Tuesday, 18 October 2016
Volume 717
Sitting date: 18 October 2016
TUESDAY, 18 OCTOBER 2016
TUESDAY, 18 OCTOBER 2016
Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.
Prayers.
Obituaries
Helen Kelly
ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): I seek leave to move a motion without notice on the death of Helen Kelly.
Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is none.
ANDREW LITTLE: I move, That this House mourn the passing of Helen Kelly, who was a champion for working people and who fought for a more just and fair New Zealand, and express our condolences to her loved ones. Helen Kelly was raised in a household built on values, principles, convictions, and immense determination. She knew what it was to believe in a cause, to champion it, and to be active in it. Helen’s political and industrial leadership began with her championing the cause of early childhood teachers. At a young age she was involved in negotiating with senior education officials and with education Ministers to improve the terms and conditions for teaching staff dealing with what are now recognised as the crucial years for our young.
Helen followed her achievements in the early childhood sector with a number of senior positions in unions until 2007, when she was elected to lead the union movement as president of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions - Te Kauae Kaimahi. She brought immense spirit and energy and integrity to the movement. As president of the Council of Trade Unions, Helen had no particular power to direct or instruct member unions on what they should do, but she did not need formal authority to do so. She used her impressive powers of persuasion to unite and mobilise the union movement. She challenged many unions to modernise, and union leaders to lead from the front. She embroiled herself in disputes when she saw that the weight of her office could make a difference.
For example, at the time of the global financial crisis and when this Government was freshly in office, she lead the unions in negotiating with the Government and employers for a 9-day working fortnight scheme to assist some businesses and many workers. I still vividly recall sitting in a restaurant on Symonds Street one Thursday evening, at the time of all of this, and we were talking about how we could make this 9-day fortnight work, and somebody came out with a brilliant idea and Helen said: “Oh, I’ll text John.” It turns out that John was the Prime Minister, and we were very surprised to learn that. We were even more surprised when, having texted the Prime Minister, she got a reply from the Prime Minister. It turned out that he was two doors down the road at a different restaurant. We urged her to lead us down there so we could continue the discussions. She said: “No, even Tory Prime Ministers need a night off.”
Helen Kelly led the way in many disputes involving meatworkers, dairy workers, and port workers. She led the fight for justice for the families of the victims of Pike River. But there are two fights that she took on that, in my view, stand out. The fight for better health and safety in the forestry industry; her efforts have saved, and will continue to save, lives. She stood up to an industry that had changed radically, that had hundreds of little employers, some big, powerful vested corporate interests that had let standards in that industry deteriorate. We must never forget how that industry let worker health and safety get so bad.
Perhaps the hardest fight Helen took on—at least until last year—was The Hobbit dispute. That was an ugly fight. Helen faced one of the most powerful industries—the might of Hollywood and its local associates. It was a dispute that would result in one of the most expedient, unnecessary, and unprincipled laws in this country, which still breaches our international obligations and remains an embarrassment amongst the community of developed nations. But, even after all that, the tributes that flowed last Friday came from all quarters. Even amongst some of her fiercest opponents she had won their respect.
On Friday we lost a great New Zealander. Faced with something more uncompromising, more relentless, and, in the end, unstoppable, Helen was stopped. Helen Kelly did not see herself as a hero. She was a champion, an advocate, an agitator. She epitomised the best of New Zealand values. When she saw others in need she offered to help. When she saw injustice, she strove to correct it. When she saw the opportunity to fight for progressive ideals, she climbed in boots and all, uncompromisingly, relentlessly, and with one goal: to make positive change. She moved between her roles of union leader, colleague, friend, partner, mother, confidant, and agitator effortlessly. Helen stood in no one’s shadow, and she will be missed.
Waiata
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): The Government joins with the Leader of the Opposition in relation to the motion that he has just presented about Helen Kelly. Helen Kelly did not come from my side of the political fence. There were many occasions when I simply did not agree with her, not the least being, actually, her disagreement with the Government’s view that the law should be changed in relation to the definition of a contractor, so movies like The Hobbit series could be made in New Zealand.
Sometimes the forceful way that Helen Kelly made her arguments frustrated me, but she also had my enormous respect. She was passionate, she was tenacious, she was articulate, she was intelligent, and she was pragmatic. Underneath all of that she had a great sense of humour and was always prepared to at least sit down and have a discussion to see whether the rights and interests of New Zealanders could be advanced. As Mr Little has just pointed out, not the least of this was in relation to the Job Summit, where I think the country had genuine concerns about what might happen to workers in this country, and she fought to see whether there was a way to preserve their jobs and their entitlements.
Helen Kelly cared passionately about those whom she fought for, and she believed in them to the end. She died far too young and she had a great deal more to contribute. I think most people know that Helen Kelly was considering a career in politics. If she had not been struck down by such a terrible illness, she would have enjoyed, I think, the opportunity to debate in this House those values and principles that she held so dearly, and we would have enjoyed debating with her. But the truth is, Helen Kelly did not need an office in the Beehive to make a difference to New Zealand; she made that all too easily through the capacity of her arguments and the way that she articulated them.
To her family and friends we pass our deepest condolences. May she rest in peace.
Waiata
DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to honour Helen Kelly, and the Greens join with others across this House in mourning her loss and offering our condolences to her husband Steve and to her son Dylan, to her wider family and her colleagues, and to her many, many friends.
I have worked with Helen a lot over the last 5 years as spokesperson for industrial relations for the Greens, but I first met Helen socially—I think it was when she was the General Secretary of the Association of University Staff, now the New Zealand Tertiary Education Union. She was in the early days of her relationship with her husband, and she used to visit our farm—our vineyard—quite regularly. Others have talked about her fierce intellect, and I can attest that she was still able to win an argument after a long night of wine tasting. We sometimes referred to Helen as the union movement’s answer to Xena: Warrior Princess because of her staunch advocacy, her willingness to enter the fray, her ability to win a fight, and her cute dimples.
Others, both here in the House and also through the media—through social media, as well—have reflected on her compassion and her work with the families of workers who have been killed at work: the forestry families; the Pike River families; and the family in India of Charanpreet Dhaliwal, the young, untrained security guard who was killed on his first day at work. There is no doubt that Helen’s campaigns for justice for these families gave them some relief. I think that if we were to look at a fitting memorial for Helen, I would suggest it would be an overhaul of our industrial relations laws: a health and safety law that actually protects farm workers; a reversal of the “Hobbit law”; a living wage for all ordinary New Zealanders; a law that enables New Zealanders to join a union without fear of retribution; the ability to organise for better working conditions; and for someone—someone—to be held responsible for the Pike River mine tragedy, and for the bodies of those men in that mine to be returned to their families so that they can have some closure. Those things would be a fitting tribute to this remarkable woman.
It is a damn shame that we will not see Helen in this House, because, goodness knows, we need women of that calibre here. Her role as president of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, a public figure, came at a cost to her family, and we thank them for it. Being a public figure responsive to the needs of ordinary New Zealanders would have served her well here. She would have shone. She will be missed. Moe mai e wahine toa, moe mai, moe mai rā! [Rest, oh courageous woman, sleep and rest there indeed!]
As we go marching, marching
We bring the greater days
For the rising of the women
Means the rising of the race
No more the drudge and idler
Ten that toil where one reposes
But the sharing of life’s glories
Bread and roses, bread and roses
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): Those New Zealanders who have had the opportunity to witness the work and life of Helen Kelly over a great number of years would celebrate the fact that she was a stand-out New Zealander, a person of true character, honesty, and integrity. Clearly, she put her cause and the people she served before herself and, in doing so, enhanced the respect for the union movement in this country. Indeed, it could be said that her interactions put unionism on a new level. Anyone who has studied history knows that a good economy and a good society need that sort of representation—and, indeed, unionism—and that sort of personality leading it.
We are a better country for witnessing her professional life and a lesser country for her departure. Our sincere condolences go to her husband, her wider family, and friends. On these occasions it is so common for speakers to rise and use the most effusive and laudatory language, but in Helen Kelly’s particular case, what is said here today has a very special significance.
MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Ā, tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā, e tū ake au ki te tuku i ngā mihi ki tērā o ngā wāhine toa, tēnei wahine rangatira e hāpai nei i ngā mahi, te tautoko i te kāhui kaimahi o te whenua. Kāore au i te paku mōhio i a ia i mua i taku taenga mai ki tēnei Whare ēngari, ko ia tēnā e wero nei i ahau i runga i a Twitter. Ko ia anō hoki tēnā i tuku mai i tōna ringa ki a au, kia whai rautaki whakamua, kia āwhina i tōku māramatanga e pā ana ki taua tūahuatanga mahi. Ko ia tēnā e hāpai nei i ngā take e tiaki pai nei i ngā whānau ki runga i te whenua, nā reira, e tika kia mihi atu ki a ia, anō na kia tuku te aroha ki tōna whānau. Ā, kua kite atu au i a ia i tērā tau, kua kite i te taumahatanga kei runga i a ia me ōna pokohiwi.
I ngā tau kua hipa atu, kua kite mātou i te mārō o te tuarā, te mārō o te tangata, te kaha o tēnei wahine ki te karawhiu nei i ngā kupu tika ahakoa ko wai, ahakoa kei hea. Ēngari i te taumahatanga i runga i a ia, i tērā tau tēnei mea te mate pukupuku, ā, ko ia hoki, ahakoa te taumahatanga, ahakoa te māuiuitanga, he take anō kai mua i a ia, ā, ko te kai tarutaru hei rongoā mō tērā mahi o te mate pukupuku. Nā reira, mai i te wā i ahu mai tēnei wahine toa ki te wā e hoki anō tēnei wahine toa ki te puku o te whenua, ki te kōpū o Te Whāea o Papatūānuku, i hāpai kaha nei i ngā take ahakoa kai hea, ahakoa ko wai, tēnā e te wahine toa, moe mai rā i roto i ngā ringa mahana o Te Atua, moe mai rā. Kua tae te wā whakatā mōu.
Ko ia tēnei-i
E mōnehutanga te whakapū-aki te ara tāro-ā
Ki ngā paepae maunga-a
Hīkoia e te tini-i, e te māno-ō
Kia tau ki te toka ō mau-mahara-a
E kani nei e te hau marangai mate-e
E ngau kino nei-i te aroha-a ē-ei
[So thank you, Mr Speaker, I rise to accord tributes to that one of the brave women, to this esteemed woman, who supported activities and the workers’ federation of the country. I knew very little about her prior to my coming to this House, but there she was challenging me on Twitter. She was also the one who offered a helping hand to me to access some forward planning strategies that would assist my understanding in that particular sphere of work. She in particular was the one who supported matters in regards to protecting families well on the land, therefore, it is fitting that we applaud and pay a tribute to her, as well as offering our sympathy to her family. I observed her last year and have seen the obligations bestowed upon her which she carried on her shoulders.
Over the years, we have observed her unyielding back, her resilience as an individual, and the intensity of this woman to bombard them with statements about justice regardless who the person was and where he or she was. But the burden that she had on her last year was this thing called cancer and how she was going to deal with it as well, notwithstanding the difficulties and weariness that confronted her, an issue was to seek relief from the cancer through cannabis. Therefore, from the time this courageous woman arrived, to the time this brave woman returns once again into the belly of the land, into the womb of mother Earth, she continued to strongly support issues, regardless where they were, who they were, therefore, rest there in the warmth of the Lord’s arms, oh bold woman, sleep there, rest. The moment for you to rest has arrived.
This indeed is her,
Who has fallen, disclosing the enduring pathway
To the mountains on the horizon
Traverse it the myriad and the thousands
To land upon the rock of memories
That the east wind of death rubs to and fro upon
Oh, how empathy gnaws keenly within]
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to join with other leaders in paying tribute to somebody, in Helen Kelly, who was fierce yet dignified, brilliant yet humble, and who spent her life with a deep and compassionate devotion to the service of others. Our regards and thoughts are with her family. May she rest in peace.
Motion agreed to.
Oral Questions
Questions to Ministers
Economy—Reports, Regional Economic Growth, and Tax Rates
1. TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland) to the Minister of Finance: How is the Government’s management of the economy creating opportunities for New Zealanders?
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): The ongoing growth of the economy is giving businesses the confidence to invest. ANZ’s most recent survey of job advertisements shows that on a seasonally adjusted basis, job advertisements increased by 0.3 percent in September, the eighth consecutive month in which job-ad numbers have increased. On a yearly basis, the number of jobs advertised in September was 13.5 percent higher than a year ago—more opportunities for New Zealanders and their families.
Todd Barclay: What does the ANZ survey tell us about regional economies?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: It shows that job growth was fairly robust in Auckland and Wellington, where ads are up 14.8 percent and 13.8 percent on a year ago. But there is a strong lift in employment intentions in the regions, including Waikato, which is up 27 percent on a year ago; Hawke’s Bay, which is up 17.6 percent; Manawatū, which is up 17 percent; and Otago, which is up 19 percent on a year ago. Clearly, the regions are generating a lot more job opportunities.
Grant Robertson: Does he recall saying on 11 May 2011 that prisons were a moral and fiscal failure, and that the Wiri Prison would be the last prison his Government built? In light of his last answer, is his plan for regional economic growth just building more prisons—is that as good as it gets?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: I do recall saying that, and the statement I made about not building any more prisons turned out to be not correct. The Government now—well, actually, the Government does not have much choice. The courts are sentencing criminals every week, and we have got to have somewhere to lock them up.
Todd Barclay: What other reports has he seen that demonstrate that New Zealanders are confident in the direction of the economy?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: As I said, job advertising in the regions is up very strongly on last year. There is also improved consumer confidence. Consumer confidence rose in September for the fifth month in a row and is now at its highest level since late 2014. According to the survey, 35 percent of New Zealanders believe they are better off now than they were a year ago, and 25 percent think they are worse off; 44 percent expect to be better off in a year’s time, compared with 13 percent who expect to be worse off.
David Seymour: What effects does the Minister believe tax rates have on work, saving, and investment activity?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think it is fairly well established that if tax rates are too high they discourage work, saving, and investment. However, because of tax reforms undertaken by this Parliament, New Zealand now has one of the lowest labour tax wedges in the developed world—that is, for an extra hour of work, New Zealanders on average pay less tax than almost anyone else in the developed world.
Todd Barclay: What other reports has he received on the state of the economy?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: I have seen in the last day or two a report asserting that most New Zealanders have seen their wages “barely rise in recent years.” That report not only is wrong but overlooks the relationship between inflation and wages. For instance, between 1999 and 2008 after-tax wages increased by 35 percent, but inflation was 29 percent in that period. Since 2008 the after-tax wage has increased by a little bit less—that is, 31 percent on average—but inflation has been only 12 percent. So real wages have increased much more quickly in the last 7 or 8 years than in the decade before that.
David Seymour: In light of his earlier answer, could the Minister elaborate on how the 51st Parliament has reduced the tax wedge faced by workers?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: I am referring, maybe, to the 50th Parliament—that is, the tax reforms done in 2010, where income tax rates were reduced. That now shows up, actually, in the average source deduction tax as a proportion of GDP, which has dropped by 3 or 4 percentage points. That achieves what we set out to achieve, which is less tax on work, saving, and investment, and more tax on consumption and property.
David Seymour: Does the Minister have any plans to reduce taxes in the 51st Parliament?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: I would not want to get into a debate with the member about which Parliament we are in or what might be the next one, but, as indicated, the Government is interested in further lowering taxes should economic and fiscal conditions allow. But that is in the context where, as we have seen in the last week or so, there is a cacophony of demands for how the Government could spend its surpluses. The great thing is that we are one of the very few developed countries that have those choices, because we are one of the very few that have rising surpluses.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could the Minister of Finance explain to the whole country why it is that the National Government gives the ACT Party a right to ask questions that box him round the ears so that it can look like—in the case of the ACT Party—a real party?
Mr SPEAKER: There is no—[Interruption] Order! There is no ministerial responsibility in that question.
Housing—Dwelling Consents and Supply
2. ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement that “we are seeing a record number of houses being built”, given 2016 isn’t even in the top 5 years for number of dwelling consents issued?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes, and, as I said in answer to an almost identical question from Mr Little last month, according to the latest building activity survey from Statistics New Zealand, the amount of residential building work in the 3 months to July was the highest since the series began back in the 1980s. That is up 6 percent on the previous record levels, set in March this year. That is an increase of 50 percent since 2013 and over 90 percent since the start of 2012. As I said previously, building consents have been running at the highest level for over 11 years, and we are looking to increase them further.
Andrew Little: Can he confirm that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s June state of the markets report says on page 5 that there is a building shortfall of 8,000 houses a year in Auckland?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No, I cannot confirm that. But what I can confirm is that if we look at the special housing areas established by the Government since October 2013, over 1,300 homes have been completed, 2,200 building consents have been issued, 2,458 new sections have been created, and 7,170 new sections have been granted resource consent—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Bring the conclusion to an end.
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The Government is making good progress.
Andrew Little: Can he confirm that the report also says on page 5 that there was no shortfall in houses in Auckland when he came to office, but now there is a cumulative shortfall of 34,000 houses?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No. I cannot confirm that. But it is hardly surprising that the demand for housing has gone up, because when I became Prime Minister of this country 35,000 New Zealanders a year deserted for Australia—because they were sick of Helen Clark’s Government—and now they are coming home to New Zealand. [Interruption]
Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I need substantially less interjection than that which is occurring.
Andrew Little: When the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said months ago that not enough houses are being built in Auckland and the shortfall is going to continue to grow for years to come, why did he not tell the public?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The Government has, through its comprehensive plan, been demonstrating to New Zealanders that it is very serious about increasing supply and, in fact, that the increase in supply that we are seeing is having a dramatic effect. One only needs to go round Auckland for about 5 minutes and have a look at the enormous amount of construction that is under way. That is why we know there are literally thousands and thousands more people working in construction—tens of thousands, actually—in Auckland than there were a few years ago.
Andrew Little: If Auckland needs 34,000 more houses today, and he has managed just 18 affordable houses in the special housing areas in 3 years, how long will it take to fix the housing shortfall?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The member is talking nonsense when he wants to try to trot out his little number of 18, and it dents what very little credibility he has got. As the Minister for Building and Housing has pointed out, over 500 houses meet the criteria that he defines, and that is why the member has no credibility, because he just keeps making things up—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! That sort of final comment will only lead to disorder. [Interruption] Order! Now the interjections are coming from both front benches. I will ask people once more to desist. If I need to start mentioning them by name, I can do that as well.
Andrew Little: Why did he claim a $1 billion infrastructure fund would be the answer to the housing crisis, when Treasury had told him it is not likely to result in additional housing in the short term?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I did not. What I did claim was that the $1 billion could be used by councils in the five areas. That will make a difference. That was as a result of ongoing discussions we have had with a number of councils over a long period of time where they talked to us about their inability to take more debt on their balance sheet. The Opposition members cannot have it both ways. On the one hand they want to tell us that we are taking it too slowly to get them what they want—and when we move rapidly they tell us we are going too fast. Maybe we have just got a Goldilocks situation: about right.
Andrew Little: Can we just get a straight answer to this: when he has managed only 18 affordable houses in 3 years, does he really think he is doing enough to fix the housing crisis?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: It does not matter how many times the member comes to the House with a made-up number that he cannot back up. It does not make it right. It is just like when he keeps telling everyone that he has the support of his caucus. That does not mean it is right either.
Roading, Auckland—Projects
3. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National) to the Minister of Transport: What recent progress has been made on construction of the Government’s western ring route motorway in Auckland? [Interruption]
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Iain Lees-Galloway, could I have substantially less interjection from you, sir.
Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Transport): Last week the Prime Minister and I officially opened the new St Lukes to Great North Road interchange on Auckland’s State Highway 16. The Government has invested $85 million to widen the highway from three lanes to four lanes in each direction, with upgrades to on and off ramps in the St Lukes Road overbridge. The improved section of highway and interchange will improve congestion on Auckland’s Northern Motorway and is one of seven projects that make up the Government’s $2.4 billion western ring route project.
Dr Parmjeet Parmar: What progress has the Government made on its commitment to deliver the East-West Link roading project?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Very pleasing progress, in fact. Recently, the Prime Minister and I marked the start of work on the East-West Link roading project, which is one of the Government’s top transport priorities in Auckland and a project of national significance. The first stage of the project, in Onehunga, is now under way, and involves widening the Southwestern Motorway to four lanes in each direction between Neilson Street and Queenstown Road in Onehunga. Dedicated bus lanes will also be added to State Highway 20 at Walmsley Road to improve travel times for those heading to and from the airport. Work is also progressing on the broader East-West project, with the consent applications for the $1.85 billion project due to be lodged before the end of the year.
Dr Parmjeet Parmar: What other priority roading projects is the Government delivering in Auckland to support the city’s growth?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: The Government is committed to Auckland and to keeping it moving. In the 3 years to 2018 over $4.2 billion will be invested in transport in and around Auckland. This will see the western ring route completed, including the opening of the $1.4 billion Waterview Connection next year. There is the ongoing construction of the $1.3 billion Auckland-Manakau Eastern Transport Initiative project, $268 million worth of upgrades to parts of the Southern Motorway, and upgrades to the Northern Motorway, including an extension of the Northern Busway. All of these projects underscore the Government’s very strong commitment to our biggest city.
Housing Affordability and Availability—Government Measures to Address
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): This question—[Interruption]—and I am pleased to see you too. Ha, ha!
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
4. 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 with a sartorial elegance that I know the member privately admires.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: I do not want to be churlish here, but—[Interruption] I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]
Mr SPEAKER: Order! As I needed to remind the House last Thursday, points of order will be heard in silence. I look forward to the point of order.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: With respect, that is so frivolous and also, as you can see, utterly wrong, that he should be asked to apologise.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, the Prime Minister has no responsibility for the question that was put down by the Rt Hon Winston Peters.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: When he said “let’s take a minute to look at the enormity of this problem. … the second worst housing affordability problem in the world. … this problem has got worse in recent years.”, what did he do about it?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: A considerable amount. That is what the comprehensive housing plan is about. It is ultimately about dealing with the issues that were created through the metropolitan urban limit in Auckland. It is the release of special housing lands. It is the reform of the Resource Management Act (RMA). It is first-home buyers grants for New Zealanders. It is a much stronger economy to create jobs. It is the release of land. There is just a range of things that the Government has done to address that issue.
David Seymour: What initiatives did the Government of New Zealand take to—
Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have a point of order. I hope it is a genuine point of order.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: It is a genuine point of order.
Mr SPEAKER: Then I will hear it.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: I have observed that it is usually the case that the primary questioner gets the first two questions, and then it passes to the side. [Interruption]
Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, I don’t need any assistance. The primary question was asked. The first supplementary question went to the member, the Rt Hon Winston Peters. I then go across to this side if there is a supplementary question.
David Seymour: It helps if the primary question has some substance. What initiatives did the New Zealand Government take between 2005 and 2008 to increase housing supply?
Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr SPEAKER: No. [Interruption] Order! There is no prime ministerial responsibility in that question—[Interruption] Order! Ron Mark, there is no need to behave like that. If the member wants to stay—[Interruption] Order! I am excited by the potential question No. 11. I want him to stay for that question, but I do need his assistance to behave himself in the meantime.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: When he said “we need Government leadership that is prepared to focus on the fundamental issues”, did he mean promoting the RMA changes loaded with race-based preference?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No, and if the member is feeling guilty about the fact that he was part of a Government that did nothing when it came to housing, he should just get up and say sorry.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: When the Prime Minister announced his four-point plan for improving home affordability—(1) ensuring people are in a better financial position to afford a house; (2) freeing up land supply; (3) dealing with compliance and building cost issues; and (4) allowing State house tenants to buy the houses they live in—what happened, Prime Minister, to the first three points?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: A great deal has happened when it comes to improving the supply of housing in Auckland and across New Zealand. That is why, in the year to August, nationwide residential building consents have increased by 14 percent to 29,622—the highest total since March 2005. I remind the member that he was part of a Government that saw nationwide house prices double—
Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Oh, the member does not like it when we point out what actually happened—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. If he wants to raise a point of order, he is certainly welcome to do so. I certainly hope that this time it will be a genuine point of order.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: It is a genuine point of order. It is to do with the fact that he went right off the question that he had been asked and started to get personal and nasty again, which is most unbecoming.
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Speaking to the point of order—
Mr SPEAKER: No. I thank the Prime Minister for his help but I do not need it. The question itself was a very long question; I could well have ruled it out on the basis that it was not succinct enough. I gave the member the benefit of the doubt and left the question there. It gave quite a wide ambit to the Prime Minister as he chose to answer it.
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I may stand corrected, and the member might want to make this clear, but I am pretty sure that he is quoting from statements I made back in 2008 when I was not Prime Minister, in which case, by definition, that does bring the points that I am making about the previous Government well and truly into play, because that is what the question is about.
Mr SPEAKER: I thank the Prime Minister, but that, again, is actually a debating point rather than a point of order. Question No. 5, the—[Interruption] Order!
Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am just going to offer to respond to Winston Peters’ question about what the point of order was. The point of order simply was that he raised the past; the Prime Minister responded.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Settle down. We have moved past that point of view, Mr Brownlee. Neither were very good points of order. They are matters for debate, and there will be a general debate tomorrow.
District Health Boards—Funding for Staff and Demographic Pressures
5. Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister of Health: Did district health boards receive enough funding in 2016/17 to meet all demographic, wage, and inflationary cost pressures; if not, what is the amount of the shortfall?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Demographic pressures for 2016-17 are fully funded, but, of course, we will not know until the end of the financial year whether inflation has been fully funded, but given the latest inflation figures it is as good as covered. Since 2001 district health boards (DHBs) have been asked to make savings every year. For 2016-17 DHBs are expected to save a tiny 0.7 of 1 percent of their total massive $12.2 billion budget.
Hon Annette King: How much funding has been allowed in the DHBs’ budgets in 2016-17 to pay for improved working conditions for junior doctors and cover for senior doctors during the 2-day strike?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, of course, that is all subject to ongoing negotiations, as the member well knows, and it is expected that DHBs will use funding within their very generous baselines to cover all pressures in the manner I have just described.
Hon Annette King: Does he stand by his statement that “It is unacceptable if our junior doctors are working in unsafe conditions,”; if so, does he believe junior doctors are working in unsafe conditions—justifying their demand for a safer roster.
Mr SPEAKER: Two supplementary questions. The Minister can answer one.
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, of course, we are not going to do wage negotiations in Parliament, but I stand by all my statements.
Hon Annette King: If he believes a junior doctor’s job is “tough”, why has he been at such pains to rubbish their survey by saying there is “no objective evidence” of a problem when junior doctors reported making mistakes and falling asleep driving home from work, exhausted after long hours?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, look, I think we have got a very hard-working junior doctor workforce and I know the member would love to drag me into the centre of negotiations, but I think the common-sense approach would be, actually, just to let this strike play out and get both parties back to the negotiating table so we can continue to provide the very excellent health services that New Zealanders have the benefit of accessing.
Hon Annette King: Does he think the Prime Minister made an unfair comparison between the long hours junior doctors work, dealing with life and death decisions, and the comparison he made with the long hours that investment bankers work, shuffling money around?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: No, the member is misrepresenting what the Prime Minister said. He said that all young people in professions work long and hard hours in those first few years after graduation.
Hon Annette King: How can he claim all costs have been covered by the Government funding, when the health system has reached the stage where we have some DHBs that could not cover the nurses’ pay increase and are now trying to claw back penal rates from junior doctors who work unsociable hours? Is what he is saying not just spin and waffle?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: No, that is completely incorrect. If you look back at the record over the previous 7 years, and what is going to happen again this year, it is that funding has actually been well ahead of the estimated pressures. So funding has kept up with all pressures, but, of course, we will not know until the end of the year what the inflation rate has been. It is very similar to the automatic savings that Labour demanded of DHBs, of 0.5 percent of their total budget each year. This is pretty much in the same ballpark.
Child Sex Offenders—Child Sex Offender Register
6. JONO NAYLOR (National) to the Minister for Social Development: What recent announcements has she made regarding efforts to prevent reoffending by known child sex offenders?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): Last week I announced that New Zealand’s first child sex offender register came into effect. Since Friday, when offenders convicted of a qualifying offence come out of prison, they have to provide authorities with a range of personal information and then tell police of any change in their circumstances, or plans to travel. The register will allow authorities to be more proactive in identifying risk and working to prevent reoffending and harm to children.
Jono Naylor: What is the reasoning behind the need for the child sex offender register?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Before the register came into effect, there was very limited information available to the authorities on where these people were living once they were released from prison and what was going on in their lives that may trigger reoffending. These offenders will no longer be able to disappear back into communities after completing their sentence, and authorities will now have a much better idea about where they are living and what their personal circumstances are. This will allow them to assess what effect a change in the person’s circumstances has on their risk of offending and whether any preventative action needs to take place.
Jono Naylor: Who will have access to the register?
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Only authorised police and Corrections staff involved in monitoring child sex offenders have direct access to the register. Information will be able to be shared between Police, Corrections, the Ministry of Social Development, Housing New Zealand, the Department of Internal Affairs, and Customs, and between the Commissioner of Police and overseas law enforcement agencies, plus police will be able to release some information to a third party such as a parent or caregiver if they assess there is a need to do so to protect the safety of a child or children. This register is part of this Government’s commitment to prevent harm to children and is another example of our focus on this very important issue.
Superannuation Fund—Government Contributions
7. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Why did he break his commitment with respect to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, “when surpluses return we will resume contributions”, and will he make restarting contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund a higher priority than tax cuts?
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): I disagree. There has not been any broken commitment regarding the Superannuation Fund. We have said for some time that when the Government returns to a sufficient Budget surplus and can contribute genuine savings rather than borrowing, National will resume contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. The straightforward issue is that even when the Government shows surpluses under the operating balance before gains and losses measure, it does not always have cash surpluses until those accounting surpluses get reasonably big.
Grant Robertson: In light of that answer, does he recall Sunday, 31 May 2009, when he said to Guyon Espiner that “the Government would restore contributions to the super fund when surpluses return.”? Is that not a breaking of a commitment?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: I remember that Sunday in 2009 in vivid detail, in fact, and constantly go back to it. The Government has outlined its position many, many times since 2009, and when there are sufficient surpluses and when we have debt down to the levels we think are prudent, which is 20 percent of GDP by 2020, then we will resume contributions, which we would like to do. I am pleased to report to the member that because we took none of the Labour Party’s advice, we currently have the choice of making some contributions.
Grant Robertson: Is the New Zealand Superannuation Fund correct when it says that, as at 30 June this year, the fund is—
Hon Steven Joyce: Back on the burning issues!
Grant Robertson: Do you want to answer, Steven?
Mr SPEAKER: Order! No. [Interruption] Order! The interjections coming from Mr Joyce are certainly not helpful. They must cease. Would the member like to start his question again?
Grant Robertson: I would. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Is the New Zealand Superannuation Fund correct when it says that, as at 30 June this year, the fund is $20 billion less than what it would have been had contributions been continued?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: No. That is a hypothetical calculation. In any case, the legislation does not give the Superannuation Fund the job of deciding when contributions are made; it gives this Parliament the job—and rightly so. Given that it is a long-term fund, it is the return over 20, 30, or 50 years that matters, not the return over the first 10 or 15. It is just a hypothetical calculation.
Grant Robertson: All right then. Is Treasury correct that the Superannuation Fund will be $36 billion short of what is required by 2030, and does he not think that making up for this should be a greater priority for surpluses than tax cuts?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: As we have indicated, contributions to the Superannuation Fund are among the choices that the Government has, as well as the size and scope of those contributions. But Treasury cannot possibly know what a shortfall might be in 2030, because it does not know what decisions Governments will make under the legislation between now and then, and it does not know about any of the other fiscal risks that might occur between now and then.
Grant Robertson: Why is he being so irresponsible and reckless to put tax cuts ahead of providing a secure retirement for future generations, when older New Zealanders are waiting longer and paying for operations, and children are trying to do their homework by torch-light in a van because of the housing crisis? Are those things not more important than tax cuts?
Mr SPEAKER: A series of supplementary questions—the Hon Bill English can answer any.
Hon BILL ENGLISH: Right now those things are more important than ineffective Government spending that does not change lives in the way that we would hope it does. This Government has developed a wide-ranging tool kit to enable it to focus on the high-priority communities that need effective Government spending. In fact, what we do with the $70 billion we already spend is much more important than what happens with the next $2 billion or $3 billion.
Prisons—Prison Capacity Programme
8. BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country) to the Minister of Corrections: What is the Government doing to ensure our prisons have the capacity they need?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Corrections): Excellent question. Well, today I announced plans to increase prison capacity on existing prison sites by around 1,800 beds, at a construction cost of around $1 billion. Despite significant progress in reducing crime, the number of prisoners has increased faster than projected. The Government is responding with new investment. We are committed to ensuring value for money for taxpayers. All the proposed beds are on prison land where a lot of the infrastructure is already in place.
Barbara Kuriger: How will the Prison Capacity Programme further ensure those in prison get the treatment and rehabilitation they need to reduce reoffending?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: The Prison Capacity Programme is not just about bricks and mortar but is also aimed at the drivers of crime: drug and alcohol abuse, and domestic violence. Along with ensuring public safety, reducing reoffending is Corrections’ ultimate goal. Corrections actively works with offenders to provide rehabilitation, education, and employment training that make a positive and demonstrable difference in assisting prisoners to turn around their lives. The programme will increase delivery of the department’s most successful rehabilitative and reintegrative programmes, including drug treatment units to address drug- and alcohol-related issues; special treatment units to address violent and sexual offending; reintegration programmes, including Out of Gate and guided release; and education training programmes such as core literacy and numeracy, and industry training.
Crown Financial Institutions—Compliance with Ethical Investment Framework
9. JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green) to the Minister of Finance: Would he act to further regulate Crown Financial Institutions if they were found to still be directly or indirectly investing in companies involved in the manufacture of cluster bombs, nuclear weapons, land mines, tobacco, or whaling?
Mr SPEAKER: Before I call the Minister, my office has been advised that this answer may be longer than normal in an attempt to fully inform the member.
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): No. And I would just like to explain briefly for the member how the independent investment activities at Crown Financial Institutions (CFIs) are already subject to a range of requirements for ethical investment. Each CFI runs an exclusion list that prevents direct investment in the companies on those exclusion lists. All of the activities that the member asked about are excluded by these lists. CFIs may also invest in what are called collective investment vehicles (CIVs). Most recent figures show that CIV investments are a small proportion—around 3 percent of ACC in New Zealand Superannuation, and 13 percent of Government Superannuation Fund portfolios, which total just short of $70 billion. If a CFI learns that a collective investment vehicle has invested in a company on its exclusion list—that is, investing in the activities that the member referred to—the CFI will engage with the fund manager to try to influence their behaviour or consider divestment. Finally, all CFIs are signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, and have adopted the UN Global Compact. These require signatories to establish a responsible investment framework, which is subject to the following statutes and resolutions: the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987, the Cluster Munitions Prohibition Act 2009, the Anti-Personnel Mines Prohibition Act 1998, and two UN Security Council resolutions regarding nuclear weapons.
James Shaw: So, given all of that, is he saying that it is acceptable for the Government to indirectly invest in, and profit from, companies that manufacture cluster bombs that blow the legs off children?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: We would expect that the fund that became aware of an investment in one of the excluded activities would then take the action required to comply with its own rules—that is, either to influence, in this case, the collective investment vehicle that may be investing at one or two arm’s lengths from such activities, or to divest.
James Shaw: Is he aware that the Government Superannuation Fund Authority continues to invest in three tobacco companies even though the authority itself has found these companies unethical, and is it not time to make the law clearer?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think the law is pretty clear, and the Superannuation Fund should comply both with the law and with the ethical investment framework, which I am advised is one of the most developed among sovereign funds in the world.
James Shaw: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Just for clarity, I was referring to the Government Superannuation Fund Authority, not the Superannuation Fund.
Mr SPEAKER: My difficulty is that the member actually asked two questions. He then also asked whether it is not time to make the law clearer, and the Minister immediately addressed that. So he has answered one of the legs, and that is enough to satisfy.
James Shaw: Does he agree with the ACC investment fund’s position statement, stating that it thinks indirect investments in cluster bombs manufacturers are perfectly legal?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: Again, we would expect it to comply both with the statute that creates a framework for its investment decisions and with any undertakings that it has made, as I said, as signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment. I think the member would probably give credit to these organisations that as and when issues are raised regarding investment in companies that are on the exclusion list, from what I have seen, in each case the funds have acted appropriately.
James Shaw: I seek leave to table the ACC investment fund’s position statement on investment in cluster bombs, obtained under the Official Information Act.
Mr SPEAKER: Is it freely available on the ACC website?
James Shaw: No. We could not find it on the website.
Mr SPEAKER: On that basis I will put the leave. Leave is sought to table that particular position statement. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.
Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.
James Shaw: Is it not a double standard for the Government funds to continue to invest indirectly in cluster bomb makers, for example, when KiwiSaver providers immediately dropped their indirect investments?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: I would not use that term—in the first place, I am not exactly sure whether what the member says happened has actually happened. Secondly, in respect of the Crown financial institutions, we would expect them, as I said, to act consistently with the statute and, in fact, with general expectations around the United Nations principles, and so on. If it is the case that ACC is not complying with those, then that would be a matter of governance, which I am sure would be raised with it.
James Shaw: Is it ever OK to fund cluster bombs?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: No, but I do not think that is the issue here. The issue here is how these financial institutions deal with the situation where much of the levy payers’ funding that they have is invested indirectly, often at two or three arm’s lengths, from the New Zealand decision maker—that is, invested in collective vehicles, which are then investing in further collective vehicles. We would expect them to have the systems that enable them to be able to track their investments and respond consistently with the framework, in a way that I think the member and the Government would probably agree on.
James Shaw: Given that when the New Zealand Herald broke the story a few weeks ago about KiwiSaver investments, indirect investments, in these kinds of companies, how come it was that it was able to move within a matter of a few days and yet the Government funds do not seem to have been able to find that information?
Hon BILL ENGLISH: I cannot answer that question directly. I think it is safe to say that KiwiSaver funds managers made statements within a few days. Just whether they have been able to divest, I think, is another matter that you would have to check up with them. But we would expect Crown financial institutions to act in a way that is consistent with their own ethical investment practices and with the statutes that govern them.
Drugs, Illegal—Methamphetamine Use and Police Dedicated to Drug Crime
10. STUART NASH (Labour—Napier) to the Minister of Police: Is the Government winning its so-called “war on P”, given the drug is now cheaper, more pure, and more readily available than ever, according to the Police Association?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police): Victory will not be declared until there is no more methamphetamine being bought and sold in New Zealand. Although there is always more that can be done, the Government has made excellent progress on tackling the problem. So far, we are seizing more methamphetamine than ever. The police have seized almost a tonne this year so far—
Hon David Parker: That’s not true. There’s more, it’s purer, and more available.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Mr Parker might think that that is something to laugh at, but I do not. We are taking the proceeds of crime from criminals. Over $390 million of cash and assets have been seized since December 2009, and we are using that money on drug-related initiatives. Just yesterday the Prime Minister announced that almost $15 million seized from criminals will be invested in anti-drug initiatives, to reduce both supply and demand, with extra funding for the Police, Customs, Health, and Corrections.
Stuart Nash: If this is such an important area, why has the number of police officers dedicated to drug crime been cut in the last 3 years, according to her own figures?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Obviously, that member does not realise that every member of the New Zealand Police is dedicated to dealing with this area. Nobody in the Police would actually walk by and allow this drug to continue being sold.
Stuart Nash: Does she support the Prime Minister’s support for gangs acting as vigilante groups to fight P, or does she support the Police, which has said: “We reinforce that people should not take matters into their own hands.”?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I see no difference between the Prime Minister’s very wise words and those of the New Zealand Police.
Jami-Lee Ross: Has the Minister received any reports of organisations advocating greater law enforcement activity in relation to drugs, while also opposing the need to accommodate more offenders in prison?
Mr SPEAKER: I will just be listening very carefully to the answer to the question.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Strangely enough, I have. That would be the New Zealand Labour Party, under Mr Andrew Little.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! No. That is a question that is designed to do nothing but attack the Opposition.
Stuart Nash: Rather than leaving law enforcement to the gangs, will she back Labour’s plan for 1,000 extra police?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Rather than ever back the Labour Party on law and order, I think we would—obviously, it is nice to know that some gang members are turning their lives around and suddenly deciding that methamphetamine is a bad thing, and that is a good thing. When they start taking family violence as seriously, then I will be a bit more impressed.
Stuart Nash: When P gets cheaper, more pure, and easier to get than ever, when communities have to turn to gangs for help because there are not enough police, when P is driving the surge in violent crime all over the country, why can she not admit that National has failed to live up to its promise to New Zealanders and adopt Labour’s plan for extra police?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: That member has obviously got a very short memory, because I remember that when Labour was last in Government it said that P was not an issue.
Drugs, Illegal—Methamphetamine Use and Government Measures to Address
11. RON MARK (Deputy 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 as Prime Minister.
Ron Mark: How can he say that his Government is “not losing the war on P” when, after 8 years of his leadership, there is now so much of it available on the street that the price has plummeted to half of what it was when he came to office?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: First, I am not sure that that is actually the statement that I made, but, second, I think it is worth reflecting on what is happening. That is that the Government has had a fairly comprehensive plan that has seen, actually, significantly more resources for both Police and Customs, and more money put into rehabilitation beds. That has seen—on the estimates of the most significant survey in this area, actually—the usage of P reduced by about half. What is true, though, is the enormous price differential between what the product actually sells for in New Zealand and what you can buy it for in markets like Mexico or China, meaning there is a huge incentive for people to bring it into New Zealand.
Ron Mark: Does he agree with the current president of the Police Association, who said in reference to the P problem that “we took our foot off the throat”, and the outgoing president, who said “funding to police organised crime units [has] been reduced, making it more difficult to fight the p problem.”, and is it not he and his Cabinet who are ultimately responsible for that?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No, I do not agree at all, and the facts do not back that up.
Ron Mark: How pathetic is it that your Government on one day announces that it is going to spend $28 million exterminating possums and rats, and then on another day announces that it is going to spend a piffling $15 million to eradicate P dealers?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I think it would be a stretch of the legislation to use the proceeds of crime to exterminate rats, and, therefore, we are using the legislation and the powers within the legislation to use those resources. Far from being behind the ball, actually, the Government has been quite forward-leaning in this area, but one has to accept that around the world the use of P has actually increased for the hardened end. The overall usage rates in New Zealand have declined, on the survey work.
Ron Mark: Then does he stand by his and his officials’ views that “the number of people using P is declining”, and would he accept that one would have to be on P to believe that?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The member is entitled to hold that view if he wants to, but the biggest survey in this area—which is an anonymous survey that people fill in and also takes into account the number of people who present themselves at hospitals and the like—indicates that the broader usage of P is going down. What is absolutely true, I think, is that the hardened end of users is going up, and what has been the case is that we have become much better at identifying that now. People do test homes, for instance, for the use of P and the like. The reality is that New Zealand—I think, actually, above Australia—has one of the highest rates, if not the highest rate, in the OECD, and that there are enormous price differentials, which encourage the gangs to try to bring it into New Zealand. We need to combat that, and that is what we are doing.
Waste Management—Plastic Bags
12. DENISE ROCHE (Green) to the Minister for the Environment: Will he support a charge paid by customers on single-use plastic bags in order to reduce waste and provide revenue for waste-minimisation programmes and education; if not, why not?
Hon NICKY WAGNER (Minister of Customs) on behalf of the Minister for the Environment: Plastic bags make up a very small proportion of New Zealand’s waste stream, about a quarter of 1 percent—a quarter of 1 percent—so the Government currently does not support a compulsory charge. That would also be double-dipping, because we already charge a levy on every tonne of waste that goes to landfill, and that charge raises $30 million a year for waste initiatives, including $15 million for local initiatives including education and research.
Denise Roche: Why will he not support a charge when overseas examples have shown how well they work—for example, in the UK where there has been an 85 percent reduction in plastic bag use and £13 million generated for environmental charities in just the first 6 months?
Hon NICKY WAGNER: Waste minimisation is focused on managing waste harm and waste volume. Plastic shopping bags become a significant environmental problem only if they are not disposed of correctly, but New Zealanders are generally very responsible about that and we have good waste management and recycling facilities. Furthermore, single-use plastic bags are only a quarter of 1 percent.
David Seymour: Does the Minister believe it a good use of New Zealanders’ funds to take $150 million—at 15c on a billion plastic bags—to potentially reduce plastic waste output by a quarter of 1 percent?
Hon NICKY WAGNER: No.
Denise Roche: Should this Government not be more ambitious than settling for a recycling scheme that does not actually reduce the 1.6 billion plastic bags that we use every year, when scientists are predicting that there will be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050 unless drastic action is taken?
Hon NICKY WAGNER: Plastic bags become a problem only if they are not disposed of correctly, and there are effective waste management systems and recycling facilities. But international research tells us that 80 percent of the plastic in our marine environment comes from a total of 20 countries, and New Zealand is not one of those countries. I believe there is a bigger concern of plastic microbeads, because it is not possible for households to separate these and they end up in the waterways and the oceans, so the Ministry for the Environment is working with its officials and with Australians to address this issue.
Denise Roche: Is the Minister saying we should just give up trying to protect our oceans?
Hon NICKY WAGNER: Of course not.
Urgent Debates Declined
District Health Boards—Junior Doctors’ Strike
Police—Raids on Euthanasia Advocates
Mr SPEAKER: I have received a letter from Barbara Stewart seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the strike by junior doctors that commenced today. This is a particular case of recent occurrence, and there is ministerial responsibility for the delivery of health services by district health boards. The test for whether a particular case requires the immediate attention of the House is a high one. The business of the House should not be set aside just lightly; there must be an element of urgency for the matter to take precedence over other business. Industrial action in itself will not necessarily mean the granting of an urgent debate. Actions taken to mitigate the effects of the strike will also be considered. I am not convinced that the taking of industrial action in this instance warrants the setting aside of the business of the House. The application is, therefore, declined.
I have received a further letter, from David Seymour, seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the police raids on advocates for euthanasia. This is a particular case of recent occurrence; however, under section 16 of the Policing Act 2008, the Commissioner of Police is not responsible to, and must act independently of, any Minister of the Crown regarding the maintenance of order, the enforcement of the law, and the investigation and prosecution of offences. There can be no administrative or ministerial responsibility of the Government for the conduct of police investigations. The House confirmed that by passing the Policing Act 2008. Given that administrative or ministerial responsibility of the Government is a prerequisite for the holding of an urgent debate, that application is also declined.
Bills
Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill
First Reading
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Science and Innovation): I move, That the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee to consider this bill. This bill has been a lot of work over a short space of time, but it is now completely ready for lift-off. It creates a modern regulatory environment to enable the development of a space industry in New Zealand and to ensure its safe and secure operation. It will enable New Zealand to meet our international obligations relating to space activities and space technology, and it provides for the management of certain high-altitude activities that take place from New Zealand.
Space and the use of space are already immensely important to our daily lives. Satellites enable a range of critical services and infrastructure that we use every day, including banking, telecommunications, internet, navigation, disaster response, and national security. The costs of accessing space are falling. As the technology continues to improve, those costs will continue to fall and the quality of spacecraft and satellites will improve. These factors are driving increased user demand for a range of satellite-enabled services.
Rocket Lab, a company founded by a New Zealander, Peter Beck, is making the most of these market opportunities. The company’s mission is to provide a dedicated, low-cost, and frequent space launch service for the growing small-satellite industry. New Zealand has certain advantages that make it an attractive location for space launches. We have clear seas and skies, access to valuable launch angles, a skilled workforce, and an innovation friendly business environment. These advantages are key factors behind Rocket Lab’s decision to locate its launch business in New Zealand.
There is an opportunity to build New Zealand’s capacity and expertise across a broad spectrum of space and high-altitude activities, from rocket technology to the use of satellites to perform functions that benefit our economy, environment, and society. The development of a space industry will attract offshore talent and investment into New Zealand, as well as provide local opportunities for highly skilled young New Zealanders. There will also be benefits for regional economies associated with increased visitors and even international space tourists attending rocket launches.
The intent of the bill is to facilitate a space industry while managing the risks and meeting our international obligations. Space activities create significant opportunities for economic development and innovation, but they also create risks to public safety, national security, and the environment.
The bill establishes a licensing regime for launch activities, payloads, launch facilities, and high-altitude vehicles. The licensing regime will enable the appropriate safeguards to be put in place to manage safety and security. However, highly prescriptive provisions in the primary legislation are likely to suppress innovation and stifle the development of the space industry, so to avoid this, the bill establishes a decision-making framework that enables licence conditions to be tailored to particular risks of proposed activities.
The bill will enable New Zealand to implement its international obligations associated with space activities and space technologies, including the Technology Safeguards Agreement (TSA), which we have recently signed with the US. The TSA enables commercial entities in New Zealand to import launch technology and satellites from the US. The TSA creates obligations on the Government to protect sensitive technology, and it also protects New Zealand’s national interests. New Zealand will be able to exercise a veto over any launch should the Government determine that the launch is contrary to our domestic laws.
To support New Zealand’s regulation of space activities, the Government has agreed to become party to the UN Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space. That convention requires the registration of objects launched into orbit or outer space. The bill provides the mechanisms required to manage Crown liability risk associated with launches. It does this by including a provision that authorises the responsible Minister to require an indemnity against the Crown’s liability and to set licence conditions that require the applicant to take out insurance for a specified amount.
The bill also establishes a legal framework to govern high-altitude activities that originate from this country. High-altitude vehicles are being deployed to perform similar functions to satellites in outer space. By including high-altitude vehicles and their payloads within this regime, these activities will be regulated consistently with other space activities as appropriate. The ability to provide a safe and secure environment for space activities is a necessary precondition for the growth of the industry in New Zealand and will ensure that we attract the types of businesses that we seek to locate here. Consistent with this, the bill establishes a new model for managing national security risk, comprising a consultation process and a certification process, which will act as a veto in cases when there is a significant national security risk identified.
The bill also establishes offences to support the bill, with penalties that apply to comparable conduct under criminal law. Futureproofing the bill is a key policy and design objective. The bill provides flexibility to respond to advances in space technology applications and related market demand. Space technologies are evolving rapidly. There are, for example, new hybrid vehicles that are both aircraft and spacecraft.
To deal with these advances in technology, the bill contains powers to make regulations prescribing things or classes of things that are or are not launch vehicles, payloads, high-altitude vehicles, or launch facilities. This will futureproof the regime and allow for regulations that require only one licence when dual functions of a particular technology might otherwise require two. These regulation-making powers are subject to significant safeguards, including consultation requirements. The bill also includes a requirement for a review of the legislation 3 years after its enactment. This will provide an opportunity to adjust elements as required.
The introduction of the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill signals that New Zealand is ready to join the global space economy. A modern regulatory environment that responds to innovation and enables high-technology industries is a critical part of building a diversified, high-value economy.
The emerging New Zealand space industry aligns with the innovation stream of the Government’s Business Growth Agenda in developing New Zealand as a hub for high-value, research and development - intensive businesses. We have never had so many opportunities to create and sell high-quality products and services around the world. It is innovation that creates those products and services and that helps Kiwi companies compete and win on the world stage.
We have hundreds and hundreds of high-value exporters making high-quality niche products. Whether it is medtech, biotech, agritech, ICT, high-value manufacturing, or, now, space technologies, it is innovation that is driving the diversification in New Zealand’s economy and creating a prosperous future for all of us. Having the right, high-quality regulations for this diversification is very important.
This is a great bill. I now commend this bill to the House.
Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North):
She packed my bags last night, pre-flight
Zero hour, 9 a.m.
And I’m gonna be high as a kite by then
I miss the earth so much, I miss my wife
It’s lonely out in space
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Quite an admission.
Dr DAVID CLARK:
On such a timeless flight
And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time
Till touchdown brings me ’round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no, I’m a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is the member reading his speech?
Dr DAVID CLARK:
Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact, it’s cold as hell
And there’s no one there to raise them if you did
And all this science I don’t understand
It’s just my job 5 days a week
A rocket man, a rocket man
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a modest poem penned recently by our very own parliamentarian and poet laureate Steven Joyce during one of his many recent visits to the Rocket Lab Māhia launch site. It is often said these days in Māhia, in fact, that Steven Joyce is seen there more often than John Key is seen outside Richie McCaw’s dressing room—that is how central it is to his programme. I take my hat off to him. It is well known, of course, that Minister Joyce is eloquent, capable, and charming—members of the House would affirm those things—but his extraordinary humility has held him back from sharing his poetry with the House, until now. It is the same humility, of course, that holds him back from saying just how pivotal he has been in Rocket Lab’s success, but if you read media reports, it is all laid out there—Minister Joyce is absolutely critical to Rocket Lab’s success. Do not die wondering; go and read those media reports. It is said, in fact, that if Steven Joyce visited other provincial centres as often as he visits Māhia these days, Air New Zealand would not just be increasing its fleet by the rate that it is, it would be doubling its new fleet purchases.
While I am here, I am going to just scotch a few other rumours before I move away from this levity about Steven Joyce’s—
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just try to stick to the bill. That would be good.
Dr DAVID CLARK: —appearances. Well, it is a bill about outer space, Mr Deputy Speaker. I think it has to be noted. I think that Mr Joyce was not the man who founded that legislation. We have to go back to the beginning. We should actually look at the story. I commend Mr Joyce though—levity aside—for his efforts in making sure that we do have an appropriate space regulation programme. We will be supporting this bill.
It was a little over 9 years ago that the reports began about what was happening with Rocket Lab. The firm announced that it was going to launch six rockets into space, probably blasting off from the South Island, it was thought at that stage, and rising 150 kilometres above the Earth, delivering payloads of everything from ashes to scientific equipment. At that time, the ingenuity that went with that was celebrated. The former economic development Minister Trevor Mallard, who attended the launch of Rocket Lab, said: “Rocket Lab would enhance New Zealand’s emerging reputation as a developer of ‘first-rate’ technology and components.”, and I think that point was well made. It was made again by Mr Joyce today. He has stressed the importance of this industry for innovation in New Zealand.
We have, of course, many innovative companies across the spectrum—from rockets through to health products and beyond, in the agricultural sector and so on—but here we have something that truly captures the imagination. I take my hat off to Peter Beck and his team. I have visited the site, and I know many members of this Parliament have visited its factory where the team are constructing these rockets. It is truly awe-inspiring. These rockets promise the ecosystem for technologies not yet seen in New Zealand or the world. This industry has so much promise for New Zealand. I think it is incumbent upon us as parliamentarians to look for ways to support the companies that will emerge in its shadow.
So today, I take off my hat. I acknowledge the pivotal role of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology in the initial supporting of the Rocket Lab programme back in 2007. The vision of those bureaucrats who made that decision is paying dividends today. The vision of the founders who had the drive to make this happen, to seek the funding, to seek the private sponsors, and to work with No. 8 fencing wire and off the smell of an oily rag to pull this project together—it has been through so many stages.
I read a report written in 2009 by David Shearer, who was the then labour innovation spokesperson, who was complimenting the project managers on their initial launch of the micro-sized rocket that took place on Great Mercury Island. There have been many parliamentarians keen to see this progress over many years. I, incidentally, was recently in Gisborne talking to the local chamber of commerce president, Gavin Murphy. Mr Murphy told me that he watched that same rocket release on the television—the Great Mercury Island scale rocket release—and a couple of days later he phoned up Mr Beck and said that there were opportunities on the East Coast. At that stage the South Island, I think, was the most likely launch site, and Mr Murphy, as the chamber of commerce president, rang Mr Beck and said: “Why don’t you come on down? We’ll host you, we’ll show you around, and here’s a Google Map with some prospective launch sites on it.” Local businesses saw the opportunity and they sought to attract Rocket Lab to the Māhia site—and, of course, the rest is history.
The team came down and had a look around the sites. There were further negotiations. It certainly was not a straightforward story, but Mr Murphy can claim his small contribution to that puzzle. And I think with this success, there will be many, many fathers claiming the success of this programme—Mr Joyce, not least amongst them. He is like a moth to the lights. He is like a man in front of those cameras who cannot be missed in the current publicity, but let us not forget there were so many people who have contributed to this programme.
We are keen, on this side of the House, to support this bill. We are keen to see a proper aerospace set of regulations in place to govern the use of our aerospace and to make sure that this technology is appropriately employed and that any other subsequent companies that wish to work in this space are also held to the highest standards—our international reputation depends on it. As I understand it, the Government has been working closely with the United States authorities to make sure that appropriate measures are in place for the space programme, and that spirit of cooperation will continue. The legislation, drafted well by officials, will continue through this House, and we will support it, assuming it looks like it does now and the submissions through to the select committee are suitably supportive as well. I cannot imagine at this stage that they would not be.
So I am grateful for the opportunity to support this bill. I note the history of support through private enterprise, through Government, and through the spirit of the East Coast wanting to get it there. I have noticed plenty of reports with Stuart Nash in them down there—supporting the site as well. Many parliamentarians will be there cheering this rocket launch on when it happens and will be wanting to support the industry and see a diversification of our exports—and see this as something that runs that flag up the pole and that we are keen to see continue. Thank you.
MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): I do not know whether it is appropriate, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I would seek leave of the House that Dr Clark—his delivery of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” was so droll, could we give him the opportunity to stand and sing Elton John’s “Rocket Man”?
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Fortunately, a member cannot seek leave on behalf of another.
MARK MITCHELL: I thought I would try. I thought I would try. It is with great pleasure that I stand and take a call on this, the first reading of the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill. I just want to say that I think that it is pretty amazing actually that we are going to have such a high-tech facility as the one that was recently opened by the Hon Steven Joyce at Māhia. As a kid growing up, I spent the lot of time down on the Māhia peninsular camping and surfing, and not for one minute did I ever think that we would see a facility of the nature that we have down there now.
I want to acknowledge Peter Beck and his team and the work that they have done to bring some wonderful innovation and a new industry to the shores of New Zealand—the fact that they are going to be able to actually deliver payloads into space for about $5 million, which, apparently, is significantly cheaper than it can be done anywhere else in the world. And from what I understand, their order book is already starting to fill. I think Minister Joyce also referred to the possibility of space tourism, and maybe with Dr Clark’s interest in being a rocket man, he might even be available for one of the first test runs up into space.
I will finish my contribution by just highlighting the purpose of the bill again. The purpose of the bill is: “The Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill … establishes a regulatory regime to govern space launches, including both launch vehicles and payloads …”—that is very significant—“… from New Zealand and by New Zealand nationals operating overseas. It also provides the legal framework for high-altitude activities that [originate] from New Zealand;”. It is a very good bill. We are certainly looking forward to receiving it at the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, and I recommend it to the House. Thank you.
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): My colleagues and I will be supporting this bill through to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, and we look forward to receiving submissions on it. Certainly, from the Labour side, we will be supporting this bill as much as we, obviously, can, particularly as it is a result of the fine work, as has been said, of Peter Beck and his company, Rocket Lab.
I first came into contact with Peter Beck about 6 years ago when he was launching one of his prototypes from Great Mercury Island with the help of Sir Michael Fay. It was a successful launch, although, as far as I know, they did not get the nose cone back again. But it certainly went as they had planned. Since then—and before then as well, actually, because much of the earlier work was facilitated by Trevor Mallard while he was the economic development Minister, in terms of moving that through the legislative process—it has been picked up by this Government, quite rightly, and carried on. As my colleague David Clark said, this project will have many fathers if it is successful. There are many politicians who will want to try to claim a little bit of that success.
Peter Beck, I have to say, is an extraordinary character in the sense that he has had a passion from a very young age and has seen this through. His qualification is that of toolmaker—from Otago Polytechnic, as I understand it, or maybe the Southern Institute of Technology—but he certainly is a toolmaker. I remember speaking to him about his qualifications, and he said that at one point he contemplated going to Auckland University and doing a Bachelor of Engineering. He went and saw them and they said: “Well, yeah, OK, but unfortunately you’re going to have to start at stage 1 engineering.” He thought long and hard about that, and they said: “But perhaps you could lecture our Master’s class in rocket technology.” He thought: “Well, if I’m teaching rocket technology at a Master’s level, do I really need to go back and do a full Bachelor’s degree?” To his great credit, he did not, and he joins that league of New Zealand entrepreneurs, inventors, and people who have got a passion and are able, somehow, in this country, to be able to see that through.
I remember, at the time of the rocket launch off Great Mercury Island, saying to him “I can understand what you are doing. Obviously, this is a terrific project. I mean, what sort of competition are you going to come up against?”, and he said: “Well, there are other competitors out there.” I said “Like who?”, and he said: “For example, like NASA.” I said: “Oh, I actually have heard of NASA before, and that is pretty illustrious competition to be in—when you are in that league.”
As he explained, his vision was for a commercial enterprise quite different from the rockets that were being blasted off at that time. Most of the rockets that had been sent up into space previously were modified missiles from the United States. They were considerably larger than what Peter Beck wanted to put up into space and therefore considerably much more expensive, and they sat on a waiting list, probably for 3 or 4 years, before they were able to get clearance and get a window in which they were able to be shot up.
His vision was very different. It was for smaller payloads with some very exciting technology around fuel and the engines that he was deploying. They were much lighter, and he was able to get a rocket into space much more cheaply. Of course, that was what made it so attractive for so many companies that want to put a rocket into space. So he has orders already—before he has even had that launch. He has got an order book that is pretty full, with orders from companies like telecommunication company Samsung and others, for putting up low-level satellites, communications facilities, etc. They want to get their names on Rocket Lab’s list so that when this does prove itself, as I am sure it will, they are in the line, if you like—in the queue—for being able to get their technology up and into low space.
New Zealand does have a number of opportunities and advantages. Obviously, we have got somebody like Peter Beck—we have got his vision for the lightweight rockets—but we have also, as somebody has said, got a country that is isolated, surrounded by ocean, and therefore ideal for firing off a rocket from Māhia Peninsula. It was originally intended to go down to Christchurch, in fact—into Canterbury. Unfortunately, that did not occur because the various actors in Christchurch could not come to an agreement. So Māhia and the eastern coast of the North Island are going to be the winners in this.
We hope that the launch is successful. I think we have to be realistic, as Peter Beck said to me when I went through his facility near the airport the other day. He said that 80 percent of all new rockets fail. I hope he proves to be in the 20 percent, but the chance is that there are going to be some teething problems before this takes off. But it is pretty exciting. If you look at what we have in front of us, we will be one of maybe a dozen countries in the world that has a rocket industry—that is, a space industry. As Peter Beck says himself, per capita we have more rocket scientists in New Zealand than any other country in the world right now. It is truly remarkable.
Coming to this legislation in the last 1 or 2 minutes I have, I think that what we need to do, in terms of ensuring that there is a solid regulatory and legislative framework for an industry like this that meets our international requirements, is make sure that we are able to do that properly within New Zealand. The New Zealand Government is currently negotiating an agreement with the United States Government to enable Rocket Lab to access technology that the United States has, which will enable Rocket Lab to function much more effectively, and to cut the corners—certainly, in terms of a lot of the technology that it does not currently have. To do that, we have to have an agreement that binds us and obligates us never to pass this technology on to a third party, and to conform to a number of requirements, which, frankly, having had a look at this agreement, you would call pretty fair and pretty straightforward.
Once we have that, and once we are able to launch a rocket, we will need the legislative backing to ensure that we adhere to all the various space and technology treaties that we are obligated to operate under. When we have done that, through the legislation that we are passing today, we will also sort out some of the issues around what happens with insurance, etc. if one of these rockets does actually go off course. We do not like to think about that, but those sorts of things are necessary within the legislation.
Lastly, from what we can see, the drafters of the legislation have, necessarily, taken a rather permissive approach rather than a deep, dark, regulatory approach to this legislation. In other words, they are trying to make it as open as possible, knowing that we do not want this legislation coming back to the House in 2 years’ time to change the regulation. It has been done in an open-handed sort of way. We will look at that, and we will hear from the various submitters, and, hopefully, Rocket Lab itself, to make sure that we are getting it in the right ballpark and getting it right so that we are enabling Rocket Lab—Peter Beck and his enterprise, and perhaps the spin-off companies that come from that—to do their job and put New Zealand on the map as a rocket-launching nation. It is pretty exciting stuff. With that, I once again say that the Labour Party will be supporting this bill through to the select committee.
Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): It is a pleasure to speak to this bill, the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill. This bill does indeed allow an exciting new industry to form in New Zealand and takes advantage of some of our competitive opportunities and attributes that we have. Our relatively remote isolation has already been mentioned. We also have a low volume of marine and air traffic, and we have a range of orbital inclinations that we can use.
This bill joins several other space treaties that New Zealand is already a party to, including the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, the Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts, and the Convention on International Liabilities for Damage Caused by Space Objects. We are also looking to be a party to a newer treaty, the Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space. Fundamentally, it talks about the requirements to register objects in space.
This bill has been guided, in its formation, by UN resolution 68/74. The name of that is: “Recommendations on national legislation relevant to the peaceful exploration and use of outer space”. Our drafters have taken heed of this and the eight guiding principles that General Assembly resolution has. It includes: the scope of such national legislation; that a country should be responsible and should have national jurisdiction for all objects that are launched into space from its land; authorisations—space activities should be authorised; that authorisation should be consistent with UN treaties; that a country should have a national registry of objects; that there should be recourse and liability to operations; and that the transfer of ownership and responsibility when objects in space similarly transfer. We can see the formation of this bill takes many of these into account and, where it does not, the treaties we are a partner to certainly do.
Fundamentally, this bill is concerned with launch facilities, space vehicles, payloads, and high-altitude travel. It defines a number of compulsory conditions that actually cover right across the launch vehicles, with a launch licence, and payloads, with a payload permit. Those compulsory conditions include: knowledge of the date, location, and the intended trajectory of the launch vehicle and the payload; basic orbital parameters; coordination of radio communication frequencies consistent with the International Telecommunication Union; a payload permit; and that you must minimise the risk of contamination of outer space or adverse changes to the earth’s environment and take into account other users of outer space. Finally, the launch vehicle and the payload must be consistent with Civil Aviation Authority and our international obligations. Our national security interests are also taken into account by requiring the responsible Minister to consult security Ministers.
This is a well-thought-out bill, and it is with pleasure that we look forward to receiving it in the select committee. I commend it to the House.
GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. Ever since the first gunpowder rockets from 13th century Sung China, through to the work of Robert Goddard in the 1920s, through to New Zealand’s own Pickering, who headed up the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, we have come an immense, long way over history. I do not want to sound ageist at all, but there are probably some members in this Chamber who were members during the first Telstar TV satellite transmission in 1962. I know it has changed my life, in terms of GPS and in terms of access to new content like Netflix.
Everyone on this planet is influenced by space, and it is great to be in this Parliament discussing space legislation, particularly in light of the fact that New Zealand could be benefiting, could be leading, and could be exporting technology around the world. I think it is a wonderful success story. It is pretty amazing that we as a species have set foot on the moon, that we have dropped probes on to Mars, and that we have sent our first probe out to Pluto with the New Horizons mission. We have even got spacecraft that have exited our solar system, with the Voyager probes. We truly are a spacefaring species, and New Zealand, I guess, is now joining the ranks of those spacefaring nations.
We heard from the member David Shearer that there are only about a dozen nations that actually have orbital space capabilities. New Zealand is the only one that is doing it entirely privately, on the back of Rocket Lab, so it is an incredibly exciting story. It is an exciting time. You have got SpaceX doing its thing in the States, along with Blue Origin. Just yesterday we saw a couple of taikonauts head up to Tiangong, the Chinese space station. It is an incredibly exciting time. It is great for New Zealand to be involved, and, to be honest, that is built on the backs of a couple of inspiring, exciting New Zealanders, Peter Beck and Mark Rocket, at the amazing, innovative, exciting Rocket Lab.
Everyone else is sharing the stories of their interactions, and I would like to share mine. I am so proud telling people overseas about the story of New Zealanders, because so few people know that right next to Auckland Airport there is a warehouse where New Zealand is pioneering the nanosatellite: small- to medium-scale orbital rocket technology. It was incredible to walk around the facility and see the 3-D-printed rocket engine, which is part of the amazing advantages over some of the old, incumbent rocket launchers. It is incredible to see this happening right next to the Auckland Airport in little old New Zealand—to see the launchers—and it is going to be fantastic to see the Electron rocket take off. Rocket Lab has noticed that there is a gap in the market for the nanosatellites and for more frequent, cheaper launchers, and I wish it all the best.
I think it is important not to forget that this is not the only space thing happening in New Zealand. We have our role with the Square Kilometre Array. Southland and Invercargill are actually doing monitoring operations for the European Space Agency. We have a history of space enterprise, and it is great to see that continue, albeit on a much greater level.
I want to concentrate on the bill because it is incredibly important and quite technical and complex. Effectively, what this legislation does is create a regulatory regime for the permitting and the certification of launchers, including the payloads. The way the Government has gone about it is, I think, on merit, probably the most appropriate way. I think it has learnt the lessons from what the Aussies did last century, in the late 1990s. This is more of a permissive regime because it acknowledges that the technology is moving so fast that a more permissive regime is probably the wiser option. It gives the responsible Minister the ability to tailor the conditions of a licence or permit in order to take account of particular circumstances. It does put a lot of power into the Minister’s hands, but the rationale, we think, is convincing.
The legislation signs up to a number of international obligations, including the Technology Safeguards Agreement (TSA) and the Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space, from 1975—this, quite simply, allows the New Zealand Government to meet its requirements to register objects that we are launching. And, of course, under the Space Liability Convention, ratified in 1974, the Government is, effectively, responsible for what these private companies are doing. The legislation deals with the regime for liability but also with insurance issues, because, as we know, rockets do not always go up the first time.
I am quite staggered that clause 76 has not been mentioned at all by members. There are a few concerns the Green Party has with this legislation. We share the sentiment of members that we celebrate the work of Rocket Lab. We want to see it thrive. We want to see more advanced, smart manufacturing and intellectual property. We want to see more space enterprises. But we do have concerns with the legislation.
When you look at clause 76, it deals with what happens if there is a launch failure. Clause 76 comes directly from article 8(3) of the Technology Safeguards Agreement, which, basically, is a requirement from the US Government if we want to launch US payloads or access US technology. I want to read it out, because I am staggered that not a single member has raised this point in the debate so far. Under clause 76, “Taking photographs, etc, or samples from debris recovery area”, it says that a person commits an offence if the person in the debris area “(a) takes any photograph, makes any sketch, plan, model, or note, or otherwise records any image of any thing … in a debris recovery area;”. This is quite staggeringly large in its scope.
I note that in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vetting, the Attorney-General looked at various clauses in the legislation—for example, clause 77, which deals with interfering with the launch vehicle and where there is a breach of human rights, but the Attorney-General said it is justified. Or you could look at where a launch can be stopped by the Minister by issuing a certificate based on national security concerns, but the person cannot go to court—the certificate cannot be judicially reviewed. Again, the Attorney-General said that it is justified, despite ostensibly breaching the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. But this clause, clause 76, is not mentioned at all.
I find it staggering to consider that anyone could come across a bit of a downed rocket that accidentally failed and it would be impossible to sketch it or to take a photograph. This comes, of course, from the US Government—from the Technology Safeguards Agreement—so my question is: what is the justification for this clause? Because it is not mentioned at all in the regulatory impact statement. In fact, it is noted in that document that the TSA is an obligation of an “absolute nature”. What is the reason? Is it to protect intellectual property? Is it to safeguard people? Is it a health and safety issue? Is it a non-proliferation issue? We go into it with an open mind, because perhaps there is a good justification for it. I note it is not the language or wording used in the TSA, so have officials simply been quite zealous to think of every potential possibility of how a person could interact with space debris? You know, could they have used interactive, interpretive dance as something to include in clause 76? So we will be looking at that.
You also see experts like Dr Pozza raising questions about why “outer space” as a term was not explicitly defined. Given that this is the outer space bill, it is possibly an important point. That is something that we look forward to working on with the submitters—working with experts—because, ultimately, what the Green Party wants to see is a good, robust, high-quality legislative Act that gives a good regulatory regime to protect the environment, to protect health and safety, and to protect intellectual property. But we do not want to go overboard with some perhaps Cold War - mind-sets in terms of not allowing people to sketch or model something that comes across their beach.
As someone from the East Coast who grew up in Gisborne—Dad had a farm up in Whangarā—it is great to see Māhia benefiting. It is awesome to see that community benefit, and I hope that it makes the most of it.
Just to summarise, we think this is a good example of the smart, modern economy that New Zealand should be focusing on. There is a limit to the number of tourists we can cram into Fiordland. There is a limit to the number of cows we can cram into our paddocks—and we are seeing those limits in our waterways. There is no limit to the smart ideas, the services, the intellectual property, and the software that we could be exporting. This is the richer future for New Zealand, and I think this legislation is a great exemplar. Best wishes to Rocket Lab—to Peter Beck and all his team. I think it is fascinating and exciting stuff, what they are doing, but let us do our job in this House to make sure that the legislation is as good as it can be and that we are asking those questions that result from clause 76. Kia ora.
FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): We really do live in amazing times. We are in an age of almost exponential technological growth and advancement. The human mind sees man go farther and faster than he ever has before, so it is a truly exciting time. Let us be clear: the bill is an attempt to enable that technology to facilitate what is an exciting industry. I would like to take time in the House to acknowledge the work of Peter Beck and Rocket Lab—for what he has done and for what he has achieved. It is really incredible.
For New Zealand to be participating in these endeavours is exciting. It is a niche industry, as others have said. It is about what we have talked about in this House so often—about a New Zealand entrepreneur finding a niche in the worldwide market and exploiting it, taking advantage of it, and trying to make money out of it. It is amazing that it just so happens to be a niche that would compete against the likes of NASA and the space industry, where we would think that it is dominated by the US, by China, and by Russia.
It is with some regret that I do have to point out—and I do have to be frank in the House—that Rocket Lab is essentially a US firm now. You look at the listings on the US markets and you see that it is pretty much owned, in the main, by Lockheed Martin, and it does kind of put—
Todd Muller: So?
FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Well, I will come to why that is an issue, Mr Muller. It is an issue for New Zealand First. Normally, I would not be anxious about enabling big corporate profits, but I do know that it is enabling local industry, and I have spoken and I have just said how incredible it will be for New Zealand. So I do stand on behalf of New Zealand First—let us make that perfectly clear—in support of this bill. But I do want to say that the Government gave millions upon millions of dollars of funding to this company Rocket Lab as a Kiwi firm, and then it was sold. There was no attempt to recover the taxpayer’s money involved in that research, which the New Zealand Government expedited through its funding. There was no attempt to establish some kind of share of the company for those millions. Our research system is a flawed system, with all of that money being given to these firms—and it does put kind of a black mark against what should be a celebration today. But here we are. We support the bill and we would like to go forward. There are some support industries, and others have contributed eloquently on this too; for example, the number of rocket scientists per capita in New Zealand is the highest in the world. So we celebrate that and we need to move forward.
What I would note, with some caution, is that officials have stated in their reports already that some work has not been undertaken in their own work because of the tight time frame with which this bill has come to the House. It has been expedited so that the legislation is here in time for the first launch, and I just want to point out, as Mr Hughes also pointed out before, that this may bring about a few issues that have not been considered because of the haste to enable this first launch.
We have already signed up to other international space treaties, but, obviously, we have never had to comply before, because it is only now that we are talking about a specific instance of a firm wanting to take advantage of launching facilities in New Zealand. This legislation does bring about compliance with those international agreements, so we recognise that. I acknowledge that the Government and its officials have also used other work from around the world to inform and to draft this bill. In so doing, and through my comparative readings of these treaties, it does look like, even in this first draft—I am not presuming anything about the outcome of the select committee process and saying that we are in compliance from the start, but I do look forward, as others have said, to the select committee process. On cases like this, when we can come together, the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee is a good select committee to be a part of, and I know that we are dealing with space rockets and sending stuff into space, so it should be fun as well as positive for our economy, going forward.
We do respect the intent of the bill. It is a deliberate effort to enable an almost No. 8 fencing wire approach, allowing for innovation and cost cutting and—it is our hope—without compromising safety. By using a permissive approach in defining the minimum necessary to meet our international obligations, it empowers those who would seek to be licence holders to make critical decisions themselves, in and of that time, rather than what we saw from the Australian example, where it was too much about regulatory compliance and quite heavy on the regulations and not about innovation and quick decision-making.
So we see that in the bill. It is, hopefully, that No. 8 fencing wire approach without compromising safety. But in this permissive approach the Government does need to be mindful of risk and liability. New Zealand First is cognisant of the prohibitive nature of existing regimes from around the world, in other States, and we do see that that does make these launches cost-prohibitive, but part of that cost is about putting the risk and liability—insurance, for example—on the private firm, on the owner-operator. So what this bill seeks to do is adopt a kind of a mixed-model approach, where the Government takes on board some of that and then limits the obligation of the business such that it is not fully liable. That is of some concern, and, in fact, I will be taking it to the select committee to explore further, because we do not want private companies to recuse themselves fully of liability if there are any safety concerns or safety issues under this licensing regime. So we will have the opportunity to do this. I will acknowledge that this is an amazing opportunity for New Zealand, and I do look forward to the select committee process and further contributions on this legislation in the House. Thank you.
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): It is great to see such uniform support amongst the Parliament for the innovation that is being shown in this bill, through the company that, basically, has set up an industry that many people would not have expected many years ago to be something that New Zealanders would be hailing as one of our export industries and an indication of the strength of our innovative economy—the strength of our people’s ability to invest in businesses, actually make them a reality, and then deliver products on a world stage that, in the past, truly had not been anticipated as a strength of our country.
So this bill, the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill, is the process that is needed to be followed through to make that business venture a reality and also to create the environment should others wish to engage in such a perspective and take up such an opportunity. It is important for New Zealand, as a growing economy, to be innovative, to be open to new ideas, and to be supportive of those new ideas, and part of Parliament’s role is also to give that legislative support so that the conditions that are needed for this to actually occur are legislated for in this House.
This bill is a significant milestone for the development of that industry. It sets up the regulatory regime for launches and the deployment of satellites, and it governs high-altitude activities from New Zealand. It sets the regulatory regime for an industry that has grown from nothing, has strong prospects, and really shows the strength of New Zealanders and their talent and their aspirations. It is great to see this Parliament supporting this bill. Thank you.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Dr Kennedy Graham.
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is a split call, right? My understanding is that this is a split call.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Yes. The Greens only ever have 5 minutes at this point anyway. So yes.
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM: That is my understanding. Normally I am told it is a split call, so I just wanted to make sure.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): It is a 5-minute call—as the Greens’ second call is, on the first reading of this bill.
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I just want to reiterate what the Green Party has already said—mainly that we will be supporting this bill to the select committee. It is important that our enthusiasm does not run beyond that and imply any unreflective commitment to innovation for its own sake, and that we reflect upon the procedural, bordering on constitutional, shortcomings by which this bill lands itself in the House in front of us today.
Let us reflect briefly on the history of this bill. There is a New Zealand firm called Rocket Lab, which is highly regarded—and I participate in that regard for the firm—and it has developed a technology. The technology is putting a payload into space from New Zealand. That in itself, on the face of it, is a good thing. The company dealt with the United States and with New Zealand Government departments—largely the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE)—for the better part of 18 months to get to an agreement by which it would be able to operate a missile launch along the lines intended from the East Coast sometime in mid-2016. It was discovered very late in the piece, to their consternation, that the nature of this technology fell within the missile technology control regime category 1, which then triggered a policy requirement on the part of the United States that there should be a bilateral treaty with any other host country that fell within that category. New Zealand, therefore, did. This then followed with negotiations, which were not made public, between the New Zealand Government and the US Government for the better part of 6 months to get a bilateral treaty that is, essentially, a template taken from the United States’ shelf and dusted off. There are strange numbers on the top right that have not been removed, and the words “New Zealand” have clearly been imprinted, substituting for whatever other country might have been relevant the last time around. It is a bilateral treaty between the United States and New Zealand, governing, essentially, the national security interests of the United States.
Suddenly, that treaty went through Cabinet—in December, from memory. It was not announced. Suddenly, in June, the MBIE website emblazoned itself with the better part of 80 to 100 pages of hyperactive enthusiasm about this, announcing also that the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee of the Parliament had opened hearings on the matter. It had not. It did so on the following day on the basis, basically, of 24 hours’ notice from the Government department by way of a public website. It was yet another humiliation of the Parliament of New Zealand—by no means the first in the last year or two, but another one.
The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee had this treaty on its desk within a few days off a public website from MBIE. The chairman announced to the members that we would be focusing on it very quickly and very earnestly. I evinced criticism of the procedure at the time. The committee was actually shown the bill in a closed session to allay whatever concerns there might be.
I will just conclude on the fact that there was, initially, a planned launch date. It was August 2016. Do I apologise on behalf of the New Zealand Parliament to the New Zealand public that because of the constitutional nicety of getting something through the New Zealand legislature, Rocket Lab cannot proceed with the launch date at the time that suits it? There is a great deal in this bilateral treaty, through the treaty examination stage and the domestic implementation, that requires a lot of thorough checking and a lot of careful reflection, because New Zealand national security is as important as US national security.
STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I am not too sure about what Mr Kennedy Graham was talking about, but what I want to do today is celebrate all that is Rocket Lab. I think this is absolutely fantastic. I must state, though, when Mr—Dr Clark mentioned—
Fletcher Tabuteau: Come on, mate. You’re married to him.
STUART NASH: —the fact that Mr Joyce was in—ha, ha—Māhia so often, I thought it was because Māhia is in the Napier electorate and what Mr Joyce was keen to find out is how Labour won the seat off National. Well, let me tell Mr Joyce the secret: hard work and concentrating on the issues that are important to the people of Napier and Wairoa.
First of all, let me rebut what the New Zealand First speaker, Fletcher Tabuteau, spoke about. Without the New Zealand Government’s help, this would not have happened. For every dollar that Rocket Lab and Peter got from the Government, he spends $4 in the New Zealand economy. Peter Beck and Rocket Lab have created over 130 jobs, and we are talking about high quality, high paid, and aspirational jobs. Rocket Lab has actually maxed out industrial capacity in this country for the sort of equipment it needs. Without the early intervention and support from the New Zealand Government—without help from a Minister in the form of Trevor Mallard—we would not even be debating this bill, because we would not have this industry.
In fact, what Rocket Lab and Peter Beck have done is put New Zealand on the map and opened doors into worlds that would not exist without this. In fact, Peter Beck has just won the title of Entrepreneur of the Year, and I congratulate him for that. There are a couple of speakers who have talked about the No. 8 fencing wire mentality. Well, anyone who has been through the Rocket Lab will know there is no No.8 fencing wire mentality about Rocket Lab. This is massive innovation, extremely high-tech equipment, and a group of very, very intelligent and engaged individuals—in fact, some of the best in the world. But what Mr Beck has to be careful about, actually, is who he employs, because not only can this launch satellites and rockets into space, it actually also can launch intercontinental ballistic missiles. So we do need to be a little bit careful about this.
Peter tells a very funny story, which I think epitomises the New Zealand spirit and what Peter is and what he stands for and how he has got to the top. One of Peter’s initial customers—and shareholders, I think—is NASA. Peter Beck phoned up the CEO of NASA and said “This is who I am, and this is what I do.”, and the NASA CEO thought that Peter had gone through the various channels to get to him. No, no—Peter had just found out who the guy was, picked up the phone, and called him. When the guy found out that this is what Peter had done, he was astounded, but he called him “the Kiwi”, and he loved this attitude. He loved the can-do attitude. This is what has made Rocket Lab as successful as it is today. So when I hear people like Steven Joyce talking about the fact that he is responsible—no, he is not. Peter Beck is responsible for this. Peter Beck and the hard-working men and women behind Peter Beck are responsible. Trevor Mallard got it off the ground and really helped—there is no doubt about that—but Peter Beck has made this happen.
But there is one other story that I would like to talk about, and this is really about the can-do attitude of provincial New Zealand. Peter did initially look down in Canterbury, and as Dr Clark, I think, talked about—or it might have been Mr Cunliffe—the people in Christchurch could not really get their ducks in a row, and after about 8 months he still had not got a resource consent. He did go to Māhia, and he went to the Wairoa District Council. The CEO of the Wairoa District Council, a chap called Fergus Power, understood what this was about—he “got” the opportunity and saw the future and said: “We’ll work with you.” What he did is, I think, within about 8 working days have the resource consent processed and through. Now this was not the council being sort of incompetent or glib or fooling around; it worked incredibly hard because it saw there was an opportunity here for Wairoa to be put on the map.
I think the opportunities in the medium- to long-term future for New Zealand and Wairoa are absolutely fantastic. I actually put a lot of that down to partnership between the Wairoa District Council and Rocket Lab. What it does show is that when a little town like Wairoa decides it really wants to grab an opportunity with two hands, it can. I will tell you what, the fantastic people on that council worked incredibly hard, and continue to work incredibly hard, in partnership with Rocket Lab to make this happen. I cannot wait to be at that launch site for this to go off, because this will put New Zealand on the map. It is just a magnificent case of innovation and expertise and can-do attitude. I welcome this bill, but more than that, I celebrate Peter Beck and Rocket Lab. Thank you very much.
TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): I rise to take a short call here on the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill this afternoon. Gosh—“Success has a hundred fathers and failure is an orphan.” is, I think, a pretty fair assessment of the various speakers today.
I do want to comment on David Clark’s phenomenal contribution. He spent quite a bit of time, actually, in his speech—probably about half of it—seeking to create the impression that our Minister Steven Joyce is somehow New Zealand’s own rocket man, including reading quite an extraordinarily lengthy tome from Elton John’s famous song. Well, if David Clark wants to be that autobiographical in respect of these sorts of things, I suggest he might spend a little bit of time looking at “Space Oddity”, because I think it does apply to him, particularly the section that says:
I am floating in a most peculiar way
the stars look very different today
from here I am sitting in a tin can far about the earth
planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do.
Well, I think David Bowie perhaps stretched it slightly. I think, certainly in our case, New Zealand is blue, and there is nothing David Clark can do, but I suggest he might just have a look at that. It has some degree of application in his case.
But, seriously, this is a very good bill, and I would just like to quickly add my comments to those who have spoken. I would just really like to emphasise David Bennett’s comments earlier: it is quite remarkable in many respects that we are having this conversation; that New Zealand has reached the stage, through the efforts of Peter Beck and his team, supported by this Government—and no doubt it began with the previous Government—where we have a scenario where we have to have legislation enacted to help facilitate New Zealand’s contribution to the space industry.
Had we talked about that a few years ago, it would have been seen as a pipe dream, and now here we are debating framework to enable it to happen, and not on a faint hope that it might happen one day, but because the demand is there, the skilled people are already in place, and, as we have heard, the launch site is being readied.
This is a phenomenal opportunity for New Zealand, and I thoroughly support it and look forward to the deliberations that the select committee will bring to it over the next few weeks. I commend the bill to the House.
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I commend the member who has just resumed his seat, Todd Muller, and also note my colleague Dr David Clark and his phenomenal opening with those immortal lines of Elton John’s. I too had visions, as I heard those wonderful words, of Steven Joyce in orbit, Steven Joyce lost in space, or perhaps Steven Joyce as the Martian stranded on the “Red Planet”, waiting to be rescued. I wondered whether when Steven Joyce falls to earth, he would be a meteor or just space junk. I do not know, but these are the questions that will confront the House.
I was thinking about The Muppet Show and “Pigs in Space”, but my mind then turned to Interstellar, where time seemed to slow down, and it reminded me of one of Steven Joyce’s speeches. Then, finally, my mind turned to Star Wars and what character Steven Joyce would be. That was a hard one, because originally I thought of Darth Vader and realised, of course, that is already taken by Judith Collins.
Phil Twyford: Chewbacca.
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: It was possibly Chewbacca because of his loquacious nature and the nature of the bill.
Right, this is a moment that I think we can all celebrate, because I think that every New Zealander is not only excited by the concept of New Zealand developing a particular niche as a very suitable launch pad for low-altitude satellites but also celebrating the brilliance of Peter Beck and his Kiwi team. I have to make a slight personal confession in relation to Peter. I have an old friend called Peter Beck, an Anglican priest who was the dean of Canterbury Cathedral. In the very early days of hearing about Rocket Lab, I thought it was a hobby of that Peter Beck—of course it is not; it is a different Peter—and when I met this Peter, I realised just how brilliant he is.
The Auckland facility is as secure as anything you will see in New Zealand. As Peter described to me, he thought it was as hard to start a $1 million company as a $1 billion company, so he thought he would go right ahead, bypass the interim steps, and go straight to the $1 billion scale. That might sound a ridiculous proposition, but he went about it in a very clever way. He went straight to Silicon Valley and engaged with some of the world’s largest venture capital foundations, like Khosla Ventures, and engaged directly with some of the other major players in the rocket industry, like Lockheed Martin. He went straight to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. He went straight to NASA. He prototyped, first on Great Mercury Island and then, more recently, with the electron project—small-scale, low-cost, highly efficient rockets that have the potential to completely disrupt satellite technology.
As other members have said, this is far from No. 8 wire; this is highly sophisticated computer-based engineering with very fine-tolerance, advanced materials, but what is really interesting is that it still captures that Kiwi spark, I think, of “Why can’t we do it that way? Why do we have to obey the status quo that everybody else has always followed?”.
As Peter Beck explained it to me, the concept of satellite rockets at the moment—this is obviously language that he has dumbed down for a politician—is like putting a bus in a high-altitude stationary orbit. The revolution in this idea is to put something not the size of a bus, but the size of a fridge—as he described it—into a low-altitude rotating orbit. In order for that to be useful for communications and observations, you need a mesh network of fridge-sized satellites around the globe, which means quite high frequency multiple launches, because they have got to get enough up there to form the mesh network. That means, at its peak, there could literally be a launch every couple of weeks—certainly every month—from Māhia Peninsula, which would make it a more frequent launcher of rockets than Cape Canaveral. What are we going to call it—“Cape Kahawai”? I think we will ask Mr Nash to come up with the byline.
But this will be a very, very significant disruption to space technology if it works. And here is my prediction: it will work. This is a very serious company, it has got some very serious backers, and we, I think, across this House, wish it well. I do, however, want to come down for a moment from the pedestal of “Success has a thousand fathers.” self-congratulations to say this: it would have been impossible in the current innovation environment for Rocket Lab New Zealand to get going if it had not gone offshore. It is not, technically, a New Zealand company now; it is a US corporation that just happens to have a New Zealand domicile. There is not sufficient liquidity in the New Zealand innovation system for a scale project like this to get the backing it needs. That is not to say that it is wrong that a highly specialised large-scale project should go to Silicon Valley; I think it is a very smart move.
But let us just take a moment, amidst all of this glorification of brilliance, which is appropriate, to remember that New Zealand invests less than half of the OECD average in research and development. So if we want to have a generation of Peter Becks, if we want our young people to be world-class inventors and entrepreneurs, then we—this generation, our generation of policy makers—are going to have to do more about it than just pass this good bill.
Yes, we support this bill. We are going to make it, within responsible limits, like our international treaty obligations and security issues, as easy as possible for this project to succeed. “Team Kiwi” is behind it. But let us be behind all of the other young Peter Becks who might be at high schools or primary schools around New Zealand, or working part-time in a laboratory or part time on their computers. Let us create an innovation ecosystem that is as good as or better than any other of the small, smart countries that we seek to associate ourselves with.
I do want to commend a project that the Government has backed and that Minister Joyce has backed, with Sir Peter Gluckman—the Small Advanced Economies Initiative. This is a group of seven countries about our size—Denmark, Israel, Taiwan, Singapore, Ireland, and Finland—that have got high-priority innovation ecosystems that do invest around about three times, per capita GDP, what New Zealand invests, and are determined to be high-tech, smart, high-value economies.
We talk the talk, but let us face it: in New Zealand we do not yet walk the walk. This bill is great. This bill is a step towards that outcome. But it is not enough on its own. I am sure that if the Government was to come to the House and build upon the progress that was made this year around the innovation budget and say “Let’s put this on steroids, and let’s get some cross-party agreement.”, it would find it on this side of the House. We are committed, we are determined to a future pathway for New Zealand that is smart, that is high-tech, and that does elevate New Zealand to the top rank of small, smart economies.
This bill traverses a number of aspects that will be important to allow this project to succeed. Firstly, it does cover off on our international obligations: the Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space; the Outer Space Treaty; the Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts; and the Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects. It does provide a regulatory framework for high-altitude activities, and it covers off on national security and national interests. Obviously, it has been developed in conjunction with its counterparts at NASA. It does provide an enforcement regime, which is credible but not overly prescriptive, and we commend that approach. It does seek to futureproof the regime by allowing for the use of regulatory powers to add different technologies to a schedule that would be covered by the bill.
I am sure the select committee will want to hear submissions on a number of these issues, and from a Regulations Review Committee perspective, I just note that there is a fine line between the responsible attempts to futureproof and drifting into a “Henry VIII” type of situation, where there is insufficient empowerment in the primary legislation and too much is vested in the regulations. So I think there will be some judgment required around that, and that is a job for the select committee to consider and report back to the House on.
I commend the Minister of Science and Innovation, actually. I have spent a bit of time in this House criticising the Minister—often in good humour—and he takes it well. He works very hard. I do want to say this. I think he has done a good job with this bill. I think we in this House are all determined to see this project succeed, as New Zealanders who celebrate New Zealand success and very much welcome tall poppies doing great things on the world stage.
Let us join together today. Let us put politics aside. Let us say that we are working together to create a common platform for a fantastic venture that has the potential not only to transform the regional economy but to lift New Zealand into a very special short list of countries that are space-capable—as Peter Beck would say, putting fridges in orbit, not buses. Thank you.
Bill read a first time.
Bill referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.
Bills
Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment Bill
Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill
Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill
First Readings
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Regulatory Reform): I move, That the Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment Bill, the Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill, and the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Local Government and Environment Committee to consider the Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment Bill, the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to consider the Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill, and the Commerce Committee to consider the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill. The three regulatory systems amendment bills are each omnibus bills in their own right. They contain amendments to legislation administered by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. As stated in the 2014 Productivity Commission report, Regulatory institutions and practices, regulation touches the lives of all New Zealanders in many ways. It is indispensable to the proper functioning of economies and societies. Regulation, when implemented well, underpins markets, protects the rights and safeties of citizens and their property, and assists the efficient and equitable delivery of goods and services. It is an important tool in preserving and advancing the public interest.
These amendment bills will achieve effectiveness and efficiency by clarifying and updating statutory provisions, addressing regulatory duplication gaps and errors, bringing the legislation up to date with relevant public expectations, as well as removing unnecessary compliance costs. These bills will reduce the chance of regulatory failure and unintended consequences that can harm the well-being of New Zealanders. The amendment bills will improve laws that affect business, building and housing, energy, communications, commerce and consumer affairs, and workplace relations regulatory systems. Each of the changes are small, and do not warrant stand-alone bills in their own right, but together they will ensure greater effectiveness and efficiency of the relevant regulatory systems.
In line with the Government’s objectives of regulatory transparency, the exposure draft of the Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill was released in December last year. The exposure draft served its purpose well, in that businesses and relevant organisations provided feedback on the proposed amendments, and that feedback has been reflected in the bills before you today. A summary of each bill is as follows.
Firstly, the Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment Bill is made up of amendments to a number of Acts, including the Building Act 2004 and the Unit Titles Act 2010. In the Building Act there are minor amendments to correct cross-referencing provisions and to remove a redundant provision. In the Unit Titles Act 2010 the amendments are technical and clarifying provisions, to reduce unnecessary compliance burden and ambiguity in the Act. The amendments include clarifying the terminology and responsibilities for assessment and reassessment of ownership and utility interest, providing time frames for the body corporate share person to call and hold an extraordinary general meeting when requested by unit owners, and clarifying that the incidental rights in section 73 are in respect of all the land to which the unit plan relates.
The Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill contains amendments to 16 Acts in total: the Building Societies Act 1965, the Commerce Act 1986, the Companies Act 1993, the Construction Contracts Act 2002, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act 2000, the Fair Trading Act 1986, the Financial Advisers Act 2008, the Financial Markets Authority Act 2011, the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013, the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Act 2008, the Friendly Societies and Credit Unions Act 1982, the Gas Act 1992, the Insolvency Act 2006, the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Act 2001, the Postal Services Act 1998, and the Takeovers Act 1993. Rather than go through each change to each Act, let me highlight the common themes behind the changes.
The first theme relates to clarity of regulatory roles—for example, in the Fair Trading Act 1986. The changes are to ensure consistency between regimes and provide clarity in the split of regulatory responsibilities between the Commerce Commission and the Financial Markets Authority. The second theme is good governance and decision-making arrangements, for example, in the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Act 2008. The change ensures the integrity of the register of financial service providers by ensuring the Registrar of Financial Service Providers has the power to initiate deregistration of a financial service provider where the provider is not, but should be, a member of a dispute resolution scheme. Another common theme is strong institutions and leadership. For example, in the Commerce Act 1986 the amendments will improve legal clarity and certainty by clarifying provisions in relation to lay members of the High Court and expenses of the Commerce Commission incurred under multi-year appropriations.
The omnibus bill, the Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill, makes amendments to the Employment Relations Act 2000 and the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act 1987. In the Employment Relations Act the proposed amendments clarify the circumstances in which a person is regarded as being involved in a breach of employment standards. The amendments to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act will improve the clarity and certainty of the Act in relation to pre-term and parental leave payments.
I have nominated the three bills be considered by the three earlier advised select committees. In conclusion, in 2014 the Productivity Commission’s report found that it can be difficult to find time on the parliamentary calendar for repairs and maintenance of existing legislation. These amendment bills are the vehicles for smaller regulatory fixes to be progressed in a timely and cost-effective way in order to deliver the flow-on benefits to businesses and the whole of the economy. I commend these bills to the House.
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to thank the Minister for Regulatory Reform, the Hon Steven Joyce, for livening up our afternoon with that contribution. It will not quickly be forgotten. We are supporting this legislation. There is nothing wrong with a bit of repair and maintenance work from time to time, but I do have to ask why we are considering changes to the Unit Titles Act now, when it has been well known that major reforms of the Unit Titles Act are overdue. I want to speak a little bit more about that later, but it is a shame that we are spending the time of the House on a set of—inconsequential would be too harsh; but very minor—tweaks of the Unit Titles Act, when such broad structural reform is needed in the sector.
I also want to question, with the Building Act, for example, why that was not included in, for instance, a Statutes Amendment Bill. I would have thought that could be easily dealt with in that vehicle. With the Unit Titles Act, another possibility would have been, for example, the recent changes that we saw in the omnibus bill on affordable housing. I raise the question, in fact, why that bill was pushed through the House under urgency completely unnecessarily. It extended the special housing areas legislation and made changes to the provisions in the Public Works Act about the future repurposing of land for housing purposes that had been acquired under the Public Works Act. Why was that pushed through the House under urgency without select committee consideration, when it could have easily been incorporated in an omnibus bill such as this one?
But never mind that, we are debating this right now and I want to just focus some comments around the provisions in the Unit Titles Act. What the bill sets out to do, according to the commentary, is that it wants to clarify and update the Unit Titles Act addressing various inconsistencies between the Act and other legislation, update the regulatory system in the Unit Titles Act, and try to reduce unnecessary compliance costs. On the face of it, that sounds fine and we will at select committee be scrutinising the bill and testing the detail in the provisions of the bill against those claims. Specifically, it allows a principal unit to comprise more than one car park, it puts in place a simpler process for subdividing a principal unit, and it expands the ability of an owner to deal with the unit by giving them the right, with the body corporate’s consent, to grant an easement over their unit. So there are a number of things that are designed to try to ease the way for owners in multi-type dwellings to get on and manage their affairs with the body corporate.
This sector is incredibly important. The residential apartment sector is estimated to be worth about $40 billion. There is no question that in our country’s biggest city, apartments are going to be a more and more significant part of the urban fabric. We are seeing a significant number of apartments being built and one hopes—with the passing of the Auckland Unitary Plan that will allow much more up-zoning, much more density—that we are going to see more and more apartments.
Anyone who lives in an apartment or works in this sector will tell you that there are serious problems with the legislation as it stands right now. There is an overdue need to put in place protections and accountability requirements to do with the body corporate managers. Better disclosure rules are needed so that very early in the purchase process people have all of the relevant information they need about a unit or an apartment or the governing body corporate. We need better dispute resolution processes in place, and it goes on.
I know that the Government has done some work on this and I want to acknowledge the work that the Hon Nikki Kaye has done bringing this to the attention of the Government. Nick Smith has said that he is looking at the recommendations from the unit titles working group, which was set up with a number of significant players: consumer advocates, lawyers, apartment owners. That did, I think, some pretty solid work looking at the whole reform agenda that is needed for the Unit Titles Act.
One of the other concerns is about abuses of power, really, within bodies corporate—the whole practice of proxy farming, where a single individual manages to marshal a whole lot of proxy votes and, essentially, dominate the decision-making process for their own purposes.
One of the other concerns that I have had raised with me a number of times is the lack of rules and requirements about the funding of long-term maintenance plans. I know some people have proposed that there be requirements in place that would require long-term maintenance plans not only to be in place but to be properly funded, and there needs to be an accountability mechanism so that, if those plans are not up to scratch and if they are not properly funded, then there needs to be some kind of body that members of the body corporate can go to for appeal purposes. Without that you get the kind of situation we are seeing more and more with bodies corporate, and that is that people find themselves faced with massive repairs and maintenance costs that in some cases have seen people forced to sell their title. We have seen people in their retirement years facing financial ruin because of this. Notwithstanding this minor piece of repair and maintenance to the Unit Titles Act, I am hoping that we are going to see from the Government something far more substantial in this area before very long.
The other matter that I want to comment on is to do with the Construction Contracts Act. I am glad that my colleague Clayton Cosgrove is in the House because he knows a lot about this area and I am sure he will have something to say about the provisions in the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill. What we can see at the back of this bill is that it basically corrects a drafting error—a drafting error in the bill that Nick Smith, Minister for Building and Housing, brought to this House. I am pretty sure it was passed earlier this year.
What this does is, essentially, it clarifies that the requirement for retention money to be held in trust kicks in as of 31 March 2017. It does not apply to contracts that were in place prior to and at the time of this provision becoming operative, and that lack of clarity in the legislation has caused a great deal of concern and confusion in the industry. All of those jobs that are under way prior to March 31 2017 face the prospect of their contracts being made much more complicated as a result of that drafting error. I think this bill will be very welcome for parties in the construction industry who have been expressing concern about this. It is worth noting, I think, that the requirement for retention moneys to be held in trust was a really important reform that people throughout the construction industry welcomed, and I think it was supported by all parties in this House.
So we will be supporting this bill to select committee. Other colleagues are going to comment on all of the other elements—the workplace relations elements of this legislation—but we look forward to scrutinising the detail of these provisions at select committee. Thank you.
MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you for the opportunity to take a short call on the regulatory systems amendment legislation put to the House today by the Hon Steven Joyce, who is the Minister for Regulatory Reform. Today I speak with particular reference to the portion known as the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill, which relates to the commerce and consumer affairs sector.
This bill is, of course, an omnibus bill, and one of a package of three bills, as a previous speaker has said, that contain amendments to legislation that is administered by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. This bill makes amendments in the commerce and consumer affairs, communications, and energy and resources portfolios, and will support the better delivery of New Zealand public services, will support productivity growth, and will make sure that existing legislation is in fact fit for purpose—that they are regulated by it. This bill will include changes for the financial sector, corporate governance, and insolvency, and will remove redundant provisions in legislation that are no longer needed for the effective administration and enforcement of law.
Two significant amendments have been proposed in this bill. The first is to allow trusts to set off amounts they owe against amounts owed to them in derivative contracts, thereby reducing the cost of capital; the second is to provide powers of the Official Assignee to better protect the interests of creditors by widening her powers to challenge sham trusts. I particularly welcome that and I look forward to the submissions on these particular elements, because I think protecting creditors is actually a very important job that we have.
This bill will, in particular, amend the Companies Act, the Friendly Societies and Credit Unions Act, and the Takeovers Act to bring them up to date and to work for New Zealanders. It is important to reduce costs—everybody wants to reduce costs, and, as you know, businesses often pass on to consumers the costs that affect them, and I think if there is a reduction in costs for businesses, consumers will, in fact, benefit as a result.
It is also an essential part of our plan to see regulatory systems streamlined and to align the law across different entities so that there are no unnecessary hurdles for innovative New Zealand industries to overcome. As the chair of the Commerce Committee, I look forward to the submission process and to working constructively with my committee members. I commend this bill to the House.
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): It is a pleasure to rise and speak particularly to the Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill, a bill that is very, very tight and very technical in the amendments that it makes—not insignificant, but fairly small changes to the legislation, simply clarifying what the current legislation actually says. They are so tight and lacking in significance in their nature that I am somewhat surprised that a National Party backbencher has not put them up as a member’s bill.
The actual changes that Part 1 of this legislation makes are, I think, quite worthy. It makes changes to section 142W of the Employment Relations Act 2000, which describes who is responsible in the event that there is a breach of the Employment Relations Act. Section 142W(1) says: “In this Act, a person is involved in a breach if the breach is a breach of employment standards and the person—(a) has aided, abetted, counselled, or procured the breach; or (b) has induced, whether by threats or promises or otherwise, the breach; or (c) has been in any way, directly or indirectly, knowingly concerned in, or party to, the breach; or (d) has conspired with others to effect the breach.” Then section 142W(2) says: “However, if the person in breach is a company, partnership, limited partnership, or sole trader, a person holding a position in relation to the person in breach may be treated as a person involved in a breach only if the person is an officer of the person in breach.”
If ever there was a clause in need of tidying up and clarification, that would be it. It comes to this old definition of a company or an entity as a person, and it gets very complicated and somewhat tongue-twisting when we talk about a person—an actual human person—who is involved in that entity that is also described as a person, which is what this clause does. So I must congratulate the officials within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment who have sought to tidy this up, which they do with the amended section 142W(2): “However, if the breach is a breach by an entity such as a company, partnership, limited partnership, or sole trader, a person”—that being a human person—“who holds a position in the entity may be treated as a person involved in the breach only if that person is an officer of the entity.” It is still fairly complicated, but much clearer than the subsection that we have currently in talking about companies, partnerships, limited partnerships, and sole traders as entities rather than as persons, which I think makes much more sense to any layperson who is trying to read this legislation.
This is important, because we do know that we regularly have cases where employers are in breach of their employment obligations. We recently discovered that something like 10 percent of employees do not even have a written employment agreement, which is a fundamental requirement of our employment legislation, and I would hazard a guess that most of the employers that do not provide written employment agreements are probably in breach of a whole host of other aspects of our employment legislation. It is important that we get this right so that we can actually identify the people who are responsible for those employment breaches. There is no point in holding a company responsible; if we are really going to effect change, the people who have made those decisions—the people who decide not to provide a written employment agreement, the people who decide not to pay people at least the minimum wage, the people who decide to employ people on visas in a fashion that is in breach of their visas—need to be held responsible.
Of course, we can only apply this legislation—we can only apply the changes that are being made in the Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill—if we have decent enforcements, if have a labour inspectorate that is well resourced and is actually able to identify the breaches that are being made, and if people feel confident to come forward and identify when they have been subject to one of these breaches. We know that a lot of people are not, and we know that the labour inspectorate cannot be everywhere, and that is why we have a lot of people who are in breach of this legislation. So this clarifying point is, I think, very, very helpful. And I should note that amended section 142W(3) continues on with the change to actually identify an entity as an entity, rather than a person, in each of those situations, such as “(a) a person occupying the position of a director of a company if the entity is a company: (b) a partner if the entity is a partnership: (c) a general partner if the entity is a limited partnership:” and so on and so forth. That is a very useful clarification of the legislation, and it needs to be applied a bit more vigorously, I think, perhaps, than it is currently being applied.
Part 2 of the Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill also makes some fairly technical changes—in fact, they are even more technical changes, I would offer—to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act. This will make the law much clearer around what people are entitled to in the event that—
Hon Ruth Dyson: It doesn’t get us to 26 weeks.
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: No, it does not give us 26 weeks; Ruth Dyson is absolutely correct. That is one thing the legislation fails to do, unfortunately. But we will get there one day when we change the Government. What it does do is it makes it clearer what people are entitled to in the event that their baby is born pre-term, in terms of when their entitlement to paid parental leave actually begins, and it makes some other subsequent amendments as well, which are incredibly tight and incredibly technical in their nature.
The devil is often in the detail with these things, though. I am glad that this legislation is going to select committee, because often this House can consider changes that we believe are technical, that we are led to believe are technical changes and are just tidying up drafting errors or anomalies in the legislation or seeking to clarify the legislation, which can often hold a few fish-hooks within them. So although we are promoting this as making reasonably technical changes, I do encourage those who have knowledge around these pieces of legislation, particularly the Employment Relations Act and the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act, to consider these changes and make submissions if they feel it is necessary. Come and share your thoughts with us at the select committee, because we do need to make sure we get these bills right. I have read on more than one occasion of a court trying to interpret what Parliament was trying to achieve with a piece of legislation, and much of the debate was around how the changes were technical in nature. There was not much debate around the substance of them, and it leaves the court at a bit of a loss as to what Parliament actually meant by legislation that perhaps itself is not spectacularly well drafted.
With those few thoughts on this legislation, I look forward to it proceeding to select committee. I am glad this is being done as a set of omnibus bills. That is a good way to proceed with changes like this. I hope that members of the National Government backbench take heed and acknowledge that there are better ways of making these changes than filling up the members’ bills ballot with bills like this when we could be filling it up with things that make far more meaningful changes than some of the offers that we have had lately.
ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): I rise in support of these omnibus bills, which deal with a series of regulatory changes regarding commercial matters first, building and housing second, and workplace relations thirdly. Without wanting to repeat the information that has already been given to the House, I did find it quite amusing—Mr Lees-Galloway explaining the person, the people, the corporate entity, the trust, and the trustee. I found it quite ironic that it was to clarify what was actually in the bill at the moment, and the whole purpose of this thing is to make it easier and simpler and clearer for the reader to understand who is liable for what. I found that quite ironic and interesting.
Anyway, these bills are there to clarify, update, remove duplication, and remove unnecessary compliance costs. As we know, regulations are important; we need to have them to ensure people do understand what is appropriate behaviour and the appropriate rules, and we need to make sure that they are clear for people to understand. On this side we are always interested in making things more efficient and effective, and I would like to mention the Rules Reduction Taskforce, which was an initiative by Minister Bennett doing exactly that—looking at ways to tidy things up, make things more efficient, and hear from the people around what some of those rules and regulations are that are ineffective and are duplications.
I would just like to pick up on the changes in this legislation that relate to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act. That is relating to pre-term babies. It is quite confusing. It also restricted the mother from the start time of her paid parental leave. This change enables the date to be more flexible and more realistic regarding the actual act of having a pre-term baby. That is a good thing. That is just one example of the clarification of the rules around these bills that is so necessary and so important.
The other is, of course, the area Mr Lees-Galloway attempted to clarify, where the person is not actually the company, which is normally the accepted practice. It was not the partnership; it was actually the people behind those entities who were in breach or who were liable for the actions of the person, per se. With that I commend these omnimus—omnibus bills; there is something that needs to be clarified—
Hon Member: What is it?
Fletcher Tabuteau: Ominous.
ALASTAIR SCOTT: —ominous omnibus bills—to the House.
JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): The Green Party will be supporting these bills to select committee. We have had a look at them; of course, we received some of the legislation only at the very last moment yesterday, so it has been difficult for us to delve into all of the implications of the minor technical changes. On the surface of it, it looks like they are OK.
I want to speak specifically to the Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment Bill, which makes changes to the Building Act. It fixes a number of cross-referencing errors and removes a redundant provision. There are over 40 changes to the Unit Titles Act 2010, ranging from fixing grammatical errors to updating body corporate operational rules. I suppose that this would be an area where we would say we have not had sufficient time and will be interested in the select committee process to ensure that the changes that are being made, particularly to the Unit Titles Act, are all in line with the Green Party’s values.
Obviously, there are a number of challenges that exist, particularly around urban development in Auckland. Although we are very supportive of providing more homes and more complete communities within the existing urban area in Auckland, so that we have affordable housing, access to jobs, and good transport options—walking, cycling, and public transport—for communities, we are somewhat limited in our ability to deliver that, in part due to the current nature of development that is there. Some of the provisions in the Unit Titles Act make it very difficult for there to be the type of redevelopment that you would normally expect where land values are very high. That is something that we would like to have a bit more of a look at, and we will have to see what the select committee process brings up, particularly in the interaction between the Unit Titles Act and the Public Works Act.
One other interesting proposal in this legislation, which I am a bit disappointed about, is the changes—this is in the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill—to the Construction Contracts Act. Many years ago now we had the meltdown of Mainzeal, which led to a number of subcontractors being completely out of pocket, unable to access their tools, and unable to be compensated for work that they had already undertaken. It took ages for the Government to act on that. I remember sitting in select committee hearings about that in 2013. We heard from a whole range of subcontracting associations that were saying that they were being hard-done-by by primary contractors. So this was a very public issue and it was something that, eventually, in 2014 the Government announced that it was going to act on.
Then, finally, we did have the construction contracts amendment bill come back to the House with some proposals that, in fact, were very similar to what the Green Party had proposed—what I had proposed as a Supplementary Order Paper—amending the Construction Contracts Act to provide protection for subcontractors to ensure that the money that had been set aside for work that they had done could not be used for other projects and other purposes, so that if the main contractor was to go bankrupt, their money would still be protected and they could be compensated for work that they had undertaken. That seemed only right and fair.
The disappointing thing for me is that although we had the changes to the Construction Contracts Act—and that was a big win—the change proposed in this legislation is amending that legislation and is requiring retention money to be held in trust only from March 2017, which is several years after we amended the Act. Certainly, main contractors should have known that this was coming and should have been protecting the money that they were paid for subcontractors in the first place—and, finally, that law was changed. The law was well-signalled. I think that it is unfortunate that this law is not going to be protecting contracts that are currently being undertaken, that we are waiting until March 2017 to give that protection to subcontractors when they have already had to wait so many years to have that rightful protection of their money in law. So that is something that I am disappointed about in this proposed legislation.
But, on the whole, it looks like there are a lot of minor changes that are mainly fixing cross-referencing errors, grammatical errors, and redundant provisions. And I suppose it does raise the question: why is it that our legislation is being passed in a form that has so many errors in it? Was there a time, perhaps when this Government first came in, that we were passing bills under urgency and we did not give them proper scrutiny, and now we have to go back and fix all these minor problems? Perhaps we should be taking the time to pass legislation that is not full of grammatical errors and cross-referencing errors in the first place. That would be nice. That is something that I am sure the Green Party and other Opposition parties would like to see. Thank you.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Fletcher Tabuteau.
Hon Clayton Cosgrove: This’ll be good.
FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): Yes. It will be good, thank you, Mr Cosgrove. I just have to give full credit to Minister Joyce for his contribution in the House this afternoon. He was magical in his presentation. He managed to make 10 minutes feel like an hour—it was incredible. Then what he also did, with the full support of the member Melissa Lee, was talk about—and I am trying to quote here; you will forgive me if I am slightly wrong—how legislation like this touches the lives of many New Zealanders. It underpins a highly functioning society. Would it not be nice if the Minister could have just come out and said: “Look, we got it wrong. We made quite a few mistakes and we need to fix it up.”? It would have been very refreshing indeed.
But I do have to make a point on behalf of New Zealand First that I am speaking to this today, but this piece of legislation was not on the Order Paper on Thursday. The Minister himself spoke quite effusively about the raft—the sheer volume—of minor changes included in this legislation. In terms of order of the House and procedures of Parliament, we in New Zealand First get spoken to about not contributing to the functions of Parliament. But this is almost mischievous in nature when a Government hands over legislation of this volume and this magnitude, claiming that the changes are minor, the day before we are obliged to read it, and when, as the Opposition, we have to try to find the errors and the mistakes in this legislation. This in itself will create and give rise to more errors and subsequent changes to legislation by the very nature of the way it was brought to the House. It is unfortunate, and I would suggest it is unacceptable.
I would also like to point out that I know that much of the fix-ups have arisen because of the Productivity Commission report in 2014, but even in that context it has taken a very long time to get to this point in the House. There is a lot of work that has needed to be done arising from that, but it has just taken too much time. I put it to the House, is it not too much to ask that the Minister be a little bit more rapid with his response to known issues? I use only two examples to highlight my concern.
Several members have spoken about the Unit Titles Act 2010. I, personally, was not in the House in 2010, but even when the legislation was passed, industries spoke about having concerns with the legislation and it not being fit for purpose. So—what is it, 6 years later—here we are with a Government that purports to be the advocates of business. The other example that came to mind was the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act 1987. Today the House seeks to amend section 71K of that Act, which, unfortunately, creates unintended consequences for primary carers of pre-term babies—now, after all this time. They are just a couple of examples that highlight my concerns.
Because of the nature of the way that the bills were brought to the House, I would like to take the opportunity to address the member with several questions that have come to me through reading the legislation as quickly as I possibly can. What I would like is to ask about the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill, Part 1, clause 5, which repeals section 104 of the Building Societies Act 1965, which currently requires certain information about loans or other investments, or certain offices or companies, to be included in a building society annual return. Why are we taking that away? That is a genuine question. What is the problem that the Government presumes to be solving by repealing that particular provision within that piece of legislation?
Another one that is of great concern: clause 19 amends section 202 of the Companies Act 1993, which currently provides that group financial statements are not required if the company is a subsidiary of a New Zealand company, and financial statements for the group of that New Zealand company are prepared. The amendment extends the provision to cover situations in which the company is a subsidiary of an overseas company. What is so bad about asking a New Zealand subsidiary of an overseas company to prepare financial statements here in New Zealand? What problem are you trying to solve? So there is a very large concern about that one. They are genuine questions, and I acknowledge that they could be raised in the select committee, but I raise with the Speaker, yet again, that this has been brought to us quite precipitously, and it may be of benefit to the Government and its staff to be aware of the nature of the questions that we will be bringing to the select committee process.
This also highlights another concern that I have. The Minister stood up and told us how much of these are small and minor changes, so let us bring them together in one omnibus bill. Yet we are taking it to three select committees. Let us get some consistency. It does not make sense to me. You have got bringing it together as an omnibus bill, but then you are sending it to three very distinct select committees, because why? Because they are probably important and need to be considered by those select committees that have the expertise and the knowledge in that area. So the inconsistencies are, again, of concern.
I probably will not take more time of the House, and I will end with this question here: clause 24 amends section 208, which imposes an obligation to prepare an annual report. The amendment provides that the requirement does not apply to a large company if it is not required by a percentage of the financial shareholders. I know of particular instances where a certain group of shareholders dominate the ownership of a company, because of the nature of their stake in that business, which is the nature of the shareholdings. But to then say that the majority of the shareholders do not want that report does not seem to fit with having a democracy and clear and transparent operations of business within this country.
There are genuine questions. Again, we have concerns about the process and about the speed with which the bill has come to the House, which undermines our ability to act in good faith as an Opposition party. However, we do support it to the select committee stage because at this stage we believe the Minister for Regulatory Reform, in his missive, that these are minor changes, and we will support the bill through the select committee process at this stage. Thank you for your forbearance.
SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I intend to take just a short call, but I cannot resist the opportunity following that member from New Zealand First, Fletcher Tabuteau, who is a relatively new member of the House. Boy, did he show his lack of knowledge and understanding of parliamentary procedure in that last speech. It seems that it is only in New Zealand First that its members are blessed with the power of 20/20 hindsight. This omnibus legislation is a process that is designed to actually enhance and make efficient use of parliamentary time to make amends to some minor technical issues that occur in legislation from time to time. On this side of the House we understand that that can occur from time to time.
I want to acknowledge the contribution of the Minister introducing the omnibus bills, the Hon Steven Joyce, who is the Minister for Regulatory Reform. As chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee, I am looking forward to my committee investigating and scrutinising the piece of this legislation that will come before us, which particularly relates to the Building Act 2004 and the Unit Titles Act 2010. This is, I think, a good piece of technical legislation. It is the equivalent of parliamentary housekeeping. This is a good process, and I am looking forward to working through it at the select committee. I commend the process and the bills to the House.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. Barry Coates—5 minutes.
BARRY COATES (Green): As my colleague has said, the Green Party gives a broad welcome to these bills, which we regard as a contribution to cleaning up some areas of inconsistency and to making regulations fit for purpose. We think the regulations need to be relevant, up to date, fit for purpose and, particularly, not significantly burdensome on small companies or on members of the public.
We have an ongoing concern that there has been a tendency for regulation to be excessively influenced by larger companies to the detriment of smaller companies, which bear far higher compliance costs than they should do. I am particularly talking about the regulatory systems commercial matters aspects of the three pieces of legislation. We do not at this stage have an exhaustive analysis of the proposals, and we look to do that at the select committee stage. We will be looking closely at some of the issues: the provision of information from directors under the Companies Act seems to be to us very relevant and in need, perhaps, of strengthening rather than of just cleaning up; regarding the financial statements of subsidiaries, we are concerned about the potential for allowing foreign companies to avoid disclosure in New Zealand; and the notification requirements for listed companies. There are, of course, other aspects under the Companies Act that may give rise to concern.
Under the Commerce Act, we are concerned about levies to cover the expenses for the Commerce Commission, and the effect that that may have on equity and on the ability to pay. Under the Fair Trading Act, we see the revision of the sharing of responsibilities of what falls under the Fair Trading Act and what falls under the Financial Markets Authority. We want to make sure that there is adequate recognition of the fair trading responsibilities within the finance sector, and that the split of responsibilities does not diminish those responsibilities. Particularly under the heading of the Financial Markets Authority, we welcome the strengthening of regulatory powers under the section, and we would question whether they go far enough. We are intrigued to see the Secret Commissions Act 1910 be assigned enforcement power. This has to do with bribery and corruption and has relevance to offences of bribery and corruption within the private sector. It relates to the OECD convention on bribery and corruption, and we welcome a far stronger set of provisions around bribery and corruption that would affect the private sector, and which would ensure that there is a high standard of financial integrity within the financial sector.
Finally, we look forward to this bill getting the scrutiny that it deserves from the select committee. We look forward to that process. Like previous speakers, we would have preferred longer to be able to look at the details of this bill prior to this session, and we hope that that may be possible in the future. Thank you.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call the Hon David Cunliffe—5 minutes.
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I take a short call to support, on behalf of the Labour Party, the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill. This is an innovative omnibus bill, something that wraps up a number of small changes across three different categories in the commercial matters, building and housing, and workplace relations areas. It stands alongside the Statutes Amendment Bill and the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill as three different processes by which the Government can do good housekeeping on making sure that regulations are updated, modern, and effective, and sunsetted when they are no longer useful. I think that is a very important thing. In order for a regulatory system to be of good repute and useful, it has to be kept up to date. Regulations are, if you like, like hedges—you have to keep them trimmed, otherwise they just grow into bushes. So we want to see well-trimmed but effective regulations that are doing the job that they should be doing.
The process for, if I take it first, the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill, one of the three, is a little bit—having said that—unusual, in that it seeks to give effect to some of the recommendations of the New Zealand Productivity Commission’s June 2014 report on regulatory institutions and practices. That is, the Government has had over 2 years to get it from the publication of the report to the draft to the House, and here we are talking about it today, but the House has had only a couple of days to consider the material that is here. There seems to be something a little bit out of kilter, if you will forgive me, in having a 2-year time frame for the Government to do its work and then slamming it through the House process.
We expect, of course, that the material here will be considered by select committees in detail. We support that process, and we look forward to the feedback from the committees. I am sure that all current and former Ministers, however, would share one rule of thumb: whenever an official comes in and says “Minister, don’t worry much about this. It is just a purely minor and technical amendment.”, it pays to have a really good look at it, because they are not always minor and technical. Sometimes, dressed up in that technical language, there can be quite profoundly important changes. I am sure that the select committees will give due regard—due diligence—to a number of the matters here. Some of the Acts that these provisions in the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill touch upon are all very, very important Acts—the Companies Act 1993, the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013, the Financial Markets Authority Act 2011, and the Friendly Societies and Credit Unions Act 1982. They are not trivial pieces of legislation that it cross-references to, and the committee will need to assure itself that the changes are useful.
I have to say that the bill’s explanatory note is clothed in pretty general language. Try this one for size, in relation to the Friendly Societies and Credit Unions Act: “The Bill promotes innovation, efficiency, and accountability and removes unnecessary operating and compliance costs …”. Well, that is good as far as it goes, but it does not tell you a hell of a lot about what it is actually going to do. It goes on to say: “by allowing friendly societies and credit unions to use electronic and postal voting …”. Fair enough, but let us trace through the implications across the different bills.
In relation to the Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment Bill, Labour will support the bill to the select committee to improve the regulation of these various pieces of legislation. Whenever I see the word “efficiency”, I get a little bit suspicious, or, at least, my antennae go up, because I would not want to see a drive for efficiency and reduction of compliance costs be an excuse for cutting corners, and we all know the hazards of that in the building industry. That is how we got leaky building syndrome last time. So let us make sure that when we are trimming the hedge we do not take too many of the trees out, because we need the hedge to be there.
In terms of the Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill workplace relations, there are some matters that touch upon paid parental leave and the calculation of early births and near-term babies, to ensure that the parents get the full entitlement. We support that in principle. We think that the Government has been pretty miserly and pretty focused on the PR rather than on the substance, if I can put it like that, in relation to paid parental leave, where it has done just enough to get the public off its back but not enough to really do enough for parents. So if this bill gives us an opportunity to revisit that, we will be very happy indeed.
Taken at face value, it is a tidy-up piece of legislation. We will be looking at it at the select committee. Labour supports it to the select committee process. Thank you.
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment Bill, the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill, and the Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill. These three bills, which arise from the Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill, will now go to separate and different select committees so that they can be properly examined by the select committee process and submitted upon by the public.
I would just like to come back a little bit to the comments that Mr Cunliffe made that it has taken 2 years from the report that led to the topics in this legislation to a bill going before Parliament. The fact of the matter is that it may have escaped Mr Cunliffe’s attention that there was a lengthy period when an exposure draft was given to people affected by the bill, people in the sector, and, actually, anybody in the public who might have wanted to give feedback on the Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill, as it was then, and indeed a number of people made contributions and comments that were helpful to the formation of the Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill.
I would also like to come back another step to talk about the importance of regulatory reform. I am very proud to be the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister for Regulatory Reform. On behalf of the ACT Party, I am very proud that there is such a Minister, because it is something that ACT brought about. The reason we thought it was so important to bring this about is that Governments can effectively do one of three things: they can either tax and spend money—money acquired using the sovereign power of Government; they can own assets, be it land, buildings, businesses, or anything else that a Government might own; or a Government can use its sovereign power to regulate all of those things that are private property that it has not already taxed or decided to own on behalf of the people.
The interesting thing is that we are lucky, as New Zealanders, to have inherited very good institutions around taxation and expenditure and ownership. Our Fiscal Responsibility Act, which is now part of the Public Finance Act, is world class. One of the reasons that the Government changed in 2008 was that Ruth Richardson’s bill, which required an opening of the books in the form of a pre-election fiscal update with full cost accrual accounting, revealed to the public just how badly managed the Government’s finances were at that time. I believe that was one of the things that precipitated a change in Government. So we are very well served to have full cost accrual accounting published regularly when it comes to our Government’s use of taxation and expenditure of Government money.
Although ACT would argue that the Government owns far too much in the way of capital assets, we actually have pretty good rules and processes around managing the things that the Government actually owns. We can find from the Crown Ownership Monitoring Unit, and its successor, how many businesses the Government owns, and even if we do not like the returns that the Government gets from those—we find that, actually, we get pretty weak returns—at least we are able to assess what it is that the Government owns and what benefit the public gets from public ownership.
But when it comes to the third activity of Government—not expenditure and not ownership, but regulation—it has to be said that we have a lot of work to do on improving our institutions so that we have a better regulated society and so that we can use the private property that the Government has not taxed, and does not yet own, more efficiently.
If you look at some of the challenges that we face in New Zealand at the moment, I cannot think of many challenges that would not be dramatically lessened had we had functional regulation of housing markets. The fact that we are a country that is 0.8 percent populated geographically but has managed to manufacture an artificial shortage of land on which you can build, and push house prices through the roof, is at the root of many of our challenges today as a country, whether it be concern about immigration, house prices, inequality, or all the infrastructure costs, rates, or whatever. Many of the challenges we face are due to the regulatory failure.
So I pick up on what David Cunliffe said, which is that it is very important that this Government has a regulatory reform agenda. I am very proud that ACT has helped to bring that about, working with the National Government over the last two terms of Government and this one, and I am proud today to see that we have regulatory systems legislation that shows that this Government is prepared to commit House time and is prepared to make a commitment to tidying up some of the impediments to good regulation.
People might be wondering, for instance, what exactly some of the concrete examples of this are. One of them, for example, is what we see in the Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment Bill. When it comes to the Unit Titles Act, we see, for example—perhaps for good reasons at the time the legislation was made, many years ago—that it is very difficult to subdivide a unit title. We see that it is very difficult for an owner to give the right to a body corporate, or for a body corporate to give an easement for someone else, to use a unit title, when there is no sound reason for that restriction to exist.
We see this throughout the three bills—on it goes: there are regulations that have not been made for sound reasons but none the less constrain what people are actually able to do with the private property that the Government has not already taxed or decided to own. We see throughout each of these bills that we are making it easier for people to get on with their lives, use their property, become prosperous, and flourish. For that reason I am very proud to be part of this regulatory reform kaupapa and to be standing here in support of this legislation today, which the ACT Party commends to the House. Thank you.
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): I am glad the ACT member took a call because although Labour is supporting these pieces of legislation to the select committee, I am mindful of the last ACT member. In fact, Mr Assistant Speaker, you will recall this, because you were in the Chair on 20 March 2012, when the last ACT member, the Hon John Archibald Banks, brought in a regulatory reform bill.
And what this bill really is—let us be honest about it, and this is not a criticism—is a patch-up, fix-up bill of a number of errors across a whole host of legislation. It could well have been done through a Statutes Amendment Bill, but it has been brought to the House on short notice, dealing with issues like, for instance—like I heard the Minister say—the Gas Act. I wondered at the time whether he had some sort of anatomical difficulty, but I then looked at the legislation and found that there was indeed some need to amend the Gas Act.
So I remember John Archibald Banks on 20 March 2012, who came in with equally flowery language—a great regulatory reform bill that was going to slash through compliance costs, as the ACT member said, and create efficiencies etc., etc., etc. And then I recall—and I am sure you do, Mr Assistant Speaker, because you were in the Chair—that that great contribution from a forefather of the ACT Party was that it actually repealed 31 spent Acts. I remember at the time—I am a lawyer, but I had to actually look it up. I had to go and ask the Clerk what a spent Act is. It is, basically, a repealed piece of legislation, effectively. Effectively, it is dead, it is redundant, and it has no effect on any entity or any individual in New Zealand, but it has not been repealed, and John Archibald Banks’ great regulatory reform bill—that is why I am a wee bit suspicious of this—was to repeal 31 Acts that, effectively, did not exist. So I have got to say that was a great contribution from the sort of godfather of the ACT Party, as he came out of the political crypt via the disaster that was the then Auckland mayoralty back into Parliament.
But, putting those sorts of foibles aside, I am glad the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister for Regulatory Reform has again taken on a sort of Banks-like persona, to come into Parliament and celebrate these wonderful pieces of legislation, which—you know, he has managed to clear the gallery. That is the extent, I think, of interest, but I am sure there are some entities around New Zealand—those involved in gas distribution, for instance—that will be hanging on every word from this member. So I suggest he goes back and has a look at the Hansard on 20 March 2012 to relive that great moment of the ACT Party making a contribution to Parliament.
If we look, though, on a more serious note, at the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill, there are indeed a number of minor changes to the Financial Advisers Act, in respect of the Financial Markets Authority and the collection of fines and to bolster the efficiency and recoverability of that via the courts; the Financial Markets Authority Act; the Financial Markets Conduct Act—a whole series of Acts. What we are here for is to amend and propel legislation to make life easier for those people and those entities that we serve. I will not take an extensive call because I think everything that has been said has already been said, and I note that the Minister for Regulatory Reform, in his eloquent address, covered all the topics that the select committees—all three of them—will be focused on.
But I just say it is a point—it is a serious point—that this legislation was not provided to political parties in due time and that it was provided on short notice, and if the objective is to upgrade and amend and increase the quality of legislation, which it is—and having had a cursory look at certainly my area, which is the financial services area, I doubt whether there is much, if anything, that is controversial around this, apart from perhaps the housing area, as Mr Twyford mentioned. With that being the case, I think it is not smart politics but just smart process on behalf of the Government—if it was to be of a mind to have provided the legislation to political parties in due time, given that I doubt whether there is a lot of politics in this; I doubt whether there is going to be a lot of controversy around this—but to allow political parties good time and good grace to look at the legislation and make appropriate contributions, even if it is only in a first reading.
So the Labour Party will be supporting the legislation, and I am sure the select committees will give it due scrutiny, but I have to say I just wonder whether this is the major priority of the Government—whether it is lacking in some ideas or lacking in some policy—if this is the highest-priority legislation that could be brought to the House, or whether these particular changes could have been dealt with under a Statutes Amendment Bill.
I remember when I was Associate Minister of Justice, we had quite an extensive consultation process. The rule, as I recall it from the old days, with a Statutes Amendment Bill was that as long as there was no controversy, as it were, and nobody objected to a provision or a clause, it would be dealt with in quite an efficient way. It was done with due notice—quite a bit of due notice; mid-year, as I recall, in the parliamentary year—so that political parties could scrutinise it carefully, and that then enabled a Statutes Amendment Bill to go through Parliament relatively efficiently—without objection—to bundle up a whole lot of these things and get them done. So that is something the Government may wish to reflect on, but we look forward to the select committee deliberations.
Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment Bill read a first time.
Bill referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee.
Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill read a first time.
Bill referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.
Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill read a first time.
Bill referred to the Commerce Committee.
Bills
Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill
Second Reading
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration) on behalf of the Minister of Civil Defence: I move, That the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This bill is the latest step in ongoing work to improve our civil defence emergency management system. Historically, most attention has been given to response. This bill makes it very clear that recovery is also important. Indeed, all of the four Rs—risk reduction, readiness, response, and recovery—are important to help minimise the consequences of emergencies on our communities. The bill addresses the lack of focus on recovery in the existing legislative framework. It focuses primarily on recovery from New Zealand’s most frequent emergencies—those that are small- to moderate-scale emergencies, such as the lower North Island and South Dunedin floods last year. This bill strengthens the recovery framework and the arrangements to support communities to get back on their feet as quickly as possible. When there is an emergency, over time the focus switches from response to recovery, and we need to better manage that transition.
The bill provides powers that can be used to support the transition from response to recovery from a national emergency. For example, the bill provides that the Minister can give notice of a national transition period. It addresses the issue that often there is a need for powers after the state of emergency has been lifted—for example, there may be places that are still unsafe and debris to be cleared. The current framework encourages keeping the state of emergency in place longer than is necessary, simply so civil defence and emergency management (CDEM) groups can continue to access powers. Keeping a state of emergency in place when communities are out of the crisis mode sends the wrong message to communities about what is happening.
The bill strengthens the legislative framework for recovery by introducing provisions that provide a mandate for roles and responsibilities that apply for the duration of the recovery from an emergency, strengthen recovery planning, and enable a seamless transition from the response to an emergency through to the initial recovery period by ensuring that appropriate and effective powers and arrangements are available.
In terms of roles and responsibilities, the bill largely mirrors for recovery the existing approach of the Act to planning for, and declaring of, a state of emergency. The bill provides authority and mandate for roles and responsibilities during transition periods. The roles of group, local, and national recovery management provide for directing, managing, and coordinating recovery activities during the transition period. Their role, functions, and powers are set out in the bill. During the development of these proposals, most civil defence and emergency management groups supported these roles.
The bill strengthens recovery planning. Originally when the bill was introduced, it had a requirement for civil defence and emergency management groups to develop a strategic recovery plan. This is no longer considered necessary. Civil defence and emergency management groups need to plan across all four Rs, and I therefore agree with the committee’s recommendations to make it a function of civil defence and emergency management groups to plan for recovery, rather than prepare a separate recovery plan.
The bill provides for local and national transition periods when there is an emergency. Over time, the focus switches from response to recovery, and we need to better manage that transition. Like declaring a state of local emergency, a local transition notice can be given by a person appointed by a civil defence and emergency management group, or a mayor. In exceptional circumstances, the Minister may also give notice of the local transition period. The local transition lasts for up to 28 days, but can be extended. It is important that civil defence and emergency management groups have access to the powers they need for recovery. We expect that in most cases 28 days would be long enough. The national transition notice lasts for up to 90 days but can be extended. Only the Minister can give such a notice, and they must advise the House as soon as practicable when this occurs.
The Government Administration Committee received submissions that suggested that the Minister should undertake some form of local consultation when making a decision to give a notice of a local transition period. However, there may be circumstances where this is impractical. The power of a Minister to issue a local transition notice is likely to be used only in exceptional circumstances. The CDEM framework is based on local communities acting in an emergency. It is “act locally”. The bill reinforces the “act locally” by requiring CDEM groups to plan for and manage recovery.
I agree with the committee’s proposal that where the Minister intends to make, extend, or terminate a local transition period they must seek and consider comment from any affected CDEM group and from the mayor or any affected local authority. There are some caveats set out in the bill to recognise that it might not always be practical to engage where the urgency of the situation requires a notice of transition to be given immediately. No doubt, today in the House, some members might suggest that the bill should provide for co-governance before the Minister gives notice of a local transition period. This is a process where central and local government jointly make decisions. We strongly support central and local government working together, but, as I noted before, the Minister giving notice of a local transition period is expected to be used only in exceptional circumstances.
Hon Ruth Dyson: I think they gave you the wrong notes on that little bit.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: For example—I am sure the member will correct it if that is the case—it could be where the local arrangements are not working because key decision makers are not available. In this type of scenario, it is prudent that the Minister is able to issue a local transition notice. I would stress, however, that this would only be a last resort. I am aware that there have been some suggestions that there is never likely to be a situation of urgency. However, recent experience shows that in each emergency there are unique features, and one never knows the circumstances that might present. Therefore, the legislation should be flexible.
Finally, the bill provides for a permanent legislative authority. This mechanism strengthens the Government’s commitment to reimburse local authorities’ expenses incurred during an emergency where they meet the Government reimbursement policy. It removes the situation where expenditure may be incurred but there is no appropriation for that expenditure.
I want to take this opportunity to thank civil defence and emergency management groups around New Zealand for the great work that they do. They work with dedication for the benefit of our communities. In developing the proposals of this bill, civil defence and emergency management groups were generally supportive of the proposals because they recognise the importance of recovery for their communities. I thank them for their input on developing this bill. I also want to thank the submitters. A number of changes were made to the bill to respond to the points they made. And, of course, I want to thank the members of the Government Administration Committee, under the solid chairmanship of the Hon Ruth Dyson, for its consideration of the bill. As a result of the select committee process, the bill returns to the House with a number of amendments that support the bill’s core objectives of better managing the transition from response to recovery. I also want to thank my colleagues from across the House, who I understand have pledged their cross-party support for the bill.
Finally, I want to acknowledge the Hon Nikki Kaye. I have every confidence that she would want to be standing here reading this bill instead of me, and I look very much forward to the time when that occurs again. I commend the bill to the House.
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I would like to support the last comment made by the Minister of Immigration. We certainly do hope that Nikki Kaye returns to the House as soon as possible. Interestingly, Labour supports the intent of this bill. We are supporting this bill. I would note that the chairmanship of the Government Administration Committee is more inspired and solid, because, ultimately, this bill is a better bill than the bill that came before the select committee after the first reading. That is due to some really quite hard work and quite a lot of to-ing and fro-ing from the committee back to officials. I think it shows select committees at their best, because the piece of law that comes back for consideration by the whole House is better for that.
Interestingly, the bits where the Minister who just spoke, Michael Woodhouse, seemed to think the disagreements might lie are not, actually. I think we actually came to quite a good place with that part of the legislation. No doubt other members will comment on that as we go through. As I said, we support the intent of this bill, which improves the way that communities recover from emergencies, and for there to be a seamless and timely transition from response to recovery.
The rationale for the bill was around the review of the legislative framework for recovery, and this is a first stage. I am going to be referring to this a few times. This is supposedly a first stage, which focused on the small- to moderate-scale emergencies such as floods and weather-related events. The Minister referred to a few of them. I would actually make the comment that these events being described as small- to moderate-scale emergencies are actually pretty solid and quite significant emergencies for each of the regions that they affect. One of the submissions that came before us, from Resilient New Zealand, noted that the Insurance Council of New Zealand illustrates that the average cost of these natural disasters for New Zealand individuals, businesses, insurers, and central and local government is about $1.6 billion a year, or 0.75 percent of our GDP. That is not insignificant.
If you add up the major events—the storm and the flooding in the North Island last year; the storm and the flooding in Otago, which was in my electorate of Dunedin South, where South Dunedin flooded; and the North Island storm in May last year—the combined impact of those, which is the insured impact and the economic and social impact, is estimated to be nearly $600 million. That is not insignificant.
As I said, we note that this bill is the first stage of a wider review being undertaken into the legislative framework of recovery. One of the comments I want to make is about the concern we have around what happens next and when it happens, and the importance of that—because this is not enough, this piece of legislation. It is not bad for the frame that it chose to cover, but there is a lot more that needs to be done.
We do have some concerns. We expressed some unease during the submissions phase at several provisions that created what we consider to be an imbalance between the exercise of ministerial powers and consultation with local communities in the recovery phase of an emergency. As a result of that concern, Labour wrote its minority report and had to rewrite it several times during this process, and what the minority report ended up being was just an expression of some concerns, whereas originally it was very specific about what those concerns were. What that showed is that there was good work done in bringing back more balance in terms of how that relationship between the local communities having input into when a transition phase should occur, or what the next stage should be, and the ministerial decision-making—where that balance should lie.
I learnt a lot about the impact of words like “should”, “must”, “seek”, and “clarify”—all of those things have actually got really important meanings in law. We ended up in a place where we think there is a good balance, and we think that the submitters, generally, would consider that to be the case as well. One of those submitters was the Christchurch City Council, which, of course, as we know, has a lot of experience in managing major issues. Yes, it recommended in its original submission that a co-governance regime should be in place for local and central government to make these sorts of decisions.
What we ended up with in terms of the amendments to the legislation that have come back before the House has been very carefully worded. In clause 28—we will be discussing this more, obviously, at the Committee stage—we are ultimately proposing an amendment that provides for the Minister to seek and consider comment from affected local civil defence and emergency management groups, and the mayor of any affected local authority, before implementing or extending a transition period. We do remain concerned and watchful that this imbalance—
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before the dinner break we were debating the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. Clare Curran was speaking and she has 3 minutes and 30 seconds remaining to speak.
CLARE CURRAN: Thirty-two seconds.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Do not contradict the word of command.
CLARE CURRAN: I will be succinct to get my final points across on this bill. Large-scale events and readiness are not covered in this bill, and this clearly was not the intent. The problem that we have on this side of the House is at what point they do become covered. At what point is New Zealand going to be reviewing its legislation and its practices around these matters? We are concerned that this bill fails to deal with important issues regarding large-scale events, and a number of submitters mentioned this. This includes not just recovery but risk reduction and readiness as well.
Despite the commitment of the Minister to a second stage of legislative review focused on large-scale emergencies, there is no evidence of this occurring in the short to medium term. I also want to make the point here that in this country at the moment there is no effective tsunami national alerting system or even an effective local alerting system despite there being more than a quarter of a million dollars being spent on this. This is a critical issue given that there were two major earthquakes that occurred off the coast of New Zealand at the beginning of September and there were immediate questions asked as to why it took so long for there to be an alert and what the impact is. These issues are not insignificant. Focusing on recovery is important—I am not diminishing from that—but so is risk reduction and readiness, and we believe there is a lot of work to do around New Zealand on community responsiveness.
A number of submitters commented on the importance of civil defence and emergency management strategic recovery plans. A provision for this was contained in the original bill—section 57A, in clause 21. That has now been removed. It was removed because it was considered that it got too complex and there would need to be too much detail about what those plans should involve. We were advised that by removing this it was going to basically be an expectation that in the civil defence and emergency management plans there would be these strategic recovery plans. But the legislation does not require it. Alarm bells were rung by major insurers such as IAG around this, and we want to acknowledge that, and I am putting on notice that we may put a Supplementary Order Paper on the Table at the Committee stage around this.
Finally, what we thought would have been the most contentious part of this bill, when I first read it anyway—the permanent legislative authority provision, which creates a new legislative authority for the payment of certain expenses; it is a flexible payment mechanism—was not. We think it is actually quite a sensible mechanism. We got advice from Treasury on this and we will talk more about this in the Committee stage. Ultimately, we support the bill.
PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): E Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou katoa e ngā mema o Te Whare Pāremata o Aotearoa. In speaking on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill in this second reading debate I want to pay tribute to both the Acting Minister, who set this bill down for the second reading, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, but actually the Minister who drove the creation of this bill, the Hon Nikki Kaye. I want to pay tribute to her and congratulate her on the excellent work that went in to the drafting of what was a very good bill. It did receive insufficient submissions to warrant a huge amount of consideration by the committee. There were only 12 submitters, of whom only six opted to submit verbally before us. But the bill has had a few amendments that have arisen out of the work of the Government Administration Committee, and I will just touch on a couple of those.
We have recommended amending the bill so that the function of the civil defence and emergency management groups is to plan for recovery rather than to create a separate recovery plan. One of their key functions, when they are executing their duties, is to build in that recovery planning as part of an overall strategy. This is common sense, and I think there was fairly broad agreement as to the positive outcomes that we could have from that.
Also, we had extensive debate in the committee around the local transition periods where the Minister would either make, extend, or terminate a local transition period. There are a number of powers that go with a transition period, and these include emergency powers to have people removed from their properties, for instance, and to control access to roads—these sorts of things.
We had debate over the level of community consultation that was appropriate. We have to remember that these are, firstly, emergencies. They may be of a small to moderate scale, which is what this bill intends to address, but they are emergencies. They may involve key personnel being uncontactable, incommunicado, or even casualties of the event that has caused the emergency. So we settled on seeking and considering comment from affected civil defence and emergency management groups and the mayor of any affected local authority as the right level of community consultation. There is not time to run surveys or go out and consider wider views when you are dealing with an emergency or even an emergency transition. So I think we have arrived at a pragmatic, sensible middle ground on that particular point. I am glad that parties across the House agree, and I hope that they will support the bill all the way through to a third reading.
As has been referenced by the Minister Michael Woodhouse when he introduced this bill on behalf of the Acting Minister, this is only the first stage of a wider review. It is not intended to deal with a Christchurch-level event—something that causes significant damage across a whole province. This is to deal with emergencies of a small to moderate size and more localised in effect. I am looking forward to the Government work programme introducing those further measures in due course. It is a good bill and I fully commend it to the House.
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am delighted to speak in the second reading of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill, which has been returned from the committee that I have the privilege of chairing, the Government Administration Committee. I want to acknowledge the Hon Gerry Brownlee, who is mustering this bill through the House, but more importantly I want to acknowledge the Minister of Civil Defence, the Hon Nikki Kaye. She has put a tremendous amount of work into this legislation. She worked hard in listening to what the committee said as we considered the submissions on it. I know that she will be tuned in listening to this debate now. I look forward to her being back in the House for the Committee stage and the third reading. I hope that she is making a speedy recovery. It is a big challenge that she is facing in terms of her health, but we are doing good work that she started and I think she will take a bit of kudos from that.
So the intention of this legislation is to really update the civil defence legislation. It has been very response focused, very command and control. Although that is appropriate for the immediate times after a civil emergency, what this bill seeks to do—and I think it has taken some quite good lessons from the situation that we faced in Christchurch through our sequence of earthquakes—is move more from response to recovery. As Paul Foster-Bell just noted, this bill is part of a wider review of the different levels of response that might be needed. We were a little frustrated at the committee that we could not look at the whole package, because it is really important that they are consistent, but I hope that the next stage of the review and the next legislation is referred to our committee as well, so that we can consider what we learnt during the deliberations on this bill and what we might put into the next bill.
We made a lot of changes, and I want to commend, in a rare moment of cross-party recognition, the National members of our select committee. They took the submissions seriously. They took the views of the Green Party and Labour Party members seriously, and I think we worked really collaboratively to get a much better outcome. Some of it is not quite how we wanted it, perhaps, at the end, and in the Committee stage we still might have some Supplementary Order Papers that we table, but I hope we do not. We might just keep talking to each other and end up with a bill that is agreed across all of Parliament. I think that would be good in many circumstances, but particularly if we are looking at a response to a civil defence emergency situation.
This is the new legislative framework for emergency response. It has got very clear mandates for roles and responsibilities. It supports a seamless transition from the response to the recovery, and it creates a permanent legislative authority to assist the Crown in reimbursing local authorities—actually, more importantly, to give local authorities the confidence that the Crown will pay up. Local authorities in an immediate situation are required to pay out quite a lot of money, and this new authority that we are using in this bill will give city councils and territorial local authorities the confidence to know that in the end the Crown will pay out. We thought that that new authority would cause quite a lot of debate. It was far less contentious than we imagined during the first reading of this bill, and I am sure that other members will comment on that during the Committee stage and the third reading.
I have to say that despite the best efforts of the officials to guide us to be comfortable with the quite strong ministerial powers that were in the original bill, we remain quite uneasy. We are not interested in giving Ministers powers that they do not need, and certainly, after the Christchurch experience, powers were used for purposes other than what was originally intended. We have seen in Christchurch, for example, over 300 heritage buildings demolished. This was not because they were unsafe, which was the intention of demolition orders in the original Christchurch earthquake recovery legislation, but because—can I give the House an example. The Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery at the time, Gerry Brownlee, wanted to widen Manchester Street, so had a demolition order put on the Majestic Theatre. That heritage-listed building has gone so that we have a wider street. It was clearly outside the powers that were intended when this Parliament debated the earthquake recovery legislation. We were specifically clear on the powers of demolition—the powers to override individual property owners’ rights, let alone heritage listings. So when this bill came to our select committee we looked at ministerial powers really closely. I think that now, through the amendments that we made at the committee, we have got the balance a lot better.
I mentioned in my introductory comments that large-scale responses are not covered by this legislation. I understand that things sometimes need to be done in parts, because often a comprehensive review will take longer and it would be preferable to have some parts of it implemented. This part of the review is being implemented, but I just want to put on record again that I want to make sure that we have consistency across the different stages of the review, because otherwise we will have what is the worst thing in response to an actual disaster and that is confusion about roles and responsibilities. We need to make really sure that communities are really clear about their roles and responsibilities, that the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management officials are really clear, and that in the middle are territorial local authorities, city councils, and district councils.
A very interesting part of the bill was the debate around proposed new section 57A. The committee members all agreed that the content of that section was not clear. There was no debate about that. The debate came as to what to do about that. Those on our side of the table thought that we could make it clearer, and those on the other side of the table thought that because it was unclear we should remove it. That is not my preferred option, and I really think that we could have worked a little bit harder to get the wording right and clear. So we now do not have the strategic recovery plan provision in that section of the bill. It has been removed. Again, I would offer the National members the opportunity to think further on that and see whether or not they would like to take the opportunity, during the Committee stage, to see whether we could do just a little bit more work and get that right.
I mentioned earlier about the permanent legislative authority. We were really concerned that this was a mechanism that was not common, that really overrode quite a lot of other existing provisions, but we got very sound advice from Treasury about the appropriateness, I guess, of that mechanism, and how it would give both central government and local government confidence about who was responsible for paying for what in response to an actual disaster. I think, again if you want to look at the Christchurch example, the Christchurch City Council has still been arguing quite recently about the various responsibilities of post-quake financial liabilities. This gives that clarity. I should say to the local authorities that it also is a message from Parliament that we have confidence that they will expend funds only as they are necessary. We do not have any fear that we will suddenly get a bill from a local authority for expenditure on things that it did not need.
In conclusion, can I just say that the quality of submissions and the quality of advice and discussion from officials has made what started off as a very good bill—and again I commend the Minister for the way she engaged with people who were involved, right from the hierarchy of Civil Defence through to leaders in the community. The Hon Nikki Kaye deserves credit for the original legislation. But we made, through the submission process, listening to the officials, and working together, a very good bill even better. That is what Parliament should aim for every time. I think that as a result of this we can have confidence that our communities will not be left out of responses from Civil Defence—they will be able to play their part—that local authorities will not be usurped by the Civil Defence hierarchy, and that we will all be able to do our part to respond to these situations.
People in Canterbury felt left out. The volunteers were not able to contribute. We heard that very strongly. Our local authority, the Christchurch City Council, as well as the Waimakariri District Council and the Selwyn District Council, felt as though they were just going along for the ride and did not have any role in important decision-making. As a result, they contributed less to the response than they could have if they had been involved right from day one. So I think we have learnt a lot from things that happened. They were errors, in hindsight, but at the time they were done with the best intentions. I think we have made a good bill even better, and I look forward to its further progress in the House.
BRETT HUDSON (National): It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill in this, its second reading. The bill will amend the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act of 2002. It is all about enabling better recovery from those small-, medium-, or moderate-scale disasters in New Zealand—those that are the most frequent. Some of them are still very much in recent memory, and I am sure also that for Mr Deputy Speaker the floods around Whanganui and Rangitīkei are a very good example of that.
Some of the key things that these amendments will bring about will be establishing a legislative framework for that recovery management, providing a mandate for recovery managers to take necessary actions, and equally importantly, actually requiring high-level preparatory recovery planning. They do say that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that is a very big part of the amendments planned in this bill.
One key element at the heart of the bill, but also part of the discussion in the Government Administration Committee, was about the seamless transition from response to the initial recovery phase. It had been discovered that there were some gaps, in terms of the mandated authority of officials and response agencies, which meant that there could be quite some challenges in swiftly moving from the early response phase into recovery. This bill seeks to take care of that, particularly by empowering officials to do things such as carrying out works to clear roads and other public places; remove, dispose of, secure, and make safe dangerous structures; and also, for safety and to prevent injury to people, to rescue and remove people or endangered persons from property. We discovered, particularly in the Whanganui and Rangitīkei situation, that that was not actually legally mandated to be done.
So I think this bill will bring about some very sensible changes. It has gone through a very rigorous select committee process, one that did work very collaboratively. I think it has returned a much better bill to the House. I commend the bill to the House.
JAN LOGIE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise and offer the Green Party’s support as well to the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. I would like to join previous speakers in acknowledging the Minister Nikki Kaye for her work, and hope that in the way the discussions progress she can take some sense of satisfaction from that and her role in achieving what has become an important piece of legislation, to start with, and, as has been mentioned by Ruth Dyson, who chaired the Government Administration Committee, has been improved through the select committee process in partnership and in discussion with the Minister.
I would like to acknowledge Ruth Dyson for her role in chairing the committee in that process, as well as the officials and all of the submitters. It has been mentioned that it was a small group of submitters, but the submissions were of a very high quality. I particularly want to acknowledge Christchurch City Council for its contribution, which really helped inform our understanding, and it pointed us in the direction of areas that we needed to be wary of and take cognisance of, and the bill is much improved from its input.
This is about dealing with small and medium sized disasters and civil defence emergencies, so it is not dealing with the large-scale events that we saw in Christchurch. It has been raised earlier that, initially, when this bill first came to the House we were promised that this year we would have legislation to deal with those large emergencies. It does not look to me—I have heard no rumours of that coming to us this year.
I do think the point bears repeating—and it is an important one—that we really should be looking at the interconnection between the plans and the legislation at all levels, to make sure that everything fits and makes sense. It is quite difficult to do that when you are looking at only one part of the puzzle, so I would encourage Government members to speed up whatever process they are going through, for us to be able to consider, not long after this, that next wave of legislation for larger emergencies, so that this is still fresh in our minds and so we can make those connections easily.
I do just want to point particularly—I would be a bad Green Party MP if I did not—and draw the House’s attention again to the importance of this legislation in light of climate change, and the increased number of severe natural events that we are seeing all over the world. I point out that there was an average of 78 recorded natural disasters every year through the 1970s. Now there are over 350 recorded natural disasters every year. Some of the figures I read show that 217 million people have been impacted by natural disasters every single year since the 1980s.
In New Zealand we have been spending between $1.2 billion and $2 billion a year on cleaning up natural disasters in this country, and this is going to become increasingly true as we deal with the level of climate change that has already been locked in. So for us, although we absolutely recognise the increasing importance of this kind of legislation and getting our response right, it is also a call to action for us all to be able to reduce our emissions to actually save us from worse disasters in the future. It is not right for us to be having this conversation without having that awareness and that compulsion to act, because it is about property, it is about communities, it is about people’s lives and the future of this country.
As for some of the specifics around this bill, it has provided greater role definition for people taking roles in this recovery stage, and it is about moving from response in the immediate aftermath of an event and moving into the recovery, which is a longer-term transition back to a new reality. We heard through the committee, from some of the submissions, from past experience where people’s roles were not locked into legislation and some people felt that they were not able to do the roles and the jobs that needed to be done. So this legislation gives them that security to know that they can go and do those tasks, and they have the legislative backing to do it. We know that some of the people have been doing those roles anyway, because they needed to be done, but they did not have the backing of any legislation. So it is really great that the House is now providing them with that, because it is essential work. It also will improve coordination between the different leaders in that recovery process.
Also, we heard submissions telling us about how some people were worried that maybe it was somebody else’s role to do something, so they would not do it, and they could not ask them for it, and that there was so much uncertainty. It caused time delays and uncertainty in the process, and that has a flow-on effect on people’s ability to recover, and it has a real impact on the ground. This bill sorts out, we hope, those coordination issues and clarifies people’s roles and responsibilities.
I would also just like to reiterate the point about how we were initially uneasy—yes—about the increased ministerial roles or powers, and are very pleased to have seen significant amendments through the committee process on that. The Hon Ruth Dyson has talked about some of the misuse of those ministerial powers in Christchurch. I also think the point needs to be made that this is not just about preventing a big bad central government from doing terrible things to a local community.
Getting this balance right between local and central government is also, in large part, about getting good decisions and good results in the long term. This is because the knowledge is held at a local level. Resilience is enabled through relationships at a local level. We saw that so clearly in Christchurch, as we have in other places, and we do know that there were some things that went wrong—after talking to people in Lyttelton and their experience of when they had a time bank that had been operating, which enabled that community to know what skills everyone had. So after the earthquake they knew they could call everyone together and they could send people out to do the jobs that needed to be done, because they knew who had what skills and what needed to be done, and the network was there.
It was working well, and people felt that they actually were doing something. It was helping them deal with the quake—the aftermath of the quake—as well as responding. Then central government came in and locked them out of the process. It slowed down the recovery and meant all of those people felt like the role and the value they were adding no longer had a value. It really displaced people and it was unnecessary and counter-productive. So I absolutely hope that this piece of legislation gets that balance right, but I do think there needs to be constant evaluation and learning from each event to make sure that what we hope is going to be delivered from this legislation is actually realised in practice.
Just, finally, on the point about the permanent legislative authorities, which also looked a little bit dodgy when we first got the bill—actually, I was totally reassured by the advice that we had from Treasury and the officials, that this just gives local authorities the certainty that the money will come and that there is that degree of trust. I think that is the appropriate mechanism. So it is nice to stand up in the House and say good things about a piece of legislation. It is an uncommon experience for me, so thank you for that, Minister Kaye.
CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I would like to, first of all, acknowledge my pleasure in standing and taking a call on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill on behalf of New Zealand First. I will probably start my contribution by adding to what Clare Curran has previously spoken about, because this issue is quite current where I am from, in the Bay of Plenty and Tauranga, and that is specifically to do with tsunamis, tsunami warning systems, and a national expectation of there being a siren there that we can identify with.
We all remember the Japanese tsunami. We certainly remember the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and the issues that that caused for so many people who were not ready for it. Certainly, in Papamoa and down the coastline in Mount Maunganui, we have had many, many meaningful, long discussions—at times, quite heated—with regard to the concerns that local residents feel that they do not have enough time to respond in the event of a big event such as a tsunami, as we have seen in the past.
It is very relevant because we have had a number of large earthquakes off the East Cape in recent weeks, and it certainly does get your ears pricked and your eyes very, very akin to coming up with a plan of escape. There are stories in Japan where those escape routes that were planned for small children in schools to go to ended up being not in safe zones, and many young children were swept away in that tragic event, and we need to do everything that we can to make sure that we do not have an event that ends up with the same sort of tragic loss of life, as we have seen around the world.
Certainly, a chorus of support will be coming from the wider Bay of Plenty and Tauranga. Along our coastline there we do have the Kermadec ocean trench, and it would take only about 20 minutes, if a large-scale earthquake happened there and caused an underground landslide, to send a huge wave crashing into our coastline. I think more needs to be done, and this is definitely the right vehicle to do it. So I would like to also say that New Zealand First will continue with our support along the lines from the first reading to now the second reading, with, potentially, some Supplementary Order Papers that we may put through into the following stages.
I suppose the biggest gripe that we are currently having is the time that it is taking to put this very important piece of legislation together. We have seen this House operate with lightning-speed reactions on bills that I do not think deserve that sort of pace, whereas this bill is a bill that is designed to save lives and speed up the recovery and the response times for these civil defence disasters and emergencies to get people and communities back on their feet again. So we would like to see this bill being progressed through. Again, we understand that this is just part one of a two-part reform coming through.
This is to do with small- and medium-scale incidents, ranging from—goodness me, I have got a list here of the things that it covers off. Explosions—they happen around the world. It may or may not happen here, whether it be a gas leak or the like. We have got sinkholes that happen too, and of course terrorist attacks, if that did happen in our country. Earthquakes, eruptions, tsunamis, land movements, floods, storms, tornadoes, cyclones, serious fire, leakages or spillages of any dangerous gas or substance, technological failure—goodness me, if that should happen and the lights went out, what would we do? And, of course, there are infestations and plagues, epidemic failure or a disruption to an emergency service or a lifeline utility, or actual or imminent attack or war-like act. That is what the civil defence is set up to deal with, and that is why we should be putting absolute urgency on ensuring that this piece of legislation makes it speedily through the House.
I would like to talk about the transitional notices—the local transition notices for 28 days versus the national transition notices of 90 days. I think they are a good opportunity to make sure that a seamless line is drawn between approaching the incident and going straight into the recovery, and the response to recovery time is exactly what this bill is there to fix and ensure that we can actually move through very, very quickly and easily.
This bill has four parts to it, really. Essentially, it mandates roles and responsibilities for emergency service providers during an event; it strengthens recovery planning, how we do it, and how we get back to a status quo, if you like; and it provides a framework to ensure a seamless transition from the response to the emergency to the initial recovery periods—and these are the transitional notices that I just spoke of. This here has got an enforcement aspect to it, because when danger is staring people in the face and they are dealing with a situation where they do not want to leave their property—because, of course, sometimes irrational behaviour can actually make people make bad decisions; we see it all the time from this Government—sometimes they need empowerment; for somebody to step in to ensure their safety and take them out of harm’s way. This bill enables that to happen so we can reduce the number of people being put in harm’s way, and therefore reduce the need for others to go out there and protect those people, putting them in harm’s way as well.
Finally, the bill gives legislative authority to allow Crown funding. In a local civil defence emergency, the responsibility goes largely on to the local government, and, as has been said, this will actually give some context around who pays what and will make sure that the Government actually comes up with what it needs to. What I would like to point out is an area that I think we would like to explore more. When we are talking about civil defence emergency management (CDEM) coordinating executive groups, it has got here, in the commentary on the bill: “The second amendment we recommend is to insert a new subclause (2), amending section 20 of the principal Act, to state that members who have been co-opted on to a CDEM Coordinating Executive Group under subsection (1)(e) may include a senior ambulance services officer.” We would like to see “may” turned into a “must”.
I think the St John Ambulance and the ambulance service play a major role as an emergency service provider, and one of the 12 submissions that came through was, in fact, from St John Ambulance itself—and it just beggars belief, really. This is in the departmental report: “St John New Zealand recommends section 4 of the Act be amended to include emergency ambulance services in the definition of emergency services.” The fact that they are not recognised as an emergency service provider is quite laughable. When you call 111, they say: “This is an emergency, would you like fire, ambulance, or police?”. We clearly recognise them as an emergency service provider and we should be mandating them to be part of those CDEM groups that this bill addresses.
Aside from that, the submissions through here were largely supportive. I acknowledge that the Bay of Plenty put in a submission that was very good, and we would like to, certainly, work along some of those points. I think the bill as it stands now has been tidied up in a few areas. We certainly like the fact that the business to do with Ministers’ roles of power, particularly around the Order in Council provisions, does not exist in this bill, although it has been suggested that in part two of this review, this may rear its head. Certainly, New Zealand First would be concerned, but we would like to know to what extent there will be Order in Council provisions in part two of this review.
All in all, it is good to be part of working together collegially with other members of the House and other parties, and, for Andrew Bayly’s sake, it is good to be working on that together. Thank you.
NUK KORAKO (National): Ā, tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā, mauri ora, ā, huri noa i Te Whare e mihi atu ana ki a koutou katoa.
[Greetings to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and may the force of life be with you and you all throughout the House. I acknowledge you collectively.]
It is indeed my pleasure to stand in support of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill, and I would also like to join other members of the House in wishing the instigator of this bill, the Hon Nikki Kaye, a really speedy recovery. Kia kaha, kia māia, Nikki! [Be strong and be confident, Nikki!]
As someone from Christchurch, which has been through a lot of issues—a lot of important changes have taken place there—to me, this bill is about two things: the first is about learning from past events, and the second is finding that balance between central and local government when talking about civil defence.
What it does is that there is in this bill improvement and recovery. There is the covering of the transitional sorts of periods, and there is the historical thing that has been looked at. There is some clarity—legislation mandates, and all of that—but I suppose the first one is that the law changes will improve communities’ recovery from small and moderate scale emergencies. These are pretty much very frequently the types of emergencies that we experience here in New Zealand.
The other one is around the transition, because even when we saw it in Christchurch, going from an emergency to a situation of a recovery and then a rebuild—what is really important here, though, is that there is an emergency, and the focus actually switches from response to recovery. This bill will better enable management of that transitional period.
The other part, historically, also, is that most of the attention has always sort of been given to preparation and actually responding to a particular event. However, as we have seen in the Manawatū and the Whanganui region following the severe storm in June 2015, the clean-up and the recovery phase can really involve a huge amount of work. It is those sorts of historical factors that a lot of this was based on.
When developing this type of implementation, what is important, too, is clarity around the law. The new law will give this, particularly to those who are leading this work, and help ensure that it can be carried out as swiftly and as effectively as possible. It will also provide the appropriate authority for those directing, coordinating, and managing the recovery itself.
The other part is that it gives a legislative mandate, which is really important. In providing that, it is important that there is clarity, particularly with the recovery managers. This bill will require that recovery planning is definitely carried out, and it will also provide powers to support the transition to recovery through the creation of those transition notices. This bill is about getting communities back on their feet more quickly after an emergency. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Eugenie Sage—a 5-minute call.
EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe, tuarua, e ngā mema o tō tātou Whare, tēnā koutou katoa. I am very pleased to take a short call on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. The Green Party is supporting the bill, and I join with others in wishing the Minister of Civil Defence, the Hon Nikki Kaye, a very speedy recovery so that she can be back here to shepherd the bill through its further stages.
I am not on the Government Administration Committee, but from reading the submissions and the officials’ reports it is obvious that the issues that the 12 submitters raised were very carefully considered by the select committee, under the very able chairing of the Hon Ruth Dyson. I am very pleased to see that a number of amendments have been made to the bill in response to a lot of the concerns that were raised in submissions. As the select committee noted, this bill is the first stage of a wider review that the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management is doing into the statutory framework for recovery, and Treasury is leading a review of the Earthquake Commission Act, particularly in relation to compensation and large-scale events. I think there needs to be a lot more transparency around what is happening as part of those reviews. In the Green Party we certainly do not want to see a bill just dropped into the House. There were a number of issues in terms of the way the Earthquake Commission (EQC) operated after the Christchurch earthquakes, and the Government needs to consult fully, given the importance of the levy payments and the funds that are available and the way that EQC operates.
With that said about subsequent stages, we support this bill, because it is based on those four Rs of civil defence and emergency management—risk reduction, readiness, response, and recovery. One of the major changes that the bill makes is to provide for a range of extraordinary powers to be available during a transition period and to introduce this concept of a transition notice. The period is to cover that period after the immediate response to the emergency and moving into that first phase of the recovery. These extraordinary powers, which override normal law, in the bill are not as extensive as the powers that are available during the state of emergency, but they are still significant. They include powers like being able to carry out works, to close roads and public places, to prevent people from entering land or areas, and to secure buildings.
There was a strong call from submitters that there be much more collaboration and consultation between the Minister and local communities and local councils before the Minister made a decision to extend the transition period. In Christchurch we know how much it disempowers communities, it disempowers citizens, and it obstructs recovery when you have central government acting without consulting with the local community, when you have emergency powers or similar powers extending well beyond that immediate emergency into the recovery period, and when you have Government agencies making decisions without calling for submissions, without holding hearings where the public can face those people who are making decisions and put their views. It obstructs recovery if you have things being done to a community rather than being done alongside and with a community.
So we are very pleased to see the Christchurch City Council’s eloquent submission calling for a much more collaborative co-governance approach. The bill did not make it that far, but the amendments that were made that require the Minister to actually consult with the local civil defence and emergency management group and with the mayor of an affected local authority before issuing or making that transition notice are a significant improvement. I would like to follow on from my colleague Jan Logie in terms of climate change. Sea level rise and climate change will increase the severity of flooding events. We need to tackle our emissions to reduce the likelihood of those events. Thank you.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Peeni Henare—a 5-minute call.
PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koe, otirā, ki a tātou katoa. I rise to take a short call on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. I am encouraged to hear the collegiality across the House with regard to this bill. Clearly there are different viewpoints at the beginning of this bill, but through collegiality, hard work, and a focus on what matters we have come to a point now where there is a wide acceptance of the bill. Despite some apprehensions—which I will cover off very shortly—with regard to particular clauses that have been removed from the bill and some that we on this side of the House believe certainly lack a bit of clarity, we have come to a point now where we are supporting this bill. We think it is a step in the right direction.
We note the contributions of the House and, of course, the report that says that is the first part of the process. There is a second part of the process, which is a broader, wider review. However, we do want to express our concern that there does not seem to be any clear time line around that particular review, and we would hate for a civil emergency to take place before we realise that actually, perhaps we should have had a time line in place so that these things could be avoided.
There is always an argument between recovery and response readiness. In August 2014, leading into the election, there were significant floods in the Far North. Major chunks of State Highway 1 were taken out. Infrastructure was affected. But I think one of the things—having been a resident in the Far North at that particular time, and having a lot of family members up there—was around that response readiness. I often wonder when we deliberate on bills such as these how they do actually translate into how whānau—people on the ground—are able to mobilise and respond effectively and in a timely manner to ensure that they do not suffer the ill effects of such emergencies.
When I read through this particular bill I think there are some good steps forward around some clear appointments around the particular roles of people in an emergency, so that there is not that confusion on the ground. But I do want to pick up the point made by several members of the House on this side that actually talks about that imbalance of power and making sure that local responses are not lost in the debate, in the response, and also in the recovery of areas as a result of states of emergency. It is important that those voices on the ground are heard, because, far too often, we see Big Brother come in with all of the right intentions, then we see them sweep out, and nothing has changed at home. Nothing has changed on the ground. Are we, after one event, more responsive and more prepared for the next one? The answer too often, sadly, is no, we are not. And we see that quite often, because what was once a one-in-50-year occurrence is now happening three to four times in a decade, and we just cannot pick when those times are, but it is important that we learn from the lessons of the past and we are able to prepare for any future event.
Section 57A has been removed. This does cause some concern around the recovery plans and strategic recovery plans, meaning that there is not much direction there for those people in the regions who are on the ground and who, for many, are volunteering their time to actually do the work, to make sure that communities are looked after, that they are able to respond to emergencies, and also that they are able to recover. Without those clear, defined parameters that legislation often allows us to put in place, without that framework, I am afraid that we could potentially see a lack of recovery from, and response to, future emergencies. Just in closing, I too want to support the sentiments made across the House for the speedy recovery of our colleague the Hon Nikki Kaye. I want to conclude by saying that we support this bill.
STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): I would like to start by also passing on my best wishes to the Hon Nikki Kaye. It is universal across the House—we all wish her well in her recovery. This Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill—really, from my own experience I know of a good example in Marlborough, where the Boxing Day fires in 2000 highlighted the need for good management and good plans to be in place and the need to be nimble on the ground, which requires people from the very top right through to the people on the ground having good pathways of communication and a good ability to get the right decisions made in a speedy manner and to deploy the resources where they are needed.
In that Boxing Day fire there were a lot of lessons learnt. I remember standing on the side of a hill witnessing an argument, which I thought might come down to a physical disagreement, with the person who was controlling the gang that I was in trying to fight the fire. There was a severe disagreement about how the fire should be handled. I wondered where that was going to go, and in the meantime the fire continued to burn. However, we did get it sorted in the end and it did not really cause too much of a problem, but it did highlight the issue.
Roll forward to the February fire in 2015, when the rural fire chief Richard McNamara, commonly or affectionately known as Mac, had completely transformed that rural firefighting team and the way that that team now worked together seamlessly with all the other authorities. Unfortunately, in that fire a helicopter actually crashed. There were 11 helicopters ferrying water up in monsoon buckets to put the fire out. Due to very strong winds one of the cables on a monsoon bucket hooked around the skid on a helicopter and with the swift water and the wind he was not able to keep up with it and the helicopter crashed into the riverbed.
That aside, the way that that fire was controlled was phenomenal. I know I went to see the fire chief, Richard McNamara, and the police all being involved in briefing the community well ahead of time, compared with the Boxing Day fires 15 years prior to that where it was absolute chaos. This particular time the police, the fire department, and the council were all there briefing people on what they had to do if the fire turned to cause a problem where they were, the ways out, and how it was all going to be handled. It really demonstrates what can happen when you get good management in place. However, that has been born out of the mistakes that happened there.
This bill will ensure that those practices are able to be implemented all around the country. It is with great pleasure that I commend this bill to the House.
ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare o te rā. Tēnā tātou katoa. It is a great pleasure to stand and make a contribution to the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. I live in a flood zone just south of the Whangaehu River that has flooded five times in the last 11 years. All of my neighbours north of me get flooded. I am very lucky that I have not yet been flooded. What I have learned over that period of time is that our communities are very resilient. In 2004 we had a one-in-100-year flood. In 2006 we had a one in 50-year flood. In 2009, I think it was, they stopped putting a time frame on it and we have had two more since then.
I think that the response from the House has been similar to how our communities work together in these emergency situations. I think it is very important that the transition from response to recovery is one that includes the community. Maybe what is within this bill does not quite do exactly what we would have hoped for, but overall we will continue to support this bill, and through the Committee stage, hopefully, try to come to some amendments through Supplementary Order Papers to make it a better bill. We must strive to make it better.
The removal of the new section 57A—of the strategic recovery plan—the Rangitīkei District Council basically said in its submission that it accepted the new section 57A. What it did say was that it would impose further costs on the council, but they were costs that it was willing to accept. Now that it is removed—and I was not actually on the select committee for this bill, though I am not fully informed about why it was removed—it would occur to me that, like the old saying goes, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. I think that the removal of a section that requires planning is something that ought to be returned in there. If there are problems with the wording of what was the then section 57A, then we should work together to try to make it better so that we can plan to make the transition from response to recovery much better.
There are also other new powers that are given to the likes of police. I am reminded of 2004 when my 90-something-year-old neighbour refused to leave her house. She was knee high in water, the river was going through her house, the helicopter was flying above her home—and she would not leave without her dogs, all three of them. So the dogs got rescued first and then she left as well. But under the new powers given to police they will be able to direct the evacuation of any premises—so she would have been breaking the law. Obviously, in 2004 she was not, because they allowed her to have the dogs rescued first, and then she left as well.
I want to follow up on my colleague’s kōrero about what is not in this bill, and the lack of a time frame to address some pretty important issues. As I said, when an area has had five floods over a period of just over a decade, you can imagine the impact and the trauma that is carried by the people who actually live in those areas. After each flood, our community loses at least one of our neighbours, because they move—they go somewhere else, and then we get new neighbours. From my calculation, in a little settlement of about 12 houses, there are probably only two of the original people who lived in our community in 2004. I remember going down to help out with my neighbours, and helping them set up in the local hall. One husband turned to his wife, and she obviously was thinking: “Please, this must be the last time.”, and I remember his words: “Maybe one more time.” And they are still there.
My point is that in areas that have these occurrences a number of times, surely for the local authorities and the Government it is time that we sit down—and I acknowledge the kōrero from the Greens on climate change, because in my personal opinion we are dealing with these issues specifically because of the ongoing effects of climate change. I just think that some of our citizens of New Zealand deserve a better deal over the long-term effect of continually being flooded. I am going to leave it there. That is what is not in the bill, but I support what is in the bill, notwithstanding some concerns over some of the clauses. Nō reira, tēnā tatou.
MAUREEN PUGH (National): I stand in support also of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill in its second reading here tonight. This is the result of a lot of work by the Government Administration Committee and also by our colleague the Hon Nikki Kaye, whom we acknowledge tonight. For me, being a resident in a highly active district that is frequently subjected to severe weather events, like cyclones, earthquakes, and floods, and having the ability for the Ministry of Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) to prepare for and manage the recovery following small- to moderate-scale events makes perfectly good sense to me.
The provisions in this bill can, of course, be applied to a large event also. On the West Coast we have had first-hand experience of the huge amount of work involved in the clean-up and recovery phases following extreme natural events. This new law will give clarity to those leading this work and will ensure that the work can be carried out as swiftly and effectively as possible. This bill will streamline the process from the initial response phase through to a transition phase, and it makes emergency powers available for post-event specific periods of time.
I understand how important it is for communities to get back on their feet as soon as possible following an event. This bill certainly provides a practical way to enable work such as clearing roads and the removal and disposing of dangerous structures and materials to be undertaken. It also gives CDEM officials the ability to lawfully enter premises to save lives, or to rescue and remove injured people, and to plan for those events. Worthy of note is that the provisions of this bill do not rely on a state of emergency to be declared for a transition notice to be issued. Instead, the Minister of Civil Defence is required to give approval for this transition notice to be put in place. This is a sensible development of the CDEM legislation, and I have pleasure in commending it to the House.
Bill read a second time.
Bills
New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill
Second Reading
Debate resumed from 13 October.
Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a call on this piece of legislation, which Labour is supporting. This is a piece of legislation that amends the 1987 piece of legislation that was brought in by the then Labour Government. What it does is make this legislation fit for purpose for the 21st century, and it makes a number of minor amendments that, none the less, do make it more modern and more forward facing.
The piece of legislation that was brought in in 1987 was quite groundbreaking in itself. It developed a system and a set of rules whereby a group of growers of various horticultural products could come together and agree on a strategy; they could come together and agree on how they were going to act and how they were going to operate in particular markets. What they were empowered to do under this 1987 legislation was something that is only usually reserved for Parliament, and that was to, effectively, tax. It was to issue a levy so that there were some resources that allowed grower groups to go in and do market development.
We can look at the evidence: in 1988, around the time this legislation was put into place, New Zealand had approximately $50 million worth of horticultural exports going out around the world. Last year, in 2015, that figure was $300 million, and the horticultural sector, of course, has ambition to get that even higher. To date, there are nine horticultural groups that have placed themselves under the regime that is governed by this piece of legislation, and around 54 exporters.
What this amendment does is bring the legislation up to speed: to realise that, actually, we might need our horticultural groups to develop more nuanced strategies; that it might need to be a little bit more geographically specific; and that the products might need to be differentiated into different markets. It may be, for entry into some of the high-value Asian markets, that emphasising the health benefits of particular cultivars and particular varietals of particular horticultural products will be the best way to achieve premium for those exporters, or it may be that it is more of a commodity strategy in other markets.
This does allow grower groups to move beyond a one-size-fits-all strategy and be much more flexible and much more able to maximise what it is that they can get as a return for their products in that market. It also clarifies the requirements that are imposed on these product groups to enter into or exit from the export framework established by the Act. Having these rules crystal clear is obviously really important when we are giving the authority through a piece of legislation to another group to, effectively, tax. This is quite a unique ability that we are bestowing through this legislation, and that, of course, has to be clearly governed.
One of the reasons for bringing this legislation in in 1987 was that we had a number of single operators who were thinking about getting one shipment across a particular border and were not thinking about developing that market and what the long-term plan for either that product or that market was. One of the ideas in the legislation was to put the rules around that, and what this legislation does is bring up the penalty system that is contained under the authority to make it so that anyone who does flout the rules, anyone who does not act in the best interests of “New Zealand Inc.” and who does not act in the best interests of a particular product group and the particular market development opportunity that exists for a particular product actually gets the penalties that are there.
What we also see is that there is the ability for information sharing, which is established under this Act, and that information sharing between the authority—so that is the Horticultural Export Authority—and the Ministry for Primary Industries and the New Zealand Customs Service makes sense in many ways. No one is disputing that. But what we have to do is have good rules around the formalisation of that information sharing between the authority and the various other agencies so that we can make sure that we do have the right rules that govern that and do not put anything at risk.
What we do need to do is make sure that we are always looking for ways for us to get a premium for our products in export markets. Our horticultural products are seen around the world as premium in many instances. We have many examples that we can point to where we have seen these collective efforts that have gone in and not only developed particular markets but also done that around particular products.
No greater example can exist than that of Zespri. Zespri has not only developed the story around the kiwifruit but also, through the fact of acting collectively as a group, invested very heavily in research and development as well. The fact that this was a grower group that was well poised to respond to the Psa bacterium when it attacked the kiwifruit plant is in no small part a credit to the fact that there was a very large germplasm collection that could be looked back on to see what remedies lay within other cultivars and other types of plants that were there that could be more responsive to that.
What we see is that when we have industries that work in a collective manner, when we have industries that band together and not only develop collective research and development strategies that are around industry good but invest in the public-good science that lies behind that, and when we also have industry groups that are focused on putting together market strategies and market entry strategies that are vitally important for our horticultural products, then we do see the kind of growth that we have seen since the establishment of this authority in 1987: from that $50 million to $300 million.
The legislation does need updating. We do need the ability for our grower groups to have the flexibility to respond differently around different products and in different markets, and I think that is something that we fully support, and it is the reason that Labour is supporting this piece of legislation.
TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland): I think you will agree, Mr Deputy Speaker, having sat on the Primary Production Committee yourself as well, that this piece of legislation has come at a good time. It has come with almost unanimous industry support. For an industry such as the horticultural industry, which is such a huge part of our primary sector, having grown about 17 percent over the last 3 years to an export value of about $4 billion—for an industry that it is looking as a whole to tap into that premium level internationally and to really solidify New Zealand’s brand as being a premium producer and is working together on those market strategies, it is incredibly well received that it is right behind and actually has driven this piece of legislation. I think it falls in line as well with the Government’s overall strategy of doubling the export value of our primary sector by 2025 and of updating the export framework to enable our industries to be global competitors in the global marketplace is incredibly important.
Brett Hudson, the rural-urban mixed electorate list MP from Ōhāriu, and I yesterday spent some time visiting Silver Fern Farms’ Finegand plant. They spent a lot of time and put a lot of emphasis on demonstrating to us that premium brand food safety, the story of New Zealand and us as a producer, is incredibly important to them, and they talked about the differentiation that they have got between their Silver Fern Farms’ reserve brand tiered meat, which is marketed exclusively at high-end restaurants, as compared with the next level of meat that they produce and they send to various supermarkets and then down the chain further across export markets. That just solidifies, I think, what the horticultural industry wants to do as well, which is why we are supporting the bill. Thank you very much.
EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Green Party is pleased to support this bill because it helps ensure that growers get some control and some influence over exporter behaviour in order to protect product reputation. It is legislation that is currently 30 years old, but it has been a very slow process to amend the Act. I do not know whether people will be able to see this chart, but it is by the Horticulture Export Authority—it has got a little snail showing the long snail-slow process to actually amend the Act after Neil Walker did that very comprehensive review, which was released in March 2010. So the little snail has got another three stages to go before it gets to eat the leaf, if this Parliament proceeds a little more quickly than the Government has proceeded to date.
So we are pleased to support the bill, but it is only tinkering, because it makes only very small changes to the regime in the current Act to provide some clarity and some flexibility around the Act’s provisions, and that includes, of course, replacing the current one-size-fits-all approach with a multi-tier system with different requirements.
This bill does not do what the industry and what the Horticulture Export Authority has been calling on the Government to do, and that is to introduce country-of-origin labelling for fresh fruit and vegetables. The authority believes that this would benefit quality production, but the National Government has resolutely opposed doing anything about country-of-origin labelling. So we do not have mandatory labelling of country of origin, and that means that fruit and vegetables in our local shops do not have any identification unless the supermarket actually puts those on voluntarily to show consumers where they are produced and, really, to identify their value. If consumers know where products come from, it enables them to make informed decisions about the products that they purchase, what their families eat, or what they eat, and how it is produced. It is the Green Party that would go much further than this bill and introduce mandatory country-of-origin labelling so that people can be clear about what they are eating and where it comes from and choose to eat locally produced food. We had that hepatitis A scare last December, where four cases of hepatitis A were traced back to imported berries. Consumers could not choose to buy local berries, because we did not have mandatory country-of-origin labelling.
This bill is a good bill as far as it goes, but it does not go very far at all. It is important that we actually move to do the things that the sector wants that will protect the reputation of local producers, that will allow local consumers to have more choice about what they buy, and that would be done by mandatory country-of-origin labelling. Government speakers have talked about the value of the horticultural sector. Certainly, it has increased significantly to produce export earnings of nearly $300 million in the last year, but if we really want to grow the value of the horticultural sector, we need to look at some of the non-tariff export barriers that countries are erecting to constrain New Zealand exports. We saw that with apples in Australia, which was finally resolved.
The Government actually also needs to pay much more attention to protecting the quality of the environment that produces avocados, mandarins, and all of our horticultural exports, because increasingly we are seeing attention in international markets turning to sustainability issues. In its annual report in 2015, the Horticulture Export Authority said sustainability was a big issue in markets in Europe and North America, and those markets were particularly interested in issues around water usage and availability, and, as Asian consumers’ consumption patterns change, the focus there will also be on sustainability. Yet this Government is neglecting environmental quality. It is allowing increased water pollution. That undermines our brand overseas. That undermines “100% Pure New Zealand” and the ability of New Zealand products to trade on that reputation. If we want a healthy economy, we need a healthy environment. We need to be investing in water quality, in reducing water pollution, and in reducing our climate pollution so that our producers can trade on that image overseas and can continue to increase our export value in the horticultural sector.
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): Indeed, it is a pleasure to speak on the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill. It is legislation that was originally brought into Parliament in 1987 by a Labour Government—a very smart piece of legislation, which has stood the test of time. I have to say that this bill must be a bit like a dead rat for the National members to have to swallow, because what they believe in ultimately—and we have seen it—is that the market should determine our future and that the market should drive decisions on capital investment, on research and development, and on where our primary industries should go. That is not the view that Labour has taken, and over the years, we have introduced legislation like this. We introduced legislation that supported the Kiwifruit Marketing Board and formed Fonterra, because we believe that through collaboration and cooperation, we can achieve more together.
The alternative—as the horticultural industry realised back in the 1980s, and still realises today—is that it needs some discipline and some guidelines and some standards to adhere to so that when we go offshore and market our products, we do not end up undermining one another and undercutting one another in the market place because we are selling the same products, basically, into the same market. It is about collaboration and coordination.
This bill makes changes to and updates the Horticulture Export Authority’s jurisdiction. It is a very important mandate that we give this organisation: the power to tax—to levy—and to impose discipline and rules and regulations on exporters from this country is not something that Parliament hands over to an organisation lightly. The organisation is an amazing one because, for the total cost of $227,000, it oversees market discipline, market development, and product development for a $300 million export sector—that is, 54 exporters of nine different products in the horticultural sector, generating $300 million for New Zealand. That is a considerable level of export income, and it costs $227,000 to administer that. It is probably the best value-for-money piece of legislation I think this Parliament has ever passed, because that cost is, after 23 years, I think it is—no, it is more than that, 32 years; since 1987—I cannot do the maths in a hurry, I am sorry.
But the principles remain: that is, where product groups—growers growing the same product—come together and can show a mandate whereby more than 50 percent of the growers agree to come together to levy themselves and come under the Horticulture Export Authority’s mandate, they then sit down and develop a strategy for how they should best develop their products and adhere to standards, and then go and market their product around the world. And it has been outstandingly successful. The only ones where the success has been better, I guess, is kiwifruit, where there is even more discipline, and in dairy, where traditionally there has been a lot.
The challenge, I guess, for the Government is how to apply this wisdom across other areas of the primary sector. I would start with meat and I would then move on to wool, where in two sectors we have had proud industries that go back well over a hundred years, and we have now come to a level where they are still significant exporters, but we do not have the level of confidence either from the producers or in the market place to actually move on. The Government has, effectively, thrown $350 million at the meat industry to try to improve it when, arguably, a piece of legislation like this could sort out the meat industry and actually deliver a far better outcome for farmers, for exporters, and for New Zealand as a whole. I would certainly suggest that to the Minister. I have challenged members of the Primary Production Committee on why the Government does not develop legislation like this, which would allow for and assist with coordination and collaboration in the market for meat, for the three different meat sectors—for beef, for lamb and mutton, and for venison. They are three different red meats that are quite unique, that are based on pasture-fed production—
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Horticulture.
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: —that have huge potential in the market place—
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Horticulture.
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: —and that could, as I say, be very similar to horticulture. I appreciate that, Mr Assistant Speaker.
So Labour supports this legislation, as we did in 1987, to bring it in. We support the update that we are, effectively, delivering here. To touch on it briefly, it is, I guess, to bring it up to the real world, where we have new methods of information transfer where it is important. We have got new standards in the market so that we have to meet higher standards of minimum residue levels for products and make sure that the growers are not going to undermine their whole industry, by having good standards on the orchard and then following through and being able to assure the importers in those foreign markets that we have delivered to them the best-possible fruit that we can.
As I say, the need for more flexible and targeted export market strategies is true now. As there is more information and you have got better transport and logistic systems, you can better target some of those markets and deliver through what were, I guess, fairly basic systems back in the 1980s, when this was first developed. Horticulture has thrived because it laid out a strategic plan for growth back in the early 2000s. I applaud this sector for that visionary thinking. As I have said, other sectors have not shown that wisdom. So, through that planning and through legislation like this, which has enabled small groups of growers to come together and develop their markets, horticulture—from the very biggest to the smallest growers—has had in place a system of planning and discipline that has seen it be, arguably, one of the most successful sectors in the New Zealand economy. The growth has been staggering, and I hope it continues. But horticulture should, as I say, learn the lessons from other sectors where deregulation and undisciplined markets have undermined the value of what were top-quality products in New Zealand that were sold into market but ended up competing with one another on the basis of price.
I will just finish with the point raised by my Green colleagues, and that is that the horticultural sector, which, in its wisdom, firstly, asked for this legislation and, secondly, developed a strategic plan, has now been asking for country-of-origin labelling. This is because it believes that the effort it has put in to produce the finest horticultural products in the world—and the safest products—should be acknowledged by those in the New Zealand market and offshore to provide consumers with the knowledge that these things have been grown in New Zealand, under New Zealand conditions to, sometimes, higher standards than are required here, but standards that are very, very high and ensure safe food. I cannot understand why the Government does not want to move ahead to implement country-of-origin labelling.
We have a deal with Australia, actually—the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code. New Zealand has an exception to that agreement so that we do not have to have country-of-origin labelling. It is a bizarre situation to be in, and all we would have to do is adhere to that trans-Tasman relationship and have country-of-origin labelling. Consumers would know what they are buying, and the fine-quality food produced here in New Zealand could be identified by consumers, so that the option of buying an Italian or a Chinese kiwifruit could be known to the consumer when they go to buy.
So, in concluding, I say that Labour supports this legislation. We have assisted the Primary Production Committee with the processing of this bill. We need to ensure that we maintain discipline in the market place. The model of the Horticulture Export Authority regulations should be imposed across other sectors of the primary sector where we have undisciplined marketing and coordination. We would all be better off if we thought more laterally and collaborated in all our efforts.
BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): It is a pleasure to take a very short call on this New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill. As we have talked about it tonight, it is about updating the export framework, which is going to enable these New Zealand industries to become more effective global leaders in the market, and we do talk about collaboration and coordination. It is really interesting because when we talk about a number of industries, whether it is milk, which is in a fairly coordinated process, or other industries without a coordinated process, we talk about the same type of product.
I know that although this is horticulture, there is quite a diverse group of organisations working together. From the avocados, which we all know about, and the kiwifruit, we move on to things like chestnuts and truffles. Often we hear in this part of the world that we are exporting milk and we are exporting milk powder and logs, but, actually, we have got some quite premium products going out. The other ones, things like tamarillos—it is my favourite breakfast at this time of the year. So, for me, it is really important to pass this legislation, because it is updating the framework.
It is enabling these New Zealand industries to be global leaders and to actually have a structure that allows them to work together so that they can tell the story of New Zealand, tell where it comes from, and they can really target what is going on in the markets and put this to the world in a positive way, in a place where this is the beginning of telling the New Zealand food basket story. It is not just about their product; it is about a whole range of things that we can put in a food basket. I think it is wonderful that this piece of legislation is going forward, and it is a real pleasure to commend it to the House. Thank you.
Bill read a second time.
Bills
Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Display of Low-alcohol Beverages and Other Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill
Second Reading
Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I move, That the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Display of Low-alcohol Beverages and Other Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. Can I thank the members of the Justice and Electoral Committee for their consideration of the bill. The committee has recommended that it proceed with amendments.
The Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 was introduced to reform alcohol laws in New Zealand. The Act introduced a range of new measures to ensure the safe and responsible supply, sale, and consumption of alcohol and to minimise harm caused by its excessive or inappropriate use. That Act has been in force now for 3 years, and although communities are still in the process of bedding in the new measures, early indications are there that it is making a positive impact. Certain minor and technical issues have, however, emerged that require correction. This bill makes changes to ensure that the Act is operating as it was intended. The changes correct drafting issues that are causing confusion and uncertainty for retailers, licensing committees, and the public. They are technical, narrow in scope, and do not change the policy intent of the Act.
The core change in the bill is to the single area of supermarkets provisions, which prescribe the only area in a supermarket or grocery store where alcohol can be displayed for sale. The purpose of the single area is to limit shopper exposure to alcohol products. Under the wording in the current law, supermarkets and grocery stores that sell low-alcohol and non-alcohol beer and wine currently cannot place them for sale in the same area of their shops as regular-strength alcohol. This was an unintended consequence of a well-intentioned provision in the Act. When we are trying to promote responsible drinking, it does not make sense to separate low-strength and non-alcohol products from other alcoholic products. Instead, the option of promoting low- and no-alcohol alternatives should be supported. To address this, the bill amends the Act to allow for the display or promotion of, or the advertisement for, low-alcohol or non-alcohol beer, wine, or mead in that single area.
The second change in the bill is to clarify that a company can hold an alcohol licence under the Act. The Act does not explicitly include a company in the category of who can hold an alcohol licence. Although it was not the intention of the Act to include companies, this omission has been causing ambiguity around how a company is defined in the Act. The bill clarifies that a company can hold an alcohol licence by adding “company” to the list of who can hold a licence. I understand that submitters to the select committee were in support of this amendment.
Can I now briefly comment on the change that the Justice and Electoral Committee recommended to the bill. The committee has recommended a change to the bill to replace the definition of “working day” in the Act so that a working day does not include a Monday after a weekend containing either Waitangi Day or Anzac Day. This reflects the change to public holidays made by the House in the Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day) Amendment Act 2013. The change in the bill is minor and technical. The “working day” definition is relevant to licence application and other procedural aspects of the Act. I am very happy to support the committee’s change to the bill, which I think is a sensible amendment, and can I once more thank the committee for its work throughout consideration of the bill. I commend the bill to the House.
LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure, as one of two Labour representatives on the Justice and Electoral Committee, with my colleague Jacinda Ardern, to support this piece of legislation and to note what fun we had in the select committee. I think that the proposal that we have come up with is one that the House should fully endorse.
It was really interesting in terms of the passage of the legislation through the select committee because, actually, we got stuck with definitions, and this bill is very much one about definitions. In the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012, to qualify as an alcohol product, a product has to have over 1.15 percent ethanol by volume. That is the technical definition of what an alcohol product is. Where this bill actually collided, I think, with consumer demand and a response by the alcohol industry to a demand for lower-alcohol products was actually with—and this is from a Ministry of Justice piece of advice—the Food Standards Code. The Food Standards Code actually allows products that are less than 1.15 percent ethanol by volume to be labelled as beer, mead, or wine, based on the ingredients and, also, based on the process of creating these products. So that is where, prior to this legislation going through the House, there has been confusion.
In 2012, when the principal legislation went through the House, there were not actually any alcohol products that were less than 1.15 percent ethanol by volume, but in 2014 there was a creation of these zero-alcohol beers, or light beers, and that was very much in response to consumer demand. In New Zealand that market ended up providing to 5 percent of the people who consumed low- or no-alcohol products, but in Australia, it actually accounted for 25 percent of total beer sales. So this is a pragmatic piece of legislation, and what I was interested in noting was that, really, all the submitters were very clear that whether a product is considered alcohol by content or alcohol by marketing, all of those products should be in a single area of a supermarket.
I really want to commend the industry—so, the supermarket industry, the alcohol manufacturing industry, and, actually, not only community organisations but Alcohol Healthwatch, the Health Promotion Agency, the National Public Health Alcohol Working Group, the New Zealand Drug Foundation, the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Waikato District Health Board, and Northland District Health Board. Everybody who came to the select committee was really clear that whether the product was alcohol by definition of the Act or alcohol by definition of the Food Standards Code, they should be all placed in one area of the supermarket.
It was a lot of fun engaging with the officials and on the select committee, but overall I really just want to commend how simple the process has been and was. I have not really got much more to add because I think it is really important that we pass this legislation, and maybe there is an opportunity to pass it tonight, so, without further ado, I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.
JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I wish to make a contribution to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Display of Low-alcohol Beverages and Other Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill in this, the second reading, and just going through my notes I came across, again, some of the submissions from submitters on behalf of the breweries. Some of the comments they made were quite useful. The one that really stuck out for me was that a number of brewers said supermarkets were nervous to sell low-alcohol beer under the current legislation, and said that it was irritating for supermarkets and confusing for customers. OK, we might not care that it is irritating for supermarkets, but we might care that it is confusing for customers, because these days a number of customers are now looking for lower-alcohol options, and the prohibition of products with less than 1.15 percent alcohol by volume not being able to be displayed in the same area as the full-strength alcohol is indeed a disincentive for people who are looking for those lower-alcohol products.
All you have to do is go along to the supermarkets these days and see that that demand is indeed increasing for those low-alcohol products—beer and wine—which was exactly the intention of the 2013 amendments in the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act. A brewery—DB in this case—said that the brewer wanted its low- and non-alcoholic beers stocked in the beer aisle, saying that it is common sense that that is where you go to look for beer, whether it is alcoholic or non-alcoholic, and I think that is a pretty strong argument as well.
The Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act has been in force for 3 years now and, although some communities are struggling in bedding in some of the aspects of the legislation, I think these minor and technical measures that are in this bill are pretty clear and well supported by this House. The legislation required correction, which is what this bill does. Thank you.
PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I rise to take a call on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Display of Low-alcohol Beverages and Other Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill in its second reading this evening. I do want to pick up on some of the points made by Minister Adams that this particular amendment bill is about tidying up some of the unintended consequences of the original legislation. Some of the amendments seem rather minor, but for the customer out there on the street—those who enter into supermarkets to purchase what is now a very wide range of alcohol products—this will eliminate the confusion whereby if you are after low-alcohol drinks or mead, you can find it all in the one place.
That is good for the consumer. It removes all of the ambiguity but it also provides somewhat of a certain process for the supermarkets, to allow them to display in one particular area—and rather discreetly, too, and I do want to pick up the point made by my colleague Louisa Wall with regard to that. So that alcohol advertisements are not spread throughout any particular supermarket and are confined to one area, it only makes sense that mead and low-alcohol products will be also included in the definition of that single area. I think that is a very good, simple amendment. It makes sense to me.
However, I do recall that in the first reading many of us did not even know what mead was. It is a bit before my time. But it was interesting as we looked through the types of alcohol that are available on the market.
There are some recent studies that are being done with regard to whether or not the intended effects of the original legislation have actually been met. Once upon a time, you could buy only a certain kind of beer or a certain kind of wine. Now we have a huge variety of products on the market for those who want to have just a small drink, or want to be able to have a good time while still being able to enjoy an alcoholic beverage without pushing too far or going over the limit. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, we have got full strength alcohol drinks that are available on the market.
We have got this wide range of products now, and there is some research that was completed earlier on this year with regard to whether or not the intentions of the original legislation were actually met. I have not had the opportunity to go through that particular piece of research, but I am interested in seeing whether or not that is actually the case, because some would argue, of course, that in the communities of South Auckland alcohol is still a big driver of a lot of domestic violence, a lot of the incidents that occur within many communities—not just South Auckland, but in many communities. I think that the recent local body elections will serve as an opportunity for communities such as South Auckland to put the squeeze on local body institutions to make sure that alcohol harm, advertisements, and sales are not creeping into areas where our families live and our children go to school. Anyway, that is another point—and congratulations, Phil Goff.
I will get back to the bill. I think it is also another great opportunity—in the definition of “working day”, including Waitangi Day and, of course, Anzac Day makes perfect sense to me. If either of those days falls on a weekend, then, of course, it carries over to the Monday, and that makes sense to me. For many, they see those days off as a holiday—as an opportunity, perhaps, to sink a few ales with the whānau and have a barbecue, or whatever it might be—but for many others they are actually days of cause and purpose. Waitangi Day, a great day out in the Far North with my Ngāpuhi relations—to which everybody is welcome, despite what the media may say. Waitangi Day is a fantastic day, of course. With the importance of the centenary commemorations around Anzac Day, I think that these are timely amendments to the bill to allow us to commemorate and, of course, celebrate those days.
The bill is pretty straightforward. It went through to the Justice and Electoral Committee, which I was fortunate enough to be on at the very beginning. Sadly, I was not able to see it through, but from all of the paperwork and from what I can hear in the House this evening, people worked together. It was straightforward. The Minister’s comments about some great amendments recommended by the select committee show that the process is working.
Finally, can I finish by saying that the 2010 Law Commission report still has some other things that I think this House should consider when it looks at the original legislation around the sale and supply of alcohol. But I want to close by saying that we on this side of the House support this bill.
JONO NAYLOR (National): It is a pleasure to rise in support of this bill. There are occasions, of course, when the public looks at Parliament and looks despairingly at some of the conflict that goes on around here and wonders whether we can ever get anything sensible done. This is one of those moments when we can get something sensible done. It is great to hear the cooperation—certainly the cooperation that we had within the Justice and Electoral Committee when going through this bill, I thought, was outstanding. There were great submissions and a great process.
Essentially, I think the benefit of this is that it is something that is helping to support what I see as a really positive trend that is happening in New Zealand. We have had a long time when we have talked about “It’s not the drinking, it’s how we’re drinking.”, and we are seeing a growing trend now of New Zealanders drinking lower-alcohol products or no-alcohol products. They are saying: “Look, we’d love to sit down and have a beer, but it doesn’t have to have alcohol in it.” I think it is a growing trend, and one that needs to be encouraged.
One of the difficulties we had, of course, with the old legislation was that somebody might roll into the supermarket looking for a low- or no-alcohol beer, look in the beer section in the supermarket and not be able to find it, and potentially walk out with a full-strength beer under their arm because that was the only beer they could find. Under this legislation, logic has prevailed, common sense has prevailed, and what we are going to see is the ability to have all those products that are marketed as beer, as wine, and as mead all in the same aisle. What we do not want to see is those zero-percent products that are marketed as beer sitting alongside soft drinks.
I think it has been a really productive process and, as I say, we have had sensible submissions. There has been a really great collegial process at the select committee. I look forward to this bill becoming law, so we can start seeing some sensibleness around this issue. I commend it to the House.
STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I am speaking to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Display of Low-alcohol Beverages and Other Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill. This is an interesting bill in that we have the industry that promotes alcohol, and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Seventh-Day Adventists, and others that certainly are opposed to the consumption of alcohol appearing to be in concert with each other. They all wanted something sensible to come out of this, and for these products to be in a single area of supermarkets. I am aware of businesses in Marlborough that have had exceptionally low-alcohol products, but because they are related to alcohol they were actually constrained from being in areas where they were best marketed. So this appears to be a good outcome.
I note that a previous speaker was talking about the build in low-alcohol beers, but I noticed, at an event I was at on Sunday, a lower-alcohol wine. It was not super-low. It was still about 9.8 percent or something—about 25 percent less—and it was being marketed out of my region of Marlborough as well. I note that my local in Grovetown in Marlborough—for people who maybe drink on a pretty regular basis and are looking at the safety of driving away from a little country pub—is going to a low-alcohol local beer. I think it is called Empathy, which is a pretty interesting name for a beer. It signified maybe some of the emotive aspects of sympathy almost for drinking a low-alcohol beer. But that has been taken up very, very willingly and very broadly across the board. People recognised they needed to be more conscious and careful about their alcohol consumption. To have these beers placed in the same area as wine—and mead, of course—in that single area in a supermarket makes significant sense.
The Green Party is very happy to be supporting this bill, and very happy, even with the low-alcohol drinks, to see them in the same area. We remain concerned about the overt advertising of alcoholic drinks throughout the community, which really ramps it up to young people that somehow a lot of these more seriously alcoholic drinks are a good thing. It is somewhat of a shame that we have not nipped that one in the bud at the same time as dealing with the placement of low-alcohol drinks in the supermarket. The Green Party supports this bill and it is great to see the cross-party support for it. Thank you.
DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First is also very happy to continue to support this bill. We support the intent of the amendments to allow for low-alcohol and non-alcoholic beer, wine, and mead to be displayed in the single area of supermarkets. For those who are not aware of what the term means, it is the area in a supermarket where alcohol can be sold, and the intention of that is, of course, to limit shoppers’ exposure to alcohol. The current situation is just plain silly. It is just plain silly for low-alcohol and non-alcoholic beer, wine, and mead products to not be permitted to be displayed in that single area simply because they do not fall within the definition of “alcohol”. Clause 5, which is really the crux of the bill, is very sensible in that it will allow low-alcohol or non-alcoholic beer, wine, and mead to be displayed, promoted, and advertised within that single area.
I would have to disagree a little with my colleague Steffan Browning, who spoke previously about advertising. There is a need for some advertising in that single area so that people simply know what the products are. I do not see any difficulty with that. The threshold, of course, as to what is alcohol for these purposes and what is not is that to be low-alcohol, the product needs to have less than 1.15 percent ethanol by weight. But that is not the real issue. The real issue is simply this: it is important that there be some discretion, some flexibility, for supermarkets as to where they can place those non-alcohol or low-alcohol products. That is, effectively, what the Justice and Electoral Committee has devoted its time and effort to, and it has done a good job of tidying up the bill to make sure that that flexibility is there.
It does make sense for these products to be placed in a single area because they are, in fact, marketed very much like alcoholic drinks and they are an increasingly popular alternative to the full-strength beers, wines, and mead that you see advertised and placed on the shelves for sale in supermarkets. We do need, as a community, to encourage people to drink those low-alcohol products by making their presence more obvious and by making it easier for people to find them on the supermarket shelves. That provides real choice for those people. As a relative teetotaller, in that I probably do, on a gallon for gallon basis, drink more tea than whisky, I do approve of that choice. I think many people would say the same. Let people have a choice when they go into the supermarket as to what they would prefer to drink. This is just sensible stuff, which I know we all support.
On the serious side, we in New Zealand First do think that a lot more needs to be done to reduce alcohol consumption in New Zealand. I know that is outside the scope of this bill, so suffice it to say that we think this Government will go down as one that really has not done enough to push back against the tide of increased alcohol consumption, especially by young people in New Zealand. We were critical of the main legislation, passed 3 years ago, in that we think it did not go far enough to achieve those ends. However, this is sensible stuff, as far as it goes, and it does not go very far. We do support it, simply because it does provide choice and it will mean people will have an easy opportunity to choose non-alcohol or low-alcohol products if, like me, they tend to be relative teetotallers. If that is the case—and we know it is—New Zealand First will continue to be very happy to support this bill.
CHRIS BISHOP (National): This is a sensible bill, but I do want to take issue with a couple of comments from Mr O’Rourke. Actually, the amount of alcohol being consumed in New Zealand is at record lows. This is quite different from what Mr O’Rourke just said then, which is that alcohol consumption is on the rise. The truth is the exact opposite. In fact, interestingly, I point out to the House that youth drinking is at record lows. The number of young people who say in the various surveys, from the best evidence we have through the Ministry of Health surveys, that they binge drink on a regular basis, that they consume more alcohol than necessary—[Interruption]—that they drink-drive, as my good colleague Amy Adams points out, that they drink and then drive. Those numbers are at record lows. Actually, it ill behoves members to continue to perpetuate the myth, which is too often said in this House, that we have some radical drinking problem in New Zealand society that is not getting better. Actually, the truth is the opposite, so I do just want to take issue with those remarks from Mr O’Rourke.
This is a sensible bill, as I think all the speakers so far in the debate have noted. There are a couple of changes, but the most substantive change—if you could call it a substantive change—is to allow low-alcohol and no-alcohol beers to be put into the single area of the supermarket where beer and wine and other alcoholic drinks are put.
We had a bit of a debate at the Justice and Electoral Committee about whether or not this should be compulsory or whether or not it should be discretionary. What I mean by that is this: should we give supermarkets the discretion to place these sorts of products in the single area, which they are not allowed to do at the moment; should we give them the ability to place them in the area where they are at the moment, which is typically with the fruit juice in other areas; or should we make it compulsory and say: “No, no. If you’re going to have these products, you must market them in the single area.”?
We had a generally pretty good debate about that at select committee and I think there are arguments either way. What we eventually came down to was on the basis of discretion, and there are actually a few good reasons for that. There are, interestingly, products that have a low-alcohol content—things like Hardieboys Ginger Beer, a great product from the mighty Hutt Valley, brewed out in Wainuiōmata—and there are fermented soft drinks. These are things like kombucha, which is really increasing in popularity, which do have some degree of alcohol in them. You would not market them in the single area; you would want them because they are substitutes for fruit juice and other non-alcoholic products. But there are, of course, non-alcoholic beers, which you would want in the single area because they are substitutes for alcoholic beer. So we decided as a committee to stick with the discretionary formula, and I think that met with the approval of most of the submitters—the very small number of submitters, the very few submitters—we had before the select committee.
This is a sensible bill. I think it is going to make its way through the House. I do not wish to take up any more of the House’s time. I commend this bill to the House.
CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I, unfortunately, have not been on the Justice and Electoral Committee for this particular bill, but I was on the select committee back in the 2008-11 term, when we were considering the Alcohol Reform Bill at that stage, so it is interesting to see where we have got to now.
Chris Bishop, the member who just spoke before me, said that the drinking situation—the drinking culture—in New Zealand has improved, and that youth drinking has reduced and is much better. Well, according to a study that I was just reading about as I was preparing for this speech, the prevalence of hazardous drinking in New Zealand is actually on the increase. In 2005-06 it was at 18 percent, then we did see a drop-off in 2010-11, when it dropped to 14.9 percent, and in 2014-15 we were back up to 17.7 percent. We do need to be aware that the prevalence of hazardous drinking in New Zealand is on the rise again. It is important that we do take that into consideration.
This bill is a bill that Labour does support. It corrects certain minor and technical issues that have emerged since the passage of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act in 2012. The bill provides for the display or promotion of the advertisement for low-alcohol or non-alcoholic beer, wine, or mead within an alcohol area. The bill also provides that any company within the meaning of the Companies Act 1993 can hold an on-licence, off-licence, or special licence, provided that it is not prevented by its own constitution from selling alcohol or holding a licence under the Act.
With the 2013 alcohol reforms, alcohol displays and promotions can be in only a single area in supermarkets and grocery stores. This is aimed at helping to limit how many shoppers are exposed to them. We are in a very different situation in west Auckland—sitting next to my colleague David Cunliffe—because, actually, we do not have alcohol sold in our bottle stores. It is all under the control of the Waitakere trusts. Some people might question whether that—
Hon David Cunliffe: With many different venues.
CARMEL SEPULONI: With many different venues. Some people may question whether or not that is appropriate, but one thing that we can say about west Auckland is that we do not have alcohol sold in our supermarkets and we do not have bottle stores on every corner of our low-income areas like some other parts of Auckland. So in some ways, I have to say, it does provide some safeguards for our community, at least with regard to the promotion of alcohol in our community and ensuring that it is not in your face wherever you go. The current definition of “alcohol” means low-alcohol and non-alcohol beer and wine cannot be displayed in a single alcohol area, which can hinder the promotion of responsible drinking. It has also caused some irritation for supermarkets and confusion among customers.
I do not have a lot to say about this bill because of the fact that I have not seen all of the detail, because I have not been on the select committee. I have read through the notes that my colleagues have prepared, and it is very clear to me why we are supporting this bill. It just makes sense, except for the fact that there are a few failures, and I will point those out.
The major concern that my colleagues did point out during the select committee process was the failure of the bill to deal with the minimum pricing issue, and this was brought up the last time that this was considered during that 2008-11 period, when I was on the select committee, just with regard to considering that idea of minimum pricing. So in its final report the Law Commission stated: “We regard pricing policies as the essential plank of any reform package aimed at reducing alcohol-related harm.” It is clear that inexpensive, readily available alcohol is one of the key drivers of alcohol harm, yet the Government has failed to address this issue, so nothing has been done with regards to pricing—and that was an issue that was raised by colleagues.
The availability of alcohol is another concern, and we see this time and time again with colleagues in places like South Auckland—not just parliamentary colleagues but also local government representatives—who are constantly fighting the establishment of increasing numbers of alcohol outlets in their communities. They understand that the availability of alcohol has an impact on that community, and all of the research points out that it does increase the levels of harm.
The other issue that my colleagues pointed out was in respect of advertising and sponsorship. Those would be the major ones.
So we do support this bill. There are some measures that the Government should still be taking into consideration to protect our community further from the harm inflicted by alcohol. Thank you.
MAUREEN PUGH (National): It is a pleasure to stand in support of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Display of Low-alcohol Beverages and Other Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill in its second reading today. This is quite a simple piece of legislation. This bill addresses some of the unforeseen issues that have arisen since the changes to the alcohol laws came into effect. The main change deals with how non-alcoholic and low-alcoholic beer, wine, and mead are displayed in supermarkets and grocery stores. Currently, no- or low-alcohol beer, wine, and mead cannot be displayed in the designated alcohol area of a supermarket or grocery store, and this means that they are now displayed with the soft drinks and juices, which, of course, makes them very accessible to children.
I would just like to point out for the benefit of a previous speaker, Peeni Henare, who had not heard of mead until dealing with this bill—he thought it was before his time, and it certainly was—that mead was actually first made about 8,000 years ago.
This bill was widely supported by the submitters to the Justice and Electoral Committee. The message was clear—to keep all products marketed as low-alcohol or beer displayed together. This bill addresses that, and I have pleasure in commending it to the House.
Bill read a second time.
Bills
Building (Pools) Amendment Bill
Third Reading
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Housing): I move, That the Building (Pools) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill is about improving the safety of swimming pools and saving the lives of young children. It is also a bill about making our law in this area more practical and enforceable. It is worthwhile reflecting on the history of when Parliament passed the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act in 1987, around which there was some controversy. There were 103 drownings in the decade prior, and if we compare that with the most recent decade, the number of children drowning in swimming pools has dropped to 21—or a reduction of about 80 percent. The provisions that we have in this bill will further improve child safety and save approximately six young children’s lives over the next decade.
This bill will do that by addressing the greatest deficiency in the current regulations and laws in respect of the safety of swimming pools. The main deficiency in the current law is actually compliance—that is, there is no requirement in the existing law to regularly inspect swimming pools after they have been constructed to ensure continued compliance. For some councils that do regularly inspect, they find that 50 percent of pools are non-compliant, and that is why the significant safety gain in this bill is a nationally consistent approach that will require all of our 60,000 swimming pools to be inspected once every 3 years to ensure that children are safely excluded from those.
There are two further changes around enforcement that make good sense. The first is that currently when there is a non-compliant swimming pool, councils have only the choice of going through a full court prosecution, with all the cost for the ratepayer that goes with that, and they do not have the power to give a notice to fix. So it is a good, sensible, practical change that this law enables the councils to give a notice to fix and enables them to be able to impose infringement notices as well as still have that option of doing a full court prosecution. It is my view that those measures will improve compliance, and that is where there are big gains for improving the safety of young children.
But this bill is also about getting rid of some of the areas of regulation that simply are unpractical and not workable. Across New Zealand we have 100,000 spa pools or hot tubs, and the current law actually requires every one of those to be fenced—that would come at the expense of about $300 million. Understandably, there is very poor compliance, and what this bill does is require those hot tubs, spa pools, and those small swimming pools to have a cover that is lockable and excludes children and that ensures that children are not able to access them. In my view, that is, effectively, what most councils are turning a blind eye to, and this law will formalise that approach. I know there are members who have opposed the practical changes in the bill around those spa pools. I would simply point out that, actually, more children have been drowned in baths than in spa pools, and no one in this Parliament is seriously suggesting that we should have to put a fence around a bath.
The second change in this bill to make the legislation more workable is to incorporate our regulation of fencing around swimming pools into the general Building Act. There are people who have argued from a symbolic basis that somehow it is better law and is more likely to be complied with if we regulate the fencing of swimming pools in its own Act. I just do not buy that sort of mushy symbolic law. I want law that will work. Incorporating the requirements for the fencing of swimming pools into the Building Act will enable us to use the inspection powers, the enforcement powers, the waiver powers, and the modification powers that all exist in the Building Act. I ask this House why you would have different rules around fencing pools as compared with the laws that require the fencing of high balconies, which can cause fatalities, or as compared with the other safety requirements that we have of buildings and ensuring that they are safe.
There are also important pragmatic changes in this bill around dealing with garden ponds and dealing with drainage ponds. Current strict interpretation of the law is that your council garden pond where children go to watch the ducks and to feed them with pieces of bread is unlawful and should be fenced. It is my view that we need pragmatic law that is workable, and that is why this bill makes plain that it applies to swimming pools and not those other bodies of water that may pose some minimal risk. This Parliament should be focused on minimising the loss of life, but equally there needs to be practical law that is workable for New Zealand citizens.
There have been those who have argued that the law should be absolutely rigid and that fences should be required on all four sides of every pool. We on this side of the House are more practical and understand the realities for families. For instance, if there is a pool alongside which there is a 20-metre cliff and that no child could reasonably get access to, should we require that landowner to put a fence along there? Or if there is an infinity pool where there is no practical way for a child to access the pool—again, we think the pragmatism that is in this bill makes sure children are protected but also respects the fact that there is a wide range of circumstances and there is more than just a fence that can exclude children safely from pools.
The other significant change I want to note is that this bill provides for independently qualified persons, not just councils, to certify that pool fencing is safe. The reason that provision is in there is that, actually, there is a significant number of pool owners who, rightly, contract with professional organisations to monitor the chemicals and the safety of their pools—and why would we not allow them to certify the fencing? We do it for lifts, we do it for all sorts of other building components—it makes good sense for Parliament to recognise that there are people other than council bureaucrats who are capable of ensuring that our pools are safe.
I want to acknowledge the work of Scott Simpson and the Local Government and Environment Committee, which has done an excellent job in ensuring this bill meets its purpose of making our children safer but also makes owning a pool practical, and makes this a piece of law that is respected and not simply ridiculed as being ridiculous red tape. The committee has done a very effective job of refining this bill. I commend the bill to the House. I say again it is a bill that will reduce the number of child drownings by six per decade, but it is a practical law that will work for New Zealanders and I urge the House to support it.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): This bill came to the Local Government and Environment Committee after a first reading where the Government said that all it was doing was codifying into the Building Act the existing law, with some very limited exceptions. It turned out at the select committee that it actually was not of that effect, and it took quite a bit of work in the select committee for the select committee to get very close to the original law and get the bill back in order.
There are a couple of points that I do agree with Minister Nick Smith on and there are a couple that I do not. I do agree with his comment about it being pointless having a fence at the top of the 20-metre cliff. You do not need a fence around a pool if it is at the top of the cliff. It makes absolutely no difference to the safety of the child, so why would you regulate for it? I agree with that, and we voted against amendments to the contrary because we thought that that was a sensible change. We also agree that spa pools and hot tubs ought not to be covered by the same rules. So long as they have got a reasonably high wall—I think from memory it is 400 millimetres, is it, or—
Hon Dr Nick Smith: 800.
Hon DAVID PARKER: —800 millimetres; thank you, Minister—plus a lockable lid, then it should not be within the pool regimes. I am sure the National Government members, like me, have been getting emails from interested members of the public who have been writing to us throughout this, suggesting that it is stupid to call them small pools rather than hot tubs or spa pools. For those people who are writing incessantly about that, they might actually care to read the bill because it says “small pools, such as a hot tub or a spa pool”. Maybe it would have been better to say “spa pools and hot tubs and other small pools”, but it does not seem to me to be a matter of great moment.
The Labour Party also thinks that some good changes were made at the select committee where it does not refer just to the prevention of death but it actually refers to the prevention of injury, because, of course, if a child is in a pool and suffers a loss of oxygen, they can be brain-damaged but live, and suffer serious injury to the detriment of all of their life and to the detriment of their family. So it is good that the objectives of the bill now, or the purposes of the bill, are to minimise death or injury.
The sole matter that the National Government had to agree to in order to get us across the line was this other change in the code to permit alarmed doors rather than automatically locking doors. We wanted locked gates or doors around pools because we did not think that alarms were an adequate protection for children. We had been lobbied by child advocacy groups saying that there is substantial evidence that the rules that we do have suffer quite high levels of non-compliance, as the Minister has acknowledged. I think it was Auckland City that found that even on a 3-yearly cycle of inspections, at the end of that 3-year period, approximately 50 percent of the pools were non-compliant in some way. If you have alarmed doors, then it is likely that some of those alarmed doors are not going to be properly functioning at the end of that 3-year period. It is creating an additional area of risk to children that is not permitted under the existing code and, therefore, in that way this bill goes forward and is more permissive, more lax, than the existing code.
Jacinda Ardern has spoken in earlier readings of this bill and made the point that it is pretty easy to ignore an alarm. At one level it is one of those things you hear and after a while you might stop hearing it. The advice that we had from the groups that are worried about the drowning of children was that this was an unnecessary change to the law that would increase the risk of children drowning.
So having helped the Government fix this bill at select committee, we had one very reasonable request, which was that that change to the underlying code be fixed. The Government members have, I think, stubbornly and wrongly refused to agree to that amendment, and they voted it down at select committee and, accordingly, they have lost us in the final vote. I think that is a bit of a shame because it was a pretty sensible suggestion that we were making. The other thing that the bill did as it went to select committee was to change the inspection period from 3 years to 5 years. The advice that the select committee received was that there are already so many pools that are non-compliant at the end of 3 years, it would be worse if it were pushed out to 5 years.
I do not have many other contributions to make. I do agree with the Minister that it makes no difference—so long as the rules are codified it does not matter whether that code sits in separate legislation or sits under the Building Act. I think that is a correct point that the Minister makes, so I do not mind it sitting in the Building Act.
I think that the select committee did a good job. Other than the point that I have raised about the relaxing of the code in respect of alarmed doors rather than lockable gates or doors, I think this bill is otherwise unobjectionable. But because of that change that the Government members stubbornly refuse to make, they are not getting our vote on the third reading of the bill.
SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Notwithstanding the concluding comments of the Hon David Parker in his speech, I would like to acknowledge, as chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee, the assistance he gave and work that he, as Labour lead, did on the select committee. I think, actually, much of his contribution at select committee was extremely useful, and as a result we have produced at third reading a bill that is in better shape than it was when it was first introduced. We have made a couple of refinements, and there are a number of points that I think have been well received, firstly, by the select committee but across the House.
This bill, as amended, and back in the House for the third reading, is not without its detractors. Actually, it is a piece of legislation that needs to be updated, to be modernised, and to be brought into a regime that is more practical and more effective than the original legislation that was introduced all those years ago.
In summary, the real issue that we had to address as a committee, and that this House, really, has to address, is that since the introduction of the principal legislation, child drownings in residential swimming pools have decreased from 100 in the 10 years before the legislation was introduced, to 21 in the 10 years to 2014. That is all very good news, and encouraging news, particularly for the parents and young children who swim in pools, but there are absolutely some aspects of that original legislation that created inconsistencies and that were cumbersome in terms of administration and in terms of application. What this bill seeks to do is to tidy up some of those aspects, and to bring about, I think, a more useful, but still important, child safety regime to ensure that drownings are kept to an absolute minimum.
The original legislation created a number of challenges for both owners and operators of swimming pools, small hot tubs, and spas—that sort of pool. It also created challenges for those who had to inspect and maintain the legislative regime that the Act set up. What we have acknowledged is that in the spa pool sector particularly, the industry norm in relation to safety covers is that they exist. Spa pools actually create and impose a relatively small risk of drowning, particularly to young children, yet the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act required them all to be fenced. What we have done in this bill is make, I think, some sensible changes, and that has been addressed by other speakers including the Minister for Building and Housing, who I thought gave a very thorough and good analysis of the bill’s progress through the House, what its genesis was, why it needed to be introduced, what it hopes to achieve, and what it will seek to do.
Perhaps one of the most important changes that we made at select committee when we were considering this bill was around the monitoring and inspection of pools by local authorities. We were originally contemplating a 5-year inspection regime. We had a number of submitters—very good submitters—who made a point that a 3-yearly inspection was probably more appropriate. On the basis of those submissions, and the sound, logical arguments that were put forward to us, we have decided to change that to require a 3-yearly inspection across the country, because it became obvious to us that there were some local body jurisdictions that were inspecting every 3 years, some were inspecting every 5 years, and, indeed, some were not inspecting at all. That simply was not a tolerable position to be in. So there were a number of changes made in that regard.
Another area that has been changed is that for those inspections where councils do not wish to undertake that work themselves, there will be an opportunity for them—should they wish—to contract out that work to suitably qualified and approved inspectors, organisations, and individuals who have had approval from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to do that work. I think that will create some flexibility for, maybe, small local territorial authorities that are not wishing to partake of that kind of inspection work. The larger territorial authorities probably have some very good systems and structures in place to achieve that, but we wanted to ensure that the element of choice was available, not only to the inspecting authorities, but, ultimately, also to the pool and spa owners.
This is a good piece of legislation. It has been well thought through by the select committee. I commend it to the House. I think it is a very good piece of legislation, and I think it is a piece of legislation that will stand the test of time. I thank the Minister for his attention to detail—
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair.
Debate interrupted.
The House adjourned at 10 p.m.