were about 100-odd people who died—children mainly—and since the legislation has been in operation only about 30 have died. That is 30 too many. What we in the Labour Party are concerned about is that although we recognise and acknowledge that there are some compliance costs around this and we need to make it as realistic and as pragmatic as possible, at the same time we want to make sure that we are not slipping or reducing in any way the safety standard that has gone on to save about 70-odd lives. What we want to try to do is to make sure that not only those 70 lives are being saved but also the remaining 30 that have been lost in the last 10 years.

For a lot of people who own pools, spa pools, etc., this is a major cost to them. It is a hassle. It is an encumbrance that they do not really need. But, quite frankly, although you may look after your children absolutely every second of the day, anybody who has children knows that you get distracted. You may have more than one child and a child will disappear, and the next thing—it takes only a few minutes before that child finds their way into a swimming pool and, tragically, loses their life.

So it is for that reason that the Labour Party supports this legislation, but only on the condition that we support the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that Jacinda Ardern has put up: SOP 208. That is a very simple amendment that simply says that rather than having an alarm that might occur if a child opens a gate that gives them access to a swimming pool, the gate itself is self-closing and the gate has a lock on it that a child cannot open. You have to ask yourself what is so difficult about putting in an amendment like that—in the form of Jacinda Ardern’s SOP—which would make the safety of swimming pools that much better because they would be more secure. You may not hear the alarm that is being activated. The cost of putting in an alarm might be more expensive. You could think of a thousand reasons why an alarm is a pretty silly idea in terms of keeping a child—an under-4-year-old, an under-3-year-old, or an under-2-year-old—safe. I can think of a lot of good reasons, and a lot of cheap reasons, to have a door that is spring-loaded and locks automatically so that a child cannot reach up and open it—like we see in every kindergarten across the country. In every play centre and preschool education centre across the country, that sort of locking arrangement means that teachers and everybody else—the parents—know that children cannot wander out on to a busy road—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I am sorry to interrupt the member, and I should have actually raised this a little earlier. This is about Jacinda Ardern’s amendment, which is in Part 2, and we are discussing Part 1.

DAVID SHEARER: Well, I come back to the point I started with, which is that the Labour Party supports this legislation. We think that there are some pragmatic changes that can be made that make the compliance for everyday households that much easier. It means, for example, that the territorial authorities will be inspecting these pools on a 3-yearly, rather than a 5-yearly, basis. All of that makes good, solid sense. But I come back to the point I was making, Mr Chair, before you made your little intervention there, to say that all of that is fine, but unless you have the amendment, it really does not make much sense because what we are doing is we are, effectively, opening the door to a lot more problems because children can make their way into a swimming pool environment and fall into the swimming pool.

JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for this brief call on the Buildings (Pools) Amendment Bill. Clause 4 of this bill adds a specific responsibility for residential pool safety to the Act, which is great. Clause 5 adds definitions to the Act, and this clause has been heavily amended by the Local Government and Environment Committee. For instance, the select committee recommended replacing the definitions of “spa pool” and “hot tub” in clause 5 with a definition of “small heated pool”. This definition will capture both of those terms, “spa pool” and “hot tub”. Consequently, the committee recommended that all references to “spa pool” and “hot tub” throughout the bill be replaced with “small heated pool”.

Labour’s support for this bill is contingent only on Jacinda Ardern’s Supplementary Order Paper 208 being included in this bill. It is vital that New Zealand does everything that it can to protect our children from hazards such as drowning. We owe it to our kids—the future of our country. We must also observe our obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to take the appropriate measures to diminish child and infant mortality.

The Fencing of Swimming Pools Act of 1987 was designed to increase the safety of young children by requiring pool owners to fence certain swimming pools. Having proper fencing—which my colleague Jacinda Ardern spoke of earlier on—and ensuring that there is a fence between kids and pools actually stops drowning. Since that Act came into force about 30 or so years ago, the number of young kids drowning has really decreased, and in the last 20 or so years, 56 young children have drowned outside their homes in New Zealand and two-thirds of these drownings have been in swimming pools.

The current bill is said to possibly save up to 10 kids for every 6 years, and because the kinds of pools that we are talking about are by their very nature temporary—some of these pools are just wading pools that are moved around by families—we have too many kids, toddlers, who drown at home. We should ensure that these kids are indeed as safe as possible. It is one of our responsibilities as members of this House.

One of the biggest changes that have been made to this bill coming back from the select committee has been to increase the pool inspection cycle, to require councils to inspect pools on a 3-yearly basis instead of every 5 years. Labour pushed very hard for this change, and it is very pleased that the select committee supported it. Thank you so much.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I just want to make a point before I take a further call, and it is that in the Committee stage we should be talking about what arose in the select committee and the submissions that were made. We should be articulating those in this Committee stage of the debate, and we can be talking about the Supplementary Order Papers that have been put up by other members. In Part 1 we are talking about the Minister’s amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 225, Metiria Turei’s amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 213, and the submissions that were made before the select committee.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I want to address the issue of why the Local Government and Environment Committee thought that 3-yearly inspections were necessary, rather than 5-yearly inspections. It is an issue that I know vexes at least some voters out there, because I know that my office has had a repeated exchange of correspondence with someone who was somewhat offended that the select committee—and I see members from the National Party are probably in receipt of assiduous representations from the same person, who was somewhat annoyed that select committee members were influenced by advice that was given to us by Auckland Council.

The council, which does inspect 3-yearly, said to us that already some 65 percent of pools are found to be uncompliant when inspected within the 3-year period, with the presumption being that if they were inspected less regularly—if it was 5 years, for example—the number of pools that are non-compliant would be even higher. Therefore, the select committee was convinced that there should be a 3-yearly inspection rather than a 5-yearly inspection, and we thought that we should make it clear that all councils had to do that 3-yearly inspection because there was some variation in practice around the country.

I have to say that the person who has been contacting my office to complain about that has not provided any other, better evidence that I have been able to think would trump the evidence that we were given at the select committee by the Auckland Council. Given that the councillors live in a city that they think is warm enough to have a lot of pools—although as a visitor to Auckland, I struggle with that reputation, at least for the last few months, when you have not needed a pool; you just need a bucket and it catches plenty of rain—I was convinced at the select committee that 3 years was the appropriate point.

Metiria Turei’s amendment—as I understand it, Metiria, and I have not read the detail of the wording—but from your concerns at the select committee, am I to take it that this is the use of natural barriers?

Metiria Turei: Natural barriers and the ability to use a wall that has a door or a window.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Right. Yes. Well, I do not share Metiria Turei’s view on this, and I respect Metiria Turei as an MP. I accept that you are well-meaning in respect of this Supplementary Order Paper 216, but if the purpose of a barrier is to stop children being able to get into a pool and be drowned, it does not concern me whether that barrier is a natural barrier, a wall, or a fence, so long as the effect of it is the same and that is to stop children drowning. So I am actually in favour of the amendment that is proposed in that regard by this bill to say that rather than necessarily having to have a fence at the top of a cliff, a cliff will do if a child cannot climb up the cliff and into the pool, because the child is still not going to drown. That is why I do not support that particular Supplementary Order Paper 216.

I was convinced by the advice from officials to the Local Government and Environment Committee that, as drafted, we were protecting children from drowning because those natural barriers in those situations are just as effective as a fence. I think that is probably the only thing I have to say at this time.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a call on the Building (Pools) Amendment Bill. I want to exercise a note of caution because of the definition that this bill contains dealing with swimming pools. The definition, which is contained in amended section 7 of the Building Act, set out in clause 5(a) in Part 1, defines a swimming pool as “(i) any excavation or structure of a kind normally used for swimming, paddling, or bathing; or (ii) any product (other than an ordinary home bath) that is designed or modified to be used for swimming, wading, paddling, or bathing; but (b) does not include an artificial lake”. The point that I want to stress at the outset is that any body of water has the potential to be a place where someone can drown and I know this from personal experience.

My parents will share a terrible story, which could have been even more terrible, about my brother splashing in a bucket of water when he was an infant and the handle on the bucket of water came down on the back of his neck. The handle had been standing up, he was splashing around in a bucket of water—which you can just imagine; an infant toddler splashing in a bucket of water—and the handle came down on the back of his neck. A bucket would not be captured by the definition of a pool, but would certainly have a depth of potentially more than 400 millimetres, because buckets are typically taller than that. So a body of water as small as a bucket could be enough to drown an infant and that is the point that I want to make.

When we are talking about a pool—actually, some of the biggest risks of drowning for infants are when they are left unsupervised with any body of water whether it be a paddling pool, a bucket, a baby bath, or a bath. In all of those things they can drown in them. Therefore, there is always going to be an element of education required around that to make sure that parents know that even in the home bath you cannot leave a baby or a toddler unsupervised. They are just as likely to drown if left unsupervised in the bath at home as they are if they are left unsupervised in a paddling pool. We do need to make sure that we are communicating about that, and so I particularly support new section 162D in new Subpart 7A of Part 2 of the Building Act, inserted by clause 7, which requires the manufacturers and retailers of any such products to actually notify people around what the requirements are. So if you are buying a paddling pool, then, actually, you should be notified what the requirements around the paddling pool are.

The question that I have got for the Minister in charge of the bill, Dr Nick Smith, and for the Government is in respect of the situation around temporary paddling pools. This is the sort of thing that does get raised with members of Parliament all the time. The idea is this: if you get one of those inflatable paddling pools and you blow it up in your backyard, and your kids—or grandkids is probably more likely to be the case in my family—are splashing around in the paddling pool, always under adult supervision, then when it is finished the paddling pool gets drained, it gets folded up, and it gets put away, where do the fencing requirements sit there? Are we expecting people who are using a paddling pool for a hot sunny afternoon to be putting a fence around it or would it be more appropriate to say that there must be supervision? There is no question that a paddling pool should not be left unattended and unsecured, but in the case of a temporary pool would it be sufficient to simply say that there has to be adult supervision for the period of time that that pool has water in it?

Hon Ruth Dyson: And in Upper Hutt you’d only bring it out 1 day a year.

CHRIS HIPKINS: In Upper Hutt we would have it out almost every day of the summer, I would have to say to Ruth Dyson. [Interruption] That is right. That is right. It would be very regularly used. I raise this point because this is important. This is the sort of thing that the members of the public are likely to raise with us—this idea that restrictions have gone mad when you have got to put up a fence around a temporary paddling pool that is there only for a matter of hours.

So the question that I have got for the Government is—and it is not clear from the bill; I have just sat down and read through the bill, and it is not clear from the bill—where those temporary paddling pools are concerned, what the rules around those would be. I can certainly support quite restrictive requirements around permanent swimming pools, but the ones around temporary paddling pools, I think, we do have to have an element of common sense when it comes to that. So I am interested in the Government’s view on that.

The other point that I want to make is on the new restrictions around spa pools or hot tubs—those with lockable childproof lids. I actually think that if Parliament is going to go down the road of saying that they should be exempt from the fencing requirements, we also then need to look at the enforcement requirements around using those lids. I lived in a house that had a spa pool with one of the lockable lids in the backyard. The whole of the backyard was also fenced, but the pool itself was not fenced. But, hand on heart, I could not say that the pool was always locked. The lid would have always been closed, but I cannot say that if a child had got into the backyard they would not have been able to open it. Although there was a locking mechanism, the locking mechanism was not always used. Simply putting a sign on it is not necessarily going to deal with that, but there is a degree of responsibility required for pool owners, so that if they are going to exempt themselves from the fencing requirements and put a lockable childproof lid on their pool, there does need to actually be a requirement to use it, and some sanction if you do not use it and something were to happen.

I am interested in hearing more about that because, again, I could not see from the bill—particularly because spa pools and hot tubs are exempted from the inspection requirements—how on earth the use of a lockable lid would be enforced. A spa pool could certainly be, again, a place where a child could quite easily drown.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I just wanted to respond, just in brief, to the comments from the Hon David Parker. I accept that my Supplementary Order Paper 213 does take the bill backwards a step and that the bill is deliberate in removing the requirement for four-sided fencing and instead replacing that very clear and simple requirement with more of a performance-based standard. I would just reiterate that, for example, Water Safety New Zealand, which has spent decades trying to improve water safety for all New Zealanders, and particularly children, was strongly opposed to the removal of the fencing requirement and replacing it instead with some performance-based standard. It said that there was no public policy rationale for making that change except for that already described by the officials, which was to reduce compliance costs for pool owners and for the councils.

But from the point of view of child safety, it is a retrograde step to replace a simple and clear conception of what fencing around a pool is—what it actually is in people’s own minds and in the normal daily conversation about that—with a performance-based standard that says you can have all sorts of different kinds of things, as long as they have the same effect. Given that we know that there was already very poor monitoring of pool fencing by councils, and across the country there is this disparity between councils about whether or not they know where the pools are, whether they are undertaking regular inspections, and whether they are applying the rules properly or not, and given that we know that many of the drownings that have occurred have been as a result of degraded fencing infrastructure—so, degraded latches, degraded fencing, and failure to comply with the very simple legislation that is already in place—this bill now allows more and more options for pool owners to use that may well not meet any kind of performance-based standard. That might not provide any degree of real protection for children at all, and the councils are relying, then, on their own interpretation of the law—and the law is softened to give them lots more options—and on the enforcement procedures of local councils, which we know are already unable to enforce the current law, as simple and clear as it is. So why, then, would we put in place legislation that actually entrenches in the law the very risks that failure to comply with the previous law has created in terms of the risk for children of drowning?

There really is no rationale for that—I mean, there is no explanation for why this is a better system. The only excuse I heard from National during the select committee process was that people with infinity pools did not like the way fences looked. That is not a justification for putting more and more children at risk.

So I get that there will be members of this Parliament who do not want to support my Supplementary Order Paper because it actually puts in place—re-establishes—the clear fencing rules that this bill has been designed to remove, but there is no rationale for that policy change, and there certainly is no evidence to show that a performance-based approach is going to provide the same degree of safety that the current fencing rules provide, let alone a greater degree of safety. If we have a choice, surely, providing the greater safety is the choice we should make. Thank you.

MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Otirā, e ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. Thank you, Mr Chair. It is a pleasure to take a call on the Building (Pools) Amendment Bill in the Committee stage. I want to focus my contribution particularly on clause 6 of the bill, and perhaps the Minister in the chair, Nathan Guy, could give some clarity around clause 6.

Clause 6, particularly clause 6A, which amends section 11 of the Building Act, talks about enforcing compliance with manufacturer and retailer notice. No issue there, but when you read the particular clause there, it states that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), particularly the chief executive, will be the person responsible for ensuring that anybody who manufactures, sells, or offers for sale any pool product designed for swimming, wading, or bathing supplies a notice summarising the responsibility of owners, pool operators, and occupiers in terms of restricting access. So, as I read it, we have got enforcement of the manufacturing and the retail notice as the responsibility of the chief executive of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

Then we go to clause 6B, which amends section 12 of the Building Act, and which identifies that the responsibility of ensuring pool barrier requirements sits with the territorial authority. So if I could just paint that picture: manufacturer notice is MBIE, but ensuring compliance with pool barrier requirements sits with the territorial authority. Then we come down to the “waivers and modifications”, and in there is clause 6C, which inserts new section 67A and amends section 188 of the Building Act. When I read this particular clause, it allows territorial authorities and the chief executive of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment the right to grant waivers and modifications of the pool barrier requirements as set out in clause 7, which inserts new subpart 7A of Part 2.

I guess the question I have is obviously one of coordination between territorial authorities and MBIE, given that we have got one chief executive of a substantive ministry and, of course, we have got numerous numbers of territorial authorities. So it just, for me, raised a question around ensuring that—for want of a better word, bureaucracy, or defining each other’s role—we do not end up having a tragedy of a loss of a young life simply because the left hand is not coordinating, or speaking well, with the right hand.

I do want to come back to other parts of the bill, but it was important that I just address clause 6 in terms of defining the respective roles between the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the territorial authorities to ensure that if we are going to waive pool barrier requirements, there is a coordination between those particular organisations. It is a question that I just put on the floor, and the Minister might be able to respond. Thank you very much.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): When this bill first came to the House, I raised some concerns, and the concerns emanated from the stated purpose of this bill. The stated purpose of this bill, and I will read it, is as follows: “will amend the Building Act 2004 and repeal the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act 1987”—but here is what I want to emphasise—“to reduce the compliance burden currently imposed on pool owners and territorial authorities in relation to residential pools while maintaining child safety.” I stated then that those were conflicting purposes—to reduce compliance on pool owners and still maintain child safety. It still concerns me.

I am pleased that my colleagues have said that our support for this bill is contingent on the Government supporting Labour’s Supplementary Order Paper 208 in the name of Jacinda Ardern, the reason being that right throughout the bill—and I am glad to see that the Local Government and Environment Committee has made some significant changes. We were told from the outset, in the regulatory impact statement, that this bill would save more lives, but I know that my colleagues would have heard evidence from the submitters, from their experiences, that would have challenged that regulatory impact statement by the Government. In fact, the New Zealand Society of Paediatric Surgeons stated that the only thing that will improve the current rate of drownings in pools in New Zealand is improved compliance. That is more compliance, rather than less, and yet throughout the bill it is riddled with an emphasis on reducing compliance, or the burden, of pool owners.

I want to come to what my colleague Meka Whaitiri has raised earlier, and that is new clauses 6A, 6B, and 6C, which give specific responsibilities around pool safety to the chief executive, the building consent authority, and the territorial authority. The question I ask is: are we now making the territorial authority and chief executive responsible for any mishaps that occur? If so, great, but the responsibility must also fall squarely on the pool owner.

Once upon a time, I was on the Manukau City Council, the greatest council in all of New Zealand—three terms—

David Shearer: We abolished it.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO: —well, this Government abolished it—and the officials who dealt with swimming pools during my time emphasised that this legislation was so stringent that it was really about saving the lives of children. In fact, one time I asked an official what sort of depth could a child drown in, and I will never forget it, because he said a child could drown in a puddle of water outside. I imagine that would be a baby. If unattended, a child could easily fall—and he said it did not need to be very deep, but a child could drown.

I still have concerns, and I am really glad that we are saying that we will support this bill if the Government supports Jacinda Ardern’s Supplementary Order Paper, because we are trying to install more safety in this. But the original purpose of the Government was not about child safety but about removing some of the burden on pool owners. I see that the select committee did work and did try to make some changes in the legislation, and one of the things that I am glad it has managed to convince the Government to change is the inspection regime, from 5 years to 3 years. Auckland Council, in its submission, said that if you leave it for too long—it has practical evidence that that actually enables owners to allow their pools and the safety of those pools to deteriorate. In fact, Auckland Council maintains that the regime should continue with 3-yearly inspections, as 65 percent of pools are found to be non-compliant when inspected within this time frame.

Although the select committee has made some amendments that have taken us back to the original legislation in terms of stringency around the protection of lives of children, it just seems to me—why did we do this in the first place? What was it? If we were already saving lives under the old legislation, what is it that we are now trying to do—to provide more opportunities for young people and children to drown? I just do not get it. I do not get it, and I am not quite sure what the Government’s intentions were, other than what the stated purpose was: to remove the burden on pool owners. I have heard some pool owners say look, it is their pool, so why should local government interfere?

But that then begs the question: what if a child does drown there? Whom do we hold responsible? The fine is $5,000. What does that mean? Is that the value that we place on a child’s life? I know that that is not the case, but I am trying to say to this House and to this Government, which has brought this bill through: what is it that we are trying to do here? If we have saved lives with the old legislation, what on earth are we trying to do with the new legislation, particularly with the stated aim and the fact that the select committee has had to push to make further changes? We still have not got them, and that is the reason we are saying that we will support this bill, provided the Government supports the Supplementary Order Paper that will be discussed later on.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Which is in the following part.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO: That is right, that is right—in the following part—and therefore I have not made any mention of the contents of that Supplementary Order Paper, other than to make reference that, although there have been some good changes here, this is not a complete bill. It does not give me confidence at all. Certainly, for those organisations that are working to promote safety in waters—I do not think that they are confident with this particular bill. Despite the changes that the select committee has attempted to make to improve the legislation, I do not think that we are confident enough to go ahead unless the Government tells us—and we will debate that Supplementary Order Paper in the next while.

I want to also then turn to the—I cannot see the clause, but there is a clause there where the chief executive officer decides who is the pool person who inspects the pools. Hopefully, that means that the chief executive of the Government department—we are now giving him some sense of authority that, by appointing the pool inspector, the public will have confidence that it is a legitimate, specialist person with the skills, a person who is professional in that duty. But, again, what about the pool owner? Do we hold the pool owner responsible to ensure that the work is carried out proficiently and carried out safely, and that, at the end of the day, there is safety for the children in that household? I simply say that although the select committee has made some good changes to move this bill towards making sure that there is safety for all children, it begs the question of why we are then repealing the old legislation. What it ought to be doing, really, is improving the old legislation, not repealing the old legislation.

I maintain that there are not sufficient safety clauses to give people the confidence that young people and children are going to be protected, particularly if there are pools in the household that they live in. Without the support of this Government on the Supplementary Order Paper in the name of Jacinda Ardern—of which I will not discuss the content until we come to the next part—we will not be supporting this bill.

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

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Thank you very much. I think that Mr Sio’s question—he asked why we should be repealing the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act—is a very good one. As some of the submitters said, this was one of the most successful child safety laws that we have had in New Zealand, and that is because it sent a very clear message to pool owners and to the swimming pool industry that pools needed to be fenced to protect young children. In clause 6C of this bill, new section 67A is inserted into the Building Act, and there is the introduction of a test that will allow swimming pool owners, potentially, to apply to local authorities and to get a waiver or a modification if that territorial authority, having regard to all the circumstances, is satisfied that the modification, and I quote from the bill, “would not significantly increase the danger to children under 5 years of age.”

So rather than having that clear message to everybody that pools need to be properly fenced, we now have the potential for these waivers and modifications, leading to considerable uncertainty and to arguments by pool owners with the local authority that their fencing is adequate. So it is moving, as Metiria Turei said, to a system of performance, which does not provide the certainty that the current legislation does.

We had submitters like Water Safety New Zealand estimating that it is not just the tragedies that the current law averts but also the major cost of over $100 million, since 2005, of protecting children from hospitalisations from near drowning. So there is a major financial benefit to the existing legislation as well as its simplicity and the strong message it sends to make sure that pools are properly fenced to avoid drownings. So that is one of the reasons that the Green Party is opposing this bill—because of this uncertainty and inconsistency, and the lack of clarity that will be created with this new provision that allows for waivers and modifications if it does not “significantly increase the danger to children”, whatever that means.

The existing law talks about protecting young children; this bill changes it to “children under 5 years of age”. We all know that children over 5 and young toddlers are equally at risk of drowning, so, again, it is a weakening of the legislation—a weakening and an undermining of child safety. We should not even be having that discussion or encouraging local authorities to have discussions about whether things significantly increase the risk to children under 5 years. We should be ensuring that our law protects those children, and that is another reason for Metiria Turei’s Supplementary Order Paper 213.

There was a lot of information that came to the Local Government and Environment Committee—Australian research—about the need for, and the benefits of, having four-sided fencing. Four-sided fencing is ensuring that there are no windows or doors in any building that abuts the pool area that can give children access to the pool. That is why her Supplementary Order Paper is important—because it will ensure that where a building does form part or all of an immediate pool area, there must be no windows, doors, or other openings to that immediate pool area that can allow children to get through and potentially be at risk of drowning.

This bill is weakening currently very successful legislation that has averted a number of child drownings and is replacing it with a test that is likely to lead to significant uncertainty and lack of clarity. It also imposes extra costs on local authorities, and for all of these reasons, the Green Party is opposing the bill.

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

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

Ayes 75

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

Noes 46

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 225 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to Part 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 73

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

Noes 48

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

Amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 213 in the name of Metiria Turei to Part 1 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 14.

Noes 75

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

Amendments not agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Final and miscellaneous provisions

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I assume that in Part 2 we are now moving into some of the more substantive provisions set out in the schedule—I am assuming we are able to take those provisions, as well, in this debate.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Yes.

JACINDA ARDERN: Obviously in Part 2 we are repealing the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act (FOSPA), but I do want to just point out that during the Local Government and Environment Committee stage there was a view that the standard that was set under the FOSPA would be lost. We were advised that the acceptable solution under the Building Act was the one specified in the schedule of the FOSPA, so that all of the work that had been done previously on consultation around standards would not be lost. If I have got that wrong I would certainly ask Minister Smith to correct the record, because I know that was a legitimate concern that has been raised in this debate.

I want to speak a little bit to an area that has been touched on only briefly by some of my colleagues, and that is the way that we are, as a result of this bill, now going to be treating spa pools and hot tubs. Under this legislation we have got three different definitions, if I have got this right. We will have small heated pools—previously we had, separately, spa pools and hot tubs—we will have residential pools, and we will have pools, generally. Hopefully that is intended to try to reduce down some of the confusion, especially for small heated pools. The point I wanted to make, though, is that the definition and some of the ways that small heated pools, as set out in the schedule, will be treated are uncharted territory.

Really, before we have had regulations relating to this that have not been properly enforced, and so now what we are saying is that, essentially, a standard will apply to small heated pools where the top surface of every wall of the pool is at all points not less than 760 millimetres above the adjacent floor or the ground, to inhibit climbing, and that, for those other pools we are able to access more easily, they must be covered with a lockable lid.

There was real debate and discussion about whether or not that in and of itself was going to be sufficient. The concern was that that is fine when it is not in use and when there is not any deterioration of those locks and so on. When they are in use, then obviously you do not have a protection mechanism, because we are now saying that an elevated hot tub with a lockable lid will not have to have any other form of physical barrier around it. The concern there, as was pointed out by submitters, is that the point of distraction could be that, with spa pools and those kinds of pools, they are hot and people often do leave them for periods of time—they might go to get a drink of water; they might go to use the bathroom. There are often times when these pools go unsupervised.

The committee was trying to reach a point of reason where you had enough protections in place, but, for instance, there was acknowledgment that often these pools are raised above the ground as well, and so maybe that does put them in a slightly different category. That is not to say that there are not concerns with this provision. In particular, we heard that there have been drownings where children have accessed underneath covers or where they have accessed a pool when a lockable lid has not been in place. So I think what I wanted to point out at this point is that this was a real source of contention for us. It was not an easy decision, and I think it deserves monitoring.

These provisions—and again there was a bit of debate about this—are not going to be monitored by local councils; the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment takes responsibility for these provisions, if I have got that right. I think it is incumbent on us as a Committee to reflect back on whether or not—after a year let us look at what is happening with them. Let us check that we have got this right, because in my mind this provision is a line call.

One thing that is not a line call for us, and we have said this all the way through—I think now we are at the point of this bill where I can expand on this slightly. We are absolutely not supporting this bill if the current schedule remains as it stands, where we allow one side of a pool to be accessed by a door that does not necessarily latch automatically, that could be accessible by a child but just has an alarm on it. That is not acceptable. In our minds that provision opens up a false assumption, a false sense of security for families, that because they are compliant with the law they have created a safe space, that surely there is some research and evidence that suggests that audible alarms stop kids from drowning. There is no such evidence. We do not know that. We know some companies now are producing these alarms; we do not know that they are an acceptable solution where you do not have an automatically latching door or a door that is inaccessible. So that is not acceptable to us.

Let me just cover again what it says. It says in the schedule: “Where a building forms all or part of an immediate pool area barrier,—(a) doors between the building and the immediate pool area must not be able to be readily opened by children,”—so it could be seen to not be readily opened, but still could be—“and must either—(i) emit an audible warning when the door is open; or (ii) close automatically after use:”. There should be no “or”. The door should automatically close. There should be no “or”.

So the way that we have chosen to instead express it is “doors between the building and the immediate pool area must not be able to be opened by children”—must not be able to be opened by children—“and must close and latch automatically after use:”. So you have got the double thing of it being inaccessible, and if it is accessed by an adult or someone who is able to access it, it has an automatic swing on it. That, in our minds, was the only acceptable version where you could have a door that opened into an immediate pool area or pool, because that mimics what we ask fences to do. That mimics what we ask other barriers to do. Why would we have a lesser test for an area that opens automatically to a building than we have for fencing around a pool? That was bottom line for us.

My understanding is that the Government will not be supporting that amendment, so we will not be supporting this bill—bottom line for us. We had hoped that by putting this amendment up that might act as some leverage to ask the Government to see sense on this, because I do not want to see us down the track reading in the newspaper about a family that thought they were compliant with the law and that, surely, will have assumed that the law was to protect them and their children and that had an audible alarm that maybe was not quite audible enough—maybe the battery had powered down; maybe there was a power cut and it did not kick back in; maybe the family was distracted and thought the alarm from a car had gone off instead of their door. Who knows? I do not want to see a drowning occur in this country that occurs within the boundaries of the law.

One of the miraculous things with the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act as it stands is that the drownings that have occurred have occurred in uncompliant pools where, if they had been compliant with the law, a child potentially may not have drowned. That would be a devastating thing for families to know, and the stories that came before the select committee—I would never want any member of this Committee to hear a story of a child who had drowned whom we bore any responsibility for. It was hard enough hearing it from a member of a family who so clearly carried with them that grief. It was absolutely devastating. It is incumbent on us to give people the trust that if they comply and they do what this Committee has suggested, then it will be enough. I do not think this bill, currently, is enough.

We really debated things like if you have a cliff face whether that constitutes a barrier. At the end of the day, the test is that it has to be inaccessible. I certainly see why Metiria has crafted the Supplementary Order Paper that she has, Supplementary Order Paper 213. Well, actually, it looks like we are not going to be supporting this bill anyway for very similar rationale, because it is a real line call to have anything other than a fence form a barrier, and it was one we debated. We, as I say, really drew a line in the sand on this.

One of the issues that I heard a member of the Committee raise was this idea that we have to always be vigilant around water. That is absolutely the case, but that is where we have error. Anyone who is a mother, a father, a grandfather, a grandmother, an aunt knows that 24-hour supervision of a child is exhausting, difficult, and nigh on impossible. So this bill has to be about removing human error and removing the idea that you can be eyes and ears all of the time. It is about an extra layer of protection, and my concern is that we have left too many openings as it stands that need to be closed, and that is what we are asking for.

Part 2 agreed to.

Schedule

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 225 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to the schedule be agreed to.

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

Ayes 73

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

Noes 48

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

Amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 213 in the name of Metiria Turei to the schedule be agreed to.

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

Ayes 14

Green Party 14.

Noes 107

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

Amendments not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 208 in the name of Jacinda Ardern to the schedule be agreed to.

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

Ayes 58

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

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

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

Ayes 73

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

Noes 48

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

Schedule as amended agreed to.

Clauses 1 to 3

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I want to take a very brief call on the preliminary clauses. Really, the only thing that I want to speak to at this point is the commencement date. These provisions will come in as early as 1 January. I understand that there is certain consultation that is currently going on around this bill, particularly around how the inspectors outside of territorial authorities might be appointed and the fact that stickers will need to be applied to the top of spa pools—things that, ultimately, feel to me like they might really be Band-Aids on what could become a much wider problem if this bill, as it is about to pass, comes into force.

None the less, a lot of these other provisions will come in without the scrutiny of the House, and I think, really, I would just say to members that I think it is incumbent on us to be aware of some of that consultation and some of those additional processes that will go on before this bill comes in to force. But, ultimately, the commencement date being 1 January 2017—I would ask the Minister for Building and Housing whether it is possible that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) commits to keeping quite rigorous oversight of this bill in its early implementation stages; that we check that councils and those tasked with inspections are equipped and ready to up their inspection regime, because for many councils it will be an increase in what they have previously had, and can they demonstrate they are doing that; that retailers who are going to carry obligations are ready to pass on to those who are purchasing pools or spa pools that they understand their obligations; that MBIE is ready to be the overseer of the new rules around heated pools; and that we, say in 12 months’ time, do a re-assessment as to how we are tracking with both the inspection regime and also with the substantial changes to this Act.

We have expressed our concerns with the loosening of these provisions, and we want to make sure we keep a close eye—that if they are not working, we know about it sooner rather than later. So even though the commencement date is, obviously, very, very soon, I would seek an assurance from MBIE and from the Minister that he will be keeping oversight from the day that it is implemented, to ensure that, ultimately, we achieve the aims that I know this side of the Chamber is focused on, and that is that it is not about compliance costs; it is about clarity of rules. It is about people knowing their rights and their responsibilities. But, ultimately, for us, it has always been about reducing drownings. No one in this Chamber wants to see drownings happen, surely? So it is incumbent on us that we keep very close oversight of a bill that, ultimately, this side of the Chamber has not been able to support.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 3 be agreed to.

Ayes 73

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

Noes 48

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

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

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

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to Accident Compensation Act 2001

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I rise to take a call on the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill. This is a piece of legislation that the Labour Party is supporting. It does make some practical changes that we endorse. I will go through some of those changes and what we are supporting.

The objectives of this particular piece of legislation are around the definition of what is a health practitioner, ensuring that there is consistency in the regulatory framework definitions that govern health practitioners—namely, the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act and its framework. Actually, it recognises the way that we conduct our health services in the modern age. So we are very supportive of the changes that this piece of legislation recommends.

There are about seven pieces of primary legislation that are impacted by the changes to the definition of medical or health practitioners, and the types of functions and duties that they will be able to carry out under the auspices of those several pieces of legislation. I want to talk specifically about the definitions of health practitioners in terms of nurse practitioners, the scope of practice that a nurse practitioner is now able to complete, what is defined within the practising certificate of that nurse practitioner, how the Nursing Council has been consulted and is engaged with that particular discussion, and what that actually means in terms of the practical service that they are able to deliver.

If we look at the separate pieces of legislation that this bill will amend—specifically the amendments to the Burial and Cremation Act 1964, what it looks at is determining who can sign off a certificate of death, and the conditions that sit around that particular practice. It is an important duty and function that our health practitioners are required to do. There are some specific conditions under which a health practitioner can sign a certificate of death. The definition of the health practitioner is aligned to that within the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003, and that Act gives some practical examples of the types of scenarios under which they will be able to issue a certificate of death.

Under the amendments to the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act, some changes are made, specifically under section 2(1), inserted by clause 15, to the definition of psychiatric hospital, which is now just referred to as a hospital. It has been a long time since we actually referred to mental health tertiary institutions as psychiatric hospitals, so it is very much in line with our modern practices in terms of health. What it also does is it provides for those health practitioners to conduct examinations of children and young persons, as defined within the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act, specifically around sections 52 and 53.

Under Part 5 there are amendments to the Land Transport Act, specifically around the ability of health practitioners to conduct a couple of duties, particularly when it comes to eye checks for those applying for a driver’s licence, and the taking of blood specimens for those who have been pulled over by the police in a drink-driving blitz, for example, and have been found to be potentially over the limit and a blood specimen is required.

Also, within the bill under Part 5A are amendments to the Medicines Act—these are specifically about the ability to look at the prescribing of drugs. Under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act the amendments look at the scope of practice with regard to the assessments that one can conduct in relation to your mental well-being. That is often very important, particularly in times when you will not have access to a psychiatrist or some other medical professional to conduct the mental health assessment. It may be on the weekend, or it may be at a time when a person has been picked up by the police due to criminal activity or his or her behaviour, and requires a mental health assessment.

Lastly, the bill makes amendments to the Misuse of Drugs Act and that is particularly around dealing with controlled drugs. It is about the prescription and the administration of controlled drugs in a range of settings—whether it is in a veterinary setting, where you are administering to animals, or whether it is within a hospital or even a community setting such as those that would be provided by mental health community services.

They are sensible and necessary amendments to those pieces of legislation and the Labour Party will be supporting this piece of legislation.

JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you, Mr Chair, for this brief call on the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill; it is a mouthful. Labour is very, very supportive of this bill. However it has taken such a long time for this bill to get on to the Government’s legislative agenda.

Nursing organisations and leaders have been advocating for over a decade for the removal of legislative barriers for nursing practitioners to undertake the full range of duties that they are capable of. It is really important that legislation keeps up with the evolving roles of the health workforce and that we empower rather than impede our health practitioners to use the skills and the abilities that they have.

The nursing review, after the first reading of this legislation, noted that the functions covered by the seven Acts that this omnibus bill is addressing include signing death certificates, taking blood specimens from drunk drivers, declaring people unfit to drive, prescribing controlled drugs, and signing sick-leave certificates. The current legislation means that nurse practitioners can sign ACC forms and sickness benefit forms but right now they cannot sign certificates for ordinary sick leave from work. A nurse practitioner, after this legislation goes through, is very, very useful, especially for our rural areas. This legislation will have a significant impact on our rural services.

The bill will allow several things. First, it will allow health practitioners with the required competencies and knowledge to perform more statutory functions. Secondly, it will make it easier for the public to access statutory health services. Thirdly, it will allow our health workforce to use their knowledge and skills. Lastly, it will facilitate innovative services and efficient use of practice.

Part 1 of this legislation deals with the Accident Compensation Act 2001. The rehabilitation plans under this Act will have a wide range of health practitioners who would be able to contribute to an ACC claimant’s rehabilitation plans. The effect of this amendment, in clause 4 of the bill, is that health practitioners leading the coordination of provision of treatment or rehabilitation to claimants will be given the opportunity to participate in the preparation of a claimant’s individual rehabilitation plans.

Clause 4(1) will now insert a new paragraph (c) into clause 7(3) of the schedule, and this would add “any health practitioner providing treatment to the claimant:”, to the list of people to be given the opportunity to participate in the preparation and costing of a claimant’s rehabilitation plan. We agree that this is really needed.

We now have over 50,000 nurses in New Zealand registered with the Nursing Council of New Zealand. We have looming GP retirement, with about 44 percent of them about to leave our medical profession in the next 10 years, so it is really timely that we allow our nursing practitioners to be able to assist in this manner and to be able to put their clinical services in and assist our health services.

We know that the health service has been underfunded over the last 6 years by a lot of money. We also know, honourable Minister, that quite a lot of our health practitioners, especially our doctors, are going on strike, I believe beginning tomorrow, at 20 district health boards (DHBs)—is it tomorrow or is it next week—partly because of this underfunding in the DHBs. So we totally agree with this particular legislation giving nurse practitioners more to do, especially because they are skilled and able to do so. Thank you.

JOANNE HAYES (Third Whip—National): I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one question for the purposes of this debate, with a vote on each question.

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

Louisa Wall: Mr Chair—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): You will get a call, but this is a matter I have to deal with. So the question is now that Parts 1 to 7, schedules 1 and 2, and clauses 1 and 2 stand part. Louisa Wall, you can talk about anything within the bill now.

Parts 1 to 7, schedules 1 and 2, and clauses 1 and 2

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Mr Chair. I appreciate that. I am rising to support the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill in this, the Committee stage. What I wanted to highlight was that, of the 28 submissions that we received, only two were opposed. They are not that surprising—well, the first one is not, because it was the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists. Their major opposition was that health practitioners should be doctors in undertaking statutory duties. In fact, that is the whole thrust, or intent, of this piece of legislation. It is to recognise scopes of practice that health practitioners who have the required competencies and knowledge should be able to perform those statutory functions.

Why did we as a select committee, or why has the Minister, proposed this legislation? Actually, it is pretty simple. It is because we want to maximise the skills and competencies of our workforce and particularly, as my colleague Jenny Salesa intimated, within a context of shortages. Those shortages have actually been highlighted by the 2015 Voluntary Bonding Scheme, where general practice has been highlighted as a shortage with general surgery, pathology, psychiatry, and rural hospital medicine. So these changes are actually very good changes because they are trying to create a fit for purpose health system that recognises such qualifications as nurse practitioners, who will be able to sign sick-leave forms, death certificates, take blood, also authorise optometrist certificates, and all those sorts of things that, currently, only doctors can undertake.

There was one other person who was opposed to this piece of legislation, and it was a person called Tamblin Davenport. It was interesting because their primary opposition was in relation to the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992. The changes that were proposed to that specific Act in this legislation, they said, would affect their civil rights. Now, obviously, there were advisers to the select committee, and we have not, as far as I know, made any amendments that specifically address this, but it was just interesting to note that that is where the opposition came from.

In terms of those who supported the submissions of the submitters were nurses and nursing organisations—Nurse Practitioners New Zealand, the Nursing Council of New Zealand, neonatal nurses, and mental health nurses; 100 percent of them support this piece of legislation. There was also good support from the pharmacy sector, from physiotherapy, and also the Public Service Association. So I think, having sat on the select committee during the beginning of this process and during the hearings from the submitters, generally most people agree that this legislation is about time. Some people have been waiting for it for a long time, but it is good to see that the Minister and the Government have introduced a piece of legislation that we can stand up and support. Really, I do not have anything more to add. Thank you.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I just want to make a further short contribution to this piece of legislation. As my colleague has indicated, it really is a sensible piece of legislation that tidies up a whole lot of aspects of the modern workforce. We know that we have had medical practitioners develop in a whole range of ways, and nurse practitioners have been with us for some time. Their ability to work across a range of skill sets has needed to be defined and then provided for within various pieces of legislation. So it is useful and appropriate that we are debating this piece of legislation, to ensure that over those significant pieces of primary legislation that nurse practitioners in particular will work across we are given the ability to define what those areas are and what those scopes of practice will be.

To be very clear, in order that a health practitioner, a nurse practitioner in particular, can work in these scopes of practice they must comply under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act, and that means not only must they fulfil the requirements of training and expertise and have the appropriate training required but they also must have a current practising certificate. So their workforce development must continue to be updated and upgraded in relation to the types of work that they are going to be required to be undertaking.

It is important to realise that the scope of practice has become so broad for our doctors and our primary health providers that it has become a requirement that we have had to allow our health practitioners to work across various scopes of practice. As I mentioned before, there are some important aspects of this that relate to areas that I have worked in prior to coming to the House, in particular in the area of mental health, where the ability to prescribe medication and administer medication is one of those health and safety issues that we in the mental health area wanted to ensure that we got absolutely right. Medical misadventure due to the administration of incorrect medication, or the administration of medication that was at the wrong dose or taken at the wrong time, was one of those things that we really wanted to avoid. So ensuring that we have staff who are trained to the appropriate level and that their scope of practice is measured and reviewed, and that they have a current practising certificate, is very important.

The other area that I want to perhaps discuss and talk about is with regard to the ability to ensure that mental health assessments are conducted in a timely way. It is often very important that those people who are in the middle of a mental health episode are able to have those assessments completed so that they can get into treatment straight away. Often this is to ensure that they are not at risk of harming themselves or other members of the public, so it is important that we provide opportunities for that to happen. The scope of practice around nurse practitioners being able to do that, rather than requiring psychiatrists to do that, is very important in this regard.

We are supporting this piece of legislation. It is good. It is about time that it came to the House and we will be supporting this bill in its passage through the House.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): I neglected to add, in my earlier contribution, that the Minister received some advice about this piece of legislation from Treasury. It was one of the 12 recommendations in his briefing. Just to quote from that report, Treasury said to the Minister that to “Identify and remove unnecessary barriers to workforce flexibility, starting by progressing the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill” was important, and the report also highlighted that this was a really good opportunity for the Minister to show some leadership in this area.

I neglected to say earlier that there is a huge imbalance in our country between the number of doctors we have and the number of nurses we have. We have got approximately 14,500 doctors, and we know that in 10 years’ time over 40 percent of those doctors are going to be retiring. We have 49,769 registered nurses and 2,815 enrolled nurses, and there are 145 nurse practitioners.

But what has been interesting to note is that in the nurse practitioner area, actually, it is providing a really good opportunity for Māori and Pacific nurses to take the next step in terms of qualifications. What I have seen from some of the results today is that it means that for Māori and Pacific women who have invested their time and energies into this particular sector there is an opportunity for equity. Because the nurse practitioner vocation will be able to undertake all these previously unlawful statutory functions that were in the domain of only doctors, it has actually provided a huge opportunity, and a huge business opportunity for our Māori and Pacific women, that really, I think, has not been factored into the debate as much as it could have been. I think it is going to be one of those unintended consequences. I do not think Treasury highlighted it and it certainly has not been highlighted in any of the advice that we have received from the officials.

But I think, into the future, it is a wonderful opportunity for Māori and Pacific businesswomen, and actually women per se, to pursue this nurse practitioner vocation. So I will be doing as much as I can to talk about the opportunity, and in fact I think that there should be a paper, possibly prepared for the Minister, about how we promote this opportunity across our communities. From my perspective, I think what will happen through the passage of this bill is it will just provide so many amazing opportunities, particularly for women living in rural communities.

I know that we are all really keen to progress the passage of this legislation, but I just felt I needed to add to my earlier contribution, particularly because our leader, the Hon Annette King, is not here—in terms of our Health Committee and our lead in the health area. I felt she would have wanted me to, at a minimum, put that case to the Committee in terms of our support for it. I am really excited that the public are going to have more competent health professionals from whom they can now access services, and I see this, as I said before, as an amazing opportunity for women and, actually, for women to get some parity and equity. So we will be looking, I think, very closely at how the remuneration for this particular profession progresses. It should become comparable to the salaries of doctors, and I think, again, this provides a really good scope or area for us to really scrutinise into the future. Thank you, Mr Chair.

JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a short call on behalf of the Greens at the Committee stage of the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill. This is my first time speaking in the House since the valedictory of my colleague Kevin Hague, who was our health spokesperson, so I would like to start my contribution by acknowledging him. He has followed this bill through Parliament up to this point, and he was a huge asset to this Parliament and somebody who, I think, was generally well respected for his knowledge of health in a community setting as well as for having been the chair of the West Coast District Health Board. He has assisted many pieces of legislation in terms of grounding them in reality, and he will be well missed, including by me.

We are supporting this bill. There are several reasons for that and some of them have been traversed already. One is, I guess, that as we have an ageing population the demands on our health system and financial demands are growing. As the technological supports around health actually also become more advanced, we have another cost pressure on our health system. So we need, as a country, to be innovative, and part of innovation is looking at where we can save money and be more efficient. At the moment it is pretty clear to most people—and I think it was the rationale behind this bill in part—that there are inefficiencies in our system, as we have doctors, on a very high pay rate, spending a lot of their time doing paperwork and signing off things that could be done by somebody on a lower pay rate who has the skill. I think that is probably a driver for this bill and it is a driver that we support.

We want our health dollar to be used as effectively as it can possibly be used. I have worked in a youth health organisation and I know that this is a very important area of health. It is one of those system-wide things whereby now that we have student loans it is actually quite difficult to get young doctors working in those services in the communities—they are needing to look for the higher paid jobs to be able to pay off their loans. Nurses traditionally play quite a significant role in our community-based services. Being able to give them additional functions, as this bill does, actually serves the delivery of services in many of our diverse communities and makes sure that they get accessible and affordable healthcare. We absolutely support that.

I remember that Kevin Hague noted that in a rural setting where we have nurse specialists, many of those nurse specialists are already fulfilling a lot of those functions, and, again, this piece of legislation aids that work and aids our rural communities. The Green Party is very happy to support this piece of legislation. It is sensible and promotes efficiency of a precious resource, where we would like to see more money going in and being able to be used for more significant health outcomes. Thank you.

JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): I would like to talk about the new Part 5A of this bill. It actually gives a new definition to “nurse practitioner”. The new definition in amended section 2 of the Medicines Act, inserted by clause 42B, specifies that it means someone who “… is deemed to be, registered with the Nursing Council of New Zealand [under] the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003” as a nurse “whose scope of practice permits the performance of nurse practitioner functions; and (b) holds a current practising certificate”.

I agreed with my colleague Louisa Wall when she stated earlier on that this legislation would probably allow for more innovative models and delivery of services and care, especially for Māori and Pacific providers. We look forward, particularly, to seeing how that model of care develops. This Government talks a lot about innovative care, and it does talk about new models of care, and we believe that this legislation will allow some of that to actually come through and be developed.

A lot of our health workforce works very long hours. They have to do much more with much less. We know that a survey of doctors that has come out recently—they surveyed just over 3,000 doctors—revealed just how overworked our doctors are. Many of them reported that they work 16-hour shifts, and some of them for 12 consecutive days. Nearly 300 of our doctors reported falling asleep, particularly when they drove home. Some of them say that they must actually take a nap before getting on the road.

We believe that this legislation allowing our nurse practitioners to assist should actually help out with ensuring that our doctors, especially our junior doctors, do not work such long shifts—such long hours. It is not in the interest of safety—not for our doctors and our health workforce, and most definitely not for our patients either. Our health workforce deals with life-and-death situations, and when they are overtired it affects the patients, it affects our families, and it affects us as a society. Nurses and GPs deal with much more complex issues right now, and they deal with a lot of specialist assessment that they then have to send back to their GPs.

It was a year ago that we first debated this bill in this House. We know from our health workforce, and particularly our nurses, that they have been frustrated with just how long this legislation has taken to get to this stage. Labour is very supportive of this bill, and we look forward to its passage. Thank you.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 agreed to.

Part 3 agreed to.

Part 4 agreed to.

Part 5 agreed to.

Part 5A agreed to.

Part 6 agreed to.

Part 7 agreed to.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

The Committee divided the bill into the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2), the Burial and Cremation Amendment Bill, the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Amendment Bill (No 2), the Holidays Amendment Bill (No 2), the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 3), the Medicines Amendment Bill, the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill, and the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (No 2), pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 230.

Bill to be reported without amendment presently.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Just to explain why we are having to go back into the House—when we moved into the Committee, we moved into Committee for only three Committee stages, and we have gone beyond that, so now we have to go back to be recommitted to a Committee stage. So that is the process.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Education Legislation Bill with amendment, the Building (Pools) Amendment Bill with amendment, the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill without amendment, and that the Committee had divided it into eight bills.

Report adopted.

Bills

Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill

In Committee

JOANNE HAYES (Third Whip—National): I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one question for the purposes of this debate, with a vote on each question.

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

Parts 1 and 2, and clauses 1 to 3

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I rise to take a call on the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill. Before I begin my contribution, I do want to acknowledge the Hon Phil Goff, who worked on the Law and Order Committee and did a huge piece of work in getting this piece of legislation to the House. I want to acknowledge his significant contribution to this Parliament and to our country, and I wish him all the best in his future governance of the city of Auckland. May you go well, Phil Goff, and we will miss your contribution to this House and to our party greatly.

This bill is of particular interest to me as I have the Labour shadow portfolio of the community and voluntary sector, with particular regard to the demands upon that sector with regard to vetting staff and volunteers who may engage in a range of activities, particularly with regard to working with vulnerable populations such as children or the elderly. This is a piece of legislation that I have contributed Supplementary Order Paper 97 to in order to amend some of the deficiencies that I see within this piece of legislation.

I guess that one of the most significant areas of contention that we in Labour and other members of the Opposition have around this is about the definition of what a “demand service” is. When I was able to sit in on the Law and Order Committee and hear some of the submissions, that was very much at the heart of the contention around this particular piece of legislation—what is, in fact, a “demand service”? There were lots of discussions about the public good versus private benefit.

I can recall having conversations with members about what we might define as private benefit, and one of the things that I found interesting was that with regard to people who work in the NGO sector and in the community and voluntary sector, generally speaking, they are in that business—whether they are being paid for doing that work or not—because of their desire to better society. In fact, what they are doing is actually in the public good, so it struck me as very odd that people who are wanting to improve conditions for children, for the elderly, and for the people who are the most marginalised in our society should actually be required to pay to be vetted to work in these particular services. What they are doing is not defined as being in the public good, but is actually defined as being of private benefit because they may be paid to do this work, and that is at the heart of our argument—the deliberation between private benefit and public good.

Some of the examples that came to the select committee that I heard were around, for example, search and rescue. Could search and rescue services be determined to be in the public interest? Well, I guess if you were the family member of somebody who was out on a boat that had not returned, then you would be thinking it was definitely in the public interest to ensure the safety of people out on the water. But another example that we were given was about the police providing security at airports. We would all assume that that is most definitely for the public good, but the examples that we were given could be defined as having a private benefit because people receive a salary or a wage to do this particular piece of work.

Then we came to look at that in the context of what might be required under Government legislation. For example, under the Vulnerable Children Act there are members of particular workforces who are required to have police vetting. Police vetting is seen as the first screen to ensure that your workforce is fit to do that particular piece of work. So with regard to working with vulnerable populations such as the elderly, or children—in particular, with regard to the Vulnerable Children Act—it would be seen as imperative that you would want to do everything you could as an employer, or as a Government, or as a provider of services to ensure that your workforce is safe. Police vetting is seen as the first mechanism in a suite of other types of mechanisms to ensure that your workforce is safe.

So in that regard my argument, and the argument that members of the Opposition had, is that it is actually in the public good to ensure that the workforce working with children is safe, as required under the Vulnerable Children Act, and therefore you should not be charged to vet your workforce. It should be something that is a core police service. Are we talking about ensuring that our workforce is safe to work in these areas, or are we talking about—and this is very much an argument that the Opposition has put up—the inability to fund our police services appropriately, so we go to low-hanging fruit and say that, actually, the vetting of staff and volunteers who work in the sector looking after children or looking after older people is an easy opportunity for us to recover some costs with regard to the work that the police do?

I know that when this particular bill first came to the attention of this House it was discussed in regard to being able to recover the costs of police to attend to things like sports fixtures or concerts where there is actually a promoter, for example, who is making a profit and that the cost to police those particular events could be recovered by this particular mechanism. I would suggest that that, actually, is an appropriate idea with regard to this. If someone is going to make a substantial amount of money and use the police force as a means of security at a public event like that, then it would be appropriate to recover the costs of the police to attend that particular event. We think that that is entirely appropriate.

However, when the bill actually did make it to the House and, subsequently, to the select committee we discovered that, actually, it was not about that at all. It was actually about charging community organisations—organisations that are largely funded by a Government contract anyway—to vet their staff. In effect, what we are doing, rather than funding the police appropriately to do the work, is taking money from another Government department to fund the police to do this work. It is literally a transfer of Government funding from one agency to another, and that is completely inappropriate in the context of what we are trying to achieve here, really, which is to ensure that the police have all the resources that they need to complete their work.

In that regard I proposed Supplementary Order Paper 97 to ensure that registered charities could be exempt from any charges. I know that at the time the legislation came up the community sector was quite hot about this particular topic and it lobbied support parties to the Government very heavily about ensuring that it could remain exempt from this particular charge, and that is right because in terms of the argument that I have presented with regard to public good versus private benefit, community groups and registered charities should be exempt from the police vetting charges.

I am pleased to say that the community pressure that went on those support parties actually paid out. We know that registered charities will, through regulation, be exempt from having to pay that, and that is as it should be because, at the end of the day, demand services, as defined as private benefit versus public good, should not impact upon those people who are trying to ensure that our society is better.

MAHESH BINDRA (NZ First): I would like to take this opportunity to speak to the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill on behalf of New Zealand First, but before I do that I would like to acknowledge the contribution that has been made by the Hon Phil Goff to this House, and in particular to the Law and Order Committee, which I have had the privilege of being a core member of with Phil Goff. I also wish him good luck for his future endeavour, which is the role of the Mayor of Auckland City.

So, coming to this bill, policing has always been the basic function and duty of a Government. Ever since there have been democratic governments formed, policing has been the basic responsibility of a Government, and the cost is recovered, basically, from the general taxes that the public pay. However, this bill, according to us, is double-dipping and we cannot support it. It makes me angry to know that after this bill is passed, citizens will have to pay twice to get a basic service. They will have to pay through their taxes, and in addition to that they will have to pay for the basic functions of policing, which could be when getting a Ministry of Justice clearance or background checks. So this will be borne by schools, this will be borne by the voluntary organisations, and this will be borne by the charitable organisations. They should not have to bear the burden of basic policing function.

It is the duty of the Government to provide protection for its citizens, and the police have already been funded for that. They have been funded through general taxes. We think that this double-dipping is unfair, and we cannot support this bill. Thank you.

JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a short call for the Greens on the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill in the Committee stage. We are opposing this piece of legislation. I remember when it was first introduced, so hot on the tail of the vulnerable children’s legislation having passed and the requirement having been introduced into legislation at that time for increased police vetting for people working with children in our community. And then, “nek minnit”, we got this piece of legislation that was saying community organisations would need to pay, and sports recreation—a whole range of organisations would now have to pay to get that vetting done. It is a testament to the community organising and the organising by certain members in this Chamber whom I am looking at, at the moment, that an amendment we have been promised will now be made into regulation so that charities will not have to pay for that, but I do think it is important to remind people of the process that happened.

We are still, even with that exemption that we have been promised in regulation, opposed to this piece of legislation, because although the rationale that has been put forward for it is that there is some kind of private benefit to be gained from the vetting of people, we argue that the primary benefit is public safety. If the purpose is vetting to approve somebody’s safety for doing a job, then the ultimate benefit has got to be, surely, safety. We believe, therefore, that that should be a core police function and should not able to be put out and charged for, and that increasing the complexity of the systems within the police and charging the public for functions like this will actually have a detrimental impact on the entire organisation of the police. That is not something that we can support.

There was almost universal rejection by submitters of the proposition that charges for demand services should be applied to police vetting of individuals who may be working in a paid or voluntary capacity, and we have seen that exemption for charities. We are concerned at the scope of this, and although the initial fees have been set at a low level, there is almost always creep in these matters, and it could well end up—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to report progress.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.